VOICES

THE DOCTOR IS IN - I am quite aware that many of you reading this are entirely unable to impartially weigh one side or another with respect to pros and cons of any given leadership in Washington or at home.

POP PHENOM - Fourscore and three years ago, Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter—a self-titled “musicianer” who was heralded as a “Bad Nigger” who “makes good minstrel” by Life magazine—explained how he came to create one of the first racism* carols.

RACIAL RECKONINGS - When you’re losing the game, summon the commies!

VOICES - The Committee to Recall LA Councilman Mike Bonin filed 39,164 signatures today with the LA City Clerk’s Office that in all probability will be placed on the ballot in a special municipal election once the signatures are verified and his time as an elected official may soon come to a close.

POLITICAL ANALYSIS - In a provocative recent essay in the New York Times, the political historian Jon Grinspan places the distemper currently afflicting American politics in a broader context. In essence, he contends that we’ve been here before.

COMMENTARY - In late 2021, when Americans think of progressive or liberal politics, what do they think of?

TRUMPISM - The Orange Beast Runs Free, Dreaming of Vengeance.  Two seemingly separate news stories are darkly and intimately related to each other in ways that you will not see intelligently discussed on “Meet the Press” or “Washington Week.”

ANTI VAXX - Dear Aaron Rodgers,

VOTING RIGHTS - My Dad skated for the Minnesota Gophers hockey team after he finally got done serving “for the duration” in World War II in the Philippines.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - Let’s skip over the troubling question “Why Biden did it?” and move on to whether he can recover. 

PARDON ME - Blasting "over a century of failed and racist cannabis policies," a trio of progressive U.S. senators on Tuesday urged President Joe Biden to use his executive authority to issue a blanket pardon for all nonviolent federal marijuana offenses.

SUPPLY CHAIN - Out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg fired back at conservatives attacking him for taking paternity leave after his kids were born – going so far as to accuse him of canceling Christmas for supposedly ignoring supply chain problems – by telling them to get vaccinated.

POLITICS WATCH - Arghh. In desperate response to Biden doing some good and building some roads, the gonzo party of Former Guy and head-spinning, self-serving hypocrisy is ever-more-feverishly fear-mongering,

CALIFORNIA MATTERS - Well, that was awkward.

JUDICIAL WATCH - Beth Robinson will officially become the first out LGBTQ woman in the country to serve on a U.S. appeals court.

COVID POLITICS - I live near Middlefield Ohio, the center of the fourth largest Amish settlement in America.

COMMENTARY - This is the one story that I have not wanted to write.

LGBTQ NATION - Religious right organizations and evangelical leaders are bragging that they are responsible for Republican Glenn Youngkin’s election in this week’s Virginia gubernatorial race.

THE COURT - Ralph Waldo Emerson once told about a guest who came to dinner and spent the entire evening prattling about his own integrity: “The louder he talked of his honor,” Emerson wrote: “the faster we counted our spoons.”

A POV - I waited almost three months for some acknowledgement, but it never came. Not a bottle of champagne. Not a congratulatory note. Not an email of acknowledgement. Not one media request.

ANALYSIS - Populism was the big winner in the Virginia election yesterday, after Terry McCauliffe ran on his past as a Bill Clinton Democrat and Glen Youngkin ran as a rightwing populist.