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THE QUOTE
“If you want to be a purist, go somewhere on a mountaintop and praise the east or something. But if you want to be in politics, you learn to compromise. And you learn to compromise without compromising yourself. Show me a guy who won’t compromise and I’ll show you a guy with rock for brains.” — former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson
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WILL YOU BE MY HERO, PLEASE?
How about that Alan K. Simpson?
The old bird who used to be a demi-villain to liberals back in the ’80s is now a darling of the left set because he tongue-lashed his fellow Republicans over the weekend.
Simpson appeared on CNN with Fareed Zakaria Sunday and called GOP legislators’ anti-tax intransigence “madness.”
Anti-Tax-ists
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Just goes to show how far we liberals and progressives have fallen when we have nobody to idolize but Republicans who occasionally say something that makes sense.
Simpson, by the way, says only a combination of solutions can revitalize the economy. That includes higher taxes for some Americans.
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GO!
Click this logo for the Pencil’s events listing, the best in Bloomington, natch:
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FACE TIME
I’m the most curious guy you can imagine (and that’s true on a number of levels.) But there are certain things I don’t need to see or know.
One of them is the video of the cops shooting that crazy nude man who was eating the face of another man.
Here’s A Pretty Cardinal
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In fact, that’s all I know about the story. I fear that if I click on any of the articles about it, I’ll see too much.
There’s nothing more I need to know about it.
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UNHAPPY ANNIVERSARIES
Get ready for the flood of stories on the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of IU student Lauren Spierer.
Profit-driven media is big on anniversaries. I look at it as lazy journalism.
If you think the Spierer anniversary will be bad, just wait until November, 2013. That’ll mark the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination.
He Did It, Okay? Can We Move On Now?
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Oh, and steel yourself for yet another wave of conspiracy books, documentaries, and articles.
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VEGETABLES ARE SOCIALIST
Michelle Obama’s new book comes out today. “American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America” recounts the story of her White House garden.
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Which reminds me that the unimaginably bizarre Rush Limbaugh raked her over the coals last fall for her garden.
“We do not like being told that we can only eat what’s in her garden,” he ranted on his radio show, which is listened to by tens of millions of mammals daily.
BTW: he also called her “uppity” once. But neither he nor his listeners are racists. How do I know? They say so — when they’re not busy calling a professional woman who happens to have dark skin “uppity.”
Sometimes I just want to scream.
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HARVEST FOR THE WORLD
I don’t remember if I’ve posted this song before but no matter, it’s worth hearing again.
The beauty of this Isley Brothers tune is that, while acknowledging that things are largely going all to hell, there is always hope. Every time I hear it, this song makes me think of morning.
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