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By Varlam Shalamov; John Glad (Translator)
by Juan Cole and Nikki Keddie
$30.60
$23
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The results of Sunday’s parliamentary election in Russia, which resulted in a sweeping victory for Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party and signaled that the president will stay in power beyond the end of his second term next spring, are being questioned on a national and international scale.
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AP photo / Fernando Llano
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Hugo Chavez sounded an optimistic note Monday after ending up on the losing end of a vote—by a slim 51 to 49 percent margin—that would have expanded his constitutional powers as Venezuela’s president and instituted changes in federal fund allocation and labor policy, among other proposed developments.
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Boy, was CNN ever psyched about a Ron Paul interview they had on their site—a major traffic driver for CNN.com!—the day of the CNN/YouTube Republican debate, CNN’s John Roberts tells Paul in this clip from the channel’s post-debate coverage Wednesday. Paul, seemingly nonplused, points out that he was summarily and unfairly ignored until close to the end and gets in a few digs at his fellow candidates.
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rpv.org
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It’s almost primary time, voters of America, so get ready for more electoral shenanigans! The venerable southern state of Virginia is fast out of the gates this election season, thanks to the local Republican Party, which came up with the ingenious idea of requiring voters who want to take part in February’s primary to pledge that they’ll also cast their vote for the Republican presidential nominee next Nov. 4.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Kevin Rudd, Australia’s new prime minister, combines iron discipline with a puckish sense of humor, political toughness with a reflective spiritual side, and a youthful disposition with an old pro’s skill at divining where a majority lies.
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The Truthdig columnist writes in The Nation that he will not pay his taxes if the United States attacks Iran. Like Henry David Thoreau before him, Hedges will not help finance an immoral war. “I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture,” he writes. “But an attack on Iran—which appears increasingly likely before the coming presidential election—will unleash a regional conflict of catastrophic proportions.”
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By Eugene Robinson — Finally, we’ve got a real presidential campaign on our hands. Wake up, those of you in the back row, because it looks as if the long-running seminar is finally over.
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The man who turned an inarticulate failed businessman into an inarticulate failed president offers his take on the campaign so far. It’s a real shocker: Rove is impressed by the Republicans, while he finds the Democrats “weak.”
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AP photo / Ron Edmonds, File
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It’s really only a matter of time, after a member of the current administration steps down, before he or she re-emerges on the political and/or cultural scene. Take Karl Rove, for example, who, not to be relegated to some contrived yet lucrative “consulting” position (not yet, at any rate), will write about the upcoming elections for Newsweek.
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By Nicholas von Hoffman — Why is it that so many voters continue to elect reactionaries who do their best to disenfranchise them? The answer, says Paul Krugman in his new book, is racism.
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By Eugene Robinson — “That’s an excellent question” normally doesn’t make the list of utterances that can get a candidate in trouble on the campaign trail. But this presidential campaign isn’t what anyone would call normal.
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By Marie Cocco — Countless studies show that abstinence-only sex education just doesn’t work, so why is it getting more money than ever from the federal government?
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apple.com/ipodtouch
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Oh dear—file this one under “further evidence our democracy’s in deep trouble”: The Politico reports that, according to a recent poll of over 3,000 NYU undergraduates conducted by an on-campus journalism class, two-thirds said they would give up their right to vote in the next presidential election in exchange for a year’s tuition at their school, while 20 percent said they’d swap it for an iPod touch.
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cbsnews.com
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Hillary Clinton’s lead in Iowa is statistically nonexistent, leaving in a virtual tie the top three Democrats running in the nation’s first electoral test, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll. On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee has sprinted past Rudy Giuliani to be within striking distance of Mitt Romney.
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robertamsterdam.com
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Although term limits require Russian President Vladimir Putin to step down in May, many, including chess wizard and opposition leader Garry Kasparov, have speculated that he will find some way to maintain his influence. Putin, it seems, agrees, saying that if his party wins the next election, he will have the “moral right to hold those in the Duma and the Cabinet responsible for the implementation” of his policies.
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By Marie Cocco — Sometime before the average price of gas topped the $3-a-gallon mark, an inevitable moment arrived. The economy beat Iraq as the issue of most concern to Americans.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The Democratic surge that began in 2006 continued in elections around the country on Tuesday. But how the Democrats won provides a cautionary tale for the national party.
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AP photo / Wally Santana
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Despite President Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of emergency rule in Pakistan over the weekend, and amid widespread arrests and protests on the domestic front and criticism from the international community, Pakistan will still hold parliamentary elections in January as planned, according to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
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Zuade Kaufman / Truthdig (left) and Carolyn Kaster / AP photo
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Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer goes head to head with progressive icon Ralph Nader, who denies the charge that he has been a spoiler and challenges the value of the Democratic Party.
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As Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf struggles to maintain power in his country, The Washington Post goes behind the scenes to look at the Bush administration’s wobbly relations with Musharraf, whom Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was unable to dissuade from imposing emergency rule.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — More significant than Clinton’s supposed gaffe in the Philadelphia debate is the subject around which she tiptoed so delicately: Immigration is the issue Democrats fear because it could leave them with a set of no-win political choices.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The first big scandal confronting Rudy Giuliani in his presidential quest has nothing to do with his personal life, his governing style in New York City, or his associations with people such as Bernie Kerik, his police commissioner now under criminal investigation.
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historicaltextarchive.com
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We certainly hope so, because it has just elected one. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who happens to be the current first lady, managed to pull in more than 40 percent of the vote. In fact, the runner-up (with 23 percent of the vote) is also a woman. Not bad for Gaucho country.
