Carl Bloice: For anti-war activists in the Democratic Party, Emanuel is probably best known for his role after 2004 as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In primary races around the country he raised cash and secured endorsements for opponents of anti-war candidates.

Carl Bloice: Why can a naton and a government that can raise $1 million each to send young men and women to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan not find the resources to adequately educate young people here at home?

There are not two groups involved, the young and the old. It’s a continuum starting from entrance into the workforce until retirement. While he says he speaks in the interest of the young, if there is a severe curtailment of Medicare and Social Security those hurt most will be the youngsters when they reach the age where they need them both.

Carl Bloice: President Obama told the country. “Meanwhile, China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting. These nations – they’re not standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on math and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America.”

I about fell off my chair when I heard that. He was speaking the truth, telling us all something that we should wrap our collective brains around.

Carl Bloice: Just as rising unemployment and economic insecurity means less retail spending and fewer trips to the malls and showrooms, it also means a fall in available jobs. Rising joblessness means the already catastrophe situation in the housing market gets even worse.

Carl Bloice: With Al Qaeda now in the picture and linked to an attempted physical attack on the U.S., the Obama Administration, obsessively carrying on the “war against terrorism,” has suddenly become enmeshed in still another civil war.

Pardon me if I can’t join in the fawning praise for President Obama’s Nobel address. “It was, as ever, a bravura performance,” one newspaper said editorially. That it was, but I can’t agree with those, …

The nation’s unemployment rate is at 10.2 percent, a 26-year high. These people will be waiting to hear Obama explain how adding to the $10 billion monthly price tag for Iraq and Afghanistan will help them find work. African American men, 17.1 percent of whom are unemployed, want a word from Obama on this,” wrote Columnist Colbert King in the Washington Post last week.

As we note, the heightened attention to the crisis, and hopefully proposals for Congressional action, the alarming jobless figures will be repeated over and over. The employment situation is dire and from all indications it is going to get worse.

What’s happening to the lives of the legions out of work – particularly the young men and women – has to take second place to the fortune of the President and his party. The human crisis would be real regardless of who is in the Oval Office and is what should move the President and the Congress to do the right thing.

In any case, the proper path for the U.S. must not involve continuing to bed down with the feudal warlords and the likes of the Karzai brothers. That puts us on the wrong side of history and decency.

The global warming debate is going to be painful, particularly if the make-Obama-fail crowd has its way, and if the major media does its usually sloppy job of defining the issue. Nonsense like “death panels” come to mind.

The much touted decline of the European left turned out to be pretty much of a mirage. The continent’s politics are being realigned not in spite of but because of the economic crisis. And the much of the gain has gone to the left – taken as a whole.

Rightwing populism is dangerous but the greatest potential peril lies not in the presence of some loony or deluded, irrational people parading through the streets. It arises from the certainty that there will always be someone lurking about in a trench coat to fan the flames for their own cynical purposes.

Job cuts in August were lower than they’ve been in recent months. But a deeper look at the data shows why it will take millions of new jobs to dig American workers out of this recession’s deep pit.

I can’t summon up any empathy for Michael Steele. Trying to rescue the Republican party while is sinks in a morass of scandal and historical irrelevancy is a task I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

One of the striking aspects of the job stats so far this year is the number of out-of-work college graduates. It keeps on growing.

In the movie “The Year of Living Dangerously,” the little guy Billy Kwan, brilliantly played by Linda Hunt, gives a news reporter Guy Hamilton, played by Mel Gibson, a talk about Indonesian puppets — the …

The Lex Column in the Financial Times got it right: “… ‘less down’ is now the new ‘up’ as media watchers search for stabilization in the overall market.” The writer was referring to the world …

The day after the White House talks between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the news agency AFP (Agence France-Presse) sent out an unusual story. It seems to have noticed what …

Michael T. Darda, chief economist at the research and trading firm MKM Partners, probably summed up last week’s message from Washington best, telling the New York Times, “Less bad is always a prelude to good.”
The …

It’s like a can of worms from which a few are slithering out. Most of the major media have avoided even approaching it. But if it is as is being suggested the implications are enormous, …

Joe Biden was quite out front about it. On the same day the newspapers were trumpeting the news that President Obama had felt a “glimmer of hope” in the economic situation, the Vice-President was telling …

As President Obama begins his first European tour this week, starting with the G20 economic summit, he’s finding that much of the rest of the world has suddenly become quite uppity.
If all goes as planned, …

By now we’ve heard “The worst economic crisis since the 1930s” – or words to that effect – so many times it’s become like a mantra. But as the days roll on it begins to …

Back in December, when it was obvious that the economy was in bad shape and before we knew how precarious it could get, Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and columnist for Newsweek and the …

Well, now it appears that, as the New York Times put it Monday, the “Rise in Jobless Poses Threat to Stability Worldwide.” This comes just after the new United States Director of National Intelligence, Dennis …

This years’ gathering at Davos appears to have been a complete dud. It’s hard for one who wasn’t there to say how complete but if President Obama is reading the reports from the celebrated Swiss …

Let’s see if I got this right. The prime minister of an allied government disses the U.S. Secretary of State, says he went over her head and got her boss, the President of the United …

Of all the outrageous statements coming out of the Bush Administration over the course of its eight year reign, perhaps the most odious came from the Secretary of State. It was the summer of 2006. …

by Carl Bloice –
It’s probable that by the time this is read, officials in San Jose, California, will have eliminated athletic programs from all 11 of the city’s high schools. It might not seem like …

by Carl Bloice –
A couple of days before Thanksgiving one of my downstairs neighbors matter of factly told me he had lost his job. He’d been abruptly laid off by a local information technology startup …

by Carl Bloice –
It is hemorrhaging fast and no end to the blood-letting seems to be in sight. No question, something has to be done about the auto industry. But what?

by Carl Bloice –

Just a small group of brothers sitting around at my place watching the Oakland Raiders lose again. During a commercial break, the subject of the next week’s election came up. “Seriously, would …

He caught me by the elevator. “Do you know how much peanut butter costs at Safeway now as compared to two months ago?” John asked. I didn’t but I had been aware of the recent …

When I heard there was a sizable increase in black community joblessness between April and May I mentioned it to a few people and in return got that so-what-else-is-new? stare. “Every month, when unemployment rate …