(Political Ramblings from a Little Left of Center)
The recent school shooting in my home state of Texas encouraged me to review a post to my blog on gun control from early 2019. Unfortunately, after more than three years, the landscape is unchanged. My own viewpoints have slightly evolved but are still likely to piss off just about everyone on both the right AND…
Yeah, it’s been a while. There’s certainly no shortage of potential blog topics – upcoming elections, the probable demise of Roe, the war in Ukraine, the Jan 6 committee’s work, school shootings & gun control, the economic roller-coaster, etc., etc. – and I certainly have no shortage of strong opinions. So. No excuses. I’m just…
I was asked to update my COVID-19 progression video. Despite knowing it would be quite depressing, here ’tis: The video shows he relative spread across the U.S., showing weekly new cases per capita by state. The darker the shade, the higher the per capita new case count. A low threshold of 0.05% is used…
While there’s no shortage of published opinions on numerous voting-related topics, I’ve seen few attempts to address the “Big Picture” overlap of these topics in terms of the 2022 elections. Since that intersection is my current cause for political anxiety, I thought I’d give it a brief shot. Background Let’s start with one simple given: …
I’ve now been tracking the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S for 52 weeks. A Year One update thus seemed appropriate. The U.S. has seen ~30M COVID-19 cases with ~530K resultant deaths. My latest video shows weekly new cases per capita by state to help visualize the relative spread across the U.S. over the past…
Of course it’s too early to handicap the 2022 Senate elections. Things change and shit happens. However, since a net gain of a single Senate seat in 2022 will give Republicans control of the chamber, it’s definitely not too early to start worrying about the landscape. The Bad News: Historically, the party that wins the…
I’ve been asked why I haven’t weighed in on the current impeachment hearing. Hell, I’m barely following it. We all know Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection. We all know that the Senate won’t find him guilty. But fine. Here’s my two cents… This snippet from the opening statement of Trump’s defense team is…
I previously posted my skepticism that our nation could find any common ground upon which to unify. Each day’s news verifies that opinion. Some on the far-right are again making explicit calls for civil war as Democrats display the audacity to pursue the agenda upon which Biden was elected. Conversely, some on the far-left expect…
Just as dolphins swim together in pods to protect each other from predators, people tend to gravitate toward those who share their worldviews in order to jointly defend against opposing perspectives. My center-left viewpoint is well-represented within my pod and I admit to thoroughly enjoying the time I spend in my personal echo chamber. However,…
So much for bipartisanship. As of this writing, the Senate can’t even agree on how to disagree. They’re stuck on an organizing resolution that will set the structure of Senate committees given the 50/50 split in the chamber. The obvious quick-route was to simply adopt the rules hammered out by Tom Daschle (D) and Trent…