"Words that make actions speak louder."
(Or “CPAC: Sideshow and Snake Oil, Pt. 2”) The circus sideshow that was CPAC folded its tent and left Washington weeks ago. However, its apparent ringmaster and chief snake oil salesman still sweats, struts, and sobs across the “stage” of conservative media — that medicine show never stops rolling and never stops hawking its “solutions” […]
Conservatives who squawk about the deficit — and Democrats who should know better, but squawk anyway — tend to do so selectively. That is, they tend to focus only on spending. But spending is only half of any deficit equation. After all, a deficit is "the amount by which expenditures or liabilities exceed income or […]
The Sideshow Glenn Beck, in a sense, is right. CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, is not and could never be a “big tent.” Neither is the brand of conservatism it tries so hard to sell. The “big tent,” to borrow his circus analogy is usually reserved for acts featuring genuine talent and skill that […]
President Barack Obama doesn’t begrudge Wall Street’s banksters their bonuses. The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is "an extraordinary amount of money" for Main Street, "there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so […]
What kind of people respond to an invitation with a list of demands? John Boehner and Eric Cantor have responded to Barack Obama’s invitation to sit down and talk health-care reform. They answered in the form of a ransom note. Here are their demands: 1) “Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward on health […]
Sarah Palin’s keynote speech was quite a hit at this weekend’s Tea Party convention. She even took a shot at pinning responsibility for the deficit on the Obama administration. “The Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda will leave us less secure, more in debt and under the thumb of big government,” she added, saying voters all over the country […]
If you’ve ever wondered where conservative economic policies like permanent tax cuts for the wealthy, slashed social services and government spending are supposed to lead us, look no further than Colorado Springs. David Sirota’s description of what’s happening to that conservative stronghold should serve as a cautionary tale.
Listening to conservatives squawk about deficits is a bit like taking parenting and/or relationship advice from Medea, the Gosselins or “Octomom.” At best, they serve as an example of what not to do. As it is with children, so it is with conservatives and deficits. People who are very good at making them aren’t necessarily […]
If you hope hard enough, and look hard enough, the jobs will appear. At least, that’s the thrust of Mark Lange’s recent column in The Christian Science Monitor When we imagine that government – and even companies – “create” jobs, we’re missing half the story: the crucial part. The part that most of us can […]
Tea bags are meant to be tossed out. They are useful, at most, once or twice in their lifetimes. Beyond that, they lose flavor and strength, eventually becoming weak as water itself. If kept around beyond their usefulness, they become unpleasant and even unhealthy, as they start to smell and begin to mold. Or they […]