In this wacky-tobaccy world of 21st Century politics, if you can't parboil an idea down to a sound byte then you might as well chug it raw. We the people like our politics plain and simple, like meat and potatoes: Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives, good guys and bad...

The fate of the unrepentant synergist is to see the seeds of all things in all other things and that goes double for your friendly neighborhood Con Man. In the spirit of everything telling us something about something else, I give you my trenchant analysis from the trenches--or, how football...

Dear Jesus,

I know You're busy, but hey -- there's no way You could be more busy than me. I had to take my first trip on a Gulfstream IV today just to make it in time for my big appointment. You know the one: your pal John McCain...

A question for today's class: in the history of television advertising, has any private citizen ever ponyed up $50 million-plus for the greater good of the American people, with no strings attached?

The answer, of course, is no--not ever--maybe because it's just not the American way. There's always an angle...

Well, my friends, if John McCain calls his audience "my friends" one more time I will never say the words "missing in action" again. If he refers to "my fellow Americans" again I will force-feed the Republican nominee with quotations from Chairman LBJ about marital fidelity.

The Straight Talker his...

Nope--not me, no way, no how was I going to leap to my feet in the Benedict Music Tent here in Aspen for any one of the multiple standing O's which the putatively liberal crowd was giving away to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: one for yakking with Aspen Institute...

Can't think of a better news hook than the Dalai Lama's visit to Aspen to talk about violence in the movies of Quentin Tarantino. Call me crazy and I'll zip your head off with the sword I just stole from The Bride.

I'm in the genius camp when it comes...

Presidential architect Karl Rove's mainly miss-the-mark missives in the Wall Street Journal are a thing of beauty, but none have quite reached the level of co-opted op-ed pulchritude as his latest exercise in self-aggrandizement, modestly headlined "Barack's Brilliant Ground Game."

Karl Rove, far too executive-privileged to show up for Congressional...

Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of The New York Times, was officially christened as king of the world over the weekend in Aspen -- and why the hell not?

He wore the mantle lightly at the Aspen Ideas Festival, in part because he married into the gazillionaire Buxbaum family,...

Some of my best friends are neocons.

Like the swallows of Capistrano, the upper crust that has segued to Aspen for the summer season have among their number a choice selection of neoconservatives.

Given the nature of my friendships with said neocons -- more degrees than a thermometer --...

ASPEN, COLORADO--What does the little town of Harper Woods, Michigan, unremarkable in so many ways, have to do with the Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, Aspen's own monarch with the $135 million manse in the beyond posh Starwood section of this mountain town?

Here in Aspen, in fact,...

The thing I love most about the Food and Wine festival here in Aspen is the famous people I've never heard of and would not know from Adam. It's like going to the Super Bowl with no clue about frozen tundra--you should have stood in bed instead of taking up...

We all know the neoconservatives would stop at nothing -- war, famine, pestilence -- to have their way in the Middle East based on a philosophy resistant to any and all strains of common sense. Nuclear weapons are not only on the table: neocons are busy sharpening the silverware.

But...

In a fit that had nothing to do with fit, my long-suffering fiancée decided I need to retire my stonewashed denim and replace it with a darker hipper Levi called "1969."

I didn't think twice (it's all right) about it. Jeans are jeans to me as long I can get...

In a land of plenty, the worst thing you can become is that guy -- that nerdy guy who runs around turning off lights and (worse) telling everyone he knows to turn off the damn lights or the air conditioner or the sauna or whatever.

I've become that guy.

Pleased...

When the historians look under the covers on civil rights, they are all but assured to see John McCain's appearance on the the Ellen Degeneres Show as one of the great seminal (sic) moments in the history of gay emancipation.

Ellen -- the woman who came out famously on her...

When I saw the book Print Is Dead: Books In Our Digital Age, my great fear was that Jeff Gomez had found out the great secret I have been carrying around for fifteen years in hopes that nobody would find me out.

Fortunately for me, Gomez -- an Internet marketing...

When Robert Downey Jr., the inherently ironic leading man, arrives on the scene in the Marvel Comics blockbuster Iron Man, it takes us a beat or two to realize his character, Tony Stark, is a drunk, philandering scumbag who just happens to be in the back of a Humvee in...

For far too long, conservatives have made political hay with the notion that they are the party of ideas and the party of values -- even as they've held a far too timid opposition at bay for having neither.

Enough, already.

The free ride is over: conservatives have not had...

If you're like me, blognoscenti, then you might have wondered more than once how a previously enlightened smarty-pants celeb can switch so effortlessly to a philosophy found abhorrent but five minutes before.

I finally figured it out: these media converts from liberalism are all fake conservatives -- not really conservative...