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Posted by HART WILLIAMS, Guest Voice Columnist | May 29th, 2012
Today, John F. Kennedy would have been 95 years old.
Speaking at the University of Wyoming fieldhouse
I heard him speak at the University of Wyoming when I was in second grade. Here is that speech, from 1963. He was assassinated fifty-eight days later in Dallas, Texas. I had met Senator Gale McGee on a few occasions, by that time. Here is what I heard:
Posted by HART WILLIAMS, Guest Voice Columnist | May 26th, 2012
Friday, something unprecedented happened. The Right/Red blogs banded together to destroy ONE person (a blogger claims he feels “threatened”). The entire front page of Memeorandum is dominated by this coordinated attack and smear. That OUGHT to scare hell out of everybody else, but I see virtually no commentary whatsoever.
The entire blogosphere has been coopted into the narrow agenda of a few individuals...
Posted by DEAN ESMAY, Guest Voice Columnist | May 25th, 2012
…you crybabies!
Posted by DEAN ESMAY, Guest Voice Columnist | May 25th, 2012
Blogger Patrick Frey has recently revealed details of how he was nearly murdered for being Conservative While Blogging.
As I read this story, I had a creeping sense of horror. And my oft-stated sentiment that maybe I made a mistake ten years ago by blogging under my own real name became a genuinely fearful reaction.
Really, this should be called terrorism.
I’ve been known to call some people who comment...
Posted by Guest Voice | May 25th, 2012
Lessons of Lugar and Specter: Only Pure Need Apply
by Scott Crass
Over the course of the past two elections, voters in Democratic and Republican primaries have shown the door to two of the most senior and influential members of the body. They include the man who was arguably among the Senate’s few Constitutional and legal scholars, Arlen Specter, as well as one of the body’s leading Foreign Affairs scholar,...
Posted by MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor | May 24th, 2012
Guest post by Richard K. Barry
Richard K. Barry, a New Yorker now living in Toronto, is the Associate Editor of The Reaction. You can also find him at Lippmann’s Ghost.
Both amateurs and professionals who write about politics struggle every day with what to write next. I have to say that an article yesterday at Politico was both an exercise in the obvious and a little kowtowing to political spin from the right....
Posted by DEAN ESMAY, Guest Voice Columnist | May 22nd, 2012
Jessica Crispin writes:
Okay, so this is what I want: I want, when someone changes their mind about something, for them not to go ideologically swinging to the far other side. I was reading some reviews of Mark Simpson’s Male Impersonators: Men Performing Masculinity, and there are some of former feminists writing about it. And when I say “former” I mean “anti.” We’re taking...
Posted by Guest Voice | May 22nd, 2012
California’s 30th District: Race Between Consensus Builders Berman and Sherman is the Most Fascinating Redistricted House Battle
by Scott Crass
This redistricting year is forcing numerous pairings of one House member against another. Some are Democratic vs. Republican matchups. Others involve incumbents whose party affiliations are the same, but whose styles are different. But the most fascinating contest...
Posted by DEAN ESMAY, Guest Voice Columnist | May 17th, 2012
While it may be that the Fat Lady has not yet sung–we do have an entire Summer and Fall to get through after all–it does look like the “Occupy” movement is sputtering badly and may soon be completely extinguished, having done little of significance except add a few barely-coherent ideas into our political discourse. I find this both a bit of a relief and disappointing at the same time....
Posted by DEAN ESMAY, Guest Voice Columnist | May 17th, 2012
Carol Marin brings up a perennial favorite in Democratic circles: that Obama should ask Hillary Clinton to be his running-mate, and offer Joe Biden the Secretary of State position.
The main problem with this being, Clinton has repeatedly said she doesn’t want the job, and not in particularly coy terms either. This begins to remind me of the Bush years wherein so many people wishfully speculated speculated...
Posted by HART WILLIAMS, Guest Voice Columnist | May 15th, 2012
We’re going to have to jam here. So much new information, so little time.
