Blog Profile / Salon.com: News

How Washington could create jobs right now

I like to ask friends about the oddest summer job they ever had. One talks about how he used to don a rubber suit every morning at a Sylvania electronics plant in Syracuse, NY, and climb into a tank, where he dipped television tubes into some sort of mercury solution. He now moonlights as a thermometer.

Getting to know the Tea Party

Scholar Robert Putnam, best known for his study of American atomization in "Bowling Alone," has produced new data on the Tea Party and it's being billed as a shocker. Sit down before you read this: They are older, white conservative Christians "who were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born."

The bully the GOP has been waiting for

Now that he’s declared his candidacy, odds are Republicans will nominate Texas Gov. Rick Perry for president. They won’t be able to help themselves. If Hollywood put out a casting call for an anti-Obama, Perry would get the role.

Our Patriotic Billionaire Challenge!

Which campaign trail "wife joke" was worse?

Credit where credit is due: Maureen Dowd, the longtime New York Times columnist whose one joke had worn thin by 1999, had a good line today:

GOP calls for a new presidential candidate are growing louder

If you're a Republican who is primarily concerned with denying Barack Obama a second term, the Rick Perry campaign rollout has been a disconcerting experience. The Texas governor was supposed to be the great consensus candidate, able...Show More Summary

"Let them eat cake!": Summer edition

If the rest of us are sweating through a wretched climate-change-seared August, it's a good bet the super-rich and powerful are calm, air-conditioned and happily summering in the world's most posh retreats.

Tea Party people less popular than many other hated minority groups

There is a shadowy group of malcontents in America today, plotting a grand takeover of our political institutions in order to completely remake the country according to their wishes. Despite the fact the members of this group are a small...Show More Summary

Another military Birther goes AWOL

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Rick Perry is America's last rock-solid investment vehicle

I've got just the ticket for getting America back to work. It's pretty simple, actually! All we need to do is get every unemployed person in the country to cut Rick Perry a check for a couple hundred thousand dollars. Next stop: a new age of prosperity!

Perry: "Almost treasonous" if Bernanke prints more money

Sometimes it's best just to stick with your initial instinct. Speaking to a small group of Republicans in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Monday night, Texas. Gov. Rick Perry was asked by one audience member what he would do as president about the Federal Reserve. Show More Summary

How to end the new War Between the States

Increasingly the battle between left and right in the United States has become a second War Between the States. Red states claim they are picking up domestic migrants and industries from blue states because the latter are too liberal in their tax, welfare and regulation policies. Show More Summary

The unpopular solution to the global debt crisis

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- When France raised the retirement age from 60 to 62 last year, three million people took to the streets in protests.

Rick Perry's got some nerve

Monday is "Get to know Rick Perry" day in the liberal wing of the media, with Paul Krugman, Joe Conason, Joshua Holland and others providing great data about the myth of the strong Texas economy and other Perry whoppers. Perry's Texas leads the nation in minimum-wage jobs, uninsured children, high school dropouts and pollution. Show More Summary

Obama, FDR, and the right way to tackle a jobs crisis

"Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat...Show More Summary

Shariah foes seize on Perry's ties to Muslims

It looks like my story last week about Rick Perry's cordial relations with a group of Muslims has, as expected, generated alarm within the anti-Shariah wing of the Republican Party.

Don't buy the "Democrats are powerless" myth

"Obama's aides say the president has a responsibility to explore policies that have a chance of passage, rather than merely making a political statement." -- Washington Post, 8/10/11

These are the choices the GOP is stuck with

Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal plays a major role in shaping and driving the political conversation on the right. Republican Party leaders and activists and other conservative media outlets frequently take their cues from the Journal's editorial page, amplifying the ideas and attitudes the paper embraces. Show More Summary

Perry: The military doesn't respect Obama

In Iowa last night, newly anointed GOP primary heavyweight Rick Perry offered a novel reason he is running for president (in addition to God calling him to do so):

What Michele Bachmann's submission theology really means

When the Washington Examiner's Byron York asked Michele Bachmann if she was submissive to her husband at the Fox News GOP debate Thursday night, the crowd gasped and booed. That's because wifely submission -- also known as complementarian theology -- is central to the faith of many evangelicals. Show More Summary