“You idiot! Get back in there at once and sell, sell!” As we set about the process of compiling and canonizing the 2012 election post-mortem, one thing we keep hearing over and over is how utterly stunned the Romney camp was at their loss. Republicans across the board apparently expected victory – the conservative punditry seemed certain of it – and
Read moreThis is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We’re stealing it back. – Bono When we hear talk about “markets” and “capitalism” and “business,” especially as such things are fetishized in the corporate media (think about how The Apprentice franchise has apparently made Donald Trump, a barking conspiracy theorist whose companies have declared bankruptcy four times and who has
Read moreYesterday I wrote a piece translating what I thought last week’s informal poll result meant. It seems like every time I get to talking about racism things get contentious, no matter how obvious the point I’m seeking to make. And if you read that comment thread, you might notice that by the end I’m being portrayed as saying some things,
Read moreLast week, a highly unscientific Scholars & Rogues poll asked our readers this question: What percent of the popular vote do you believe Barack Obama would win in the upcoming election if he were white? The results are in, and I’d like to spend a few moments examining what they reveal. First, the numbers: Less than 50% 15.15% Roughly 50% 10.61%
Read moreIf you read Wufnik’s secession piece yesterday, you may have noticed that the inevitable cropped up in the comments: racism. You can’t talk about secessionist impulses anywhere – Scotland, Belgium, Spain, Quebec – without the subject of the US intruding, and that tends to mean the South. As in, the South in which I grew up (as did some of my
Read moreBack in the old days rape was rape. Or, at most, there were two kinds. There was the “put on a ski mask and rape her at knifepoint” type and there was the “she said she was 18” statutory type. Which wasn’t really rape at all, because, I mean, LOOK at her. And she really wanted it. These days it’s
Read moreI broke the story back in June that “Donald Trump” is a hoax. In actuality, the real Donald Trump sold his identity, back in the 1980s, to none other than Andy Kaufman. Kaufman then staged his own death and assumed the Tony Clifton-esque Trump persona in pursuit of the greatest mass pranking since War of the Worlds. Today, millions of people
Read moreEverybody seems to be so negative about campaign season. They hate the ads, they hate the mudslinging, they hate the lying, they hate the candidates. Not me – I LOVE campaign season. Why? Because it’s an opportunity to learn stuff that not only didn’t I know before, but that I’d never learn any other way.
Read moreRemember back before the first debate when Mitt let us know he was working on his zingers? Yep. Clearly he wanted to land a punch that would push him over the top in the public consciousness, score the iconic rhetorical knockout blow that people would still be pointing to decades later. He wanted to be like Ronnie: There you go
Read moreGiven the course of Campaign 2012, the idea that Americans are trending toward less religion probably sounds ludicrous. But maybe not. In response to an audience question last night, Richard Dawkins said he’s “optimistic” about the future of religion. (If you’re a religious type, he doesn’t mean that in the way it probably sounds.) He noted that the US is still
Read moreUnless you’ve been off-world for a few years, it’s not news that electronic media technologies are exerting a dramatic impact on our political sphere. However, being generally aware of the fact and having a more detailed understanding of the hows and whys, that’s another thing. Our good friend Josh Catone and his colleagues over at Mashable have just released a
Read moreLet’s start with this. DENVER – A Mexican restaurant in the Highlands neighborhood declined a Mitt Romney campaign stop. Now the owners of Rosa Linda’s Mexican Café are getting death threats, nasty threatening phone calls, and insulting e-mails criticizing their choice. “I don’t want people to be angry at me,” Rosa Linda Aguirre, the owner of the neighborhood staple, said.
Read moreCredit Joshua Holland with that headline, which I’m stealing gleefully. Rush really is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t he? In case you missed it: Rush Limbaugh went on a tirade today about how “feminazis” and “chickification” are to blame for the fact that he has a tiny dick the average penis is 10 percent smaller than 50 years ago:
Read moreThis is just remarkable. And it may be the 7th Sign. I try not to read David Brooks any more than I have to because every time I do I wind up wanting to throw things. Through the years he has established himself as one of the most reliably disingenuous, dishonest propagandists on the GOP payroll, a fork-tongued weasel who
Read moreI think some of us are so used to the frustrations of how local governments sometimes work that we’re shocked when a municipality gets one right. Here in West Denver, for instance, a lot of us have been incensed by the way our elected officials are siding with developers against the needs and express wishes of the people who put
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