When the social contract dies, it’s time to riot.
The White House amid clouds of tear gas as park police clear a nighttime protest in Lafayette Square. The protests after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police have led me to think on a game theory question I’ve avoided to this point. When is it time to riot? I don’t mean protest. It […]
“I don’t take responsibility at all”: Trump fails the Trolley Problem.
Don’t touch your face, Doctor Fauci. I’m writing this from Ground Zero in Seattle, the epicenter of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic. With 2,000 confirmed cases and 95 people already dead from the disease, Seattle is being treated as a plague town. So I have time alone to think about the Trolley Problem and how it relates […]
America is in a game of Cyberball, and it hurts. Just like love.
Cleanup on Aisle Iowa. As I write this, the Iowa Caucuses have ended in an inferno, with no results reported, the fourth-place candidate claiming victory, and the frontrunner’s campaign suggesting the results of an election are invalid. The trial of the president for darn-near-treason will end in an acquittal after no witnesses were called, as potential […]
The Thunder in the Rotunda: How Nancy Pelosi rope-a-doped Trump.
This week I was in DC and saw people just trying to get through this thing called life. On Monday morning, when a Secret Service agent was asked why they cleared Lafayette Park for no apparent reason, he shrugged and told my companion, “Hey man, it’s the White House. You never know what goes on […]
You can’t spell “believer” without “lie”: A look at why Trump lies so much.
“Trust is like glass: shatters in an instant, with a single blow, and takes a long time to restore.” — Kathy Sullivan, chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under President Obama The world was riveted last week at the ruin wreaked during Hurricane Dorian. The storm blew the Bahamas to Kingdom Come. Officially 50 people […]
If Trump’s not indicted because he can’t be, he should be.
To paraphrase Pearl Jam, Robert Mueller spoke in class today. Both today and in his report, Mueller described a vast Russian conspiracy to defeat Hillary Clinton that often intertwined with advisors to President Trump. Today, he spent most of his time telling America that it had a criminal president, but that he could—and would—do nothing […]
Trump will always blink.
Even one of the doorknobs was furloughed. I should probably resist this urge to brag, but I can’t. In December, I promised my dad that the partial government shutdown would end in the fourth week of January. The shutdown ended in the fourth week of January. After one compromise proposal to get his border wall […]
Trump tanked the presidency. Can he tank the economy too?
Last year at this time, I wondered if Trump was tanking the presidency, intentionally failing to spur a GOP bloodbath at the midterms. Jury’s out on that, but this New York Times article on Trump at the midpoint (maybe?) has an interesting paragraph that might corroborate my theory. As a result, a partisan war may […]
Ready Individual One: The quizzical power of a lame duck.
That haircut even looks like a lame duck. Two years into his presidency, Donald Trump just became a lame duck. His team lost the House and hundreds of state seats in the midterms. New governors and state attorneys general stand ready to file suit after suit against him. His own Justice Department called him a committer […]
Mike Pence is the Werewolf.
This one goes out to all the gamers. Today’s op-ed piece in the New York Times got tongues wagging, because it was written by an unnamed senior White House official who scalded President Trump for being an unmoored, untamable child. The piece, entitled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” stated that the […]