There are a lot of ways in which we could reduce electoral candidate scandals. I want to point to a few that are, I think, the most undervalued.

1. The Murder Problem

As a society, we recruit, train, and condition many thousands of people to engage in intense campaigns of mass killing and destruction abroad, and we reward and praise them for it. When they struggle with the shift to a nonviolent, non-hating environment after completion of their so-called “service,” we blame ourselves for not giving them more read more

Trump has a trillion dollars a year for wars — a record amount, more than most other countries combined, more than the non-war federal discretionary budget, enough to attack Venezuela and Iran on his whim, enough to send drone-murder missiles into houses and boats around the world, enough to keep the weapons falling on Gaza and Ukraine, enough to fill new countries with U.S. bases, enough to build new nukes, enough to create a “golden dome” fantasy death machine, enough to do read more

When I was a kid it was fun to hang out on the U.S. National Mall by the Washington Monument, which reflected just fine in the Reflecting Pool, on the Fourth of July. The Beach Boys would jam on an outdoor stage with about 35 opening acts. We’d bounce beach balls overhead. There were no jets or tanks in sight.

Now the psychopath across the road prefers weapons parades and is planning to put gladiators in a cage on the White House lawn and have them fight for his entertainment. This bothers read more

Is voting for a boot to your own face exclusively a Kansas problem?

What is going on in California?

There’s a primary election for governor with three leading candidates, the top two of whom will compete in a runoff.

One of the three is a pro-corporate-oligarchy rightwing Republican who will lose the runoff. He wants to stop regulating businesses, slash taxes on gazillionaires, end income taxes on most people to reduce their interest in government, and cover California in sprawling roads and read more

In 2004 Michael Christopher Carroll published a book called Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Germ Laboratory. He appeared on several television shows to discuss the book, including on NBC’s Today Show, where the book was made a Today Show Book Club selection. Lab 257 hit the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list soon after its publication. CNN discussed read more

What do Donald “a whole civilization will die” Trump, Pete “kill all Muslims” Hegseth, Army Secretary who couldn’t be found on January 6 Ryan McCarthy, Trump supporters Douglas Macgregor and H.R. McMaster, former CIA Director Mike “we lied, we cheated, we stole” Pompeo and his aides Ulrich Brechbuhl and Brian Bulatao, Trump confidant David Urban, many U.S.-backed foreign dictators, private-sector mafiosi like John Gotti, and their ilk back through the read more

The Democrats’ autopsy doesn’t simply not mention Gaza. It doesn’t mention anything at all. Kamala Harris’s platform doesn’t come up. What the candidate said she’d do if elected isn’t apparently relevant to why she lost. Therefore, what policy proposals she might have offered that she didn’t must be irrelevant too.

This is typical political campaignthink. Plenty of Congressional campaign websites have no policy positions whatsoever. Most have no foreign read more

Trump is eager to steal a pile of government money and hand it out to people who tried to overthrow the U.S. government. In the first round of prosecutions of those people, 20% of them were in or had been in the U.S. military. And many of them were in neo-Nazi militias, which targeted veterans for recruitment precisely because they might be skillful in a coup (a concept hardly new to U.S. history). Matt Kennard, who warned about open Nazism in the read more