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Must We Feel Sorry for Those Who Believe MAGA?
The tricks Donald Trump tried to play on the recent hurricane victims were beyond depraved. Here were people suffering major losses, their lives stopped in a hellscape of tattered roofs, ruined possessions and, in some cases, a pile of debris where their home once stood. And there was Trump making their lives more miserable as a tactic to fool...Read more
Beyond Weird
It started as a joyful campaign. When President Joe Biden dropped out, Kamala Harris, the president's pick and soon after the pick of every prominent Democrat, quickly secured the nomination. No one put themselves up against her. It was a relief and a joyful coronation. Her vice presidential nominee was the salt of the earth. Coach Tim. The ...Read more
Sordid Story: Corporate Executives Get Self-Gratification From M&As
Sadism and masochism (abbreviated as S&M) are generally frowned on in polite society as perverse acts of sexual gratification. But what should we make of M&As?
This is Wall Street's abbreviation of mergers and acquisitions, which are acts of self-gratification practiced by top corporate executives. Such financial couplings can also be judged ...Read more
Waves and Walls Higher for Harris' Catwalk
Since crossing the Golden Gate Bridge running away from a wrecked home, I've taken to life on my own. I come and go as I please. I pursue plans and projects to my heart's content and can hear myself think.
Then when Girlfriend -- my cat -- came into my life, it seemed complete. The gray tabby seemed the perfect amount of company. She's gone ...Read more
Why the Fight for Trans Rights Never Gets Easier -- or Less Vital
In the spring of 1999, young people across the country began to prepare for that singular teenage right of passage: prom. For Diamond Stylz, this time included not just finding the right dress and corsage but fighting for her right to attend prom at all. School administrators had told the then-17-year-old Stylz just two days before prom that ...Read more
No Questions Asked: Elevating Woke Over Journalism, CBS Looks Like Occupied Territory
In her 2021 book "Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy," journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon argued that arrogance and addiction to political fashion has tanked Americans' faith in the news media. There's reason to think she's right. Former National Public Radio editor Uri Berliner described NPR's "unspoken consensus about the stories we ...Read more
Musk Wants to Control the Presidency
Elon Musk is a migrant.
There is a difference between a migrant and an immigrant. An immigrant is a person who moves to another country with the intention of living there permanently. The great majority of immigrants to America come for work or personal safety or affection for the way of life. Their goal is to assimilate.
A migrant is ...Read more
Keep the Faith
Some of you have shared with me your fears about the upcoming election, now just 22 days away.
I can’t sugarcoat this. It is frightening and worrying. We have already endured four years of Trump. Another term could tip America and the world into full-bore fascism.
Trump has become even more unhinged and vindictive. His fascistic personality ...Read more
Trump, Spreader of Conspiracy Theories, Needs to Get Out of the Way
While following news coverage of the horrific and deadly path of Hurricane Helene across North Carolina, I was given pause by the ironic name of a large county which received some of the worst destruction: Buncombe.
American political history buffs will recognize this as a catchword for meaningless speech. “The usual story” of the origin of...Read more
'The Message' and The Interview
On Sept. 30, bestselling author Ta-Nehisi Coates appeared on the "CBS Mornings" show to promote his book "The Message," which is a one-sided critique of Israel as an apartheid state. The book compares Israel to the "Jim Crow South" and calls it out as the "one place on the planet -- under American patronage -- that resembled the world that my ...Read more
Why Won't the Government Explain the Migrant Crisis?
I fantasize about a government that tries to act like it is, if not quite by the people, at least for the people and thus internalizes the principle that the people deserve to be treated like fully vested adults rather than idiotic children.
Nothing about what the media calls the "migrant crisis" withstands the slightest scrutiny. This begins ...Read more
How Could Anyone Be Miserable on a Disney Vacation?
By pure luck, I traveled to Walt Disney World with my husband and my son just last week between hurricanes Helene and Milton. Milton made landfall in Florida as a category 3 hurricane. We planned this vacation months ago according to our son's fall break from school.
This trip was our first family vacation that didn't revolve around also ...Read more
If You Work It Right ...
If you work it right, you might be able to kill freedom in America and in the Ukraine with just one vote.
You might also be able to kill abortion freedom, drag queen freedom, gay freedom, freedom to read any book you want and a bunch of other freedoms no one uses much. Read much? Then the hell with it!
You will keep your freedom to own 67 ...Read more
In the End, Republicans May Save Us from Donald Trump
You must admit, this is a campaign unlike any we’ve seen before. The incumbent Democratic president suddenly drops out and endorses his vice president. The Republican candidate survives two assassination attempts. Two back-to-back hurricanes wipe the presidential race off the front pages.
But history will show that one of the most crucial ...Read more
Warming Comes for Florida's Economy
Florida was the future. The weather's balmy in winter, the beaches are divine and there's no personal income tax. All that and a lower cost of living had set off a sizeable migration of companies from New York, Chicago and California. Between 2021 and 2023, Florida was the fastest-growing state.
Now as a second monster hurricane in two weeks ...Read more
What Matters
Bob Woodward's new book, "War," has what we have come to expect as the usual number of blockbuster revelations, proving once again his skill at loosening the lips of those close to power. My favorite is the story that in the midst of drastic shortages at home and abroad, Donald Trump was sending Covid tests off to his authoritarian buddy in ...Read more
A Political Day in Court
Election 2024 is certainly as classic an American courtroom drama as sure as "Twelve Angry Men."
The contrast, nay contradiction, between the two leading witnesses could not be clearer.
Speaking of angry men, one star witness in the witness box seems to swim in the spittle of his own outbursts of outrage. He is a 78-year-old man, but nobody ...Read more
To Fight Right-Wing Book Bans, Read Banned Books!
In high school, my friend Charlie and I once poked into an abandoned Victorian house in our hometown. Up in the attic, we found a secret door to a space containing several boxes of books.
One held 50 copies of "The Age of Reason," Thomas Paine's treatise ridiculing the myths of Christian theology and the Bible. Hot, forbidden stuff! In Paine'...Read more
Ways the Media Introduces Bias to the Immigration Debate
For more than two years, the immigration debate has revolved around one issue: "the border."
Despite the fact that issues related to the border are vast and complex, the entire U.S. immigration system -- flaws and all -- has been boiled down to grainy images of barbed wire atop a border wall and videos of families and others seeking safety ...Read more
False, And True: A Lot of Phonies Since Oct. 7, but Also Leaders
What began last Oct. 7 with the invasion of Israel by 6,000 Hamas gunmen bent on slaughtering Jews has reached the one-year mark, with Hezbollah, another heavily armed and genocidal enterprise, firing thousands of missiles at Israeli civilians. The left has largely whitewashed or defended Hamas' and Hezbollah's attempts at genocide while ...Read more