That was the name of a punk band that played at Sigma Nu during my freshman year at U of O, way back in 1982, and at the time I didn’t yet see that America was becoming that; I was still a Republican, after all. We went from the Great Society to the Punitive Society [...]
UPDATED BELOW: It’s too early to tell how the much-vaunted Republican “sweep” is going to turn out, but since they’re probably going to win at least two, and predictably deem that outcome an historic victory, I have to wonder: ” Victory for what?” Somewhere deep down, you’d think that a separatist minority must have some [...]
It’s been curious, in the most delightful way possible, to watch the Republican party rise from the ashes of its last two defeats carried on wings of insular delusion into the ether of pure crazy. This has been happening for some time, of course, but under the careful eye of Karl Rove and Tom DeLay, [...]
Ever since Nixon, the American Right has essentially given up on facts, logic, and evidence, preferring to focus on comic book narratives wherein they’re always the plucky, all-American heroes, fighting valiantly against forces of pure evil. Unable to sell the efficacy of any of their policy goals on the merits, the world has been imaginatively [...]
UPDATE BELOW: UPDATE II: After reading abundant analysis about the health care speech last night, some of which said better what I might have said, I’ve decided that the most enlightening, and to a degree hopeful, thing about the speech was the boorish outburst by Neo-confederate Joe Wilson of South Carolina. ”You lie!” Hmmm. Care to [...]
What the whole disgusting rightie flap about President Obama having the outlandish temerity to give a bland, Mr. Rogers-type speech to America’s schoolchildren about the importance of being educated really boils down to is that, as was so eloquently put in the song from South Pacific that fellow Hag authors RMP, Dirigo, and I were [...]
I’m standing up for the unknown woman in a wheelchair who appealed for help with her two auto-immune diseases at a public meeting on health care last week in Red Bank, New Jersey. A show of hands in support! Anyone? Great Caesar’s ghost! Check out the link and watch one of the ugliest displays of [...]
Who says there’s no bipartisanship in Washington? When it comes to endorsing our culture of violence, revenge, and punishment, we’re essentially a one-party state. This was vividly on display with the release of the dying Lockerbie bomber by those commies over in Scotland, when the networks fell all over themselves to find “grieving” family members [...]
The birthers, ‘baggers and death panelists, alarming and aberrant as they seem on the surface, are nothing but the latest manifestation of a drearily familiar Republican tactic; crassly and audaciously projecting their own least desirable traits on Democrats to delegitimize them since they can no longer beat them. Having nothing to offer the American people [...]
Listening to the Ed Schultz Show today on the radio at work, I was enjoying the discussion brought forth by substitute host Norman Goldman, when he opened the show by asking listeners, “What do you want from your government, and how would you like to pay for it?” The question was drawn from the debate [...]