Category Archives: Commentary

No one seemed as excited about the election of Joe Biden being the next president of the United States as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. When all hope seemed lost, where Abbas found himself desperate for political validation and funds, Biden arrived like a conquering knight on a white horse and swept the Palestinian leader away to safety. Continue reading →

For the first time, a non-partisan report has cataloged, all in one place, the federal government’s weak, disjointed, leaderless defense against the coronavirus. Continue reading →

During these last few weeks since the election, watching the further decline of President Donald Trump as he descends even more into madness, denial, destructiveness and self-proclaimed victimhood, two magical movie moments keep popping into my head. Continue reading →

Noam Chomsky is right when he says that, in the US, sports creates the necessary “fantasy world” required to shield people from understanding, organizing, and attempting to “influence the real world.” Continue reading →

It is beyond counter-intuitive that in the Age of Information, the masses are more ignorant of facts than at any time in the past. It matters not that smart phones provide reliable information to individuals at their fingertips. Increasingly, some of the most well-informed people on the planet are adopting the mindsets of the Luddites, the anti-technology English workers of the 19th century. Continue reading →

As news leaked that outgoing President Donald Trump is discussing pardons for all of his adult children and for his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a story broke Tuesday that the Justice Department is investigating a scheme in which a presidential pardon would be granted in exchange for a huge campaign contribution. Continue reading →

Interfering in the internal affairs of other countries is flagrantly illegal under the UN Charter and other international law—that’s automatically US constitutional law. Continue reading →

We know their names! We’ve given immense power to Five Hundred and Thirty-Five People to do good or bad. One Hundred Senators and Four Hundred and Thirty-Five Representatives. Unfortunately, some 1,500 corporations control most Members of Congress. Think about all the dreams for a better world that could come to be realized if our elected officials worked for the big majority of Americans instead of for Big Business interests. Continue reading →

In his latest masterful maneuver to overturn the election, Trump attorney Rudy Guiliani, fresh off his peak successes with hair dye and Four Seasons Total Landscaping, went to a Michigan House Oversight Committee hearing Thursday to present what he’d touted as “extraordinary witnesses” with compelling proof of egregious election fraud in the state. Continue reading →

In his first words as President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken said, “we have to proceed with equal measures of humility and confidence.” Many around the world will welcome this promise of humility from the new administration, and Americans should too. Continue reading →

Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has nothing to worry about as the man who will directly handle America’s foreign policy in the Middle East is a loyal friend of Israel. Crisis averted. Continue reading →

We always knew Trump would contest the election results. He’s spreading wilder and wilder conspiracy theories about non-existent voter fraud. Of course, these claims haven’t held up in court because there’s zero evidence. But the integrity of thousands of people responsible for maintaining American democracy is being tested as never before. Continue reading →

Israel and Saudi Arabia are doing everything in their power to prevent Biden from rejoining the nuclear agreement—and Biden’s team has nothing to say. Continue reading →

Once again, Europe’s top diplomats expressed their ‘deep concern’ regarding Israel’s ongoing illegal settlement expansion, again evoking the maxim that Israeli actions “threaten the viability of the two-state solution.” Continue reading →

A top lawyer for Donald Trump called on national television Monday for the execution of Chris Krebs, the former U.S. cybersecurity chief in charge of protecting the 2020 election from cyberattacks. The president fired Krebs, a lifelong Republican that he appointed, after Krebs described the 2020 election as “the most secure in the country’s history.” Continue reading →

Donald Trump has another surprise in store for military veterans—dubbed “losers and suckers” by the outgoing president. Due to the financial stress experienced from COVID-19 by many veterans receiving co-pay prescription drugs from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the VA placed a hold on billing statements on April 6, 2020. Continue reading →

“Life is going to return to normal,” Joe Biden promised Thursday in a Thanksgiving address to the nation. He was talking about life after Covid-13, but you could be forgiven if you thought he was also making a promise about life after Trump. Continue reading →

