ArcaMax

Remember when candidate Donald Trump went on and on about all the rapists and murderers who were invading our country and he said he was going to deport them? It was his favorite issue, his answer to everything. It was enough to frighten anyone and helped him win the election. People believed him: According to exit polls, even many Hispanic ...Read more

Reacting with borderline hysteria to demands that the government open its files on Jeffrey Epstein -- the deceased pedophile and financier who once described himself as Donald Trump's "best friend" -- the president has aroused suspicion even among MAGA cultists. Few Americans believe the excuses Trump and his appointees in the Justice ...Read more

More than anything else, American voters worry about the economy. Specifically, they struggle to pay their bills. Those with jobs are scared they will get fired through no fault of their own, perhaps because globalization ships all or part of their sector overseas, or because artificial intelligence replaces humans. The unemployed and ...Read more

Lately, when I tell people that I am a writer, the conversation inevitably turns to artificial intelligence. People want to know if AI will replace journalists and take over everything from writing newspapers to books. I don't think it will, and here's why.

AI can be a useful tool. I use an AI-driven app to transcribe the interviews I conduct ...Read more

Sometimes, you gotta start the job from the back.

People who used to think President Donald Trump was fighting an international ring of Hollywood-run pedophiles are now twitching all over because they can't get a look at the "Epstein client list." The list may or may not include Trump's name as one of the men who enjoyed the company of girls ...Read more

Can you hear the canary in the economy's coal mine singing her heart out?

You know that we are headed for trouble when some masses start buying groceries on the installment plan. That is the business model behind the popular "Buy Now, Pay Later" (BNPL) borrowing platforms -- loans that spread out purchases into four payments.

Troubles are ...Read more

"It's going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it's going to require Democrats to just toughen up," former President Barack Obama told Democratic donors at a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee last Friday night. "What I have been surprised by is the degree to ...Read more

July 16 marked the 80th anniversary of the first atomic bomb explosion, at what the bomb's creator, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, called the Trinity Site in New Mexico. The harsh desert terrain had been known for centuries by the name given by the Spanish conquistadors, the Jornada del Muerto, the Journey of Death. The Trinity test was ...Read more

We have a madman in the house, the White House.

By that I mean Donald Trump is a bit insane, drunk with power and revenge, and full of fury, at the one-eighth mark of his presidency.

One-eighth.

Time to grapple with the grave reality, that the president captured the Constitution's restraints, Congress and the Supreme (Extreme) Court.

Under...Read more

Big news! The Trump4Sale shop next door to the Office of the President has just issued an exciting new product: "Trump Fragrance." Yes, it's officially certified President Donald Trump perfume, allowing you and your loved ones to reek of the essence of The Donald at only $249 for a 3-ounce bottle.

I wondered, with so much going on, why he is ...Read more

By nightfall on Oct. 7, 2023, enough details of what several thousand Hamas gunmen had done to about 1,200 Israeli civilians had emerged to make clear the scope of their savagery: youngsters executed en masse running for their lives from a dance festival, families tied together and burned alive or machine-gunned to death as they sat trembling ...Read more

There are a lot of things Donald Trump does not like. Find a common theme, and one may conclude that Trump doesn't like America. This thought is not original to me. Democratic strategist James Carville offers it as his theory of why Trump wreaks so much damage on this country.

Trump knows what he's doing and apparently takes pleasure in the ...Read more

On military bases across the globe, books are disappearing from shelves. Posters of historical figures, such as Frida Kahlo, are being removed from walls. Black History Month celebrations are being canceled.

This rampant censorship is the result of the Department of Defense's new policies banning books, classroom discussions, events and ...Read more

"If they can do this sort of thing to Abrego Garcia, to 238 people that nobody knows, and send them to CECOT forever with no due process, they can do that to anyone," Erez Reuveni, a former Justice Department lawyer who has filed a whistleblower complaint with the Senate Judiciary Committee told The New York Times. "It should be deeply, deeply ...Read more

Years after his apparent suicide in a Manhattan federal lockup, the notorious sex offender and financial manipulator Jeffrey Epstein has returned from the dead to haunt Donald Trump and instigate a massive rupture in Trump's government and MAGA movement.

Having long encouraged the proliferation of conspiracy theories on the right -- from the ...Read more

Elon Musk says he is going to start a new third party. Assuming he's serious, he'll soon learn that the Democratic-Republican duopoly has made it insanely hard to break into their -- emphasis intentional -- system. As The New York Times observes, "Launching a new national political party in the United States may be more difficult than...Read more

When I first heard about eastern hellbenders, I thought they sounded like a motorcycle gang, not large salamanders the color of river rocks. I also had no idea they were important ecosystem indicators for clean water.

The story goes that the amphibian got its name from early settlers who thought the thing was so ugly it must be a creature from ...Read more