The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    GotToBeMe's picture

    Political Cartoon: The jester mocks the Jester

    By GotToBeMe on Sat, 01/08/2011 - 9:07am |

    Political Cartoon: The jester mocks the Jester Copyright 2011 Kaveh Adel

    ......The Jester does not like being mocked, even by the jester!........

    AmiBlue's picture

    Don’t tell ‘em. Sell ‘em

    By AmiBlue on Fri, 01/07/2011 - 8:05pm |

     Rick Perlstein  writes a brief and enlightening history of the conservative battle to destroy  liberals in First Principles: The Role of Government,  part of the winter issue of Democracy Journal.  The republicans have used the power of media for many  more years than I had imagined and the paranoia that fuels the fight seems to have been around even longer.  (N.B. I’m taking just a few snippets from Perlstein’s article here, but I hi

    we are stardust's picture

    Robert Gates’ Pentagon Budget-Cut Magic

    By we are stardust on Fri, 01/07/2011 - 6:58pm |

                                   (by permission, Anthony Freda, www.anthonyfreda.com)  Thanks, Anthony.  Easy to sell war to us, isn't it?

    Richard Day's picture

    ROSEWOOD & THE BADGE OF SLAVERY

    By Richard Day on Fri, 01/07/2011 - 2:46pm |

    File:Rosewood Florida rc12408.jpg

    The next time some jackass contends that the American Civil War had nothing to do with slavery; show him this:

    MSNY's picture

    WTF IS GOING ON!

    By MSNY on Thu, 01/06/2011 - 8:10pm |

    (at your service, Mr. Day)

    There is some weird stuff happening.

    First, I saw a story about thousands of birds just dropping out of the sky in Arkansas and I thought, ‘oh, that’s weird.’  But I since I was on vacation, I didn’t give too much thought to it after that.

    coatesd's picture

    Sanity in a Time of Madness

    By coatesd on Wed, 01/05/2011 - 8:00pm |


     

    “When you are in Washington, remember what the voters back home want – less government and more freedom”[1]

    (Jim DeMint, welcoming tea-party backed victors in the 2010 mid-term elections)

     

    This is no ordinary day in American politics. This is the day power officially shifted in the House of Representatives from Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats to John Boehner’s Republicans. This is the day the inmates retook the asylum.

    Richard Day's picture

    THE FATES & THE FURIES

    By Richard Day on Tue, 01/04/2011 - 12:30am |

    File:Deux furies.png

    BACHMAN AND PALIN DISCUSSING STUFF

    How the Fed's 0% Money is Creating Jobs, Profits

    By NCD on Mon, 01/03/2011 - 2:23pm |

    ....at the big banks, hedge funds and Wall Street. Homeowners, non-profits, and religious institutions overdue taxes are being sold as tax liens by state and local governments, and bundled by big banks like Bank of America, and hedge funds like Fortress Investment Group.

    jollyroger's picture

    Prez: "I declare three emergencies: Infrastructure, Family, Fiscal"

    By jollyroger on Mon, 01/03/2011 - 2:01pm |

    In keeping with the (fantasy) vigorous executive that we have not got, suppose the following:

    At the SOTU, flanked on one side by Gracie Slick ("Tear down the walls") and Michael Vick on the other ("Everyone can use a fresh start") Prez galvanizes his presidency and the country,.

    Decader's picture

    Blogging Convergence: the Untouchable (G-Man) or Leave it to Bieber

    By Decader on Sun, 01/02/2011 - 7:35am |

    [Sorry about formatting, but really, I can't be bothered... All is one, all is everything]

    [And originally there was some link between space aliens and Republican politics more than the usual and obvious, but seems to have disappeared from my arghives, only a few crop circles left. Maybe the Mayans hold the secret afterall - 2012 resolution...]

    cmaukonen's picture

    Those Were the Days...or were they ?

    By cmaukonen on Sat, 01/01/2011 - 8:50pm |

    There is a lot of back and forth on the blogs these days about what should or should or be done about the economy, jobs, the financial industry and what not. Some pointing to the president others to congress but most to each other. The problem with all of this is that most of the arguments are based on a premise that assumes a few fundamental myths but ignores some basic facts.

    Richard Day's picture

    A NEW YEAR IN EDUCATION

    By Richard Day on Sat, 01/01/2011 - 7:40pm |

    File:WinstonChurchill1916Army.gif

      NOT THE FINEST HOUR

    Surprise, surprise, historians have found glaring errors in a textbook claiming that African Americans fought in large numbers for the South during the Civil War.