No matter who ends up winning Senate confirmation for top positions on President Biden’s “national security” team, an ominous dynamic is already underway. Some foreign-policy specialists with progressive reputations are voicing support and evasive praise for prospective cabinet members—as though spinning through revolving doors to broker lucrative Pentagon contracts is not a conflict of interest, and as though advocating for an aggressive U.S. military posture is fine. Continue reading →

The Senate adjourned and left town without even trying to pass a COVID disaster relief bill. By the time they return today, based on current trends, an additional estimated 16,000 Americans will have died from COVID-19. Continue reading →

The Biden Transition team is about to connect with the Trumpsters running federal departments and agencies into the ground. The Biden staff should prepare for serial shocks. Biden’s people will be observing the first glimpses of staggering wreckage and corruption. They need to tell the American people what they find. Continue reading →

The corporate media have joined the incoming administration in deciding what we can and cannot see and hear. Continue reading →

What if Donald Trump won’t leave the White House? It’s a question many of us have asked, but the Boston Globe’s Beth Teitell did something our soon-to-be-ex-president would never do—she went to some experts and got their practical advice. Continue reading →

If ever there were a year filled with an abundance of bad news and a shortage of good news, 2020 would take the prize. Between the toxic political theater, pandemic scares, nationwide lockdowns that smack of martial law, a rollercoaster economy, and the ever-present menace of the police state, it’s been a hard, heart-wrenching, stomach-churning kind of year overrun with too much hate and too little tolerance. Continue reading →

It gets tiring constantly having to bash on the political, social, military, economic and media leaders in the United States along with fellow citizens of every class and persuasion. But what is a journalist—and citizen—supposed to do when presented with the petulance of a sitting American president in Donald Trump who, defying precedent, refuses to submit to the fact that he lost an election and simply out of spite is placing land mines—in the form of edicts, firings, appointments and executive policy actions— for the incoming president, Joe Biden. And what of the Republican party that enables this dangerous precedent? Continue reading →

Financial regulators subject banks to stress tests to see if they have enough capital to withstand sharp downturns. Continue reading →

In lieu of writing reviews of their own books—with the exception of Walt Whitman, who did that with Leaves of Grass—writers often write introductions or prefaces. The purpose of such introductions is to give the prospective readers a sense of what to expect in the pages that follow, as if the author knew exactly what he was writing when he was writing it, as if he weren’t waylaid by words along the way, or could possibly know what a reader may experience when reading them. In a way, I too have done that, even while knowing that all writing, if it is any good, is a leap into the relative dark, both for the writer and the reader. We can’t know beforehand how either will affect us. What changes us in life and in books is always surprising. Continue reading →

By all accounts, the frontrunner to be Joe Biden’s pick for secretary of defense is Michèle Flournoy. It’s a prospect that should do more than set off alarm bells—it should be understood as a scenario for the president-elect to stick his middle fingers in the eyes of Americans who are fed up with endless war and ongoing militarism. Continue reading →

Joe Biden has decisively won the presidency. There is no way for Trump to overturn the results of the election, and his campaign’s post-election lawsuits have gotten dismissed left and right. Continue reading →

Welcome to the world of Pandemia. It is a place where a deadly virus pandemic spreads in an out-of-control fashion. Sheltering at home has led to widespread unemployment. With closed borders and reduced airline flights, international and some domestic travel are all but dead. Legislatures and judicial courts render their decisions over video-conferencing connections. People of all ages die without being able to physically say farewell to their loved ones. Continue reading →

Trump has gotten away with almost everything throughout his bankruptcy-driven business career and his corrupt, cruel, and costly political years in the White House. Things changed on November 3, when he was retired by the voters. Continue reading →

Let’s talk about turkey! Continue reading →

Donald Trump loves executive orders as a tool of dictatorial power, avoiding the need to work through Congress. But that works both ways, making it relatively easy for President Biden to reverse many of Trump’s most disastrous decisions. Here are ten things Biden can do as soon as he takes office. Each one can set the stage for broader progressive foreign policy initiatives, which we have also outlined. Continue reading →