Denis Campbell: 8000 telephone poles snapped in Potomac, Westchester, or Greenwich, crews would work 24/7 to restore power. Yet many in the Cheyenne Sioux Reservation have been without power or heat for more than five days. They daily brave temperatures and wind chills of -19 degrees.

Denis Campbell: Love them or hate them, Republicans get members to toe the line. Democrats need to placate EVERYONE within many constituencies. That bogs them down and they end up pleasing no one. Republicans say sit down, shut up and do as you are told. Democrats beg, cajole, plead and, even with this huge electoral majority, cower in the corner chanting the mantra “please don’t hurt me.”

Denis Campbell: So when someone says ‘airport security,’ remember these El-Al examples. Aside from the tail’s blue Star of David targeting the aircraft during take-off and landing below 1,000 feet, I never felt safer on any airplane.

Denis Campbell: And yet despite all their media noise about birthers, death panels and socialism, there was only one story that really mattered to this journalist, Bringing Paula Home. Paula Persechini-Petitti is a remarkable woman who travelled the globe for 17 years bringing medical supplies and healthcare to third or fourth world nations around the globe.

Washington DC is so stuck in its traditions it is literally the land that time and technology forgot. Press galleries off the House and Senate floors are musty old museum chambers lined with musty leather couches, antiquated black wall telephones and 1940s era phone booths. One could envision reporters of that age bursting from the floor vote to call or Telex in their copy to the National desk then retire to a local tavern.

Even the soberest fiscal conservatives cannot avoid the power of this pitch and will jump out of his or her seat with wallet wide open! You may get in for $19, but more than half of you will spend many hundreds if indeed not thousands more.

President Obama presented a strong hybrid speech last night. He reached out to Republicans who clearly will not vote for it, encouraged Democrats to grow a spine, and went back to his community organising sharp elbowed Chicago political style.

That means eight new Red states, including Texas(!) are solidly in play. Texas, the home of George W. Bush and, until now, as Red a Red State as they come, at 42% Democrat and 40% Republican is too close to call. When the Republican Party loses Texas that is their tipping point.

Yesterday, Minnesota’s senior Senator Amy Klobuchar won the over/under wager of before July 4th and the nearly 8-month-long nightmare for Minnesota’s voters came to an end. For 237 days, she served as Minnesota’s only Senator, …

Gary McKinnon of Crouch End, North London, was branded a ‘cyber-terrorist’ by the US government. In 2002, he was arrested for hacking into Pentagon and NASA computers. The US Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security Departments …

The ultra racist British National Party (only native born white Brits can become party members) had an Adolph Hitler in the 1930s moment and captured two European Parliamentary seats (a body they wish to see …

The Republican Party needs an intervention.
When a comedy news quiz show makes them apoplectic with rage, I worry that their stressors to try and remain relevant – big movie trailer voice here – “in a …

Rachel Maddow’s example on MSNBC was a simple enough explanation of how $21 billion dollars in annual tax revenue disappears from US coffers through legal loopholes that create tax shell corporations.
Mr. Bill Hypothetical, based in …

Obamania checked and locked for the next city’s visit, the USA rock and roll diplomacy makeover tour left today for NATO and Strasbourg with full global marks for President Barack and Mrs. Obama. Of course …

When Buddhists praying in the midst of financial district protests becomes news, we’re all in trouble. While the mainstream media focused on giftgate and other gaffes (FLOTUS — aka Michelle Obama as the First Lady …

Stan Greenberg has advised former President Clinton, former UK PM Tony Blair, Nelson Mandela, Israel’s Ehud Barak, and others. He is one of those political lions inspired during the Bobby Kennedy era to join politics …

Only President Barack Obama could keep digging in a barn filled to the roof line with manure and find a brand new pony. Yet that is what the country and indeed the world needed in …

The conservative Republican ideology for this first decade of the new millennium (during which they led the world into two holy wars, bankrupted a nation, and linked radical fundamentalist Christianity to governing) is boiled down …

Buried in the news about the Stimulus, private military security firm Blackwater Worldwide announced it was re-branding and changing its name to XE (Zee). Xe President Gary Jackson in a memo to employees said, “the …

It’s been done before, an FDIC/Comptroller of the Currency (or similar insurance or governmental institution elsewhere) bank take-over. I witnessed my first in Miami in 1991 when a former employer in the mid 1980s, Southeast …

Nixon, at least, had Gerald Ford issue his pardon. While the world wondered if Bush would pre-emptively pardon his torture gang on the last day, most forgot… he already did. Well, at least he tried …

It was a message not directly spoken but heard by all… President Obama met privately with House and Senate Republicans, all without aides, in the Roosevelt Room. Simply said, there’s room on this train for …

One does not become POTUS after three years in the Senate without making shrewd moves. These two are genius: separating John McCain’s political legacy from the ‘Wasilla Hillbilly’ and letting others carry the torture debate …

The 16-page list of Inaugural events is published. The detailed entry map for reserved seating and standing area patrons extends close to a half mile from the Capitol steps out to 4th Street. This means …

Times are not tough everywhere. Indeed, The Big Four accounting firms: Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PriceWaterhouseCoopers reported annual combined 2008 global earnings in excess of $102 (US) billion and a blended …

I am certain a few of your favorites were left out. These were the best moments of the campaign. There are no adverts because nothing could trump the candidate in their own words and that …

New York Governor David Paterson is involved in a high stakes daisy petal pull game of ‘she loves me, he loves me not’ in Albany where he contemplates who will replace Hillary Clinton in the …

I wouldn’t wish the current Democratic Congressional leadership group on any incoming President, especially not one with a mandate for change like Barack Obama. In the Jib-Jab year end film, 2008 is expelled from the …