    Brother can you spare a dime

    By Flavius on Sat, 01/01/2011 - 2:44pm |

    The point of post-1945 European welfare states was to free the needy from dependence on private generosity, which tends to miss out the socially marginal, and to be least available when times are hardest. Welfare gave a sense of security and dignity that the less fortunate had never previously enjoyed. It was particularly important to continental societies that had seen how insecurity bred fascism.

    Barth's picture

    Facing the Music

    By Barth on Sat, 01/01/2011 - 2:00pm |

    It was observed in passing yesterday, and probably not just here, that as a day of reckoning, today---New Year's Day---is a bit scary and never painless. The Jewish version of the new year adds the little "book of life contest"---who gets to be in it, and, ummmm, who not, but the secular version, with its resolutions and such, could drive a person to drink, which explains a few things. At least it is not the occasion a decade ago when we all had to consider how we managed to waste a whole millennium.

    2010 the year that ended DADT

    By Flavius on Fri, 12/31/2010 - 11:39pm |

    Step back and think about  it.

    Until now our National policy was to officially designate one group of our fellow citizens as inferior.While at the same time braying about our "Exceptional status".  Yeah, we were exceptional.

    Whodunit!

    By Dennie Briggs on Thu, 12/30/2010 - 1:55pm |

    So now we know the culprits of the holiday blizzard: weatherman Pat Robertson, with his direct cellphone line to God, revealed that it was his punishment to Americans who were planning to attend some gay event! The Eastern flight snarl, furthermore, would prevent them from attending until it was over. And straights, get this: "I think God probably wonders, if these people are really straight, then what are they doing in New York?"

    RUSSELL CROWE TO HEAD CONSUMER FINANCE BUREAU

    By Oxy Mora on Thu, 12/30/2010 - 12:55pm |

    0f course not,

    but a Progressive guy can dream can he? 

    A WSJ article today reports that Elizabeth Warren is looking for a Bureau Chief for Obama to send up to the Hill. For once wouldn't we like to see a working class upstart with street smarts and the ability to stare down the opposition go into the confirmation hearings and sell the country on why financial reform is self-evident and urgent? In otherwords a person with the opposite image of a Timothy Geithner?

    Richard Day's picture

    THE MEANEST SOMBITCH IN AMERICA

    By Richard Day on Thu, 12/30/2010 - 8:50am |

    File:Joe Arpaio.png
                  A NON SMILER

     

    Maricopa County, Arizona is so messed up right now; it is difficult to find a starting point from which any intelligent discussion could ensue.

    Officials in different departments of the state are at each others’ throats.

    cmaukonen's picture

    The Ghost of the Free Market Economy Myth

    By cmaukonen on Wed, 12/29/2010 - 9:27pm |
    "Mercy!" he said.  "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"

    "Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or not?"

    "I do," said Scrooge.  "I must.  But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"

    WAG THE BANKS

    By Oxy Mora on Wed, 12/29/2010 - 2:11pm |

    Does Dodd-Frank's requirement that TBTF banks submit "funeral plans" open the door to dismantling the banks?

    This morning I listened to the interview on Bloomberg of Jason Cave, head of the FDIC's new Office of Complex Financial Institutions. The jist of it was that the Fed and FDIC now have authority to delve into the complex structures of TBTF banks (others like Insurance,etc., to be named) and that the institutions must provide "Resolution Plans" to show how they would be broken up in the event they were judged to be in default or in imminent danger of defaulting.

    cmaukonen's picture

    How the technocrats get it wrong on education...and everything else.

    By cmaukonen on Tue, 12/28/2010 - 12:33pm |

    Scanning the Huffungton post I came across this little item.  Not a particularly  new sentiment in and of it self but the total jest of it does hit home quite well. Having to attend school after my father died, the family was quite impoverished. Little in the way of breakfast and for me, generally no lunch for the first year after this occurred.  The next year I was able to work in the lunch room and get lunch that way. And our finances improved. I was able to get a job in a local TV repair store.

    Narcissism. Stealing a look into the unconscious.

    By Dennie Briggs on Tue, 12/28/2010 - 8:44am |

    The term Narcissism got a bad rap from the beginning when Freud published his classical paper on the subject in 1915.

    Pages