Yes, talk about politics at Thanksgiving this year
Lead with your values. Pivot to agenda. Talk about billionaires, and about media.
Latest
Exit Poll (2003)
Note: reposting with permission an excellent piece from 2003 from Noam Scheiber on centrist Democratic consultants. Little has changed today. The centrist consultants, chosen by the Democratic leadership, are still leading Democratic politics astray. It's time to pass the torch to younger generations, who are not stuck in
Kamala Harris is making Trump look small and weak
The mockery and belittling is working.
Weird.
The word 'weird' has exploded this week, as the Harris campaign metaphorically bludgeons Trump with it.
"A weird night on Fox News." "It would just be weird if it wasn’t so dangerous." "A weird and
Democrats should loudly reject Netanyahu’s far-right government
A political memo for Americans who love freedom, equality, democracy, and peace.
The ADL and AIPAC support the far-right Israeli government and we should reject them too
Originally published in November, 2023. Some additions made in Dec 2025, noted in [brackets].
The head of Twitter pushes Nazi messages, and the
All we need to know about political messaging we learned in kindergarten
A conversation with my kindergartner. An inspiring discussion. We can say this to adults too.
Did Donald Trump steal the 2016 election? Yes.
He has been illegitimate from the start.
The World Cup, Rupert Murdoch, and monopolistic influence on US media
Media owned by billionaires, Murdoch to Musk, is fracturing American democracy. Let's look at our media concentration rules.
Post seems like it wants to be the "Uber of news." Let's be careful.
Update, 2024: Indeed, Post's business model failed as I described here. News outlets did not join Post en masse, and so Post wasn't able to build the monopoly power they needed. Post shut down in April 2024.
Twitter is becoming more of a far-right clown show
Twitter is being used by a billionaire to shift public opinion. Time to go elsewhere
When your opponent controls the playing field, you will always lose that fight. Let's democratize our media.
Responding to your MAGA relatives this Thanksgiving
Talk about media, and how rightwing billionaires harm average Americans. It works!
Nov 22, 2022
A visit with family and friends is in the cards for many of us this weekend. Sometimes, tough conversations come out during those visits. Political issues in America are taking on more and more import
Overreliance on polling is sinking American democracy
Democratic leaders: be bold and strategic, instead of making every decision based on data
Boosters for COVID-19 have become a high-stakes issue. This summer, Americans thought COVID would fade, and we would be looking at a more-normal fall. But then new variants arrived.
The story of boosters highlights a critical
Media bothsidesism hasn't improved since 2016. Aargh!
How has the media not yet figured out how to deal with bad-faith liars??
In 2016, after the election, to reassure myself things might not be that terrible, I leaned on the expectation this president would draw attention to some major problems in our public information sphere. I thought that
How the Trump base was cultivated by lies about "line cutting" – from Reagan, through Fox
I was inspired by Seth Cotlar’s take on how modern conservatism got to where they are at today, but there’s one aspect he didn’t cover. From a red area, I watched Republican media, and Republican elites, cultivate the GOP base to want someone like Trump. Republicans have