G. Dubya Bush assuring residents of The Big Easy that
nothing bad actually happened in Katrina, and even
if it did, everything would be hunky dory. The square
was lit by emergency generators : virtually the only
electricity IN New Orleans that night…
I wrote this to the Eugene Register-Guard in 2003:
Posted by MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor | May 14th, 2012
Guest Post By Richard K. Barry
Richard K. Barry, a New Yorker now living in Toronto, is the Associate Editor of The Reaction. You can also find him at Lippmann’s Ghost.
A couple of conservative commentators are very excited about a recent poll (published May 11) by Rasmussen Reports that finds Mitt Romney ahead of President Obama by a seven-point margin, 50% to 43%, which is actually based on what they call...
Posted by HART WILLIAMS, Guest Voice Columnist | May 13th, 2012
Six years ago, I found a group of Koch intimates running stealth initiative campaigns in a dozen states and more. They poured millions of anonymous dollars — seemingly coming from just three anonymous contributors — into pushing their Frankenstein legislation on the unwitting citizens of said states. When the story came to light, the national media ignored it. (The New York Times, at best, rather...
Posted by Guest Voice | May 11th, 2012
What Capitalists Don’t Know:
Without Democracy, Capitalism Dies
by Craig Barnes
In the 1990s renowned political scientist and author Ben Barber wrote in Jihad vs McWorld that global capitalism was at war with democracy. He was right, of course, and the intensity of that war has only increased since then. Global corporations are battling democracy’s environmental regulations, taxation, labor laws, legislation...
Posted by DEAN ESMAY, Guest Voice Columnist | May 10th, 2012
“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” –Rebecca West
I have long been alternately amused and irritated by that famous quote. Why? Because I find myself relating to it in divided fashion:
For my part, I have never been able to find out precisely what...
Posted by Guest Voice | May 10th, 2012
By Ali Ezzatyar
I feel like it is difficult to be a casual follower of the Iranian nuclear issue. All related news items are generally tagged with a derivation of one of the following themes: a) Israel is going to attack Iran; or b) the parties are set for nuclear talks. Particularly with respect to the nuclear talks, it is even frustrating for me, an IR nerd of sorts, to see this title every once in a while,...
Posted by DEAN ESMAY, Guest Voice Columnist | May 8th, 2012
It appears that there may be a serious safety problem for pilots of F-22 Raptors, and it looks like there’s some butt-covering by the brass over it.
A full PDF of the official Air Force report on the crash of Capt. Jeffrey Haney is available here. The most chilling note, to me, is in the conclusion:
“By clear and convincing evidence, I find the cause of the mishap was the MP’s failure to...
Posted by KAY WOOD | May 8th, 2012
While working today, a show came on the radio about how cruel and nonsensical the new Voter ID law is and I just had to stop and do a movie.
PS – If you want to see the follow up movie to “Little Stuff” I posted earlier on TMV, here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNkT3aQtqkM
Posted by HART WILLIAMS, Guest Voice Columnist | May 8th, 2012
[* Thurston Howell III's kid.]
Seems that Mitt Romney tired of abusing dogs and turned his attentions to boating. Buzz Feed reports [emphasis added]:
Mitt Romney Was Arrested For Disorderly Conduct In 1981
According to what Romney told the Boston Globe in 1994, he had taken his family off to Wayland, Mass.’s Lake Cochituate, about an hour outside Boston, for a summer excursion. As Romney prepared to put...
Posted by DEAN ESMAY, Guest Voice Columnist | May 7th, 2012
Time Magazine has a fascinating look at the campaign to re-elect the President. Their basic mantra: “Be confident, but take nothing for granted.”
The President has fairly good reason to be confident. That said, Romney has not yet truly begun the general election campaign. While he is the presumptive Republican nominee, he doesn’t have the nomination quite yet, and cannot afford to take it for...