The governance, or lack thereof, of the great republic.
Mmmm! What’s that devilish flavor, Midge? It’s got a base of frowning judge and overtones of cold marble and concrete, sprinkled with arbitrary traditions and with subtle hints of collective punishment! Wait, I know — it’s austerity! Yes, it’s the hot new lifestyle trend that’s sweeping Europe, and it’s coming to America, …
Of all the issues over which Republicans and Democrats have butted heads in recent elections, none have proven as shockingly polarizing as health care. When President Obama managed to pass a health care reform bill, it so enraged the opposition — despite the fact that it was a monstrously compromised …
Most Americans — and I hope to excuse the broadness of this claim by absolutely, unreservedly including myself — are really, really bad with money. This is not to say that they are simply stupid about their finances, or that when they are, it’s their fault. As has been widely …
The recent cultural fisticuffs over Amanda Palmer’s initial decision to hire local musicians to play for her in exchange for the non-negotiable instruments of “beer and hugs” has rippled far beyond Palmer herself, becoming a talking point in a larger conversation about what it means to be an artist in …
Blame is a tricky thing in politics. For one thing, you have to be particularly careful about the entire notion of blame — for blame, after all, implies agency and power, which can easily backfire. People who say that the current administration is responsible for all the woes of the …
I am not the first, and may not even be the one millionth, person to point out that a lot of voters approach politics as something about halfway between a sports fandom and a religion. In every election, there are massive numbers of people who treat the process not as …
I was adopted when I was two days old. I never met my birth parents, and my adoptive family is the only one I have ever known. But I know a few things about the couple who conceived and bore me: my mother was a white American, who married quite …
Elections, as people on the losing end of them are painfully used to being reminded, are as much about personalities as they are about politics. A candidate can have the most reasonable, sensible policies imaginable, but doesn’t stand a chance of winning office if, as they say, the dogs don’t …
“When we refer to a subject, place or person in the phrase ‘the question of’, we imply a number of different things. For example, one concludes a survey of current affairs by saying, ‘And now I come to the question of X.’ The point here is that X is a …
There are a number of symptoms of rot amongst the “New Democrats” — the dominant aggregation of technocratic centrists who have given us the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — that keep progressives and leftists from doing our party-bound duty to embrace new realities of forced austerity and …
That well-fed fellow up there is the Reverend Douglas Wilson. A product of Idaho’s state university system and a recipient of the largesse of his flock, this noble sky pilot is best known for his series of debates with the notoriously godless Christopher Hitchens on the topic of whether or …
A loving tribute to the forward-looking vision of the dignified speakers at the Republican National Convention. 01_Built_By_Hand
Yes, it’s time once again for that all-time family fun game, “What’s This Guy Worth?, or, Exactly How Rich and Out-of-Touch Are the Rich, Out-of-Touch Assholes Who Are Going to Tell Us How to Fix the Economy?”. On our last episode, we examined the occupations and net worth of members …
Barring the promotion of Isaac from a tropical storm to a full-blown hurricane, and presuming it does not alight directly on the Tampa Bay Times Forum and slay all the Grand Old Party luminaries gathered there for the Republican National Convention (an occurrence which would provide, to me at least, the …
“Critics (of books or drama) often use two rather singular arguments. The first consists in suddenly deciding that the true subject of criticism is ineffable, and criticism, as a consequence, unnecessary. The other, which also reappears periodically, consists in confessing that one is too stupid, too unenlightened to understand a …
