This week: bad economy, Blanche, Fauci, El-Sayed, and the Wizard of Was. weeklysift.com/2026/08/10/i...
Interested Parties
Tyranny is the handmaiden of the moneyed interests. – Robert Reich “The real meaning of Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan” This week’s featured post is “Why the fre…
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When I listened to El-Sayed, I found a lot to like. weeklysift.com/2026/08/10/w...
Why the freak-out over El-Sayed?
Don’t react to labels, paraphrases, or guilt by association. Listen to what he says. It wasn’t the blow-out the polls had predicted, but progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed defeated th…
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This week: war, wildfires, Blanche, El-Sayed, pool vandal, and Saturn rising. weeklysift.com/2026/08/03/g...
Going Long
So, how did we get here? Not because one party discovered a winning campaign slogan, a charismatic leader, or because of one presidential election. We arrived here because one political movement de…
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Democrats can raise money for elections. Republicans raise money to build institutions. weeklysift.com/2026/08/03/p...
Power is more than just votes
Good short- and medium-term political news has emboldened some writers to remind us of the longer-term bad news. The good news is that polls for the fall elections keep looking better. The unpopula…
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This week: the endless war, wildfires and heat, ICE, tariffs, the Musk crash, and a very useful pile of rocks in Finland. weeklysift.com/2026/07/27/l...
Left of what?
People [are] calling us the “far left” and we are literally just out here talking about funding public schools and keeping hospitals open and paving roads. – Jess Piper There is no featured p…
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This week: ICE killings, concentration camps, Blanche and Clayton, Odyssey, and a solar-panel-shaded bike path. weeklysift.com/2026/07/20/c...
Coming for Us
You may think the camps are for someone else. DHS has already floated “100 million deportations” as a real number. Only 47 million people living in America were born somewhere else. Hitting 100 mil…
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My review of Cory Doctorow's book "Enshittification". weeklysift.com/2026/07/20/w...
Why everything seems to be getting worse
Cory Doctorow’s recent book not only outlines how “enshittification” works, but lays out solutions. The problem with Google. Recently I was trying to plan an upcoming trip to Pari…
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This week: Platner, ICE, McConnell, Lindsey, and a Marco sit-com theme. weeklysift.com/2026/07/13/a...
Arms and Wisdom
Arms are of little value in the field unless there is wise counsel at home. – Cicero This week’s featured post is “Graham Platner’s exit, and the debate it leads to”. …
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What happens next in Maine. weeklysift.com/2026/07/13/g...
Graham Platner’s exit, and the debate it leads to
A quick convention to replace Platner will raise some long-brewing issues. So Graham Platner is out. Having overcome a number of past controversies, he finally faced more than he could explain away…
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This week: 250, birthright citizenship, trans rights, good-bye WaPo, and an orange wedding ritual. weeklysift.com/2026/07/06/u...
Unfit
A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. – the Declaration of Independence This week’s featured post i…
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It's not a fork in the road. It's one more chapter in a perennial American debate. weeklysift.com/2026/07/06/c...
Capitalism vs. Socialism? Get Serious.
We’re not in a Manichean struggle between two monolithic systems. We’re just deciding where to draw the line between the private and public sectors of our economy. If you believe the he…
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This week: Supreme Court, primaries, Tulsi, disappointing 250th, and a song about cold beer. weeklysift.com/2026/06/29/j...
Just Say No
If you don’t want to be prosecuted for crimes, don’t do crimes. – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, responding to Republican fears of investigations by a future Democratic Congress This week’s …
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Alito’s motivated reasoning has a simple motive: racism. weeklysift.com/2026/06/29/i...
Immigration is about Race
The Supreme Court signs off on Trump’s program to Make America White Again. Other than openly professing Nazis, the anti-immigrant voices in the US get incensed at the suggestion that what th…
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This week: Versailles Treaty II, Obama’s library, masculinity, reflecting pool, and a curly-tongued bird. weeklysift.com/2026/06/22/s...
Shared Values
These are the values and traditions I believe in, and they are not Republican or Democratic values. They’re American values we can all share. – Barack Obama, opening the Obama Center Friday T…
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How (for better or worse) our fictional heroes blaze a trail for our eventual leaders. weeklysift.com/2026/06/22/s...
Story Games
How narrative turns into destiny. I’ve mentioned before the writer A. R. Moxon and his blog The Reframe. [See endnote 1.] He doesn’t do the weekly news processing I do here, but instead…
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This week: Iran agreement, trillionaire, 80th birthday, Platner, a war crime, depopulation, and a caring Mother Wrench. weeklysift.com/2026/06/15/p...
