I suppose there aren't too many ways to proceed with a political campaign in the face of several charges of sexual harassment, but Herman Cain is certainly finding one of the more distasteful ways of proceeding. His campaign is choosing to answer the accusations by smearing the accusers ((Link)/ ) . Well. That's unattractive, to say the least. The point of the tactic as a tactic seems suggestive of the machinations behind the choice. The incidents in question occurred during the 1990's, a...

A Grand Unified Theory of Inequality: or, Herman Cain is just Awful Addressing the various statements by Herman Cain is like evaluating a pigeon based on the Rorschach test of the patterns made by its poop. What you have to say about his pronouncements regarding whether he is pro-choice or pro-life, or whether he would negotiate with terrorists, say more about you than about the candidate, because, let's be honest: he's making some of this shit up as he goes along, not unlike a pigeon. And yo...

Two pieces that I read today made me give a good hard think about the relationship of the establishment Democratic Party to the Occupy movement. On one hand, we've got a pollster hack, Doug Schoen (Link)/ , biasing his polls to "demonstrate" that the Democratic Party shouldn't get involved in the Occupy movement because the goal of the latter are supposedly "radical". On the other hand, we've got concerned liberals like Glenn Greenwald (Link)/ who believe that the Democratic Party has done to...

You don't do a damn thing ((Link)), you argue over details ((Link)) , you fire people ((Link)) and you hope things turn out for the best! Um. (What's the old saying about herding cats? Or "I don't belong to any organized party--I'm a Democrat!" Insert your favorite hackneyed political phrase here.) I'm a liberal Democrat. Oh yes, I am. And sometimes I just don't like my party. It's not that I want a third party. Third parties are for nerds, quitters and people who have enough money to make a t...

I also cross-posted at the Poetry Forum, so there's that, but I was curious if this would get any feedback. RAND I guess my issue so to speak is with Objectivism, which doesn't match with objective reality as it happens to you and me, because I produce what I do in my downtime for peanuts, but my real nut is what I do for the state, which players hate but appreciate I deliver a service and give a hundred percent and reap benefits which are because of my union, because collectivism is a recogni...

From today's speech: The America I know is generous and compassionate; a land of opportunity and optimism. We take responsibility for ourselves and each other; for the country we want and the future we share. We are the nation that built a railroad across a continent and brought light to communities shrouded in darkness. We sent a generation to college on the GI bill and saved millions of seniors from poverty with Social Security and Medicare. We have led the world in scientific research and t...

(I don't know if this "belongs" here--but I wrote it and wanted to share it.) It's not a territory. You don't get to wage war over it. It's mine. My body is the only thing I came into this world with. I was born with it, and I will live in it until I die. It's the one thing I can say is truly mine. My parents and my marriages and my on-line presence have left me with different names and handles, but if you're looking for me--the definitive location of me, myself, and I--you're looking for the ...

whether there are enough Ghostbusters, because since the 80's, there's only been, like--four. and there has to be a hellalots of ghosts when you considered all the people who died since forever, right? Also--vampire hunters? Anyone? Can anyone name anybody but Van Helsing?--No, probably not. I think Buffy and them are a t.v. show, so....I'm just saying, we aren't dealing with vampires like they are real, and vampires have never been more popular, except in the 80's with the Anne Rice and maybe t...

I was at work when this story shot out across the Intertubes, so I wasn't able to see the video. The transcript alone had me kind of amazed: damn, she's uninformed. But the video itself is what's so incredible: When the law students are laughing, she thinks they are laughing with her, not at her. She thought she made a point! And sadly, I think I know which one. Religious fundamentalists just don't believe in separation of church and state. You can't make them. They won't hear it. They'll teac...

(Link) So, people paying attention to the Republican candidate for Governor of the state of New York already know he is fine with the "N-Word", sexism, pictures of bestiality, and despite his own peccadilloes, seems to have a case of "prowess-envy" where Andrew Cuomo is concerned. In other words, he's already a horrible joke perpetrated on the voters of a state that deserves far, far better. (But let us not forget--he is endorsed by Newt Gingrich!) Of course, since he's been portrayed as so v...

