Repeatedly, we’ve been told that “Obamacare” will discourage sharp, motivated professionals from becoming doctors. That even though it makes no mention of capping the salary a doctor can make, young people will be so dismayed at any type of regulation to the health insurance market they won’t want to go to school to become one…
Category: Larger Editorials
We Can’t Keep Losing Our Top Anti-Corporate Voices to Sex Scandals
Below this feature Now What? did an excellent job of pointing out how strange this whole Weinergate saga is, but I’m a little interested in the uniqueness of it and a lot more interested in the “Who cares about it all?” aspect of it. Most importantly, we’re a little worried this is going to cause…
Larger Editorial: Why Republicans are the Pyramid Scheme Party
In an item I ran on Sunday I said social conservatives (the majority of the Republican Party by far) need to wake up to being used by fiscal conservatives (the small minority of the party that actually runs it). And I’d like to continue on that thread now. After all, when social conservatives have been…
Larger Editorial: Republicans, Why Self-Hating Governments Can’t Be Effective
“Republicans have a great gambit. They run on the promise that government is ineffective and then they get in there and prove it”–Bill Maher Republicans hate government. They hate the regulations it imposes. They hate the taxes it draws to keep the country running. If you’re Ron Paul, you even hate that government forces you…
Larger Editorial: Defending Teacher Unions, the Most Misunderstood Organization in America
Blaming teacher unions for what’s wrong with public education is like blaming the coal miner’s union for the pollution a coal company causes. But yet, in everything from the worthless documentary Waiting for Superman—which faked an interest in probing what’s wrong with public education before taking the easy way out in blaming education unions—to the…
Larger Editorial: Is Obama Ushering in a New Era of Competent Government?
“Government can do nothing right.” Republicans have said this for so long, we hardly blame them for getting elected into office and proving it. They run on the promise that government is ineffective, sluggish to respond, and unholy expensive, and then don’t even attempt to govern once they get elected. Instead, trying as hard as…
Larger Editorial: Superman Struggling, Is Obama Worth It?
Last week I spent most items defending President Obama, but now it’s time to ask the flip side of that question: Is he worth it? By worth it, I mean is the entire Democrat Party worth compromising for this one man? Far right wing conservatives (i.e. racists) hate him with every fiber in their body….
Larger Editorial: Why Climate Crisis is the New Civil War and Why It’s Worth Fighting
If anyone has ever read a book or seen a TV show based on life in the “contemporary” Southeast, sooner or later The Civil War comes up. It’s as if the writer—who probably “isn’t from around here”—is itching for the moment to work this into the narrative. Even otherwise great books and television series go…
Larger Editorial: Is Reality TV responsible for the Tea Party?
Let me start off by acknowledging that I don’t mean that title literally. I don’t mean to suggest that the creators of the Real Housewives of [Some City You Don’t Live In] were sitting around thinking of faster ways to ruin civilization and decided to create a quasi-racist, definitely ignorant, oxymoronic (they want to lower…
Mitt Romney is Funneling Money to Drug Cartels to Claim Mexico for Mormonism! (Or Why Faux News is so Dangerous)
By now articles about the legendary inaccuracies to stories Faux News reports are almost old hat. Nearly every week, people accuse them of making something up. If it can be proven they did, they ignore it long enough to hope it goes away. If it cannot be proven to a certainty what they reported is…
While Democracy Spreads Throughout the World, It’s Taken Away in the US
It is the best of times to be a democracy. It is the worst of times to be a democracy. All over the world, fledgling democracies are springing up in the place of decades old dictatorships. Tunisia, Egypt, and (any day now) Libya will all be in that exciting new phase of a country where…
R.I.P “Liberal” Media (or Why the Media Won’t Call Scott Walker a Fascist But Will Call Obama a Socialist)
It’s time to call a time of death on something that may never have existed in the first place: the liberal media. I’m not sure the exact date to put on the tombstone for either birth (of course at one time the media was as doctored and corporatized by big business as it is now) or…
Larger Editorial: Why Jesus Would Support Unions
Partial Caveat: This could easily go into Sunday’s Sermons (and was supposed to originally) but if I wait until Sunday to post it, who knows if unions will even still be around. Plus, this section is where I post something I value every week, and for me the issue of unions is about as close to…