PayPal, the NBA and Bruce Springsteen are well-intentioned, but they’re punishing the wrong people. I have a solution. By now you know all about North Carolina’s appalling HB2 – “the bathroom law” – which seeks to keep transgendered people out of the wrong restroom even though in all of history they have committed fewer crimes in bathrooms than Republican legislators.
Read moreWe’ve had two decades to get to know former First Lady, former Senator and former Secretary Clinton. We look at that history and we understand something you don’t: she isn’t one of us. First, a caveat: this article is not about all Clinton voters. Many of you support her candidacy for reasons I don’t agree with, but you do so in good
Read moreQ: What’s the Mexican word for “heat”? A: El heat. Yes, the La NBA is back with its annual Latin Heritage promotion, where it pays tribute to the league’s Latino fans by replacing the English team names on uniforms with their Mexican equivalents. Examples: As you can see, it’s easy to speak Mexican.
Read more2016 is a watershed moment. If November features Clinton vs Trump, the Republicans win regardless of how the election turns out. It’s the economy, stupid. Big thanks to our friend Rich James for passing along this analysis in today’s Atlantic. (Pardon the longish snip here – it’s important.) But on issue after issue, Trump vows to use government as a tool to
Read moreLast night a topic in the GOP debate was how big Donald Trump’s dick is. (The over/under line in Vegas is 1½ inches. Erect.) Normally this is where somebody says something like “wow, they’ve really hit rock bottom this time” or “damn it can’t get any worse than that.” But this is the modern Republican Party. Of course it can get worse,
Read moreMatt Grimm offers up a new campaign anthem. Line of the year: “What if ideas were the only things too big to fail?”
Read moreDear everybody freaking out because some people think the Bernie Sanders economic plan can’t pay for itself. Three things: 1) You can’t work with recent historical data as your assumption because the Sanders approach throws it out and works off different assumptions entirely. 2) Okay, okay. That’s true but I don’t have the time to explain why in detail. So let’s go
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These things are not mutually exclusive. I want to show you two pictures – ones you may have seen recently – and ask you a simple question: what is being communicated? What are the subject, the photographer and the publisher saying to you?
Read moreSara Robinson, who has spent years thinking and writing in places like Orcinus, Our Future, Group News Blog, Salon, Grist, the New Republic and New York Magazine (as well as S&R, now that I think about it), has finally struck out on her on her own and debuted Future Imperfect. And just in time. Sara has devoted a great deal of energy
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The four stages of critical thinking: Critical thinking is something you make yourself do. Critical thinking is something you do automatically. Critical thinking is something you can’t stop doing. Critical thinking is who you are. Hopefully you’re on the spectrum somewhere, preferably at four or working your way to it. I noted this because I’ve been thinking about Facebook memes.
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Is Abby Wambach a xenophobe? I doubt it. But her remarks on foreign-born players were clumsy at best. On Wednesday night Abby Wambach, the greatest striker in women’s soccer history, played her final match, an uninspired 1-0 loss to China that was in no way the sort of send-off she deserved. While the game lacked fireworks, her appearance earlier in
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If you think Barack Obama is a socialist, you simply don’t know what the word means. That’s likely because you’re lazy and willing to trust those who would manipulate you for their own cynical ends, and who really could not care less about your well being. Obama is demonstrably to the right of Nixon (aside from the racist Southern strategy) and
Read moreWould the GOP have deported Yogi Berra? Item 1: Yogi died last week. He was an American icon of the first order and a legendary practitioner of the national pastime. Wikipedia sums his career up nicely. An 18-time All-Star and 10-time World Series champion as a player, Berra had a career batting average of .285, while compiling 358 home runs and
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Walter Palmer, the dentist who killed Cecil the Lion, says he did nothing illegal and that he’s going back to work. I don’t think Dr. Palmer understands the issue. He doesn’t grasp why people are so upset. He thinks we’re all mad because we mistakenly believe that he broke the law. No, Walter, we know you acted legally. We live in
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We all love freedom and the Constitution. But is it really that simple? I’m a huge fan of a good debate. And by “debate” I don’t mean the sort of ginned-up scream-lie-and-spinfests we have come to associate with the term in the past few decades. No, I mean spirited, intelligent, thoughtful exchanges between parties with honest, good-faith disagreements. Lucky me, I tripped across
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lullaby pit 