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Soft Power, Hard Power, Election Power | The Smirking Chimp

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Smirking Chimp - Jan. 31 (Opinion) - Unless something goes awry, this nation will have four relatively soft-spoken candidates for our top offices this year. I propose that means more soft power will displace older hard power models. Who knows for sure, but the trends are there.

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Bush III, Bush IV, AmBushed Forever | The Smirking Chimp

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Smirking Chimp - Jan. 09 (Opinion) - Unless wrongheaded agendas are directly dispatched, they can live on and predate whatever comes afterwards. The ultimate tragedy of Obama is we are still under the reign of Bush-Cheney. And 2012 promises little relief.

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Gingrich's Messiah Complex

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Smirking Chimp - Dec. 19 (Opinion) - Here's my New Year's gift, a light bauble of a jingle for those normally put off by reason in rhyme. I gave up trying to take Newt seriously enough to write prose for, like Kissinger per Tom Lehrer, he's moving himself beyond satire. But I found a thesis and inspiration from that famous lyric celebrated by heavy drinkers.

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Oligarchy Unmasked . . . and Outspoken

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Smirking Chimp - Dec. 13 (Opinion) - Rarely do we hear the unfettered, unfiltered truth from the vaunted ruling class, but here is a misdirected email that sheds light on how the rich, the fat and the sassy think -- and what they control -- and don't.

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Three Cheers for GOP Moderation! | The Smirking Chimp

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Smirking Chimp - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - I wish to adjust the one-sided stereotype by overwrought leftwingers that every comment from every GOP candidate is a tissue of delusion, lies, and propaganda. By citing positions they don't take, which could be worse, I make my point. By scratching up what remains of moderation, I support my thesis. That's satire, after all.

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Will Perry's Epic Washout Disgrace Texas As Palin Did Alaska? | The Smirking Chimp

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Smirking Chimp - Nov. 14 (Opinion) - There are few more engaging delights than watching an arrogant blowhard fall, hard and fast. That joy increases when our most self-aggrandizing state, a muddle of blowhards, is part of the disgrace and descent. No pity here.

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First Round: Lesser of Two Evils | The Smirking Chimp

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Smirking Chimp - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - The tornado of hypocrisy and mendacity has bashed Herman Cain, sending this sex predator into the eye of the storm. Which only reminds us that the GOP must choose between their lesser evil before the rest of us choose ours, in the national election.

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President Everything to Nearly Everybody - The Hero with 1000 Faces

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - Nov. 01 (Opinion) -

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Taboo - or Not Taboo. Make That 15 Commandments.

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - By Robert Becker - Oct. 26 (Opinion) - It's good news that bad taboos, which reinforce prejudice, are falling by the wayside. But what about good taboos on which civilization depends, also falling by the wayside?

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The Great White GOP Hope, in the Wings

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - Oct. 20 (Opinion) -

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You're No Truman - That Populist Bulldog Didn't Just Growl

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - Oct. 11 (Opinion) - If Obama thinks he's like Harry Truman, per the media hype this week, he's doubly blighted. Not only was Truman a genuine, Democratic populist (though not without flaws), he offers a very striking contrast to what Obama isn't doing -- and/or is doing wrong.

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Right Dithers, Left Withers | The Smirking Chimp

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - Oct. 05 (Opinion) - Can anyone recall such a fickle GOP electorate -- raising up one wingnut after another, only to smash their chances two weeks later? And how curious this display happens when the left is agonizing over what to do with a president who betrayed his promises and still looks like a loser?

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The Rise of the Pro-Ignorance Right Wing Puts us All In Danger

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Stephen Pizzo - Sep. 28 (Opinion) - The nation's simpletons have leapt from the shadows, where they wisely hide, except for distinct and notable moments in human history; the Dark Ages, the Inquisition, late 19th-century Germany and the same country during the 1930s. During such times, when the conditions are just right, like they are now, dumb and dumber leap from the shadows and take center stage, claim their right to lead, and... well the results are history.

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Palin Show Suckers Nader: "Lot Smarter than People Think."

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - Sep. 25 (Opinion) - What, though, did old Ralphie say that tickled my fancy, bereft for amusement -- that Sarah Palin, America's perennial, crusading rogue dilettante, is "a lot smarter than most people credit her." Talk about your odd couple -- culturally, politically, or intellectually.

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Born-again Social Darwinism: Survival of the Callous, Morally Unfit | The Smirking Chimp

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - Sep. 20 (Opinion) - Social Darwinism provides a terrific window to explain today's Tea Party for its biases reflect like-minded distortion of Darwin's biology. Such a frame also explains the TP shift from confrontation to demonization, now to scapegoating this week.

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The end of the Washington Times and Rev. Moon's right-wing charity

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Smirking Chimp - By Eric Boehlert - Jan. 12 (Opinion) - You'd think that somebody with a direct line to the Almighty, and tapped by Jesus to save mankind on Earth, would be able to come up with a better business plan for running a daily newspaper. But, alas, after nearly three decades of unrelenting financial losses, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a federal tax cheat, accused cult leader, and founder of the Unification Church, has decided to pull out. Actually, according to news reports, it's more like Moon's U.S. college-educated sons, as part of an internal family power struggle, have decided to finally cut off the endless stream of Asian church cash that's kept the Times afloat.

