conservative mind

The two parties aren't "the same." Democrats aren't the same as Republicans. There are some good Democrats. There are no good Republicans. The identity politics Democratic politicians play-- pro-woman, pro-gay, anti-racism, for example-- is better, way better, than the identity politics Republicans play. As for corruption... well corruption is part of, and even lionized by, conservatism.

This morning's first post-- based primarily on the work of Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson conflating today's off-the-rails Republican extremists with the post Civil War secessionist Democratic extremists of 1879-- is one of the most chilling ever at this blog. If you missed it, I heartily recommend you go back and read it right now.

Photo by the Orland Park (IL) Police Dept."Man arrested for vibrator theft offers to show police his penis, before slamming Obama"-- a New York Daily News headline yesterdayby NoahI bet the above headline from the New York Daily News caught your eye. What the hell? you probably said. What's next? And I bet you want to read more, right?

Jen Sorensen, Daily Kos Comics (click to enlarge)by KenThis strip is so wonderful that it hardly needs amplification or commentary, though I think you're going to enjoy it even more after you've read Jen's own background note (see below).

With a Doonesbury bonus: The deep rootsof modern conservative policy-making"None of the leading Republicans," says E. J. Dionne Jr., is willing to offer a more fundamental challenge to the party’s rightward lurch over the past decade." "Unfortunately for the Republican Party and the country, [Wisconsin Gov. Scott] Walker’s careful parsing of shape-shifting counts as one of the cerebral high points of the debate among the party’s 2016 presidential candidates."-- E. J.

Domesticated cats may have developed in the Americas! So says cat authority John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol's Anthrozoology Institute, and author of Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet, in this really wonderful interview with WNYC's Leonard Lopate."We can't reason with cats.

When I was 13-- and all my friends were studying for their bar mitzvahs-- I was making my first big hitch-hiking excursion. My grandparents were in South Beach, which was very grandparent-friendly back then, for Easter and I decided to see what hitching would be like. Brooklyn to Florida with $20 and a toothbrush in my pocket. I got as far as the New Jersey Turnpike and got arrested. They made my father come pick me up. He gave me the dough for a Greyhound. But it wasn't about the destination. I wanted to try out hitchhiking.

Born in 1911, Ronald Reagan came from a normal working class Illinois home. He was a labor union activist in the 1940s and the president of his union from 1947 until 1952 and again in 1959 but at some point in there he sold out to management and started secretly ratting out other actors to the FBI as "communist sympathizers." He remained a Democrat and even helped California Senator Helen Gahagan Douglas defend herself against the deranged attacks from a sleazy, fascist-oriented political newcomer, Richard Nixon.

The Ted Cruz/Koch brothers-inspired government shutdown cost the American taxpayers an unfocused and gratuitous $24 billion. Conservatives in Congress can at least tell them selves they're recouping part of that loss by cutting back on food stamps.

by KenSomehow I seem to have found myself on the Nobel beat. First, there was the rush of the unexpected but wildly deserved Literature prize for Alice Munro.