Republicans are pussies.

From the congressional chicken hawks to the half-baked Alaskan Sarah Palin; from the wild-eyed doughboys and smug bullies who spew bilge from their televised perches to the shivering talk radio gremlins who broadcast out of their parents' basements, they sure talk a good game but have...

One of the trademarked mantras bleated daily (along with "America's the biggest..." and "America's the greatest...") is "When Americans put their minds to something there's nothing they cannot do."

And as well as being heart warming and patriotic (and quite possibly narcissistic and inane) it's also patently true and goes...

CNN's in fourth place. No surprise there.

Because by playing the other guy's game, you lose. It's the failure of many a formerly conscientious endeavor to fall victim to the undertow of fast trends and easy money.

And it's the typical result in a world where the corporate approach...

Has it ever occurred to the millions of emotionally charged opponents to the health care initiative that this entire kerfuffle might actually be a deceptive delivery device for something other than fearing a socialist government takeover of the health care system?

That it might be like the same deception...

Americans like their approximations of reality.

We have Las Vegas, which forsook its original cultural identity for amusement park approximations of Paris, New York and ancient Egypt; gigantic malls which are commercially driven approximations of the town square; Fox News, which purports to be a fair and balanced news...

I begin to have deep distrust for the world as it is portrayed by our trusted sources of information.

I am feeling the effects of exposure to the 24 hour sell-a-thon that has become America.

And the intensity of the sell speaks to the desperation of the seller, who...

Welcome to the new world order where isolationism is as fusty a notion as fairness and balance. Actions on the local level reverberate so globally that even the pissy little nyah-nyah-nyahing which the right wing Republicons persist in using as their chief mode of expression has twanged the world-wide-wire and...

And therefore, I will be supporting the same policies which led directly to the current fiscal crisis and everything else related to Ronald Reagan's universally discredited theory of trickle-down economics.

I will seek to abolish a woman's right to choose and decry the unholy unions of gay men and...

While the Republicans have proven themselves to be an effective combination of arrogance, cowardice, ignorance and greed, a zealous tribe which adheres to arcane mythology, eschews moral responsibility and worships at the foot of the petrodollar, it is that golem of capitalism -- the corporation -- which seeks to strip...

One of the most inspiring things a modern leader has, in my opinion, ever said was when president John F. Kennedy famously stated "We all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal."

If, however, that statement...

We've had the Birthers.

We've had the Baggers.

We've had the Deathers.

Now, In light of the IOC's slapping down of Obama's face to face bid for the Olympic games to be held in Chicago, we're now suffering the Smuggers.

Why, they sound almost cuddly, except for...

I woke up, and began my day as I customarily do: opening a bottle of breakfast wine, opened the newspaper and rapidly concluded: being American has gone to our head.

The last several months have highlighted, more than any time I can remember, the confluence of commerce and politics, the...

As a loyal listener to KCRW's "Left, Right and Center" (Fridays at 2:30 PM PST), one of the few forums for reasonable and energetic political debate, I have always enjoyed its spirited and stalwart cast of silver-tongued commentators: the occasionally irascible but scrupulously centric whiz of a host Matt Miller,...

In a stunning development, several marginal Republican senators and congressmen from small districts with very few people living in them have declared the weather as "socialist".

Apparently rankled over the fact that rain, snow, wind, heat and all other phenomena connected with weather effects gays, minorities, women seeking abortions...

I'll puncture my own theorem by stating the following:

Unless we make a real effort to detach ourselves from the throbbing data-teat, the one that oozes garish, incendiary, pseudofacts from every beeping, blipping electronic device in our homes, cars and pockets 24 hours a day, grade-A schmucks like Glenn Beck...

Like a Shavian-meets-Rovian tongue twister, the media beams its memes into the mainstreams.

And by jove, we get it.

If this presidency does fail (as the current meme goes), it will be the biggest back alley abortion in history. And the knitting needle will have been wielded by Republicans.

In...

Perhaps one of the most telling bits of cyber flotsam I happened to grab onto during my regular slosh around the internet was the video of Sen. Al Franken talking down "angry" anti-health care protestors.

What was so telling was that it showed how our country could conduct itself...

It's characteristic of this generation of Americans to be either immediately gratified or just as immediately un-gratified. Those seemingly interminable moments between sound bytes actually used to provide opportunities to ponder information and parse the details therein in order to arrive at a considered conclusion.

But even with the overwhelming...

By jinky, the Cleveland Steamer herself Jean Schmidt was right: it's all about cut n' run!

The Republican playbook is becoming clearer and clearer. It's Rummy's dreamed-of Light and Fast army in action.

Think about it: almost every month or two a big stink is whipped up over some...

It's easy to believe airliners were brought down by guys with box cutters.

For this nation's duly elected president and his progressive policies to be kneecapped by a minority of loud, angry, possibly psychotic right-wing zombots is a sure sign that democracy is nothing more than a gossamer ideal....