In the dark days following the 2016 election, after the initial shockwave of fear, dread and more fear subsided, I began to spitball various ways the emerging Resistance could successfully slow or stop the worst of the damage from the then-forthcoming Trump presidency. Based on ...read more
Days like these, I often stare at my blank computer screen, unable to zero-in on a topic to cover. Clearly there are way too many tantalizing bombshells bursting forth from the ongoing fire-hose of news. As a political writer, I'll never complain about an overly abundant news ...read more
Donald Trump made perhaps his most fatal foreign policy blunder so far this week by signing a memorandum authorizing the U.S.'s resumption of sanctions against Iran, violating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known colloquially as the Iran Deal. Trump's ...read more
A while back, I coined my very own rule about the corruption and despotism of Donald Trump. If you're at all familiar with my work, you likely recognize this: "Trump always makes things worse for Trump." Ninety-nine percent of the time, it absolutely applies to every Trump ...read more
In the debate about gun control, everything comes back to the validity and applicability of the Second Amendment in a modern context. What's its purpose? Why is it still necessary? Honestly, while I understand the arguments of the gun culture, I don't grasp why, in a modern ...read more
Having researched the cesspool of the far left for almost two years now, there's few among its ranks more repugnant than HA Goodman. Formerly a contributor at Salon and The Huffington Post, Goodman wrote hundreds of misleading pieces claiming that Hillary Clinton would be ...read more
(Photo: Coffey Park, Santa Rosa, CA. Elijah Nouvelage, Special To The San Francisco Chronicle) The Banter Long Read: I've had an interesting week. And it all began with something inside my computer called "classpnp.sys."... UPDATE: For the next 24 hours, you can get a month's ...read more
Back in 2009, I was invited to be the co-host of a podcast on a platform known as BlogTalkRadio. It still exists today, and it's still predicated on the concept of using your telephone to host a show... To continue reading this article, please go here. You'll get unrestricted ...read more
The Banter Long Read: "Somebody came along and said liberal means soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on Communism, soft on defense. And we're going to tax you back to the stone age because people shouldn't have to go to work if they don't want to. And instead of saying 'Well, ...read more
The Banter Long Read: It's not a name currently in the news because abortion and Planned Parenthood haven't been brought up since the failure of the congressional Republicans to repeal Obamacare, but let's begin by talking about Margaret Sanger... To continue reading this MEMBERS ...read more
The Banter Long Read: I'm not entirely sure how to set about writing this piece given how the ideas I plan to criticize came from people I otherwise consider to be otherwise brilliant and insightful online friends... (word count: 1347) To continue reading this MEMBERS ONLY ...read more
I can't even imagine the Trump fatigue being experienced by civilians -- those of you who don't cover politics for a living. In bad relationships, when one of the participants is overbearing or too heavy handed, we tend to experience emotional suffocation.... To continue reading ...read more
You caught me at an odd time in my political writing career. Early in 2007, I resigned myself to believing that Hillary Clinton would easily march to the nomination the following year since no one really had the machine nor the charisma to upend her campaign, save for one guy and ...read more
There was a time when Salon was the go-to site for thoughtful, intelligent analysis from the left on subjects ranging from politics, to the media, to pop culture. That, however, was long ago; these days all that's left of that storied era are a few really terrific columnists ...read more
Here at The Daily Banter, we strongly encourage debate on all the pieces we write. After all to 'banter', is to "talk or exchange remarks in a good-humored teasing way." It's not always good humored or teasing given we talk about some pretty serious stuff, but there are ...read more
Dear Bob, We come to you today as friends, as family, and as people who love you. We've come together to face up to our own fears that we've let a situation go on for far too long, a situation that's hurting you and hurting us. It's something we can't allow to go on for one ...read more
This has been alluded to a couple of times here over the past two days, mostly by the always thoughtful and analytical Bob Cesca, but as usual I'll be the one to dispense with all the pleasantries and just come right out and say it: Fuck Glenn Greenwald and David Sirota. Fuck ...read more
