2023 Archives

They’re enthusiastically letting people die: low income working people have to put off medical care or, like Charlene Dill, cut their medications in half to be able to buy food for their kids... In his State of the Union address, President Biden noted: “So, some of my Republican friends want to take the economy hostage — I get it — unless I agree to their economic plans. All of you at home should know what those plans are. “Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans — some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I’m not saying it’s a majority —” At which point Republicans in the audience started shouting, booing, stomping their feet, and yelling, “Liar!”

Jimmy Carter was the finest president of my lifetime, perhaps one of the four best presidents in American history behind Roosevelt, Lincoln & Washington. When he passes, America will be the poorer... It’s Presidents’ Day, so I wanted to share a few things you may not know about my favorite president. Jimmy Carter has always been one of my heroes, and not just because he was the only president willing to come on my radio program and speak bluntly about the Supreme Court and American oligarchs (among other things). — He was one of those rare Christians in political life who actually lived the values Jesus taught.

The Best of the Rest of the News — How the Senate is fine-tuning anti-democracy minority rule. — Senator John Fetterman’s brave admission of his clinical depression and hospitalization for it will almost certainly save many Americans’ lives. — Did rogue mostly Israeli contractors help put Trump into office and push Brexit on the British people on behalf of Russian and/or American billionaires? — Women in Kentucky who order abortion pills through the mail or travel to other states to end their pregnancies may one day soon be facing imprisonment and lethan injection for murder if a new bill becomes law. — Why does Rite Aid employ pharmacists who refuse to give Covid booster shots? — Will the Michigan GOP survive the ongoing assault by religious zealots, gun nuts, racist and homophobic bigots, and openly Nazi followers of the Confederate “lost cause” mythology? — It’s the John Brown Gun Clubs to the rescue of drag shows! — Geeky Science! Can preventing dementia and cognitive impairment just be a few thousand steps away? — Crazy Alert! Ann Coulter welcomes Nikki Haley — the American-born daughter of Indian immigrants — to the 2024 presidential race with the classic racist slur, “Go back to your country.”

It’s hard to overstate how much damage these corrupt rulings by Republicans on the Court — from Buckley and Bellotti in 1976/1978 to Citizens United in 2010 — have done to American democracy. I took a couple of flights this past weekend that reminded me again of the damage Republicans on the Supreme Court did to America when they legalized political bribery. The good news is that there are numerous things Congress can do to undo the Court’s bizarre doctrine that money is the same thing as free speech and corporations have Bill of Rights freedoms and protections as “persons.” Neither of these “rights to bribe” by the morbidly rich and corporations were recognized in the early years of our republic. Even today we’re unique among advanced democracies in holding these Supreme Court-created doctrines which underpin much if not most of today’s political corruption.