From the Left
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The Zen of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is the most American of holidays. But there is something almost un-American about it. It is a day opposed to striving, to getting more. We stop adding up the numbers on the scorecard of life. We freeze in place and give thanks for whatever is there.
The Wall Street Journal once featured sob stories about failed dot-com ...Read more
Bill Press Advisory
Bill Press is not filing this week. We will sub Clarence Page. Press returns next week.
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How Biden Can Act Now To Limit Trump's Mass Deportation Agenda
President-elect Donald Trump has made mass detention of immigrant communities a central part of his political platform. Trump's cabinet nominees are reportedly laying the groundwork to expand detention capacity in cities around the country. The Trump administration's proposed plans include making detention mandatory, which would trap ...Read more
How to Hope in a Near-Hopeless Time?
It’s been a few weeks, but it feels like an eternity.
It feels like an eternity because of the immensity of the loss — not just the loss of the election but the seeming loss of America. Not just America, but the apparent loss of the world as we knew it.
In reality, we lost by a relatively small number of votes, but in our winner-take-all ...Read more
Trump’s Kakistocracy Invites Possible Catastrophe
“Kakistocracy” is trending again.
The obscure term, coined as early as the seventeenth century and defined by Merriam-Webster as “government by the worst people,” has surged on Google Trends since the election.
What does government by the worst look like? To ...Read more
The Transgender War
She has yet to even be sworn in. But the hateful Republican women in the House of Representatives have already declared war on the first openly transgender woman to be elected to Congress, Sarah McBride. She is my new hero.
Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who The New York Times describes as "one of the more attention-seeking members of the...Read more
No Flat Taxes. More Progressive Taxes!
As we have seen previously when a Republican has won a presidential election, the progressive individual income tax -- in which the more you earn, the higher of a percentage of your earnings are subject to taxation -- has once again become a target for dilution or elimination. We have long heard about schemes like the "flat tax," where tax ...Read more
How Trump Corrupted Pam Bondi
Newspaper profiles of Pamela Bondi -- subbed in as President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. attorney general following the scandalous implosion of Matt Gaetz -- often describe her with a phrase like "longtime loyalist."
The former Florida attorney general's unwavering fealty dates back to September 2013, when a political committee ...Read more
Americans Don't Do the First Thanksgiving Story Any Justice
We've all heard the story of the first Thanksgiving. The plight of pilgrims traveling from England to establish Plymouth colony in the new world. How they survived a brutal winter and then celebrated a successful harvest with Native Americans the following fall in what would become known as the first Thanksgiving. Holding this feel-good story up...Read more
Cabinetwork
I hadn't done much sanding in my life, but my wife and I bought a new house, and she asked me to sand the kitchen cabinets so she could paint. She likes to paint. I got a handheld electric sander and went to work.
Turns out I'm not a bad sander. She is mid-paint right now.
That's one of the things to remember in life. You don't know if you ...Read more
Trump’s Insane Cabinet: Gaetz Gone. Confirm the Rest!
By nominating the feckless Matt Gaetz as a ttorney g eneral, Donald Trump wanted to show how far he’s willing to go in blowing up the federal government. How fitting that cynical ploy blew up in his face.
Was Gaetz fit for the job? No way! He only practiced law for two years. He accomplished nothing in Congress except to lead the mutiny ...Read more
Recalling the Jihad Against Martha Stewart
I like Martha Stewart. Always have.
Two recent documentaries, "Martha" on Netflix and the CNN series "The Many Lives of Martha Stewart," follow the Greek drama that make Stewart a cultural fascination to this day. They recount the jihad against this visionary who came under attack for being a woman with fierce ambition.
Admittedly, Stewart's...Read more
He's Trolling Us
What to make of Donald Trump's nominations of the Fox News team to the Trump Cabinet? Attorney General Gaetz? Can this be serious? An expert on wrestling to take down the Department of Education? An opponent of public health to run Health and Human Services? What kind of game is this? Is he really just trolling us to see how far outside the ...Read more
Trump Serves Revenge, Dares Senate to Defy
"Julius Caesar did not seize power; the Roman Senate ceded power to Caesar." -- Sen. Robert C. Byrd
Let that be a lesson to us from the West Virginian's grave.
Donald Trump promised to be a dictator on day one. Yet we missed his meaning: the first day after the election. Right away, we felt the president-elect's revenge, blowing in on the ...Read more
How Trump's Made-in-America Scam Still Means Made-in-China
Wow! Who says election promises don't produce real change?
Candidate Donald Trump had loudly proclaimed that he'd force U.S. corporations to move their Chinese manufacturing jobs back to America. How? By imposing a whopping new tariff on all the made-in-China products they sell to us.
Even he must have been surprised, though, when one major ...Read more
Exactly as Warned: Trump's AG Pick Is the Bottom of the Barrel
In just two weeks since being elected to return to the White House, Donald Trump has given those accused of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome ample cause to feel, well, decidedly un-deranged. Regrettably if unsurprisingly, it's shaping up to be an epic time for "I-told-you-so's," as the president-elect's selections of those who will ...Read more
On Vaccines, 'It's Every Man for Himself'
It takes a cracked mindset to name a cracked pot with no scientific training to head the agency that oversees 11 agencies tasked with protecting Americans' health. They include the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, Medicare and Medicaid.
Donald Trump's pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human ...Read more
Biden Must Use Final Months in Office to Commute Federal Death Sentences
President-elect Donald Trump has chilling plans to use his second term to expand the federal death penalty. This expansion continues the killing spree he initiated in the final six months of his first presidency when Trump oversaw more executions than any president in the past 120 years. His plans for a second term include sentencing more ...Read more
How Democrats Let a Rising Generation of Supporters Slip Away
Far-right streamer Nick Fuentes, who usually welcomes publicity, received the type he probably didn’t want after Donald Trump’s election victory.
The 26-year old white supremacist and antisemite, who has been banned from multiple social media sites for violating hate speech policies, posted on X: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”
...Read more
Trump’s ‘First Buddy’ is in Deep Trouble
The two finalists to become Trump’s Treasury Secretary — the person will have a major hand in cutting taxes for the wealthy and raising tariffs so everyone pays more — are Howard Lutnick, who’s CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and Trump’s co-transition chair, and Steven Bessent, the founder of the investment firm Key Square Capital Management....Read more