Left Jabs

  For various reasons, my writing output will be curtailed a bit this summer, so I’m trying to fill the void with pieces from the past that somehow resonate with our current situation. This is not as hard as it seems, as the Trump crowd has been remarkably consistent in their cruelty, ineptitude, and stupidity. So please return with me to April 13, 2020, to the earliest days of this blog, just as Covid was washing over us and shutting everything down. The first Trump administration was already breaking new ground for governmental incompetence, and an old Stephen King novel was finding a new and scary relevance that has not diminished since.   I have no intention of rereading  The Stand , Stephen King’s apocalyptic novel of a virus that obliterates most of the U.S. leaving a smattering of survivors to pick up the pieces. I read it twice — I was a bigger King fan then than now — but only because he released a second “original” version which was longe...

    How ironic that it would be deep red Texas hosting the first of what will surely be many natural disasters exacerbated by the Trump regime’s malicious incompetence. Already we know that the evisceration of the National Weather Service was likely a factor in the failure to adequately warn of the flood danger. We also know that FEMA has been largely defunded and deprived of the people who know the most about disaster response. So when looking for a piece I could rerun this week, I found this one, from June 2023, which seemed to fit right in. Because now that we know how Texas’ victims weren’t properly warned, and now that we know they probably won’t get either short- or long-term aid to recover, at least we know they can count on the insurance industry to make them whole, right? Uh, read on.   Ron DeSantis probably doesn't want too many people to know this, but he just signed a new law that brings sweeping regulation and oversight — two words t...

  L et’s be clear about one thing. A Democrat is a Democrat. We have neither the time nor the bandwidth to split policy hairs when the country is being burned to the ground. The only thing we need to know about any Democrat is that they’re not Republican. The media would have us believe there’s some deep chasm between “moderate” Democrats and “progressive” Democrats. They talk about “leftists,” as if there’s some diabolical cabal of radicals planning to turn the whole country gay and woke. They talk about “centrist Democrats” as if they just disagree with Trump on an issue or two. All Democrats share some core beliefs, even if they never think about them, even if they take them for granted. Rule of law. Reproductive rights. Civil rights for all. Healthcare for all. Strong safety net. A few others. Republicans, for the most part, want these things as well, but they’ve been brainwashed into thinking otherwise. Still, the legacy media continues to outdo itself ...