John Peeler: No wonder the hyper-cautious Obama is moving as if he were in a minefield that’s been covered with grease. Anything he does (including nothing) will elicit ferocious criticism from both opponents and supporters.
The Peace Movement Today
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Lawrence Wittner: Despite the President’s rhetorical support for nuclear abolition, it looks like the United States and other nations are on a very slow track to ridding the world of the nuclear menace.
Across-the-Board Cuts Needed to Avoid Fiscal Armageddon
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Ivan Eland: To keep with the bipartisan spirit after the Gabrielle Giffords’ assassination attempt and also to avoid partisan fighting over spending priorities, which will bog down and probably eventually kill any significant budget cuts, all government programs should be cut by 15 percent from last year’s budget level, including heretofore sacred defense and entitlement programs.
D-Day For Public Employees
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Joseph Palermo: With the aggressive onslaught aimed at public employees and their unions that Republican governors have unleashed in recent weeks, it’s long past time for politicians calling themselves “Democrats” to push aside the anti-labor elements inside their party and stand up for basic worker protections.
Why Republicans Should Support Planned Parenthood
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Tina Dupuy: What Planned Parenthood really does is keep poor people out of emergency rooms. The clinics treat people with or without insurance for ranges of health issues. Yes, low-cost community clinics save taxpayers’ money. Lots.
Obama Policies Ensure the GOP Never Has to Defend Bush
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Tina Dupuy: Mr. Bush announced he had to cancel his first trip to Europe since he published his memoir and admitted to authorizing waterboarding. There were calls for large protests and threats of investigations, so Mr. Bush opted (as always) to stay in Texas. So, we ignore him. The GOP doesn’t mention him. And the rest of the world wants to lob a giant shoe at him. To make this all worse, the only person who seems to be toeing the line for Bush is…Barack Obama.
The End of America’s Middle East Empire
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As we’ve watched the dramatic events in the Middle East, you would hardly know that we had a thing to do with them. Oh yes, in the name of its War on Terror, Washington had for years backed most of the thuggish governments now under siege or anxious that they may be next in line [...]
Bush Concerned Nation ‘Going Through Period’ of Nativism
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Andrea Nill: The Bush brothers don’t appear ready to fully acknowledge the role their party has played in stoking nativism and killing the chances for sensible immigration reform in the near future.
We Create Our Own Reality
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Berry Craig: Tea Party types are cool with Bachmann because she loves what they love — guns and the Good Lord, for instance. And she disdains what they disdain — immigrants, gay people and the “Kenyan” “Muslim Marxist” in the White House whose “plan” is “white slavery” come to mind.
Brisenia Flores: The Little Girl That You Don’t Know
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Jessie Daniels: Brisenia Flores was a 9-year-old girl murdered in Arizona by anti-immigrant vigilantes, yet her death – unlike that of the 9-year old killed last week in Arizona – is getting almost no attention in the U.S. mainstream media.
What Is To Be Done About the State of Our Union?
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Lydia Howell: Nine months after taking office, Obama began slamming the Democratic Party’s liberal/progressive base for daring to notice, much less criticize, his corporate-friendly policies and center-right positions. In the wake of his Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission, Obama will likely make a sober call for national sacrifice.
JFK: Fifty Years Later
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Tom Degan: Although JFK wasn’t able to accomplish a heck of a lot during the less-than three years that fate allowed him, he did set this country on the path toward accomplishing great things.
So, Did Anything Unusual Happen Over Last Weekend?
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Robert Letcher: With all the violence and contempt that seemed “in the air”, it was starting to feel like some “Tucson” was bound to happen, but there wasn’t enough actionable information: no “when”, no “where”. Nor were resources available to “look into the situation”, as they had been to President Bush.
AARP’s Magazine Plays Softball in the Bush League
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Sherwood Ross: Next to the happy, smiling face of this clueless warmonger are the words: “What he regrets, what he wants next (grandkids!)” — as if Bush is some typical retiree who hadn’t started two wars over resounding global protests and brought misery and death to millions.
