Salmon Bagel

(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo) Despite the clown show on the part of the Trump team, it does appear that by hook or by crook, Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States. Trump's obstinance has resulted in a strangely informal transition process, Biden not being privy to intelligence briefings as would normally be the case for a President-Elect. Nevertheless, Biden's team has begun filling out his cabinet and it is from this process that we can get a fairly clear idea of the sort of executive branch we're all going to be dealing with for the next four years. What we've seen so far has been unsurprisingly gloomy. The pick that has received the most blowback on the left has doubtless been Cedric Richmond, currently House Rep for the 2nd Congressional District of Louisiana and soon-to-be Senior Adviser to the Biden administration, and public liaison to " the business community and climate change activists."  The young black Democrat came at...

The bloodbath of the 2020 election and its subsequent fallout has led to a great deal of finger-pointing between Democrats and the left. While Democrats won the biggest prize, defeating Donald Trump, the supposed Blue Wave never materialized, with democrats losing House seats and failing to retake the senate, the race coming down to two runoff elections in Georgia, both of which appear to be longshots for Democrats. The Democratic establishment has maintained that their losses were the fault of the party's Progressive wing, creating the impression that Democrats want to defund the police and pass socialist policy like Medicare for all and free college. Indeed, Republicans pounced on this message in many of their attack ads. Progressives like AOC have retorted that Democrats who lost their races in swing districts (or even in districts thought to have been safe) lost because of weak social-media presence, no in-person doorknocking (which Republicans continued to carry on, pandemic o...

When I came home from work on thursday I made a sandwich, grabbed a shandy out of the fridge, and plopped onto my bed to scroll through memes on instagram. What I immediately found was this: Well, not actually that. What I found was a video of two young black men smashing self checkout counters with hammers. But you know, same vibe. I want to discuss the ongoing events in Minneapolis, the public reaction to them, and how they fit into a broader historical and political context. But before I do that, I want to establish the facts surrounding the case that ignited the whole situation. George Floyd was murdered. Pretty much everyone agrees on that and virtually no one apart from actual white supremacists is defending the officer who murdered him (nor the three other officers who watched). Regardless, I'll substantiate that. Specifically, George Floyd, a 46 year old black man from Houston who lived in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, allegedly tried to buy a sandwich with a count...