When my Dad was practicing criminal law in Portland in the 1960’s, he exposed my innocent, Holy Names educated mother to a lot of street smarts and lingo that stuck with her forever, and every so often she would unexpectedly astonish me with some expression or term more suited to a jaded beat cop than [...]
Having found such a gold mine of authoritarian propaganda in the “news” pages of the poor Los Angeles Times over these last two days, I couldn’t help dropping in again for a look-see this afternoon. Would there be yet another journalistic equivalent of an overturned dump truck in the Cahuenga Pass? So enamored am I [...]
Is it just me, or is GOP giddiness about their chimerical but purportedly inevitable “sweep” in the next election leading them into near daily outbursts of unseemly candor? Those of us on the left know quite well that they hold their non-rich supporters in utter contempt, but they at least used to recognize that most [...]
While watching or reading about the headliners at the 2010 CPAC, the title of that great Stephen Sondheim song Send in the Clowns from the musical Little Night Music kept ringing in my head. Using some lines from that song, here in parenthesis are the kind of thoughts that are in the minds of the [...]
Hag readers know I harbor an understandably visceral disdain for NBC’s David Gregory, but watching him this morning on his last-place excuse for a show, I think I started to figure out why. He’s an automaton (and a sloppily made, one, too… they evidently put on either the wrong eyebrows or the wrong hair at [...]
It is getting harder and harder to believe that September, 11, 2001 was, well, almost NINE YEARS AGO. To hear our politicians speak, you’d think it was last week. We’ve grown accustomed to onerous waits and pointless hoop-jumping in airports, endless and expanding wars all over the globe, militarized policing, the mainstreaming of torture, and [...]
By Retired Military Patriot (RMP)
Barack Obama knows that the U.S. highly discriminatory Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is archaic, homophobic and morally wrong. Military organizations in Europe and around the world have long since dropped any pretense of believing that an open gay or lesbian in any way threatens the morale and welfare of the [...]
I have to offer a turban tip to Sysprog, who informed me in the last thread that the incomparable James O’Keefe, the twenty-something righty True Believer whose questionably edited “sting” videos of ACORN have already landed him in legal hot water, has struck again. This time, the adenoidal nincompoop was attempting, with three of his [...]
I’ve always regarded varmints with suspicion. While I admire their ability to support themselves, unlike pets, I have had a lot of unpleasantly close encounters with them that I would never want to repeat. There was the time in high school when I was moving the last of our firewood from the woodpile and brushed [...]
There’s a lot of talk right now that the Citizens (!) United decision and the Scott Brown victory might give the Administration the perfect opportunity (or kick in the pants if you prefer) to summon that long lost populist voice, which has been suffering from laryngitis the last year or so, to finally sing an [...]