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Domestic terrorism case is upstate NY?

An unusual quartet of law enforcement agencies -- the FBI, the NYC Police Department, the State Police, and the Saratoga County Sheriff's Department -- raided a mobile home in Malta Wednesday, taking...

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Corrected: Angry white man's murder toll did not double to 12

Correction: I misread the LA Times story, and had assumed from earlier reports that six people were killed in drive-by fashion, and that the evidently non-drive-by apartment, sorority and deli deaths...

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NRA responds to Isla Vista with free membership offer

The NRA claims to have 5 million members, most presumably paying the $35/year fee, and gets outsized political impact from that claim, even though that's less than 4 percent of the voters in 2012.But I...

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Anti-marriage equality march is another big DC FAIL

The National Organization for Marriage, the major group opposing marriage equality, held its second March on Washington today and like most such wingnut events in DC lately, it was a big FAIL.NOM's...

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George Will defends himself with projection

Tired old Tory pundit George Will has lost a few newspaper op-ed checks after his column about how college sexual assault victims get some kind of "coveted status" when they report the assaults.The...

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Has Carly Fiorina ever heard the 'strong and bitter words' of tea party leaders?

Carly Fiorina is a two-time loser (as CEO of HP and 2010 Senate candidate in California) who was invited onto CNN Sunday chat show to defend the anti-woman Hobby Lobby decision by five old Catholic...

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A Villager explains why he's moving left UPDATED

Thomas Ricks covered the military for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post for more than 20 years, and was, like most such in the DC media Village, supportive of the various wars he...

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Florida's libertarian beaches can kill you

This may essentially be another a story about how climate change sucks, but there's also a telling libertarian twist to it that should concern anyone considering swimming off Florida's...

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Senator Gillibrand's Labor Day barbecue

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has held a Labor Day barbecue every year since she was elected to the House in 2006.The barbecue is largely a thank-you event for people in the former NY-20 who have...

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NY-21: Woolf responds to Stefanik's national radio address BS

Elise Stefanik is a rich kid Bushite who is running for the NY-21 open House seat with the full support of the national Republican establishment.Before Saturday, that was evident in the seven figures...

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When unions disappoint

Labor unions are generally supportive of Democrats, as well they should be because they know from decades of experience that Republicans would, if they had total political control, legislate unions out...

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Reframing 'infrastructure' to win the Senate

Maintaining a Democratic Senate majority this year was always going to be difficult, given lower mid-term turnout and that we did remarkably well in Senate elections six years ago.About 10 races (AK,...

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Greed drives outsourcing of good jobs

And water is wet.For many decades now, American manufacturing corporations have moved to the South, and then overseas, in order to find the cheapest labor possible.They have been encouraged, and...

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Joe Strummer: 'Black 47 is the only band that matters'

That's what The Clash's main man said in the 1990s, according to a wonderful valedictory story about the unique Irish-American band Black 47 in the New York Times on Friday.Why would Joe Strummer say...

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Mike Nichols: We are all Willy Loman now

Not exactly Willy Loman, and not exactly now, Nichols was interviewed by the NPR business show Marketplace in 2012, when he directed a Broadway revival of "Death of a Salesman" starring Philip Seymour...

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The real story of ISIS

The corporate media went gaga about the "new" jihadi militia group ISIS a few months ago, largely because they had overrun the Sunni Triangle part of Iraq that had been the main battleground of the...

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Chris Gibson for NY governor or US senator in 2018?

New York Republicans have not won a statewide race (governor, attorney general, comptroller, US senator) in 12 years, mostly because NY is a solidly blue state by registration, but also because they...

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A Koch hack tells the Pope to 'back off' on climate change

Pope Francis will be issuing a rare encyclical on the environment and climate change next year, and it's pretty clear that his message will not be "Drill, baby, drill."According to the Guardian story,...

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Scott Walker hates public higher education for two reasons

Hunter's diary today about Scott Walker's proposed $300M in budget cuts for the University of Wisconsin system is, of course, great. But Hunter does not explore the real motive for these savage cuts.It...

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NY-Gov: Gibson begins campaign

When GOP Rep. Chris Gibson, NY-19, announced last month that he would not run for a fourth term in 2016, many people (myself included) opined that he was setting his eyes on running statewide (probably...

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The teabagger response to the first state seat belt law

Some teabagger pols in Maine want to repeal the state's seat belt law, because of the ficticious freedom to seriously injure yourself on public highways.yingyang had a diary today about this, that...

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Other Bloody Sundays

The 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma has occasioned a wonderful movie and moving tributes yesterday by President Obama and Rep. John Lewis on the bridge named for a notorious racist where...

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Albany charters stumble while founder pockets $400K-plus/year

Former Pataki hack Tom Carroll used to be the very public voice of the Brighter Choice charter school system in Albany. But since the charters for his two middle schools were not renewed by the state...

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A job 'Americans' apparently won't do -- digging ditches for Verizon for...

Verizon is a telecom behemoth, with revenues of $32 billion and profits of $4.3 billion in the first three months of this year.But like most corporations these days, Verizon employs as few workers as...

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NOM's pathetic response to the Irish vote

The Irish people's brilliant affirmation of marriage equality yesterday has naturally caused some gnashing of teeth among the ever-fewer Catholics who are devoted to their idea of "traditional...

