Category Archives: Politics

The United States was born of rebellion against a distant crown. America fought a civil war to free slaves. So much of the progress made in our history stems from rebellion. Women rebelled to win the vote. African-Americans rebelled to end Jim Crow and win civil rights. Disobedience is woven into the fabric of our nation as surely as fifty stars are sewn into our flag.

So when the President calls on NFL players to be fired for taking a knee in protest, when the Interior Secretary says 30 percent of his staff is “not loyal to the flag,” when those protesting against racism and Nazism are equated with said racist Nazis – all this is utterly un-American.

The current administration would like us all to be loyal to the flag, but they have no idea what that truly means. They think that this means standing for the national anthem. They think it means accepting the word of the administration without question, hence the demonization of journalists. They think it means offering un-earned respect and, yes, subservience.

They’re wrong. So incredibly, egregiously wrong.

Protest is American. The Olympians raised a fist, the NFL takes a knee, the NBA opts to work for social change instead of kowtowing to a narcissist. Americans battled their brethren to preserve the Union and free slaves. Women marched for the vote. Rosa Parks refused to move. Dr. King told us his dream. Ferguson reminds us we have so much ground left to cover. Charlottesville reminds us that we must stand guard against the creeping danger of racism and Nazism.

But they don’t want that now. Not when they’re in power.

Our current President showed zero respect for his predecessor by insinuating – without evidence – that he was not American, a baldly racist ploy to trump up (pun intended) his own ambitions. Now in office, he demands the same respect he failed to give and, moreso, has failed to earn in office.

He accused Barack Obama of playing too much golf, but has spent at least a third of his time in office at his own properties, fully a quarter of his time at his golf resorts.

He accused Hillary Clinton of endangering the nation by using private emails for government work; at least five current and former Trump White House staffers, including members of his family, have used private emails for government work. No big deal, according to his spokesperson.

But we know this, of course. We know Trump’s word is about as trustworthy as a wooden nickel. All of this – his reaction to Charlottesville, his whole-cloth invention of the NFL controversy, his calls for patriotism and honor when he has neither – is just a façade, a show for the rubes whose patriotism is nothing more than sports fandom. He wants us all to care about which side we’re on, to divide us into winners and losers, rather than focusing on what it really means to love our country, to be patriots, to participate in our democracy.

Meanwhile, the GOP tries and tries to take millions of people off healthcare – thankfully, with little success, and due in no small part to Americans engaging in the time-honored, patriotic act of protest. They’re demonizing immigrants for taking jobs and committing crime, whereas our nation is near full employment and immigrant crime rates are lower than those of native-born Americans. They’re furthering an agenda that would continue to put more money in the pockets of the rich and cement a permanent American underclass, denying the American Dream to millions.

People in Puerto Rico – and yes, dear God, Puerto Ricans are American citizens – are suffering without food, potable water and electricity in the wake of hurricanes. The current President, though, focused on the flag and the anthem this weekend. He is Nero without even a fiddle to cover for his breathtaking inadequacies.

Just watch the reality show. Never mind the suffering of millions from lack of healthcare, hurricane relief, a living wage, the right to speak freely and to demand government transparency. Never mind all that. Just watch the dancing bear.

There’s a Russia segue in that, but honestly, this post is long enough as is.

The President and the GOP want to deny our very birthright – our right to rebel. More than a flag or a song, rebellion and protest is in our national DNA. If enough of us embrace that birthright, they know they’re screwed.

So rise up. Rebel. Protest. America is slowly turning into an oligarchy while they distract us with siren songs of false patriotism. Don’t let them. Call your reps. March. Donate. Support local politicians who remember our rebellious birthright. Throw out the bums in the Senate and House. Speak up.

For our country, and for my daughter…

Yesterday, after watching the President’s abject moral failure to categorically denounce Nazism, racism and white supremacy as bad — which, really, should not have been a big ask — I went over to Trump Tower after work to let off some steam and shout at the gleaming black Isengard with my fellow Ents. Honestly, it felt great.

A gentleman on social media got into a discussion with me afterward regarding free speech and political discourse. Now, I don’t think he was a Trump supporter by any stretch, but he was passionate about free speech. The conversation was civil, but I pretty much ended it when I saw the rhetorical trap he was setting with regard to free speech, boiling it down to either for or against.

