Politics
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Class Warfare
I wanted to expand on a response to a comment made by Eustochius to my post yesterday on Libertarianism. He feels that what I’m describing here is too conspiracy theory-esque with the use of such words as "overclass" which suggests the phrase "class warfare"–a big no-no in polite conversation, especially with conservatives. They don’t like
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Resignation
McClellan’s gone. Here’s Sidney Blumenthal’s mean, but rather apt take: McClellan is a flea on the windshield of history. On the podium, he performed his duty as a slow-flying object swatted by a frustrated and flustered press corps. Inexpressive, occasionally inarticulate and displaying a limited vocabulary, his virtue was his unwavering discipline in sticking to
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Iran with a Bomb
Why is Iran with a bomb inherently more scary than Pakistan with a bomb or N. Korea, China, and India, or even–with Bush in office–the U.S. with a bomb? After all the U.S. is the only country that has ever dropped one on people, and Bush seems ok with the idea of doing it again.
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Our Carnival Hall of Mirrors World
What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we’re not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we’re living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. Paul Krugman, July 2005
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Patty Hearst Syndrome
Back in 1978 Mr. Kristol urged corporations to make "philanthropic contributions to scholars and institutions who are likely to advocate preservation of a strong private sector." That was delicately worded, but the clear implication was that corporations that didn’t like the results of academic research, however valid, should support people willing to say something more
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Breaking the Trance
If we Americans are split into two meaningful camps, it is not conservative versus liberal. The two camps are these: the politically awake and the hypnotized — hypnotized by television and other mass media, whose overpaid Svengalis dangle the swinging medallions of packaged candidates and oft-told lies. It is all done to politically prolong the
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Iran, etc.
“There’s no way [President Bush is] going to take military action in Iran. Iran is, is three times as big geographically, there’s 58 million people vs. 26 million people in, in Iraq, and, and there’s no way. A fanatical government — I mean, the, the president of the United States does not have a military
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Mendacity Fatigue
I find myself somewhat bored and uninterested in the new information about Bush’s involvement in outing Valerie Plame. It doesn’t tell me anything new or anything that I didn’t at least suspect to be true. I suspect that far worse things have happened, and that we’ve only just scratched the surface in learning about how
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L’etat c’est Moi
From Josh Marshall: Beyond the legal particulars, the president’s attitude seems to be that the law just doesn’t apply to him — and that’s not surprising since we see so many other instances of that perspective in practice. Peel back all the individual arguments from Al Gonzales and the president and whomever else they put
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Those Who Live by the Hammer Die by the Hammer
Just one example from Molly Ivins why Delay was such a hypocritical Christianist sleaze: Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich turned the U.S. House of Representatives, “the people’s House,” into a pay-for-play machine for corporations. Put in enough money, get your special tax exemption, get your earmarked government contract, get your trade legislation and your environmental