We now live in the world of Trumponomics, which might be defined as: "It's like Groundhog Day, except every day." I should specify that this is decidedly not in the sense of the movie of the same name -- where exactly the same things happen every day -- but rather in the sense that each and every day the entire world waits to see which side of the bed Donald Trump got up on: whether he's going to say something so threatening to the economy's future that the stock markets panic, or whether he's going to walk back some previous stupid comment and the stock market will recover a little bit.

The last few days have been somewhat hopeful, since it seems that some people still do have the power to stand up and explain to Trump that he is causing great harm. Trump blinked not once but twice this week, and reports are that in both cases it was directly due to people with greater knowledge than Trump explaining the ways of the world to him in such a way that he understood -- even to the point of backing down (which Trump hates to do). The first came when Trump reversed himself on wanting to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the second came as Trump hinted at weakening his brutal tariff moves against China.

Continue Reading »

There's a new poll out from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania which has some interesting data -- interesting both for what the data says about American public opinion as well as interesting because of the specific questions that were asked. Most public opinion surveys limit themselves to a few key indicators (presidential job approval being the biggest one), but this poll seemed designed to address some pertinent current issues in much more depth.

Continue Reading »

The Pentagon, under the "leadership" of Pete Hegseth, seems to be in meltdown mode. That specific word was used by several different people to describe it, I should mention, lest I be accused of being hyperbolic. This news kind of surprised me, because while I fully did expect there to be Pentagon-meltdown stories before now, I expected them to come from a different direction entirely. I thought Elon Musk and his minions would have taken the chainsaw to the entire Pentagon structure and procurement process and it would have blown up in their faces (much like many of their other efforts has) and thus be a big scandal. But so far, that hasn't happened in a big way. Maybe Musk has been told "hands off the Pentagon" or something? At this point, it's hard to tell.

But getting back to the actual scandal (rather than my expectations of a scandal), Pete Hegseth seems once again to be teetering on the edge of becoming more trouble than he is worth to the White House. What's more, this seems to be the result of a power struggle not between Hegseth's own personal minions and the entrenched bureaucracy at the Pentagon (as might have been expected), but it seems to be coming entirely from within Hegseth's inner circle itself. Which is also kind of surprising.

Continue Reading »

This weekend will mark the end of the third month of Donald Trump's second term in office. Only 45 more fun-filled months to go!

Sorry if that's a bit disheartening, but at this point it's hard to find much in the way of optimism in the political world. And we're certainly not alone in this view.

Continue Reading »

With lightning speed, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals just shot down an appeal by the Department of Justice which tried to block a judge from moving forward on a path that may end with finding the administration guilty of contempt of court. It's just another episode in the continuing drama: "As The Constitutional Crisis Unfolds," really, and the next step will almost certainly be the administration appealing today's ruling back to the Supreme Court.

Last time around, of course, the administration lost at the Supreme Court, with a stunning 9-to-0 ruling. However, they couched their ruling in some legalistic language that the administration has clung to in their continuing efforts to essentially strip away any constitutional right to due process for anybody they feel like whisking away to a hellhole of a foreign prison -- which could (if the administration gets its way) also eventually include American citizens. Donald Trump and his minions want the power to "disappear" people -- just like tyrannical and dictatorial regimes have always used to get rid of people they don't like. This (more than a struggle between the executive and judicial branches) is the true constitutional crisis here. Does anyone Trump doesn't like have any legal rights, or don't they? That is the fundamental question underlying the power struggle.

Continue Reading »

American politics, for better or worse, is built on a two-party system that is occasionally challenged by independent third parties, who never have much in the way of notable successes. How many members of Congress are there from the Green Party? How many did H. Ross Perot get elected when he launched the most successful third-party bid for the White House in a generation? The answer to both is, of course, "zero." Third parties can change the political conversation in major ways (and occasionally even move the "Overton Window" in a big way), but so far none of them has built up enough success to truly challenge the dominance of the Republican/Democratic dichotomy. Instead, what is much more common is one (or both) of the two major parties being dramatically changed from within.

Continue Reading »

I begin today for an unusual (for me) foray into the Bible. Because there are two passages that seem particularly apt for the moment of crisis we find ourselves in. There are many translations of these verses available, but I decided on a traditionalist approach and used the King James Version for both.

The first is Galatians 6:7, which proclaims:

Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

And the second is Hosea 8:7, which states the same case with a warning:

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

Put in more modern vernacular, both verses warn that whatever seeds you plant, the fruit of those seeds is precisely what you will harvest as a direct result. These days, the thought is usually shortened to: "You reap what you sow."

Continue Reading »

As the Trump Trade War lurches onward, with another heaping amount of uncertainty added over the weekend, China just made a move that could have drastic worldwide consequences. They haven't fully committed to playing hardball, but they are certainly signalling that it might be their next step. And (to mix game-playing metaphors), in this particular game, China holds all the cards. They've got a royal flush, and we don't even have a pair of twos to work with.

Continue Reading »

James Carville's famous political maxim ("It's the economy, stupid") needs updating. As we all ride out the Trump Slump in various ways, what we've got now is: "It's the stupid economy." The people running things are stupid. They are making stupid decisions. They have no clue whatsoever what they are doing, and it shows. Stupid is as stupid does. Welcome to The Stupid Economy, folks.

Economist (and Nobel Prize laureate) Paul Krugman went a slightly different direction (in an article titled "Trump Is Stupid, Erratic and Weak"), preferring: "It's the uncertainty, stupid," but either way it works out the same. Krugman prefaced his article with a video clip of a guy bouncing on a pogo stick, titled: "Live shot of Donald Trump setting tariffs." This was followed by: "Here's what happened yesterday," his lead-in to the "Run away!" clip from Monty Python And The Holy Grail. He might just as easily have chosen the "It's just a flesh wound" clip, but we won't quibble with his choice.

Continue Reading »

Senator Ted Cruz is attempting to tackle a problem, but I for one don't expect to see the problem solved any time soon. That "any time" was a joke, actually, because the intractable problem is none other than time itself. The Senate Commerce Committee (which Cruz chairs) just held a hearing on whether they should (as they're now calling it) "lock the clock" and finally be done with the twice-yearly hour shift in the clock to either start or end Daylight Saving Time.

This is somewhat of a unique problem, for a number of reasons. First, it's not really a partisan issue at all. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are solidly behind any one plan. Second, it is one of those problems where just about everyone agrees that something needs to change, but they can't all agree on what should be done. This means that no matter what change is implemented, some people are going to be unhappy about it. Which is why I am predicting that what will happen is what always seems to happen (time after time, you might say), which is nothing at all.

Continue Reading »