Mother’s Day Manifesto
On this day of Mothers, let us not just remember flowers and cute cards, or Sunday Brunch. Let us remember: Some women don’t want children. Womanhood ≠ Motherhood and vice-versa. Some mothers love...
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Excerpt from America, You Sexy Bitch, by Meghan McCain & Michael Ian Black
Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride Meghan: As much as I consider myself a Republican and feel in almost every way intellectually and culturally tied to both the Republican Party as an organization and its...
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Excerpt from The Mormonizing of America, by Stephen Mansfield
There are nearly seven million Mormons in America. This is the number the Mormons themselves use. It’s not huge. Seven million is barely 2 percent of the country’s population. It is the number of...
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Politics and Sincerity
There are exactly two ways you can react to things. You can either react sincerely or politically. For example, if I’m listening to a Chicago Cubs game in 2012, and a Cub hits a grand slam to win it in...
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Romney ‘Rithmetic
While I have a great deal of respect for my opponent, President Obama, I am forced once again to come to the American people and set straight the distortions that both his campaign and the leftwing,...
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2012 Election Literary Smackdown: Atlas Shrugged vs. The Grapes of Wrath
I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all...
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Excerpt from The United States of Paranoia, by Jesse Walker
October 7, 2001: less than a month after 9/11. Police in Maryland decide that two trucks on Interstate 270 might be carrying explosives. The alert cops block traffic for an hour, searching the vehicles...
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Notes from Buffalo: On the Current Crisis in Washington, D.C.
I’ve been pretty worked up about the government shutdown, and more so now since it appears that we’re headed for default. Yesterday I let loose some thunder from the pulpit of my church about...
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Excerpt of Friday Was the Bomb, by Nathan Deuel
PEOPLE LIKE US On our leafy terrace in Lebanon, beside the civil war in Syria, my wife Kelly and I were entertaining an old friend, the new Beirut bureau chief for a major news organization. This woman...
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Making Space, Holding Space: #90X90 and Literature as Resistance
There haven’t been many weeks since the summer of 2014 ended in which I haven’t thought about or someone hasn’t reminded me of #90for90, that time we did 90 events over 90 days in a train station bar....
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Excerpt of Hacking Trump, by Ranbir Sidhu
Fuck it. We Lost. Or, an Old Man Burns in a Chair Days before the November 8 election, while driving through rural New England, I was invited to, of all things, a Guy Fawkes Night celebration—the...
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Excerpt of Hacking Trump, by Ranbir Sidhu, Part II
“What’s going on over here?!!” Donald J. Trump, moments before body-slamming Vince McMahon, 04/01/07 There’s perhaps no better arena to understand the spectacle at the heart of Donald Trump than the...
View ArticleLiving in the Shadow of the North
When I first came to South Korea, a little over two years ago, the international media was ablaze with predictions of doom on the peninsula. The North Korean government declared to the world that it...
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Ten Reasons Why Al and Tipper Gore Should Reconsider
Al and Tipper Gore announced their break up, “a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together.” Here are ten reasons why I think they should reconsider. 10. A few years ago, Al...
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Unprecedented News from Australia
In one of the wildest 72 hours in backroom politics in Australia’s history (which is saying something), Kevin Rudd has been deposed as leader of the Labour Party, and Julia Gillard has taken the helm...
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Five Certain Words
My American friends. Imagine, if you will, waking tomorrow to find that Hillary Clinton had suddenly replaced Barack Obama as President of the United States. Imagine that, while you slept, a gaggle of...
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Knives Out
This is a very exciting weekend for all of us in Australia. Wait, did I say exciting weekend? I meant, ‘carnival of idiocy’. I wish I could say this is because the jetpack I ordered from the internet...
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Tom Sleigh: The TNB Self-Interview
Hey! You showed up! I didn’t think you would. Well, I almost didn’t when I heard you were doing the interview. I’m not that bad…we go way back, after all! I think of us as brothers, almost twins....
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Excerpt of American Snake Pit, by Dan Tomasulo
Rock, Paper, Sister Private Practice: 30 Years Later June 8 Nick had presence. He was a tall, solid bodybuilder. Sharp, chiseled angles defined his jaw and shoulders. He wore a worn green T-shirt and...
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