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The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress
By Chris Hedges
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By Gay Talese
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Flickr / Tracy O
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We’re barely into the general election campaign and already more than $1 billion has been raised by the various candidates. That tally includes now-defunct campaigns and personal loans. Still, that’s more money than has ever been raised for an election, and we’ve got about five months to go.
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Flickr / seiu_international
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Hillary Clinton went back to work Tuesday “with an even greater depth and awareness of what we have to do here in Washington,” she said. The senator was greeted at the Capitol by a cheering crowd on her first return since losing the nomination.
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Jon Stewart compares and contrasts Barack Obama’s version of the presidential seal to the real deal in this “Daily Show” clip and takes aim at the presumptive Democratic candidate for his declaration that he won’t be drawing on public financing for the home stretch of his bid for office after previously suggesting otherwise.
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Charlie Black, lobbyist and adviser to Sen. John McCain’s campaign, has apologized for his statements suggesting that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee would stand to gain from another terrorist attack on American soil. Rescinding his earlier claims, Black said, “I deeply regret the comments. They were inappropriate.”
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AP photo / Marcio Jose Sanchez
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By Bill Boyarsky — Watching the couples in line for licenses in Beverly Hills on the first day of gay marriage in California, I was struck by how the scene was so commonplace, even boring—just a bunch of men and women waiting their turn at a nondescript government office.
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By Marie Cocco — There’s nothing like the Saudi version of straight talk to put in perspective the tongue-twisting of American politicians.
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By Eugene Robinson — The question isn’t whether race will be an issue in the general election campaign between Obama and McCain. Race is already an issue, even if largely confined to the shadow world of implication and coded language.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Barack Obama’s decision to forgo public funds will bring joy to opponents of campaign finance reform. But to say that Obama has killed public financing is to miss the point.
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Flickr / Steve Rhodes
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According to a Pew poll, about 10 percent of Americans think Barack Obama is Muslim. The candidate has tried repeatedly to counter that “smear,” (the word used on Obama’s Web site) but a growing number of Muslim Americans are frustrated with the implication that there’s something wrong with them.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak, file
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By Chris Hedges — Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers.
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AP photo / Hans Deryk
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Presidential candidate Barack Obama is currently enjoying a 15-point lead over Republican rival John McCain, according to a new poll conducted by Newsweek, which found that 51 percent of registered voters around the country favored Obama for president, while 36 percent picked McCain.
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itpsites.com
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If there was one word that summed up the political tenor of the Bush II presidency, it definitely wouldn’t be accountability. On Friday, this was once again made clear as the House of Representatives passed a bill granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that allowed their networks to be used by the government to eavesdrop on Americans following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
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AP photo / Rick Bowmer,file
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Hillary Clinton will be joining her erstwhile rival, Barack Obama, for a week of campaign support as he ramps up his efforts to defeat John McCain in November’s presidential elections. Clinton will kick off her tandem tour with Obama June 27 in a bid to repair lingering rifts within Democratic circles.
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By David Sirota — In our us-versus-them culture, every political campaign is a battle to define who exactly the “us” and “them” are. At their most effective, Democrats parry by defining the “us” as the majority of working people, and the “them” as the tiny group of plutocrats who control the country.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The race for electoral votes could be so close in November that small states may well pick the next president.
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Now that the presumptive nominees are getting ready to do battle for the presidency, their wives are also subject to increasing scrutiny by the press and public. Here, Cindy McCain takes a moment to endure the (soft focus) glare of ABC News cameras and answer softball questions about her husband’s stance on women’s rights and whether she’d feel safe with Barack Obama as president.
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Flickr / jurvetson
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Arguing in a video message to supporters that “the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken,” Barack Obama announced Thursday that he will not accept public funds. John McCain would like to cast that decision as a major flip-flop, but as the Los Angeles Times notes, he’s got issues of his own.
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AP photo / Brennan Linsley
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By Stanley Kutler — John McCain and Barack Obama’s differences over the Supreme Court’s recent Guantanamo decision speak volumes about the two candidates and their competing visions for America.
