John Bolton, National Security Advisor

04/15/2018 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Imagine a president seriously batshit, barely keeping it together.

Now imagine that president taking national security advice from someone who helped sucker us into Iraq, one of the worst unforced errors in our history.

Donald Trump was close to his first national security advisor until he pled guilty to undermining U.S. sovereignty. He fired his second advisor, a three-star general with an impeccable record, for giving recommendations that made sense. Read more…

Laura Ingraham Fox News

04/06/2018 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

This is not the sound of whining. Not long after an AR-15 was used to murder seventeen high-school students in Parkland, Florida, Fox News launched an assault of its own. On the surviving students.

Instead of bullets Laura Ingraham used smears, mockery and calumnies to belittle students demanding that their parents and their government protect them against epidemic gun violence. Read more…

Kushner Billboard

03/28/2018 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Despite the fact that Jared Kushner has been denied permanent security documentation by the FBI, Donald Trump has put him in charge of international U.S. relations with Mexico, Canada and China.

The president has placed nothing less than the future of the Middle East peace process, our opioid crisis and the problems at the VA in the hands of an untested son-in-law who is limited in his ability to view highly classified information.

There’s a pattern of national security risks at work here. Read more…

Ministers In Bed With Trump

03/18/2018 by Pat Shiplett 1 Comment

Although I preach family values, I’ve climbed into bed with a married man who pays hush money to a pornstar.

Although I shame teenage girls for how they dress I’m okay when Donald Trump parades them half-naked at his beauty pageant. Read more…

Gus, Piano Tuner

03/12/2018 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

There’s a moment before the start of a symphony when vibrations float above the orchestra.

It isn’t music exactly.

But it isn’t cacophony either.

Certain instruments break through the drone and send out sounds like mating calls in a forest — a piccolo looking for a willing woodwind, one tuba looking for another.

Symphonic tuning is more theater than necessity. Virtuoso artists take their chairs knowing their tools are, forgive me, fit as a fiddle. Read more…