Category Archives: Elections & Voting

Repelled by Donald Trump’s pussy grabbing, Republican politicians are scattering like roaches exposed to strobe lights. (This just in: Many of the roaches are crawling back.) Continue reading →

Hillary is ready to take the baton from Obama and run the last leg for America’s free-trade relay team. Scoundrel Bill started the race by allowing businesses to export many family-sustainable jobs in America without providing an economic bridge to remedy the consequences; and now his missus is about to complete the race, without scruples and a straight face, on behalf of the moneyed-class. Any attempt to see it any other way is political suicide by deception, nothing else. Continue reading →

If there was the tiniest doubt left in your mind that Donald Trump holds no regard for the principles and ideals of a representative democracy—or that he views this country as anything more than a podium for his grandstanding ego, base dictatorial instincts and gutter mentality—Sunday night’s debate should have shot that shred of doubt straight to hell. Continue reading →

The powerful establishment interests vested in the continuation of the status quo and, therefore, the election of Hillary Clinton, have created a campaign narrative that tends to stereotype and stigmatize the white working class as racist, sexist and xenophobic. This was most colorfully expressed recently by Clinton herself when in an unguarded moment before her wealthy donors in Manhattan she stated that half of all Trump supporters consisted of a “basket of deplorables.” Those backing Trump, she continued, were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it.” Continue reading →

With daily bulletins from consciousness control informing us of the dangers of electing a textbook capitalist as president while daily news of textbook capitalism’s increasing dangers to humanity go unreported, it is long past time for an “alt-left” to balance the “alt-right” which seems to represent the only organized critical voice in American politics. Continue reading →

Once again, the quadrennial apparition has reached the dreaded countdown to political ignominy, placing American democracy on trial once again . . . yet quickly dismissing the charges, letting the political circus continue with its three-ring democracy made up of a dangerous quasi-autocratic executive, a corrupt special-interests Congress, and an ugly, politically tainted judiciary. But in 2016, the choice of whether to reelect Lesser-Evil for the umpteenth time might be looking at Evil as a new candidate: Lesser-Able. Continue reading →

Well, that was depressing. Continue reading →

Forty years have passed since Sidney Lumet’s finest film, “Network,” written by Paddy Chayefsky. Anyone who wishes to see an almost clairvoyant vision of how our culture would regress, please watch this film. Our high schools and colleges should make this a must see for their curricula. Continue reading →

When I was growing up in the Jim-Crow/apartheid Deep South in the 1950s—in Florida, the second state to secede from the Union—a constant refrain from a good share of white citizens was “the South shall rise again.” Some of those parroting that sentiment were only half-serious; their comment was more wish-fulfillment and resentment at their side having lost the Civil War. But, for many members of the Klan and White Citizens Councils, and their more “respectable” supporters and enablers, they were deadly serious about a future rising to restore their white privileges. Continue reading →

The one verity going into the first presidential debate, not widely recognized, was that it did not matter how Clinton managed and what she said, although a collapse on the stage clearly would have been a decisive enough matter. Continue reading →

Monday night was more evasion, distraction and political fraud than anything resembling real debating—like all previous encounters of the same kind preceding them, demagoguery and bad theater instead of substance, failing to give voters real information on where candidates stand on major issues of our time. Continue reading →

And so, after all the anticipation, the rampant sports metaphors and the breathless, sensationalized buildup (MSNBC’s headline in the minutes before the event was “Clinton/Trump Showdown”), the first debate is over. Continue reading →

The final countdown has begun to the 2016 presidential election, and you can expect to be treated to an earful of carefully crafted sound bites and political spin. Continue reading →

First, what is meant by “deep state”? Continue reading →

Let’s call the whole thing off. Continue reading →

If you are an alien, terrestrial or extraterrestrial, looking at our nation these days, you would be scratching your head trying to figure out why our country is known as the USA and not the DPA (Disunited Peoples of America). Only thing that appears to unite us—not all but most—is the love of empire and pride in a corporate-military war machine that mercilessly sucks a great part of our economic, intellectual and moral resources; truly impoverishing our people and making Americans friends of some but enemies of most people around the world. Continue reading →

When voters go to the polls this November, they won’t just be choosing the next president, they’ll also be deciding the direction of the Supreme Court. Continue reading →

Politicians are human and occasionally they cannot contain themselves, allowing their true sentiments to come out; sometimes in droplets hardly noticed, but sometimes in damaging blurbs. We, certainly the media, usually point to these blurbs as gaffes. But in reality they simply represent what these politicians think but are not supposed to acknowledge in a world where we must try, at times force ourselves, to be painfully politically correct in order to achieve some modicum of conviviality. Continue reading →

For some years I have used the term “delusional democracy” to describe the condition of the US. It seemed obvious to me that the vast majority of Americans have deliberately chosen to fool themselves. They have been brainwashed to believe what no longer is true. Become convinced that you do not live in a true and terrific democracy, or that your democracy is the best in the world. Continue reading →

To say that a voter cares whether or not a given politician is a liar, is to say that even if the politician is of that voter’s own political party, the voter will reject the politician for being a liar. Continue reading →

Sadly for most Americans, the more we examine our choices for president, arrogantly referred to as “the leader of the free world,” the more our 2016 presidential election is starting to look as a simple referendum, the flip of a coin that has either two heads or two tails: a toss of a coin that no matter how we call it, as it lands, we are all likely to lose. The question we might want to ask this year, however, is how reparable we want that loss to be. And the answer, as unhappy as it may seem to most of us, appears to be rather clear. Continue reading →

The recipe could not be simpler. Mix cynicism with greed, quickly stir and voila! American politics and government served up on a platter to the highest bidder. Continue reading →

From its creation, the citizens of the United States have had a special relationship with the person they choose to lead their republic. Given extraordinary powers by the Constitution, the president is expected to not only be a wise and effective administrator, but to possess the moral compass established by George Washington, the Nation’s first president. Continue reading →