Prostitution in the old Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628-92), which then ran north into southern Maine and included the seaside town of Kennebunk (“So Close, Yet Worlds Away”), was a hanging offense. Times have changed however. And so on Friday a state judge in Portland accepted a plea deal from alleged Zumba dance madam Alexis Wright [...]
On Morning Joe this morning, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews became one of the first major media figures to actually state the blindingly obvious: that Mitt Romney and the Republicans are running a campaign so openly racist it would make Lee Atwater blush. I’m not sure whether Tweety drank some of that potion or what, but this [...]
It appears that Republicans have, lacking any less revolting choice, awakened with Santorum all over themselves. Rather than just stripping the bed and jumping in the shower, as any normal person would in this situation, they’re using this meaningless and drearily recurrent Clown Car discharge to crank up the Wurlitzer of persecution fantasies against God’s [...]
As we approach the 2012 elections, I have to admit grudgingly sympathizing with the poor Republican contenders on some level; everywhere you look, one (hilarious) presidential aspirant after another has to deal with the fact that large blocs of their party hates them, for one reason or another. The reasons, to a sane person at [...]
They’re everywhere – these little men. No tendentious description of the phenomenon is required, nor is a detailed and boring historical context necessary, since they (like the poor) “have always been with us.” But the sudden “surge” of poseurs, fakers, demagogues, deadbeats, and crooks stands out right now, as our vaunted world economy teeter-totters, [...]
Ted Koppel, one of the last eminences of the old broadcast news era, weighed in some days ago on the never-ending debate about how things just aren’t as august as they used to be (whenever that was) when it comes to informing the American people (instead of just yelling at them). Koppel targeted Fox News [...]
Until I saw this clip today I was in a pretty bad mood, and not just about politics. The rain is coming down sideways, and temperatures will be in the thirties by tonight, which has already started and it’s not yet 4:30. But no bad weather and/or serial capitulations by Democrats can spoil my [...]
Have you ever noticed how many Fox News Democrats are actually, well, Republicans? Joe Lieberman is perhaps the most famous example, but it’s quite clear that the mediocrities they employ to “balance,” their typically 4-1 right wing “panels” have been sucking the Murdoch tit for so long, they’ve gone native, and their rhetoric sometimes makes [...]
New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino may or not be a bigot, but one thing’s for sure: he is as dumb as a post. As I’m sure you heard, he went to speak to ultra-Orthodox Jews in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and told the approving crowd that gay people are “dysfunctional,” we shouldn’t “brainwash” children into thinking [...]
In this astonishing video, multimillionaire radio and TV Huckster Glenn Beck speaks, solemnly and with laughably faked empathy, to a bunch of rubes about how “we” are going to have to make deep sacrifices to pay off the Republican debt that faces the country. ”We” might lose our pensions. ”We” might lose our jobs. ”We” [...]