Until today, I was pretty depressed about the political season; now my mood has perked up considerably. In the aftermath of Santorum being labeled, once again, “a solid #2,” and reading headlines like, “Mitt Romney, Ron Paul Face Awkward Moment After Emergence of Santorum,” heck, maybe this crummy election will be good for some laughs [...]
It’s impossible to escape the breathless (and brainless) reporting of the sad, sad, spectacle that is the Republican Presidential primary, but what’s most painful, not to mention infuriating, is watching the media treat it as a serious exercise, when it’s anything but. Last week the New York Times bothered to run a two-page foldout on [...]
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, [...]
Well, if this whole 99% thing has accomplished anything worthwhile, it’s shown the world that Republicans are, truly, only on the side of the 1%, and they’re no longer the least bit shy about saying so. Gone are they days of sending $200 checks to the hoi polloi to soften the blow of such wanton [...]
Last week my crazy grandmother, Etta, would have been 106 had she not done the world an enormous favor by finally tipping over back in 1980. Much to my chagrin, however, I continuously find that while Etta is safely interred on her hilltop promontory alongside a 1953-modern statue of the Blessed Virgin, what I’ll call [...]
UPDATED BELOW: All eyes, including my own, are on Wisconsin tonight, and for good reason; six Republican state senators who supported Gov. Scott Walker’s Koch-funded Randian Fantasyland are facing recall. Two of them, the loathsome Randy Hopper (whose recently-dumped wife has joined recall efforts) and Dan Kapanke from LaCrosse, are expected to lose. A third, [...]
Well, it looks as though ol’ Rupert Murdoch found a suitably Galtian solution to his little crime spree as it started to get hot: fire a whole bunch of random people, except, of course, those responsible. On Sunday, the undoubtedly checkered 168-year history of The News of the World comes to an abrupt and ignominious [...]
I guess the bright spot in President Obama’s Afghanistan speech last night is that a great deal of Kabuki was devoted to making a meaningless, marginal drawdown of troops in an endless, decade-long fiasco into some sort of dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Establishment Republicans predictably howled about the errant perfidy of “playing politics [...]
I’ve been loath to post over the past few days, partly because I’m in Napa, and partly because the stupidity of the news of late leaves me depressed, tongue-tied, and even thirstier than usual. All such conditions lead inevitably to writer’s block, although the comic possibilities of Weinergate were admittedly tempting. I was finally roused [...]
It’s a phenomenon that began as soon as George W. Bush was safely installed in office; all that hogwash about “compassionate” conservatism and “humble” foreign policy went right out the window, to be replaced with Bush’s natural “sore winner” pose. Policies appeared to be designed not for their efficacy, but for their offensiveness to key [...]