[ Posted Friday, February 6th, 2026 – 19:38 UTC ]
Today Donald Trump proved yet again that he is nothing short of a stone-cold racist. He reposted a message on social media that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. That's really all you need to know about it, other than the fact that (for once) it was so unbelievably offensive that, hours later, it was deleted. The White House blamed an unnamed "staffer," to which Black voters everywhere responded: "Yeah, right." Trump's hatred for the Obamas is well-known, of course, but even some Republicans complained at this latest racist outrage from Trump.
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026 – 17:10 UTC ]
The government shutdown is over. Today the House passed the Senate funding bill and sent it to Donald Trump, who signed it into law. Which means all parts of the federal government are now open, and a full-year budget is in place for everything except the Department of Homeland Security (which only has a two-week extension). So the stage is set for the negotiations to begin over the reforms Democrats want to impose on ICE and the Border Patrol and all other federal immigration enforcement agents.
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[ Posted Thursday, January 29th, 2026 – 16:14 UTC ]
Democrats now stand at one of those rare junctures in politics where things can move quickly and public opinion is pretty solidly on their side. They have leverage, and even more importantly they have a deadline which makes this leverage immediate and potent. Rather than some dragged-out debate that goes on for months, change can be enacted within days (or at the most, weeks). And the opposition is already crumbling. As I said, that is a rare confluence in politics.
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[ Posted Friday, January 23rd, 2026 – 19:16 UTC ]
Welcome back to the ongoing saga of "The Arsonist Fireman." In this week's episode, our protagonist lights a fire which could burn down the entire Western world -- starting with its military alliance -- before grabbing a fire extinguisher and singlehandedly snuffing it out. As usual, he then wonders why everyone doesn't congratulate him on having bravely averted such a disaster.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 20th, 2026 – 17:04 UTC ]
Today marks the end of the first year of Donald Trump's second term in office. One down, three to go.
Looking back, the most notable thing about Trump's first year back was how he has thrown himself fully into the Silicon Valley maxim to "move fast and break things." Trump has indeed moved fast, and he has indeed broken many things -- some of which will take a very long time to put back together and some of which may just stay broken forever.
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[ Posted Friday, January 16th, 2026 – 18:55 UTC ]
In another four days, we will have survived the first full year of Donald Trump's second term in office. That's right -- one down, only three more to go!
(Sigh.)
The defining feature of this past year has been -- just like it was in his first term -- the continuing cycle of being so aghast at Trump's planet-sized ego, flailing insecurities, and toddler-grade tantrums and thinking to oneself: "Well, it surely can't get any worse than this!" -- only to wake up the next morning, read the headlines, and find out that yep, it sure can get worse, in ways you would never have imagined in a million years, pre-Trump.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 14th, 2026 – 17:26 UTC ]
The Democratic Party -- and liberalism in general -- needs to take a stand. So far, they have mostly been reactive, fighting back against Donald Trump and his administration. Trump will do something outrageous, and Democrats then react to it. But there's no cohesive plan to any of it -- nothing that ties it all together into an actual political agenda. So it would behoove them to steal a page (actually a whole lot of pages) from the Republicans, and come up with a "Project 2029" document that lays out what their vision of the federal government would be, if they win the White House and Congress.
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[ Posted Monday, January 12th, 2026 – 16:23 UTC ]
Metaphorically, you could go with either pigs or clocks. Take your choice: "Even a blind pig can sometimes find an acorn," or: "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day." But perhaps that's too dismissive, since Donald Trump suddenly championing an issue that originated among progressive Democrats is not really just random chance. Trump is doing so for his own political benefit, plain and simple. But in this particular case, progressives should still try to work with him to see if some sort of deal could actually be achieved. Because the biggest beneficiary could be the American people.
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[ Posted Friday, January 9th, 2026 – 18:31 UTC ]
It has been a week of stunning events and dangerous rhetorical excesses. Currently the political debate is divided over the question of when government officials can use deadly force against people who are protesting or ignoring orders from those officials. This question is steeped in politics, as it so often is. Whether a person deserves death at the hands of the state almost always has a political element to it, which is not exactly a new thing.
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[ Posted Thursday, January 8th, 2026 – 17:10 UTC ]
Congress is actually showing some signs of standing up for itself. This is remarkable, since for the past year they have been no more than a rubber stamp, approving anything Donald Trump wants while ignoring anything he does to encroach on their constitutional powers. Today, however, several votes were held which did indeed push back on Trump in notable ways. All of them will likely wind up being merely symbolic, but it is still refreshing to see at least some signs of life from Congress.
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