I disagree with those who suggest that we permanently close down the U.S. mail on the grounds that it can kill you. That is sheer hysteria. I think we should permanently close down the U.S. mail on the grounds that it has been making us sick for quite a while.
It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots.
Donald Trump's humor is hostile to a fault.
Most men I know adore women, and I am including gay men. I think studies on jury selection show that the biggest critics of women - people less likely to trust their character or judgment - are women.
Donald Trump is way worse than George W. Bush. George W. Bush is a fundamentally decent man of limited intelligence who surrounded himself with awful people who dragged him in terrible directions. He was a bad president. But he was not actively malign, in the sense that he did what he thought was right. I don't think this guy cares what's right. I think he's in it for self-aggrandizement, for profit, and for power.
I think politics is everything.
Reporters are not merely recording devices that take down what people say and repeat it in print; we are expected to use our knowledge and experience both for triage - deciding what's important to cover and what isn't - and for contextualizing, analyzing and such.
Trump cannot change because in his mind, he has ALWAYS been rewarded for his boorish, stupid, arrogant behavior.
It is not a coincidence that Donald Trump has attracted white supremacists.
On Twitter, people like me regularly get called "sore losers" by Trumpeters. It just makes me roll my eyes. This is not about winning and losing. We all lost, even them, they just don't know it yet.
I don't think I could ever love someone with whom I fundamentally disagreed, politically.
I think there are a good many Donald Trump voters who are sick of government as it is practiced in America and genuinely want to blow up the system and see what happens. They are stupid - or at least unwise - but not necessarily racist.
Hillary Clinton was a cute, smart chick in the 1960s.
I don't consider Hillary Clinton to be the lesser of two evils.
Allowing a non-lawyer to be on the Supreme Court strikes me as a very American thing, in a good way. Another is that the speaker of the house doesn't have to be a member of congress. He or she can be anyone. I'm not sure if James Madison really intended that, or if the wording was accidentally imprecise, but the Constitution, as a recall, simply says that the House shall chuse a speaker.
I think Hillary Clinton will make a fine president, and (most important) I am comfortable with her making gigantic, momentous decisions.
I read a lot of conservatives. They are thoughtful and intelligent and annoying, and I always read them because they have viewpoints that challenge my own, even thought they are wrong. But this does me no good because, being intelligent and sophisticated human beings, they are all contemptuous of Trump. They hate him. They find him...vulgar.
The advent of DNA testing, and the number of convictions thrown out, has confirmed that we've put LOTS of innocent people to death. There need not be any other argument against death penalty.
Is it really the right of the media to dictate to the president whom he will allow in his press conferences? That's tetchier. And then there is the added issue of whether it would be a service to their readers, and the country at large, for, say, the Washington Post to take itself out of the room -- meaning they don't have the ability to ask important questions the president is obliged to answer? I think that would be a mistake.
The odd thing is that Trump's hand movements don't seem to coordinate with the topic at hand. Most pols manage to make their hand movements correspond with the message, so a slash will accompany emphasis, etc. Trump's got about three moves, the most notable of which is his "okay" gesture, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger. Anyway, Trump has only a few gestures, including that one, and to my eye he uses them seemingly indiscriminately. I've seen him use the "okay/f.u." sign to be pedantic.
It doesn't entirely make sense that if 51 senators are from one party, and they can stick together, they can do whatever they want. Especially in this age of blatant, shameless gerrymandering.
I always love it when a small paper wins. When I was growing up in the Bronx, the editor of the Riverdale Press - a neighborhood rag - kept submitting his columns for a Pulitzer. We laughed and laughed at his ego. He finally won.
An editorial writer might consult a reporter to see what she thinks, if it is what she covers. But they are entirely independent.
The total wall is between editorial and newsroom. And unbreachable barrier. For good reason. It doesn't mean the two sides don't talk.
I believe the publisher is a member of the editorial board, and I think his vote would matter.