I really do try to avoid writing about the far-right wing of the far-right wing of the Republican Party. First, there are simply too many names and too many ignorant maniacs saying way too many ignorantly maniacal things that it's nearly impossible to keep up. And many of them ...read more
By Ben Cohen: I've received quite a few emails and comments about my piece on Glenn Greenwald's rant on the progressive media last week. Some readers took exception to my position that Greenwald's rhetoric is unhelpful and counter productive, claiming my attack on him was ...read more
By Chez Pazienza: Some of the most entertaining columns written for this site, I think, come from the times when Bob Cesca and I decide to get into a back-and-forth over subjects we're passionate about. While we both write here and host a podcast together, we obviously don't ...read more
By Ben Cohen: I live blogged Obama's speech last night and was left a little underwhelmed by it and couldn't quite put my finger on exactly why. Jonathan Chait has a very insightful piece in the New York Magazine that sums up my feelings on the speech that was a bit of a let ...read more
In case you missed it here's what we covered at The Daily Banter this week: After the awful events in Aurora, Colorado we looked at the complicated ways in which we make sense of tragedy, Bob argued that untreated mental illness pulled the trigger in Aurora, and Chez opined ...read more
By Ben Cohen: There's a very creepy book called 'The Game' that every woman should read in order to protect herself from sleazy, desperate guys. Written by Neil Strauss, the book details the authors infiltration of a network of 'pickup artists' in Los Angeles who have ...read more
This will be quick and appropriately dirty. A couple of weeks back, Bob Cesca and I each put together a list of the people in cable news we disliked the most, then ran down our respective choices on our subscription-only podcast After Party. A couple of the names we both came ...read more
In case you missed it, here's what we covered at The Daily Banter this week!: We looked at New York Time's columnist Thomas Friedman's fast food intellectualism, and analyzed Obama's use of Karl Rove's election tactics for the 2012 Presidential race. Bob Cesca tore into ...read more
By Ben Cohen: According to the Mississippi Tea Party, the implementation of Obamacare is tantamount to treason, and the chairman is advocating an armed uprising to get rid of the 'criminal invaders' residing in the White House. On their official website chairman Roy Nicholson ...read more
In case you missed it, here's what we covered this week at The Daily Banter! Chez Pazienza commented on the victory for Obamacare and warned the Left not to get too excited, Bob Cesca explained why Republicans love Obamacare, but just don't know it. We looked at possibly the ...read more
With a huge amount of disinformation about President Obama's healthcare plan swirling around the country, it is no wonder Americans are unsure about 'Obamacare' and what it means for them. As Bob Cesca wrote in a column earlier this week, even Republicans love Obamacare, they ...read more
In case you missed it, here's what we covered this week at The Daily Banter (and it was a very big week for us - highest traffic so far!): Mark Ames broke a big story on the Left's total abandonment of labor rights, Chez Pazienza wrote a heart breaking piece on the merciless ...read more
Welcome to this week's edition of The Daily Banter mailbag, where Bob Cesca, Ben Cohen and Chez Pazienza answer reader's mail as best we can! Today we discuss meaningful movies, whether Glenn Greenwald has a personality disorder and the effect Angelina Jolie has on the ...read more
By Bob Cesca: As I write this column today, the Supreme Court could, at any moment, hand down its decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. I don't feel particularly hopeful about this one, given the crap-on-a-stick precedent of Citizens United and the ...read more
By Ben Cohen: Last week, a great deal of posting time on The Daily Banter was spent discussing how productive it was to attack President Obama from the Left. Bob Cesca, Chez Pazienza and myself wrote about Glenn Greenwald, criticizing him for his incessant attacks on President ...read more
This week at The Daily Banter, we looked at Mitt Romney's bold plan to tax the poor, and looked at a disturbing reason why Republicans believe in doing this. We asked why the GOP Presidential candidate wants to cut jobs for Fireman, teachers and the police, and unfortunately ...read more
