ArcaMax

I like Martha Stewart. Always have.

Two recent documentaries, "Martha" on Netflix and the CNN series "The Many Lives of Martha Stewart," follow the Greek drama that make Stewart a cultural fascination to this day. They recount the jihad against this visionary who came under attack for being a woman with fierce ambition.

Admittedly, Stewart's...Read more

What to make of Donald Trump's nominations of the Fox News team to the Trump Cabinet? Attorney General Gaetz? Can this be serious? An expert on wrestling to take down the Department of Education? An opponent of public health to run Health and Human Services? What kind of game is this? Is he really just trolling us to see how far outside the ...Read more

"Julius Caesar did not seize power; the Roman Senate ceded power to Caesar." -- Sen. Robert C. Byrd

Let that be a lesson to us from the West Virginian's grave.

Donald Trump promised to be a dictator on day one. Yet we missed his meaning: the first day after the election. Right away, we felt the president-elect's revenge, blowing in on the ...Read more

Wow! Who says election promises don't produce real change?

Candidate Donald Trump had loudly proclaimed that he'd force U.S. corporations to move their Chinese manufacturing jobs back to America. How? By imposing a whopping new tariff on all the made-in-China products they sell to us.

Even he must have been surprised, though, when one major ...Read more

In just two weeks since being elected to return to the White House, Donald Trump has given those accused of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome ample cause to feel, well, decidedly un-deranged. Regrettably if unsurprisingly, it's shaping up to be an epic time for "I-told-you-so's," as the president-elect's selections of those who will ...Read more

It takes a cracked mindset to name a cracked pot with no scientific training to head the agency that oversees 11 agencies tasked with protecting Americans' health. They include the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, Medicare and Medicaid.

Donald Trump's pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump has chilling plans to use his second term to expand the federal death penalty. This expansion continues the killing spree he initiated in the final six months of his first presidency when Trump oversaw more executions than any president in the past 120 years. His plans for a second term include sentencing more ...Read more

Are you shocked? Matt Gaetz as attorney general. A man with virtually no experience as anything other than an election denier, a Jan. 6 troublemaker who called the rioters "patriotic Americans," a man who was within days of a withering report from the House Ethics Committee on everything from underage sex to misuse of campaign funds, this is the...Read more

Turbulent times can make people feel helpless and hopeless, but we have more agency than we might think. We can still choose to live life on our own terms -- whatever that means for each of us individually. This is what the McCaffertys did. "So many people have fallen prey to this idea that what they do doesn't matter and that we're all doomed ...Read more

After an election, we make nice. The loser congratulates the victor; everybody shakes hands and promises a smooth transition of power. Spicy campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, such courtesies in service to the God of Stability are made possible by the underlying assumption that, while competing candidates and parties offer different ideas of how...Read more

Among the sharpest conservative opponents of fascism is George T. Conway III. During a Nov. 14 appearance on CNN, the attorney and activist offered this pithy description of Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Gaetz and Bobby Kennedy, the worst nominees (so far) to Donald Trump's cabinet:

"If you were seeking to destroy the country, the Gabbard, Gaetz, and ...Read more

As an enemy of the people, or "journalist" as we were called in the pre-Trumpian eras of light, I am at some risk of being silenced. How soon? Well, that depends on how many Fox News commentators Trump appoints to his new administration.

But writers, like cockroaches, can survive nearly every adverse condition. In fact, if cockroaches could ...Read more

Yes, Donald Trump took all seven battleground states and the electoral votes to go with them. This time he also won the popular vote, unlike in 2016. But let's put all that in perspective.

Trump took Wisconsin by less than one point. He won Michigan by only a point and a half. He did slightly better in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia with 2-...Read more

Sez Us is a new social media platform founded by long-time Democratic strategist Joe Trippi. It's an alternative to "X" and Truth Social, which are of course now wholly controlled subsidiaries of Donald Trump Inc. Trippi, who recently appeared on my podcast, "No Holding Back," is as smart as any Democrat I know and has been around the block ...Read more

The biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse thundered in on Election Day.

Almost as if they conspired to make now-President-elect Donald Trump win, two are Democrats and two are Republicans. The four played distinct roles in a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

The first Horseman is, of course, President Joe Biden, like aged King Lear ...Read more

Even in a barrelful of rotten apples, you might think there'd still be a few good ones.

But don't get your hopes up looking into barrels labeled "private equity investors." These esoteric, multibillion-dollar Wall Street schemes rig the marketplace so "high-net-worth individuals" can grab fat profits and special tax breaks to buy up doctors' ...Read more

The results of the election are in: Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the United States.

Trump's win comes after a campaign in which he consistently targeted immigrants, transgender youth and other vulnerable communities with hateful rhetoric. He also threatened retribution against dissidents and political opponents.

I know that ...Read more