governing
Jul 19 2024
Project 2025’s blueprint for what Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has called the “second revolution” divides the 920-page document by section, and chapters within that cover the government departments. It's an exhausting slog to plow…
Read More »
the presidency
Dec 22 2023
The true Donald Trump has come out over the last few months. There have been symptoms all along, but now his fascist longings and racial hatreds have burst forth unrestrained. They have become his manifesto.
It has become standard for him in…
Read More »
government
Aug 11 2023
Right off, we can't proceed without attempting a definition of "New Right", a term you perhaps have heard of but probably know little further, not least because, like antifa, it isn't a formal organization and has no consistent doctrine, other than a strident discontent with how things have turned out.…
Read More »
the report
May 10 2019
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke by phone for an hour on May 3rd, agreeing that the two-year Mueller investigation was a "Russian hoax", imaginary intrusions into the 2016 election apparently, and, as Trump said to reporters, the Mueller report "ended up being a mouse". The question of Russian intervention in the 2020 election? Trump said it did not come up.
Other subjects discussed sounded optimistic and mutually beneficial, but on this topic our president once again is in accord with Putin's claim of no election
interference he memorably said, standing alongside Putin…
Read More »
governing
Tom Price and others living big on our dime
Oct 5 2017
Tom Price: Out
How does the average citizen grasp the workings of the mind of Tom Price, the disgraced and now former Secretary of Health and Human Services? How many transformations would we have to undergo in order to reach a state of mind so corrupted with self-importance as to think oneself deserving of private jets and military transports just to ferry oneself about to this or that meeting at exorbitant cost to…
Read More »
Dec 28 2016
By guest columnist Al Rodbell
George Will gave up his long time registration in the Republican party when it chose their nominee for the Presidency, and unlike many others who protested this at the time, he has not backed down an inch. This is in contrast to the Bush family who all sent Trump their congratulations, and most egregiously Mitt Romney who fawned over him, along with so many other former “neverTrump” Republicans. This has freed Will from any party ideology or concern about how he appears to a target audience of its members. O.K. sure, he’s…
Read More »
the election
Once president, his weapons go far beyond Twitter
Nov 11 2016
The days-long assault on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado that peaked from 3:20am to 5:00am one morning underscored to what lengths Donald Trump will go for vengeance. It amplified concerns for how that character trait is
likely to burst forth when transported to the affairs of the Oval Office. Bill Maher reminded viewers of "Hillary's ad from 2008, 'Who do you want answering the White House…
Read More »
election 2016
Once president, his weapons go far beyond Twitter
Nov 4 2016
The days-long assault on former Miss Universe that peaked from 3:20am to 5:00am one morning sounded an alarm that went far beyond concern for the undeserving Alicia Machado. It underscored to what lengths Donald Trump will go to revenge the most trivial of insults or rebukes. It amplified concerns for how that character trait is likely to burst forth when transported to the affairs of the Oval Office.
Bill Maher reminded viewers of the 2008 campaign ad, "Who do you…
Read More »
the partisan divide
Conservatives are having none of it
Sep 15 2023
On August 1, the ban against incandescent light bulbs took effect. That LEDs (light emitting diodes) now cost little more than Thomas Edison's creation of the late 1800s, last years longer than incandescents, and require far less power such that $3 billion a year is expected to vanish from American…
Read More »
the report
Apr 23 2019
The Mueller report is finally out but unsurprisingly it has resolved little between proponents and opponents of the Trump presidency. Each camp has taken away what it hoped to find, and like the War of the Roses, the discord promises to drag on interminably.
Essentially, the president and those on the right hold to the top line no collusion
Robert Mueller
and a questionable claim of no obstruction whereas the left burrowed into the details and found a president and an administration guilty of appalling conduct.
Almost lost in the heated…
Read More »
national security
No security clearance, but the son-in-law sees everything
Feb 18 2018
For the last seven presidencies, the day began with reading the daily intelligence briefing, the product of an arduous nightly undertaking by the intelligence agencies that pulls together for morning delivery findings from all over the world.Kushner Clearance Downgraded: Feb. 28: His contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns causing access to classified information to be reduced from top-secret to secret, still extraordinary for someone well past the time limit for temporary clearance.
But…
Read More »
governing
Feb 14 2018
There are about 2 million people employed by the federal government so it may not seem all that important that a comparatively small number of posts sit empty. But these are the jobs of key personnel, some 1200 top jobs that call for presidential nomination and Senate confirmation. Of those The Washington Post
tracks 630 that are thought to be the most important. More than a year into the Trump presidency, 240 of those…
Read More »
governing
Nov 25 2017
“There is simply no denying the warning signs that point to mounting threats to our institution and to the global leadership that depends on us”, writes Ambassador Barbara Stephenson, a career diplomat with the U.S. State Department for over 30 years, in a letter to a foreign service publication:
"The talent being shown the door now is not only our top talent, but also talent that cannot be replicated overnight. The rapid loss of…
Read More »
Dec 22 2016
If you want a cabinet position, write op-eds for The Wall Street Journal. How else could Trump have come upon Andy Puzder, the CEO of a restaurant chain whom Trump has appointed to be labor secretary. He's not new to us, though. It has filled us with wonder to watch the Journal give Puzder extraordinary free access to its op-ed page at one point we counted four submissions in one…
Read More »
Dec 22 2016
For health secretary, Trump has chosen a House representative who has drafted a complete replacement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), leaving no doubt that he is allied with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who says, "I can tell you where we're going to start" the new term. "With a process to repeal and replace Obamacare".
Trump's choice is Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon from…
Read More »
Dec 22 2016
The Attorney General of Oklahoma can finally stop suing the Environmental Protection Agency. Donald Trump has appointed him to run it, from which vantage he can reverse decades of policy extending back to when government environmentalism began: Richard Nixon's signing of the Clean Air Act. He is to head an agency charged with the role of regulating the industry he has made a career of promoting because it will now become an agency that…
Read More »
Dec 22 2016
DeVos, a long time advocate of vouchers and charter schools, presumably will champion the conservative desire to make free choice of schooling the norm. This would bring a complete reorientation to the Education Department. The mission would no longer be support of public education, if Ms DeVos has her way. It is notable that DeVos, a billionaire, has never attended a public school.
In her home state of Michigan, she has lobbied for parents to…
Read More »