“It’s the economy, stupid.” This was Carville’s version of Reaganism. Talk jobs, talk prosperity. Talk up enterprise. Talk down “Big Government”.  Painting in this limited palette with a canvas supplied by the shallowest recession in economic history allowed Bill Clinton and Ross Perot to decisively defeat the hapless Elder Bush who may have then regretted his own tactical distancing from Reagan.

Or perhaps not. It takes great effort now to understand the despite and ridicule that met Reagan whenever he reared his Brylcreamed-head among the governing elite of whatever party. Dick Cheney, we are recently reminded, as a toddler was tasked with casting Reagan (to his detriment) as a second Goldwater. Not Goldwater the man, dedicated friend of liberty and very fine Senator, but rather Goldwater the electoral event which saw a shellacking not yet repeated until, maybe, 1984. One could wonder now how such a program could be possibly entertained, especially when the contest was a Republican Primary, but that is because we now, apparently, are officially unanimous in our respect and affection for Ronald Wilson Reagan. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, trusted media & news by Ken Watson
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For a while now I have been hoping for an encounter with death– Saint Death, that is, or Santa Muerte, affectionately known to her (largely Mexican) followers as La Flaca– the Skinny Girl. She’s all bones, you see.

I don’t remember how I first found out about Lady Death. It was some time last year, while I was prowling the Texas-Mexico border. For the uninitiated, Santa Muerte is a crypto-saint not recognized by the Catholic Church. Nobody seems to know where she came from- one source I read speculated that the cult was new, dating back only to the late 1960s. Another speculated that it was much older, and arose as a result of peasant confusion between a Catholic Saint and an Aztec deity of death. Whichever variant is true, Holy Death emerged looking like a figure from a death metal album cover: grinning skull face, scythe, hooded robe etc. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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10. “I’m a Tea Partier. By definition, we don’t like thinking things through.”

9. “The NRA told me it would be okay.”

8. “It’s not like I was targeting Republicans!”

7. “I can’t be responsible for every crazy person out there, just myself.”

6. “It was a joke!”

5. “I’m a mama grizzly, and I believe in the Constitutional right to arm bears!”

4. “Guns don’t kill people; bullets do. Guns just make ’em go real fast.”

3. “I have an endorsement deal with the Target retail stores.”

2. “Thinkin’ gives me a headache.”

1. “I’m a heartless bitch with no regard for human life — unless it’s a fetus.”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, politics & government, trusted media & news by Bob Sullivan
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For a long time now I’ve been wondering: who the f*ck is Paul Krugman? Now of course, I know who he is supposed to be: a Nobel prize winning economist, a professor at Princeton, and multi-purpose talking head whose principal media platform is a column in the New York Times.

But seriously — have you read that shit? For a supposedly deep thinking intellectual, Krugman just churns out nothing but boiler plate bien pensant waffle, week after week. There’s no thinking involved. It’s more like a stimulus response: add Sarah Palin here and watch the head spin. Add Tea Party here for instant spittle- flecked rant.

Most of the time — like most people — I simply ignore this Krugman freak. But this weekend he kind of pissed me off. His instant blog on the Arizona shootings was exactly what you’d expect from an angry wee man with a hate-on for the hoi polloi.You know, evil Republicans and Tea Party types creating a climate of violence etc. His column a day later expanded on the theme — Krugman’s people, the virtuous “left” would never do anything like that. But it wasn’t the blog that pissed me off so much as the thought of tiny little Krugman rushing to his computer within seconds of hearing of the attack to exploit it for political ends. Even as the bodies of the dead were still cooling, he already knew everything, without actually knowing anything. [Read more →]

Tags: diatribes, politics & government, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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I get a kick out of what I call everyday irony—small contradictions, often so small they pass without notice—that make me laugh. For example, the other day a friend of mine pointed out the everyday irony of those radio ads that ask for donations of old cars to benefit the blind. Undoubtedly a worthy charity, but it still brings to mind Mister Magoo. [Read more →]