By Chez Pazienza: So over the past week this site has turned into the "Let's Take a Few Shots at Glenn Greenwald" show, with two of its highest-profile columnists -- Banter founder Ben Cohen and blogging machine Bob Cesca -- penning pieces that take issue with Greenwald's ...read more
A heads up to our readers, every Friday we'll be doing a brief roundup of the best stories here at The Daily Banter. This week we profiled arch conservative Grover Norquist's psychopathic view of society, and argued that Scott Walker's win in Wisconsin only proved that money ...read more
By Bob Cesca: The debt and deficit are evidently making American voters more insane and more self-defeating than they usually are. Conservatives, conservative financiers, anti-Obama zealots and a ridiculously complicit press corp have tapped into an easily-fooled, ...read more
By Bob Cesca: I promise I won't write about every single Karl Rove Crossroads GPS anti-Obama commercial that gets wet-farted into the ear-holes of American television viewers. I'll only write about the most awful ones. And the new one is a $7 million lie. By the way, that's ...read more
Bob Cesca: In the absence of anything realistic and feasible to say, the Republicans have all along made an effort to attack the president -- not in the name of substantive alternatives to his policies -- but for every day basic things all modern presidents do. It began even ...read more
One of the memes I often have to repeat is, simply put, the Republican and conservative leadership routinely lies to its followers. I mean, outright lying on just about every issue. They tell their people that President Obama has doubled the deficit (he's reduced the deficit), ...read more
By Chez Pazienza: I didn't want this to turn into a public back-and-forth, but when I wrote a piece last week for this site on the double-standard when it comes to how news outlets cover crimes which are racially motivated or have the potential to be racially motivated, I knew ...read more
Welcome to this weeks edition of The Daily Banter Mail Bag where Bob Cesca, Chez Pazienza and Ben Cohen answer questions from our readers! Today, we discuss the reasons behind the Right's denial of climate change, whether the Democrats would ever recover from a Republican ...read more
By Chez Pazienza: I've never been a big fan of smoking pot. Yeah, I've done it a few times, but being that I seem to have lived by the motto "Go Big or Go Home" when it came to kicking off my storied career in drug use -- diving directly into LSD and ecstasy rather than going ...read more
By Ben Cohen: Last Friday one of our readers asked why the Republican party is so extreme. I answered in the mailbag that the financialization of the economy and wealth inequality was one of the major factors behind the militancy seen in today's Republican party: I’d argue ...read more
By Bob Cesca: Paul Glastris from the Washington Monthly wrote a piece for the magazine's forthcoming issue that praises the Obama presidency. I hope he's prepared for the onslaught of screeching from various unhinged hipsters tarring him as an "Obamabot." Meanwhile, Kevin Drum ...read more
By Ben Cohen: A quick announcement: Every Friday, we'll be doing a mailbag with myself, Bob Cesca and Chez Pazienza where we will be answering reader's questions. We'll take the most intelligent, succinct and funny queries - nothing is off topic (although please keep it to one ...read more
Bob Cesca hammers home the point: Everyone with a realistic view of the the Obama administration knows what's what — for better or worse. At this stage in the proceedings, with another pivotal election around the corner, there's nothing wrong (and everything right) with making ...read more
A Treasury department graph highlighting the debt under Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton and Obama (via Bob Cesca): Of course this graph is a reflection of reality and the Republicans aren't really interested in that. The Republican line states that Obama started two foreign wars while ...read more
Bob Cesca on the alternate universe created by the Republican Party: Their ability to shape their own reality -- to blame the president for the entire recession while simultaneously rigging the game against the recovery is unprecedented in American political history. It's ...read more
Bob Cesca brilliantly takes down the corporate press and its poisonous effect on the political system: The cable news media has gone from simply cracking gaming and sports metaphors to actually becoming a game, with politicians as the contestants and a rotating guest panel of ...read more
Harrison Ford - Presidential Mannequin Having spent a bit of time perusing the media and blogosphere to gage reactions to last nights Republican Presidential debate, it occurred to me that who 'won' should be of absolutely no interest to anyone. The press has been falling over ...read more
