Puffin’s Place

Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessnes, and corruption.
James A. Garfield
President 1831-1881

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Do you know that you can set up a snopes.com feed?
If you do not and you have an email account, let me caution you against two items currently going around.
One email sets forth the theory that the Obamas funded their college educations with “funny money.” The subsequent letter is full of fraud, hysteria, and provincialism [...]

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Don’t miss The Onion’s video report on Bush’s tour of America to observe the Damage caused by his disastrous presidency.

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All of the hullabaloo about Michele and Barack Obama might remind us that being among the elite is no bad thing to be. Especially when the label is applied by others.
For reasons transparently envious, the Obamas are constant targets of the unfunny (cf Joel Stein’s strained efforts to write standup in a recent LA Times [...]

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I spent a bit of time yesterday accosting folks in shopping centers to spread the word about registration in my state and the newly-opened Obama headquarters in my town.
Perhaps it is fanciful thinking, but those who support Obama seem a bit different from those who grunted and scurried away. It is as though the sense [...]

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I continue to be gobsmacked by the sequence of miles between what Obama said and what people—not even in his San Francisco audience—purport to have heard.
One expects Hillary Clinton and McCain to make a meal of this once they have distorted his words sufficiently to raise a row. One expects the media to leap upon [...]

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And the logic behind the firestorm of the following Washington Post blog report of Obama comments is?
Obama dismissed the idea that his struggles were based on his race, and instead offered lengthy observations about working-class disenfranchisement and its political manifestations.
“In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have [...]

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FWIW, I recommend this article in the April 7 issue of New York Magazine. In it, John Heilemann offers the fascinating scenario of Hillary Clinton successfully wooing the brains of John and Elizabeth Edwards in an NC meeting after Edwards withdrew from the nomination race. According to Democratic scuttlebutt provided by the article, whereas Obama [...]

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Well, well, the US government can bail out Bear Sternes but, according to Republican presumed candidate McCain, will surely not attempt to lend a hand to careless middle class home owners who signed on for mortgages unprepared for gas tank fill-ups at $3+ a gallon and job layoffs thanks to the economy of an administration [...]

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Today in cruising the Los Angeles Times site I ran across Michael Meyers’ column, “Obama Blew It.” If you are an Obama supporter, I urge you to read it.
The crux of Meyers’ thesis can be found here: “He [Obama in his Philadelphia speech] should have presented us a pathway out of our racial boxes and [...]

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