America’s Dumbest State, Alabama, continues to be unfairly pilloried by the liberal media for its demented and draconian immigration laws. Last month, Alabama police arrested a Mercedes Benz executive for the newly-minted crime of driving without his papers; later, an Honda execuive was similarly jailed. Of course, to find any such liberal media, you do [...]
Now, I’ve read some dumb things in my life at the Atlantic (especially since Megan McArdle came along), but this is ridiculous. Wendy Kaminer, an “author, lawyer, and civil libertarian,” which in plain English means “wingnut welfare queen,” leapt into the fray with one of the silliest “slippery slope” arguments against OWS I’ve ever heard, [...]
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 [...]
Well, it’s been finally settled, what ails America. You see, the richly overpaid media stars who spout errant nonsense to us each day disguised as news seem to agree with the plutocrats that even words that might hurt that the delicate feelings of those who make, say $50,000 per hour, must be censored at all [...]
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 [...]
Ordinarily, you’d think that an upstart journalistic enterprise calling itself PolitiFact emerging in this era of Cokie’s Law, where whatever utter claptrap some politicians coughed up would nonetheless become widely believed despite its jaw-dropping falsity, would be a good thing. And sometimes it is, especially when it eviscerates serial liars like, well, all the Republicans. [...]
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, [...]
I’ve been traveling a lot lately, and thus reading more (political, natch) books than usual, but none seemed new and juicy enough to review. Fortunately, Karma chose to compensate me for the money I’d thus far wasted at Powell’s; I showed up at a Firebagger Meetup in Portland, and they had FREE BOOKS. I grabbed [...]
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 [...]