Whenever a police kills a Black or Latinx person, we play by all the rules. We write letters to public officials, we go to community meetings, we dialogue with the police, we work on political campaigns, we vote…and we protest. News reports emphasize “peaceful” as if peaceful protests aren’t the norm. Often the protests are…
There Are Riots Going On
Have you ever been in a riot? Never? I have; several. The first one was at the Democratic National Convention in 1984. We went down from Sacramento to San Francisco to see the Dead Kennedys. Mayor Dianne Feinstein had the police create “protest pens,” areas tucked away from the convention, which allowed police to keep…
Where’s the Fight?
Please don’t freak over Trump and his recent lashing out about Twitter. It is all impulse and show. He cannot do anything to shut down or police social media. No executive order he issues (if he actually does, he puff ‘n bluffs a lot) will make it through the courts. Read Trump’s hissy fit as…
The Puff ‘n Bluff: How Donald Trump Gets Over
One of Donald Trump’s most effective tactics is the puff ‘n bluff. He puffs himself up as a tough guy, a know-it-all, or a tough guy know-it-all and starts babbling bullshit. It is a tactic he learned at a young age. When he was an “aspiring developer,” he puff ‘n bluffed his way into city…
Trump’s Voter Fraud Chicken Little Act, Pt 236
Donald Trump has been talking/tweeting a lot about voter fraud. While the latest blasts have been regarding mail-in voting, Trump has been talking about voter fraud since before he was elected. In 2016, shortly after his nomination to run as the Republican candidate for president, Trump was talking about voter fraud and how the general…
The Crisis of the COVID Crisis
Things get stranger and stranger. While a majority of the country still believes that we should follow public health experts’ advice and be very cautious with “reopening,” more and more people are treating the advice as something that they think is totally right on…for everyone else (COVID for thee and not for me me me…
Donald Trump: Master of the Empty Threat
On Wednesday May 20th, President Donald Trump threw an internet tantrum over Michigan and Nevada’s push towards vote-by-mail for the Fall election. He tweeted, “This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud…
A Pizza Guy’s Lesson On The New Economy & FDR’s Old Goal
Interesting story on The Verge: A pizza shop owner gets a few phone calls from angry customers complaining about delivery. His restaurant doesn’t offer delivery so he does some digging and finds that DoorDash is delivering his pies. News to him, he didn’t contract with DoorDash. DoorDash was doing what most of these third-party “disruptive”…
Trump Fronts for the Saudis…Again
Every day a new story, and, since everything is so damn intense nowadays, it is easy to let the news fly by. Stuff that happened months ago gets buried and we forget…maybe… As any historian will tell you, history lives through tendrils attached to the present. Take President Donald Trump’s firing of State Department Inspector…
Elon Musk: Tech Pest & Bad Guy
As a news-junkie and a journalist, I love stories that unfold, the ones that start with some basics and then explode. In the initial stories, there’s hints of something more. I don’t really know what that something is, but a close read reveals some unanswered questions and odd coincidences. Enterprising journalists take those hints and…