|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Shlomo Sand
$23.07
 . '/' . substr('9780195181722',-6,3) . '/' . '9780195181722' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Steven J. Ross
$29.95
$18
|
|
|
|
Flickr / dsearis
|
Congressional Democrats seemed to have turned in their spine—yet again—Tuesday when they announced they would allow the 26-year-old ban on offshore drilling to expire, a resounding sellout to the rhetoric of the McCain campaign and a reactionary move aimed at accommodating the crisis-ridden financial markets.
|
|
By Sam Harris — When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. “They think they’re better than you!” is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. “Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!” Yes, all too ordinary.
|
Scan of the "Obsession" mailer obtained by Truthdig
|
The blogosphere is alive with the sound of buzz—all about an inflammatory DVD on radical Islam being distributed to millions of households at the peak of election season. Critics are calling the DVD, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” anti-Muslim hate, or politicking, or both. The obvious question: Who is behind it?
|
AP photo / Madalyn Ruggiero
|
By Bill Boyarsky — In Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, the fact that he is African-American has seemed to be an obstacle that could be overcome with a good campaign, a few breaks and the issues turning his way. That’s what is happening now.
|
Collage: Flickr / transplanted mountaineer / buddhakiwi
|
Barack Obama is depending more and more on a Rocky Mountain victory and, according to a new poll, Sarah Palin may have just given him a boost there. It seems the Alaska governor’s growing unpopularity among independent voters has helped Obama to a seven-point lead in the Centennial State.
|
composite: latimes.com and Flickr / Robert Scoble
|
Steve Schmidt is widely credited with re-energizing the McCain campaign with his tough and often deceptive style, but his latest is a bit much, even for a Karl Rove protégé. During a conference call with reporters, Schmidt accused The New York Times of being “a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day impugns the McCain campaign.”
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — Let’s be clear about why we’re facing a crisis that could pull down the global financial system. The irresponsibility of individuals who bought houses they couldn’t quite afford pales in comparison to the irresponsibility of the financial wizards who built on those shaky mortgages a towering edifice of irrational faith.
|
|
Former President Bill Clinton braved the deceptively comfy-looking couch on the set of “The View” to sit for a chat with Barbara Walters and her deceptively bubbly-seeming quartet of co-hosts, who are suddenly in the catbird seat in terms of landing the big political interviews after their headline-grabbing session with John McCain on Sept. 12.
|
AP photo / Susan Walsh
|
By Chris Hedges — The lobbyists and corporate lawyers, the heads of financial firms and the crooks who control Wall Street, all those who spent the last three decades assuring us that government was part of the problem and should get out of the way, are now busy looting the U.S. treasury.
|
Flickr / gmeurope
|
Forget houses, John and Cindy McCain have 13 cars to Barack and Michelle Obama’s one. McCain would point out that most of the vehicles are in his wife’s name, but still, you can’t call the other guy an elitist when you sleep with one.
|
onechoicehealthcare.com
|
Whoops! As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed out Friday, presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain both have articles in the latest edition of Contingencies magazine about how they would reform America’s health care industry. In light of certain recent events in the banking world, McCain may want to reconsider his position.
|
momocrats.typepad.com
|
And now, this latest dispatch from the U.S. Department of Unintentional Irony: Sen. John McCain spoke out against the Federal Reserve’s recent bids to give life support (read: gigantic amounts of money) to failing financial institutions. Isn’t he the same guy who has looked to Phil Gramm for economic advice?
|
|
Turns out that having Phil Gramm on one’s economic advisory team may not be the best way to demonstrate one’s readiness to inherit the gigantic mess that the U.S. economy has become under the Bush administration’s not-so-close watch—or at least that’s what Obama’s camp is pointing out in this ad on the financial debacle.
|
|
Carolyn Eisenberg takes a close look at Melvyn Leffler’s “For the Soul of Mankind” to ask whether our current troubles are rooted in a history that continues to haunt us.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — John McCain was telling the truth when he said that economics wasn’t his strong suit. In response to what many economists have called the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Republican nominee has sounded—and let’s be honest here—totally, embarrassingly and dangerously clueless.