Pacts
guy has a trillion dollars, 0 friends, and has never landed a joke. I know a pact with the devil when I see one. – Amy (@lolennui.bsky.social) This week’s featured post is “What t…
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We’d like to field unassailable, squeaky-clean candidates, especially this time around. But that’s not always an option. weeklysift.com/2026/06/15/w...
What to make of Graham Platner
Can we buy a redemption story without sinking into the same moral morass Republicans have? In spite of a variety of accusations (some of which he has admitted and apologized for), Graham Platner wo…
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This week: reconciliation, 60 Minutes, a trillionaire, life expectancy, and a Jimmy Fallon stunt. weeklysift.com/2026/06/08/s...
Self and Others
A man does what’s right when no one is watching. He upholds his commitments to his family and neighbors. He doesn’t lie, cheat, & steal his way through life. Real men serve others. Weak men ser…
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You may believe that Pride has nothing to do with you. But the targets of fascist bigotry inevitably expand with time. They may get to you sooner than you think. weeklysift.com/2026/06/08/a...
All Americans Need Pride Now
It’s the nature of fascism to keep expanding its list of enemies. No matter who you are, they’ll get to you eventually. “First they came for the Communists …” Martin N…
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This week: Republican resistance, Iran rumors, 2024 autopsy, Ebola, and putting beavers to work in England. weeklysift.com/2026/05/25/l...
Like No One Has Ever Seen Before
The president is suing himself and compensating other people for legal claims that have not been identified from people that we don’t know. We just haven’t seen anything like that. – Adam Zim…
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You've heard it before, but this time it might be true. weeklysift.com/2026/05/25/h...
Has Trump finally pushed Republicans too far?
I hate to even ask this question, because it’s been discussed so often over the years, and the hopes raised have (up until now) always been dashed. But maybe? Maybe? Way back in 2015, when Tr…
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This week: corruption, summit, voting rights, inflation, Christian Nationalism, and a peacock. weeklysift.com/2026/05/18/n...
Narrow Ideology
We are deeply concerned that what is really being rededicated is a nation to a very narrow and ideological part of the Christian faith that betrays our nation’s fundamental commitment to religious …
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When so much is wrong, what should we focus voters' attention on? weeklysift.com/2026/05/18/i...
Is Corruption the Democrats’ Unifying Theme?
Maybe the reason the government is working so badly for you is that it works so well for him. Ever since he came down the escalator in 2015, Donald Trump has posed a unique problem for his opponent…
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This week: racial redistricting, ballroom, Ka$h, a golden idol, and the hope-inspiring story of Earl Warren. weeklysift.com/2026/05/11/p...
Profoundly Wrong Things
Good people, people who go to church, people who love their families, people who believe they’re good have, throughout the history of this country, done deeply, profoundly wrong things to Black Ame…
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What if we’ve been thinking about war all wrong? weeklysift.com/2026/05/11/p...
Phillips O’Brien’s “War and Power”
Why have predictions about recent wars gone so horribly wrong? Ukraine. On February 21, 2022 — just three days before Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine — Robert Kagan, a f…
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This week: voting rights, abortion drugs, Iran, Comey, and a photogenic squirrel. weeklysift.com/2026/05/04/n...
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A previous version of this didn't load for some people, so I've republished. weeklysift.com/2026/05/04/w...
What to do with a lawless Supreme Court?
Can democracy flourish, or even survive, if two-thirds of the justices on the Supreme Court don’t believe in it? [A previous version of this post didn’t load for some users, so I republ…
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The Roberts Court has become the enemy of multiracial democracy. weeklysift.com/2026/05/04/w...
What to do about a lawless Supreme Court?
Can democracy flourish, or even survive, if two-thirds of the justices on the Supreme Court don’t believe in it? One of the great moments in American politics happened on March 15, 1965. It w…
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This week: gerrymandering, asylum, the war, SPLC, and a little musical comedy. weeklysift.com/2026/04/27/d...
Don’t Start
The best way to achieve what is now the central war aim — opening the Strait — would have been simply not to start the war in the first place. – Josh Marshall This week’s featured posts…
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Asylum laws exist for good reasons, but Congress needs to fix them, not the President. weeklysift.com/2026/04/27/f...
Fixing the Asylum Mess
A bad process, but a good cause. One of the first things President Trump did in his second term was to “declare that an invasion is ongoing at the southern border” and respond by direct…
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