If  voters are to understand the Democratic debates in the next election, they will need to understand a “new economics” that is beloved by the political left: Modern Monetary Theory, affectionately known as MMT.  I think of it as Money Magic Trick. And it isn’t new.  The the

An interesting poll came out the other day. (“Poll Watch,” The Week, Feb 8, 2019, pg. 17)  Fifty-five percent of Americans favor receiving a health care plan through Medicare, but only 37% would be willing to raise taxes for it.  Presidential aspirant, Kamala Harris, and Senator

Nobody likes a multi-billionaire who stiffs his workers.  Donald Trump accuses Jeff Bezos of greed and Bernie Sanders agrees, suggesting a man who pockets $157 billion a year while his warehouse workers live on food stamps is a man whose conscience is questionable.*  While Trump’s

Weaponizing anger is a dangerous game.  Bernie Sanders tried it in the last Presidential election and so did Donald Trump.  Trump did it better and he remains a beacon for those who feel disenfranchised.  What both candidates did was tap into the residue loathing still with us from

Dinosaurs ruled the earth for 65 million years.  They may have managed it because they had  small brains.  They didn’t possess enough grey matter to imagine how to tinker with their environment.  Homo sapiens used theirs  to disrupt the planet.  So many changes are  far f

Somewhere along my 8 years of blogging, I picked up a gaggle of folks from East Africa..  I’ve learned they are deeply religious, possibly members of the same church.  Most of the time, I read their  patter about what God wants from us and what we must do to be good Christians. 

My father taught me the difference between truth and a lie when I was five.  The story begins with a teddy bear, a tiny, plastic ornament that hung at the end of my toothbrush. I loved to watch it in the bathroom mirror, bouncing up and down as I cleaned my teeth.  One day, the tedd

My Yahoo news page came up with the following headline, recently: “Bernie Sanders followers are among the smartest…  They don’t believe anything.  The post must have proof…”   I didn’t read further. I’m not a Bernie Sanders fan, though some of my Facebook friends hav

James Wolcott in a recent essay pokes his finger at the thorn of my discontent.  We are in a period of hysteria where the political alt-right and alt-left, overblown with fears and secretly hoping for a revolution, begin to sound the same.  As Wolcott explains, the two sides may not

The Overton Window is the current term for moving the inert political middle to the right or the left.  It refers to “the range of policies on any given issue that are, at the moment, popular enough for a politician to campaign on successfully.” (“A Theory of Everything,” by