Obviously, it’s not as simple as that, and the argument goes well beyond whatever one can thumb-type on a bus. So I’m gonna unpack it here. Fair warning: politics and Nazis below. Skip if you’re understandably tired of it all.

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The new, and supremely unqualified, White House communications honcho Anthony Scaramucci threw a public fit this week when some media types got hold of his financial disclosure form. He called it an unauthorized leak and saying he was gonna find out who did it and file charges.

Of course, this end up being a blinding display of ignorance and incompetence, as said form was already in the public domain. But this is what you get when you put a hedge fund manager in charge of political communications, rather like the result you’d get putting a mechanical engineer in charge of heart surgery. Just because you’re smart at one thing doesn’t mean you’re qualified to do something completely different.

As for the leaks coming out of the White House, Congress and the various executive branch departments…well, duh, what did you expect? Leaks happen. Leaks are currency, man. So long as people have agendas and/or axes to grind — and the Trump Administration is causing a run on grindstones all over town — there’s gonna be leaks.

And here’s the thing: In many cases, leaks aren’t bad in and of themselves. We wouldn’t have known about Watergate without leaks. Or Iraq’s lack of weapons of mass destruction. Yes, they can be weaponized to drag people down — ref. Clinton, William Jefferson, who of course should’ve kept it in his pants in the first place. And yes, on very rare occasion, leaks can cause real damage to American interests and lives.

But let’s be super clear. Those occasions are exceedingly rare, and the vast majority of responsible journalists will hold off on publishing leaked information if it impacts intelligence gathering, military operations, court proceedings, etc. There’s an entire system of informal exchanges that happen in these cases; for example. rumor has it The Washington Post is sitting on some great dirt on Trump and not publishing it at the request of special counsel Robert Mueller because it would screw up his investigation.

Now, I didn’t cover much of Washington back in my journalism days, but I did get leaks on the business beat. And I found that they tend to fall into three categories. Read on for some serious journalism wonkery!

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Warning: Political rant incoming. Feel free to skip if you like, though I hope you won’t — especially if you think you might disagree. Different perspectives are fun. 

Nearly two months into the great Trump experiment in governmental self-destruction, I hope it’s becoming clear that the populist veneer of the Donald was just that — a veneer. A thin layer of formica made to look like marble, slapped onto plywood, rather like the furnishings in his casinos.

The GOP replacement for the Affordable Care Act will result anywhere from 6 million to 10 million people losing health insurance coverage, according to the Standard & Poor’s rating agency (hardly a bastion of liberal socialism), while providing $600 billion in tax breaks to the richest 0.1% of Americans — roughly $200,000 per rich person. Let’s put it another way — that extra $600 billion is enough money to provide $50,000 in basic income for 12 million families of four for a year.

Now, I’m not so much a socialist liberal elitist or whatever to suggest that we do that. But I’m not so blind as to think that even a fraction those immensely rich folks are going to take their $200,000 and increase investment into industries and businesses that will help employ more Americans, as per the thoroughly discredited trickle-down economics the GOP seeks to cling to. No, chances are, that $200,000 will be rolled over into the market, or maybe go toward a really nice first-class vacation somewhere — just like the rest of us do with our tax refunds.

This is not populist. This is not any sort of salve to the middle class. This is a naked giveaway to the most wealthiest people on the planet. And it is shameful.

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WARNING: Political rant incoming. That said, no matter your politics, I’d urge you to give it a read.

Just this afternoon, journalists from The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, CNN, BuzzFeed and Politico were barred from attending a “gaggle” — kind of an informal briefing — with Press Secretary Sean Spicer at the White House. Anybody, of any political affiliation, should see this as the affront to American values it surely is.

Combined with the ever-increasing rarity of Republican congressmen and senators refusing to hold town hall meetings with constituents, apparently for fear of getting yelled at, and a veritable pall is settling upon American democracy. The very notion of the “loyal opposition” has been perverted into believing dissent is traitorous. And the critical function of a free press in American democracy has been mauled and spindled into “fake media” and “alternative facts.”

I cannot overestimate how horrible and threatening this is to the very fiber of America and her values.

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