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By Jerry Z. Muller
$16.47
By Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
$14.96
$22
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Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)
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Perhaps hoping that Americans are either forgetful or forgiving (or both), former House Speaker and ’90s novelty throwback Newt Gingrich announced Monday, through de rigueur Twitter and Facebook channels, that he’ll be running for president in 2012.
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AP / Jim Cole
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By Marcia Alesan Dawkins — The certificate and its release prove two things most people should already know: Obama is an American. And, as Tavis Smiley put it, the 2012 presidential race is shaping up to be “the ugliest, the nastiest, the most divisive, and the most racist in the history of this Republic.”
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AP / Jeffrey Phelps
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By Bill Boyarsky — Contrary to conventional wisdom, the media fascination with the potential presidential campaign of the great American phony, Donald Trump, has been helpful to the Republican Party.
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Flickr / slobug (CC-BY-SA)
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He made a stir in 2008, and it looks like Texas wild-card Congressman Ron Paul is throwing his hat in the ring again for another try at the presidency in 2012. Paul will reportedly announce his intentions in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday.
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By Ruth Marcus — When it comes to matters of money and politics, there is a big gulf between Democrats and Republicans—in theory.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Handicapping an election 19 months away seems relevant only to political junkies except for this: Expectations, as shrewd investors know, affect actions.
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Flickr/ ?ÇP? (CC-BY)
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An ever-authoritative New York Times/CBS News poll has discovered, shockingly, that Republican voters are not very tuned in to, or excited about, the potential lineup of contenders for the 2012 White House grand prize—and those they are aware of tend to be of the TV-friendly persuasion.
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Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)
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By Richard Reeves — The American dream seems to have evolved into getting on the tube and making a fool of yourself, with help, say, from Jerry Springer or Maury Povich.
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Wikimedia Commons / Office of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann
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With 2012 buzz building about Sarah Palin, it seems only fitting, not to mention inevitable, that Minnesota’s own tea party darling, the dependably batty Rep. Michele Bachmann, would also be the subject of speculation about a possible charge at the White House.
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Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)
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Just when we’d gotten used to life without presidential campaign nonsense, here it comes again. What better way to kick it off than with the news that none other than Newt Gingrich is expected to announce that he’s putting together an exploratory committee ...
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AP / Matt Sayles
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On Tuesday, Elizabeth Edwards, who fought a very public battle with her husband John Edwards over his private life even as she fought cancer, died of the disease in North Carolina.
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http://tlc.discovery.com
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Sarah Palin has been many things to many people: Vice presidential candidate to John McCain; inspirational leader to scores of She-publicans and “Mama Grizzlies,” not to mention tea partyers in Alaska and “the lower 48”; and brunt of jokes to countless others besides Tina Fey.
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Each election cycle brings fun new ways to mock politicians using the wonders of technology. Here’s something that candidates haven’t really had to contend with until now: Watch as Christine O’Donnell’s “I’m not a witch” spot gets the remix treatment, complete with auto-tune action.
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AP / Diane Bondareff
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This is news that will come as a relief to some (ahem, Sean Penn): Former Fugee and wannabe Haitian president Wyclef Jean has conceded that he’s not in the running to become his homeland’s next leader and has officially withdrawn from the race.
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Flickr / LiberalsWA
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In a historic moment for Australia, an Aboriginal man has won a seat in the country’s House of Representatives, the first indigenous person to be elected as an MP in Australia’s century-long history as a democracy.
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The final weekend of August was a costly one for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with seven Americans killed. Also, five campaign workers for a candidate in upcoming parliamentary elections were found slain, and a candidate for parliament was shot to death.
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Flickr / SEIU International
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Aaron Sorkin made his name as a writer and producer of “The West Wing,” so he clearly knows a thing or two about political drama. Turns out he also really wants to direct movies, and he’s gearing up to make quite a debut with his big-screen adaptation of ... (continued)
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Flickr / Tony the Misfit
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He was once counted among the Democratic Party’s lineup of top presidential hopefuls for 2008, but then John Edwards met Rielle Hunter on the campaign trail, and his ensuing relationship with her (not to mention the inexhaustible efforts of the National Enquirer) changed the course of Edwards’ life.
