Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The Democrats and the filibuster

Ezra Klein has moved to the New York Times, and he has a very good piece up today.  His argument is familiar to anyone who follows his work, but well-argued and definitely worth reading.  He begins with this: President Biden takes office with a ticking clock. The Democrats’ margin in the House and Senate couldn’t […]

Trump on his own terms

David Hopkins has an interesting take on the failure of Trump’s presidency: Regardless of these challenges, the general verdict on Trump among historians and political scientists, reporters and commentators, and most of the Washington political community (including, at least privately, many Republicans) is guaranteed to range from disappointment and mockery to outright declarations that he […]

Liars and Their Lies

Poor Jim Jordan, singled up with no Doug Collins, Trey Gowdy, Darrell Issa, Louis Gohmert, Mo Brooks, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, …, along side him, on 12 and 13 Jan, 2021, tried valiantly, well, at least loudly and indignantly, to pull the Republican wagon out of the ditch; the ditch that they all had taken […]

Impeachment, again

I want to revisit my earlier post on impeachment.  I am more inclined to support impeachment today than I was 6 days ago, although it is still far from clear that impeachment makes sense.  Trump has done great damage to this country by making clear that congressional Republicans will allow a lawless, authoritarian president who […]

Exploiting the Stupids: The Intellectual Foundation of Movement Conservatism

Exploiting the Stupids: The Intellectual Foundation of Movement Conservatism  From about the age of 8-12, I read a lot of sci-fi.  Along the way, I stumbled across Robert Heinlein, in particular his novel The Day After Tomorrow, initially published as The Sixth Column.  It was so crudely racist I avoided from then on anything with Heinlein’s name […]

Double standards in policing

Many have noted, correctly, that there is a clear double standard in how the police treated the right-wing protesters at the Capitol on Wednesday and how they treated Black Lives Matter demonstrators this summer.  This is indeed a huge problem and I hope to comment further on it soon.  Here I simply want to point […]

Unfit

For eight years Mitch McConnell did everything in his power to block any initiative by President Obama; no matter the cost to the nation. It simply wouldn’t do to have the Democrats governing, to have a Democrat in the White House; especially not a popular black President. He never was much on democracy. McConnell couldn’t […]