An alarming thing has happened and the most alarming bit is that no one is alarmed. Things seem to be proceeding apace in Egypt and the intellectuals are salivating at the prospect of a new Egyptian constitution, to be drafted by around June. That doesn’t leave much time so they are soliciting advice from foreign corners and from one corner was dislodged sitting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg who used the occasion to suggest that under no circumstances should the Egyptian reformers consider the US Constitution as any sort of guide. It is, after all, laughably aged and enfeebled. Much better ore is to be had in the post-War world. Look right at 10:00 to see where she swallows the Constitution she has sworn to defend in one gulp. Most emphatically does she advise the Egyptians NOT to look at this document for guidance even as she describes the ordinary Rights of public participation and arrest that have been made real in the world, in large part, because of the attention given them in our Constitution and the spread of these, through means fair and foul, to every aspiring society.  How the Egyptian fellow did not show shock or even surprise is a bit mysterious but a larger puzzler is how this could have been on youtube for a week and only now drawing attention. Hopefully this was a clever bit of disinformation. The dimmest Cairo cabbie could not fail  to realize, Ginsburg is a Jew. Perhaps the State Department and the Justice came up with a plot of reverse-psychology. “Ruthie,” Hillary might have told her. “You go in and you tell ‘em, don’t you look at our Constitution. There is NOTHING in there for you, and they will tear into it like Bill through a Ladies’ Auxiliary!” But no, with the specifics and enthusiasm it is plain, this is Ginsburg Unplugged. [Read more →]

Tags: money, politics & government, race & culture by Ken Watson
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If ever I run this town, even before I take revenge on my enemies I will have a statue commissioned. A bronzed Anne Cox-Chambers already man’s the traffic island outside my front door, permanently enjoying a newspaper as only an owner of one could do. Around Underground there are life-size bronzes from the ’30s and 1890s. Naturally we have a smattering of Civil War heroes (or villains), some artsy friezes and a Phoenix both in abstract and figure. There is at least one missing. The subject has not been gone long enough to become historic but I remember and will see her commemorated. She was always in the company of statues when I saw her, usually Herman Talmadge. She stood quite nearly as a statue; an elderly woman, clearly a nifty number from the Mad Men era would stand unmoving in a parka and gloves in the winter, in a sundress with a wet hanky on her head in summer, holding a stack of leaflets in each arm. She didn’t hand them out. She couldn’t have since both hands were full, the half-reams perfectly her cubit. Sometimes they were single sheets and sometimes it would be a stapled pair. Did I mention the rocks? She also had a rock on each pile to act as a paperweight. Around her neck hung a small sandwich board explaining in meticulous print how the private ownership of land was the source of near all of man’s troubles. [Read more →]

Tags: if I were king..., politics & government by Ken Watson
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Tags: politics & government, technology by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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Do you remember back when that jury full of carefully selected idiots let Casey Anthony stroll her baby-murdering caboose out of court, free as a bird last year?  Come on, you remember her, right?  The 20 something tart that had either murdered her own two year old daughter, or helped someone else hide the body after they murdered her, and then went on a 31 day party binge, boozing it up and getting new tats before she was arrested, which caused her to immediately began creating lie after lie in an attempt to avoid paying the penalty for slaughtering her kid so she wouldn’t have to deal with the responsibilities of being a parent?

Immediately after the trial, she dyed her hair, let it down out of that ponytail, changed her name, and is now living wild and free, unrecognizable as the baby killing liar we all saw on TV, and the public’s outrage exploded.  The jury hastily ran to the cameras, gibbering about how “Oh, I didn’t say she was innocent, just that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict her in the 400 items introduced by the prosecution during the trial!” in an effort to stop the harassment emanating from even their friends and family.  Do you remember what the public was told, over and over again, in an attempt to calm everyone down?

“Our justice system is designed to let 1,000 guilty people go free to avoid punishing 1 innocent person!”

Oh, really?

