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$19
By Deanne Stillman
$9.66
$40
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By Joe Conason — Having allowed his Republican opponents to dominate the economic debate, Obama used his first news conference to rebut them—coolly and civilly, yet without leaving any doubt that he can strike back harder if necessary.
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Flickr / World Economic Forum
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Tzipi Livni, leader of the centrist Kadima party, took a slight lead in exit polls and early returns after Israelis voted Tuesday in parliamentary elections. However, with Likud a close second and a splinter ultraconservative party set to win about 15 seats, conservatives may be the real winners. Update
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By Marie Cocco — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s renewed struggle with cancer is both a demonstration of courage and a dismaying reminder that she represents a quota of one.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It took less than three weeks for the real Barack Obama to come into view. He turns out to be both a conciliator and a fighter. Update
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By Joe Conason — Mythology is overshadowing history in the debate over Obama’s plan to stimulate the depressed economy. Excessive airtime is devoted to the prejudices of cable hosts and radio personalities who regurgitate ideas they barely understand.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Obama’s outreach to Republicans is popular, but the coming week will test his resolve. Eventually, he’ll have to say “no” to the GOP, or lose what he’s fighting for.
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By David Sirota — Intragovernmental squabbling probably makes the conflict-averse Obama uncomfortable. But the “make him do it” dynamic could finally bring the center of Washington’s political debate closer to the progressive center of American public opinion.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Obama’s visit with House and Senate Republicans this week was useful for setting a new tone and a refreshing break from the Bush administration’s habit of consulting almost no one. But it was a sideshow to the main battle over how to improve the economy, which is among Democrats.
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Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune —
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Beneath the warm pledges of bipartisanship and the earnest calls for cooperation lurks an unpleasant fact: From the moment it loses power, the opposition party turns to the task of getting it back.
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By William Pfaff — Barack Obama’s is a restoration presidency. His job in office, as during the campaign, is to summon up the better America that was abandoned or repudiated during the past eight years by his predecessor.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Barack Obama intends to use conservative values for progressive ends, and in doing so he will confuse a lot of people.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Obama has made it hard for anyone to pin him down philosophically. So when he raises his hand on Tuesday, exactly what can the American people expect?
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Flickr / exfordy
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By Joe Conason — Would it be rude to ask whether the Republicans have any new proposals to save the country from this worsening recession? If not, they should halt their reactionary opposition to Barack Obama’s stimulus plan.
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Jon Stewart takes Sarah Palin to task for her postelection face-saving: “Is it really fair to ask a vice presidential candidate what things they read?”
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It’s amazing what happens when powerful minds get together. Take this episode of “Fox and Friends,” during which conservative luminary Glenn Beck quotes Jack Bauer, an imaginary person from the land of TV make-believe, to prove the righteousness of torture. Genius.
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Department of Justice
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An internal investigation has found that Bradley Schlozman, a former high-ranking Justice Department official, hired and promoted conservative “right-thinking Americans” while making it clear that “adherents of Mao’s little red book need not apply” to work in his wing of the Justice Department. He also transferred an employee for allegedly using “ebonics.”
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Conservative scarecrow Ann Coulter insists she was banned by NBC, and to prove it, she accepted the network’s invitation to appear on air. Wait a second! The ban, like so much of what Coulter talks about, seems to exist only in her head and the pages of the Drudge Report.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — While Republicans are looking inward and focusing on appeals to the party’s activist base, Obama wants Democrats to concentrate their energies on recently acquired political terrain and the new converts who were central to his party’s sweep last year.
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By David Sirota — If you’re like me, you sometimes find yourself speechless when confronted with abject insanity, such as conservatives’ newest talking point—the one designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — By inviting Pastor Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation, President-elect Barack Obama has alienated some of his friends on the left, but the choice also enrages conservatives who fear the breakup of right-wing dominance in the white evangelical community.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Because Arne Duncan gets along with teachers unions but is also seen as a reformer, his selection was interpreted as a politically shrewd, split-the-difference choice by Obama. But that is not the whole story.
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By Marie Cocco — I must admit that when the danger of a global financial implosion became apparent in March, I did not understand how all those worthless Wall Street credit swaps really could be the fault of an overpaid union welder at an auto plant somewhere in Michigan.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Oh, my: Barack Obama is still more than a month away from assuming the presidency and already there are reports about “the left” being dispirited about change it no longer believes in.
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By David Sirota — Judging by the proliferation of capital letters in the e-mail correspondence I receive, many seem worried that Barack Obama may not deliver the promised “change we can believe in.”
