Poplicola

There But for Fortune

On this day in 1940, the incredible songwriter, performer and activist Phil Ochs was born.  He wrote some of the greatest, funniest and most touching protest songs ever conceived before ending his own life in 1976. The era in which I grew up lacked a YouTube or a Spotify, so finding his recordings was hard work, but now we can all watch videos of his performances and his entire library is on Spotify. Yay technology.

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New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you frequent this here premier “web log,” there’s a good chance you may once or twice have read the New York Times op-ed page. You might even recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today\’s is from Thomas Friedman, who in his column today, \”We\’re Always Still Americans,\” writes: Our bargain is that we have to let them know we understand their challenge and will let...

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Writing Fads That Need to Die, Part 1

Welcome to a new series (maybe), in which we explore some ways people are killing the written language. 1. Using the word “because” purposely without “of.”  “The world works. Because science.” This is dumb. Replace with “Because of science.” Although that’s pretty dumb as well, but at least it’s grammatically correct. 2. The use of capitalized letters on fake proper nouns to “make some kind of point.” This kind of shit is popping up everywhere. Like: “It was a Totally Big Deal, or at least he thought it was.” Stop that. That is not a proper noun or...

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New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you frequent this here premier “web log,” there’s a good chance you may once or twice have read the New York Times op-ed page. You might even recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today\’s is from David Brooks, who in his column today, \”Class Prejudice Resurgent,\” writes: There has been a migration away from prejudice based on genetics to prejudice based on class. This is...

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New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you frequent this here premier “web log,” there’s a good chance you may once or twice have read the New York Times op-ed page. You might even recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today\’s is from David Brooks, who in his column today, \”The Unifying Leader,\” writes: I’m not here to apportion blame, but it would be nice if, in the future, we evaluated presidential...

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New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you frequent this here premier “web log,” there’s a good chance you may once or twice have read the New York Times op-ed page. You might even recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today\’s is, of course, from David Brooks, who in his stupid fucking column today, \”Obama in Winter,\” writes: But with his implied veto threat of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, President Obama...

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New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you frequent this here premier “web log,” there’s a good chance you may once or twice have read the New York Times op-ed page. You might even recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today\’s is from Paul Krugman, just because his column today, \”When Government Succeeds,\” is the kind of column that depressingly gets written so infrequently, yet needs to be written: It’s true that government-hating politicians...

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New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you frequent this here premier “web log,” there’s a good chance you may once or twice have read the New York Times op-ed page. You might even recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written. Today\’s is yet another from Thomas Friedman, who in his column today, \”Freud and the Middle East\” (oh brother), writes: Just as there is a little bit of West Bank “Jewish settler”...

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So what’s next?

This morning, we went over the preordained Republican takeover of the Senate. So, other than having to hear “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says” over and over, what will the next two years look like? For the most part, you’d be correct in assuming that it’d look a lot like the last four years: With Democrat Barack Obama still the president, and a Republican-controlled House and Senate, it’s going to be a loud not much. Yet even with that caveat, we can still look into what a unified legislature is going to at least try, and perhaps...

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