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Flickr / Revista Forum
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Barred from holding Brazil’s presidency for a third term, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has personally nominated his chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff, to run as the Working Party’s candidate for president in October. Rousseff, whom the party has officially endorsed as its candidate, will be the first woman to hold Brazil’s executive office if she wins the election.
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Flickr / geerlingguy
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Could she be a contender? In the eyes of the voting public, that remains to be seen. For her part, Sarah Palin isn’t giving any clear signals that she plans to make a play for the White House in 2012, but in her customary fashion, she’s not exactly answering that question directly and completely either.
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AP / Kathy Willens
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By Eugene Robinson — If widely reported revelations about John Edwards’ childbearing affair are true, then the two-time presidential candidate is simply a bad person with no redeeming social or political value.
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In this clip from Sunday’s episode of “Meet the Press,” Sen. John McCain goes into Papa Bear mode to defend his former running mate, Sarah Palin, but his show of support seems a little strained at times—as when he says “I don’t think she quit,” for example.
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Wikimedia/David Ball
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Perhaps because he’s already looking forward to 2012, or maybe because he had some pages to fill in his brand new book, erstwhile Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee is once again taking issue with Mitt Romney and questioning his rival’s commitment to conservative politics
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publicradio.org
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A razor-thin margin in the contest for a Minnesota Senate seat between comedian Al Franken, the Democrat, and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman will trigger an automatic recount that is likely to stretch into December.
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Obama campaign / AP
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Barack Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who he says had a major role in bringing him up during his early years in Hawaii, died Sunday just before midnight in Honolulu. She was 86.
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What’s that? An Obama infomercial? Network TV? Wednesday night? Oh, right—here it is, in case you missed it.
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By Mike Farrell — “You really do hate America!” This was the parting shot from a man I had just debated on a television show shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Because he’s a notorious right-wing blowhard, I laughed it off as the raving of a crackpot in extremis.
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So Alan Greenspan isn’t clairvoyant, as it turns out. Whoops! Neither, apparently, are Sarah Palin’s handlers, or else they might have done some bargain shopping instead of landing their leading lady in a heap of trouble over her pricey threads.
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Award-winning journalist and Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges does his part to give third-party candidates Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin a (televised) forum to debate each other and to describe what they stand for and what they believe would constitute “change” for the country.
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AP photo / Madalyn Ruggiero
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Life took an unexpected turn for Joe Wurzelbacher, or “Joe the Plumber,” when he became a kind of human talking point for John McCain and Barack Obama during their last debate, and now Wurzelbacher has apparently taken a shine to politics.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism has found that media coverage of Republican presidential candidate John McCain has been over three times as negative as coverage of his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, since the two parties held their conventions.
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AP photo / Matt Rourke
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Did the Republican National Committee splash out a staggering $150,000 since early September to get Sarah Palin all spiffed up for the campaign trail? And if she and John McCain don’t win the election, does Palin get to keep all those versatile and stylish career separates? Updated
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unconfirmedsources.com
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During Wednesday night’s debate, Barack Obama told John McCain that the McCain campaign’s intense focus on Obama’s ties to former Weatherman Bill Ayers “says more about your campaign than it does about me.” Updated
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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By Robert Scheer — And the winner is … Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Remember him—the great Democratic president who saved capitalism from the capitalists by reining in their exorbitant greed? Forget the Reagan Revolution heralding a new era of small government, which turned out to be nothing more than a fig leaf for legalized corporate crime. The hero of the hour is FDR.
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Flickr / soggydan
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John McCain has laid out his plan for how he would help Americans recover from the recent shocks to the domestic and international markets. He took the action on Tuesday, a day later than he initially said he would and a day after Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama released his own economic plan—and McCain’s timing was not lost on the Obama campaign.
