Betsy DeVos took the Jared Kushner route to a prominent place in America’s life. She married into it. She did it by betrothing billionaire ($5.5 billion net worth) Dick DeVos, whose father founded Amway. Dick got his turn as CEO. It’s the American way. So is buying influence with lawmakers. Over the years, the DeVos…
DetailsNewly elevated, helium-inflated, a president for a bare blink of an eye, Donald Trump chose as one of his first presidential acts a declaration of war on the press. So, how’s that going? Trump called reporters “the enemies of the people.” Henchman Steve Bannon called the media “the opposition party.” Interesting claim from one who…
DetailsAs we recall now, it was James McCord, our nation’s 37th president, who in 1974 famously said, “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.” No? Oh, right; James McCord wasn’t president. He was just the first name of note – a campaign committee schlemiel arrested…
DetailsLook at the smiles on those faces. Look at the preening. You’d have thought President Trump and the beaming Republican cohorts standing behind him – Stephen Colbert called it “the strategic white persons reserve” – had just cured cancer. Or accepted ISIS’s surrender. Or returned man to the moon. Or brokered Middle East peace. No.…
Details“The clownish veneer of Trumpism conceals its true danger,” writes David Remnick in The New Yorker. “Trump’s way of lying is not a joke; it is a strategy, a way of clouding our capacity to think, to live in a realm of truth.” What’s it this week? We are asked to “reform” our tax system,…
DetailsThe word is that Donald Trump isn’t much of a reader. Former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Taran Killam affirms this – that then-candidate Trump “struggled to read” when preparing for a dismal guest-hosting of SNL last year. That’s OK, Mr. President. Research finds a broad swath of our population, up to half of us,…
DetailsIt’s a tradition in many militarized cultures, like turkey and cranberry sauce. First comes the military show of force. Then come the goose-stepping troops. You may think this to be a reference to the goons of North Korea, or the vipers of Syria. It is. It’s also a reference to “Fox and Friends.” First, Syria:…
DetailsWilbur Ross was misinformed, and he was sitting right next to the guy. To watch the missiles fly, Donald Trump had assembled his inner circle to a cramped room that looked like a banquet nook at Benihana. Please pass the saké. It was Mar-a-Lago, actually. Being at the new nerve center of western civilization, you’d have…
DetailsIt’s about the public record now. It’s about Coretta Scott King speaking from the grave to remind us how one-time judge and now Attorney General Jeff Sessions winked in approval from the bench at racist schemes to keep black people from the polls. It’s about our new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos showing how little…
DetailsAct 1 of Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” features a put-down of a hollow braggart who “speaks an infinite deal of nothing.” Sort of reminds of the merchant of Mar-a-Lago and his first act as a legislative mastermind. “On my very first day in office,” said Donald Trump in October, in full bray about the Affordable Care…
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