So there was a recent election for a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin (that’s how they do it there, by election) that would have been a shoo-in for the conservative judge under any normal circumstances. But Walker’s over-reaching, union-busting brand of republicanism has proven to be spectacularly unpopular in very short order, so this election [...]

This line comes up a lot to justify the ideological attack on so many institutions that are publicly funded. The removal of Medicare as we know it, riders on the budget to defund NPR, ideas about dismantling the Post Office, cutting off any public funding for Planned Parenthood, etc. That this reflects “the will of [...]

The Republicans are clamoring for a government shut-down. They think bad news for the country, so long as Obama is in charge, is good news for them. That, and the nihilistic thrill of letting destruction happen, so long as it doesn’t personally affect them. From The Washington Post: House Republicans huddled late Monday and, according [...]

  “These words are not tools of communication They are shards of metal Dropped from eight story windows They are waterfalls and gas leaks” “There in the spine of the dictionary, the words are worthless; they’re a mere weight pressing against my thoughtlessness.” Goddamn, Saul Williams knows how to string words together. Share this:PrintFacebookDigg

A squirmish? Oh, dear. Maybe she meant a 43 Man Squamish. OK. So you’re saying, “Hey. that’s petty. Skirmish, squirmish, potato, poTAHto, let’s call the whole thing off.”  A simple slip of the tongue on a word, it happens. Fine. Then the story becomes the freaky word-salad crazy-talk that sounded kind of coked up  about how [...]

From George Orwell’s 1984: And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced [...]

  Can you tell the difference between perky Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway and real-world-Scrooge McDuck analog Warren Buffet? If so, congratulate yourself. You are smarter than the assembled might of the super-smart Wall Street crowd who, according to business-types and professionals, need their obscene bonuses because to deny them would take “talent” out of the [...]

Listen to the whole audio thing. It’s pretty funny. Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota and now declared 2012 Republican presidential hopeful’s most interesting aspect, to date, has been his complete and utter lack of anything interesting about him. The media and beltway press are often too focused on such matters and tend to over-simplify [...]

If Larry Kudlow is the banality of evil, Glenn Beck is the punch-me-face of evil. I have often said that people who like and agree with Glenn Beck must have thought that Frank Burns was the hero of M*A*S*H. He’s a specifically weaselly, conniving opportunist who doesn’t even believe his own B.S., which makes him [...]

View Japan Tsunami Video Locations in a larger map via WhileSeated blog. The footage on TV is often looped and mixed and matched, so it is hard to get an actual, geographical handle on the scope and enormity of the earthquake and tsunami that has devastated so much of Japan. This GoogleMap begins to put [...]

We are done a disservice in our sensationalized conception of “evil.”  The notion of completely self-aware monsters, horror-lit from under the chin intoning dread pronouncements of arch-villainy makes the spotting of actual evil things that much harder. In movies and books, our villains are dastardly master-plotters who delight in their own wickedness.  They announce their plots [...]

Ezra Klein, who is smarter and more eloquent than I am (and, statistically speaking, probably more than than you, too) about policy matters provides a good, concise answer to the republican/tea party talking point of Social Security’s fund being full of “worthless IOUs.”   Here’s the money quote. (Pun vaguely intended.)   What would be [...]