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By Marie Cocco — It is inevitable that at some point in the presidential campaign the Iraq debate will turn from recriminations over how did we manage to get in to the question of how do we reasonably manage to get out.
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Michelle Obama visited “The View” on Wednesday, and, following a round of fist bumps with the show’s starring lineup (as well as a few jokes about the “terrorist fist jab” of Fox News fame), Obama addressed some of the rumors and criticisms that have circulated about her recently and weighed in about whether Hillary Clinton should be her husband’s running mate.
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Flickr / Steve Rhodes / VictoryNH: Protect our Primary
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Michelle Obama has a nine-point edge over Cindy McCain in the race for America’s hearts and minds, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll. But neither of the aspiring first ladies has a majority of America’s approval. Really, America, whatever one thinks of their husbands, it’s time to cut the wives some slack.
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trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com
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Some challenges to Sen. Barack Obama’s potential presidential authority might be considered covertly racist, but here’s one that baldly revels in its ignorance: At last weekend’s Republican state convention in Texas, a vendor booth hosted by Republicanmarket pushed a pin that brought racial politics to the fore in the most blatant and unproductive possible way.
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AP photo / Carolyn Kaster, file
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By Robert Scheer — Why not Hillary? Not my first choice—Al Gore is—but I find all of the pro-and-con debate about Hillary Rodham Clinton to be beside the point. She is, as Barack Obama said, likable enough, and the Dems are not likely to pick anyone better.
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Is someone soft on terror because he thinks the president shouldn’t be able to indefinitely imprison anyone, for any reason? John McCain and his surrogates seem to think so. Barack Obama fired back on Tuesday, blaming Osama bin Laden’s freedom on the failure of Republican strategies.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It would be unfortunate if Obama’s words were read only as an attempt to win white votes. It actually matters that a presidential candidate is taking the costs of fatherlessness seriously.
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AP photo / Mel Evans, File
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During the final stages of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, a common refrain emerged among some of her more ardent supporters: If Barack Obama wins the nomination, we’re backing John McCain. Now that the dust has settled somewhat after Clinton’s concession, Obama is working to clarify the differences between his positions and McCain’s when it comes to issues that impact the lives of female voters.
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Here’s a lengthy (run time: 23:49) video clip from Barack Obama’s Father’s Day speech at Chicago’s Apostolic Church of God on Sunday, beginning with his riff about too many fathers from the African-American community being “MIA.”
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Patti Solis Doyle was once one of Hillary Clinton’s closest advisers, but after the senator’s presidential ambitions took a nose dive, Doyle was essentially fired and reportedly no longer speaks to her longtime friend. Now the former Clinton campaign manager works for Barack Obama—a sign, Clinton insiders say, that the New Yorker won’t be invited to join the ticket.
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Flickr / World Economic Forum
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The former vice president is throwing his political capital behind the Democrats’ presumptive nominee. “From now through Election Day, I intend to do whatever I can to make sure he is elected President of the United States,” Gore blogged on Monday.
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AP photo / Dennis Cook
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By Stanley Kutler — For two centuries, selecting vice presidential candidates was at best a mere afterthought. Hardly anyone knew of the process, if indeed one existed aside from a brief huddle by the presidential candidate with a few advisers and friends. The presidential nominees usually settled on lesser-known figures, deserved obscurities in American history.
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rollingstone.com
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The uneasy love affair between celebrity and politics continued late last week with a change of camps by former Hillary Clinton booster Barbra Streisand, who has officially made a lateral move to endorse Barack Obama. Babs’ fans are still waiting to hear if la Streisand will pipe up for the Illinois senator this summer as part of her pro-Obama plans.
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How did the two presumptive presidential nominees react to Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling that Guantanamo Bay prisoners have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in court? Find out on “Left Right & Center,” KCRW’s weekly radio show on current events and politics, featuring Matt Miller, Arianna Huffington, Robert Scheer and guest host Amity Shlaes filling in this week for right-leaning regular Tony Blankley.
