Liberal Elitism? No. Some People Are, Sadly, Stupid
November 16th, 2009
While the concerns of many white, middle-class people are worthy causes and should be addressed by liberals (and are), it is not elitism to treat this roving band of conspiracy nuts for the cretins they are or associate with. This would be akin to President Johnson in 1964 undertaking a federal committee to study the mind control powers of fluoridated water. That would be asinine.
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Tragedy at the Holocaust Museum: Stand Up To Terrorism
June 10th, 2009
You have to go back a long, long way in American history before you come to a place where you find incidents like this happening an average of once every two weeks.This escalating level of violence is adding data points to a potentially emergent pattern that we need to be looking at and preparing for. So far, there are at least five things I'm particularly concerned about.
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Paranoia Strikes Deep
November 9th, 2009
Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we've grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption "National Socialist Healthcare." It was grotesque — and it was also ominous. The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn't a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership — in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings.
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How Government Won on Election Day
November 9th, 2009
Here's a story you may have missed because it flies in the face of the dreary conventional wisdom: When advocates of public programs take on the right-wing anti-government crowd directly, the government-haters lose. This is what happened in two statewide referendums last week that got buried under all of the attention paid to the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey
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The Tea Party's Takeover of the GOP
November 6th, 2009
The anti-health care reform rally in Washington indicates the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement are increasingly one and the same.
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That Old Republican Revival
November 13th, 2009
Will the GOP be sufficiently rebuilt to challenge Obama and the Democrats in 2010? Probably not.
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The Palin Effect
November 16th, 2009
During the 2008 presidential race, some Republican Party elders warned of Palin's destructive influence. They insisted she was a polarizing figure whose extremism would accelerate the Party's slide toward the political and cultural margins. New polling data appears to support such doomsday prophecies.
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He Roped The Dopes
September 10th, 2009
On August 10th, I suggested that President Obama should take a lesson from Muhammed Ali and use a rope-a-dope strategy to counter the attacks on his health care plan. Listening to his speech tonight, I saw him do this to his opponents. After laying out the benefits to those who currently have health insurance, he waded into the misconceptions and mis-truths that have been used to undermine the issue of health care reform. And what was the reaction of those in the Congress that have played this cynical game? Silence. Damning silence.
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Making Them Do It: The Next Challenge
August 30th, 2008
Now that the festivities in Denver have drawn to a close, one thing, at least, is clear to me after having spent four days among progressives from all over the country: They are convinced that this moment is real and that the stakes have never been higher. There is a sense of opportunity and engagement with issues that I haven't seen in progressive circles for some time.
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Attack of the Palinites
November 6th, 2009
Democrats have some thinking to do after Tuesday's elections, but Republicans don't have time to think. They're too busy trying to survive the party's internal purge and avoid being shipped off to political Siberia.
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