The first month of the second presidency of Donald Trump is now over. Only forty-seven more to go!

That, of course, is a daunting prospect, but we can at least open with some good news this week: Trump is already wearing out his welcome with the public. The presidential "honeymoon" period is apparently over (almost before it began). Trump started off his second term with historically dismal ratings, although they did best one previous president -- himself, in his first term. His job approval numbers were actually at 50 percent or just above when he was sworn in this time around (which, as mentioned, every other modern president has beaten), so he could at least claim a majority of the public was behind him. Not any more.

Read Complete Article »

So far, most Republicans have sat back and watched President Elon Musk's bull-in-a-china-shop efforts to fire people and slash budgets with glee. The whole tech-bro "move fast and break things" ideology is just fine with them, as long as the targets are parts of the federal government they have long hated -- like foreign aid or the Department of Education. But now things are about to get a little more personal for them, since the next department on the chopping block is going to be the military. The Washington Post broke the story today of what exactly this is going to mean:

Read Complete Article »

It's hard, as each new week goes by, not to get distracted by all of the chaos emanating from Washington. This week, we're going to begin by connecting a few dots that really need connecting, and (so far) haven't gotten enough attention (in our humble opinion).

Before Donald Trump became president again, both he and his MAGA choir spent a lot of time decrying "censorship" and wailing about their "free speech" being somehow suppressed. This was largely due to social media sites policing their allowable content, and occasionally removing objectionable or flat-out false posts and even kicking people off their platforms.

Read Complete Article »

Donald Trump's "Day One" in office is now less than two weeks away. He promised American voters a lot of action on his first day, but in the past few weeks he seems inordinately focused on some rather odd (one might say: "downright bizarre") goals. He has become a big fan of expanding America in what can only be called imperialistic fashion -- adding Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal to the American map. Today he floated a new idea, this one not a land-grab but instead of a sort of water-grab: he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America," for no particular reason (other than to annoy Mexico, one assumes).

Read Complete Article »

Welcome back to the second of our year-end awards columns! And if you missed it last Friday, go check out [Part 1] as well.

Read Complete Article »

The Oxford English Dictionary has announced that their Word Of The Year for this year was "brain rot." Their definition: "Supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. (Also: Something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration)." Hey, we can relate to that concept....

Speaking of rotting brains (a wonderful segue if there ever was one), Donald Trump continues to fill out his administration, nominating more and more sexual predators, total incompetents, billionaires, and complete clowns (those categories are not mutually exclusive, we should point out). A "team of ribalds" for the ages, it seems.

Read Complete Article »

President Joe Biden, at the end of the Thanksgiving break, decided to pardon his son Hunter. This has led to some very mixed feelings among Democrats and a whole lot of gleeful "I told you so!" responses from Republicans. Both the decision and the ramifications of it are complex, obviously.

Read Complete Article »

Well, that was quick. As many have amusingly pointed out, the nomination of Matt Gaetz to be Donald Trump's attorney general didn't even last a full Scaramucci. Eight days, from beginning to end, was all it took. It's more than he deserved, really.

Read Complete Article »

Few have commented on it since the Democratic National Convention last year, but to me there were some striking parallels between the election of 2024 and that of 1968. The biggest of these? A sitting Democratic president declined to finish his effort to win re-election, so the party had to rally around an alternative candidate late in the cycle -- who went on to lose. But that's not the only parallel. In 1968, America was mired down in a proxy war in Vietnam. Young people faced being drafted and sent off to fight and possibly die halfway around the world, and neither political party seemed to have any answer to the situation that didn't include a whole lot more of the same. This is where the parallel is not exact, because nothing like that is happening today.

Read Complete Article »

We've all already seen this movie once, so we should kind of know what to expect. And sequels are usually much worse than the original.

Which is why today we're going to devote this column to pondering how bad things could really get in Donald Trump's second term in office (rather than sticking to our normal Friday format). Some things will probably not be as horrifically bad as Democrats now think, some things will indeed be precisely that bad, and some things will be even more horrific than anyone's imagining right now. And my apologies, because this is not an attempt at making a comprehensive list of predictions but rather just free association, what might be called initial thoughts.

Read Complete Article »