A big problem as you know with that is ideology (weaponized by conservative media to go directly into your home and change what you think) which is poison and makes people believe what they want, instead of what actually is measured through whatever law having its measurable effect on fixing the problem.

She can do it! Live! Live! Live!

I agree with the last bit a hundred percent. Oh, I definitely wish for a time when our political differences were due to which scale and scope of government was more effective in helping the people and solving public programs—moderate Republicans, I think they were called—but we're way past that based on my study. …

Peggy!

RBG is 83. I definitely don't propose a Freaky Friday scenario or anything. But, now, what's the worst that can happen anyway?

Just as saying "Idiocracy was a documentary" became a cliche long ago, saying that about Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale just took a big advance.

This is good but it isn't the problem. The problem is that half the country supports policies that don't work and in fact do them and everyone else quantifiable harm. They are not aware that what they fervently love does this. Science education is great, because, ultimately, government is a science where laws are…

Sorry, I really meant "too pure." Yes, FDR made some terrible decisions, but arguably he was one of our greatest presidents and created the modern American social welfare state. He was the first and last democratic socialist this country has had. But every politician won't make the right decisions 100% of the time,…

No, because Trump's campaign gave lots of evidence that it was breaking civic norms like attacking Americans, and pitting one group of them against each other. Sanders and Warren gave the same protest without actually physically protesting, both saying that they and the rest of America would not abide if Trump…

Wow, that is pretty far left…

I will though disagree with you, and say that we have to assume that Donald Trump loves his country (and his children), too. That's not mutually exclusive to being a narcissistic con artist loving the glory of his new powerful position, but he did run for president, and, generally speaking, you don't do that unless…

Is Chris Christie Falstaff in this analogy?

I retain a slim hope that Trump's election was a bit of a rebuke against partisan politics, when some of his voters rejected a partisan politics they viewed as "the elites", made up of Democrats and Republicans, and working only for themselves instead of common Americans. If all of that is true, a big factor in why…

Why are you worried? A Great Depression 2 with massive unemployment throughout the world will surely bring in the next FDR, and the next Hitler, but the next FDR! It's a fundamental law of human nature that brutal experience is sometimes the only thing that knocks sense into people.

I've already said this a few times: It's very important that protesters constantly say that they are not protesting Trump's legitimate win, but protesting any future policy and rhetoric of hate and cruelty. Telling him that the people will be watching him. If they don't say that, Republicans just like they did when W.…

On last night's Charlie Rose, the optimistic Doris Kearns Goodwin drew a hopeful parallel with the early 20th century, when people were massively discombobulated with the industrial change of society, with the Gilded Age wealth inequality, but they still channeled their worries through the normal political system by…

Before the election, my analogy was you don't set your self on fire to get rid of a bad cold. Believe me (sorry), I agree with you. Another big factor in Trump getting elected, I think, is the terrible failure of the mainstream media to get Americans to listen to them by doing their jobs. Print media did, but I doubt…

He certainly gave lots of evidence for that. But my larger point is that, to people, he represented a solution to how politics and government have left them behind, Clinton being the perfect avatar of that, a professional politician who they saw as having done nothing for them, and whose husband, they felt had done…

Under Pres. Hillary, I thought I could go back to posting pop culture stuff here, when I was mostly only posting responses to Velocirapstar's Politics Corner, but now with the nightly temptation of Pres. Donald, I have to make an effort to comment about the things this blog was actually designed for, so I don't become…

This is why I'm thinking about it in epic fiction terms. He definitely has to earn it, by developing skills he's never had before, and, if he's to be any good for the country, developing a moral education he's never had before. And in the face of advisors and colleagues that want him to do the exact opposite of what…