Dan K
Stories by Dan K
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This is Not a Second Gilded Age. It’s a Brass Age.
It is often said that we are now living in a Second Gilded Age. The Gilded Age dates from around 1870 to the early 20th century, though I think it could be argued that it didn’t really end until the Great Depression killed it off (notwithstanding Teddy Roosevelt’s efforts to rein in corporate overreach). That…
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It’s Not Nice to Screw with Mother Nature
trump does not have a good relationship with the weather. From his contemptuous dismissal of climate change to his attempt to change the course of a hurricane with his magic Sharpie to blaming the rain for his disastrous performance on Meet the Press the other day, trump has long been at odds with nature. Now…
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Hang Kavanaugh Around Collins’s Neck
I see several diaries up this morning about the Maine Senate race, mostly focused on whether or not Maine Democrats did the right thing in choosing a candidate who is, let us admit, less than perfect. Angela Marx has it right: The Maine primary is over; how about we end the fighting here? I want…
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Toxic Masculinity is Destroying our Country
(Full disclosure: I have the XY chromosome.) Yes, this is a topic that has been explored here before, but given the impact that trump’s obsession with his penis size is having on the country and the planet, it bears some more exploration. Paul Krugman starts us off: Money and Machismo are Undermining America: Trump is…
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Hegseth Groups Religions into “Christians” and All Others
Last week, the Hegseth’s Department of the Indefensible announced it was reducing the number of religions it would recognize from 221 to 31. US military shrinks recognized faith list to 31: Which religions are in and which are out: A memorandum dated May 20, 2026, signed by Anthony Tata, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel…
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WH’s Effort to Link Immigrants to UFOs Shows Resistance is NOT Futile
For a while now, the trump administration has been playing up the UFO scare. Trump Opens UFO Files in Historic Government Release. “President Trump directed the Department of War to identify and release government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena, and unidentified flying objects because he is the most transparent president…
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Trump Wants to Punish the US for Not Loving Him Enough
Paul Krugman has one of his usual insightful columns this morning: Trump Has Given Up / No longer interested in governing, he is filled with rage and obsessed with revenge. Donald Trump will never admit that his gratuitous Iran war has been a total disaster. But the debacle has clearly broken him. So we are…
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Trump Now Thinks the Iran War is “Boring”
Remember Iran? The country trump said must never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon? The one he threatened to bomb back into the stone age? The war he said he had to focus on so much he couldn’t attend his son’s wedding? Yeah, that one. Two stories from today, in chronological order: 10:45 AM…
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Latest CA Poll Has Me Leaning Toward Steyer
Ok, fellow Californians – one last shot at the polls. (I think this is the last poll before Tuesday, but I can’t promise that.) Emerson College has just released the results of its May 27-28 polling, and it’s Becerra ahead by 5 points, while Steyer is now ahead of Hilton (within the margin of error):…
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California’s Latest Gov Poll Still Leaves Me Undecided (Edit w/ New Thought)
New thought: A friend just pointed out to me that if the governor’s general election is between two Democrats, this could depress GOP turnout and help the downballot races. Not sure if I totally agree, but it is an interesting thought. ———————————————————————————————————————————————- A lot of us on Daily Kos are Californians – not surprising, since…
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Does Trump WANT Americans to Die from Ebola?