Okay, I don't usually do the "all the other bloggers are doing it" stuff if I can help it. But today I decided, what the hell! I've supported the Obama Administration this far, and the Democratic Party since.....my whole life, basically. So why not voice an opinion about whether I feel like the tone of things said recently by the Administration I voted for and that in not quite two years seems to be working on its campaign promises, even if they aren't addressing the issues I totally think they ...

college had a chapel? Yeah, I think a prayer room doesn't make the Cordoba building a masjid in the way a swallow doesn't make a summer. The anti "9/11 mosque" people are missing the larger point regarding what really does make this country great-- we do have religious freedom. Allowing an Islamic community center--or even a mosque, if it was one--isn't a zero-sum issue where its presence really is a "point" to some vague Islamic extremism. The United States also is a free-zone for Islam and it...

(Link) (from my blog*) You might hear her raise her voice just a bit to make her point that Jan Brewer, a pink elephant if there ever was one (bless her heart!) has more cojones (three?) than President Barack Obama, who was elected to his office by a fairly wide margin, I can't help but repeat, over Senator McCain and the curiously popular now-former half-term Governor from the state of Alaska, whose immigration problems are mostly....Alaskans sneaking out to get Canadian health care, I think....

This post regards this Youtube video of Gingrich's longer speech in front of AEI, where he encourages a pursuit of the other countries mentioned in the Axis of Evil, invoking both the Cold War, and especially, WWII. He is a peculiar character--not really an elected figure the last decade or so, and actually ended hid position as Speaker of the house in something akin to an ouster by his own party, he's nevertheless taken seriously. Even when he suggests things like hippies being responsible for ...

Are streetlights a gov't takeover of traffic? Are police forces a government takeover of crime? Are IRS audits a gov't takeover of your money? Is it socialism when a government responds to any disaster? Such as FEMA response to a hurricane or the local response to a fire? Social Security is a response to the needs of the aged, and Medicare to their healthcare needs--are the life and death issues of other citizens less important to society, or more? (Response should be provided in the form ...

Ten Commandments display will get high court review (at (Link) ) (Can't figure out how to link pic--but you know what the Commandments are, surely.) The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled next week to consider the case involving a Ten Commandments monument on Haskell County Courthouse property in Stigler, but the legal discussion got a head start Friday at the University of Oklahoma. Political science professor emeritus Peter Irons, of the University of California at San Diego, and law profe...

From tonight's speech: Over the last several years, the Taliban has maintained common cause with al Qaeda, as they both seek an overthrow of the Afghan government. Gradually, the Taliban has begun to control additional swaths of territory in Afghanistan, while engaging in increasingly brazen and devastating attacks of terrorism against the Pakistani people. Now, throughout this period, our troop levels in Afghanistan remained a fraction of what they were in Iraq. When I took office, we had ...

My husband marked the annual flare-up between us and the season by asking me a question I already knew the answer to: "Can you guess what they started playing at work?" Without missing a beat, I answered, "Christmas music." It's not even Thanksgiving yet, and the Christmas music is being heard in retail stores, probably throughout America. I knew, because I worked retail myself about eleven years ago, and they did it to us then--constant, wall-to-wall Christmas music. It would start as spora...

for the Boston Review covers the relationship of the religion of some of the appointees overseeing the VA with their penny-pinching, glib, and dismissive response to the real disorder that effects the nerves and behaviors and sense-perceptions of persons who have been subjected first-hand to real emotional and physical trauma. It shows a culture that wanted to ignore the reality that soldiers are thinking, feeling human beings, or wanted to pacify them with self-help books like Rick Warren's The...

issue, but more of a trend we've been seeing happening with "old-school" retailers going bust. Gimbels? Wanamakers? Mays? Gone. Macy's is one of a definitely dying breed, but the death throes of this kind of retailer have been going on for something like twenty years. There seems to be lots of different factors behind it-- 1) Sales people vs. "associates". The better sort of department store needs to have actual salespeople, people who know the lines, know the customers, and know how to move pr...

