Tom McKay

Here's something you don't see every day: one of the most powerful men in the country being extorted on live television. Well, maybe. Former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, who is currently on the business end of an FBI probe into $3.5 million in alleged hush ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

Mad Max: Fury Road is a miracle of a movie. From its jaw-dropping physical stunts to its thought-provoking themes, the latest installment of the four-decade franchise deserves its near-perfect critical reception. But if you wanted a needlessly contrarian hot take on why the ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Feb 17, 2016

Republicans supposedly hit two birds with the same stone last week with the release of the first batch of Clinton emails, supposedly of the secretary of state sending now-classified info about Benghazi through her private email address. Unfortunately for the GOP, the supposed ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

Anonymous hook-up website Adult Friend Finder (you know, that place in all the pop-up ads) has been hacked big time. Ars Technica reports roughly four million users had their "email addresses, sexual orientations, and other sensitive details" sent out in the breach. While it was ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Feb 17, 2016

The arrest of six Baltimore Police Department officers for the death of Freddie Gray and a looming Department of Justice investigation into the city's police are just the tip of the iceberg. Records obtained by the Baltimore Sun and published this week reveal that the rough ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Feb 17, 2016

The Associated Pressreports that 223,000 jobs were created in April, bringing the unemployment rate to 5.4%. That's the lowest since the sixth month of the Great Recession in May 2008, indicating that employers are relatively confident about continued growth after a weak January ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

Here's the week that was, at The Daily Banter. For the One Millionth Time, Criticizing Islam Isn’t Bigotry Banter senior editor Mike Luciano pens a harsh rebuttal of the wave of vitriol directed at anti-Muslim fanatic Pamela Geller in light of news that two would-be Islamic ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

Stuffing as many people into a compressed space as possible is a long, storied and stupid American tradition, from the 1950s phone booth cramming craze to the ever-declining size of airline seats. Today's Republicans are already applying the same principle to their ongoing ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

As news that far-right hatemongers Pamela Geller and Geert Wilders were the near-victims of an apparent assassination attempt in Garland, Texas during a "Draw Mohammed" event shot through the right-wing blogosphere, lesser bloggers merely wrote about it from homes or offices. ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Feb 17, 2016

When I'm not writing for The Daily Banter, I have a day job writing news, commentary, and analysis for Mic, a new media company targeted towards progressives and millennials. Occasionally I get a chance to do some on-the-ground reporting. On Wednesday, I was fortunate enough to ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Dec 20, 2018

Has anything changed? Why is this happening? What comes next? These are the tough questions Banter staff tackled this week while Baltimore burned in response to death of 25-year-old black man Freddie Gray, who died of a severed spine inflicted in police custody on April 19. ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

While Baltimore police were busying themselves cracking skulls and issuing shrill warnings of gang retaliation against cops, right-wing commentators were taking the time to gloat about how much the devastating rioting across the city confirmed their worst stereotypes about black ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

Ted Cruz would like you to know that he really doesn't hate gays. He just hates gays that don't want to write him a check. TheNew York Timesreports that Cruz "struck quite a different tone" towards homosexuality during a Monday night "dinner and 'fireside chat' for about a dozen ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

Here's the week that was, at The Daily Banter. Elizabeth Warren Is Not Telling the Truth About The Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal Tommy Christopher lays a pretty solid case that liberal icon Elizabeth Warren is misleading the public over her opposition to granting ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

You can't walk 10 feet in D.C. without running into a high-minded centrist extolling the virtues of moderation and reaching across the aisle. This way of thinking casts itself as above partisan nonsense and cloaks itself in intellectual rigor -- real, in the case of The New ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

We have officially reached the point in which Republican presidential candidates no longer even put up the pretense of being concerned about big money in campaigns. Nowadays they're just gleefully carving up the dying whale of American politics for special interests while ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

With Hillary season in full swing, the Banter staff have taken a break from their daily routine of stalking Ted Cruz from the shadows to bring you coverage on H-Dawg's first week. (We're still watching you, Ted.) Here's the week that was, at The Daily Banter. Ready for Hillary ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

On the Tuesday edition of Outnumbered, Fox News' Andrea Tantaros suggested that Hillary Clinton's incognito trip to a Toledo, Ohio Chipotle (which she reportedly pronounced "Chi-polt-ee") was an effort to "eat off this hangover" and also some kind of "Hispanic outreach" because, ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Feb 17, 2016

The race for 2016 is on, and so far Team Hillary is the fastest horse out of the gate with a 'D' on its saddle. More accurately, it's the only horse, and it's going to have at least a couple billion dollars riding on it. But as any drunken loon at the racetrack would tell you, ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the next president of the United States, who is totally straight and does not have any unresolved anxieties about his sexuality, ranting about about gay jihad. From the good folks over at RightWingWatch, here's Ted Cruz telling the Network ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

Eccentric billionaires agree: Screw college! It's for sheeple. In a recent Bloomberg interview, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson gave a heap of bad advice to young entrepreneurs convinced that they have the next big idea: college is for "the masses" and a waste of your time. ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

Here's the week that was, at The Daily Banter. How In the Hell Is Nobody Getting Fired at Rolling Stone Over the UVA Rape Story Disaster? Banter's Chez Pazienza documents Rolling Stone's lackluster handling of the very serious reporting misfire in its UVA rape story, such as ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

Would you like some lies and misdirection with your shitty fast-food job? McDonald's recently announced it would begin paying $1 per hour above the prevailing minimum wage in each state, a significant raise in percentage terms, but a pittance compared to the $15 an hour ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018

Amid the news that two terrorism suspects were nailed by the FBI this week, PATRIOT Act co-sponsor Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) knew immediately what was to blame: a bomb-building guide from the 1970s and Al Qaeda's half-assed version of Us Weekly. Feinstein, who happens to ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Nov 9, 2018