Monthly Archives: May 2012

What God Wants, God Gets, God Help Us All

Over at The American Conservative, Rod Dreher adds to a continuing discussion: you don’t have to believe that Christianity is true to believe in human rights and dignity, but to say that God — by which I mean the basis … Continue reading

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Cry Baby Cry

Back in high school I took a few years of guitar lessons.  I never got all that good at it, and in retrospect, the main value of the lessons may have been the music I was introduced to by my … Continue reading

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Romney Supports European Freeloading

Persistent Mitt Romney fact-checker Daniel Larison notes that Romney, in his effort to constantly oppose everything the president says and does, has come out in support of Europeans freeloading off the US: Michael Cohen follows up on earliercriticisms of Romney on NATO: … The only … Continue reading

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Evidentally The Bain Attacks Are Working…

Because Romney doesn’t seem to want to talk about Bain at all: I never really got the criticism that it’s unfair or off limits to criticize Mitt Romney’s record at Bain. He’s stressed his private sector experience, much more than … Continue reading

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All the drek that fits

Now I don’t know much about IPOs and finance and the bookface and all that tech stuff, so I wanted to google to find out why shareholders are suing Zuckerberg over the IPO. Here’s the sampling of news hits I … Continue reading

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Our Pakistani Allies

Maybe we can’t fund/occupy/bomb every foreign country into modernity after all: A Pakistani doctor who led a phony vaccination campaign aimed at helping the CIA pinpoint Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts was convicted of treason Wednesday and sentenced to 33 years in … Continue reading

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“He’s Simply Not Their Kind Of Guy”

The media’s making a semi-big deal over Pres. Obama’s primary struggles in heavily white Southern states. As Zandar points out, “Folks, I’ve lived here.  There’s a reason why a state of majority registered Democratic voters gave John McCain the win … Continue reading

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Anecdotes vs. Evidence

Watching the right wing try to assemble evidence of a “War on white men” is kind of like watching a toddler mash non-matching puzzle pieces together. The narrative on the right is that the country is ignoring the real bias … Continue reading

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Zombie Reagan Want YOU!

I’ve been away from the blog for a while now as other things have become more hectic, but I should be back to writing regularly starting tomorrow. That said, I couldn’t resist bringing this to everyone’s attention: A British auction … Continue reading

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Manufacturing Contempt

On my post about how watching Fox News makes you stupider, commenter Tevyeh asks, “Any thoughts on how a higher percentange of Republicans than Democrats answered correctly on each of the eight questions?” That’s a reasonable enough question, but I … Continue reading

Posted in News and Current Events, Politics | 11 Comments

Nothing’s Too Stupid For Tom Friedman

Political science Cassandras Thomas Mann & Norm Ornstein offer an article well worth reading in full, offering ideas that won’t work, and ideas that might work, to reduce partisanship. One of the perennial failures: Ah, if only we had a … Continue reading

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Too Stupid For The National Review

Well, too frivolous, anyway. Rich Lowry doesn’t like Facebook all that much: Facebook is the world’s foremost purveyor of information you shouldn’t care about. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is to uselessness what Henry Ford was to the automobile. He has … Continue reading

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Nothing Is Too Stupid For The Right Wing, Ctd

Watching Fox News makes you less informed, more certain, and more adamant. It’s not really a great combination. David Frum writes up a new study:

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Nothing Is Too Stupid For The Right Wing

A few weeks ago, the Heartland Institute unleashed an ad campaign comparing people who believe in climate change to Ted Kaczynski. As a result, a substantial number of their staffers quit, and their funding is drying up. Heartland will probably … Continue reading

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On Tragedies

Not that long ago it was pretty common to have streakers running onto the field at every major sporting event.  Eventually, ESPN and other sports broadcasts realized that if they just stopped showing the streakers on TV, there was way … Continue reading

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Rubio Guilty of Greatest Hyperbole in History of Planet

Rubio may very well be getting the VP nod.  He sure is starting to sound like Romney: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) did not mince words on Saturday, labeling President Barack Obama as the most “divisive figure in modern American history.” … Continue reading

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“I Don’t Think There Are Many People Like That”

From Kenneth B. McIntyre’s engaging review of Paul Gottfried’s new book on Leo Strauss: According to Gottfried, Strauss and his followers have always been more concerned with practical questions about contemporary politics than with intellectual history or complex philosophical questions. Their … Continue reading

Posted in Foreign Policy, History, News and Current Events, Politics | 1 Comment

Little Wings

Little Wing is up there as one of my favorite Jimi Hendrix songs.     It’s also been the subject of some good covers through the years. 

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