Why I'm Rooting for Newt Gingrich To Be The Republican Nominee

If you're a liberal, you've probably had at least one Republican acquaintance inform you that you ought to be supporting Ron Paul for President. This is because Republicans don't really quite understand Ron Paul. Since he believes in civil liberties and doesn't like sending young people off to die in ill-conceived foreign wars, Republicans often assume he's a flaming liberal hippie in disguise. In the black-and-white world of Tea Party Republicans, he's not nearly white enough to be white, and must therefore be black.

Shift The Power: The American Dream Movement Is No "Left-Wing Tea Party"

Ronald Radosh's Pajamas Media piece "Can Van Jones Create A "Left-Wing Tea Party"? Don’t Bet On It" is only one of several recent articles about the American Dream Movement, but it's arguably the most comically irrational. Radosh has made something of a cottage industry out of hissing rather ineffectively at film director Oliver Stone, and occasionally frets about Russian spies and other bogeymen, but Van Jones and the American Dream Movement are the latest targets of his rapier illogic and willful ignorance.

Dancing with the Devil: Obama's Perilous Pragmatism

President Obama's much-ballyhooed and much-maligned bus tour was reputedly an attempt to "pivot back to jobs" and reconnect with voters increasingly dubious about his ability to right our listing economy. Predictably, Republican Presidential candidates were quick to disparage Obama's message and his performance.

Snooki Kabuki: Comedy, Tragedy, and Tea Party Stupidity

For weeks now, our government has been mired in a bizarre drama the likes of which we've rarely seen, and for weeks I've struggled for a metaphor to fully convey the surreal, theatrical attributes of this manufactured crisis. I finally settled on kabuki, the time-honored Japanese genre of dramatic play. If you're at all familiar with kabuki, you'll have to agree it's an apt metaphor, encompassing the elaborate staging, overt symbolism, and stylized extravagance of the Debt Ceiling Drama, not to mention the fact that—as with true kabuki—the characters' interpersonal and political struggles have completely overshadowed the plot. Sure, this particular surreal drama could potentially tip us into a global depression, but it's the political struggles that seem to have captured the attention of the audience—for now.

Tea Party Zombies Push GOP into Boston Harbor

When President Obama dramatically took leave of the theatrics in Wednesday’s futile debt negotiations, news outlets predictably focused on the melodrama. Right wing pundits pounced on the President as churlish and panicky, with Rush Limbaugh painting a cartoonishly dismal picture:

Will Budget Reality Finally Topple Right Wing Dogma?

In a recent Los Angeles Times piece, Washington Bureau reporter Lisa Mascaro offers a tantalizing peek into a Republican Party now fractured into two warring factions: conservatives, and paint-eating tea partiers. Mascaro reports, "One of the most treasured tenets of the Republican Party — 'No new taxes' — has been thrown open to debate by a simple question: What, exactly, is a new tax?"

Picking The Lock Boxes At Social Security And Medicare

Sociologist and author Margaret J. Wheatley once made the eminently sensible observation, "Everyone in a complex system has a slightly different interpretation. The more interpretations we gather," she said, "the easier it becomes to gain a sense of the whole." Sadly, Dr. Wheatley neglected to add a necessary exception to her otherwise serviceable rule—politics.