Will Free Speech Kill Health Care Reform?
Cross-posted toShowMeProgress.comSince 1976, when the Supreme Court first articulated an equivalence between political donations and constitutionally protected free speech, we have seen the growth of a...
View ArticleSmoke and Mirrors
Cross-posted to ShowMeProgressWe are all in hyper-ventilation mode about the noisy tea party fringe-wingers who have been congregating at various summer congressional constituent meetings, spewing...
View ArticleGlenn Beck says let them eat cake - and die
The Wonk Roomreports that Glenn Beck is willing to let at least some of his most devoted watchers die. Speaking of Michelle Obama's anti-obesity initiative, specifically her suggestion that restaurants...
View ArticleWhen the sequester cuts close to home
Today progressive commentators are bewailing a House bill that would allow the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) enough flexibility in administering the sequester spending cuts to avoid disrupting air...
View ArticleCan we afford the GOP?
The title above might seem a bit obtuse to some since it's clear to most progressives that the GOP is already on the corporate dole and doesn't need any more funding. However, the funds in question...
View ArticleLiving in a GOP fantasyland
Notice how GOP talking points persist even when refuted over and over with real facts? Today many commentators are registering amazement at rightwing blogger Eric Erickson's blithe response to facts...
View ArticleWhy I'm troubled by the discussions on Syria
I've been following the discussion of Syria all week and growing more and I've been growing more and more impatient with some of what I've been hearing. There are important arguments against any type...
View ArticleCPAC: ahistorical conservatives will always get it wrong
Cross-posted to ShowMeProgress.The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) regional convention was held yesterday (Sept. 28) in St. Charles, Missouri, just outside of St. Louis. According to...
View ArticleAnn Wagner does Wall Street's bidding and and asks Main Street to thank her...
Cross-posted to Show Me Progress.So we know Republicans hate Obamacare so much that they can't shut up about it. But don't let their nattering on this topic lead you to think that they don't have a...
View ArticleSarah Palin, Pope Francis and militant Christianity
Sarah Palin, who seemed for a while to be receding into obscurity, has come roaring back into the public eye, appearing on sundry talk shoes to shill her new book, a paen to Christmas as it is...
View ArticleThe Republican jobs plan, or, How to build a third world economy
The recently enacted federal budget that everybody is regarding with relief but no hosannas failed to extend federal jobless benefits. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, about 5...
View ArticlePlaying the God card
Cross-Posted to Show Me ProgressEver notice how certain religious types think that their faith is a get-out-of-jail card that excuses just about any kind of nastiness? The most obvious recent example...
View ArticleDownton Abbey, George Will and his topsy-turvy vision of paternalistic...
We've all been either amused or outraged by the rightwing evocation of latte sipping, sushi-eating, volvo-driving, New York Times reading, etc. , etc. and etc. progressives. It's almost surreal to...
View ArticleSister Teresa Forcades, abortion, choice and individual self-determination
For many years I believed that there was some ground, albeit narrow and shaky, on which to respect those anti-abortion activists who sincerely believed that abortion was tantamount to murder. We've...
View ArticleNullification for thee, but not for me
The Attorney Generals of Oklahoma and Nebraska, Scott Pruitt and Jon Bruning respectively, have given us another example of right-wing hyprocisy. Not a surprise in itself, but given the tendency of...
View ArticleErick Erikson, the President, and the Pope
Conservatives got a new target today in their continuing game of whack the black man in the White House. At the National Prayer Breakfast the president had the gall to speak a few truths about the need...
View ArticleWho kills the most Americans?
It seems that House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-TX) is worried that undocumented immigrants are driving up our murder statistics:SESSIONS: Every day, all along border states, maybe other...
View ArticleWhy are we letting the GOP write Hillary's narrative?
I've now read and heard nearly a gazillion news reports that talk about a supposed public perception of Hillary Clinton as "untrustworthy" and "dishonest." So far as I can tell, here are no concrete...