[Read more →]

Tags: politics & government by Mike McGowan
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They say it is over. “They” is the Romnoids. But they have been saying it was over before it ever began. Now Newt, bedraggled and forlorn, seems to be in sullen agreement or at least he is not up to energetic resistance, which amounts to agreement. If we needed any more evidence that Newt has a half-life, a shelf-life and an inner-life inconsistent with the rigors of the Presidency, this is it. It seems Newt had begun to believe his own press. Santorum took a much harsher beating but unlike Newt, it was what he expected. Unshocked, he and his 13% will march on. If Newt were an ordinary party loyalist, he would back Mitt immediately hoping for Commerce Secretary to the detriment of the party and the nation. It seems he might be infantile enough though to consider his dignity over his advancement; always the calculation. If Gingrich can demonstrate a weak pulse and continue harrowing Romney it will be the finest service he could ever perform for the nation (and Rick Santorum), not that Newt should gain the office. Romney is the great threat at the moment and the Gingrich Blunderbuss is the only plausible weapon at hand but the powder, while voluminous, has grown damp in the Florida humidity. What if Mitt has succeeded, as of yesterday, to make his nomination a done deal? [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, trusted media & news by Ken Watson
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The TEA Party is dead.  The corpse of hope has rigor mortis, and is beginning to produce a funky odor.  I write this as a funeral dirge for the light of the right, a remembrance of what was, and a lament for what should have been.

Ok, maybe that’s a bit melodramatic, but the fact remains that the TEA Party is done, and its influence has faded like the last flickers from a guttering candle.

[Read more →]

Tags: politics & government by Mike McGowan
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Tags: animals, politics & government by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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Mitt Romney has suffered serial pantsing through the primaries, some of it self-inflicted. Count the Iowa caucuses as an own-goal. If he hadn’t made his puny “win” by eight votes (against Rick Santorum for cripes!) into some sort of historical landslide then his puny loss by thirty-odd votes and the quick-change dealing involved would not have landed with such a thump. The lash bit especially deep as he also played his genuine and unsurprising win in New Hampshire as the second in a streak! And don’t you know that NOBODY has ever won both Iowa and New Hampshire and NOT won the Republican primaries! This factoid suffers explosive decompression when it is likewise understood that none of those gents ever won the general. But Triumphalism is largely the coin of the primary realm. With momentum any uptrend is rideable all the way to the White House, so Mitt was certainly counseled, that is IF he had to be convinced to take his victory lap and did not, as seemed to happen, leave all salaried employees in the dust. We can forgive Willard his enthusiasm perhaps as he was doing it for Dear Old Dad. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, politics & government by Ken Watson
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I never wanted to write an attack piece. As a satirist with a few TV appearance under my belt, I’ve always avoided the type of person-as-the-joke pseudo-commentary you can hear from smirking amateur comics in LA who say things like, “Hey guys, GLENN BECK! Haha!”

Legitimate commentary deconstructs politicians in order to make a point, rather than relying on shared prejudices to get a snicker. But despite my best attempts, the only real point I can think of to make about Newt Gingrich is that he actually is a joke, and he’s one that a shocking number of Americans don’t get.

This is my attempt to explain it to them. [Read more →]

Tags: diatribes, politics & government by Kevin R. Breen
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The New York Times opinion page is chock full of benignant thinkers. It’s a roster of such great intellectual depth that, to be honest, I always feel like I’m missing something every time I read them. The lineup is so impressive that it’s difficult to decide exactly which one of them is the most special, but David Brooks recently made a strong case for himself when he made the following important observation about politics and the government:

Sunshinism is a destructive ideology. Forcing people to financially undress in public is just one of those incursions that repels decent people from running for office.

…

It also destroys people’s faith in government. Have you noticed that as democracy has become more open, cynicism has skyrocketed and the effectiveness of government has gone down the toilet? Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has the best observation on this — that parts of government should be hidden for the same reason middle-aged people should wear clothes.

[Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, trusted media & news by Ricky Sprague
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