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By Anna Badkhen
$2.99
By Paul Conrad
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Welcome to the war over E2I2. The great budget battle of Bill Clinton’s presidency was waged around a slightly different set of initials, also inspired by the “Star Wars” character R2D2.
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By David Sirota — The Super Bowl was a bewildering assault on the senses, to say the least—and nothing was more singularly mind-blowing than the NFL using a Ronald Reagan eulogy to kick off a sports-themed tribute to socialism.
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Martha Soukup (CC-BY)
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According to The Associated Press, “for the third straight year, American families and businesses will pay less in federal taxes than they did under former President George W. Bush. ...” In fact, as a share of gross domestic product, Americans haven’t paid this little in taxes since Harry Truman called the shots.
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AP / Ron Edmonds
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Former President George W. Bush canceled a planned trip to Switzerland over fear of legal action there as pressure mounted on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal probe into allegations of torture if he visits the country.
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By Joe Conason — To his fellow Egyptians and to most observers across the world, Mohamed ElBaradei looks like a hero—an international diplomat who might well have lived out his days in the comforts of Geneva and New York but instead returned home to provide leadership despite serious personal peril.
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AP / Amr Nabil
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By Juan Cole — A largely unheralded hero of the Egyptian revolution is a mild-mannered academic who endured imprisonment and then exile for daring to criticize the Mubarak family’s increasingly dynastic ambitions.
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By Andrew Bacevich, TomDispatch —
In defense circles, “cutting” the Pentagon budget has once again become a topic of conversation. Americans should not confuse that talk with reality.
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Flickr / Mike Licht (CC-BY)
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By Moshe Adler — During the Great Depression, high rates of unemployment prevailed for 11 years. The experience of seeing a free market system drive itself into a rut that it cannot pull itself out of is nothing new. And we have long known the solution.
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Flickr / Chuck Coker
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Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano is expected to announce the retirement of George W. Bush’s color-coded terror alert system that always seemed like an easy way to terrify the public. In its day, the color-coded threat indicator only hit red (severe) once, and never dropped below yellow (elevated).
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By Richard Reeves — If Americans had really understood what was happening with the Peace Corps, we might be a much greater country today and the world might be a better place as well.
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Flickr / Ed Yourdon (CC-BY-SA)
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The Justice Department will ask Congress to make it mandatory for Internet service providers to retain data on their users’ activity. Law enforcement officials already can ask for data to be preserved, but Justice would like to have more robust snooping capabilities in order to investigate and prosecute “almost every type of crime.” (more)
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Juan Cole examines the psychological torture of accused whistle-blower Bradley Manning in light of the collapse of Tunisia’s brutal regime. The “monarchical national security state” created by George W. Bush and his cohort can abuse, torment and punish the unconvicted with the best of them.
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By Amy Goodman — The Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol that Jared Loughner is accused of using in his rampage in Tucson, Ariz., is, according to Glock’s website, “ideal for versatile use through reduced dimensions” and is “suitable for concealed carry.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Obama’s call for “a more civil and honest public discourse” will get its first test much sooner than we expected.
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By Ruth Marcus — “High Capacity Magazines ... When ten rounds isn’t enough,” the Internet site offers. When, exactly, would that be? Enough for what?
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AP / Petros Giannakouris
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By Chris Hedges — All polite appeals to the formal systems of power will not end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must physically obstruct the war machine or accept a role as its accomplice.
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AP / Gerald Herbert
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By Juan Cole — Sen. Lindsey Graham has been wrong about almost everything in the Middle East for a decade and a half, so his harebrained proposal to build permanent bases in Afghanistan is hardly surprising.
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Flickr / Marc Nozell (CC-BY)
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What to make of conservatives Rudy Giuliani, Michael Mukasey, Tom Ridge and Fran Townsend celebrating the officially designated terrorist organization Mujaheddin-e Khalq? Glenn Greenwald has some ideas.
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Flickr / Nick Bygon (CC-BY)
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By Chris Hedges — “The more outrageous the Republicans become, the weaker the left becomes,” Ralph Nader said when I reached him at his home in Connecticut on Sunday.
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U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Andrew Smith
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Thursday’s New York Times headline on Pakistani disappearances and U.S. disapproval is just a bit too much to take. ... (more)
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Was 2010 American liberalism’s Waterloo? If there is one thing the Obama White House most underestimates, it is the dispirited mood of its troops.
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Flickr / Gage Skidmore
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Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton top the USA Today/Gallup Poll lists of the most admired men and women in 2010. Obama has lost some love since last year, but still has more admiration among Americans than the rest of the top 10 combined. ... (more)
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Flickr / Frank Kovalchek (CC-BY)
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Two years into the Obama administration, the Bureau of Land Management has decided to reverse a Bush-era policy and get back to the business of protecting wilderness on its 256 million acres of public land.
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By Joe Conason — To understand the depths of shame and cynicism in the partisan stalling of health legislation for 9/11 first responders, it is only necessary to recall how eagerly Republican politicians once rushed to identify themselves with New York City’s finest and bravest.
