Trump’s Mandate

“We expect a massive increase in military spending. We expect money for border security in this bill,” Mr. Priebus said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And it ought to be. Because the president won overwhelmingly. And everyone understands the border wall was part of it.” (NY Times). Umm, Trump did not win “overwhelmingly”. Not even close. In fact, he barely won. He is, in the end, President. But with the second worst...

Private Facts

Reading the left and right repeating their talking points about Gorsuch and the nuclear option it occurs to me: This is what happens when people live in the same world, but understand it through two completely separate sets of facts. Not just alternative explanations, but completely independent facts. So it is not that both sides are looking at the same thing and just seeing it differently. They are looking at different...

Trump and Tragedy of Garland

It is rapidly becoming apparent that Trump is not going to govern as a maverick outsider, but is instead a tool of the far right. Nothing illustrates this better than his Supreme Court pick, where he nominated a far-right jurist when he could have made a bold move to heal the nation. Trump could have put up Merrick Garlend, and come off looking like Solomon. In one fell swoop he would have healed the “stolen...

Trump is his own Chaos

I find it kind of funny how many people keep trying to spin the chaos of the Trump administration like it is all planned, and none of it is a big deal. Sorry, the news is that the Trump administration is chaos. Not even the ten people in the White House with offices closest to the Oval one have any idea what is going on. Oh, and the reason has nothing to do with Democrats. This is all about the man at the top. He...

Race, Identity, and Voting

Ever since Trump won an upset victory in November 2016, analysts have been debating whether economic issues or racism are what “really” caused him to win. I don’t think it is an either-or. Identity is a complex package. In this country, almost since the beginning, race has been a component. Identity explains voting patterns to a considerable degree. Race is part of that. We can debate to what degree each...

The ignominy of Mitch McConnell

There is a lot of blame to go around with the slide into hyper-partisanship over the past several decades. But when the history books cover this era 50 or 100 years from now, Senator Mitch McConnell will be singled out. The “nuclear option” on Gorsuch was fairly predictable, and I even argued in the past weeks that Democrats should provoke it. But the fact will remain that McConnell was the one who ended 228...

Counterintelligence

When I was in the military, many years ago, I was in military intelligence. I was trained as a battlefield interrogator, which meant that between 1991 and 1995 I did nothing remotely related to my training. In my military intelligence unit, in addition to the “human intelligence” operatives (the interrogators), we also had soldiers trained as counterintelligence specialists, as well as signals interception and...