This week, liberal activist Amy Siskin tweeted this message of yearning nostalgia for the good old days before the Orange Ogre befouled the sacred temple of the Oval Office: “I miss our country. I miss normal and days of non-crisis. I will be so grateful when we take our country back, every single day. Future generations will read about this frightening and tragic time we are living now.” I read that whilst drinking my morning coffee in a café (or was it my morning caffè in a covovfe?), and to quote Mel Brooks quoting Joe Schrank, I could hardly believe

The US has passed another historic week focused on some of the most burning issues of our time, complex and contentious matters that have rightfully provoked many hours of nuanced analysis and intellectual discussion throughout every form of news media: print, video and digital. We refer, of course, to those twin peaks of public concern, embodied in a pair of vital but mystery-shrouded questions that might never fully be resolved: 1. Is Trump fatter than he says he is? 2. Is Trump a foul-mouthed, knee-jerk racist? Loath as I am to turn anyone’s attention away from these unfathomable enigmas, I

I’m ashamed, but I’ll go ahead and admit it: For years, I thought Rupert Murdoch was the single worst poisoner of our political system. I thought the Civil Rights movement was a remarkable manifestation of the human spirit. But now, thanks to our sensible Democratic centrists, I know how wrong I was. Over the course of the past year, I’ve finally seen the light. Now I know that Vladimir Putin is behind every malign element in today’s political scene. What’s more, I’ve finally realized that Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and all those other malcontents who moaned about

Remnant I was dreaming of her offering of the perfume on her wrist the sweetness and the nearness of her skin just like a kiss The pang as it’s withdrawn and disappears into the mist the yearning and the burning to be more, much more than this The love that outlasts love’s withering away The light that lives on when night swallows the day The soul that remains when all faith in the soul is dead The hope that’s still there when all hope has fled I was driving through the forest where they made the atom bomb out of

(My latest column for CounterPunch Magazine.)  Her spinal column was fusing. Arthritis was clutching at her joints, balking every movement, filling it with pain. Her insides were a wreck, and had been for 40 years, after an unnecessary hysterectomy in the days when that operation was ordered for every mild form of “women’s troubles.” Pain filled her mind as well, the bitter, implacable anger at a life gone wrong and now slipping away. Her husband had died. One son had lost his mind then died. Her life had been lived in servitude to others, from her girlhood slopping hogs on sharecropper

From the Guardian: “Jeremy Hunt [UK Health Secretary] accused of ‘astonishing failure’ after GP numbers fall by 1,190.” This is indeed alarming — but the headline isn’t true. Jeremy Hunt is not “failing” in any way. He is succeeding very well at his true job: destroying the NHS so it can finally be sold off to American conglomerates. There’s no question that this is his goal, the mission for which he was appointed by the Tories. Like the extremists in the US Congress and White House, they have a deep, visceral, ideological objection to the very notion of a public

Good old godly Roy Moore now has a page on his website where you can contact him and tell him if you’ve been approached by the evil media trying to dig up dirt on him. This follows news that Alabamians have been receiving robocalls from someone claiming to be “Bernie Bernstein of the Washington Post” offering to pay for salacious stories, which, curiously enough, is the same line that Breitbart and other defenders of mall-stalking goobers are taking, i.e., that the media are paying people to smear good old Roy. Immediately upon hearing of this opportunity, I leapt at the

So we’ve finally seen some of the social media ads which we are told skewed the entire election in 2016 and constituted a key part of the internet assault on America launched by Vladimir Putin’s “troll army.” Scary stuff, blazoned across front pages and screen scrolls everywhere. But before going on, perhaps we should find out what makes a social media account part of Putin’s invasion force? Well, according to Twitter, it is ANY account created in Russia. Or any account where the user has a Russian email address. Or if their name contains Cyrillic characters. Or if they ever

From Vanity Fair: “I HATE EVERYONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE!”: TRUMP SEETHES AS ADVISERS FEAR THE PRESIDENT IS “UNRAVELING” The best solution for Trump personally would be to resign now (citing ‘deep state, fake news’ persecution). He would immediately be hired by NBC (yes, the one he’s threatening now) in a revival of “The Apprentice.” He would go on being a big media noise, investigations of his manifest criminality would stop, his ‘brand’ would be more potent than ever. He’d play the martyr to right-wing crowds, while going on Kimmel, Colbert, even SNL to josh & joke with his fellow celebs, now

(This is my column from the latest edition of CounterPunch Magazine.) As the title of this column suggests, I’m an admirer of Bob Dylan’s work, from the world-shaking epics to the off-the-wall obscurities. But I admit that even I quailed this March when I heard he was about to release yet another collection of classic crooner covers — in a three-record set, no less! I’d enjoyed his first couple of forays into this area, especially the moody “Shadows of the Night,” where he sang with more genuine emotion than he’d shown in years on record. But the thought of 30 more of