In the Kavanaugh Hearings, as in All Things, Republicans are the Party of Bad Faith
The Kavanaugh hearing is a lie. Senate Republicans lie. There is nothing left that isn’t a fabrication. They are the party of corruption and dishonor.
How Republicans Warp Everyone Else
I’ve written about how Republicans warp the discussion around them. There was an excellent article in the Daily Kos a few days ago: Teaching the Holocaust in the South after Charlottesville. It’s a heartfelt discussion of how student sensibilities changed after the racist Unite the Right riots. It’s also nearly a primer on how conservatives use our sense of community to shift the discussion center. ...
The Cake is a Lie
It’s weird. Everything President Donald Trump and his Republican goons are promoting are lies. All a lie; not even a bit true. Immigration, refugees, trade, policing, Medicare, Medicaid, all of it. Trump’s been making up what he sees as happy Republican lies for decades now. I’m assuming his base knows that, too. They’re not stupid people, and (all rumors to the contrary), the Republican base...
Trump Deranged
I admit, I watched Trump’s press conference at the G6 plus one. The liquor helped. It was bloody awful. How on earth did we elect this abuser to power? Trump acted like a deranged idiot. Republicans love posturing about how manly they are, which they seem to translate into “aggressive, selfish, and indifferent.” (Real Republican men are homophobes terrified of their sexuality. And women. And...
Trump’s Favorite Lies
Here we go again. Look, I know it’s a crime in Illinois, but I’m still going to subject people to Trump’s tweets. I know they’re not pretty (or well punctuated), but they are surprisingly entertaining. The modern American President is just spinning away. Maybe he’s feeling especially vulnerable, but there is far too much free time in that man’s mornings. I thought he had a job? ...
President Trump will hurt America by breaking the Iran nuclear treaty
Trump seems increasingly likely to decertify Iran’s compliance with the Iranian nuclear deal. The deal is good for Europe and good for the US, but it was a something Obama touched, so Trump wants it to die. And he can, simply by decertifying Iran’s compliance. You can see Trump’s trigger-finger start twitching when the topic comes up. But if Trump does this thing, he will...
Should public lies be malfeasance?
Here’s a revolutionary thought. Our public servants have been lying to us at a fantastic rate. Suppose we decided we didn’t like that? I know this is far beyond the pale these days, but what would happen if we demanded our officials not lie to us? Crazy, I know, but lying is a kind of malfeasance. So what might happen when public officials who tell...
Insane or Stupid: the New American Kleptocracy
I can’t tell if we’re insane or stupid. We see the collapse of the two-party system into a criminal kleptocracy, and yet we keep pretending it’s something else. I started this with the Stoneman Douglas High School deaths. It still hurts to think about it, but we have another mass shooting in another school. We see the broken and bloody bodies of our children on...