It’s always instructive to hear powerful political officials declare that in the name of democracy, they must usurp the people’s democratic authority. This has become all too common, as even so-called democratic regimes in France and Israel have infuriated their people by trying to ram vastly unpopular, anti-democratic schemes into law by executive fiat. Luckily, though, our US of A remains committed to The People’s rule right? Moreover, our leaders agree that local government is best, for it is closest to the people, right?

Deanna, here. We've got some answers to your questions. (We hope!)

I have to concede one point: Today’s far-right Republican party does not discriminate against women. In fact, the GOP is giving its female political buffoons a higher profile than its male bozos. Consider Sarah Huckabee Sanders, governor of Arkansas, who became a star in the new Republican Crusade to bring back child labor abuse. Pushed by their corporate backers, GOP governors and lawmakers exclaim that the answer to America’s so-called “labor shortage” is not to make jobs more attractive, but to fill them with cheap, compliant children.

With new outrages erupting every day, I find some comfort in knowing that We the People have at least eliminated certain particularly-ugly plutocratic abuses. Child labor, for example – outlawed in 1938, right?

Listen now (2 min) | It’s always useful in a moment of national urgency to have level-headed experts explain what’s happening. Experts like extremist right-wing politicos. For example, when two high-flying banks crashed this month, these screechers flocked to blame it all on their latest ideological bugaboo: “Wokeness.” Their loopy contention is that everything bad in our country is happening because such institutions as schools, libraries, corporations, and even banks are responding to America’s long history of systemic inequality by pursuing “politically-correct” policies promoting liberal values like fairness, equality, and diversity.

Willie Nelson, a very lively 89-year-old, has recorded a playful little tune refuting speculation by some that he had become the late Willie Nelson. Not so fast, protested the people’s troubadour, singing:

Listen now (2 min) | Until recently, kids were thrilled when their parents said: “We’re going to Disney World!” But that was in the beforetimes, before Florida’s autocratic governor put Disney World under the control of his state’s thought police, turning it into “DeSantis World.”

Listen now (2 min) | What’s wrong with us? Our nation’s moral compass, I mean. I don’t like being a downer, just focusing on wrongs, but some wrongs stand out as morally abominable, such as this one. It’s about hundreds of thousands of our low-income elders who, toward the end of life (when frail and most vulnerable) find themselves cast into a part of the Medicaid system that has been deliberately structured by Congress to subject them to needless deprivations and daily indignities.

Listen now (2 min) | Exciting News, people: Utopia is on the rise! Space Commander Elon Musk has announced that His Magnificence (ie, him) intends to construct his very own private town on 3,500 acres of farmland near his new Tesla plant southeast of Austin, Texas. More than a town, Musk explains that he will create

I would call Josh Hawley a fool, but he keeps demonstrating the proof of that faster than I can say the word. The latest embarrassing stunt by the right-wing senatorial harlequin from Missouri is to try matching wits with Woody Guthrie! Apparently, Hawley thought (always a danger zone for him) that no one would notice if he appropriated and totally perverted Woody’s most famous anthem for his own political gain. So when Josh introduced a racist, anti-immigrant bill that would ban thousands of Chinese-Americans from owning US farmland, he decided it would be clever in a Super-MAGA-Patriot sort of way to title his piece of legislative nastiness the “This Land Is