|
|
By David Sirota — Barack Obama isn’t going to win any arguments about the economy if he keeps winking at the robber barons who helped wreck Wall Street.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If he carries Michigan, many routes to victory are open for Barack Obama. Without Michigan, he’s got a big problem.
|
White House photo / Paul Morse
|
Humans may be susceptible to methods of persuasion that play on the emotions and circumvent logic, but computers are another story. Enter a software program that purports to detect “spin” in politicians’ speeches by using a complex (albeit man-made) algorithm to hunt for truth-stretching words and phrases.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — Obama shows more promise than McCain, if only because he correctly sees deregulatory zeal as a culprit. But Obama’s economic strategy simply can’t be implemented now: He wants to spend on necessary investments such as health care, but would have no money to do it.
|
|
By Joe Conason — With the markets in frightening turmoil and the public outraged by financial irresponsibility and excessive greed, John McCain has suddenly rediscovered the importance of strong, watchful government.
|
|
By Ellen Goodman — Three weeks after the nomination of the Candidate From Nowhere, one week after the robo-interview with Charlie Gibson and days after the “Saturday Night Live” skit, there is still a flood tide of women choking on the possibility that Hillary Clinton paved the way for Sarah Palin.
|
|
Barack Obama’s fundraising extravaganza in Hollywood Tuesday night raised a whopping $9 million for his presidential campaign and the Democratic Party—the single highest figure ever raised by a candidate in one go, as MSNBC anchor Alex Witt points out in this clip.
Posted on Sep 17, 2008
READ MORE 
|
|
John McCain took the opportunity Tuesday to criticize Barack Obama for consorting with celebrities at a Democratic fund drive in Hollywood that night, but McCain had apparently forgotten about his own celeb-attended fundraiser in Beverly Hills last month. McCain supporter Wilford Brimley has yet to comment on this grievous oversight.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — With financial institutions begging for bailouts, taxpayers should be in the driver’s seat. Instead, decisions that will cost people for decades are being made behind closed doors, by the wealthy, by the regulators and by those they have failed to regulate.
|
|
The Obama campaign promised to toughen up in the face of John McCain’s notoriously dishonest attack ads, and has since fired off a salvo of negative spots.
|
DoD / Pfc. Christopher Grammer
|
Sarah Palin has energized the Republican base, but she’s also helped Barack Obama raise millions. Political insider Taegan Goddard uses a viral e-mail to explain why the moose hunter makes liberals nuts.
|
|
We’re used to seeing Rupert Murdoch release the hounds on any number of Democratic campaigns, but here Fox News’ Megyn Kelly demands that McCain mouthpiece Tucker Bounds explain the straight talker’s lies about Barack Obama.
|
AP photo / LM Otero
|
By Bill Boyarsky — While it’s fashionable for the media and some of his own supporters to be mourning the demise of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, they may well be overlooking an important point—that the vaunted McCain-Palin ticket has peaked. What else but such blind optimism could be motivating the unflagging energy of thousands of Obama grass-roots workers?
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Americans don’t mind wealthy and even rapacious capitalists as long as they deliver the goods to everyone else. But when the big boys drag everyone else down, Americans rise up in righteous anger.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — The great lipstick-on-a-pig campaign imbroglio, if we are lucky, will mark the moment Republicans jumped the shark with their cries of alleged sexism toward vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — What kind of person tells a self-aggrandizing lie, gets called on it, admits publicly that the truth is not at all what she originally claimed—and then goes out and starts telling the original lie again without changing a word?
|
AP photo / Paul Sancya
|
Well, there you are, Joe Biden! After what seemed like ages out of the spotlight, the Democratic vice presidential nominee came out swinging at a campaign stop Monday in Michigan, casting Republican presidential hopeful John McCain as a Bush wannabe and part of “a culture in Washington where the very few wealthy and powerful have a seat at the table and the rest of us are on the menu.”
