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By Saul Landau
$34.95
By Sheldon S. Wolin
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Flickr / Sister72 (CC-BY)
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He’s a one-man downer, but mainly because he’s smart, credible and pulls no punches. In his latest New York Times column, the Nobel Prize winner warns that the Federal Reserve isn’t taking a negative enough view of the economy—with potentially dire consequences. Happy Monday to you, too, Paul.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If the midterm elections were held now, Republicans would likely take control of the House of the Representatives. Democrats have to figure out a way to appeal to independent voters while simultaneously winning back their disenchanted base.
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Flickr / nycmayorsoffice, Edward Reed
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President Obama’s immigration speech on Thursday, according to a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, bore an extraordinary similarity to the one delivered by his predecessor back in 2006.
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U.S. Air Force / Tech. Sgt. Francisco V. Govea II
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By Robert Dreyfuss, TomDispatch —
Afghanistan is the place where theories of warfare go to die, and if the COIN theory isn’t dead yet, it’s utterly failed so far to prove itself.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — This week’s hearings over Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court will mark a sea change in the way liberals argue about the judiciary.
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Photo illustration from Flickr / Burstein! (CC-BY)
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It seems obvious, but if you publicly sign a petition seeking to ban gay marriage, your name can be made public. The 138,000 Washington state cowards who thought they could meddle in the relationships of their gay neighbors from the comfort of anonymity got a reality check from the Supreme Court on Thursday.
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By Joe Conason — Clearly the president understands what is at stake. And he apparently senses renewed opportunity in the wake of the Gulf catastrophe, which illustrates the problems of oil dependency with harrowing urgency.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Obama gave a good and sensible speech that was not a home run. What’s odd is that Obama was seen as needing a home run. This is where the Democratic malaise comes in. Democrats should feel a lot better than they do.
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The Webby Awards were held Monday night in the posh Cipriani ballroom (once the lobby of the bank that would become Citi) on Wall Street. Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer took the opportunity to stick it to the neighborhood. Video after the jump.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Do Democrats honestly think that nickel-and-diming on stimulus now will either have a substantial impact on the long-term deficit or be of greater help to them in this fall’s elections than more robust growth?
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AP / Mikhail Metzel
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By Ivo Mijnssen and Philipp Casula —
Russia has come a long way, but geopolitics in Eastern Europe are still overshadowed by a mutual distrust rooted in World War II.
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By David Sirota — After Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt delivered a national address making eight references to the “sacrifice” that would be needed in the impending war and three mentions of the “self-denial” we would have to endure.
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Flickr / Mr. T in DC (CC-BY-ND)
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It should become the philosophical shot heard ’round the country. In a remarkable speech that received far too little attention, former Supreme Court Justice David Souter took direct aim at the conservatives’ favorite theory of judging.
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Rick Rowley / Big Noise Films
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By Amy Goodman — The anger is palpable across the Mississippi Delta. As the Deepwater Horizon oil geyser, almost a mile underwater, continues unabated, the brunt of this, the largest environmental catastrophe in United States history, is rolling onto the coast, impacting the ecology, the economy and entire ways of life.
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Why shooting peace activists to death is a big deal—even in foreign policy circles, what priests’ mistresses think of celibacy, and how much public money Sarah Palin got paid to attempt public speech.
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AP / Elizabeth Dalziel
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By Chris Hedges — Hope in this age of bankrupt capitalism will come with the return of the language of class conflict. It does not mean we have to agree with Karl Marx, but we have to speak in his vocabulary.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By William Pfaff — Though the president reiterated his promise of success, the future he outlined at West Point is hard to distinguish from what we have already been through in Iraq, with less than reassuring results.
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By Joshua Holland, AlterNet —
The bill would cut the DoD’s budget and use that money to make the first $35,000 each American earns tax-free.
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At least you know when you ask an Oscar-winning actress to be your commencement speaker that she probably won’t botch her lines, but will she actually have anything of value to say, or will she just spend 90 minutes exploring the nuances of her “craft”? (continued)
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Flickr / houze
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Political activist-critic Noam Chomsky was refused entry into Israel on Sunday. He was to have delivered a lecture at the Bir Zeit University near Jerusalem.
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AP / Emilio Morenatti
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By David Sirota — Imagine an alternate universe in which a foreign military power begins flying remote-controlled warplanes over your town, using onboard missiles to kill hundreds of your innocent neighbors, and then jokes about it.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Ever heard the one about the guy who hated government until a deregulated Wall Street crashed, an oil spill devastated the Gulf of Mexico, a coal mine collapsed, and some good police work stopped a terrorist attack?
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The Danish cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad inspired more than death threats. A Dutch cartoon mocking the Holocaust was published in response and the group responsible was taken to court for being offensive. (continued)
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By Eugene Robinson — Perhaps Obama could have scored more popularity points if he had ordered a few financiers to be led out of the Cooper Union auditorium in handcuffs.
