Category Archives: Politics: US

If, like most people who read this blog, you get the entry feed but not the comments feed, you might want to head over to the comments on The Burning Question.

They're heating up.

One of the most disturbing things I've seen online is this report, via Think Progress, Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch As Family Home Burns Down:

[7/6/2012: links re-insterted into post — something seems to have eaten them. Here’s a direct link to the video.]

A very good read: Sarah Palin the Sound and the Fury.

Full of creepy personal details. And this:

For messaging strategy, Palin relies on William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, and Fred Malek, who was an aide to Presidents Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush.

It is actually hard to imagine a worse combination (although I will admit preemptively that it is undoubtedly possible): one stupid and venal, the other evil. Yes, it's that Fred Malek.

A friend who just spent six months abroad concentrating on his work asks in bemused wonderment, “What happened to the US while I was away? How did it lose 15 IQ points and lurch to the right?”

Glenn Greenwald has some gloomy thoughts in What collapsing empire looks like.

Please tell me why he's wrong.

Rep. Grayson gave a stemwinder of a speech the other day in which among other things he noted that by delaying the extension of unemployment insurance Republicans were “taking food from the mouths” of children. There's probably an element of truth to this, since not everyone losing benefits will be able to go on welfare immediately, but in any case it's not the sort of talk the GOP is used to receiving; it would rather dish it out.

The reaction was not slow: a GOP apparatchik at something called the Media Research Center offered a public call:

“I'll give $100 to first Rep. who punches smary idiot Alan Grayson in nose.”

Grayson's reaction is at least as good as his original speech.