“I am proud to be a Democrat and I wish Bernie were, too.”

- Hillary Clinton

Coming out of the 2016 presidential elections it looked like the Republican party was hopelessly fractured. Trump had steamrolled past primary opponents favored by the establishment turning party orthodoxy on its head. After a failed last-minute attempt to block his ascension at the convention, the party faithful fell into line and prepared themselves for a certain loss; they would regroup in 2020 and take on Clinton for her reelection.

But then Trump beat the odds and won. The Never Trumpers fell away along with long-standing planks in the Republican platform. The party that used to believe in free trade sat by while Trump instituted ill-conceived tariffs and started trade wars. While they once responded to complaints of abuse by police officers with the retort of “blue-lives matter”, no defense was forthcoming for career FBI agents subjected to Trump’s unsubstantiated charges against them. Former deficit hawks who used to insist on “pay for” for any social program gladly voted for a tax bill that primarily benefited corporations and the 1% while ballooning the deficit and increasing income inequality.

“Renate Alumnius”

- Brett Kavanaugh

Like a child who had gotten caught with his hands in the cookie jar, SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh looked into the eyes of United States Senators and the American people and said he did not do it. However, no amount of tears or righteous indignation will change the fact that placing “Renate Alumnius” on his yearbook page was not an act of “affection”, he was not old enough to legally drink at the time he allegedly tried to rape Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, or that he regularly attended parties like the one described by Ford.

“It is our job to make his pattern of revolting behavior clear -- piece by painful piece”

- Brett Kavanaugh

Much like Dr. Christine Ford, Monica Lewinsky’s life was turned upside down by the glare of someone else's spotlight. While Brett Kavanaugh asserted that engaging in sexual relations with Bill Clinton turned “her life into a shambles”, from Lewinsky's point of view it was his boss, Kenneth Starr, “who turned [her] 24-year-old life into a living hell”. As tribal politics raged, it was not the sex acts, but Clinton’s use of her as “a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position” that provided his contribution to her enduring victimization.

“Out on the road today
I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said
‘Don't look back, you can never look back’"

- Don Henley

When Don Henley released the song “The Boys of Summer” in 1984, I had just begun my senior year in high school and life was exciting. With a long-term girlfriend, I was exploring what it was like to be in a relationship. My unrestricted driver’s license was brand new and I could now make plans without having to rely on my mother for transportation. My band, in which I was the drummer, was taking the first steps towards turning noise into music and my school notebooks were peppered with lyrics for songs that were waiting to be written. While I planned to move on to college, I dreamed of becoming a rock star.

Donald Trump is a master of branding. He took a “small loan of a million dollars”, bought some gold spray paint and turned the Trump name into something synonymous with how poor people think rich people live. Sure, you could not afford to live in the Trump Tower where the penthouse has “over over-the-top surroundings that might make Liberace blush” and the “upper-level residential floors are not equipped with fire sprinklers”, but what about some Trump Steaks? They were best when “cooked well-done and smothered in ketchup.” If these “dreadful pieces of meat for a high price” did not kill you and you still had room left on your credit card, you could have looked for a class at Trump University on how to inherit millions from your father and turn it into six bankruptcies.

As the temperature heads towards 120° in Los Angeles, I am trying to concentrate on cool thoughts. Having been part of the last generation of paperboys in suburban New York, there are plenty of snowy memories to rely on.

In one of my favorites, I woke up after an overnight snowstorm having to deliver a thick Sunday paper using roads that had still not been plowed. Not wanting to make several trips, I had the brilliant plan of strapping a milk crate to my sled. This worked great for the first half of my route, at which point the sun came out in full force and completely melted the fresh snow. It took me forever to finish my route as I dragged the sled over solid ground.

“Man Plans and God Laughs.”

- Yiddish proverb

"Congress placed marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and, as such, growing, distributing, and possessing marijuana in any capacity, other than as part of a federally authorized research program, is a violation of federal law regardless of state laws permitting such activities."

- Obama’s Justice Department

While the right-wing likes to pretend that Barack Obama was “the most liberal president in America's history”, the fact is that he governed from the corporate center. He may have campaigned on a stimulus package that would have created a $10 billion foreclosure prevention fund and a $60 billion infrastructure bank, but the end result was a package that relied more heavily on $288 billion in tax cuts. In the 2008 campaign, he opposed Clinton’s call to use the Republican idea of mandating the purchase of health insurance coverage, but this was a key part of the Obamacare system that was eventually passed. Candidate Obama expressed concern about “a system that locks away too many young, first-time, non-violent offenders for the better part of their lives”, but President Obama left office with many of those prisoners older and still behind bars.

“That Steve Knight is vulnerable to defeat in his re-election campaign is widely known.”

- Santa Clarita Gazette

“Yes, we definitely need to take a closer look at charter schools and a moratorium would give us the time needed to collect data, research and share successful practices”

- Jon Pelzer

“We were here!”

                    - Nightwish

I was a little hesitant about buying tickets to see Finland’s Nightwish on their current tour. The press release promoting the tour was promising to feature “rarely heard material from the earlier era,” but these weren’t the songs that had drawn me to the band. I had discovered the band after stumbling across their Showtime, Storytime video on YouTube and the newer songs from their twenty-plus year career are the ones that had made them one of my favorite bands. These are the songs I wanted to see them play.

I should have had more faith.