Baker 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 moreFOX News contributor and former GOP Congressman rides to racist Clipper’s owner’s defense, ignorance in hand. If you’ve been paying attention for the past few years, the idea that Allen West is wrong about something is hardly news. His latest public opinion, though, is more than a little baffling because in this case he seems not to understand how conservativism
Read moreHe meant that The Negro would be better off as a slave in the progressive way. What the hell is wrong with you people?
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Snowden, Assange, Greenwald, and anyone else who believes that NSA spying on American citizens is wrong is a tool for Mother Russia. Makes sense. I just read Edward Lucas’s Wall Street Journal piece entitled “A Press Corps Full of Snowdenistas.” I can’t honestly say if Mr. Lucas is a liar, an idiot, or simply a guy who’s a little too
Read moreDid you see this? Ann Coulter Calls Melissa Harris-Perry a ‘Token’ Black Conservative pundit Ann Coulter insinuated on Monday that MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry was a token African American on the cable network. Coulter was on Fox New’s Hannity show discussing Harris-Perry’s apology over comments made on her show about Mitt Romney’s black grandchild.
Read moreAt WashPo, the narrative is more important than the facts… Earlier today a friend forwarded me, via e-mail, the text of an opinion piece that was ostensibly about the “new reality” on the right. It began well enough. Following the recent tea party Tet Offensive — tactically disastrous but symbolically important — the Republican establishment has commenced counterinsurgency operations. Sens. Mitch McConnell of
Read moreEmbarrassing defeat in government shutdown and debt ceiling face-off reveals cracks in GOP coalition. While I have retired from political blogging, there is some value in pausing, from time to time, to remind our readers about past discussions of particular relevance to the events of the moment. One such opportunity presented itself this morning, as John “The Straight Talkin’ Mavericky
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Government shutdown, debt crisis reveal how much GOP has in common with other sociopaths… Is this to be an empathy test? Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil. Involuntary dilation of the iris? I believe Philip K. Dick had it right in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Technology had, in that not-so-distant future, created androids that were
Read moreProgressive reformer can’t be what the College of Cardinals expected… I don’t traditionally care for popes. The Roman Catholic Church has this really long history of promoting oppression and corruption and ignorance, and there’s the whole pedophilia thing, too. I’m hard pressed to think of an organization that done more raw damage in the entirety of recorded history, and that
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Via our boy Dr. Jim Booth: BuzzFeed last week presented “11 Things The North Carolina Legislature Gave Us This Session.” The list isn’t pretty. It includes: Moral Mondays Harsh abortion restrictions hidden in a motorcycle bill The most restrictive Voter ID laws in the country The decimation of public education as North Carolinians know it The assumption that all those
Read moreA few days ago I offered up Art Pope and Pat McCrory leading North Carolina into the 19th century, a collection of thoughts on the state I was born and raised in. The comment thread wandered a bit, as they tend to do when you say things other people don’t want to hear, and eventually one commenter – a Stan
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Late Saturday we posted a Scrogues Converse Roundtable looking at the IRS/Tea Party controversy. The debate got started when our colleague Dr. Sid Bonesparkle suggested that perhaps the IRS wasn’t out of line in taking a good hard look at organizations dedicated to undermining the tax system trying to organize using 501 status, which is reserved for social welfare oriented
Read moreNewt Gingrich addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference today and, as is his habit, had some interesting things to say. This session doesn’t seem to have been as much fun as the 500 Racist Hillbilly Over the Top Rope Battle Royale we had yesterday, but credit the far right with understanding the value of offering up a diversity in its entertainment,
Read moreTo announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. ― Theodore Roosevelt On March 10, 2003, at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire theatre in London, Natalie Maines stepped to the microphone and said this:
Read morePart 2 in a series. The Reagan/Thatcher years were marked by an utterly bizarre shiny/happy pastel sheen spread liberally across a decidedly apocalyptic doom. Listen to songs like “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and “Forever Young” and “It’s a Mistake” (and watch the videos). The aesthetic seemed to be “we’re all going to die in a nuclear holocaust, of
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lullaby pit 