You may be alarmed to discover that sequestration not only affects our nation’s battleships, but also its art galleries and strategic folk dancing troupes. As sequestration leads to the involuntary fiscal liposuction of our federal budget, the National Endowment for the Arts will tighten its belt by $7.3 million. That reduction will leave the NEA read more
Category Archives: Politics
Human Achievement Hour
March 22, 2013 – 1:56 am
This Saturday during Earth Hour various people around the world will shut their lights off for sixty minutes as a symbolic gesture to raise awareness about climate change. Hopefully if enough people do so they will scare the bejeezus out of unsuspecting astronauts. Watching Houston inexplicably pretend to be Pyongyang for forty-five minutes is surely read more
Good Riddance, Soda Ban
March 13, 2013 – 2:40 am
Fortunately for you it is still legal to buy Pepsi by the bucket in the city of New York. I do not speak lawyer, but a cursory glance of Judge Tingling’s ruling indicates that Mayor Bloomberg’s attempt to ban giant sodas was halted partially because Bloomberg overstepped his bounds as mayor, but also because the read more
Political Totems
February 19, 2013 – 11:49 pm
Which do you hate: solar panels or natural gas? (If you’re Amish, you should hate both. Then you should post on the message board why exactly you’re on the Internet what with being Amish. Then send me a bale of cheese.) Over the last year I’ve noticed that a surprising amount of Americans hate one read more
The Inauguration
January 20, 2013 – 11:07 am
This week Americans will come in droves to Washington DC to stand around in very cold temperatures and watch the president get sworn in. This quaint tradition dates back to the founding of the republic, when nobody actually wanted to be president, and we would drag a general or governor or some such, kicking and read more
Confessions of a Campaign Robot
November 10, 2012 – 12:01 am
Campaign season has finally come and gone, so politicos can rest for another two or three weeks before the next cycle begins. Trying to “get out the vote” takes multiple forms: phone banking, door-to-door candidate salesmanship, and (in select counties) rampant voting fraud. As someone with sweaty palms and a naturally shifty disposition, campaigns rarely read more
Where to Flee to If Your Candidate Loses
November 6, 2012 – 12:00 am
In every election dating back to at least Lincoln, Americans have whined about leaving the country if their guy loses. Then they annoyingly stick around anyway. If you’re giving serious consideration to flying the coop in the event of electoral defeat, here is a helpful list of ideal retreat locations: Social Conservatives: USA, ca. 1984 read more
Scrap the Electoral College
November 5, 2012 – 12:37 am
In this year’s presidential elections your options are Republican, Democrat or “throw your vote away.” There are important distinctions between both parties, and it’s unfair to paint them as merely “Pepsi” and “Diet Pepsi.” By that same token, however, America’s most pressing political questions often have more than two proposed solutions. That’s why we should read more
Political Tribalism
October 16, 2012 – 12:01 am
Deep down there is more in common between Republicans and Democrats than there is between people who use all caps on online message boards. To illustrate, here’s a short quiz which determines whether or not I would ever want to discuss politics with you: I am voting for my candidate because (select one): read more
Foreign Policy Knows no Party
September 6, 2012 – 12:40 am
My European friends typically portray Republican foreign policy as monolithic. Which is to say, nasty. This is baffling, as there is little consensus on foreign policy in either party beyond razing any Olympic uniforms made in China, and wholly and unquestionably doing whatever AIPAC wants. There are perhaps one or two blurry foreign policy differences read more
Can the Government Make you Skinny?
August 30, 2012 – 2:59 am
You may have noticed over the last couple of years that menus at fast food chains are now required to display calorie content. A number of vending machines likewise cheerfully detail the same information, to forewarn you against the perils of eating Doritos. What’s so interesting about this development is that it implies fat people read more
How to Save America: The Multi-Vote System
August 22, 2012 – 12:27 pm
If some terrible catastrophe befell America wherein mass groups of citizens were stricken unimaginably stupid, would it be a good idea to preserve our current one-vote-per-person system? I think not: should the republic suffer a collective lobotomy, we would need to restructure the system so that better-informed citizens had weightier votes than the sorts of read more
Dan Boren: Outgoing Congressman Lets Loose
August 8, 2012 – 12:31 am
My exclusive with Congressman Dan Boren is by far the most fun interview I’ve ever conducted. Running rampant through the halls of Congress with an outgoing member? Pranking Dennis Kucinich? Awesome. The congressman, in a display of unrivaled glory, did five things he’s always wanted to do before leaving Congress. I hope to do read more
Offshoring, Nonsense & Robots
July 19, 2012 – 2:46 pm
Excepting this “recession” I keep hearing about, if you asked the average American “where have all the jobs gone?” they would likely say “China.” There’s also a high probability that they would further denounce those damned top hat-wearing plutocrats who shipped our jobs overseas, and the complicit politicians who permit said evil. We need to read more
Tobacco Farmers are Better than You
July 5, 2012 – 2:24 am
Did you know we actually subsidize tobacco? You know– that brown stuff that kills people and makes teenagers look cool? We hand over fistfulls of tax dollars to tobacco growers every year. To grow poison. If that’s not perplexing, wrap your mind around this: we also tax people for smoking cigarettes. In 2009 we passed read more
I Don’t Blame Congress, I Blame YOU
June 14, 2012 – 12:01 am
One of the interesting things about living in a democracy is that we actually get what we deserve. That’s the basic premise behind democracies. Yet if you speak with an average American voter, they talk as if a bunch of lawyers snuck into Congress one day and we need to hire exterminators to come in read more
Moderates are Pragmatists
May 28, 2012 – 11:38 pm
Garrison Keillor once said, “it’s difficult to get people fired up about moderation.” Particularly now in Washington, where the term “moderate” has been vilified. At best, it conjures images of blandness. At worst, a wishy-washy politician who is inconsistent and (most damning) willing to listen to the other party, instead of secretly plotting to kill read more
Review: White House Correspondents Dinner
April 30, 2012 – 1:00 pm
Maybe next year the White House will be kind enough to invite me to their hoity-toity dinner instead of forcing me to make a review on YouTube.
Congressional Districting as Rorschach Tests
April 12, 2012 – 12:01 am
As of last week 80.2% of America disapproved of Congress. To put that in perspective, if America had an up-or-down vote on whether or not to disband Congress in favor of relegating decisions to a Magic 8-Ball, representatives would spend the next year arguing about who gets the position of National 8-Ball Shaker. Yet we read more
Grover Norquist Interview
March 15, 2012 – 1:08 am
Say what you will about Grover Norquist, the mega lobbyist was incredibly accommodating in his Cloture Club exclusive. Not only did he play along with my jokes, he also taught me how to juggle. This was a fun interview. We’ve got a couple lined up in the near future, and I’m looking forward to more after read more
