June 24, 2022

Alito’s Supreme Affront of 9th Amendment Kills ‘Roe’

Today the Supreme Court deserted 49 years of precedent in striking down Roe v. Wade, paving the way for states to ban abortion. In Justice Alito’s majority opinion, he states because the Constitution does not mention abortion, there is no constitutional right to abortion. It’s remarkable to me a sitting Supreme Court justice in 2022 would make such an argument given the long history of such foolish arguments, but this is how religion and righteousness can cloud one’s judgement.

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October 9, 2020

What’s The Deal With Trump Followers?

Five years ago when Donald Trump rode that escalator and announced his candidacy, everyone including most people who are now Trump-for-lifers, believed it was a stunt, and he was clearly unqualified. In the subsequent year-and-a-half of the campaign, one-by-one candidates dropped until one candidate remained, The Donald. Along the way, he gained a loyal following, and in the final months of the 2016 election, even many Republicans who previously mocked him were now onboard, even some people who proclaimed themselves to be “Never Trumpers.”

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March 16, 2017

Russian Election-Hacking Bingo, Conspiracies For Liberals

With giddy pride, liberals have deservedly vilified an expansive sea of right-wing conspiracy theories. But it now appears those seditious chickens have come home to a roost of left-wing treachery. Modern liberalism has become a hospitable nesting place for paranoia in the months since President Donald Trump’s election. With vociferous oratory growing in the weeks after his inauguration, left-wing talk show hosts and liberal pundits have stoked the base to a level of conspiratorial thinking previously thought reserved for conservative talk radio.

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March 10, 2017

With ‘Fatal Conceit,’ Speaker Paul Ryan Fails Insurance 101

It appears Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is deeply disturbed that insurance premiums paid by healthy people help offset the insurance costs of people who are sick. But that is exactly how health insurance works. In fact, it’s how all insurance works. It’s called spreading the risk. In any insurance pot, there is a minority segment who are higher risk, and these higher risk individuals rightfully pay higher premiums. But in addition to those high-risk premiums, the low-risk majority chips-in to cover the greater cost outlay to insure the high-risk minority.

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March 8, 2017

Republicans Cannot ‘Solve’ Health Care In Good Faith

Fiscal conservatism defines nearly all Republicans, even if decades of failed economic promises say otherwise, but the modern Republican Party is also a collective of combative factions. There are extreme social conservatives who often vote based on social wedge issues like abortion. There are moderate social conservatives who tend to go along with many social conservative positions, but who are primarily fiscal hawks. And there are extreme fiscal hawks who lean libertarian, and in many cases reject some of the more offensive tenets of social conservatism.

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March 7, 2017

Wiretapping Trump’s Reality Detachment, One Tweet At A Time

In a series of reckless tweets over the weekend, President Trump accused President Obama of tapping his phone at Trump Tower. “How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy,” said Trump via his favorite form of communication. Of course Trump offered no evidence, and worse, it seems he received the “intel” from Breitbart News and the cranial hemorrhage conservative radio host, Mark Levin.

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March 1, 2017

Counterview: Trump’s Cynical Exploitation Of Navy SEAL’s Wife

During President Trump’s congressional address on Tuesday night, he offered a tribute to William “Ryan” Owens, the Navy SEAL killed in a raid in Yemen, a raid Trump approved at a dinner that included his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Owen’s wife Carryn, seated next to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, was seen looking up to the ceiling in tears while applause carried on for several minutes.

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February 28, 2017

End The White House Press Briefing

Last week when Sean Spicer expelled CNN, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and others, apart from the habitual antics of a juvenile administration, perhaps it was a harbinger of a new post-briefing era. While this administration’s anti-First Amendment frolicking is repulsive, it could just be President Trump and Sean Spicer did us all a favor. I say we end the White House press briefing.

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February 27, 2017

Will Trump’s War On The News Media Work?

With President Trump’s “fake news” crusade now turned up to eleven, we are left little choice but to assume it is part of a broader de-legitimizing strategy. And strategy is the job of Steve Bannon, Trump’s White House Chief Strategist. Bannon told the New York Times in January that the “media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.” Bannon was talking about how the media was wrong about the 2016 election, never mind that the polls were not all that far off from the popular vote tally. “The media here is the opposition party,” said Bannon in the Times interview. “They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.” If it is a blueprint, Trump’s anti-media bombast is a plan likely architected by Steve Bannon.

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