Four Score And Seven….Please, Settle Down….Four Score And…Thank You
From the New Republic’s Speech!: “If Abraham Lincoln were brought back to life, one thing that would throw him, other than electric power and the Internet, would be that audiences disrupted his speeches by clapping after every three or four lines. As ordinary as this seems now, this kind of applause is actually a custom [...]
Heartbreaking
From NY Times Magazine’s Is Obama the End of Black Politics?: “Elijah Cummings, the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and an early Obama supporter, told me a story about watching his father, a South Carolina sharecropper with a fourth-grade education, weep uncontrollably when Cummings was sworn in as a representative in 1996. Afterward, [...]
Tracking A Digital Whisper
From the Washington Post’s An Attack That Came Out of the Ether: “Allen set her sights on dissecting the modern version of a whisper campaign, even though experts told her it would be impossible to trace the chain e-mail to its origin. Along the way, even as her hunt grew cold, she gained [...]
Laying The Soil
From Gary Hart’s America’s Next Chapter: “Ralph Waldo Emerson noted the political oscillations between the party of memory and the party of hope, the party of conservatism and the party of innovation. Henry Adams believed that ‘a period of about 12 years measured the beat of the pendulum’ during the era of the founders. Arthur [...]
Nothing Like Tiny Village Living
From the Rutland Herald’s Poultney superintendent departs amid feud: “The relationship between the Poultney School District and its superintendent is so frayed there’s a chance the state troopers might be called on to escort [her] from the town’s high school graduation ceremonies today.”
A Long, Interesting Read
From the NY Times Magazine’s The Aria of Chris Matthews: “The broader issue involves whether Matthews is a man trapped in a tired caricature. And it touches on the future of his archetype in general — in other words, whither the cable blowhard? The ‘What happens to Chris’ question — a hot topic at NBC [...]
When I say “Us,” I Don’t Think of John McCain
From the New Republic’s Meet John ‘Dubya’ McCain: “Weaned by a military family on the lessons of that most classically Manichaean of modern conflicts, World War II, and psychologically defined by his own maverick streak, McCain’s worldview may be more instinctual than intellectual. But it doesn’t matter. Like Cold War conservatives, McCain has taken a [...]
The unfortunately utterly factual record of American iniquity.
From Alternet’s The Wright Controversy Revealed America’s Gutless, Panicky, Deeply Insecure Side: “The point is that a country that had any balls at all — that was secure enough in its patriotic self-image to stare vicious criticism right in the face and collectively decide for itself, in a state of sober reflection, what part of [...]
20 Progressive Ways To Save America
From Democracy’s What’s Next: “Democracy always has seen its role as revitalizing and renewing progressive thinking for a new century. Usually, we focus on ideas instead of policies—on overarching approaches rather than the specific proposals which follow from them. But, at this moment, we believe that it is critical to do something slightly different and [...]
Theocracy Rejected: Former Christian Right Leaders ‘Fess up
From Alternet’s Theocracy Rejected: Former Christian Right Leaders ‘Fess up: “Frank Schaeffer, John Whitehead and Cal Thomas have repudiated the theocratic movement they once led. Here’s why.”