Britons call him “THE” playwright. Americans recognise her more as television’s Catwoman than the sexy singer who turned heads long into her 70s. Nobel laureate ‘Sir’ Harold Pinter and music legend Eartha Kitt passed away within hours of each other Christmas Day. We are all the poorer.

by Denis Campbell –

Since he truly cares not a whit, let’s plan a real tone deaf legacy tour for George Bush and the team. The only thing missing from the current trip is bomber tour …

By Denis Campbell –
New York City suburb, Greenwich, Connecticut, has 55 houses for sale asking $9 million dollars or more. Staff at East Hampton Airport on Long Island, a scene of private Gulfstream jet gridlock, …

by Denis Campbell –
11:00, Saturday morning. I’d finished frying an egg, was headed to the office to finish a poker article I was on deadline for. As I walked across the room, my 6-year-old asked …

We’ve celebrated for two-and-a-half weeks and what better way to remember Jack Kennedy on this solemn day than to watch President-elect Obama’s deliberate, studious, and principled leadership in action. The hard work began precisely at …

While Maricopa County (Phoenix) Judge Edward O. Burke agreed with the state’s Libertarian Party that county elections director, Karen Osborne, did not follow election law, ensure ballot integrity and an unbroken custody chain, he ruled …

by Denis Campbell –
Is it payback time? For two weeks, we’ve watched the Democratic Party leadership shamelessly threaten while pandering to Senator Joe (Judas) Lieberman in the slim hope he will do the honorable thing …

by Denis Campbell –
In the early stages, Barack Obama’s Presidential quest was called quixotic at best and at worst political suicide. Here was a man barely in the US Senate who had just two years …

Would anyone vote for him with his character and history if he’d been black? To be black in politics, means to be perfect in every way, every moment of every day. He would have had …

If you think this campaign was about tons of money for slick television adverts, you’re wrong. The money helped Obama take his message into additional ‘red’ states, but this election was about getting to know …

Hispanic? Congratulations, you’ve only a 500% chance your vote will not be counted. Black, 900%. Native American, 2,000%! While you may have been purged from voter roles in the first two classes, you can cast …

Keith Olbermann will utter the words: “That’s Countdown for this the 2,000th Day since the declaration of Mission Accomplished in Iraq. I’m Keith Olbermann. Goodnight and good luck” thus closing Monday night’s MSNBC broadcast, two …

Said NBC’s Rachel Maddow, “frankly, John McCain looks more like he does not want Obama to be President more than he wants to be President.” That’s a problem progressives know too well. It’s the same …

While the Presidential contest gets the most press, the race for control of both houses of the US Congress and state governorships is equally critical to whoever becomes the new President. Sixty in the Senate …

by Denis Campbell –
I feel like a Cheshire cat who swallowed a big-haired ‘g’ dropping canary whole ‘dontchaknow,’ gives me energy and sustenance without leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

by Denis Campbell –
2,822 page days have turned in the Administration of George W. Bush. Today there are only 100 left until 20 January 2009 when either Barack Obama or John McCain will become the …

When the circus act of Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain whipped up crowds into a seething frenzy, where was the US Secret Service? That is the group designated to protect all four candidates (and the …

“Kill him” and “terrorist” were hollered by audiences this past weekend in stump speeches by Sarah Palin and John McCain. Just as when McCain was asked “how do we beat the bitch…” he smiled and …

My European Union media colleagues have a hard time understanding that daily national tracking polls mean little. On November 4th, voters will enter and cast ballots in 50 statewide winner-takes-all contests.
There are 538 electoral votes …

Could Sarah Palin really be a Walt Disney creation? At some point the comparisons between her and perky Mouseketeer Annette are hard to push out of consciousness. Annette learned her lines and recited them with …

$700,000,000,000… oh what a relief, it is! With apologies to Alka-Seltzer, one chamber crawled out of the sandbox and reached an unpopular but bipartisan decision to save global credit markets last night as banks held …

$9,897,708,003,650.45 is the current national debt jackpot and we all lose!
Our country’s real owners the Congress said to its pretend owners, the voters, then the one’s propping up the economy, the Chinese, Saudis and Japanese …

“Daddy needs a new pair of shoes!” and the dice cubes fly.
John McCain loves craps. It is routine for him to wager and lose $25,000 in a session as to play the “suspend the campaign …

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis (at left) seems to have truthiness problems. At least he cannot remember when or if he left the lobbying firm he was or is it still is a partner in.
Jill …

The rhetoric of fear made its way into the election as still President Bush (for 111 more days) put on his serious face, stared into the camera, and lied to bail out his Wall Street …

“What will be the next thing that challenges us? That makes us work harder and go farther? You know, when smallpox was eradicated, it was considered the single greatest humanitarian achievement of this century. Surely, …

In a stunning deregulation reversal, President Bush in a one-minute statement before retreating back into his sealed White House bunker, called for the creation of a massive $700 billion dollar toxic mortgage bailout RTC-like organization …

Throughout the primaries we heard, “it’s 8:00 pm in the east, polls have closed, CNN can now declare with 1% of the ballots counted, Senator Barack Obama is the winner of the South Carolina Primary.”
99% …

by Denis Campbell –
For 36 hours, Pima County’s Democratic Party was led on a chase that would have either made The French Connection’s Popeye Doyle proud or retch in disgust.

As a journalist, the story intrigued; as a citizen, it outraged.
For seven years, Michael Duniho—a quiet, determined, and dignified man—had been sending quarterly or so e-mails, quietly seething about the conduct of elections in his …

by Denis Campbell —
Millions will soon begin early voting in the November general election. Nearly half of all US counties will use the Diebold GEMS tabulation system. Election officials have the ability to print …