Getting Over Him

Look, sweetie, he’s been gone a month now and you really have to start getting over your rage. Two things to know about rage: hold on to it too long and it turns incredibly toxic — for you, not for him; and rage almost always begins with fear.

Of course you were afraid of him. We all were, as long as he was the accidental president of the United States.  (I say accidental because he lost the popular vote but became president by an accidental alignment of the electoral college, and although he later claimed to have brilliantly planned the whole thing it is certain that he did not then and does not now have a clue as to what the electoral college is or how it works.) Fear was the right response when he could drop a nasty tweet and ruin a life, or mention someone in a speech and get them hounded by trolls spewing death threats; or get someone investigated because they looked at him the wrong way. And fear, when it’s prolonged and helpless, morphs into rage. Continue reading

Senator Joe Manchin Keeps Nope Alive

When a political party achieves the majority in the United States Senate, it acquires not only the ability to win all votes (that don’t require a 60% majority), but to appoint committee chairs and set the legislative agenda. It is an event of enormous significance for the party, the government and the people. Parties strive to achieve the majority, usually, by putting forth an agenda of things they would do if only.

In 2020 the Democratic Party won not only the presidency and vice presidency, but the senate, by virtue of winning two special elections in Georgia after the presidential election. Actual membership in the senate is an equal split of 50-50, but since the vice president chairs the Senate, and she is a Democrat, her party is the majority. Continue reading

Mr. President, Congratudolences

AUSTIN, TX. Nov. 7, 2020. A Protect the Vote rally is held in Wooldridge Square shortly after former Vice President Joe Biden was declared the projected winner of the 2020 Presidential Election. Michael Minasi/KUT

When  they finally told us who had won the 2020 presidential election, I felt a profound sadness. Not because I wanted the other guy to win — not hardly — but because I felt sorry for the winner.

Like most successful campaigns, Joe Biden’s offered a clear and simple promise — “I am not Donald Trump, I will restore competence and decency to government.” Eighty-one million American voters approved, more than voted for any presidential candidate ever before, and seven million more than voted for Trump. But not-being-Donald-Trump is not going to be enough. Consider what we confront: Continue reading

Cooling Our Jets

The Army of the Deplorables assaults the US Capitol on Wednesday, January 6, 2021.

Overheated rhetoric deployed against overheated rhetoric is like spraying gasoline on a fire. The events at the Capitol last Wednesday were awful enough; exaggerating them serves no purpose.

  1. It was not an attempted coup. A coup seeks to assume the power of government, something these morons were obviously not equipped to do, and to be objective were not trying to do. To the extent they had a strategy it was apparently to delay the certification of the Electoral College vote for president.  
  2. But it is not at all clear that there was a strategy, an overall plan. By appearances they were just a mob, rioting, and mobs have IQs that equal the average shoe size of their members. Clearly, some of them wanted to kill and maim, others wanted to trash, and some wanted to take pictures of the pretty statues and selfies of their grand adventure.

Continue reading

The Armies of Democracy

No, the armies of democracy did not wear uniforms. Maybe they should have. To get a little respect.

If they had done what they did a few days ago as a military operation — wearing uniforms, carrying weapons — the world would have been transfixed, our adversaries carried out of the arena in a dead faint. 

By the hundreds and then the thousands and then the tens of thousands, they left their homes in the predawn dark last Tuesday and headed for their assembly points. For a few of them it was just another day on the job, but the great majority were volunteers with a day’s training under their belts. stepping up because someone had to. According to a well-rehearsed plan, they took possession of a critical building in each of their neighborhoods, booted up their complex computerized equipment and donned their face masks. Remember, all this was happening at the height of the worst pandemic, the worst public health emergency, in a hundred years. Continue reading

On Labelling Judges

Color them red, and blue, and that’s it? I think there’s more to it…..

I often think we — and be we I mean all of us collectively, people, journalists, politicians, etc. — overestimate the degree to which judges appointed by a particular president continue to represent that president’s point of view for the rest of their careers. I am also suspicious of the meaning of the labels “liberal” and “conservative” as applied to jurists, and as used to predict their future opinions.

Years ago a friend of mine was summoned to jury duty. It was a long, complicated and serious case, a charge of manslaughter as I recall. My friend was the owner of a small construction company, a Republican, a hunter and second-amendment guy, who didn’t have much good to say about people who didn’t look and think as he did. (As I recall it, the accused at trial was a member of a minority.) Some time after the trial was over I ran into him and asked him how it had gone. His answer surprised me.  Continue reading

The Russians Are NOT Coming, Again

Granted, they look scary, especially on the battlefield. But they are lousy at US presidential politics.

Once you notice it, it drives you nuts. Every single news story about how the Russians are interfering with our 2020 election, or for that matter how they interfered with our 2016 election, shouts about what they plan to do, or attempted to do, or hope to do, or what someone fears they will do. You are not likely to see a single account of what they actually accomplished in 2016, or what they are actually capable of doing in 2020. 

There’s a reason for that. 

Moreover, dig just a little bit into the fables about Russian machinations worldwide — the poisoning of the Skripals in Britain, of the Russian opposition leader in Russia, the “bounties” offered for US soldiers in Afghanistan — and what you find, without exception, is an illogical, ignorant lash up that cannot withstand the simplest of logical questions. 

There’s a reason for that, too. Continue reading

The Agony of Victory

Why is this man smiling. Does he think winning is a good thing?

As I try to imagine what’s likely to befall us in the coming months, there’s a group I’m increasingly concerned about — a group in addition to the sick, the uninsured, the unemployed, the homeless, the bankrupt ( If you have unsecured debt like medical bills, you can consult an attorney to help with filing your chapter 7), all of whom will surely suffer greatly. I’m worried about the Democrats. 

I think they’re going to win the election, and for weeks and months afterward will be on a terrific high — the Prince of Darkness gone, decency and competence restored to the White House, our country no longer the laughingstock of the world. What I worry about is what happens when it dawns on them that it hasn’t made any difference. Continue reading

November 3, 2020: Election Day or Execution Day?

It is becoming more difficult every day of this long, hot summer to avoid the possibility that the United States of America may not survive the 2020 presidential election.  The existential threats gathering around us are so numerous and ugly, our governments at all levels are so incompetent, corrupt, and stupid that a critical mind searches in vain for a reason to expect a reasonably good outcome. The stress on our entire society is so extreme that the glue that holds us together, that keeps us civil, is breaking down and when it is gone instead of civil people we might well have civil war.  Continue reading

Not a Very Good Year

“Business has been pretty good this year despite everything. We’re pretty much back to normal, wouldn’t you say, dear?”

Frank Sinatra’s iconic song about “a very good year” will never apply to 2020, which is shaping up to be a very bad year indeed. We (in the mid-Atlantic United States) are like people on a small island, awash in a recent tsunami, facing incoming ranks of equally severe tsunamis, one after the other, as far as any eye can see.

We are, of course, still up to our asses in the first tsunami, the coronavirus pandemic,  which has receded a little bit here but is still rising elsewhere in this very large country. America’s handling of this public-health crisis has been the worst in the world, with the possible exception of Brazil. It is the only country in the world whose leaders have encouraged the politicization of an infectious disease, with one party belittling it as inconsequential, even imaginary, while it has stricken three and a half million people and killed 140,000 (one-third the number of American service members killed in World War Two). Continue reading