[ Posted Wednesday, August 7th, 2013 – 17:48 UTC ]
The Republican Party is busily choosing sides in an upcoming fight. Now, in normal times that sentence would be parsed as: the Republican Party -- as a whole -- was choosing their strategy in a looming battle with Democrats. These days, due to the ever-more-visible deep divisions within the party itself, Republicans are instead choosing which side to take in an upcoming battle with itself. Which makes the entire exercise enjoyable for Democrats, who have a number of options of their own. But we'll get to that in a moment.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, August 2nd, 2013 – 17:36 UTC ]
It was a busy week in Washington, since all the congresscritters were eager to get out of town for their not-so-well-earned five weeks of vacation. It'll take awhile for the dust to settle, so let's take a look at some of what's been happening while it does.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Tuesday, July 30th, 2013 – 17:12 UTC ]
The news of Bradley Manning's conviction today on multiple charges (and his acquittal on the most serious one) has people lining up to either defend or denounce the verdict. We'll probably be hearing about it all week, in fact. When he is sentenced, it will spur another round of this debate, no doubt.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Monday, July 29th, 2013 – 16:48 UTC ]
President Obama, for the first time in memory, is not going to ignore August. Augusts haven't been kind to Obama in the past. But this time around it appears he's going to proactively go on the offensive for the month, rather than sitting on the sidelines during what is now known as "town hall season." How successful he will be in this effort remains to be seen, but it is at least refreshing to see him make the attempt.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, July 26th, 2013 – 17:19 UTC ]
While it may seem like that headline refers to yet another poll released which proves that Congress is held in lower esteem than dead bodies (dead bodies are actually now enjoying a resurgence of support, due to the proliferation of zombies in pop culture), it is in fact nothing short of literal. The U.S. Botanic Garden is currently experiencing record-breaking crowds eager to see -- or, more accurately, to smell -- the blooming "corpse flower" (or amorphophallus titanum, which -- no lie! -- translates to "giant, misshapen penis"). We merely note the event for those in the D.C. area who are inclined to visit the blossom before it shrivels up, and not to inspire any jokes in the comments or anything. I mean, how could you possibly joke about a corpse-like stench... the Nation's Capital... or "giant, misshapen penises"?
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Wednesday, July 24th, 2013 – 16:40 UTC ]
So the question is now: what will the big 2013 Silly Season issue be? Predicting such things is almost impossible, admittedly, due to the silliness factor itself -- if these things followed some sort of logical process, then we wouldn't call it Silly Season, would we? But that doesn't mean we can't have our own kind of silly fun guessing what it'll be, right? After setting the stage a bit, I'll offer up my own silly prediction at the end, and then we can all see who can manage to out-silly it in the comments.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Monday, July 22nd, 2013 – 17:36 UTC ]
[The Scene: A warm Philadelphia evening, 226 years ago. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention -- after a long and miserably-hot day of respectful debate (and quite a lot of just plain bickering) over the text of Article I, Section 10 of the proposed draft of the new United States Constitution -- take up the final item on the agenda. We join the Founding Fathers as they (somewhat-wearily) begin discussion of the final subject of the day. Since the debate was conducted behind closed doors, this re-creation uses no names for the participants, to protect their anonymity.]
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, July 19th, 2013 – 16:13 UTC ]
As usual this week, there were several stories the mainstream media was obsessing over which I am just largely going to ignore. The most inane of these was, of course: "This just in! It gets hot in the summer! Who knew?!?" The most ridiculous one was the foofaroo over Rolling Stone using a photograph on its cover which many other media outlets had used for front-page stuff, but which somehow Rolling Stone wasn't supposed to use, for some inexplicable reason. Even though -- on the same cover -- they called the guy "a monster." Lots of out-of-context outrage ensued, including one call to buy the magazine and then burn it. Um, yeah, that'll show them! Just hand over your money, in protest!
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Wednesday, July 17th, 2013 – 16:40 UTC ]
But what if it works reasonably well? What if (gasp!) people actually like it?
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, July 12th, 2013 – 17:19 UTC ]
OK, we've got somewhat of a backlog to take care of here, due to summertime laziness striking early this year. So we're just going to plow through the swirling storm of craziness as fast as possible. Insert your own "Sharknado" joke, if you feel so inclined.
Read Complete Article »
