Let’s dispense with the “Are you better off today than four years ago?” pitch. Most people for whom this might matter only see the price of eggs – statistical evidence be damned. Job figures? Great. Stock market? Soaring. Inflation? Moderated. Ah, forget it. Anyway, my wife has a better question to jog political memories: If…
“People in the Republican Party feel very comfortable disenfranchising people, throwing out their votes. Anyone who thinks the opposite has been purged from the Republican Party.” That’s former acting U.S. solicitor general Neal Katyal talking. Such a statement would sound over the top if not coming from one of the nation’s leading legal minds. Are…
Jon Stewart didn’t let Bill Adair finish his sentence, so I’ll do it. Adair, father of Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checker PolitiFact, was discussing his book “Beyond the Big Lie” on “The Daily Show.” A theme of the book is that though politicians of all stripes lie, the GOP’s devotion to it so far exceeds the other…
If you ever wondered what makes a snake slippery, it’s not spray tan. That goo comes from a thin coat of fatty lubricant in a network of scales. We saw the slime at work the other night on TV. No, it wasn’t a Jack Hanna segment. If viewers stayed till the end of the vice…
I had just turned off MSNBC when the doorbell rang. A dark-skinned man stood outside. He pointed a menacing weapon at my head (later Googled as a laser-sighted bazooka). “Salir de su casa,” he ordered. Venezuelan for, “Get outta your house.” We exited onto barren streets, hands aloft. “So, Trump was right,” I said. We…
In Colorado, a certain number of specialty license plates show an image of the light purple-and-white state flower, the columbine, and the phrase, “Respect Life.” It’s tender and thoughtful, near poetry. And it’s propaganda. The state’s last Republican governor, Bill Owens, authorized it in 2000 after lawmakers rejected the idea. He said it memorialized the…
(With apologies to George Thorogood and the Destroyers) On the day I was born/ the nurses all gathered ‘round And they gazed in wide wonder/ at the joy they had found The head nurse spoke up/ said, “Leave this one alone.” She could tell right away/ I was a fraud to the bone. Fraud to…
It was Aug. 26, 2019, in Biarritz, France, and Donald Trump greeted a friend as only he could – and get away with it politically. Having repeatedly disgraced himself as our face and voice at another G7 economic conference, Trump topped things off in Trump style. As a sit-down with brutal Egyptian military ruler Abdel…
“Aristocracy has a tendency to degenerate the human species,” wrote Thomas Paine. Acknowledging degrees of truth in Paine’s quip, let me defend my genome. Don’t downgrade us all based on one corrupt man-child who believes himself born to rule. That would be Donald Trump. I demand not to have my value as a human commodity…
Donald Trump is backpedaling like Primo Carnera. Stunned and harried, he hears the blessed bell. But it’s an illusion. The fighter before him is ringing his chimes. Who is this Primo Carnera person? Only a boxing nerd knows. The reason is that in a 1935 boxing match some well-placed blows by young Joe Louis made…