As we approach the 2012 elections, I have to admit grudgingly sympathizing with the poor Republican contenders on some level; everywhere you look, one (hilarious) presidential aspirant after another has to deal with the fact that large blocs of their party hates them, for one reason or another. The reasons, to a sane person at [...]
Whenever I’m working out of town, it’s always a treat to listen to a different lefty talk station; when I was in Napa over Thanksgiving I tuned in daily to Green 960, a San Francisco-based Clear Channel station which, though lacking any local programming, has a good mix of national shows I don’t generally hear [...]
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, [...]
Everywhere you go today you’ll find another righty, from Sarah Palin on down, blaming crazy people for their craziness, loudly and revealingly attempting to exonerate not just their heinous words, but more significantly, their disastrous policies, which both are almost designed to precipitate just such craziness. Nearly lost amid the narcissistic pout-rage of which Palin’s, [...]
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy UPDATED BELOW: (UPDATE V: SUNDAY) Well, it seems that yet another mysterious “lone wolf,” acting completely spontaneously of course, has shot recently reelected Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in a Tucson parking lot. In the head. Coincidentally, Sarah Palin has suddenly removed her infamous, [...]
Ted Koppel, one of the last eminences of the old broadcast news era, weighed in some days ago on the never-ending debate about how things just aren’t as august as they used to be (whenever that was) when it comes to informing the American people (instead of just yelling at them). Koppel targeted Fox News [...]
One can hardly argue that something awful hasn’t happened to our news media in the last few decades, but those actually in the media still steadfastly, and at times almost comically, refuse to see it. In short, a calculated plan by the right, beginning in the 1970′s, has reached glorious fruition in 2010: the right [...]
I suppose it’s old news now that the Republicans have let slip their inner (or in the case of Rich Iott, outer…) Nazis this election cycle; the “arrest” of a reporter by Joe Miller’s goons, the head-stomper at the Rand Paul “rally,” yesterday’s assault on a young, female protester at a Dino Rossi event show [...]
For as long as I can remember, Republicans of various stripes have been telling me and the world that the sky was falling, and yet, so far it hasn’t… Oughtn’t they catch a clue by now that, well, they’ve been so wrong before, and so often, that to believe anything they say requires a suspension [...]
Increasingly it seems that Republican candidates are, in the post-Reagan era, chosen solely as spokesmodels; it’s just like choosing an anchorwoman at Fox News, really. Not much upstairs, but what a staircase… You’re hired. This trend has two roots: the first is that Republicans fundamentally believe that intellect, energy, and accomplishment are only found, [...]