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Flickr / BohPhoto
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William Kristol was becoming apoplectic, Hillary Clinton was sounding optimistic, and the McCain campaign was being perhaps a tad unrealistic—or so read Monday’s political barometer as an ABC/Washington Post poll indicated that the Obama campaign had taken a 10-point lead in the presidential race.
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AP photo / Madalyn Ruggiero
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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has pulled significantly ahead of Republican rival John McCain, taking an 11-point lead after Tuesday night’s presidential debate, according to the latest Gallup Poll.
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If there was any lingering doubt as to the tone that will characterize these last weeks on the campaign trail, take a look at this disapproving, if vague, McCain ad, in which a disdainful-sounding narrator claims Barack Obama did something dishonorable at some point in the campaign, and also, liberals are bad ... or something like that.
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The McCain-Palin campaign has been criticized for limiting media access to VP hopeful Sarah Palin, and now it seems some journalists are having trouble interviewing her supporters, judging by the situation at the Alaska governor’s campaign stop Monday in Clearwater, Fla.
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Collage: AP photo / J. Scott Applewhite and nbc.com
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The McCain-Palin campaign team might soon borrow a page from the celebrity crisis management handbook (see Chap. 11: Poke Fun at Yourself on a Late-Night Comedy Show), if the rumor that Sarah Palin is considering an appearance alongside her “Saturday Night Live” doppelgänger Tina Fey comes true before the Nov. 4 election.
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“Mosaic Intelligence Report” host Jamal Dajani is distinctly unimpressed with the level of knowledge about the Middle East displayed by Sarah Palin and Joe Biden during Thursday night’s vice presidential debate.
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All right, now this is getting ridiculous. None other than Ryan Seacrest has managed to insert himself into the political mix by scoring a phone interview with Hillary Clinton on his radio show Friday. What’ll it be next, the Obamas and the Bidens sit down with the preternaturally perky Mary Hart on “Entertainment Tonight?” Oh, wait ... never mind.
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Did they deliver? That was the question coming from the Democratic and Republican camps after Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin did battle at the vice presidential debate in St. Louis on Thursday night. Here’s the full debate in video—tell us what you think about how the candidates handled themselves and represented their respective tickets.
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AP photo / Don Emmert, pool
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By Bill Boyarsky — Gov. Sarah Palin survived Thursday night’s debate, much to the disappointment of Democrats who hoped she would crumble as she did in her interview with Katie Couric. But she ducked tough questions, gave canned answers, tried to smile her way out of tough spots and cheerfully distorted Sen. Barack Obama’s record.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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John McCain’s bid to put his campaign on hold in order to wing his way to Washington last week was intended to make him seem ready for action in a crisis but may have resulted in a “political dead end” for the Arizona senator after Monday’s bailout bomb, according to the Associated Press.
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AP Photo / Alex Brandon
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Even though the American mainstream media pronounced Friday’s presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain a draw, the UK’s Guardian newspaper tallied up some poll results and found that Obama has gained an edge over McCain as the candidates head into their final month of campaigning.
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By RJ Matson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch —
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You might think you’re watching a movie trailer when the voice-over kicks in on this promo spot for the Wasilla Assembly of God’s “Master’s Commission,” which a member of Sarah Palin’s former church describes as an “intense discipleship training program.” Although darkness sets in and seems to never let up in America’s northernmost state, the booming voice proclaims, “God has a destiny for the state of Alaska” ... and the world!
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“Saturday Night Live” alumna Tina Fey returned once again to fulfill her comedic duty on the Sept. 27 episode of NBC’s comedy show, spoofing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s one-on-one interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric earlier in the week. Fey’s fellow “SNL” comedian Amy Poehler dropped her Hillary Clinton act to play Couric in this clip.
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Thank goodness there was Fox News host Sean Hannity to fill the excruciating void between Sarah Palin’s big interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson and her upcoming one-on-one with CBS’ Katie Couric. On Wednesday he sat down with Palin for the benefit of Fox’s conservative-friendly audience.
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Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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