When I was growing up, we always laughed at the relentlessly upbeat statements that came from the old Soviet Union, where even disasters were turned into triumphs, and leaders, statues, and the names of places themselves switched magically as fashion and leadership required, which usually worked out better for the places renamed than the people [...]
You know, it’s somewhat mystifying to me why, given that there are so many clever Republicans, when they start thinking about the top spot they always go for the dummy. It wasn’t always this way; when my brother was born in 1965 his scalp hadn’t closed, and the doctor peeked right into his brain and [...]
The GOP strategy for achieving its already media-trumpeted 2010 landslide is shaping up, and it has to be admired for its sheer audacity, as well as its desperate but hardly unwarranted reliance on the media continuing to be as stupid as it was throughout the Bush years. Richard Cohen, David Broder, and David Gregory are [...]
In Jeff Sharlet’s disturbing book, The Family, Family leader Doug Coe describes his group’s philosophy as “Jesus plus nothing,” and he and his followers repeat this nonsensical mantra as though it meant anything. Actually, it means a lot of things, but if Jesus were to find out what they were, he’d be suing for libel. [...]
Republicans seem never to tire of gazing at their own reflections, but often disliking the beady eyes and fleshy face menacingly staring back at them, suddenly see their own glaring flaws writ larger than ever in others, and are unduly fond of pointing this out. The bible makes early mention of this phenomenon, about motes [...]
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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 ideal [...]
Just when most Amercans were beginning to think that part of our problem might be that we’re in too many wars, the Washington Ignoratti declare, with the characteristic oracular certainty that is their unfortunate hallmark, that the real problem is too few. After all, where’s our 9/12 spirit, now that all those hypothetically glorious wars [...]
As I’ve noted before, one of the neatest things about righty discourse is the way it so perfectly packages every fear and hatred, albeit haphazardly, into a baroquely nefarious conspiracy that, lo and behold, turns out to be diabolically connected. To normal people, it might seem a little on the insane side for Glenn Beck [...]
(h/t to the phonetically eponymous Salon commenter for the title…)
Glenn Greenwald has a great piece up today about how religious nut Mike Huckabee met up with some other religious nuts in Israel, to, well, be nuts and religious together. As my mother used to say, sweetly and surreptitiously, about especially striking unattractive couples, “It’s nice [...]
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 [...]