I was raised to have great respect, even reverence, for the President of the United States, no matter who he or she is. My parents were lifelong Democrats, my father more out of habit, my mother because she had thought long and hard about things and decided that the Democratic Party stood more for fairness […]

I did not watch Trumps State of the Union show last night. I just couldnt. The advance notice, based on White House information, said he was going to issue a call for unity, and this in particular is infuriating. (I know I shouldnt let Trump make me so emotional, but he just does) How dare […]

Discussions about morality are frustrating. One mans morality is another mans sin. Its common for people who preach their particular morality to claim that theyre standing on principle. For instance, Christian homophobes say that the Bible gives them licenseindeed, commands themto be against homosexuality. My principles forbid it! they say, fully a...

As Ive said before, Im not ready to support any of the Democrats who have declared, or who may declare soon, for president in 2020. We have a lot of timemore than a year before the first primaryto listen to the candidates. But if I had to choose now, it would be Sherrod Brown. All […]

The Republican Party is dead in California, thank goodness. Prior to last Novembers election, Republicans had only 14 Congressional representatives in the state, out of a total of 53. Now, after the election, they hold only seven. So loathed are Republicans in California that elected GOP officials are changing their party affiliation to Democrat. I...

Howard Schultzs ego-driven drive to run for president reminds us once again that we do not want or need billionaires to run our country. They already have more money than they could spend in 100 lifetimes. Mansions, yachts, tropical islands, fleets of expensive cars, private jets, legions of servants, jewels, antiques, paintingswhat more do they [&...

Newsweek just published a story in which Cliff Sims, Trumps former communications director at the White House, called Trump the most authentic president in American history. This, despite Trumps astounding, outrageous pattern of pathological lying. The Washington Post has counted 8,150 such lies since Trump became presidentan assertion neither Trum...

Donald Trump has two demographic walls currently in his favor: About one-third of voters insist theyll never stop supporting him, no matter what. These diehards are represented symbolically by Roger Stone The second wall going for Trump is that more than 50 percent of the public at this time does not support impeachment. Together, these […]

For those of us who are determined to get rid of the catastrophe of Trump by any means, the latest Washington Post-ABC poll is troubling. The polls key finding is shocking: The trend on impeachment has moved in Trumps directiondespite [Tom] Steyers multimillion-dollar campaign. Last August, the result was a 49/46 plurality in support of […]

Kamala Harris was in my home town yesterday for the formal kickoff of her presidential campaign. She is of course the junior Senator from California; before that she was District Attorney of San Francisco and then Californias Attorney-General. But what a lot of people didnt know is that shes an Oakland girl, which is why […]

I couldnt agree more with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortezs plan to impose a 70% marginal tax rate on the richest Americans. In fact, the rate can go even higher, as far as Im concerned. In a marvelous moment of serendipity, AOCs suggestion occurs at exactly the same time the news hit that a hedge fund billionaire, Ken […]

Todays news that the Republican, Catholic-dominated Supreme Court allowed Trumps transgender military ban to go into effect has had a shattering effect on the LGBTQ community. The online news site, LGBTQ Nation, published an article justly comparing the ban to Hitlers anti-semitic campaign in Germany in the 1930s, which was designed to frighten and...

It was been nearly 60 years since a potential Presidents religion was a national issue. In 1960, the potential President was, of course, John F. Kennedy. His religion, Roman Catholicism, threatened to derail his campaign. People were afraid the Pope would rule America, that Kennedy would inject his Catholic values into his governance. Kennedy effec...

I went to a great wine tasting on Friday, Flights, put on by ZAP, the Zinfandel consumer and trade group Ive known and enjoyed for many decades. The event was held in the elegant, posh Palace Hotel, in San Francisco. A flight is a series of individual wines, tasted and evaluated side by side. All […]

January, 1940 was a weird time in the history of the Second World War. The war had technically begun the previous Sept. 3, when Britain and France declared war against Germany for invading Poland on Sept. 1. But while sporadic incidents between the combatants had broken out, widespread fighting had not yet begun (nor would […]

The denial of reality on the Right is now so extreme, theyve even started a new meme: The November, 2018 election resultthe Blue Wavewas fake news! Yes, thats how much the minds of the neo-nazis at Breitbart have descended into paranoid delusion. Here, for example, is a comment from Will Kane, who may or may […]

We all know that Putin and his minions in Russian security manipulated our 2016 election in order to create chaos among liberals and hand the presidency to Putins hand-picked candidate, Trump. The evidence is overwhelming. Through vigorous social media meddling, the Russians sought to spread divisiveness and resentment among Democrats. The voter su...

I thought Bobb dodged and weaved during his hearing. He gave a little on the hardest of the hard-right conservatives, but hes still ardently anti-abortion; and he hid his real views about Mueller behind curtains of I havent studied the issue enough vagueness. We still dont know if hell permit Trump to fire Mueller. We […]

We know that Trumps five meetings with Putin have resulted in no transcripts being released to the public. There was no one in the room except for the two principles and their translators, and Trump even confiscated the interpreters notes and told them not to discuss what had transpired with other [U.S.] administration officials. Thus, […]

One thing that so far has been hard to understand is why Trumps white, conservative, Christian, rural base is in favor of Trumps suck-ups to Russia and Putin. They have supported him for the last two years, despite mounting evidence of his collusion with Russian security and corporate forces. In foreign policy, Trump has hewed […]

I love that Michel Cohen is going to testify before the House Oversight Committeepublicly. Its been said before, but Cohen knows just about everything that went on behind the scenes with the Trump Organization. He knows about the hush money, emoluments, conflicts of interest, most likely about the DNC break-in and Russian collusionall the various [...

