2015 archive
An Acme of Candidates 0
Reg Henry thinks that the Republican candidates are truly Looney-Tooney. A nugget:
I nominate Bobby Jindal for the part of Wile E. Coyote, Genius.
The Fee Hand of the Market 0
Vulture capitalists give feathered vultures a bad name.
Lies and Lying Liars 0
Proposed headline: Hen House Strikes Back at Fox.
Fox News was found in breach of British broadcast code that says, “Factual programmes or items or portrayals of factual matters must not materially mislead the audience.”
More at the link.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Ensure that children have the opportunity to be polite.
(snip)
Mayor Craig Randall said he was told by police that the couple’s 3-year old child was believed to have fired the weapon.
Just another day in NRA Paradise.
The Republican War on Women 0
Bruce Lowry thinks it will be unrelenting through the campaign season. A nugget:
Yet equally difficult to watch are the lengths to which Republican presidential hopefuls will go to thrash Planned Parenthood, a group that has, for the most part, done an awful lot of good while administering vital reproductive health care services, particularly to low-income women. In that frame of reference, the level of viciousness, even from Governor Christie, is hard to register.
Of course, he is quite wrong in the first sentence of the excerpt. There can be no rational debate about an irrational lie, other than to point one’s finger and say, “That’s a lie.”
Textual Interpretation 0
Words fail me. Just read it.
“Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves” 2
Wisconsin Republicans seek new ways to punish the poor for being.
The Republican Party has become a vile and loathsome thing.
Chris-Crossed, Godfather of the Guard Dept. 0
Chris Christie doesn’t seem to be adept at playing soldier, if news coming out of the New Jersey National Guard is any indication. A nugget:
“It’s like the mob,” said Brian K. Scully, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who says he lost his job because he refused to help cover up the general’s affair. “One minute you’re the ‘made man.’ The next, you get a bullet in the back of your head. Only here, it’s career assassination.”
Satanic Writes 0
A copy of The Clansman, written by a Baptist preacher often described as the “Billy Graham of his day” in terms of his popularity, resided on my parents’ bookshelf. I don’t know that they ever read it. Likely they had inherited it, but no doubt they knew of it. It was probably a fixture in many Southern white households of a certain day.
I was never tempted to read it, I can’t say why. My hand hovered over it many times, but I did not pick it up.
It’s a book that still influences today. It was the source for D. W. Griffith’s vile movie, Birth of a Nation*, a propaganda piece for Jim Crow created by scions of the Secesh. Many of today’s images of freed slaves and their descendants (think watermelons and fried chicken) can be traced to that book and movie.
Yesterday, I listened to the podcast of last Friday’s Another View, which featured a discussion of Birth of a Nation. You should listen too.
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*The “nation” in question was the terrorist organization called the Ku Klux Klan, which D. W. Griffith thought was a Good Thing. ‘Nuff said.
St. Ronald of Reagan 0
I was no fan of Ronald Reagan, who managed to be simultaneously genial figurehead and duplicitous scoundrel extraordinaire, but Michael Smerconish reminds us that, unlike today’s Republican Party, St. Ronald of Reagan was not completely nucking futs.