|
|
Satire by Andy Borowitz —
In this tongue-in-cheek report, we learn that pit bull lovers don’t love Palin’s “lipstick” comment.
|
Flickr / tshein
|
While John McCain took heat for reasserting that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong,” two of the five biggest American investment banks folded on Monday. Bank of America bought out troubled Merrill Lynch while Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. Update: Another big one stumbles
|
|
On Sunday, The Washington Post ran an Op-Ed piece written by McCain campaign adviser Donald Luskin in which he argues that, despite “trouble spots in the economy,” recent comparisons between the present moment and the Great Depression are the product of “pessimists” and “politics.” Over to you, Alan Greenspan.
|
|
President Bush’s former aide Karl Rove knows a thing or two about crafting campaign messages and, although he does not spare Barack Obama’s campaign, he now says that John McCain’s team has gone beyond the “100 percent truth test” in its recent crop of ads targeting the Illinois senator.
|
|
On Friday’s episode of “Left, Right & Center,” show regulars Matt Miller, Robert Scheer and Tony Blankley weigh in about the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crisis, the fate of Lehman Brothers and Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin’s one-on-one with ABC’s Charlie Gibson.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It has been hard to remember lately that the country is in the midst of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — There was a time when Republicans campaigned on their ideas, programs and values. This year—lacking ideas, programs or values—John McCain and Sarah Palin are running for the White House on an elaborate fictional narrative of victimhood.
|
Flickr / Photo Mojo
|
Last spring, it seemed like tug of war over the Democratic presidential nomination would never end, but now that seems part of the distant past, as Barack Obama enters the final stretch leading to November’s election. Luckily, his relations with Bill Clinton appear to have improved over time, and the former president now says he’s willing to roll up his sleeves to help Obama’s campaign however he can.
|
|
By William Pfaff — The United States has just invaded Cambodia. The name of Cambodia this time is Pakistan, but otherwise it’s the same story as in Indochina in 1970.
|
|
Robert Greenwald and Co. have collected some of the worst examples of John McCain’s deceptive campaign ads. Straight talk indeed.
|
|
By Ellen Goodman — Let us remember that Republicans had long targeted working mothers as the centerpiece of the culture wars. Now their heroine is the in-your-face governor who once said: “To any critics who say a woman can’t think and work and carry a baby at the same time, I’d just like to escort that Neanderthal back to the cave.”
|
RJ Matson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
|
By Marie Cocco — Let this be the last time. Please, let it be the last. Let this be the last commemoration of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to be used as any sort of backdrop for political theatrics, even if the show is bipartisan.
|
McCain campaign image altered for comment
|
It’s time to start using the L-word when referring to John McCain and his campaign for the presidency. Misleading doesn’t quite capture the hypocritical use of distortions to make your opponent appear dishonest, as McCain’s latest ad attempts.
|
|
In case you haven’t heard, Barack Obama has been sucked into the vortex of another absurd media storm, courtesy of John McCain’s Rovian acolytes. If he plays it right, the Democrat could turn controversy to conquest.
|
|
Keith Olbermann began the second part of his interview with Barack Obama with a tale of two conservatives: “One guy who makes about $40,000 a year said, ‘Ask him why he’s going to raise my taxes.’ Another guy makes about a million dollars a year, said, ‘Ask him why he’s going to raise my taxes.’ ”
|
iamatvjunkie.typepad.com
|
While MSNBC reshuffles its anchor chairs, thanks in part to criticism from rival media outlets and a certain presidential candidate, Fox News continues to be a loudmouth right-wing spin factory. Is it a case of the boy who cried “terrorist,” or is there a double standard for Murdoch’s media empire? Truthdig contributor Elliot Cohen has more.
|
|
Part one of Keith Olbermann’s interview with Barack Obama focused on the falsehoods of the McCain campaign. As Obama put it: “They’re not telling the truth.” The “Countdown” host followed with a question that’s been uttered once or twice around our own offices: “Why do people hesitate to use the word lie about these things?”
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