Every impartial observer has to admit that the whole motive behind Trumps wall thing is dislike of brown-skinned people from Central and South America and playing to his base. The poor, uneducated, rural whites in that base are out-and-out racists, no different from George Wallace or Bull Conner in previous generations. They never gave a […]

Tuesday, shortly before the speech I was glad Trump decided to give his first national address from the Oval Office. Hes not an inspirational speaker, and I suspected and hoped he would come across as clumsy and ill-informed. Yes, hes good on the stump, in front of friendly redneck crowds for whom the chant Lock […]

Trump said he had denuclearized North Korea. He even had his cohorts set in motion talk about a Nobel Peace Prize. We now know that North Korea hasnt denuked, and if anything, theyve stepped up their enrichment activities. Nor does it seem like theyre going to willingly let go of their nuclear capacity. The Norths […]

Right-wing populists demonize minorities. Left-wing populists demonize the wealthy. Neither offer real solutions for the American people. Thats from McMullins Twitter feed last Saturday. What did he mean and why did he say it? I have consistently argued that its wrong to equate the Left and the Right in moral terms, because that implies that [̷...

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY Internal Memorandum From: Deputy Secretary of the Treasury [DepSecTrea] To: Director, Secret Service Division [DSSD] From now on, Secret Service Division (SSD) personnel are prohibited from smuggling women into wherever POTUS is inhabiting. This includes porn stars, hos and strippers. From: DSSD To: DepSecTrea POTUS ...

Speaker Pelosi gave the loveliest acceptance speech yesterday. It was filled with love, hope, and genuine reaching across the aisle to achieve true bipartisanship with her Republican colleagues. And yet, as soon as the swearing-in was over, MSNBC interviewed Republican congressman Buddy Carter (R-GA) to ask his reaction to Pelosis speech. Did he re...

This is the day weve been waiting for, when Trump is held to account. Here's the gavel, Speaker Pelosi! Under her leadership, these five Democratic House chairs are going to be the heroes of 2019: Jerry Nadler, Judiciary Committee Adam Schiff, Intelligence Committee Elijah Cummings, Oversight Committee Richard Neal, Ways and Means Committee Maxine ...

Last week I wrote about how its more apt to compare Trump with Mussolini than with Hitler. Here are some quotes from Ivone Kirkpatricks authoritative 1964 biography, Mussolini: A Study in Power. Can you see the similarities between the two men, one a dictator, the other a would-be dictator? In publiche relied on his considerable […]

The biggest political question in Washington is: Will the Democrats impeach Trump now that they rule the House of Representatives? The question of impeachment, which is inevitable given the last two years, is said to be driven by the Democratic base. The theory is that Democratic politicians are as dominated by, and afraid of, the […]

And when Ahithopel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself.             0;           &# 160;   
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Trump has a brand new lie out: If House Democrats investigate him in the next Congress (which they should and will), it will amount to presidential harassment. And, he threated, mafia-style, I know how to handle that better than anybody. Lets get a few things straight. Theres no such thing, legally speaking, as presidential harassment. […]

Over the weekend Chris Bridgegate Christie compared Trump to a 72 year-old relative who become[s] more and more convinced of the fact that what theyre doing is the right thing, and it becomes harder to convince them otherwise. Christie was apparently trying to explain away Trumps erratic behavior in a way that lets Trump off […]

Regardless of what you think about Twitter, its a good barometer of what the American people are thinking and talking about. This morning (Saturday), I entered trump into the search Twitter bar and these were the top three results: #TrumpResigns #TrumpResign #TrumpShutdown All three are rather sudden. The latter (#TrumpShutdown) was inevitable once...

"I'm a happy person, but an angry citizen." — Louis Black Now Mattis is out. Whether he quit in protest, or was fired, we dont know. Either way, yet another voice of relative moderation is now gone from this felonious, immoral regime. This has got to weigh heavily among Republican politicians. One wonders where they […]...

Franklin Graham is one of the most vicious, dangerous rightwingers in America. A lifelong homophobe, hes an ardent anti-liberal who longs to go back to the good old days of patriarchy and white authoritarianismfascist leanings made all the more sinister by an evangelical Christian ideology that makes him an avenging Crusader against the enemies of ...

Back tomorrow with a Special Report on Franklin Graham's ties to Russia.

Not even the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committeerightwingers likeMarco Rubio, Roy Blunt, John Cornyn and Tom Cottoncould avoid the conclusion that Russia favored Trump in the 2016 election, in meddling that was far more extensive than originally understood. Thats from the Committees new report, just out, that shockingly spells out how ...

I finally got around to reading Hillary Clintons 2017 memoir, What Happened. Its a terrific read, and reminds me all over again why Hillary Clinton has been one of the most outstanding political activists of the last 40 years. She says so many important, wise things in the book that its hard to single out […]

Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of MSNBCs Morning Joe news show, got into hot water the other day, after calling Trumps Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, what the media are calling a gay slur because theyre too squeamish to quote her real word: buttboy. Ill explain what that means (if you dont already know, and I suspect […]

It is with great pleasure that I can inform you my dog, Gus, is on the short list to Chief of Staff to President Donald J, Trump.  This is a singular honor,Gus told me, when I told him Id read about it at @realDonaldTrump. He added, Im looking forward to serving the president, and to […]

The French like nothing more than a good riot. Some of us remember May, 1968, when general strikes, university sit-ins and widespread civic mayhem almost brought that country to the edge. Now, theyre at it again. Whatare the French upset about this time? Just about everything, which makes it hard to Macron to figure out […]

NINETEEN YEARS AGO Bill Clinton was impeached for saying I did not have sex with that woman when everybody knew he did. Now we have Trump insisting I did not collude with the Russians when everyone knows he did.  Clinton, famously, was impeached. And Trump?  For three yearsone year of primaries and two years of […]