Category: Deep Thoughts

  • LIVING THE DREAM: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH SONG 2

    LIVING THE DREAM: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH SONG 2

    We say it like it’s a fact. Greatest country on earth. Number one. Living the dream. But when you actually look at the data — the rankings, the numbers, the verified receipts — the scoreboard tells a different story. Living the Dream is the second Enough Is Enough protest song.

  • The Peace President Needs to Fund His Wars Instead of our Health and Child Care. So Democrats Talk About Crayons?

    The Peace President Needs to Fund His Wars Instead of our Health and Child Care. So Democrats Talk About Crayons?

    Sort of an Opinion piece but not really, it’s just this country is batshit off the rails. You seriously could not make up how out of touch these people are. WTF Is Wrong With Us? No Seriously… Let me set the full scene, because context is everything here. IHere is everything you need to know…

  • Angry Old Extremely Religious Christian White Man Yelling from His Porch Syndrome

    Angry Old Extremely Religious Christian White Man Yelling from His Porch Syndrome

    What finally broke my brain was the sequence. The Epstein files dropped. The same movement that built itself on QAnon, on “protect the children,” on Democrats running pedophile rings out of pizza basements — the moral foundation that supposedly separated them from the godless left — went quiet. Or shifted. Or decided that maybe context…

  • Are We About to Come Full Circle on Who We Trust?

    Are We About to Come Full Circle on Who We Trust?

    I was driving to yet another baseball tournament Saturday morning, half-awake, NPR on in the background, when a story about AI disinformation in the Iran conflict completely hijacked my brain for the next forty-five minutes. The segment was trying to walk through which images were fake and which weren’t. Iranian state TV had broadcast AI-generated…

  • Is the Iran War America’s Biggest Self-Own of Self-Owns?

    Is the Iran War America’s Biggest Self-Own of Self-Owns?

    Three and a half weeks in. Twenty-four days of US and Israeli strikes on Iran, oil at $112 a barrel, thirteen American soldiers dead, the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, and the administration now scrambling to lift sanctions on the very country we’re bombing — just to keep gas prices from completely destroying what’s left…

  • WTF Is Up With MTG?

    WTF Is Up With MTG?

    Something happened to Marjorie Taylor Greene and I’m still not sure how to file it. Six months ago she was the most reliably deranged member of Congress. She’d stalked a teenage school shooting survivor through the Capitol on video. She’d endorsed online conspiracy theories I genuinely do not want to type out in detail on…

  • What’s Wrong With the Democrats. What’s Wrong With the Republicans. It Doesn’t Matter.

    What’s Wrong With the Democrats. What’s Wrong With the Republicans. It Doesn’t Matter.

    Neither One Will Deliver for You. Let me start with something that should be obvious but somehow never gets said out loud. Neither party won the last election. The other party just lost it more. That distinction sounds like splitting hairs until you realize it explains almost everything broken about American politics for the last…

  • How an Angry Old MacDonald Became a Protest Song

    How an Angry Old MacDonald Became a Protest Song

    It started with a question: What is actually wrong with this country, and why do we seem so far apart? The division felt real. The anger felt real. But when you actually looked at the polling data, something didn’t add up. Americans agree on almost everything that matters. Healthcare. Wages. Campaign finance reform. Taxing the…

  • Americans Agree on Almost Everything—We Just Don’t Realize It

    Americans Agree on Almost Everything—We Just Don’t Realize It

    I scroll Instagram mostly because I have to. Crooked Number lives there and you can’t sell baseball mom shirts to an empty room, so I spend more time on it than I’d choose. Which means most of what I see is algorithm-served noise I didn’t ask for. One of those infographics floated past the other…

  • Term Limits: I Was For Them Until I Wasn’t

    Term Limits: I Was For Them Until I Wasn’t

    Honest opener: I used to think term limits were obviously a good idea. Get rid of the lifers, drain the swamp, fresh blood, problem solved. It polls at 87% support for a reason — pretty much everybody across the political spectrum looks at Congress and goes “yeah, these people should go home.” I was in…

  • Vote FOR Something: An Honest Look at Voting Reform

    Vote FOR Something: An Honest Look at Voting Reform

    The last time I felt good about a vote I cast for president, I was probably in college and the candidate was probably losing. Every election since has been damage control. I’m not voting for somebody, I’m voting against the other guy because my kids have to live in whatever country the next four years…

  • The Argument Over Alex Pretti Is Bait. Don’t Take It.

    The Argument Over Alex Pretti Is Bait. Don’t Take It.

    By the time I started writing this, the videos of Alex Pretti’s last few minutes had been on my phone for three days and the argument about what they showed had hardened along the exact lines you’d predict. Half my feed saw a peaceful citizen being murdered by federal agents in his own neighborhood. The…

  • Let’s Stop Screaming at Each Other

    Let’s Stop Screaming at Each Other

    Libtard. Right-wing nut. Snowflake. MAGA moron. Commie. Fascist. We’ve all heard it. Most of us have said some version of it. I know I have. And every time it happens, somebody wins — but it’s not you, and it’s not the person on the other end of it. Americans are more polarized than at any…

  • Mamdani Madness

    Mamdani Madness

    So Zohran Mamdani was sworn in on January 1st as New York City’s first Muslim mayor and first democratic socialist mayor, and the outrage machine on both sides has been in full swing. Michael Rapaport, less than a week into Mamdani’s tenure, posted an Instagram announcement that he’s running for mayor in 2029 to save…

  • Make America Great Again — Compared To When?

    Make America Great Again — Compared To When?

    I want to put this one in my own words because I had it backwards for a while. The first time I really thought about the slogan, I assumed the argument was about the again part — what year are we trying to get back to, what did “great” mean then, who was it great…

  • Why I Started Writing About Politics

    Why I Started Writing About Politics

    We’ve gotten a little off track from what we normally write about here — travel adventures, home projects where mistakes are inevitably made, the odd obsessions. So I figured I should explain what happened. I’ve been concerned about the direction and polarization of this country for a while. I consider myself open-minded and not on…

  • Who Actually Is a Patriot?

    Who Actually Is a Patriot?

    There’s a flag the size of a tablecloth on the back of a pickup that parks at the field where my kid plays baseball. The truck has a “Patriots Don’t Comply” sticker on it. The guy who owns it is probably very nice. But I find myself thinking, every time I see it: comply with…