Can anyone make sense of this? Anyone? Trump Bans American Disease Specialists From Speaking to WHO Despite Deadly Ebola Outbreak According to recent reporting, American disease specialists have faced limits on direct communication and collaboration with WHO counterparts as the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola spreads across parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighbouring…
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The “Nones” May Yet Save Us – If We Just Pay Them Attention
“Nones” are people with no religious affiliation. They may be secular, agnostic, atheist, or religious believers who are just tired of coping with the demands and restrictions of organized religion. And also of the politics of organized religion. Axios has an article this morning explaining why this is a problem: Campaigns pay the price for…
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The Need for Compromise (and Why So Many Hate It): An Ode to Ben Franklin
At the close of the Constitution Convention, Benjamin Franklin gave one of his most famous speeches. Urging the delegates to accept the Constitution with all its flaws, he argued that compromise (though he did not use the word itself) was essential to a free republic. For when you assemble a Number of Men to have…
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Hard Power (War) is No Substitute for Soft Power (Diplomacy), but Trump Doesn’t Care
I was watching Rachel Maddow last night as she talked about how Trump and Rubio have turned the State Department into a “dumping ground” for failed administration officials such as Kari Lake, now nominated to be ambassador to Jamaica after failing her assignment to kill the Voice of America. Rachel also pointed out that, out…
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Trump’s National Prayer “Event” Is Leading to a Religious War [Edit]
The United States has never experienced a real religious war. We’ve had lots of religious fights, some very bloody. During the Civil War, God was invoked by both sides (go read the Battle Hymn of the Republic). The Ku Klux Klan attacked, beat up, and killed people for being Catholic or Jewish as well for…
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TWO Tesla Recalls in a Week – WHAT a Metaphor!
Yes, we’re still on vacation, and no, I shouldn’t be paying attention to this sort of thing, but it was too delicious to pass up: Tesla recalls more than 218K vehicles over rearview image issue that poses crash risk Tesla is recalling more than 218,000 vehicles because of delayed rearview camera images that could increase…
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Trump Puts his Mug on the Passport
We all know there’s no limit to Trump’s vanity. Still, his latest trick is really something. (I’m trying to come up with a clever way of phrasing it, but this is so vile it will just have to speak for itself.) The State Department has announced a new passport style for our 250th anniversary: one…
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Trump Throws a Temper Tantrum (in Other News, the Sun Rose in the East This Morning)
This morning’s headline in HuffPost – Trump throws temper tantrum over ‘rigged’ poll numbers, backlash to Iran war – was almost routine: President Donald Trump raged about rigged polls and reports he was goaded into war with Iran by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a Monday morning Truth Social post. Still, it reminded me…
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Trump’s Military Fires On, Seizes, Iranian-Flagged Vessel near Oman
So now we (that is, Trump, in our name) have fired on an Iranian ship in (or near) the Strait of Hormuz, blew a hole in its engine room, and sent in the marines to take it over. Iran War Live Updates: U.S. Attacks Iranian Cargo Ship While Preparing for New Round of Talks: A…
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Russia and China Resurrect Themselves Over and Over. Can the USA?
Submitted for your consideration: There are, arguably, three Great Powers (in the pre-World War I sense) in the world today: Russia, China, and the United States. The first two have been around for hundreds of years – in China’s case, thousands – and have, as the title suggests, been broken and restored many times in…
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Is Hegseth About to be Fired?
When Trump is getting ready to fire someone, the press often picks up warning signs in advance. We saw this with Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem; now there is this story in the HuffPost: Ex-White House Official Points To 1 Trump Post That Shows Pete Hegseth’s A Goner : [Bill] Kristol, who served in the…
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This Site is Becoming a Blog for the Staff, Not a Forum for the Community
Ever since the new site came on line, I been noticing that the set of “Trending Stories” hasn’t changed much. In fact, if you look at when they were posted, most of them are 2-4 days old. That never happened on the old site; trending (or “recommended”) stories came and went as people’s interest in…
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The Incompetent Autocrat Hits a Structural Wall – Himself
Trump does love his walls – walls along the border, walls around his concentration camps, walls (metaphorical or otherwise) between the various parts of society which help him divide and conquer. On the other hand, he has also tried to knock down those walls that constrain the executive from becoming a dictator: Congress, the press,…
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Vance Just Called Trump an Economic Terrorist
It looks like Vance just threw Trump under the bus. He was on Fox News and actually said this: Three years of Yale Law School, wasted. I was watching Rachel’s A…
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The Times – Finally – Hints that Trump is Nuts
Well, it only took them forever. Peter Baker, the NYT White House correspondent, has a front-page article up this morning: Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme…
