I plead with all the writers, journalists, pundits, posters, commenters and tweeters of the nation: Please stop calling the Republican field a clown car. It was funny and image-provoking the first hundred times I read it. Now it’s the quip that won’t die. Also, in fairness, it’s an insult to clowns. While I’m not exactly… Continue reading →

First let me get this out of the way: I don’t agree with the pro-life position on abortion for two reasons. One: If abortion is criminalized, all women of child-bearing years legally become public incubators. The ability to bear children will mean being subjected to special scrutiny by the government. If you believe women are… Continue reading →

I’m a free speech extremist. I believe the government has absolutely no business regulating or censoring speech. Of course, commercially popular speech doesn’t need protection. It’s only unpopular””racist, sexist and vulgar””speech that requires it. So as a free speech extremist, ironically, I often find myself on the same side as those I believe to be… Continue reading →

There’s no shortage of publicity maestro, name-emblazer Donald Trump think pieces on the Internet these days. Most will attribute his straight talk to his more-than-likely-fleeting frontrunner status. Others point to some anger or racism the Trump Brand Name has tapped into. The rest? Apologists or denouncers. But all seem to agree that Trump is bad… Continue reading →

In all of America’s 239 years of existence, only roughly 20 of them have been without warfare of some kind. And no, those are not in a row. We’ve had one or two years, here and there, where we haven’t spent our time bombing foreign countries, bayoneting our brothers in hopes of keeping our slaves… Continue reading →

The Republican brand is that they’re on the side of business. “Corporations are people, my friends,” uttered doomed 2012 presidential candidate, CEO-turned-Massachusetts-Governor Mitt Romney. At the time I assumed what he actually meant was, “Corporations are my friends, people.” This has been the bottom line for the GOP: Business is their business. Even South Carolina… Continue reading →

The dream of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney has now been realized. Their solution””their idea for universal health care has been passed by both houses, signed by the president and upheld twice now by the Supreme Court. Yes, they call it Obamacare. Yes, they strangely call it socialism. But… Continue reading →

In the wake of the Duggar molestation scandal and now the quirky case of Rachel Dolezal, one thing is clear: We as a public don’t know what child abuse looks like. The CDC estimates that one in four American children experience some form of abuse and yet we’re not quick to spot it or identify… Continue reading →

In 1915, Polish immigrant, Nathan Handwerker, bought a hot dog stand in Coney Island and went about undercutting the boardwalk’s other restaurants by half. These five-cent sandwiches were so much cheaper than other offerings consumers were leery of their content. To counter this, Handwerker famously hired actors to wear lab coats and eat his hot… Continue reading →

I’ve never quite understood why Republicans will jump to trash talk big government””gleefully calling to eradicate the IRS, NSA, EPA, CIA, etc.””all while embracing the death penalty. As the abundant field of GOP presidential hopefuls all vie to woo the same group of hyper-conservative white evangelicals which make up the party’s base, not one of… Continue reading →

This week in Nevada, Jeb Bush accidentally declared he’s running for president to reporters. He was supposed to say, “if I run” and instead said, “I’m running for president!” So now that it’s official, I feel it’s my duty to explain the Bush years to younger/amnesiac Americans who may not remember what life was like… Continue reading →

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina announced this week she’s running for president. She’s not the first woman ever to dive into the GOP’s Also-Ran Industrial Complex and (wink) attempt to become the (wink, wink) next president of the United States. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll last time around. So far, Carly’s the… Continue reading →

While running for president in 2012, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was chatting up some students at Otterbein University about how they could get ahead in this world. He offered that his friend, Jimmy John, borrowed $20,000 from his parents to start a sandwich shop. “This kind of divisiveness, this attack of success, is very… Continue reading →

I had a deadbeat dad. The kind of slacker so egregious””so blatant in shirking his responsibilities””that he and his generation of counterparts inspired a series of draconian laws to combat their “free spiritedness.” My father (I wince to refer to him as that) exists as a transitional fossil in the evolution of child support in… Continue reading →