Don’t Expect Iraq to End Like Sudan
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Ivan Eland: The American media continues to tout the reduced violence in Iraq without foreseeing the long-term potential for a resumption of severe ethno-sectarian violence and the absence of mechanisms—à la Sudan—to defuse it.
Tpaw and the Campaign ‘Autohagiography’
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Michael Sigman: Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty this week joined Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, 2012 GOP presidential hopefuls who’ve published campaign books that might best be called “autohagiographies.”
Saving Social Security and the Poisonous Chalice
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Carl Bloice: Social Security is not, to any significant extent, a contributing factor in the burgeoning deficit. Defenders of the system, including some leading economists, have successfully advanced that argument. Yet, a growing number of conservatives have begun to advance other specious arguments for “entitlement reform” that may threaten Social Security.
A Radical Solution for the War in Afghanistan
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Ivan Eland: The problem is that the U.S. goal in Afghanistan—although President Obama has reduced it from George W. Bush’s instituting democracy to merely stabilizing the country—is still too ambitious.
Look Away, Dixieland
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Tom Degan: Listening to some of them defending the the secession ball was amusing, to say the least. In their minds, the War Between the States had not a thing to do with human bondage. It was all about “states rights”. Oh, brother!
In the Grip of Ronniemania
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Tom Degan: What needs to be understood is that Reagan was, essentially, a mask with a twinkle in its eye and a fine Irish smile. Remove that mask and you have the twisted, hideous smirk of George W. Bush.
Tax Deal Will Normalize Bush Era
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Joseph Palermo: Whatever President Obama accomplished during his first two years in office, with most of the heavy lifting thrown on Nancy Pelosi’s shoulders, his decision to normalize the sweeping changes in American governance of the George W. Bush period will likely neutralize any lasting positive effects for Democrats.
Haiti to the US Embassy: Here’s the Will of the People
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Ezili Danto: In our shallow, narcissistic, celebrity-driven globalize pop culture, the novice Martelly is merely a tool to be used by those “more schooled in the patterns of privilege and domination” than any self-serving Haiti politician could ever dream to be.
Ninth Circuit Judges May Not Rule on Prop 8 As Expected
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Paul Hogarth: My prediction is that the Ninth Circuit will grant standing to Prop 8 supporters – despite clear legal precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court in Arizonans for English Only that gay marriage opponents must prove they have a “direct stake” in the outcome that affects them on more than mere ideological grounds.
Obama Attacks His Political Base
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Randy Shaw: After his decision to freeze federal salaries – not as part of any broader budget and tax deal, but unilaterally – it’s clear that the President is far more politically clueless than previously thought.
The Showdown On Tax Cuts for the Rich
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Robert Reich: In political terms, a strong stand enables the President to clearly demonstrate who’s side he’s on (the working and middle class that’s still bearing the brunt of this lousy economy) and who’s side the Republicans are on (the powerful and privileged who brought much of this on, and who are now doing just fine).
With Federal Benefits Set to Expire, Unemployed Workers Face Shrinking Safety Net
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Marian Wang: Not extending federal unemployment insurance, it noted, would cause 2 million unemployed workers to be cut off from federal unemployment benefits by the end of the year.
Stupid Politics From a Smart Administration
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Joseph Palermo: The whole tenor of the next two years is going to feel like George W. Bush never left office. The GOP will have de facto control over the nation’s politics and agenda. If President Obama goes down the Clinton path of triangulating against his progressive base (as seems likely) then he deserves to be a one-term president.
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Racism in Review, A Look Back and a Look Ahead
Jessie Daniels: Amid all the racist flame throwing of 2010, politicians managed to achieve a bipartisan consensus when it came to one boogeyman. China-bashing profilerated on both sides of the aisle as candidates blamed the ascendant superpower for America’s economic woes