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The remarkable endurance of the weird POW/MIA flag

There was a brief tabloid media kerfluffle in NYC last week about a relic of the Vietnam War -- the POW/MIA flag.It seems the flag had not been flown in front of City Hall for almost a year, until...

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Using 'entitlement reform' is always wrong and misleading

since what is really meant is "reducing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits."Yet it is misused all the time, and not just because two words are shorter than seven.The corporate media and...

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'Vanity Fair' piece on Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge barely mentions NY-19 race

A long Vanity Fair feature by Sarah Ellison entitled "The Complex Power Coupledom of Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge" has a lot of detail about their backgrounds, how Hughes became a Facebook...

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How Scott Walker talks to the base, when there are no cameras around

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is a top-tier candidate for the Republican presidential nomination next year.Not because he's been a great success as governor, not because he's reliably wingnut on social...

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Walker lies again, like it's second nature

All politicians gild the lily when talking about themselves and their accomplishments, but they usually try to avoid outright lies.Not Scott Walker -- he lies so often and so casually that it must be...

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Joy on Broadway with the World Champions

I have been a fervent TV fan of the US Women's National Team since just 2011 (occasional before that), because of the latest and most dramatic World Cup goal, men or women -- Allie Krieger to Carli...

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Trump elbows Walker in Iowa, says 'Wisconsin's doing terribly'

Short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump is clearly not afraid of "going too far," by Village media standards, in criticizing anyone, from Mexican immigrants to President Obama.As a direct result, he is...

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My email to Schumer and Gillibrand re: Iran

Evidently, how my NY Senators, Chuck Schumer moreso than Kirsten Gillibrand, will vote on the Iran nuclear agreement is a big thing.The story linked above is relatively balanced, compared to the...

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Best Hillary analysis ever

Sady Doyle says she’s “spent much of this year working on a long project on how women are demonized in the media” and Hillary Clinton was naturally part of that.Doyle’s analysis of how the media,...

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Warmest, least snow winter in recorded history

At least around Albany, NY.I’ve been living here for 60-some years, and do not remember a winter when I did not have to shovel snow.Until now.Temperature records date back to the 1820s. This winter...

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Bernie-booers quieted by Gillibrand, Franken and Silverman

One of the reasons Trump got a poll-bump is that the crowd in Cleveland only booed Cruz, and was otherwise loudly enthusiastic for their candidate.Early on tonight, the PBS talking heads were on about...

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NY-19: 'Moderate' Republican kisses up to radical Oath Keepers

NY-19 is one of those swing districts that Democrats must win to have any chance of recapturing the House majority. It’s been represented since 2010 by relative moderate (for House Republicans) Chris...

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'the most vulgar man I have ever met'

is Trump, of course, according to a fun appreciation of the short-fingered vulgarian by Graydon Carter, who published that moniker dozens of times when he was a founding editor at Spy magazine back in...

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NY-19: Teachout wins NYT endorsement

NY-19 is one of those swing districts that Democrats must win to have any chance of recapturing the House majority. NY-19 is a Hudson Valley/Catskills district that includes all of Columbia, Delaware,...

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Say goodbye to state recreational/medical marijuana laws

Though marijuana is still a Schedule 1 illegal drug (which means it allegedly has no medical benefits), 28 states allow for regulated medical use of marijuana, and eight states allow some level of...

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Did German-Americans voting for one of their own help elect Trump?

It’s a truism of politics here and everywhere that voters will tend to vote for people like themselves.White people tend to vote for white politicians, black people tend to vote for black politicians,...

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Fake news comes in the mail too, as it has for decades

Direct mail has been a money- and rage-raising medium for the right wing for more than 50 years. And unlike RW radio, TV or social media, direct mail mostly flies under the radar, because most of the...

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Everybody likes Energy Star ratings, except Trump extremists

The EPA Energy Star program which encourages and certifies energy efficient appliances and HVAC systems is, according to this LA Times story, voluntary, cost-effective and “immensely popular.”So...

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Honoring Confederate traitors, on talk radio in Albany, NY

White supremacy, like racism generally, is not just a Southern thing. As was re-emphasized this morning on WGDJ, a locally owned conservative talk radio station in Albany, NY.Melody Burns spent 30...

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'I know a lot about healthcare, you know a lot about healthcare'

Those are two lies in less than one sentence from Trump’s 100-day interview with Sarah Westwood of the Washington Examiner, a further-right-than-the-Moonie Times magazine and website owned by...

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History Channel promotes Lost Cause in Robert E. Lee bio

OK, you get what you pay for — I picked up a DVD for free at the local public library about Robert E. Lee, one of the History Channel’s “Great Commanders.”It’s available to all on Youtube, for free...

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The Guardian finds another clueless Trump voter

While we are “Waiting for Godot” for national/international media to do any story about what Hillary voters think about our President*, what Trump voters think about his performance remains endlessly,...

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A way around Trump's NDAs that will ruin him

Trump has a long history of making most of his employees and contractors sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that are designed to keep his often atrocious conduct secret forever.Trump’s NDAs are...

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Gillibrand shines on '60 Minutes'

“60 Minutes” Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi did a feature story on NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand tonight (video and transcript here) which christened her the “#MeToo Senator.”There was some basic bio...

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Dateline NBC's excellent hour about cannabis

Cannabis prohibition is awful for many reasons. Dateline NBC had a full hour tonight about one of them — the federal government has deemed cannabis a Schedule 1 controlled substance (along with heroin,...

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