President Barack Obama’s speech on a “new chapter” in U.S. policy toward the Middle East was filled with platitudes befitting a New Year’s resolution, but there is little expectation that he will follow through, especially on the hardest issues like…
Category: Politics
Halberstam’s ‘Best-Brightest’ Blunder-2
David Halberstam won acclaim and riches from his influential book, The Best and the Brightest, about the making of the Vietnam War, especially during the Kennedy and Johnson years. However, in retrospect, the book’s narrative asserting that John Kennedy and…
Spain’s Tahrir Square
Angered by “free-market” policies that have created high unemployment and are now forcing government spending cuts, tens of thousands of Spaniards are occupying central squares in Madrid and other cities in a challenge to the country’s economic elites, as Pablo…
Leaving a Church of Free-Market Miracles
A significant part of the U.S. population is stuck in angry denial, unwilling to acknowledge scientific realities (like global warming), embracing fictions (like Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth), and refusing to acknowledge America’s diminished situation (like the crumbling infrastructure of roads…
Rand Paul’s ‘Health Right=Slavery’ Rant
Sen. Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite, likens the idea that every American should have a right to healthcare to the imposition of “slavery” on doctors like him and their staffs, a bizarre and extreme analogy that Lawrence Davidson dissects…
Mitch Daniels, Architect of US Debt Crisis
Exclusive: Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is the new Republican darling of the Washington establishment, which hails him as a “fiscal conservative” who would be “serious” about addressing the nation’s staggering debt problem. But his many admirers forget to mention what…
How Fox News Outfoxes Americans
To understand how so many average Americans can be duped into embracing right-wing positions that go against their own interests, you must look at how Fox News (and right-wing media outlets) use faux populism and phony outrage as propaganda techniques,…
Jimmy Carter’s October Surprise Doubts
Special Report: Ex-President Jimmy Carter tells an interviewer that he isn’t sure what to believe about the longstanding suspicions that Republicans went behind his back in 1980 to stop him from freeing 52 American hostages in Iran, a failure that…
The War Against Taxing the Rich
The Republicans have dug in their heels against any proposal to raise taxes on the rich, even opposing efforts to close loopholes for the oil industry which has been chalking up stunning profits simply by riding the wave of rising…
Attacks on Israeli Critics Escalate
Jewish playwright Tony Kushner is the latest critic of Israeli government treatment of the Palestinians to come under attack by pro-Israeli hardliners. They sought to strip him of an academic award, but Kushner and his supporters managed to fight back,…