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Three BIG Problems – One Simple Solution

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Most of Us Ignored the First Two – Until the Third One Affected All of Us

Its All About People

We have had two long-running, serious – and interrelated problems for decades. The third one is a bit more recent. All three revolve around people – what people want and how people treat each other on a national and personal level.

Problem 1

The first of these is border security. Ignore the nonsense of the Trumpists; they actually made the problem worse, with their infantile focus on a mythical wall. But setting that aside,

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Mid Term Elections Unlike Any in Our History

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America Will Take a Big Leap to the Next Peak – or Into the Abyss

 This Will be One for the History Books – and the Rest of Our Lives

How many times have we have heard – or said – “This is the most important election…”? Yeah, they all seem to feel that way, and at the time, each met that criterion. Surely the presidential election of 2016 did. Elect Donald Trump? That would be a disaster. Thanks to the anachronism of the Electoral College, we blew it. The rest is,

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The Gun Thing is Not Complicated

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It’s Surely Not Easy – But It Actually Is Uncomplicated – and Doable

 

 America and Guns

It has been my great privilege of living all over this country, have travelled through almost all of it, and have lived and traveled around the world. As will surprise no one, I can say definitively, there is no other country, certainly no other advanced country, with so demented a relationship with guns as the good old US of A.

I have spent time in other countries in which guns have a long history intermixed with society – France and Switzerland come to mind foremost.

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Reflections from a Poll Greeter

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Observations from the Front Lines During Primaries

The First Votes are In

Primary season is upon us, about wrapped up, actually. I think what I saw in working at the polls for a few days in my neighborhood likely reflects what others saw in many other areas. For the most part, more good news than bad, which was something of a pleasant surprise. Let’s hope the good things noted below carry through to the general election.

Primaries are important for many reasons, but they have unique characteristics that do not always carry forward to the general election,

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Big Government Is Good- When It Does What YOU Want

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The Hypocrisy is Palpable

First, Let’s Admit a Near Universal Truth

I know you will be shocked to hear this, but hypocrisy is rather common within our species. It can be especially virulent among our political class. All those old aphorisms about “watch what they do, not what they say,” “power corrupts,” and similar sayings are true pretty much across the board.

People change their tunes when circumstances or opportunity calls upon them. While this is a near universal truth, the scope and depth of such hypocrisy within the Republican party today is unique,

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About Supreme Court Nominations

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No Better Time Than Right Now to Talk About “Qualified Candidates”

 

Oh, the Horror!

Right-wing media is afire with angst and anger that the president is about to follow through on his commitment to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. How could he?! What about qualifications?! Is everyone else ineligible for consideration?!

As soon as they finish hyperventilating, let’s see what this really means. And what they really mean.

Any Relevant History Here?

Yeah, just a little bit. Over 300 people have sat on the Court. About 99% of them had a screening criterion – they needed to be white men.

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Read This – It is Someone Else’s Blog – But You will be Better for Reading It

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A Fine and Detailed Recap of Biden’s First Year – A Lot to Celebrate

Press Coverage of The One Year Mark

I find much of the press coverage of Joe Biden’s first year in office to be off the mark, in both content and tone. There is an interesting phenomenon within the media that I have noticed ever more in recent years. I refer to it as me too-ism.

A story gets picked up from one media source and is replayed by many more, at times it seems without much reflection,

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Odds and Ends Rattling Around of Late

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A Lot of Us are Snowed in Now – It’s a Good Time for Some Assorted Observations

Supreme Court on Vaccination Mandates

 The current Supreme Court looks increasingly less supreme with every ruling. I keep thinking it cannot get worse, but they continue to raise the ante. At least they kept the health care workers mandate in place (barely – by 1 vote).

Gutting the large employer mandate on the basis that OSHA is the wrong agency for such a mandate enforcement is ridiculous. This is what happens when you have a court anchored in rigid ideology rather than real life.

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Sometimes the Big Important Things Show Up in Small Ways

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Two Events in Congress Answer the Question- How Bad Could It Get?

A Congressman from Arizona Shows There is No Bottom

A few days ago Rep Paul Gosar ran a little video on Twitter, depicting a cartoon in which he murdered another member of Congress, someone who has already had frequent death threats. This at a time of high levels of political violence here and around the world. Here it ranges from assaults on the Capitol to menacing crowds outside a school board member’s home.

Gosar thought his cartoon was funny. No harm or threat or insult intended.

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It’s 11 PM – Do You Know Where Your Representative Is?

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A Few Notes About Passage of the Infrastructure Bill

A Long Night – Following Long Months

The title for this posting is a bit of a chuckle that will ring a bell to readers of a certain age. Years ago, that line was often played on TV as a public service message, asking parents if they knew where their children were at that moment.  Since sometimes it feels as though our congressional representatives are childlike, the phrase came to mind.

But last week, they finally did a good thing and pulled off what sometimes felt like an impossible task. 

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