Tuesday, September 01, 2026
Most People Would Prefer States Have Open Primaries
The chart above reflects the results of the YouGov Poll -- done on August 5th of a nationwide sample of 6,176 adults.
Only 32% Approve Of Trump's Handling Of The Economy (Only 14% Strongly Approve)
The chart above is from the Strength in Numbers / Verasight Poll -- done between August 7th and 11th of a nationwide sample of 1,591 registered voters, with a 3.14 point margin of error.
Monday, August 31, 2026
Canadians Overwhelmingly Approve Of PM Carney Standing Up To Trump
The charts above are from the Abacus Data Poll -- done between August 21st and 26th of a nationwide sample of 2,022 Canadian adults, with a 2.2 point margin of error.
The Best Of Us And The Worst Of Us
This is from the website of Robert Reich:
Even at 80 years old, she was still bringing Americans together. At 80, he continues to tear us apart.
She always stood for the underdog. He stands for the overlord. She was among the most generous people in American public life. He is the most self-centered. Hers was a voice of clarity, courage, and hope. His is the voice of cruelty, corruption, and incompetence.
If you line up the human species from most admirable to least, she’d be among the first; he’d be among the last.
Sadly, she is no longer with us. Sadly, he is.
This week he took to his Truth Social media to share an AI-generated illustration of himself walking arm in arm with her around the White House (see above). “I knew her a little bit,” he boasted on Glenn Beck’s radio show. “She really liked me, I will tell you!” at which Beck laughed out loud.
Most of the people I meet around this country are more like her than him. Americans are kind, friendly, empathic, optimistic. We want to protect the vulnerable and comfort the afflicted.
We’ve given refuge to those fleeing violence and persecution. We’ve aspired to equal opportunity for the disadvantaged, help for the destitute. We’ve given louder voices to those who’d otherwise not be heard. We’ve been a beacon of hope in the world.
These ideals are embedded in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Emma Lazarus’s poem affixed to the Statue of Liberty, FDR’s second inaugural address, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington.
We haven’t lived up to them, of course. There’s always been a dark side to America — a part of our soul that exemplifies him rather than her. We’ve been intolerant and bigoted. We’ve supported dictators. Earlier on we enslaved and engaged in genocide.
But most of us aren’t proud of that dark side. We’ve been proudest of our ideals.
So why did we elect him president again? Everyone has a view: Joe Biden should have exited the stage sooner, Democrats should have had a mini-primary, Kamala Harris wasn’t the best candidate, Trump cheated, and so on.
The deeper reason, I think, started several decades ago when those who had accumulated a great deal of power and wealth began to change America.
They destroyed the basic bargain at the heart of our economy: that if you worked hard and played by the rules, you’d do well and your children would do even better. Since the late 1970s, some $80 trillion has been siphoned from the bottom 90 percent of Americans to the richest 1 percent.
Yet they got us to blame each other for our struggles rather than look upward and see where all the power and wealth had gone.
Trump gave voice to the scapegoating — blaming undocumented workers, the “deep state,” transgender people, Latinos, Black people, “communists,” Muslims, and Democrats. Now even Canada! All along, he’s been the mainstay of big money, the tribune of the wealthy and powerful.
But his power is now waning. Americans are seeing where he and the dark side have led us — to another unending war, to higher prices and lower wages, to cruel and brutal mass deportations.
We are finally looking upward and realizing where the power and wealth have gone.
We will have an election in just over nine weeks. It will give us a chance to correct some of this — not just constrain him but also start the long and difficult process of rebuilding the nation toward the ideals we’re most proud of, and which she exemplified.
GOP Congress Has Made It Easier For Their Rich Friends To Evade Paying Taxes
The following is part of an article by economist Paul Krugman:
Much of the rise of the modern American oligarchy has been driven by deliberate policy rather than technological or market forces. And that deliberate policy has been the decades-long dismantling of the system of progressive taxation — a system that had ended the Gilded Age, the last period of great inequality. Starting in the 1970s, right-wing politicians pushed through large reductions in effective tax rates on the wealthy. And in the 2010s, Republican-controlled congresses stripped the IRS of resources to enforce the tax code. These two changes set the stage for the reemergence of immense fortunes, with vast social and political consequences.
What exactly does a “reduction in effective tax rates” mean? Much of that change was implemented through reductions in the statutory rates. For example, the top federal tax bracket on individual incomes was more than 90% in the 1950s, versus 37% now. Large corporations paid a tax rate of 52% on their profits in the 1950s, which is now down to 21%. Large estates paid a 77% tax rate until 1976; now the rate is only 40%, and that only applies to the value in excess of $15 million.
However, beyond these reductions in statutory rates, tax avoidance and tax evasion have grown significantly. “Avoidance” and “evasion” may sound like synonyms, but they are not: avoidance involves exploiting loopholes in the tax code in ways that are legal, even if they shouldn’t be, while evasion involves breaking the law.
And tax evasion is now a very big concern. Reasonable estimates of the “tax gap” — taxes that individuals and businesses are legally obliged to pay, but don’t — are startlingly large — $600 billion a year or more – approximately 40% of the current budget deficit. Furthermore, much of this tax gap is surely accounted for by tax evasion by high-income Americans. So tax evasion is a significant contributor to both the rise of American oligarchy and the high federal debt.