View ArticleReality really does bite: Where Hillary's emails and God's problems with...
I read today that Philippine’s President Rodrigo Duterte has had a message from God:Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has promised to stop swearing, saying God spoke to him on a flight from Japan on...
View ArticleTurn up the heat on Trump's scandals
During the past eight years we have been treated to numerous congressional show trials that emanated from manufactured media “stories.” There were silly investigations into trumped up stories about...
View ArticleWill Donald Trump take us down the path forged by Italy's mini-Trump, Silvio...
Asking “what can America learn from Italy,” Guardian reporter Stephanie Kirchgaessner has written about the resemblance between former rightwing Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a billionaire...
View ArticleA modest proposal for an effective opposition
In a first rate piece of analysis laying out the problems with Rep. Tim Ryan's reliance on a simpleminded and single minded appeal to the supposed power of white identify politics in his effort to...
View ArticleRussiaGate a crucial test for American media
The CIA has publicly announced that it has “high confidence” that the Russians not only attempted to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but that they did so in order to help elect Donald...
View ArticleTrump won. What are we going to do about it?
The Big Orange Buffoon won a freak victory with the help of a little voter suppression, a little Russian assistance and a direct line to the ugliest part of the national id. We on the left have...
View ArticleNormalizing Trump
Joe Biden said it while presiding over the counting of the votes of the Electoral College in the House of Representatives yesterday: “It’s over.” The vote effectively delivered a license for the Trump...
View ArticleShock therapy: To Russia from the U.S, From Russia back to the U.S ... with...
It is now common knowledge that Russia’s Vladimir Putin was personally behind efforts to intervene in the 2016 American presidential election. We also know that President-elect Donald Trump was Putin’s...
View ArticleWhy we need congressmen and women to boycott the inauguration
As of 10:29 am to day, Jan. 19, 2017, 65 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have announced that they'll be skipping Donald Trump's inauguration. Rep. Lacy Clay (D-1) is one of the 65. He's...
View ArticleThe Big Lie and Trump's inauguration speech
TPM’s Josh Marshall cautions against despair as we contemplate a Trump presidency. He acknowledges that the man and the direction that he will take our country is clear and has been so for a long time...
View ArticleCan progressive feminists make common cause with anti-abortion feminists?
In the media reports of the Women’s March on January 21 and following the anti-abortion March on the 27th some conservative women expressed self-righteous outrage that their participation wasn’t...
View ArticleBen Carson - the lone African American in Trumpland shows us how its done
Re theHuffington Post, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) met with the agency’s employees today and his remarks were just as surreal what we’ve come to expect from denizens...
View ArticleOptimism vs. pessimism: Is Ruy Teixeira right - will we survive the...
Ruy Teixeira is a well-known political analyst and a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation and The Center for American Progress. He’s written a new book with the provocative title, The Optimistic...
View ArticleThe Great GOP AHCA vote auction: Sold! To the highest bidder
Apropos the political disaster that has resulted from Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with something “better” (a.k.a. the GOP Dump and Dupe operation), Kevin...
View ArticleIs the resistance flagging already?
In recent days there has been quite a bit of media coverage, including a few diaries on DailyKos (see here and here for today’s most prominent offerings) on the topic of the Senate’s rush to push a...
View ArticleSometimes Scaramuccia even loses his head
Antony Scaramucci, a wealthy financier, Trump sycophant and, as David Brooks put it on the PBS NewsHour yesterday (7/21), a “bro,” is, as everyone knows by now, the new White House communications...
View ArticleNo more lambs to the slaughter
There s a common canard that German Jews submitted passively to Nazi atrocities and had they only resisted, there would have been no Holocaust. This belief is demonstrably false. There were many...
View ArticleDangerous TV: The Blacklist gave us an idealized Trump before there was...
One thing that the last presidential election shows us is that successful politicians and political movements need to have not only a consistent narrative, but one that strikes an emotionally resonant...
View Article
