|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By James Andrew Miller, Tom Shales
$14.91
By Andy Borowitz
$16.95
$20
|
|
|
|
|
Satire by Andy Borowitz —
In the first two weeks after the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the last eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.
|
|
On Thursday night, Attorney General Michael Mukasey suddenly collapsed while making a speech at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. He was rushed to George Washington University Hospital for treatment.
|
|
By William Pfaff — The Americans who voted for Barack Obama as president were promised change they could count on, but it rather looks as if they may actually be asked to make do with a mildly refurbished Clinton administration, with many of the same officials and nearly all of the same policies.
|
Archive / White House Press Office / Cecil Stoughton
|
By Stanley Kutler — The 36th president of the United States seems strangely absent in the current celebrations. Perhaps Lyndon B. Johnson is not fondly remembered, but his triumphs paved the long road to Barack Obama’s historic presidency.
|
White House
|
George W. Bush has had no shortage of gaffes during his reign of terror. One such miscue may also be the most enduring image of his presidency—that speech in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner before his war in Iraq turned into an outright catastrophe. He now regrets that moment, among others.
|
|
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.
|
|
John McCain was dignified and gracious in the face of overwhelming defeat Tuesday night. Barack Obama embraced his moment in history with yet another incredible speech. It brought tears to Jesse Jackson’s eyes and to countless others around the country.
|
us.penguingroup.com
|
An insightful book discloses how a confidence game combined pride and cunning and stupidity to bring America to the brink of catastrophe.
|
Reagan Library
|
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.”
|
|
By Marie Cocco — My computer will allow a letter to be displayed at a maximum 500 percent of its normal size. That isn’t big enough for a capital “H” that conveys the towering hypocrisies of the Sarah Palin political wardrobe malfunction.
|
npr.org / youtube
|
The one form of political advertising that’s completely unregulated and free is the speech of an individual citizen, even when money amplifies that speech by putting it on the airwaves. Tim D’Annunzio, who describes himself as a “concerned North Carolina businessman,” is doing just that.
|
Flickr / buddhakiwi
|
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank found many former Hillary Clinton supporters in Pennsylvania who had a hard time switching to Barack Obama—until Sarah Palin joined the Republican ticket. One Gail Silverberg captures the sentiment: “Hockey moms and lipstick on a pig and six-packs? I don’t want that stuff.”
|
AP photo / Jim Mone
|
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?
|
|
Satire by Andy Borowitz —
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin went on the attack today, claiming that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has long-standing ties to The Weather Channel.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Each campaign has given voters ample notice about the inclinations, temperaments, habits, philosophical leanings and advisers they would bring to the White House. That’s enough.
|
AP photo / Jim Bourg, pool
|
By Scott Ritter — Ralph Nader is right: The two-party system is failing America. There isn’t time between now and Election Day to create a viable third-party candidate, and so the sad reality is one of two deeply flawed men, the byproduct of a deeply flawed political system, will serve as president for the next four or eight years.
|
|
By William Pfaff — Less apparent to most people than the economic crisis, but just as real, are the signs of an impending crash of an American military system in which, since the end of the Cold War, Pentagon dysfunction has metastasized so uncontrollably as to scandalize the men who have overseen it.
|
|
First John McCain hopped on the change bandwagon, and now he sounds like he gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. The money quote in this new ad is better in the original Barack Obama.
|
youtube.com
|
Despite House Minority Leader John Boehner’s claim, backed up by other Republicans in Congress, that the bailout bill might have passed were it not for meddling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s bombastic speech on Monday, others from within GOP ranks beg to differ.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — John McCain’s sudden intervention in Washington’s deliberations over the Wall Street bailout could not have been more out of sync with what was actually happening.
|
Flickr / scriptingnews
|
The trailblazing atheist and Truthdig contributor takes on Sarah Barracuda in the new Newsweek: “When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. ‘They think they’re better than you!’ is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again.”
|
Flickr / buddhakiwi
|
Radio Iowa has a great play-by-play of a McCain-Palin rally in Cedar Rapids. With the “Top Gun” soundtrack heralding the arrival of the ticket (seriously), the crowd was pumped—for Sarah Palin. A casual poll before the rally suggested that Palin was the event’s star, and that sentiment was backed up when the audience started filing out five minutes into McCain’s speech.
|
White House photo / Paul Morse
|
Humans may be susceptible to methods of persuasion that play on the emotions and circumvent logic, but computers are another story. Enter a software program that purports to detect “spin” in politicians’ speeches by using a complex (albeit man-made) algorithm to hunt for truth-stretching words and phrases.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — What kind of person tells a self-aggrandizing lie, gets called on it, admits publicly that the truth is not at all what she originally claimed—and then goes out and starts telling the original lie again without changing a word?
|
RJ Matson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
|
By Marie Cocco — Let this be the last time. Please, let it be the last. Let this be the last commemoration of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to be used as any sort of backdrop for political theatrics, even if the show is bipartisan.
|
|
According to McCain campaign strategist Nicole Wallace, it doesn’t matter if Sarah Palin talks to the press because Palin can make “her own points” in her speeches, directly to the American people, as she did in St. Paul last week. “Who cares if she can talk to Time magazine?” Wallace asks Jay Carney of, yes, Time magazine in this clip.
