Every Good Morning

You Can Listen Here: I must keep knocking myself out of this narrative fallacy that we are in a story that ends well, but are almost wholly caught in the uncertainty of events and in the decisions of men (almost all men) who care nothing for what is good. This feels like a whirlwind, and that is why I keep trying to distance myself from hourly and daily episodes of the storm and instead […]

You Can Listen Here: He is the great President of my lifetime. His Bills rescue the economy from collapse, introduce banking regulations to try to prevent it from occurring again, and extend health insurance to millions of Americans. He protects additional wilderness lands for future generations, takes us out of Iraq, saves the US auto industry, ends the use of torture as American policy, and negotiates the Iran Nuclear Arms Agreement. He does all […]

You Can Listen Here: 9/11, the Great Recession and the war in Iraq did something to the American public that it will take decades to figure out, but in a heartbeat I would argue they felt a terrible falling away of control over and confidence in the staying power and progress of their own lives. Those three global events were also intensely personal and psychologically harmful. It has been seventeen years, and that does […]

You Can Listen Here: I cannot think of Reagan without grimacing, the first Republican to practice what my friend has called “smash and grab economics,” whereby the wealthiest begin their looting through tax cuts and sweet deals and the public good is given short shrift. Reagan continues the transformation of his party into white revanchists. He speaks of “welfare queens driving cadillacs”, and in a 1976 described “young bucks” using welfare money to “buy T-bone steaks .” With […]