After the Storm: Four Beginnings
There are thousands of stories about how things came back after Katrina. Here are four of them.
View ArticleBarack Obama, Speechifying, and Cultism
I'm sold; I'm voting for Obama, and I'm doing it because of a speech. Lately I've heard some complaints that Barack might be a bit of an empty suit other than his ability to give speeches. While you...
View ArticleIt's important: His middle name is 'Hussein.' With an H.
I say it's important to remember: Barack Hussein Obama. There's a good reason, too, but a poll to see if you agree...
View ArticleWhy the swiftboating doesn't seem to work
It's worked so many times before that we keep expecting it: The Sound Bite from Hell looped 24/7 on the teevee and viewed 3,000,000 times on YouTube that will destroy a campaign. But so far, it's not...
View ArticleWTF comment poaching @ Baltimore Sun?
OK I should be posting this at democraticunderground.com because it's where I posted the poached comment, but I post so little they won't let me :-( Meanwhile, WTF is up with this?"I" have the top...
View ArticleConversation with a Republican
Last Friday I drove to Brookhaven, MS and had lunch with a longtime coworker. He's a lifelong Republican in his mid 40's who is very politically active and has only voted for Democrats a handful of...
View ArticleMy teeth used to look worse than McCain's
Yes, they were badly stained and also unevenly worn. I'd had a run of bruxism and ground them down so far the dentist was unwilling to clean them, for fear of removing the rest of the enamel.
View ArticleThe problem isn't Gay Marriage, the problem is Marriage.
While we circle wagons with our GLBT friends and look to undo the cruel and vindictive travesty that is Prop. 8, I think we need to remember why denial of marriage is a tragedy. The problem is not...
View ArticleInaugural Prayers: Why were they chosen?
The tradition of having prayers given at the Presidential inauguration only goes back to 1937. In considering my position on the Warren flap, I decided to go back and see who has gotten this honor...
View ArticleShowdown for the Poker Player in Chief
For me I can't tell if he's a Jedi Master, playing chess on a three-leveled board way ahead of us, or this is kicking his ass.--Jon Stewart to Bill O'Reilly I don't know how pertinent the skills of a...
View ArticleNukes, and the story of an "Einstein"
There was a period of about eight years back in the 1990's when I spent most of my free time hanging out in casinos. It's a long story, one which ended with a friend a self-made millionaire and my...
View ArticleIt's not Chess, it's Poker, and in case you didn't notice...
...President Obama just crushed the table.
View ArticleDear Hillary: The primary isn't winner-take-all
This isn’t about the issues, this is about the math. This is about how HIllary Clinton’s 2008 campaign blew the primary, and how they seem intent on doing it again.We have heard a number of claims...
View ArticleDopes and Babies: Why They Sat There and Took It
There are several diaries up about the shocking tirade Trump launched in the Tank, as excerpted by the Washington Post from the upcoming Very Stable Genius book. And in those diaries and the comments...
View ArticleA Perfect Call: How Trump Uses Language
As the impeachment trial unfolds, one of the elephants in the room (and not the Republican mascot) is how Donald Trump uses the English language. It’s not just that he lies; after a certain amount of...
View ArticleCOVID-19: The Math
This is a relatively simple reflection on something that should be obvious.There are several good trackers out there for COVID-19 data; this one taken at random currently (Feb. 29) reports 85,721...
View ArticleThe Relatively Simple Reasons for Everything He Does
When the news dropped about the bizarre PPE and supply procurement situation, where Trump noisily stomped that supplies weren’t his problem and that the governors should be making their own...
View ArticleDonald Trump's Sadism isn't Sexual - It's Far Worse
The idea that Donald Trump is a sadist, particularly a sexual sadist, comes up periodically; most recently in this Salon interview with John Gartner which has been making the rounds. While it’s...
View ArticleThe 51% Vulnerability
I got in a conversation with a coworker last week about how cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin work. He couldn't understand how they could work without some kind of central authority. I explained that the...
View ArticleDo any of Russia's Nuclear Weapons Actually Work?
I know, the title is crazy, right? We all know that Russia is the big #2 nuclear power in the world. They have thousands of warheads — actually, according to Wiki, about 1,500 actively deployed and...
View ArticleThe Bifurcation of Democracy
The caption picture is a very famous mathematical graph which not many people understand. It comes from chaos theory, formalized in the 1980’s, a branch of mathematics which is both lauded because it...
View ArticleRepublicans are the Kzinti of Modern Politics
So who are the Kzinti?In the 1960’s and 1970’s Science Fiction writer Larry Niven created an ambitious, rambling future history of the human race called Known Space. It wasn’t the first such project;...
View ArticleWhat was known, and what we've learned
What We KnewI was born in 1964. I am not old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis or the JFK or RFK assassinations. When I came to awareness of such things the largest nuclear weapon that...
View ArticleNew comment behavior
The new comment compression thing that only shows a few words of each comment until you click to expand it is a complete pain in the posterior. Please provide a way to turn it off and just show all...
View ArticleAm I the only one who thinks the new comment thing sucks?
I have been here since DK moved to Scoop. The new comment behavior, where you have to expand every damn comment to see more than a few words, is a huge pain in the posterior. Please offer a way to...
View ArticleSorry, but you're not sick enough yet...
Please bear with me on a meditation that starts with a mysterious $150 overcharge, and ends with matters of good and evil, and life and death.I recently completed cataract surgery. I’m still on the...
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