“There are many bad men around the world who run countries and we don’t topple them, and indeed in earlier years we had actually supported Saddam Hussein when he was fighting against Iran. The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for [...]
When I was a kid back in the 70′s, it was easy to believe that racism in America was on the way out; no one I knew, and certainly no one I respected, was openly racist unless they were old, dumb, and/or ignorant. Racism still existed, of course, but it was as embarrassing in polite [...]
Florida Rep. Alan Grayson was on Thom Hartmann today, and in a brief but quite unconventional interview that included caller questions, he made some profound points about our current political situation, which were as enlightening as they were depressing. Responding to a question about the glaring obviousness of the corrupting influence of money on the [...]
Growing up, my sister had a doll named Chatty Cathy. She was a large doll, a life-size 3-year old girl (but oddly with a flip hairdo like the sorority girls in Animal House, especially at first…) whom, when a string was pulled in her back, a paleotechnic speaker in her chest would squawk out something [...]
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, [...]
Well, the teabaggers “descended” on Washington today, in part courtesy of 40 buses chartered by something called “Americans for Prosperity,” and of course having been heavily promoted on Fox. A “crowd” the police estimated at 3000-3500 came waddling in to generally make asses of themselves, invading the wrong offices, carrying strikingly dumb and offensive signs, [...]
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, [...]
It’s only a paper moon, hanging over a cardboard sea, but it wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me. While it’s probably somewhat redundant at this point to pile on poor Michael Steele for his brand new but flabbergastingly idiotic “What Up (!) ?” web site, I still feel a need to do so, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]