It’s going to be all right. My margarine tells me so. It’s more than margarine. It’s Vicks VapoRub and oat milk. And more. As we enter a new year, a few things have got me thinking mankind and our planet aren’t doomed. Indeed, better things are ahead. Why? Well, first, my margarine. I’m a toast…
“If I had one wish this holiday season,” mused Steve Martin many Christmases ago, “it would be that all the children join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace.” So appropriate. So needed in discordant times. If granted another wish, he added, it would be “$30 million a month to be…
“Onward Christian soldiers. Marching as to war. With the cross of Jesus going on before.” Raised a Methodist, I was a little confused by the hymn. The lyrics meant well, surely. But was the Jesus of Sunday School a gun-toting militant? I guess it depends on what war Christians think they are fighting. Kyle Rittenhouse.…
In this season, recall what the most reputable Ebenezer Scrooge said when a charity appealed for help with so many “in want of common necessaries.” Retorted Scrooge, “Are there no prisons?” Prisons there are, Sir. But nowhere close to enough prisons to house all Americans on the verge of defaulting on their student loans. That…
In this season of compassion, please send thoughts and prayers to Lauren Boebert. The Republican congresswoman from Colorado says she’s the victim of senseless violence. She’s not the type of victim killed or maimed at Club Q in Colorado Springs, a place for LBGTQ individuals and friends. Her victimhood is nothing like those harmed and killed in…
Jerry, would ya wake up to reality? It’s a military thing – Cosmo Kramer. Plot: “Seinfeld’s” Kramer says he’s seen a part-pig, part-man creature — what he calls a scheme to create “a whole army of pigman warriors.” Remember when conspiracy theories were fun? As opposed to, say, ones concocted to obliterate democracy? Social media…
Loaves and fishes. Water to wine. Franco Harris’ “immaculate reception.” All certifiable miracles. Add now what Donald Trump made possible in Arizona. Late-to-acknowledge-MLK-Day Arizona. Evan Mecham’s Arizona. “Let us see your papers” Arizona. And now: Katie Hobbs’ Arizona. Mark Kelly’s Arizona. Blue Arizona. Arizona, where Democratic secretary of state-elect Adrian Fontes, post-victory, called Big Lie adherents “traitors.”…
In a propagandist’s bag of tricks, analysts call the “glittering generality” the easiest to deploy. “Family values.” “Real America.” “Patriots.” “Pro-life.” No propaganda term is abused by the “family values” crowd, however, like “freedom.” Exhibit A: National embarrassments Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert named their cuckoo klatch the Freedom Caucus. Yeah. Republicans…
Donald Trump’s tax returns must be a chamber of horrors. Rows and rows of skeletons. More murder weapons than a Smith & Wesson showroom. More fingerprints than an FBI field office. Or it could all be above-board. Clean as a whistle. Assume not. The extent to which Trump has gone to conceal his finances, going…
I had so hoped that a menacingly masked poll watcher would be nearby where I went to cast my vote last week. I wanted to explain democracy to him. I felt so envious of the Arizona voters in Maricopa County incensed to see camouflage-clad clowns hanging around and watching them at their ballot drop boxes.…