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…
DetailsDonald 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…
DetailsI 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.…
DetailsWhen I was a kid, a playmate flushed out a wolf spider’s hole. What came next was the stuff of nightmares. A river of brown hairy things swarmed the ground – legs and torsos in every direction. We took our bony limbs to safety with screams right out of Hitchcock. I never saw anything like…
DetailsHuffington Post had the perfect headline: “Trump stumped over why Jan. 6 panel didn’t ask him to testify earlier. Nobody else is.” The committee’s rationale may be best expressed by what Trump’s former attorney, John Dowd, says in Bob Woodward first book about Trump, “Fear”: “He’s a (rhymes with ‘clucking’) liar.” Executive privilege being what…
Details“Russia, if you’re listening . . .” — Donald Trump, 2016. It turns out, Russia was all ears. The day after candidate Trump called on a foreign adversary to “find the 30,000 emails” of his opponent, Russia invested all of its high-tech might to do just that. As Robert Mueller asserted — and a Washington…
DetailsIt seems a bit late to do anything about it in 2022. If we know anything about today’s Republican Party, however, the GOP will do anything and everything it can before 2024. About what? About angry women voters. Oh, yes. Those women are a big problem for the party of Trump; of McConnell and Cruz;…
DetailsThe car is approaching 200,000 miles. Aside from the leaking steering-wheel column and two automatic windows that don’t automate, it runs pretty well.It was the primary vehicle when we obtained the consumer loan for which the car remains collateral.The friendly finance guy took its picture to prove it existed. He would take the car from…
DetailsWretched refuse.In his glowering snark, Ron DeSantis believes he sent Martha’s Vineyard a load of manure.From Texas’ Greg Abbott and Arizona’s Doug Ducey: shipments of human effluent to Washington, New York and Chicago. C.O.D.Warning: murderers and rapists inside. And some good people.To hear these demagogues, reactions in Massachusetts, New York, Chicago and D.C. are just…
Details“We’re not letting the Capitol fall.” Bravery before the imponderable – our democracy besieged by our own. The words of a Capitol police officer were captured on his body cam Jan. 6 as pro-Trump terrorists attacked the seat of our government. It was all so hard to grasp then. Everything from “Hang Mike Pence” to…
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