The second round of debates between the Democratic candidates for president demonstrated how imperfect the presidential debate system is. The candidates basically repeated the talking points that they had mouthed in the first round. Important issues such as taxation of the rich were all but ignored, while issues such as healthcare and immigration tended to […]
Now that the initial stench of Donald Trump’s racist comments about four freshman Democratic female Congressional representatives has lifted, most analysts are discussing this series of racist tweets as if they represented an overall election strategy: make these four progressives candidates the “face” of the Democratic Party. This gambit—if it is one—attempts to take the […]
The problem with the news media talking about socialism in the context of the current election cycle is that most people—including most reporters and columnists—have no idea what socialism is and only a fuzzy notion of what capitalism is. What’s worse is that popular but inaccurate or misconceived definitions of the two words confuse the […]
Yes, we know the BS that Trump, Bolton, Pompeo, the Saudis and the Netanyahu government have been slinging in the news media. Accusations of tanker bombings and other acts of terrorism, all backed by as many facts as supported Lyndon Johnson’s version of what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin. Backed by as many facts […]
Under the leadership of Donald Trump, the Republican Party has graduated from pursuing Ronald Reagan’s politics of selfishness to pursuing the politics of cruelty. How else to explain this week’s decision by the administration to cancel English classes, recreational programs and legal aid for unaccompanied minors staying in federal migrant shelters? The excuse for not […]
Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction doesn’t break new ground in its discussion of how computer algorithms discriminate against the poor, minorities and women, making them pay more for loans, shutting them out of jobs, and disrupting their work schedules. Just about everything she writes about we’ve seen in the pages of major newspapers and […]
Many major media outlets, including USA Today and New York Times have been floating the idea of lowering the voting age to 16. Bad idea. If anything, we should raise the voting age to 21. The simple fact of the matter is that the brains of virtually all 16-year-olds are still forming. Their reasoning capacity […]
The current wave of anti-choice legislation passed in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio and elsewhere fills me with a deep sadness for the many victims whom these benighted laws will create. Women who will die or be severely injured in back alley abortions. Men and women whose lives will be made infinitely more difficult or unhappy because […]
Pangloss is a fictional character in Voltaire’s 18th century masterpiece of satire, Candide. When describing the current state of affairs, Pangloss always refers to the status quo as “the best of all possible worlds.” His smug optimism in the face of injustice and tragedy produces much of the mordant humor of Voltaire’s novella. From the […]
The Democrats who don’t want to impeach Donald Trump at this point are afraid of their own shadows. Or maybe the shadows of their big funders. They say they fear that the move would backfire—as it seems to have done when the House impeached Bill Clinton in 1999 and Slick Willie’s popularity soared. But the […]