(Political Ramblings from a Little Left of Center)
Just giving a shout-out to an excellent podcast: The West Wing Weekly. For those of you who pine for the return of President Josiah Bartlet, this may be the next best thing. (For those of you who don’t know who Jed Bartlet is, I have no clue why you’re reading my blog.) Each weekly podcast…
Let’s talk 2020. I need to contemplate the paradise of a Trump-free future for just a little while. I said back in August that it was too early to talk about the 2020 Democratic Presidential candidates… and it’s still too early. However, since everyone with a pulse is starting to announce, it does seems appropriate…
I’ve spent considerable time looking into Trump’s “national emergency.” As a U.S. citizen, I am now genuinely appalled and frightened. I’m also quite disappointed that the media has largely missed the big picture here. I guess that’s why I have a blog. As everyone is now aware, Trump has decided to declare a national emergency…
Trump & Intelligence: Two words that should never be used anywhere near one another. Earlier this week, the directors of our major intelligence agencies appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee to present their Worldwide Threat Assessment. The report itself is a tough, depressing read and is best paired with a bottle of good Scotch. Those…
So here I was, in the midst of composing multiple blog entries that weighed in on possible Democrat strategies and candidates to win the Presidency in 2020. Mostly, I was trying to organize a surfeit of suppositions into coherent postings of humane length. I had almost managed to compartmentalize the daily onslaught of insanity from…
Starbucks founder and former CEO Howard Schultz was just on 60 Minutes. The man is considering a third-party bid for the Presidency in 2020. Bloody hell. Folks, that’s the ballgame if he runs. Schultz is a billionaire with the money to make a serious dent in the contest. He has no chance of winning the…
With sincere apologies to William Blake and to a well-remembered English teacher whose passion for “The Tyger” was contagious. [Edit: And to several readers who thought this posting was weird: Yeah. It is.] Donald Donald, breeding blight, In the House that once was White, What indifferent shrug or sigh, Could frame thy imbecility? In what…
“I’m not a member of any organized political party…. I’m a Democrat.” – Will Rogers, 1935. Some things never change. While Democrats have thus far shown remarkable solidarity in response to the shutdown, there are numerous party battles on the horizon that could make Game of Thrones look like a baby shower competition. There’s the…
I couldn’t bring myself to listen to Trump’s prime-time border diatribe last night, but I did read the transcript. Wow. Numerous media outlets have done a decent job fact-checking the cornucopia of outright lies, so there’s little reason to do that. However, I will add a few thoughts to my previous take on the subject.…
Paging 2020 Democratic presidential candidates: Where the hell are you? The government shutdown over border wall funding should be your opportunity to break out early. This is a slam-dunk, folks. Trump has shuttered part of the government causing paychecks to stop for some 800,000 federal employees …. … over a wall that doesn’t have popular…