House Teabaggers Don't Fear McCain's Pending Attack... Not Even A Little

No one in the House Republican caucus thinks the man who befriended Muammar Qaddafi and lolled away his evenings at the Qaddafi family ranch, is any kind of threat to their political careers.Beltway Republicans expect McCain to blow any minute now-- and that the target of his wrath will be the far right of the House Republican caucus this time-- teabaggers, Know Nothings and the blatantly racist end of the party. But they're laughing at the 2008...

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"Israeli racism has a new and original justification: The people love it" (Gideon Levy in Haaretz)

Haaretz caption: Beitar Jerusalem fans holding the flag of the outlawed racist Kach party at Teddy Stadiumby KenProbably there will be a lot of Americans who bristle at the idea that Israelis have broken new ground with the discovery that bigotry is good for business. Certainly Chick-fil-A CEO doesn't need any lessons from around the world in making bigotry pay -- although he does seem to have some killjoy traitors in his organization who leaned...

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Is Obama Lying When He Says The U.S. Wasn't Complicit In The Egyptian Coup?

Obama won't even acknowledge the military takeover from a legitimately-elected government in Egypt was a coup. And he claims the U.S. had nothing to do with it. U.S. allies and puppets in the region-- other than Israel-- aren't hiding their participation though. From a report by the right-wing Israeli military intelligence website, DEBKAfile: The lightening coup which Wednesday, July 3, overthrew President Mohamed Morsi put in reverse gear for...

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Sunday Classics: Brooding and striving, grand and intimate, it's Bruch's "Scottish Fantasy"

by KenIn Friday night's preview we revisited Beethoven's Choral Fantasy (for piano, soloists, chorus, and orchestra) and Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia (for piano and orchestra) in anticipation of turning our attention today to Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra.With this installment we have concluded our survey of the three works of Bruch known to most music lovers. We heard the soulful Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra ("A haunting...

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Fascism In Cairo Cheered By The Americans Who Always Cheer Fascism

Fascists love those military strongmenThere's always been a big audience-- and cheering section-- for fascism in the United States, which explains the popularity of the Wall Street Journal, not to mention Fox News and Hate Talk Radio. The other day we looked at the 1933 fascist coup attempt against Franklin Roosevelt led by Republican industrialists and financiers Irénée du Pont, J.P. Morgan, Prescott Bush, Grayson Murphy, and other prominent Wall...

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TV Watch: If "Food Network Star" has often felt a bit wheezy in Season 9, it's still had its moments

Easily the dopiest challenge of Season 9 of Next Food Network Star was Episode 4's "Dinner and a Movie," in which three-person teams not only had to create a dinner suitable for a genre of movie -- romance, Western, and musical -- but do a trailer for it. Team Musical (Rodney the pie man, Chris, and Lovely) sang, God help us. Click here for a preview of tomorrow's Episode 6.by KenIn fairness, by Season 9 of anything it's apt to be a tough haul to...

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Hospitals-- A Place People Go To Get Even Sicker?

I'm sure many people think of hospitals as places to go to be cured of sickness. I always think of hospitals as places to go to die. And not just to die because medicine doesn't cure much of anything but die because hospitals all filled with disease so that patients who go to them are at risk of catching something unrelated to whatever brought them there in the first place-- and dying. Does that sound crazy? Thursday Reuters published a report from London that over 3 million Europeans come down with just such an infection in a hospital every year!...

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The Republican Fear Of All Things Womanish

by NoahNo, this isn’t about The Republican Party’s continuing war on women, as recently exemplified in the neo-fascist states of Ohio, Texas, and North Carolina. It’s just something that recent events made me think about on this 4th of July weekend. It’s not about abortion rights per se and it’s not about the hate-filled Herculean pro-death, Republican efforts to stop uterine and breast cancer screening with sneaky late night anti-democratic state...

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Midterm Report: The Best and the Worst Democratic Freshmen

Time to grade the Democratic freshmen-- or at least to pick out the 10 best and the 10 worst. Which ones lived up to what Alan Grayson laid out in his little monologue above? And which served the interest of careerism and corporate special interests above the interests of their own constituents? Short version-- for people in a hurry-- here are two lists (alphabetized), the 10 best, followed b the 10 worst: THE BEST:• Tony Cardenas (D-CA)• Matt Cartwright (D-PA)• Alan Grayson (D-FL)• Jared Huffman (D-CA)• Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)• Joe Kennedy (D-MA)•...

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