|
|
There are three great moments in this short video of McCain’s acceptance speech. First, a Code Pink demonstrator interrupts McCain’s speech and gets dragged out to chants of “U.S.A.!” Then, McCain fumbles and makes an antiquated tech-related joke about static. Finally, McCain delivers his speech in front of a blue screen. Stephen Colbert, eat your heart out.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — Talk about role reversal. The Republican Party, which scoffs at the nonsense of “identity politics,” has staked everything on the compelling life stories of its presidential and vice presidential candidates.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Once upon a time, John McCain promised to be a different kind of politician and a different kind of Republican. McCain wants voters to remember that man. But that man has disappeared.
|
|
John McCain, a lobbyist and fixture of Congress for more than 30 years, nominee of the incumbent party and self-proclaimed foot soldier in the Reagan revolution, tried to convince Americans Thursday night that only he could bring real reform to that wretched place called Washington. Updated
|
Flickr / buddhakiwi
|
The AP took a closer look at some of the claims in Sarah Palin’s speech Wednesday and found that the VP nominee, like some of her allies, is simply full of it on a number of points.
|
gopconvention2008.com
|
In the aftermath of her convention speech, it seems clear that Sarah Palin is an effective mascot for the base of her party. She excited the Xcel Center, but failed to impress independents, who didn’t like her sarcasm and still aren’t sure she’s qualified. John McCain will have to do the heavy lifting there, notes the Political Insider, if he has any hope of winning the election.
|
|
Sarah Palin has been a one-woman soap opera the last few days, so when she strolled out onto that RNC stage Wednesday night without dragging a baby or a caribou carcass, she was already ahead of the game. Then she showed that she could handle the spotlight, casting herself as a small-town victim of the big-city media and relentlessly attacking Barack Obama.
|
|
Rudy Giuliani answered that question Wednesday with a despicable performance in front of the Republican National Convention. The former U.S. attorney said he learned as a lawyer “if you don’t have the facts, you gotta change ‘em.” Clearly, it’s a lesson he absorbed, filling his vindictive speech with distortions and cheap shots.
|
|
Sen. Joe Lieberman did his best to make Sarah Palin look good on Tuesday by giving a speech at the Republican convention. Although the GOP faithful managed to keep Lieberman off what might have been one of the least charismatic tickets ever, the self-described Democrat stood by his man.
|
|
In this week’s edition of “Left, Right and Center,” co-hosts Tony Blankley, Robert Scheer and Matt Miller weigh in about the Democratic convention in Denver, Barack Obama’s historic nomination acceptance speech, and whether John McCain made a sound decision in choosing wild-card Sarah Palin as his VP.
|
youtube.com
|
Was he tone-deaf or spot-on? Or, worse, did AP writer Charles Babington prepare his reaction to Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech not by listening to the address but by reading the transcript before Obama actually delivered it? And just who is this Charles Babington anyway?
|
|
Although the story was corrected later, the first version of AP writer Charles Babington’s critique of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech Thursday night contained at least one technical error and other potential discrepancies that some analysts, such as MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, considered to be off-base, to put it mildly.
|
AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
|
If you’re going to be accused of being a celebrity, you might as well enjoy some of the perks, too, as Democratic nominee Barack Obama did on Thursday night, when some 40 milion Americans tuned in to watch his momentous acceptance speech at Invesco Field.
|
AP photo / Ted S. Warren
|
By Bill Boyarsky — In a speech that rose beyond the occasion, Sen. Barack Obama changed the dynamics of the presidential campaign. With fire in his eyes and politeness thankfully forgotten, he finally put Sen. John McCain on the defensive, most notably mocking the Republican’s claim that he’s best suited to be commander in chief.
|
Truthdig / George Edelman
|
Truthdig videographer George Edelman sends us this snap of someone in Denver who didn’t seem too thrilled with all the Democrats running around. Wonder what Dr. Freud would say about this guy’s sign issues.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — In 1948, a young Minneapolis mayor electrified Democratic delegates gathered in Philadelphia with a bold endorsement of President Harry Truman’s civil rights policies and the “promise of a land where all men are free and equal.”
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — “I cried on Monday when Michelle spoke,” Rep. John Lewis told me Wednesday at the Pepsi Center, “and I know that on Thursday night at the stadium I’ll cry again.”
|
AP photo / Matt Sayles
|
In what was perhaps the most highly anticipated (and no doubt the most highly scrutinized) moment of his political career thus far, newly nominated Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was saddled with a huge task Thursday night, but by the end, Obama had both thrown down the gauntlet and risen to the occasion—at least in the eyes of thousands of supporters who came to see his history-making acceptance speech at Denver’s Invesco Field.
|
|
RJ Matson, Roll Call —
|
|
During his speech to the Democratic convention, the aspiring veep praised the courage of his good friend, John McCain—right before twisting the knife in his back. It’s the vice presidential candidate’s job to go on the attack, and Joe Biden does his job well.
|
|
By Ellen Goodman — Democrats have provided nearly all the drama of this campaign season, an 18-month run, a narrative with two compelling leads, a race between two people to open the door of history. A door that could only admit one at a time.
|
|
Bill Clinton reminded Democrats on Thursday why he’s one of the brightest stars in the political universe—and a great cheerleader to have on your side—with a rousing speech in support of Barack Obama.
|
dipdive.com
|
Will.i.am’s viral hit will be performed live before Barack Obama’s historic acceptance speech in Denver on Thursday. Other musical acts expected to perform include Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Sheryl Crow and Jennifer Hudson, who will sing the national anthem. Bruce Springsteen has been rumored and un-rumored to appear, so we’ll have to wait and see. Updated.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Truthdigger of the Week: Medea Benjamin
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