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Flickr / Chris Denbow (CC-BY)
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By David Sirota — Whereas former presidents typically devote their retirements to history-revising legacy preservation, Bill Clinton is laudably doing the opposite—and the nation will, hopefully, benefit.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — For the first time in Obama’s presidency, Republicans are uncertain as to whether resolute opposition to a Democratic idea is in their political interest.
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If you missed Robert Scheer discussing his column, nuclear weapons and President Obama with readers or you just want to relive the excitement, you can read a full transcript right here.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Amy Goodman — President Barack Obama has just returned from his first trip as commander in chief to Afghanistan. The U.S.-led invasion and occupation of that country are now in their ninth year, amid increasing comparisons to Vietnam.
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By Eugene Robinson — It is disingenuous for mainstream purveyors of incendiary far-right rhetoric to dismiss groups such as the Hutaree militia by saying that there are “crazies on both sides.” This simply is not true.
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American Enterprise Institute
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The Washington Post, among others, is reporting rather matter-of-factly that conservative commentator David Frum (who, as a Bush speechwriter, coined “axis of evil”) has been fired by the American Enterprise Institute for criticizing the Republican approach to the health care fight. (continued)
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It was only a matter of time before someone worked something magical out of John Boehner’s health care vote speech.
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By Ruth Marcus — No one really knows how such sweeping changes to the health care system are going to play out.
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The president, speaking after the passage of health care reform, said, “We proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things.”
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The House minority leader got a bit hot and bothered just before the House vote approving the Senate’s version of health care reform, repeatedly dropping H-E-double hockey sticks. Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke instead to history.
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AP / Wade Payne
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By Bill Boyarsky — The lines at health care centers in working class communities around the country start forming when other Americans are going to bed, and they’re getting longer.
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AP / Muhammed Muheisen
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By Chris Hedges — The Israeli government, its brutal war crimes in Gaza exposed in detail in the U.N. report by Justice Richard Goldstone, has implemented a series of draconian measures to silence and discredit dissidents, leading intellectuals and human rights organizations inside and outside Israel.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Could Prime Minister Gordon Brown pull off the biggest political upset since 1948? Britain’s Conservatives are ascendant, but there’s reason for Brown to hope.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Ruth Marcus — The chief justice is a big crybaby. To listen to John Roberts, you’d think that mobs of pitchfork-waving Democrats had accosted a handful of trembling justices.
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By David Sirota — Speaking to the Conservative CPAC conference, Glenn Beck expressed sympathy for the anti-tax terrorist kamikaze pilot and called for the eradication of progressivism. The mob cheered.
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By William Pfaff — The U.S. devotes large sums of money to subsidizing the participation in Afghanistan of small NATO countries and publicizing the affair as a true coalition operation, but NATO-nation political and public support for the war is faint and grudging because few believe the mission is realistic.
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AP / Elise Amendola
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By Chris Hedges — Now that unions have been broken, rapacious corporations like FedEx and toadies in Congress and the White House are turning workers into serfs.
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AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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With cheers urging Dick Cheney to run for president, the Republican spokesman talked at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, pontificating about the party’s chances in 2010 and even 2012, claiming that “President Obama is going to be a one-term president.”
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By Ruth Marcus — If you are asking, as former President George W. Bush did jokingly the other day, “Who the hell is Marco Rubio?” you probably won’t be for long.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Scott Ritter — Fear of a nuclear Iran has generated irrational policies that will only hasten such an outcome. Instead of listening to his own words, the president fell for that old lure, a great power with great bombs that tells others what to do.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — When word went out that Bill Clinton was hospitalized, the prospect that he was in danger made me wish that President Obama had spent more time learning lessons that only Clinton can teach.
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Flickr / SpecialKRB
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By Eugene Robinson — The headlines scream as if Godzilla were rising from the icy depths of the Potomac: “Sarah Palin: Threat or Menace?”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The ferocity of the tea party movement’s opposition to President Obama is mystifying to political progressives. Most of the left simply doesn’t see the current occupant of the White House as especially liberal, let alone “socialist.”
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This is—no joke—how Sarah Palin began her speech to the tea partiers: “I am so proud to be an American. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Do you love your freedom?” She then thanked the troops for her freedom, repeated that she was proud to be an American and said, “Happy birthday, Ronald Reagan!”
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White House / Pete Souza
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — I asked Vice President Joe Biden if we will hear more on the America-as-No.-1 theme. What followed was a torrent, in red, white and blue.
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By Joe Conason — The most revealing moments in President Obama’s State of the Union address were not in his remarks, but the reaction to them by those listening on the Republican side of the aisle.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Medea Benjamin
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