Over the weekend a report emerged detailing how Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process was aided by a fast-tracked FBI investigation which failed to follow up with dozens of witnesses with potentially damaging information on the nominee. It also includes new allegations from a witness who says he saw Kavanaugh push his penis into […]
Read moreIt’s not about Biden’s age
Joe Biden leads the polls primarily, I assume, because of name recognition and the fact that Democratic voters liked Obama and associate Biden with him. That’s fine. There are a lot of reasons people like candidates, especially if they’re not hyper-connected with the day-to-day of the campaign like obsessives can be. Biden, on the whole, […]
Read more“People Love Their Private Insurance”
I’m often told by opponents of Medicare for All that we can’t have a single payer health care system because people love their private insurance. In other news: Whole Foods is eliminating health insurance benefits for 2,000 workers. Because it can. Wouldn’t life be way better if your health insurance was not controlled by your […]
Read more“Theft of Democracy”
When Joe Biden or whoever talks about “reaching across the aisle” to work with Republicans, someone needs to smack them in the head with a printed-out copy of this editorial, reminding them that Republicans have zero interest in such things because they are ideologically at war with democracy.
Read more9/11 and Modern Memory
My kids are studying 9/11 in school. Yesterday my son was talking about it and described a video they watched featuring victims, family members of victims, and witnesses as “old people talking about 9/11.” He spoke of it in the same terms as we might’ve talked about History Channel shows featuring World War II veterans. […]
Read moreCurrent Mood: Jim Rockford
I’d occasionally see reruns of “The Rockford Files” when I was young. I didn’t think too much of it. To me it was like a dozen other 70s and early 80s cop and detective shows for all the good and the bad that entailed. Stuff my parents liked. Give me “The Dukes of Hazard” and “The A-Team” […]
Read moreMarking the 25th anniversary of the 1994-95 baseball strike
Today is the 25th anniversary of the start of the 1994-95 Major League Baseball players’ strike. Over at the baseball site I wrote about it. But note: this is not a “here’s what happened in 1994” post. Rather, it’s 4,231 words about why the 94-95 strike happened in the first place. A strike that is […]
Read moreTweet names of campaign donors all you want. That’s the damn point.
“Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.” — Antonin Scalia, Doe v. Reed, 561 U.S. 186 (2010) Yesterday Congressman Joaquin Castro — who is also chairman of his brother Julian Castro’s presidential campaign — tweeted out the names of several notable people and […]
Read morePick your side
We don’t debate whether anyone who says the things Trump says is a racist. It’s obvious. I mean, if your neighbor told a black person to “go back to Africa” or a any other non-white, native-born person “go back to where you came from,” the message would be loud and clear: a non-white person is […]
Read moreJim Bouton: The Patron Saint for Those Who Chafe
Baseball and literary legend Jim Bouton died today. He was 80. My full story about his life and work can be read over at the baseball site. Now, though, something personal. I have spent most of my life as something of a square peg in a round hole. I moved around a lot when I […]
Read more