78% say Citizens United was a bad decision 63% would support raising the minimum wage to $15/hr 75% would support raising it to $12.50 82% support indexing the minimum wage to inflation 62% believe in debt free public college 46% believe public college should be free 79% support paid family and medical leave 58% support legalizing weed 63% oppose raising the age at which citizens can start collecting Social Security benefits 68% oppose privatizing Social Security 67% support

We’re in a bit of a quandary here with Trump. He is giving every appearance of being a despot in the making. It’s possible, he’s just an idiot savant who is going to be one of our worst presidents and we’ll recover. And maybe our institutions are strong enough to withstand any attempt by him to step too far outside the lines. But after the last year in particular, that seems like a foolish thing to put our hopes in. Institutions haven’t been doing so well for quite some time

Many Trump supporters literally voted for a person who exists only in their head. I first realized that there was something strange going on with Trump and his supporters during the primaries when a seemingly normal man I’m connected to on Facebook shared a Trump ad saying, “this is amazing! Wow. If everyone saw this, Trump would win in a landslide. Finally, someone who gets it.” (Or something like that, I’m working from memory.) So I watched the ad. All it was was Trump maki

So, odds are good that you’ve heard about actress Meryl Streep’s speech the other night where she said politically charged things like “disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.” OK, that’s not quite a fair depiction of the matter. Her speech actually did constitute an attack on Donald Trump. I didn’t watch the it, but I heard about it in real time from friends on Facebook who felt like she was

So, two weeks ago today I fell on an icy driveway and broke my ankle. It was classic; my foot started to slip on the ice, hit dry gravel and stopped. I continued my fall, my foot did not. Just like in every other broken ankle story you’ve ever been told, I heard the crunch of breaking bones, screamed and went into shock. There was no safe way to move me and both my oldest son and my husband have their own issues with balance/stability, so an icy pile-up nightmare was a real d

This is the cover of The National Enquirer this week. All lies, but lies repeated take on an air of truth. This is what people are seeing at every check-out lane at every Walmart and grocery store in the country. Pass It On! Tweet Email More Print Share on Tumblr WhatsApp #politics #Trump #culture #propaganda #currentevents

One of my working assumptions about life is that only that which can be redeemed is allowed. So anything that happens carries possibilities. Because if it’s happening, it can be redeemed. Now, whether any of that is factually true or not isn’t really here nor there. Even if it’s just a mental construct, it’s served me well through some really crazy shit. Because I assume that everything is moving towards being redeemed, when life throws me a doozy that I wouldn’t choose if yo

It’s all well and fine to say that being critical, calling out wrong doing, speaking against oppression and being rude are not necessarily impediments to love, prayer or peace. But the fact remains that I’m being particularly nasty about Trump and his election-on-a-technicality. Yes, there’s the Russian deal. And the fact that we’re in a scarier position than people want to admit (more on that later). But it’s also that I’m well aware of a dynamic described by Jonathan Chait

A couple of weeks ago I ran into an acquaintance who told me that work at his job was so slow that his hours had been cut and he was afraid that by Christmas they would be closing the shop altogether. He’s a machinist, which is one of those jobs which is usually in high demand; I know just a couple of years ago local shops were recruiting kids right out of high school for training. So I asked him about that but he just shook his head and said that it’s changed. Then, to my su