Every time I see a picture of yet another Hollywood actress who has starved herself down to concentration-camp thinness, I think about this topic. It has been acute since Elizabeth posted in praise of "fat chicks" (the size she describes isn't "fat" as far as I'm concerned, but/… Read full post »

I was born back before plastic playground equipment.  When bike helmets were for hardcore cyclists on the Tour de France.  When roller skates still had wheels made out of steel, and you could get the kind that clipped to your shoes.

My Mom got married at 19, and had… Read full post »

I haven't posted in the last few days. Naw, it's not laziness; it was a migraine that struck like a hammer to the head at 5:45 a.m. Monday morning, and didn't deign to leave until sometime early this morning when I finally fell asleep.

Ordinarily, I'm not the kind… Read full post »

Bear with me on this; it all comes together in the end, I promise.

A couple of things have collided in my fevered brain in the last couple of days, causing me to want to repost some thoughts I had in a letter to Salon many months… Read full post »

Taking a break from politics, primaries, and Bush outrage . . .

I have an iPhone. As a person who's always been big on portable, hand-held, video-replay technology, I was thrilled that I could watch movies or TV shows (either purchased through iTunes or ripped from my private collection)/… Read full post »

There is apparently a lot of discussion happening in the Obama campaign and among Clinton's large donors for help from the Obama folks in retiring Clinton's large campaign debt. According to TMP Media, Obama is "getting an earful" from angry Clinton supporters about this and other issues.

I… Read full post »

Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.

It was inevitable with a candidate as inspiring as Obama that there would be disappointments; I was just hoping they would happen after inauguration day. 

It's bad enough that the Bush Administration is pushing the "surveillance whenever we say… Read full post »

I don't like to write about (or think about, or listen to) Still President Bush because as Charles Taylor so elegantly said:

"There has been no other period in my life -- not during Watergate, not during Iran-Contra or the rest of the Reagan administration -- when picking up… Read full post »

I was face down on a hotel bed, sheets all sweaty and disheaveled, when the call came at about 7:30 a.m. California time.

It was a business trip, you see. But having lived in the Bay Area for 25 years, I still had friends I liked to visit… Read full post »

Coming from an Irish-Catholic family where there is alchoholism on both sides, I've always been very cautious when it comes to any alchohol. Beer and wine, yes, okay, but spirits, mixed drinks and such, not so much.

(It helps that most high-proof alchohols taste like the liquid penicillin… Read full post »

 I know I'm not the only one who is a bit dismayed by the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth the press is currently going through over the recent death of Tim Russert.  To be perfectly frank, I have very, very mixed feelings about it.

"Of the dead,… Read full post »

Today's Supreme Court ruling in favor of habeus corpus--even for those "known terrorists" down at Gitmo--is of course a welcome and profound step in what I hope is our return to being a nation of laws, rather than a nation that has one "accountability moment" every four years when/… Read full post »

I've felt for a long time that McCain's "straight-talk" reputation, combined with his habit of cultivating the press in endless discussions, had the potential to be very damaging to him.  Now it appears we're starting to see some of that come to pass.

McCain has coddled and cultivated the… Read full post »

It is a common thing these days to read about how Bush is one of (or the) Worst Presidents in History^tm.  What's always been morbidly amusing to me is that we really shouldn't be surprised; Bush has failed at durn near everything he has ever attempted.

There are those… Read full post »

Gary Kamiya has a very interesting article today talking about Barack Obama's mixed race heritage, and it's impact (both current and future) on racial identity. It made me think.

I'm a white guy. I mean, really white. My Dad was half-Irish, half "Some of us came/… Read full post »

So okay, yes, it's premature, but during the past several years I haven't been able to help but wonder what a President Edwards or President Clinton or (now) President Obama would do to undo the damage of the deranged Bush Administration.

I'm not just talking about big obvious things,… Read full post »

Perhaps it's simply intellectual cowardice, but I've never talked about "Clinton for President" in other than pragmatic terms: electability and ability to govern. Frankly, I think all the Democratic candidates were better choices than any of the Republicans. (Well, maybe not Mike Gravel, but the/… Read full post »

Now that the primary season is actually over, it's time to assess a little bit. I'm not enough of a reporter to look back on the two campaigns in toto, and other people have already done it better than I can. I do have a few thoughts/… Read full post »

I'm not particularly stunned that the press jumped on Sen. Clinton's "assassination" gaffe for the weekend.  

(I do have to disagree with Joan Walsh's opinion on the matter, however:  aside from Clinton's comment being wrong on several levels, Keith Olbermann has a point in that it is/… Read full post »

We all live with the spectre of a disease like cancer striking us down without warning.  I think this is part of the reason why Teddy Kennedy's recent diagnosis of malignant brain cancer has had such a startling effect on folks.

In my case,  it is even more… Read full post »

One of the saddest legacies of the Bush Administration is that it has reinforced in me--and almost certainly created or reinforced in many other people--the tendency to distrust what the government "officially" says.  Even more than that, I have now reached the level of doubting everything the/… Read full post »

By now everyone who wants to has probably seen Chris Matthews' (Chris Matthews of all people!) wonderful skewering of Kevin James, one of the many right-wing know-nothing blowhards who currently pollute our political discourse.

Alex Koppleman, who enjoyed the exchange as much as anyone, feels that/… Read full post »

Remembering the "Total Perspective Vortex" from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (wherein a person is put in a machine that shows the whole of creation, along with their position in it--usually driving them mad), I am very hesitant to say "We need a little perspective." One/… Read full post »

My father-in-law is a HillBilly.

I say this not as an insult, nor do I say it against the will of Pop himself (who describes himself that way), but merely to point out a fact.  Pop is a HillBilly who grew up in a rough cabin in the hills… Read full post »

I was fascinated reading Mike Madden's article on Obama's chances in West Virginia. Not because of the blatant racism he reports on--I think we all expected some of that--but because the excuses so closely match up with the excuses claimed by many of the anti-Clinton crowd.

There is… Read full post »