Recent items in the news: The commandant of the marine corps said a few days ago U.S. forces will likely be at the “war on terror,” or whatever it’s called now, for a bit longer, maybe another decade. Or more. The marine leader’s remarks echo those by an obscure defense official overseeing undercover doo doo. [...]
Prostitution in the old Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628-92), which then ran north into southern Maine and included the seaside town of Kennebunk (“So Close, Yet Worlds Away”), was a hanging offense. Times have changed however. And so on Friday a state judge in Portland accepted a plea deal from alleged Zumba dance madam Alexis Wright [...]
Back in 2004, a blog commenter at Daily Kos made a video that compared Bush to Hitler, and there was a immediate run on smelling salts that lasted for weeks. At the time I was working for a couple who were regular Fox News watchers, and they were naturally horrified. “Really?” I responded. “Aggressive wars, [...]
“Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It’s time to start thinking.” – Ernest Rutherford, British explorer – quoted sometime after 1910 Political analysts unaffiliated with The Onion suggested Monday that Silvio Berlusconi and upstart challenger Beppe Grillo may have enough votes between them to form a new, coalition government in Italy. If this [...]
UPDATE: (somewhat unnecessarily) Sure enough… http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/twitter-impeach-obama-gun-control.html And Republicans have to impeach Democratic Presidents with the temerity to beat them. In some ways I’m surprised it’s taken this long; Clinton was denounced as illegitimate before the drapes went up in the oval office, and within months the media was announcing his Presidency was “over,” a [...]
I hesitated to write about the latest mass shooting, since I hadn’t even gotten around to writing about the one here just last week, about which I felt more qualified to comment. I guess the rule ought to be not to wait, because before you ever hit “publish” there will probably be a new one, [...]
There are a lot of advantages, politically, for a plutocratic, authoritarian party like the Republicans to court the stupid. For one thing, they’ll believe anything, even against all available evidence. For another, they’re easily distracted from the real business at hand, which is of course looting the treasury. When things are going well, a little [...]
The reptilian and oleaginous Fox News “Democrat,” Doug Schoen, has taken to the Daily Beast fainting couch, and I for one couldn’t be more delighted. Deeply alarmed that some annoying facts might be seeping into the rhetoric if not the actions of the presidential candidates, Schoen hyperventilates that “Occupy Wall Street Has Seized Control of [...]
Allen West should take a cue from another House Negro of the racist right, Clarence Thomas, and STFU. Better to, as they say, keep your mouth shut and be thought an idiot than to open it and remove all doubt. Today in The Hill, West is given enough rope to hang himself, and unsurprisingly he [...]
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, [...]