The bad news about what’s going in Wisconsin is that, if Scott Walker succeeds in busting the unions, it could be a template for the corporate funded right-wing to cripple labor across the country, leading to a further consolidation of political power in corporate interests and accelerating the growing gap between rich and poor. The [...]
Entries Tagged as 'AR'
Why We Need Unions (In Spite of Jimmy Hoffa)
February 24th, 2011 · 1 Comment · AR, Labor, Politics
Tags: Ezra Klein·income inequality·Kevin Drum·labor movement·Scott Walker·unions·Wisconsin
Go. . . Steelers?
February 4th, 2011 · No Comments · AR, Sports
The two weeks between the NFL’s conference championship games and the Super Bowl are a unique kind of media overkill, a period where attention is at a maximum while activity is at a minimum. Predictably, this year the main subject of the glare is Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who last March was accused, for the [...]
Tags: Ben Roethlisberger·Charlie Sheen·fandom·football·Pittsburgh Steelers·Super Bowl
Trendsetting
February 2nd, 2011 · No Comments · AR, Politics, Sports
Bill Maher had an excellent piece during the “New Rules” section of last week’s Real Time about how the popularity of the NFL, particularly relative to Major League Baseball, proves the merits of socialism over unrestrained capitalism. It’s such a good idea for a column, it makes me wish that I had thought of it. [...]
Tags: baseball·Bill Maher·Capitalism·football·NFL·self-promotion·socialism
Racism on the Redskins? Impossible!
November 14th, 2010 · 1 Comment · AR, Sports
A column about who should be running the two-minute drill for the Washington Redskins may seem like an unusual jumping off point for a serious discussion about race, but this awful sports column for by awful sports columnist Rick Reilly* hits so many of the low notes of contemporary racial discourse that it’s worth examining. [...]
Tags: colorblindness·Donovan McNabb·implicit bias research·John Feinstein·Mike Shanahan·race·racial bias·racial coding·racism·Rex Grossman·Rick Reilly·Washington Redskins
Fair is Unbalanced
November 10th, 2010 · 1 Comment · AR, Politics
I’ve been quoting Bill Maher quite a bit lately on this blog. And I’m going to have to go ahead and do so again, because while I was slow to organize my thoughts on Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity,” Maher pretty much went ahead and aired them on his show last Friday. You need [...]
Tags: Bill Maher·Jon Stewart·Keith Olbermann·Rally to Restore Sanity
Socialist Patrol
November 3rd, 2010 · 1 Comment · AR, Arts and Entertainment, Politics
One particularly depressing thought that occurred to me last night: there’s an episode of The Simpsons in which a bear is spotted in Springfield, causing the townspeople to go crazy and demand that Mayor Quimby do something about the town being “infested” by bears. Quimby starts a massive “bear patrol,” with armed agents and helicopters [...]
Tags: 2010 elections·magic rocks·right-wing hysteria·The Simpsons
(Expletive Deleted)
November 3rd, 2010 · 1 Comment · AR, Politics
Going into yesterday knowing that it wasn’t a a question of whether the results would be good or bad, but rather how bad, I had planned to write a post this morning titled “Silver Linings and Sour Grapes.” But I wasn’t prepared for just how bad things would be last night, and decided to scuttle [...]
Tags: 2010 elections·Harry Reid·Keith Olbermann·Michael Bennet·MSNBC·right-wing hysteria·unqualified sucking