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washingtonpost.com
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The third time’s no charm for Fox News, which has been forced yet again to apologize to Barack Obama for making racist comments against the presumed Democratic nominee. This marks the third “oops” moment for the television channel, all in the span of only two weeks.
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By David Sirota — Some say Hillary Clinton’s defeat was the victory of sexism—but Obama faced at least as much racism. No, this resounding defeat goes beyond pernicious isms and beyond one candidate—it is a fist-pounding rejection of a corrupt ideology.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — At the moment, Barack Obama is winning a smaller share of Democrats than John Kerry did on Election Day four years ago. Yet Obama is beating John McCain by six points in the latest Gallup Poll. How can this be?
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By Joe Conason — McCain has invited his rival to join him in a “town hall” tour. That would provide a forum for discussing the economy and for looking at just who has helped ease Americans’ pocketbook troubles in the past.
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Clinton enthusiast James Carville tells CNN that Barack Obama should select Al Gore as his vice president candidate and energy czar in order to “send a signal to the world ... that America’s gettin’ serious about this horrendous problem that we face.”
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Mike Keefe, The Denver Post —
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Stephen Colbert outdoes himself with this indictment of the non-controversy over Barack Obama’s alleged elitism. After all, “Nothing stings like being called an elitist by the humble working-class members of the media and politics. Some of those people have to do their own hair.”
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By Ellen Goodman — So is the glass half full or half empty after Clinton’s departure? Or to pick a better metaphor, is the “highest, hardest” glass ceiling now half shattered by the 18 million cracks or does it look as impermeable as ever after this unsuccessful battering?
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From ThinkProgress.com
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President Bush says he is now reconsidering the swaggering cowboy image that he adopted early on in his presidency. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric,” he tells the U.K.‘s Times Online as his time in office ticks out.
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich filed articles of impeachment against President Bush this week, and he already has a taker: Barack Obama’s Florida campaign co-chair, Rep. Robert Wexler. According to Wexler: “A decision by Congress to pursue impeachment is not an option, it is a sworn duty. It is time for Congress to stand up and defend the Constitution against the blatant violations and illegalities of this Administration.”
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Granted, Fox News’ target demographic is probably not too terribly current when it comes to understanding contemporary pop cultural references and practices, but Fox she-anchor E.D. Hill went above and beyond the call of ridiculousness by calling Barack and Michelle Obama’s fist pound a “terrorist fist jab.” Really, E.D.?
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Barack Obama’s vice presidential vetting committee has been meeting with lawmakers in Washington, so naturally a few names have started to filter out. Most were to be expected (Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Jim Webb and so on), but among them is someone you may not have heard of: retired Gen. James Jones, a veteran of the Vietnam War and former supreme allied commander of NATO. Of course it’s far too soon to place bets.
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By Eugene Robinson — Clinton’s speech Saturday conceding the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama couldn’t have been classier—and couldn’t have been more auspicious for the party’s chances of capturing the White House in November.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The Delaware senator should be at the top of any list of vice presidential picks for Obama. Why Biden? Few Democrats know more about foreign policy, and few would so relish the fight against McCain on international affairs.
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AP photo / Alex Brandon
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By Chris Hedges — The failure by Barack Obama to chart another course in the Middle East, to defy the Israel lobby and to denounce the Bush administration’s inexorable march toward a conflict with Iran is a failure to challenge the collective insanity that has gripped the political leadership in the United States and Israel.
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Mark Penn has taken no shortage of blame for the downfall of Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations, but the former campaign chief has a few ideas of his own about what could have been. Penn writes in the New York Times that Team Clinton should have taken on Barack Obama from the beginning and should have courted young voters and women more aggressively, but money “may just have had a lot more to do with who won than anyone imagines.”
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The Democrats have just completed an epic string of primaries that spanned more than a year of campaigning in all 50 states and various territories. In case you missed it, or you just want to relive the drama, here’s a no-nonsense summary of the Democratic campaign.
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Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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