Mark Green

Sarah Palin's rhetoric against the East and West Coast elites -and liberal media - appeals to aggrieved "ordinary Americans", in her phrase. Sounds like "middle Americans" and "the silent majority." Sarah Palin meet Richard Nixon. So alike. But.

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So, the BNP is about to welcome a Mr Rajinder Singh. And, quite frankly, it's a bit of a shock. Members of the party that wants to put the "great" back in Great Britain are meant to look as though they've spent their lives in bunkers, safely locked away from...

Actor Missi Pyle and her Smith & Pyle band mate, Shawnee Smith, along with actor/comedian Hal Sparks put a comedic spin on the serious topic of marriage equality (or, more precisely, the lack thereof for gays and lesbians). In a faux marriage ceremony presided over by faux preacher Hal Sparks,...

Everyone's heard it a hundred times by now. Joe Biden said it when he was on The Daily Show last week. Tim Geithner says it every time he's on television or in a congressional hearing or in the car talking to himself. "We had to do the bailout. We didn't...

There's a good piece by David Sirota that's highlighted on this site and is making the syndication rounds right now in which he takes aim at the dumbing-down of America as a nation; specifically, he ties it to what may eventually be remembered as the most inadvertently prescient not-very-good...

"Short and sweet" seemed just right for a holiday week blog.

I found the perfect gem to share, a quote from Will Rogers, as I flew back to New York from Colorado where I'd been visiting my mother.

Humorist Rogers (1879-1935) once said: "Why pay to go to...

There is one mysterious thing about the John Ensign affair in Nevada. You know how there were lots of mysterious things about the Appalachian lies in the Sanford affair? The Ensign affair, with its $90,000 pay-offs disguised as severance from his parents to the cuckolded husband and wife employees that...

President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are now, to use a poker term, "all in" on healthcare reform. Some may immediately respond to hearing this by saying: "Hey, Chris, you're just on an endless quest for fresh, new metaphors to describe the healthcare reform effort, after writing about it...

"It was a mistake not to see beforehand that this would be controversial," said an apparently tone-deaf Nigel Coleman, chairman of the Danville Tea Party. "The general public didn't exactly understand what we were going after."
Yeah, I wasn't sure either. You see, when you decide to burn people...

There's a Category 5 storm about to make landfall, and the president and the officials in charge of preparing for the approaching disaster don't seem to be particularly worried. Sound familiar?

Just as Katrina exposed critical weaknesses in the priorities and competence of the Bush administration, the unfolding unemployment disaster...

The recent debate on health care reform has brought new focus to the important issue of reproductive choice -- and a clear understanding that it cannot be taken for granted.

As the Senate prepares now to take up its version of a massive health care overhaul, pro-choice Americans are watching...

Were one to design a political philosophy calculated to appeal to large numbers of "conservatives" and "liberals," it might look very much like contemporary libertarianism: tolerant and supportive of individual rights in matters ranging from sexual orientation to religion, and committed to the rule of law and free market capitalism.

The day Christopher Simmons was sentenced to death row in Missouri for a crime he committed when he was seventeen, he probably didn't know his opportunity for freedom lay in the nether regions of his frontal lobe. Simmons' case, which led the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the death...

The Republican message on extending health care coverage can be summed up in two words: "Bah, humbug."

In taking a purely obstructionist stance, the GOP has evinced scant empathy for tens of millions of fellow Americans who lack basic protection against illness or injury. So much for compassionate conservatism.

On...

The Senate collectively orders from Papa John's.

To see more of August J. Pollak's cartoon "Some Guy With a Website," check out the archive.

So what was Glenn Beck's big, massive, history-altering announcement? Is he running for office? Founding a PAC? Setting up a third party?

No, no, and no, but he is developing... (drum roll, please)... "The Plan" -- "a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps...

My employer, a charity, just received a 10% increase in our Blue Shield group health plan -- a standard Preferred Provider Plan with a $500 deductible for outpatient care and for prescription drugs. Care is expensive in Los Angeles and many physicians have dropped health insurance billing altogether -- which...