Perhaps the most pernicious myth about the wonderful “free market” is how a person of conscience, in the obvious absence of viable alternatives, can supposedly “vote” with their dollars, thus magically driving out bad actors without the overweening schoolmarm of government sending anybody to detention. The trouble with this notion is that consumer choice is [...]
In the wake of the inciteful words and subsequent violence from the right following the health care vote, it didn’t come as much of a surprise to me that no Republican dared to utter an unqualified denunciation of even the acts themselves, much less the violent rhetoric from Fox and talk radio that provoked them. [...]
You know, you really have to hand it to the Republicans. They started out with a plan that was seemingly so audacious and unlikely to succeed that Democrats never saw it coming, much less moved to counter it. Selling plutocracy to the rubes, via a systematically concentrated media, has turned out to be like taking [...]
UPDATED BELOW: When I was a kid in the 70′s, everybody listened to KGON, the local FM rock station, and it was avowedly liberal: pro-pot, anti-Nixon, anti-war, with a great cast of hippie-ish DJ’s that became like family. As Archie and Edith wistfully sang, “Those Were the Days.” They had a feature in the morning, [...]
UPDATED BELOW: I continue to be haunted by the right-wing BS I encountered at OregonLive yesterday, and the stunning success it represents in recruiting committed followers to some of the most reprehensible and elitist ideas ever conceived, all in the name of a twisted and yes, Hitlerian “populism.” Reagan may have been a doddering old [...]
Among the punditocracy, which bears so much responsibility for the current disaster in which we find ourselves, the current consensus is that the Democrats are set to lose, and lose big, in November. Of course, since this is the same bunch that bathed Karl Rove’s “Permanent Republican Majority” in the flattering amber glow of inevitability [...]
UPDATED BELOW: UPDATE II One of the funniest things about the right is that they never lose, even when they do, and they even have rather disturbing success convincing others, or at least the media, that this is so. A lot of us, and certainly any trained psychiatrist, would look at their behavior each day, [...]
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 [...]
Although I’m somewhat reluctant to admit this, I probably listen to more talk radio than most 70-year old Teabaggers. Because of the nature of my job, I have several hours alone each day at work, performing tasks that, to put it mildly, leave my brain less than fully engaged, and the three-hour shows, punctuated by [...]