The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

I just read an article from USA Today conservative columnist Nicole Russell, which I felt deserved the fact-check treatment. It's titled, "GDP soars and Trump's economy roars. Liberals still won't give him credit." Let's see what she has to say. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/07/30/trump-gdp-us-economy-rebound-tariffs/85406642007/    "Thanks to President Donald Trump's bold policies, it appears that the United States will avoid a recession this year - one that so many liberals were predicting only months ago." Okay, I hate to be hard on her, but Ms. Russell's argument is off to a slow start. The fact of the matter is Donald Trump inherited a strong economy. The ONLY reason there was ever fear of a recession this year was BECAUSE of Donald Trump's policies. That's it. The man has changed his mind on tariffs more times than a mother of octuplets changes diapers. Here's how things went. There were no fears of a...

NBA sharp-shooting veteran Kyle Korver recently wrote a column entitled "Privileged" and I felt the need to talk about it here today. Since I feel Korver's article is of great significance, I'm going to share and dissect the entire piece. Here's how it starts: "When the police break your teammate's leg, you'd think it would wake you up a little. When they arrest him on a New York street, throw him in jail for the night, and leave him with a season-ending injury, you'd think it would sink in. You'd think you'd know there was more to the story. You'd think. But nope." A good, intriguing start to the article, as Korver hooks the reader with a sense of mystery and comes at things from a rather personal perspective. Let's continue... "I still remember my reaction when I first heard what happened to Thabo. It was 2015, late in the season. Thabo and I were teammates on the Hawks, and we'd flown into New York la...

Former George W. Bush speechwriter and current conservative columnist Marc A. Thiessen seems to be taking a course in Wishful Thinking 101 right now, given his most recent Press Herald  piece, "Mueller probe could turn out to be a disaster - for the Democrats." Thiessen starts his column with this: "All of Washington is focused on the political peril President Trump faces from Robert Mueller's investigation. But the Mueller probe could very well turn out to be a disaster, not for Trump, but for the Democrats." ...and that's where we begin. Okay, Mr. Thiessen, let's hear your attempt at hypothetical rationalization, as if there were such a thing... "The Special counsel was appointed to investigate whether Trump engaged in criminal conspiracy with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election. If Mueller finds incontrovertible evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, then the president will be - and ...

What is it with these wackier-than-usual conservative columns of late? Tis the season to be crazy? The latest in the growing list comes courtesy of John Sweeney at The Federalist . His article is titled, "You're Not Allowed To Knock Trump For Stormy Daniels If You Watch Porn." No, this is not a joke. Stop laughing. Okay, you can laugh, but follow along as you do so. Thanks. Sweeney starts his whatever you want to call it with this: "Many have been quick to judge President Trump for his affair with pornography creator Stormy Daniels, and rightfully so. But Donald Trump is not the first man to cheat on his wife with an onscreen prostitute this year. Presumably, thousands of men engage in adulterous behavior with pornographers and strippers every day." Really? There are that many strippers and pornographers in central Ohio? I had no idea... Culturally we may not believe it, but each time a married man watches pornography, he commits an act of adultery. This...

Fox News columnist David Bossie wrote a piece the other day which I feel the need to rebut. It's titled, "Attacks on Trump ignore all the things he's accomplished." Now, the technical definition of accomplishment is "to achieve something successfully," but when most people hear the term, they tend to affiliate it with something positive. After the news reports a murder, you don't often hear observers say, "Well, that's an accomplishment." No, we tend to hear such a response in light of some good news, like graduating from college, getting a job, etc. Keeping that in mind, let's dissect Bossie's "piece." "Hardworking American taxpayers who believe in commonsense conservative ideals have many reasons to feel good about President Trump's job performance during his first two years in office." "Commonsense conservative"? I see Mr. Bossie is a fan of oxymorons... "By any measurement, this pre...

I recently read an editorial by  New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks and felt the need to comment on it. The article was entitled "Respect First, Then Gun Control." Some bits which stood out are as follows: - "This has been an emotional week. We greet tragedies like the school shooting in Florida with shock, sadness, mourning and grief that turns into indignation and rage. The anger inevitably gets directed at the N.R.A., those who support gun rights, and the politicians who refuse to do anything while children die." - "If there's one thing we've learned, it is that guns have become a cultural flash point in a nation that is unequal and divided. The people who defend gun rights believe that snobbish elites look down on their morals and want to destroy their culture. If we end up telling such people that they and their guns are despicable, they will just despise us back and dig in their heels." - "So if you want to stop sch...

In a recent Washington Post article, professor and activist Michael Eric Dyson asked the question, "Is Obama to blame for Trump - and the revival of white supremacist hate?" While I tend to respect Dyson and his viewpoints, I can't disagree more with this one. Here is the jist of what he wrote, to which I'll rebut: "Yet Obama’s initial reluctance to address race, the outlines of which Baker briefly traces, left an interpretive void that was grievously, and gleefully, filled by his successor, who is all too eager to ply his poisonous perspective. Baker argues that Obama picked up the pace of race talk in his second term, but it may have been far too little, far too late. When it came to race, Obama, as he did in his foreign policy, led from behind. But Obama’s time in office evoked a unique hatred that undoubtedly rested in race, if not alone, then at least primarily. No amount of ideological dispute or partisan disagreement could account for the relentless as...

Novelist and screenwriter Roger L. Simon just recently published an article I felt the need to rebut. It was published by the far right-wing media outlet PJ Media  and entitled, "Trump Will Win Bigly in 2020." Yes, it only gets better from there... Simon starts his piece with this: "I have bad news for the mainstream media and the Democrats. Time to stock up on absinthe or hightail it down to the medical marijuana store -- Donald Trump is going to be president for eight years. Not only that, he will win reelection much more comfortably, easily winning the popular vote as well as the electoral college." We are just 3 months into Donald Trump's first term in the Oval Office; that's 1/16 of the 4 years he's been elected to serve as President of the United States. No matter which side of the fence one may be positioned, it'd be utterly ridiculous to predict an outright victory or defeat for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. First off, we still hav...