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By Eugene Robinson — If things get much more “interesting,” we might have a collective nervous breakdown. But along with the anxiety, there’s also a sense of rare opportunity—a chance to emerge better than we were economically, politically and socially.
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By Marie Cocco — This week marks a decade since a consortium of state attorneys general negotiated the landmark settlement of lawsuits against tobacco companies. The results are in: Cigarette consumption has declined by 28 percent in the past 10 years.
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By David Sirota — If you’re having trouble remembering what the recent election was all about, rest easy: You’re probably not going senile – you’re likely experiencing the momentary effects of brainwashing.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — There is a second transition under way over which President-elect Barack Obama has no control—the transition of conservatives to minority status. How they do this will have a powerful impact on the new presidency.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Obama’s most urgent task is to repair an ailing economy. But one of his most important promises was to end the cultural and religious wars that have disfigured politics for four decades.
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By Ellen Goodman — Have you ever seen a transformation this fast? Think of it as evolution on steroids. But don’t think Sarah Palin will go quietly into that good Arctic night.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If Reagan had the voters’ permission to move away from strategies associated with liberalism, Obama has sanction to move away from conservative policies. And Reagan offers another lesson: His first moves were bold, and Obama should not fear following his example.
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By William Pfaff — The president-elect is a foreign policy novice and will find himself under great pressure to follow Middle Eastern and China and Russia policies inherited from George Bush, even though these are what Barack Obama was elected to change or terminate.
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By Ellen Goodman — There was symbolism as well as sadness in the passing of Barack Obama’s grandmother. When we’re young, we think change is a 100-yard dash. As we get older we think it’s a marathon. Eventually we see a relay race.
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By Marie Cocco — Republicans will try to tie memories of Jimmy Carter to the new Democratic president by conjuring up disturbing visions of policy failure and “malaise.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — With Obama’s victory, it’s time to hope that the era of racial backlash and wedge politics is over. Time to imagine that the patriotism of dissenters will no longer be questioned and that the world will no longer be divided between “values voters” and those without a moral compass.
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myspace.com
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Calls have been going out in Virginia and Pennsylvania, telling people to vote tomorrow, on Nov. 5, according to Jonah Goldman, director of Election Protection at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. Goldman says he doesn’t know who’s responsible, but similar misleading messages are being distributed via e-mail, FaceBook and fliers, often targeting young and minority voters.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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Nixon’s former counsel has written a scathing review of conservative Republican politics and says the McCain-Palin ticket, which “scares the hell out of me,” fits the mold. How’s this for an endorsement?: “If Obama is rejected on November 4th for another authoritarian conservative like McCain, I must ask if Americans are sufficiently intelligent to competently govern themselves.”
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By David Sirota — John McCain and Barack Obama have made the race’s final weeks an ideological proxy war between two presidential icons who still loom larger than them: Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt.
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Reagan Library
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OK, so Ronald Reagan isn’t around to actually endorse anyone. But that doesn’t stop political operatives from invoking his presidency to boost their candidate. A new, liberal Colorado-based group called Progressive Future is bringing back the Gipper to put in a plug for Barack Obama, while the conservative Let Freedom Ring calls Obama the “anti-Reagan.”
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By William Pfaff — The real issues of the American presidential election are the future of the economy and the future of American foreign policy. The one seems already settled. The second seems to unite John McCain and Barack Obama in support of a program doomed to fail.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — A candidate is supposed to rally the base during the primaries and reach out to the middle at election time. John McCain got it backward, and it’s hurting him.
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By Marie Cocco — Conservatives fear a “period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy” should Barack Obama and the Democrats sweep in November, but the voters care more about competent government than ideology.
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By Eugene Robinson — Grouchiness, twitchiness and haughtiness didn’t help John McCain in Wednesday’s debate, but what he said hurt him more than how he said it.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — John McCain’s debate performance almost certainly did him good among those whose votes he already has: very conservative Republicans who share Joe the Plumber’s view that Obama is some kind of socialist.
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Christopher Buckley has resigned from his father’s magazine, with the help of a stiff boot to the rear, thanks to his recent endorsement of Barack Obama. The satirist says he has no hard feelings, but “I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me.”
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AP photo / Jim Mone
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Are we witnessing the re-emergence of the far right as a power in American politics? Has John McCain, inadvertently perhaps, become the midwife of a new movement built around fear, xenophobia, racism and anger?
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npr.org
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And to think that anyone thought James Dobson would sit out this presidential race. The Christian right leader and his advocacy group, Focus on the Family Action, are planning a multistate strategy to help elect McCain, and to prevent Democratic gains in Congress while they’re at it.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Sen. Angus King
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