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The “Real Time” host makes the case for prioritizing our fear: “What’s really scary this Halloween is that the same group of idea-free losers who won the last presidential election could win the next one by making us afraid of the wrong things, which is why this Halloween, I’m going as something truly horrifying: a melting polar ice cap.”
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Jimmy Carter told the new Web site Guardian America that, compared to the Bush presidency at least, George W. Bush will make a “very good” ex-president. Carter also said of Hillary Clinton’s seemingly insurmountable lead in the polls: “One thing I know is that, this far ahead of time in the past, it’s been impossible to predict the outcome of the election.”
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By Marie Cocco — The nominee for attorney general doesn’t know “what is involved” in waterboarding, and he appears to back Bush’s usurpation of power. Isn’t it time for the Democrats to grow some spine?
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nytimes.com
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The voters of Louisiana are very close to electing as their governor Bobby Jindal, a conservative Republican congressman of Indian descent. While the chattering class is preoccupied with whether the nation is ready for a black or woman president, the conservative Republicans of Louisiana, many of whom once threw their support behind former klansman David Duke, seem to have moved on.
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AP photo / Mel Evans
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By Bill Boyarsky — I don’t know Al Gore’s plans, but here’s what I’d tell him to do if he wants to be president: Ignore New Hampshire and Iowa. Hope Hillary fizzles. Bet the house on early February when the big states have their primaries, and he could win the biggest, California.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — One of the few things the Republican and Democratic presidential contests have in common is the relentlessness with which candidates on both sides are wrapping themselves in orthodoxy. Heretics need not apply.
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Eric Lee / Paramount Classics via NYT
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Al Gore and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their crusade against global warming. Now, just imagine what would happen if the Nobel laureate applied himself with equal intensity to ending the war in Iraq. That could be the beginning of a thrilling presidential campaign.
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By Bill Boyarsky — Presidential hopeful Barack Obama is striking a chord among middle-class black voters, notes Boyarsky, who looks into Obama’s fundraising successes among that demographic as an entrée into “an African-American political landscape seldom visited by journalists.”
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getreligion.org
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It’s not easy to win over an entire country—or at least a majority of its voters—without bruising some feelings. That’s particularly true in the early-primary states, where locals place high demands on presidential candidates, who, despite their best efforts, frequently step in it.
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drinkliberally.org
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DraftGore.com purchased a full-page ad in The New York Times, hoping to persuade an audience of one that “it’s a moral imperative for [Al Gore] to be a candidate.” The former vice president appreciates the sentiment, but still “has no intention of running.”
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Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer goes head to head with progressive icon Ralph Nader, who denies the charge that he has been a spoiler and challenges the value of the Democratic Party.
Special thanks to The Nation.
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In case you think conservative Christians are just bluffing with their threats to split from the Republicans, take a gander at this clip of Sean Hannity begging James Dobson to support Rudy Giuliani. Dobson refuses, standing on principle and the promise of a more frenzied and loyal base under a Clinton presidency.
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AP Photo / Ivan Sekretarev
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Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is busily offering olive branches, and even pledging to resign his military post in the near future, during the final hours before Saturday’s presidential election. It looks like his strategy may work, as the election is expected to result in victory for Musharraf, even as his legitimacy as a candidate is being contested and reviewed by the nation’s top court.
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By Ellen Goodman — With Hillary Clinton well ahead of the Democratic pack in the polls and Republican candidates scrambling to demonstrate who is best able to defeat her, the question isn’t whether America is ready for a woman president but rather can anyone stop her.
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AP photo / Kathy Willens and Brett Flashnick
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By Bill Boyarsky — Maybe I’m crazy, but I’d bet on John McCain to win the Republican presidential nomination. And the Democrat with the best chance to beat him is John Edwards.
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By Marie Cocco — Voters put Democrats in control of both houses of Congress last fall and, for this act of civic determination, they face an infuriating conundrum. Republicans are still running things.
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By Eugene Robinson — Yes, you heard it right: At the Dartmouth College debate Wednesday evening, not one of the three leading Democratic candidates could pledge that all U.S. combat troops would be out of Iraq by the end of his or her first term as president.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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By Scott Ritter — If you think the Iraq war is a disaster, just wait until we start bombing Iran. The countdown to another war is both real and terrifying, Ritter argues, and, distasteful though it may seem, it won’t be stopped so long as Iraq holds on to the spotlight.
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The House has passed an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program but failed to win enough votes to override President Bush’s promised veto. Still, SCHIP has overwhelming public support, and Democrats welcomed the opportunity to force Bush and his congressional allies to take a stand against poor children.
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AP Photo / Charlie Niebergall
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By Bill Boyarsky — If there’s any candidate who knows what he or she would be dealing with in attempting to change the American healthcare system, it’s Hillary Clinton. And, according to Boyarsky, charging into that particular political battleground might have made her a stronger contender.
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local10.com
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Guess he wasn’t in the “free speech zone”: University of Florida student Andrew Meyer apparently went on too long while asking Sen. John Kerry about his 2004 presidential run (among other questions) and was Tasered and arrested on Monday. Did the police overreact? That’s where Internet video comes in handy.
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By Marie Cocco — Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal won’t please progressives looking to do away with corporate insurance or conservatives who prefer unaffordable micromanaged care to government “bureaucracy,” but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — As Virginia goes, so goes the Senate—and the nation? The decision of former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner to run for the seat of retiring Republican Sen. John Warner is more than just bad news for the GOP.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The question of whether or not the “surge” is working is a distraction from the fact that fighting “them” over there makes us less safe at home. If the Democrats want to bring the troops home, they should repeat that mantra over and over.
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