Tags: language & grammar, politics & government, race & culture, trusted media & news by Jay Baldwin
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It’s important to seek wonder in everyday life, to retain a child’s fascination for simple things. This is not always simple – the sheer grind of daily life can easily knock the joie de vivre out of your system. Fortunately you can find wonder in the most unexpected places, so long as you keep your eyes open. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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So anyway, the other day I was in my local HEB super center (that’s a grocery store for folks reading this who live outside of Texas and Mexico) and I decided to have a look at the books since I’m always interested to see the kind of books you can buy in a mega grocery store. Since they offer nothing but the best selling titles, it’s like a direct line to the popular reading taste.

There wasn’t too much Alejandro Jodorowsky or Daniil Kharms but there was a lot of James Patterson, Twilight, Sarah Palin and a goodly stack of George Bush’s Decision Points. What would it be like, I wondered, to spend a year only reading books purchased from HEB or Wal-Mart? I could call it The Year of Reading Dangerously, write a blog and then get a book out of it. Maybe even a film deal, like that Meryl Streep Julia Child crock of shit. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Back in the Golden Age of easy credit I’d walk around Britain wondering where all the money was coming from. This abundance of cash was especially baffling in Scotland, where nobody makes anything any more. Who was scoffing down truffles in the fancy restaurants? Who was shelling out a fortune for houses that had been built for miners in the 1930s? Of course, the high priests of money-voodoo insisted that there was nothing to worry about. Then the global economy crashed. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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TIME magazine recently announced its selection of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as its “Person of the Year.” Below is the complete text from their essay on Zuckerberg and why they chose him:

Many years ago, perhaps as many as 100 years ago, a dead white person made an astute observation about human nature. That observation was vague enough that it could be applied to anything, and I am applying it, now, to TIME’s “Person of the Year” selection, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. [Read more →]

Tags: technology, trusted media & news by Ricky Sprague
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I lived in Prague for a while in the 90s, back when it was a favorite spot for American college grads dreaming of Bohemian greatness. Once or twice I even attended their open mic nights, at which Henry Miller wannabes would read aloud rancid poetry to similarly minded aesthetes bankrolled by daddy. Years later I still remember my pain, if not the content of what I heard- except for the first line of one mediocre song: [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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I never miss an opportunity to display the true patriotism that beats within my heart. You can tell a true patriot, like me, because we are in favor of everything that helps America achieve its goals of being good and doing great things for everyone, all over the world. The problem is that there are too many people who aren’t patriotic. The WikiLeaks story has shown that most Americans refuse to let their “American flag” fly.

In case you haven’t heard, WikiLeaks is a terrorist organization that is run by a terrorist who hates America, and is helping terrorists. It helps terrorists by revealing secret government documents that undermine the goals of the politicians and bureaucrats that we elect to run our government. Our government, if you remember, is comprised of our employees (they work for us, because it’s a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as no less an authority than the Constitution states). If someone is doing something that harms your employees, don’t you think that person should be put in prison? Don’t you think that’s the patriotic thing to do?

How ironic is it, then, that the most patriotic person in the world is a person in Sweden, where they have finally issued an arrest warrant for the WikiLeaks terrorist leader, Julian Assange (or, as I prefer to call him, Julian ASSange, because he is an ass and also an ange [actually, he is more of an “ass ange”]). [Read more →]

Tags: terror & war, trusted media & news by Ricky Sprague
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I recently moved and one of the things that attracted me to my new address was the church at the end of the street. It’s a white, wooden structure, with a narrow spire: classic Americana, like something out of a movie. Best of all is the message board outside the entrance, which reads:

One out of every one will die.
Life is a terminal illness.
Where are you going?

