↧
Late Night Blogging Thoughts
[From the Frog Pond] I've been an incurable political junkie for about ten years now, maybe twelve. For the past five years I've spent six-to-twelve hours a day reading or writing about politics,...
View ArticleThe Anti-Corporatist Movement
[From the Frog Pond]I want to talk about a losing ideological battle that is being waged on the left in this country by a group of people that I will call (non-pejoratively) "anti-corporatists." They...
View ArticleCenk
In a set of recent pieces, Cenk Uygur has made a defense of relentless criticism of the president and an argument that Howard Dean and Jane Hamsher cannot be wrong no matter what they say so long as...
View ArticlePlaying the Blame Game
Al Giordano makes an amusing analogy comparing Democrats to the Simpsons and Republicans to the Flanders. Whose party do you want to attend? I agree with Al for the most part, but I just don't think...
View ArticleObama's Aspirational Language
[From the Frog Pond]I call the following rhetoric from the State of the Union speech 'aspirational,' because it isn't objectively true or false. It's a call for all of us to be better people and...
View ArticleCognitive Dissonance
[From the Frog Pond]It's interesting to watch Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) speak before the Conservative Political Action Conference. He is making a passionate case for tax cuts for the rich (because...
View ArticleHow Did We Get Here?
In part, the new Brookings Institutionreport on party polarization by William Galston doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. The two parties haven't been this divided since Reconstruction....
View ArticlePA-06: Interview With Manan Trivedi
[Originally posted on May 8th, at the Frog Pond]Last Friday, I sat down with Manan Trivedi, who is running in the Democratic primary to be my congressman here in Pennsylvania's Sixth District. While...
View ArticleMy Life in Politics
Presidential elections in my lifetime: 1972: I was three years old on election day and living in Princeton, New Jersey. I had almost no awareness that an election was happening, but I did enjoy one...
View ArticleYes, It Is All About Race
[Also available in green] One way to understand the divisions in the Republican Party is to note that they have none. They are an almost wholly united Party of No. But, that didn't used to be the...
View ArticleIn Blueville
[Also available in green]I live in a Blue Family, so what do I know? Over hear in Blueville, there are certain things you don't do in polite company. For example, you don't break out in song with your...
View ArticleThe Republican House of Horrors
[Also available in green]One of the odd things about the current crop of Republicans is that they're all scoundrels to one degree or another. Now, I expect a bit of questionable history from...
View ArticleThinking About Huckabee and Colonies
[Also available in green]Media Matters reports on Mike Huckabee's appearance on the Bryan Fischer radio program. Here they discuss why Barack Obama has "anti-American" views.
View ArticleAggressively Stupid Republican Ideologues
[Also available in green]:Yesterday, I was watching MSNBC when they cut to a local Oklahoma station that was monitoring a massive tornado (as it turned out, there were several) that was cutting a swath...
View ArticleI Almost Feel Bad for the Teabaggers
It's kind of interesting to wade into the fetid waters of Lunaticville to see how they're reacting to the news that real Republicans represent Wall Street, and Tea Baggers are merely their (mostly)...
View ArticleA Word on Glenn Greenwald's Worldview
[From the Frog Pond]It's not very nice to take Glenn Greenwald on about an article in which he cites me approvingly, but I do have to lodge a complaint about his style of rhetoric. I don't have a...
View ArticleWhy Hand Obama a Win?
[Also available in green]What we have in Washington is something of a political death spiral. It's a little complicated to understand, but bear with me. In this morning's Politico we're treated to...
View ArticleThe Worst Political Party
In 2009, New Jersey voters went to the polls to elect a governor. Their choices were not promising. On the Republican side was a former U.S. Attorney who had done enough of Karl Rove and Alberto...
View ArticleWhy and How You Should Fight Voter ID Laws
On Monday, March 15, 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed a Joint Session of Congress. It was a mere week after the deadly clashes in Selma, Alabama, where the police had attacked...
View ArticleDo Something About the War on Voting
On May 17, 1957, exactly three years after the issuance of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, roughly 20,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to urge the federal government to do more to...
View ArticleGOP Hates Citizens United, Too
Recently, some Republicans have begun to reconsider the merits of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Just yesterday, John McCain said this:"As you know, I...
View ArticleOn Operation Hilarity
[Opinion from the Frog Pond]In theory, Mitt Romney could regain his lead against Obama among independents as quickly as he lost it. But I don't think that is likely to happen. Romney's plunge isn't...
View ArticleWe Can Fix Citizens United
[Also available in green]The Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in the Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission case removed all restrictions on corporate spending on electioneering communications....
View ArticleCitizens United & the Montana Corrupt Practices Amicus Brief
I'm going to talk about something I care a lot about. Bear with me.In February, the Supreme Court of the United States blocked a ruling of the Montana Supreme Court. The case concerned a state law...
View ArticleWhat Happened to Campaign Finance Reform?
Do a Google News search for "John McCain" and "campaign finance reform" and you won't find much. John McCain doesn't talk about campaign finance reform anymore. After the Supreme Court issued their...
View ArticleObama Should Be Your Hero
[Also available in green]Near the end of a long article in the Washington Post about the resistance people have in Oklahoma to buying car insurance or being told what to do by the government, we...
