Markos from Daily Kos has a new gig writing opinion pieces for Newsweek, and he’s been in rare form with his first couple of efforts. From this week’s column: “In his first Inaugural Address, Ronald Reagan remarked that ‘government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.’ While the quip has provided […]

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In order to keep these roundups fresh as a spring daisy, I usually discard any links I’ve been keeping around that are more than a week old. But since this is OcPot’s first roundup in more than six weeks, I’m extending the freshness window slightly to include a few things that were just too good […]

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Eric Alterman has an outstanding column in The Nation on how the media’s mean girls (of all genders) develop the narratives they use to bring down the presidential candidates they take a dislike to. With examples of what they did to Gore in 2000, and what they’re doing to Obama and Edwards right now.
Two of […]

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General Petraeus says that “victory” in Iraq will require 9-10 more years. I’m trying to imagine how ten more years of bloody occupation can possibly work out to a victory. More on that subject here.

A bill has been introduced in Venezuela to restrict baby names to a list of 100 approved choices. “The bill’s ambition, […]

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I just finished reading Armistead Maupin’s newest book, Michael Tolliver Lives — well, inhaling it really, because reading Michael Tolliver Lives is less like reading a novel than it is like opening a richly detailed letter from an old friend you inexplicably lost touch with about 15 years ago, and suddenly here he is giving […]

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“Iraq hasn’t even begun”: Writing in the LA Times, Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European studies at Oxford University, examines the long-term consequences of the debacle in Iraq, and concludes, “Looking back over a quarter of a century of chronicling current affairs, I cannot recall a more comprehensive and avoidable man-made disaster.”
Digby on the […]

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Nicole at Crooks and Liars puts it well: It’s ironic to be celebrating Independence Day during a time when we have a virtual King who defies the law with impunity, and is not held accountable to the people he governs. Revolution? What revolution?

Also at C&L, what a TV newscast looked like on July 4, 1972. […]

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BOOKS: This week marked the release of Armistead Maupin’s new book Michael Tolliver Lives, which picks up the story of Michael “Mouse” Tolliver, the iconic character from Maupin’s Tales of the City series. Mouse is now in his mid-50s, living with HIV but happily married. Maupin says, “I wanted to tell the story of a […]

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It’s the foreign policy, stupid: This great post at Crooks and Liars takes apart the simplistic and unhelpful notion that terrorists “hate us for our freedoms.” As Michael Scheuer, former station chief of the CIA’s Osama Bin Laden task force, says:
“The fundamental flaw in our thinking about Bin Laden is that ‘Muslims hate and attack […]

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Kansas governor says it’s been harder to deal with the recent tornado disaster because the war in Iraq has put such a drain on the state’s National Guard. Both personnel and equipment that should have been available to the state are currently tied up in Iraq. “Here in Kansas, about 50 percent of our trucks […]

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Apparently the Republican candidates spent their recent debate going on and on about how great Ronald Reagan was and blah blah “Morning in America” blah blah Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn! blah.
Oh, Republican candidates. You silly creatures. You really should know better than that. Because now I’m going to have to open a can […]

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I got an email this week from my friend Justin Hayford, who works at the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago when he’s not moonlighting as a cabaret crooner.
Justin had a lot to say about a couple of pending bills in the Illinois House of Representatives. I could spend a bunch of time trying to paraphrase […]

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Newt Gingrich calls on Abu Gonzales to resign.
Trying to sound like a big, butch hunter to please the NRA, dreadfully amusing little joke of a candidate Mitt Romney says he likes to hunt rabbits and refers to them as “varmints.” Tell it to the Easter bunny, Mitt. I hope he left a gaily decorated rotten […]

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Here’s a little smorgasbord of items I wanted to blog this past week, and didn’t get the chance to. Because unlike spaghetti, time to blog doesn’t grow on trees!

John Nichols of The Nation asks whether we’re nearing an “Impeachment Moment,” noting that the I-word is finally being discussed — if not exactly embraced — on […]

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