We can all stop pretending continued Republican anger about the Affordable Care Act is news. Some figured a Supreme Court ruling would settle things. And since the GOP said it was unconstitutional with the same fervor as people who’ve read the Constitution””it was easy to assume a decision from the nine justices in the highest… Continue reading →

Nothing says leadership more than bravely standing up against a concern that’s not actually a problem. We’ve had a one-sided battle with Sharia Law in the U.S. No one is fighting for replacing U.S. law with an Islamic moral code, but nonetheless Republicans are heroically fighting against it. Same with aborted fetuses in commercial food… Continue reading →

Mitt Romney’s off-the-cuff comments are starting to seem like Barack Obama’s bowling: Not good. Kind of spectacularly bad. Kitsch on a kind day. Romney keeps on rolling gutter balls in front of the cameras: “The trees are the right height.” “I like being able to fire people.” “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” “I’m… Continue reading →

You can’t run government like a business anymore than you can run business like a government. GOP presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, burned corporations to the ground then made millions selling off the charcoal. This private sector experience is being touted as his qualification to be president. This expertise of bankaneering””corporate raiding””is so sexy to Republicans… Continue reading →

If you ask the typical hyper-political gun owner (and I have ” at Thanksgiving dinner), why it’s important to own a gun, they’ll bark about the Constitution. Yes, the Second Amendment: “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed!” This of course is the slogan the National Rifle Association… Continue reading →

The future is always a dystopia and the past is always better than this mess we live in right now. That’s if literature has any ability to tell us about ourselves. Stories about the future: Forewarning. Stories about the good ol’ days: Heartening. Somewhere in our collective unconscious we believe there was a golden era… Continue reading →

We’re a species that has gotten around; we’ve wandered, pioneered and migrated to every corner of the world. The spear tip of technology is how we can get somewhere else: the wheel, the sailboat, the rocket. In short: we’re movers. We are now as mobile as we’ve ever been as a culture. Our phones are… Continue reading →

Republicans didn’t set out to have a war on women; they wanted a war on religion. Their intention was to march two Republican-created boogiemen into a battle that would make the War on Christmas cringe: ObamaCare and ObamaIsAMuslim. The Affordable Care Act stipulates birth control be included in insurance coverage instead of forcing women to… Continue reading →

Calling ObamaCare “socialized medicine” truly lowers the standards on what could be considered socialized medicine. It’s like calling paved roads “government overreach”; a stop light a “government takeover of your commute”; or a neighborhood with speed bumps “a road to communism.” The law is really some regulations to help consumers buy private insurance coupled with… Continue reading →

When asked to report on the onslaught of political ads on television words like “flood,” “deluge,” and “torrent,” will suddenly pepper copy. A report from the Borrell Associates estimates $9.8 billion will be spent on political advertising this season. Nearly 60 percent of that will be on television. Phrases like “secret money” and “shadow funders”… Continue reading →

What does a government bureaucrat being between you and your doctor look like? That was the go-to canard to scare Americans away from the health care reform bill (or single payer for that matter). So, imagine your doctor decides he or she doesn’t want you to get a procedure. They don’t agree with it for… Continue reading →

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina members of the media noticed there was widespread devastation in the South. Watching it on television, as a person of Southern heritage, to me it was clear: “Some of that was like that before the storm.” And it was. And it still is years later. Now since the… Continue reading →

Conservatives really wanted a fight about religious freedom. It appeared to be an easy win: Make an ObamaCare mandate that insurers cover birth control into a war on religion. The GOP, void of any ideas Obama hasn’t contaminated by agreeing with, finds itself in an election year frantically looking for a bold battle cry. That… Continue reading →

This campaign season can be summed up by one interview on conservative talk radio last August. It was with Iowa Straw Poll-sweeper Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, in which she proclaimed: “What people recognize is that there’s a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of… Continue reading →