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Profiling CEOs and Their Sociopathic Paychecks

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - By Thom Hartmann - Jul. 29 (Opinion) - If there is a "free market" of labor for CEOs, then you'd think there would be a lot of competition for the jobs. And a lot of people competing for the positions would drive down the pay. All UnitedHealth's stockholders would have to do to avoid paying more than $1 billion to McGuire is find somebody to do the same CEO job for half a billion. And all they'd have to do to save even more is find somebody to do the job for a mere $100 million. Or maybe even somebody who'd work the necessary sixty-hour weeks for only $1 million. So why is executive pay so high?

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AIG Exec Whines About Public Anger, and Now We're Supposed to Pity Him? Yeah, Right

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - By Matt Taibbi - Mar. 27 (Opinion) - Like a lot of people, I read Wednesday's New York Times editorial by former AIG Financial Products employee Jake DeSantis, whose resignation letter basically asks us all to reconsider our anger toward the poor overworked employees of his unit. DeSantis has a few major points. They include: 1) I had nothing to do with my boss Joe Cassano's toxic credit default swaps portfolio, and only a handful of people in our unit did; 2) I didn't even know anything about them; 3) I could have left AIG for a better job several times last year; 4) but I didn't, staying out of a sense of duty to my poor, beleaguered firm, only to find out in the end that; 5) I would be betrayed by AIG senior management, who promised we would be rewarded for staying, but then went back on their word when they folded in highly cowardly fashion in the face of an angry and stupid populist mob. I have a few responses to those points. They are 1) Bullshit; 2) bullshit; 3) bullshit, plus of course; 4) bullshit. Lastly, there is 5) Boo-Fucking-Hoo. You dog. AIGFP only had 377 employees. Those 400-odd folks received almost $3.5 billion in compensation in the last seven years, a very large part of that money coming from the sale of credit default protection. Doing the math, that averages out to over $9 million of compensation per person.

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Someone Take Away Thomas Friedman's Computer Before He Types Another Sentence

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Smirking Chimp - By Matt Taibbi - Jan. 22 (Opinion) - When some time ago a friend of mine told me that Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, was going to be a kind of environmentalist clarion call against American consumerism, I almost died laughing. Beautiful, I thought. Just when you begin to lose faith in America's ability to fall for absolutely anything -- just when you begin to think we Americans as a race might finally outgrow the lovable credulousness that leads us to fork over our credit card numbers to every half-baked TV pitchman hawking a magic dick-enlarging pill, or a way to make millions on the Internet while sitting at home and pounding doughnuts -- along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-'stached resident of a positively obscene 11,400-square-foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism. Where does a man, who needs his own offshore drilling platform just to keep the east wing of his house heated, get the balls to write a book chiding America for driving energy-inefficient automobiles? Where does a guy whose family bulldozed 2.1 million square feet of pristine Hawaiian wilderness to put a Gap, an Old Navy, a Sears, an Abercrombie and even a motherfucking Foot Locker in paradise get off preaching to the rest of us about the need for a "Green Revolution"? Well, he'll explain it all to you in 438 crisply written pages for just $27.95, $30.95 if you have the misfortune to be Canadian.

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O'Reilly Wants Proof That FoxNews Is Racist: Read Your Own Columns, Bill

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - By Steve Young - Jul. 25 (Opinion) - Yesterday on his Radio Factor, Bill O'Reilly tried as hard as he could to come up with something that proved the case those dang smear sites were making. That the Fox News channel is racist. He even brought on the ever brilliant, albeit Fox News consultant, Prof. Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, a real live African-American, to try to help him.

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Guess Who's Coming to the Impeachment

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - By David Swanson - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - Then the topic was altered. Rather than being about impeachment, the hearing will be about impeachment and other supposed remedies to a lawless presidency, with the bulk of the time devoted to those other remedies.

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A Brief Chronology of the Bush-Cheney Impeachment Movement

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - By David Swanson - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - June 2005 - Ranking minority member John Conyers holds unofficial hearing without subpoena power and is not taken seriously.D

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Swan Song for Fannie: Eulogy for the Ownership Society - The Smirking Chimp

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - By Mike Whitney - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - If the administration was serious about changing direction they would dump Paulson and reinstate Paul Volcker. Whatever one thinks about Volcker, his presence would calm the markets and send a message that the adults were back in charge.

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VIDEO: GOP Brags That McCain Will Continue Bush's Economic Legacy

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - By David Sirota - Jul. 16 (News Report) - Notice about half-way through as the Republican strategist I'm debating actually acknowledges that McCain's major idea for fixing the economy is continuing George W. Bush's tax policies - and that when she's called out for saying that, she tries to deny what she just said:

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The Secret Email Dick Cheney Doesn't Want You To See

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Smirking Chimp - By Steve Young - Jul. 13 (Opinion) - Seeking to play down the effects of global warming, in October of 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed to delete from congressional testimony references about the consequences of climate change on public health, a former senior EPA official claimed Tuesday.

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