Almost 50 days into his administration President Obama made his way around to what strikes me as America’s #1 long-term issue, education. The soundbite is pretty catchy: he wants to overhaul the system “from the cradle up through a career.” A compelling sentiment, that is. Our educational system couldn’t be much more broken, and a righteous keelhauling overhauling is certainly
Read moreDr. Slammy offered up some thoughts the other day on Joe Nacchio, the prison-bound former CEO of Qwest. For the good doctor, the case is both public and personal. For my part, I don’t know Joe, but do take some satisfaction in the knowledge that he’s going to Hell. And yes, I do have insider knowledge on that subject. The
Read moreObama was in town yesterday to sign his stimulus bill. This victory, the first great moment of the Obama administration, was a hard-fought one earned in the face of fierce opposition from fiscally responsible Congressional Republicans. These staunch guardians of the American purse strings have proven, time and again, their willingness to combat wastefulness and ill-advised spending by… Wait a
Read moreYou may have heard that Inauguration Day was something of a mess in our nation’s capital. People with tickets who couldn’t get in to see the actual inauguration (which included everything from an all-around offend-o-rama of an “invocation” to a Supreme Court justice swallowing his tongue to an example of why people don’t like poetry to the longest goddamned rendition
Read moreAha. This explains a lot. Wonder why the mainstream press never reports this stuff?
Read moreA few nights ago John McCain treated us all to a masterful concession speech. He was gracious, articulate, noble – he said all the right things and struck all the right chords as the nation and his party look toward the future in the wake of an epic statement on the part of the American electorate. If you’re like me,
Read moreTrusting is one thing I don’t know When it comes to the campaigning men But I’ll meet you at the election When I vote for the hope of this land – Sean Kelly You may have noticed, if you’ve been paying attention, that the music industry has gone to hell of late. It isn’t that nobody is making good music
Read morePart two in a series. There’s a rising tide on the rivers of blood But if the answer isn’t violence, neither is your silence – Pop Will Eat Itself, “Ich Bin Ein Auslander” When all is said and done, nothing communicates the racism and knee-buckling stupidity of all-too-wide swaths of our nation quite like video. So if you don’t trust
Read morePart one in a series. Listen to the victim, abused by the system The basis is racist, you know that we must face this In 1991 Pop Will Eat Itself produced one of the most damning comments on racism in society in the history of popular music. “Ich Bin Ein Auslander” was specifically aimed at anti-immigrant racism in Europe, but
Read moreHey, America: are your politicians stupid or do they just think you are? Check this new analysis of Thursday night’s “debate”: An analysis carried out by a language monitoring service said Friday that Gov. Sarah Palin spoke at a more than ninth-grade level and Sen. Joseph Biden spoke at a nearly eighth-grade level in Thursday night’s debate between the vice
Read moreThis could be a Very Bad Week for Sen. John McCain. Last week, McCain attempted a stunt for the ages, announcing that he was “suspending his campaign” so that he could rush back to Washington, where he was apparently desperately needed in order to pull together an economic bailout package. He called on Sen. Barack Obama to stop stomping the
Read moreIn part two of the S&R Interview, comedian Lee Camp talks with me about the relationship between politics and comedy and has high praise for those who, like Jon Stewart and Chris Rock, are able to infuse their work with important insights about our society. “Thank god for The Daily Show,” he says. “I wish there was a network that
Read moreOn February 23, comedian Lee Camp appeared on FOX News, where he proceeded to sound off on the hosts and their audience. “What is Fox News?” asks comedian and activist Lee Camp on the air. “It’s just a parade of propaganda, isn’t it? It’s just a…festival of ignorance.” Obviously Camp is a man with some political convictions. He’s also a
Read moreI believe I recall Barack Obama quoting Otto Von Bismarck’s edict that “politics is the art of the possible,” and evidence of that optimism abounds everywhere I look in Denver today. The two words we seem to be hearing more than any others are “hope” and “change,” and we saw a wonderfully eloquent articulation of this enthusiasm last night in
Read moreI’m beginning to get a bad feeling about Campaign ’08. A nasty, sinking feeling that we’re a’fixin’ to spend the next three months obliterating ever record for dirty, dishonest, unethical, immoral electioneering in the history of American politics. I don’t say this casually. I remember the Bush I “Willie Horton” ad. I lived through multiple Jesse Helms campaigns in North
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