"Words that make actions speak louder."
My dad, who died six years ago today, was a cowboy. A real one, complete with beat-up Stetson and muddy ropers and a Ford pickup and an ancient blanket-lined Levi’s jean jacket that smelled of manure, leather, horse sweat, and tobacco — the distinctive aroma of all cowboys, the one that’s rubbed so deep into […]
It’s not just Texas. Rick blogged yesterday on the collapsing roads and bridges of Denton County, Texas. Unsurprisingly, it’s happening in other places, too. From today’s Arizona Star: PHOENIX — From Wickenburg to Eagar, streets in cities and towns across Arizona are falling into disrepair because there’s not enough money to keep them in shape. […]
Ah, you optimistic soul. Did you really think the nuclear power debate died after Three Mile Island brought the reality of its dangers home to insurers, investors and utility companies? Think again. As both the rhetoric and the reality of global warming heat up in the years ahead, nuclear power is about to rise from […]
Marc Ambinder at theatlantic.com notes that Crocs (which are probably what your children are wearing right this minute) seem to be a perennial favorite when GOP presidential candidates come to Colorado and need to call out a Great American Company: President Bush, on November 4, 2006: One of the entrepreneurs with me today is Duke […]
Over the course of my master’s program, I’ve had some tortured conversations with my dean over the direction my research is taking. He’s been poking at me (and, being an atheist who was raised by Jesuits, he’s one of those gentle souls who knows how to poke sharp and hard, with a positively angelic smile […]
The current debate over offshore oil leases has put America’s gargantuan energy appetite back on the discussion table this week. I’ve tried to stay out of it so far for two reasons. The first is that (here comes the full disclosure) I married into a family that’s been making its modest fortune in the oil […]
Twenty years ago this spring, the small software company I was working for hired in a new vice president of advertising to be, among other things, my boss. The guy, who’d come from running his own agency, was a CEO crony. He had all kinds of old-hippie cred (he’d belonged to one of the most […]
It’s over, at long last. The Democrats have a nominee. And now the other hard part begins—the part where Democrats try to patch up the party and try to keep a lot of disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters on board. It’s worthwhile to take a moment here and look at the ways we were seduced into […]
One of the grandest — and most frustrating — things about carrying on the great democratic conversation via blog is finding out how many of your fellow citizens (including many who are nominally on your side) turn out to be looking at the world from a completely different set of assumptions than you are. In […]
Progressives have always loved holidays, which may be why we’ve created so many of them. There are Saturdays, of course, brought to us with no small help from the early 20th century unions. And May Day. And Labor Day. And Mother’s Day, which started out as the first and perhaps greatest progressive holiday of all. […]