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By William Pfaff — The great campaign to create a new Middle East and Central Asia, slay Islam’s violent extremists and build a radiant new world of democracy and capitalism is moving backward.
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By Amy Goodman — One of President Barack Obama’s signature campaign promises was to protect the freedom of the Internet. Jump ahead to December 2010, where Obama is clearly in the back seat, being driven by Internet giants such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.
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whitehouse.gov
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In Internet-ese, one possible response to a couple of President Obama’s more intriguing justifications on Friday for the passing of the contentious tax-cut bill might be O RLY? This is because the president declared later that same day ...
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White House / Pete Souza
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After a brief show of disapproval, the House went along with the Senate to extend George W. Bush’s gift to the yachting community for another two years. President Obama negotiated the compromise, which will add $858 billion to the deficit, thanks in part to generous giveaways to rich Americans—and not just those who are living.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The “No Labels” group that held its inaugural meeting this week in the name of the political center fills me with passionate ambivalence.
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AP / Greg Baker
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By Steven Hill — China is experimenting with representative democracy. Cynics say “don’t hold your breath,” but they fail to consider a new generation of Chinese citizens and leaders who are developing different sensibilities than their forebears.
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Wikimedia Commons / United States Senate
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California Sen. Barbara Boxer is one of a group of purportedly left-leaning politicians who is choosing to throw in with President Obama in his plan to preserve Bush-era tax cuts that give the wealthy a break along with Americans hailing from lower-income brackets.
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Fake news by Andy Borowitz —
In his latest effort to find common ground with Republicans in Congress, President Barack Obama said today that he was willing to agree that he is a Muslim.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — American decline is the specter haunting our politics. This could be President Obama’s undoing—or it could provide him with the opportunity to revive his presidency.
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By Eugene Robinson — Approve the lousy deal. It pains me to write those words, because the agreement President Obama negotiated with Republicans on tax cuts is really quite awful.
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Flickr / (CC-BY-ND)
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Democrats in the House passed a resolution Thursday telling the president not to bother bringing his compromise extension of tax cuts for the wealthy to their chamber. Nancy Pelosi said Democrats would continue to work with the White House and, if history is our guide, the White House will continue to work with Republicans to get the bill passed.
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By William Pfaff — The WikiLeaks documents reveal the irrelevance in much of what was being reported by American diplomats. There was no recognizable pattern or purpose.
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By Ruth Marcus — President Obama’s tax deal offers him a relatively painless way to wriggle out of his most irresponsible campaign promise: to permanently extend the so-called middle-class tax cuts, the middle in this case amounting to 98 percent of households.
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This just in: The rich get richer. President Barack “Hope ’n’ Change” Obama ticked off a lot of people Monday by helping the affluent and entitled stay that way with his GOP-appeasing tax cut plan ...
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White House / Pete Souza
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Based on what The New York Times describes as President Obama’s “substantial concessions to Republicans,” Democrats in Congress have reason to fret. Not only did Obama agree to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, but he caved in to Republican demands to neuter the estate tax. ... (more)
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Being the party of “new and improved” surely beats getting trapped in a fight whose terms were set entirely by Republicans.
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By Eugene Robinson — Why did Republicans go to the trouble and expense of winning the midterm elections?
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Is President Obama’s strategy of offering pre-emptive concessions destined to make enemies of his potential friends in the electorate without winning over any of his adversaries?
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By Amy Goodman — The way the U.S. conducts diplomacy is now getting more exposure than ever—as is the apparent ease with which the U.S. government lives up (or down) to the adage used by pioneering journalist I.F. Stone: “Governments lie.”
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By Eugene Robinson — The secret U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks leave one overriding impression: It’s hard out there for a superpower.
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U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Andy M. Kin
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“If the Pentagon wants something, the logic goes, then it must be necessary,” writes Gregg Easterbrook in a recent examination of military waste. As a result, military spending has jumped 119 percent since 2001, 68 percent if you exclude the two wars fought in that time.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — We are about to enter a two-year period in which the Beltway Republicans will always blame Obama’s America first—you know, the America that happens to disagree with much of the conservative agenda, the America from which they want to “take back” the country, as if the rest of us represent an alien force.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The proposal put forth by the deficit commission’s chairmen is a deeply conservative document, but if Republicans are as concerned as they say, they should debate the plan—and deficit-increasing tax cuts—in Congress.
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By Andy Borowitz — After it emerged that entire sections of George W. Bush’s new memoir, “Decision Points,” were plagiarized from books by former aides, The Borowitz Report asked our followers on Twitter to come up with the best plagiarized first line for the book.
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Nate Beeler, Cagle Cartoons, The Washington Examiner —
Posted on Nov 19, 2010
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Eugene Robinson — Forget the Republicans. It’s the president who sets the agenda, and who ultimately is held accountable for America’s successes and failures.
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