This time a year ago we were flying down the home stretch of what turned out to be a wave election. In the wee morning hours of Election Night, the GOP candidate ultimately won the Electoral College vote count for the Presidency and his party made substantial gains in a wave that extended far down…
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Book Review: Giant of the Senate by Al Franken
Alan Stuart Franken, a talented and smooth spoken Harvard educated 60-something, has spent a lifetime riding a unique mix of humor and irony to celebrity and a good living . Most of us late night insomniac TV watchers remember his start as one of the original writers for Saturday Night Live in 1975, a gig…
Continue ReadingA moral and humanitarian failure of leadership
What benefits any person, group or nation to gain all the material wealth in the known universe but to ultimately lose the very essence of the core of their own soul? That is one existential question which Yours Truly has been forced by public statements and actions (or lack thereof) made by certain government officials…
Continue ReadingSlowing down the forced march backwards
What a week it has been in *President Trump’s America. Is anyone tired of winning yet? Never before in my lifetime have I seen a chief executive of any organization let alone the defacto leader of the free world (a position which the United States is apparently abdicating) so self-absorbed by the fact he won…
Continue ReadingRepeal of Affordable Care Act is failing!
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka The Affordable Care Act will remain the law of land after the primary legislative aim of the GOP-controlled Congress to repeal it failed to gain enough support for passage in the U.S. Senate on Monday evening. President Barack Obama signed the ACA into law in March of…
Continue ReadingAnd so the Oklahoma Blue Wave begins
When the 56th Legislature of the State of Oklahoma was sworn in back in January, the Republicans occupied 75 of 101 seats in the House and 42 of 48 seats in the Senate. Since the swearing in of the state’s lawmakers, there have been six Republicans that have had to resign their seat under the…
Continue ReadingDoes the end justify the means?
We are now 160 or so days into the Trump era and I have been watching and listening in mostly silent and at times stunned amazement at how the polarized factions of the American nation are evolving. I must say I am not surprised by most of what has been attempted by the GOP-controlled Congress. …
Continue ReadingWatergate: An enduring memory of my youth
All democracy is a work in progress. For better or worse and despite being under constant threat of compromise since its founding, the grand American experiment has met the demands and overcome multiple imposed stresses as well as all manner of intense strain up to and including civil war. In my lifetime that radical idea…
Continue ReadingA long day at the sausage factory
If you are fond of the taste of sausage then never let yourself get talked into watching how its made and especially never agree to participate in the process of making it. Even still, a state political convention is something everyone should experience at least once. This past Saturday over 600 passionate delegates from all…
Continue ReadingWe are not OK
Life seems to have been toeing the line of the surreal for the past couple weeks while events, local and national, happen in real time and evolve over a period of days. This past week there was a candidate forum for those running for Chair of the Oklahoma Democratic Party where four of the five…
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