Now some individuals might object to being confronted daily with this bleak message, but I was delighted. It’s good to be reminded of your mortality, even- or perhaps especially- when you’re running down the store to buy toilet paper. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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William Shakespeare once suggested that “beauty is bought by judgement of the eye.” With a deeply deferential bow to the Bard, I would go on and add my own scribble, that “sense is bought by judgement of the ear.”

Which brings me to a verbal gaffe by Sarah Palin, the uproar – or lack thereof – over said gaffe, and the ensuing backlash towards those who did choose to raise an uproar.
[Read more →]

Tags: trusted media & news by Jeff McDonald
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For most of the 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union served as Yin and Yang, each nation opposing its righteousness to the other’s evil.

Even today, with the collapse of the Soviet Union almost twenty years behind us, multifarious hacks in the Anglo-American media remain wedded to a vision of America and her sinister doppelganger. They pine for a New Cold War. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Maybe I’m demonstrating my social media savvy … or maybe it’s something not-so-great that I’m demonstrating. Either way, when I sign-off from my Twitter account, I stay in front of the computer a few minutes longer, to watch their rotator of current tweets on a variety of trending topics.

I know, I KNOW … I could be reading books and magazines, surfing the web, or even – gasp! – getting out and talking to people. But there I am, nonetheless, parked in my chair and soaking up someone else’s virtual wisdom, 140 characters at a time. Today, there’s more than a lil discussion of Lil Wayne.
[Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, trusted media & news by Jeff McDonald
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I met Sgt. Ron Martin of the El Paso police department early in the morning, and was about to climb into his car when I found my way blocked by an assault rifle, propped up against the backseat like a faithful dog awaiting its master. A thorny issue of etiquette presented itself: Do I push it out the way? But what if it goes off and blows my brains out? [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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To everyone over the age of 30, I have a message: The world is changing. Your ideas of what is “personal” versus “private” are outdated. The kids today, they share things. Now they’re on the facebook (yes, they’ve all left friendster!). They think it’s funny to post photos of themselves passed out drunk, for their friends to see. They send each other “sexts” (that’s a portmanteau word combing “sex” and “text,” and it means they send each other sexual text messages, sometimes even with photos of themselves). They take photos of themselves at parties, engaged in the act of “partying.” [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, trusted media & news by Ricky Sprague
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Last week Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow’s mayor of 18 years, was fired by President Medvedev. The news scored lots of column inches in the Huffington Post, Reuters and all the major papers, which is a rare honor for a regional politician in a faraway country of which we know little (and we do know little).  Partly this was because Medvedev fired him, and thus the story fits into the lazy trope so beloved of the world’s kerrrrap Russia correspondents, who otherwise might have to learn something about the country they purport to report upon: is this a sign that Medvedev is his own man, or does he still have Putin’s hand up his ass? [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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‘We’re not going to die, are we Dan?’ asked my friend Joe, a CBS radio reporter, shortly before we crossed from El Paso into Juárez, Mexico, murder capital of the world. ‘Nah,’ I replied. ‘Our guide is a priest. It’s a Sunday. The narcos will respect that.’

I was lying to make him feel better. [Read more →]

Tags: terror & war, travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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A recent yahoo article takes the lede, buries it under about 50 pounds of dirt, then poops all over it by reporting that president Barack Obama has resorted to quoting Jimi Hendrix lyrics in his attempts to counter his “powerful” critics.

“Some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time — and they’re not always happy with me — they talk about me like a dog. That’s not in my prepared remarks, but it’s true,” Obama said during a speech at Wisconsin’s Laborfest on Monday.

Though Obama didn’t acknowledge it, the line was a verbatim quote from “Stone Free,” the first song Hendrix wrote after moving to England in 1966. “They talk about me like a dog,” the song says. “Talkin about the clothes I wear. But they don’t realize they’re the ones who’s square.”

It’s unclear if Obama consciously or unconsciously cited the lyric.

Once again, the main stream media — or, as I prefer to call it, the lame stream media, because they’re lame, [Read more →]

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