Remember back in the mid-aughts, when Democrats were convinced that all Republicans were brilliant political strategists? Yeah, not so much: House Republicans on Tuesday soundly rejected a bill approved by the Senate that would have extended the payroll tax cut for most Americans beyond the end of the year and allowed millions of unemployed people […]
Paul Constant
Posted in$$$
AT&T Leaves T-Mobile at the Altar
The New York Times reports: AT&T said late on Monday afternoon that it had withdrawn its $39 billion takeover bid for T-Mobile USA, acknowledging that it could not overcome opposition from the Obama administration to creating the nation’s biggest cellphone service provider. The company said in a statement that it would continue to invest in […]
Posted inElection 2012
Watch Newt Gingrich Discuss His Plan to Send U.S. Marshals to Bring Secular Judges Before Congress
Somebody forgot to tell Newt that you’re supposed to wait until after you become president to abuse your Constitutional powers. Here on Face the Nation, he explains how he wants to use U.S. Marshals to bring “activist” judges before Congress to explain themselves before they’re impeached: You’d think a “historian” who Republicans describe as one […]
Posted inElection 2012
Marcus Bachmann Vows to Battle Gay Marriage as First Husband
The New York Times reports that Marcus Bachmann has decided what his cause will be as First Husband: …if Michele Bachmann becomes president, her husband, Marcus, said Friday that he would use his time as first spouse to wage a pro-marriage, pro-family and pro-life campaign. “I’ve decided my cause is not going to be happy […]
Posted inElection 2012
The Good, the Bad, and the Sexy
The Good: Have you seen this amazing Fox News “mistake” yet? In a graphic showing the candidates’ standings in the polls, they put a photo of Barack Obama where Mitt Romney’s face should have gone: The apology that followed was about as perfunctory as you can get; if ever you needed proof that Fox News […]
Posted inBooks
What Do Newt Gingrich and Philip K. Dick Have in Common?
Newt Gingrich has referred to himself as a historian so often that people are starting to repeat it. But more accurately, Gingrich is an alternate historian. In the New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg writes about Gingrich’s alt-history novels: They make up a pair of loose trilogies, one set in the Civil War (the rebels win more […]
Posted inElection 2012
Fox Hosts “Not Another Republican Debate” Tonight!
Tonight at 6 pm Portland time, Fox News will be hosting what is probably the final debate before the Iowa caucuses. (Come back, Donald Trump! All is forgiven!) What kind of a hot mess will we be seeing tonight? Will Mitt Romney continue his assault on the “zany” Newt Gingrich? Will Ron Paul, fresh off […]
Posted inElection 2012
Romney Calls Gingrich “Zany”
I’m pretty sure this is the Mormon equivalent of swearing up a blue streak: Mitt Romney is sharpening his warning to Republicans about the consequences of nominating Newt Gingrich, declaring in an interview on Wednesday: “Zany is not what we need in a president.” “Zany is great in a campaign. It’s great on talk radio. […]
Posted inBooks
R.I.P. Russell Hoban
The author of the great post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker is dead at age 86. If you liked The Road or Clockwork Orange, I’d encourage you to check Riddley Walker out. But you might know Hoban’s name because he also wrote the much beloved, Bread and Jam for Frances. (I fondly remember Frances’s lunch in that […]
Posted inElection 2012
Andrew Sullivan Endorses Ron Paul
I expect better of Sullivan than this: …I see in Paul none of the resentment that burns in Gingrich or the fakeness that defines Romney or the fascistic strains in Perry’s buffoonery. He has yet to show the Obama-derangement of his peers, even though he differs with him. He has now gone through two primary […]
Posted inElection 2012
Hot Mitt-on-Newt Violence
Mitt Romney appears to be getting desperate, because he sure isn’t running like a frontrunner anymore. The Washington Post just published this interview: “He has been an extraordinarily unreliable leader in the conservative world—not 16 or 17 years ago but in the last two to three years,” Romney said. “And even during the campaign, the […]
Posted inElection 2012
Newsflash: Wealthy White Man Rails Against Political Correctness
Hey, look! Rick Perry is back on Brokeback Mountain—he changed jackets, though—and now he’s talking about Washington D.C.’s “political correctness.” Weirdly, the examples he uses (inappropriate relationships between senators and lobbyists, bankrupting Social Security) have nothing to do with political correctness. So what’s going on, here? “You and I know it’s true,” Perry says near […]