View ArticlePoor Mitt, We Know How You Feel
[Also available in green]What's it like for Mitt Romney to have to deal with someone like Harry Reid claiming that he heard from a Bain Capital investor that Romney didn't pay any income taxes for ten...
View ArticleIt Struck a Chord
[Also available in green]My piece on poor Mitt Romney went viral, with over 4,000 shares of the orange version and 1,300 shares of the green. It spent most of the day atop the Daily Kos recommended...
View ArticleThe Disgraceful Richard Cohen
[Also available in green]The sins of Richard Cohen have been well-documented. I don't think I need to recount them all here. All that is important is that you realize that Cohen is one of the rare...
View ArticlePick of Ryan Leaves House GOP Defenseless
[Also available in green]On April 15th, 2011, at 2:53 in the afternoon, the House of Representatives voted 235-193 for the Paul Ryan budget for fiscal year 2012. There was not a single Democrat...
View ArticleDestroy the $716 Billion Lie
[Also available in green]The 716 billion dollar lie is the central line of defense. It's like the Republicans' Maginot Line. If the lie can be breached with the blitz of truth, the GOP's argument will...
View ArticleA Campaign About Nothing
I knew that the Romney campaign reminded me of something. It's an episode of Seinfeld.
View ArticleWhy Romney's Secret Speech Will Matter
There are so many ways I could approach Mitt Romney's recently revealed secret speech. People will snark it to death. We can have hours of fun with this thing. If we're feeling really mischievous,...
View ArticleGetting the Crazy Out of the Philly Suburbs
During the Republican National Convention, I went to get a haircut because I was going to be appearing on an internet feed the next day and I was looking a little scraggly. When the middle-aged woman...
View ArticlePhilly Republicans Want to Kill Medicare
You don't wait until you have been in a car accident to purchase car insurance; you don't wait until your house has been flooded to buy flood insurance, and you don't wait until your home is ablaze to...
View ArticlePA-08: Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick's Contempt for Working Families
[Originally posted at Booman Tribune]Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania's 8th congressional district had about the most inauspicious beginning to his term that can possibly be imagined. He...
View ArticlePA-06: Tomorrow, Action Summit for Manan Trivedi
[The author is a consultant for Democracy for America]If my readers will indulge me for a moment, I want to talk briefly about something local. I live in Pennsylvania's Sixth District. My congressman...
View ArticleLying Romney in Couplets
[Also available in green]Let's do a little exercise. I am going to provide you with some couplets. They are things Mitt Romney said at different times about the same subject. And I want you to try...
View ArticleThe Wilderness
[Also available in green]That the Republican Party is demonstrating fractured views on foreign policy is only one small part of a much greater state of generalized disarray. The most obvious problem...
View ArticleMarco Rubio is Being Groomed for 2016
[Also available in green]Something I noticed in January, when Marco Rubio unfurled his support for comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship, was that many voices on the right who...
View ArticleJohn Boehner and the Sequester
[Also available in green]If you've been following the debate over the impending "sequester," you have probably seen liberals quoting Speaker Boehner saying that he got 98 percent of what he wanted in...
View ArticleTreat the Tea Party Like the Addicts They Are
[Originally in green]Jonathan Bernstein is correct that you can tell who the target audience for an opinion piece is by looking for the "to-be-sure" paragraph. The "to-be-sure" paragraph is intended...
View ArticleWho Broke the Very Fabric of the Senate?
[Originally in green]The following excerpt raises so many issues:As senators in 2005, Obama and Biden publicly defended the filibuster and the requirement of a supermajority to change Senate rules....
View ArticleAbout That Ubiquitous Atwater Rosetta Stone Confession
[Also available in White and Green]I don't know if everyone is talking about race because Congress is deadlocked and, well, we have to talk about something more than Ukraine and the missing jet...
View ArticleA Heat-Fever Bacchanalian Feast of Stupid
[Also available in green]Charles Krauthammer is clearly nervous about the House Republicans' decision to go Full Metal Benghazi by creating a Select Committee to look into...what? So, he has some...
View ArticleWill Anyone Read This?
[Cross-posted in green]So, the DSCC is moving in with a big buy in South Dakota. So what? You don't live there, so what do you care? Hell, it exhausts me to even think about trying to explain the...
View ArticleRuth Marcus is the Latest "Liberal" Columnist to Defend Dennis Hastert
Looking at my archives, I realize that I’ve written about Ruth Marcus more often than I thought. It has never been flattering.Typically, I say things like “If Ruth Marcus suddenly sounds like Jane...
View ArticleOf Course, Trump Will Never Win
It’s gotten to the point that it appears almost like a nervous tic. Pundits and political scientists feel like it’s absolutely necessary to preface anything they have to say about Donald Trump with a...
View ArticleCoalition Government: How to Fix the House of Representatives
Ever since 2007, when the independent socialist Bernie Sanders graduated from the U.S. House of Representatives to the U.S. Senate, the House has been made up of some combination of 435 Republicans and...
View ArticleOn Bob Bennett and Donald Trump
Bob Bennett died on May 4th from complications after suffering a stroke while trying to fight off pancreatic cancer. He was 82 years old. Until 2010, he was a U.S. Senator representing Utah, but he was...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....