I won't forget where we were as a nation just after 9/11. When the Towers were hit, the first responders, the NYPD and the NYFD, were uniquely close to a human tragedy in the making, going into highly at-risk buildings in the attempt to save as many lives as humanly possible. But in the days after, many, many volunteers, iron and steel-workers, police and fire and rescue experts, wanted to help with a grim job afterwards--of finding survivors, or as was increasingly likely, bodies. To take apart...

Re: his performance here-- (Link) He's nuts. I know. Picking on Uncle Pat for his peculiar version of racism is like a canned hunt, but you have to give Rachael Maddow points for marksmanship just given that many people in the mainstream media have not actually considered him a game animal before. But here, he just looks like what he is--an artifact of a bygone era in American ethnocentricity. I think the thing I like best is his implausible assertion that not only is Sonia Sotomayor an affirm...

I think I've found a way to explain what I hate, hate, hate, about today's news media, and I'm calling it "The Puppy-Kicking Doctrine". The idea relates to the idea of "balance" in the point of view presented in discussion of any news topic, and it goes something like this: Whenever a rather awful thing takes place, the only way to discuss it in a really balanced way is to show both sides of the argument. Even if the topic is kicking puppies. Even if the numbers showed that maybe one in a thous...

Dr. George Tiller, age 67, was murdered in the lobby of a church because the doctor had spent the better part of his career performing much-needed women's health care services, which included late term abortions. He was one of a very few physicians that provided these services, and had, over the course of his practice, been shot, threatened, protested, but felt a dedication to providing this form of medical assistance. The doctor's murderer without a doubt, believes that the Wichita health clin...

Now, Before I get into this, I'm not a "9/11 Truther" and I really can't see the Bush Administration deciding it was better for this to happen, or worse yet, encouraged it. But there were signs something was happening before 9/11 that they just didn't notice--and not because Sandy Berger and Bill Clinton never told them in 12/2000, that al Qaeda was going to be a major threat (and they'd have been reminded of this when the final analysis in re: the USS Cole attack came out in January of '01) and...

I swear I've seen more of Cheney in the past month than I think I did during Bush's last year in office. And if it were at all possible, I think I like him less. My biggest problem with him right now is, in the midst of the torture debate going on in the news and in the blogosphere, that we know he's a lying sack of crap. He lied about WMD's in Iraq and the Iraq-al Qaeda thread long after it was fashionable or practical for anyone to do so. And so he pushed the "Liberty Tower lie" on a show li...

Demin is the All-American fabric. It is the fabric of our proud frontier past, and our hard-working future. It's the fabric of youth culture, and the fabric of ease. It's the touch, the feel of cotton, which is the fabric of our lives as Americans. James Dean--denim. Dennis the Menace--denim overalls. The Fonz--jeans. The Marlboro Man. Whether it's gold-panners or laborers or farm-workers, truckers, or motorcyclists--denim is the American fabric. It's our real colors. For hippies or working-cla...

performances are ad-lib, but they don't come alive until they hit paper. Take a look at the strong, incantatory reiterations of this piece: We've got time to write tickets, we've got time to write tickets, Have the police officers write tickets, you know why; because That way, the city has money that they can bribe people To vote for them; they don't want to enforce these laws Because they want more votes; you know it happens every time; They're doing it to the border patrol, they're doing it...

(Based on my response to a post in the Lounge which got all serious.) I don't think the GOP is over, but some facets of it are in serious jeopardy. These are my top 5 Republican ideas that are in the rubbish pile. You can add your own Dead Republican ideals to this thread. Here's the GOP endangered pile: 1) Free Market notions: If Economics is a science, why is it that every time the experiment of deregulation is put in place, and the results are the opposite of what the hypothesis forecasts (...

Even though there seems to be a revelation-a-minute regarding McCain's vice-presidential running-mate, I put my money on her not leaving the ticket. This was inspired by an earlier thread, and, since I'm a raving egomaniac, I decided to put my comments in a separate post. The thesis: He's stuck with her. The reason: Because they are who they are. The reason you won't see a change anytime soon is two-fold: problem one is Palin, and problem two is McCain. Sarah Palin is currently under an ethics ...