Thus it is startling to realize that, except for a brief attempt to reduce the tax gap by the Biden administration, the U.S. government has over time reduced its efforts to ensure that the wealthy pay the taxes they owe. It’s clear that the purposeful reduction in the enforcement of the tax code for the wealthy is both a symptom as a well as a cause of America’s rising oligarchy. It is a key factor in America’s downward spiral into oligarchy, which is currently ravaging our politics and our democratic institutions.
Sunday, August 30, 2026
Saturday, August 29, 2026
U.S. Public Overwhelmingly Supports Voting By Mail
The chart above is from the YouGov Poll -- done on August 26th of a nationwide sample of 9,430 adults.
The 20 Most Popular Country Music Artists
From the YouGov Poll. The data was last updated in the second quarter of 2026 (before Dolly's death).
Friday, August 28, 2026
New Poll Has Talarico With A 6-Point Lead Over Paxton
The charts above are from the Texas Public Opinion Research Poll -- done between August 21st and 24th of 1,000 likely Texas voters, with a 3.3 point margin of error.
"Trump Has Become Mad As A Hatter - Loonier Than Loony-Tunes - Totally Nuts"
More brilliant commentary from Robert Reich:
I’m still grieving Dolly Parton. I never met her and always wanted to. She was almost exactly my age and my height and had values I deeply admired. Her death leaves a hole in the firmament.
Which brings me to the person whose values are as far from Dolly Parton’s as any human’s could possibly be and still claim to be human. I’m referring, of course, to the current occupant of the Oval Office.
“I knew her a little bit,” Trump boasted about Parton yesterday on Glenn Beck’s radio show. “She really liked me, I will tell you!” at which Beck laughed out loud.
Trump has become mad as a hatter. Loonier than loony-tunes. Totally nuts. An enraged, engorged child who’s frightened to death of being seen as a loser.
He’s losing his war in Iran — the war he decided to start without the support of any other nation, without consulting Congress, without even telling the American people his goal or exit strategy.
Now he’s trapped there — with a stronger and more extreme group in control of Iran than before his attack, more intent on making a nuclear bomb, blocking the Strait of Hormuz (it was open before Trump attacked), causing oil prices to again rise.
His current attempt to stop other nations from dealing with Iran is a bad joke. Iran is becoming the dominant power in the Gulf, having demonstrated its ability to damage the oil and gas infrastructure of its neighbors. Besides, China can supply almost everything Iran needs and has a strong incentive to do so.
So — now clearly revealed as a loser — what does Trump do? Like any bully, he lashes out.
If the courts won’t allow him to put his name on the Kennedy Center, he’ll demolish it. If they say he doesn’t have authority to build his ballroom, he’ll build it anyway. If his blue paint on the reflecting pool is peeling and the green algae are back and his U.S. attorney won’t prosecute “vandals” for causing the problem, he’ll stick to his story and blame vandals anyway.
It’s all going so badly for Trump that his lizard brain is compelled to show he can bully someone. So who does Trump choose? Our old neighbor and friend Canada, who has always gone along with whatever the American colossus ever wanted.
Out of the blue, Trump imposes 50 percent tariffs on all cars, trucks, auto parts, and steel coming from Canada. Why? Because, he says, “Canada has been ripping off the United States of America for years. On Trade, and in other ways, also, they are among the worst Nations in the World to deal with. They feel entitled, and yet, WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!”
In other words, we’re in a trade war with Canada because, well, Trump wants one. A trade war with Canada likely seemed easier to win than a hot war with Iran. And he had to save face somehow, right? Even though the Supreme Court found his attempt to use emergency powers for his last round of tariffs to be unconstitutional, he’s now using the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of 1930 — which, not incidentally, worsened the Great Depression.
But maybe a trade war with Canada won’t be all that easy to win. Canada has now retaliated with its own 50 percent tariffs against about 700 American products (made primarily in Republican states). As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney noted Saturday, “Last spring, I warned that America is trying to break us so they can own us, and I promised that will never, ever happen. We are keeping that promise.”
Carney is now a hero in Canada with approval ratings soaring to 65 percent, while Trump’s have sunk to the low 30s.
Humiliation upon humiliation for the man who can’t stand to be humiliated.
It gets worse by the day.
Netanyahu has rejected Trump’s plan for Gaza. Congressional Republicans are blasting him for increasing imports of ground beef. Universities are rejecting his latest directives. ABC has sued his regime for threatening its broadcast licenses.
Even the bond market won’t be cowed. It’s in open revolt against his bonkers fiscal policies.
Thank goodness for him that Darline Graham won South Carolina’s special election Republican runoff to replace her brother. Trump had made her race all about himself — of course — telling supporters that her opponents were “only fighting Darline because they want me to lose.”
I’m sure that’s what he’s telling himself about his many losses and humiliations — that they’re all due to his opponents plotting and scheming against him.
(Hopefully, he’s about to lose Congress, too.)
That’s an easier story for him to accept than the truth: that Trump’s carefully cultivated aura of invincibility has just about disappeared. The would-be emperor has no clothes.
Almost everybody now sees the thin-skinned, peevish, petty, incompetent, corrupt, naked infant who’s been parading around in presidential garb.
And they’re not going to obey him anymore.
Dolly Parton was a huge winner, bless her soul. Trump is the biggest loser on the planet.
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