What a fucking day. Item: Congress has tentatively agreed on a bill that will keep the government from shutting down. Now, there’s a lot wrong with it, starting with the fact that the Republicans are insisting on a huge payoff to Wall Street, basically holding the best interests of the people hostage to the best interests of the insanely rich. The smart money
Read moreFerguson, MO is currently a dumpster full of flaming grease and it’s a long way from being extinguished. As I have been watching the Michael Brown/Darren Wilson case unfold, a few things have occurred to me. 1: Let’s just get this out of the way first: there were two distinct groups in the streets the other night. Group A comprised people
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I’ve been thinking on Obama’s recent outbreak of backbone. Standing up to his FCC appointee on Net Neutrality was a fun start, and a lot of folks are welcoming the fact that finally, after six long years, he’s beginning to act with a little courage. Maybe. Maybe he realizes that he has two years left and no more elections to
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A political list I’m on has been having some interesting discussions running in parallel of late surrounding a variety of issues (Obamacare being the big one), and at the core of it all is a basic question: how do progressives aggregate and assert the power needed to effect the policies they support. (Which is ultimately the core question of all politics, I guess.) So, if you’re
Read moreS&R co-founder Mike Sheehan had a really funny comment on my “Dems need their own Tea Party” post. As in, I laughed until my sides hurt. Checkit: Well, what’s stopping you from running for office? If I’d had soda in my mouth I’d have spewed it all over your computer. He continues: Er wait, never mind… intelligence is a liability in
Read moreI’ve been sifting through the various analyses and post-mortems, and I don’t know that I have anything insightful to say that others haven’t said better. Also, I just don’t have the energy. I think it’s clear from what I have had to say in recent years – and I have said it in various forms more times than I can
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An old friend, Jon Epstein, is involved with Greensboro College’s Healing Blues Project, which aims to to raise $30,000 for the Interactive Resource Center, a tax-exempt, nonprofit day center in downtown Greensboro for people experiencing homelessness. I’m not even going to bother explaining why this is a worthy cause, and honestly, I’m not sure what I could say that makes the
Read moreA prominent political “news” site has gotten its hands on a year’s worth of archives of a “top secret” Google Group of liberal activists called the Gamechanger Salon.* According to the emails, the group reportedly includes prominent members of the Occupy movement, “Democrats, Sierra Club officials, journalists who work for The Huffington Post and The Nation magazine, senior union representatives,
Read moreI saw this meme on Facebook, extolling the importance of voting. But then I thought, hey, wait. What if you crop out the top and bottom?
Read moreTwo decades ago the WaPo condemned the use of “Redskins.” A generation later, by god they’re doing something about it. Sorta. Way back in 1992 the Washington Post concluded that “the time-hallowed name bestowed upon the local National Football League champions — the Redskins — is really pretty offensive.” (Emphasis mine.) A rough estimate based on occurrences of “redskin” in a WaPo
Read moreSomebody needs to teach Facebook’s CEO how to wield wealth and influence. This started out as a brief comment on Frank’s post about leaving Facebook. If you haven’t read it yet, go do so now. It’s an important piece of writing and gods would America be better off if we all followed his lead. Ello, you can’t arrive soon enough (and
Read moreIn their fascination with technology, are Libertarians really just seeking certainty? I just finished reading George Packer’s remarkable, if not especially uplifting, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. One of the people he considers in his biography of the modern US is billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel. Thiel is, among other things, a diehard Libertarian. Packer is … not.
Read moreClinton’s comments on Cheney and Iraq are 100% correct. But they ignore something important. Bill Clinton has taped an interview that will air tomorrow. In it, he’s asked about Dick Cheney’s attacks on President Obama and the Iraq mess.
Read moreBaker was the man who set me on the path to progressivism. Former Tennessee Senator and Reagan White House Chief of Staff is dead at 88. Baker was, in many ways, one of the last of his kind: to wit, a coherent Republican. I have noted before that in my youth I was a conservative – by the standards of
Read moreThe public interest is what the public is interested in, bitches. Thanks to Facebook, we all see new memes every day. Some of them are funny, some insightful, and a lot are of the preaching to the choir variety, which even though they’re right as rain, they occasionally get tiresome. Like a lot of us, frustrated as hell with the
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lullaby pit 