The Best Of Shepard Smith: Taking On BP, Torture, Anti-Vaxers, Glenn Beck, Joe The Plumber, & More

FOX News’s one passionately sane and moral voice last week went after BP executive Tony Hayward for his flippant attitude towards the ecological disaster his company has recently wrought.  The man is an oasis amidst his network’s cynical demagoguery and sincere lunacy. And, of course, there is his passionate denunciation of torture from over a […]

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Obama’s Rawlsian Defense Of Separation Of Church And State

This video of a speech Obama made during his presidential campaign which is making the rounds among my atheist Facebook friends today: When the speech was made I commented on James Dobson’s faulty reaction to Obama.  As I implied in that post, in the part not addressing Dobson, I think this speech is a spectacular […]

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He Came From A Very Good Christian Family

Maurice Clemmons, the murderer shot and killed in Seattle today years ago had his sentence famously commuted by Governor Mike Huckabee, who we all know makes no bones about his desire to base U.S. law on his perception of God’s law.  Here’s some of his Christian judgment about who deserves mercy under such laws: Clemmons […]

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Daily Hilarity: Marlin Hill’s Awesome Obama Impression

This guy is so, so, so much better than the lame SNL one we seem stuck with.  His Obama is as good as Carvey’s Bush, Sr. and Fey’s Palin.

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Why Barack Obama DOES Deserve A Nobel Peace Prize Already

Everyone left, right, and center is baffled today by Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize received out of the blue and before he has actually accomplished much of anything of what he had promised from his presidency (as Saturday Night Live compellingly argued).  He certainly has failed to be a fierce advocate of gay and lesbian rights, failed […]

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“Why Should God Bless America?”

This laughable awfulness would be qualify as funny if the theocratic attitudes it expressed were not so serious and were the forum for this nonsense was not a presidential debate. Rachel Maddow had a great report last night on this year’s meeting of the same group that sponsored this. The footage of the astoundingly self-absorbed […]

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Kanye Disses Taylor Swift (On The Pusillanimity Of Joe Wilson And Kanye West Vs. The Magnanimity Of Beyonce Knowles And Barack Obama)

So last night, Kanye proved once and for all that he has no class through a single action which demonstrated an unbelievable lack of grace.  Taylor Swift looked so demoralized and her speech had been all about feelings of being surprised to be accepted by this particular voting bloc, when he insulted her by implying […]

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Professors As Insistent On The Moral Imperative To Vote As To Donate

Eric Schwitzgebel is initially surprised by the data but then does rough calculations about why it is sensible: Now is it just crazy to say that voting is as morally good as giving 10% of one’s income to charity? That was my first reaction. Giving that much to charity seems uncommon to me and highly […]

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Palin Hung Out To Dry By McCain Campaign Last Year

Easily the ugliest and most irresponsible moment of the 2008 Presidential Campaigns came when Sarah Palin accused Obama of bieng someone who: sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country. This is not a man who sees America as you see […]

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Does Palin Represent “Real America?”

David Weigel is baffled that such a meme persists: Scarborough’s quasi-co-host Mika Brzezinski followed this up by saying Palin represented “real Americans,” and that some people in “urban America” didn’t get it. This is fascinating. In 2004, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) lost the presidency with 48.3 percent of the vote, […]

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Anti-Obama Centered Feminism

This is an alluringly and gorgeously produced but positively goofy propaganda video which sides with both Clinton and Palin against Obama (with all the usual baseless smears against him thrown in for good measure).

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Sarah Palin: A Daily Show Retrospective

In honor of the surprising news of Sarah Palin’s resignation, here are my nine favorite classic Daily Show segments on her (in chronological order): September 3, 2008: Sarah Palin Gender Card September 4, 2008: Sarah Palin-Vet This! September 15, 2008: Sarah Palin Won’t Blink September 18, 2008: Gov. At First Sight October 6, 2008: Vice […]

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Andrew Sullivan Lets Loose On Palin (Again)

The last year or more I’ve been a devoted reader of Andrew Sullivan’s blog.  But it was the last three months of the presidential campaign that I have the warmest nostalgia for and much of that time his blog painstakingly logged ever one of Sarah Palin’s lies and character flaws. It was a great source […]

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Barack Obama’s Most Important Achievement Regardless of What Follows

I have always held in this race that while of course we shouldn’t vote for a presidential candidate based on something as skin deep as skin color, that nonetheless all things being equal in terms of character, temperament, policy proposals, principles, and priorities, that there is a crucial psychological bonus to having a black president. […]

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The Theocratic Mindset of James Dobson

As something of a Rawlsian about public discourse, I have no problem with religious people arguing in government for application of ideals that they personally discovered through their religion or their sacred texts, their religious institutions, etc. as long as they respect the need to give reasons that are publicly accessible, reasons that do not […]

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Obama Speaks In Politician and I Translate For the Readers At Home

Flip-flopping on NAFTA, Obama explains his position in his native politician language: “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified,” he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA “devastating” and “a big mistake,” despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy. […]

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Quote of the day

From a New York Times profile on quotes Obama: “I love when I’m shaking hands on a rope line and”— he mimes the motion, hand over hand — “I see little old white ladies and big burly black guys and Latino girls and all their hands are entwining. They’re feeding on each other as much […]

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A Treasure Trove of Polling Information and Analysis of Obama and Clinton’s Chances vis-a-vis McCain

Fascinatingly thorough and multiple treatments of the hard numbers about Obama and Clinton’s respective prospects against McCain. That and more important analysis that should go into superdelegate thinking about whom to support. And all this info and analysis is on one page of multiple mathematical pleasures

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Daily Hilarity: Senator Tom Coburn’s Editorial About Why The Republicans Are Set Up For A Rout In November

Senator Coburn writes, Compassionate conservatism’s starting point had merit. The essential argument that Republicans should orient policy around how our ideas will affect the poor, the widow, the orphan, the forgotten and the “other” is indisputable – particularly for those who claim, as I do, to submit to an authority higher than government. Yet conservatives […]

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Daily Hilarity: John McCain on Saturday Night Live

There’s probably never been another presidential candidate so willing and able to completely satirize himself like this.

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The Next Six Months Will Induce Much Wincing

Andrew Sullivan posts an e-mail from one of his readers: I live in SD and I am a candidate for the State House. I was out walking my district last month and spoke to a woman about the primary. She has a statue of the Virgin Mary in her front yard and was wearing several […]

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The Six Degrees Of Jeremiah Wright

Well, now it turns out that anyone that Barack Obama endorses is magically endorsed by Jeremiah Wright. By November’s time it is the Republican party’s wish that not only Barack Obama is equated with any one he’s ever been associated with in any capacity but that pretty much every Democrat who aligns him or herself […]

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What Should Matter More To Superdelegates? The Popular Vote or the Pledged Delegates?

As the Democratic primary season is winding down, Barack Obama has an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates.  Because of the nature of this lead the race is being declared over and done with in his favor.  It makes a lot of sense to think that if the superdelegates were to overturn a clear mandate for […]

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