LOGO: Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines. A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
2010 Webby Award Winner for Best Political Blog
 
September 9, 2011
Log in / Register

 Choose a size
Text Size

Featured Arts and Culture

A Dud From ‘Darth’

Dick Cheney’s book is a bomb, but not the exploding kind.
Featured Reports
AP / Brennan Linsley

How Little We Know About the Origins of 9/11

For a decade, the main questions about 9/11 have gone unanswered.
Featured Reports
AP / Erich Schlegel

Flaming Hypocrisy

While Rick Perry was denouncing the federal government at Wednesday's debate, he was also accepting all the financial assistance President Obama could offer his burning state.
 
A/V Booth

This week on “Left, Right & Center,” Tony Blankley, Matt Miller and Robert Scheer discuss President Obama’s jobs speech, Rick Perry’s performance at the GOP debate and the state of things 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

This week on Truthdig Radio, in collaboration with KPFK, we hear about Agent Orange and the continuing devastation from America’s chemical warfare; the Justice Department’s recent move to hold big banks accountable; the efforts of a pioneering Spanish broadcaster; and the economic outlook on jobs.

Before NBC’s Brian Williams could even finish asking Rick Perry on Wednesday if he had any trouble sleeping after having allowed the executions of more people than any other modern governor, the crowd at the Reagan Library debate erupted in joyous whistles and applause for the Texan. They did it again when Perry said criminals in Texas face “the ultimate justice.”

 
Arts and Culture

As I mentioned to friends when I started reading Dick Cheney’s memoir, I was doing it so others would not have to. And, as a precaution, I did it alone in case my head exploded. It did not. This book is a bomb, but not the exploding kind.


A crane being used in repairing earthquake damage to the main tower of the Washington National Cathedral toppled Wednesday, damaging two adjacent buildings at the historic place of worship. (more)


This Labor Day, it’s not just 25 million Americans who are out of a job. In our comic book society, not even female superheroes can find work. (more)

 
Digs

The Questions Education Reformers Aren’t Asking

Mike Rose notes that no one in power is asking fundamental questions about the purpose of education and whether much-hyped reforms might do more harm than good.

 
 
Reports

Retired Republican congressional staffer Mike Lofgren outed the “political terrorism” of the lunatics and crackpots who make up the GOP today, and that’s why he’s our Truthdigger of the Week.

Hear the one about Rick Perry’s appointees who run Medicaid in Texas allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be misspent on orthodontic braces for children who don’t need them—with huge profits for private dental clinics owned by Wall Street hedge funds? There’s more.

Ten years ago this week, I, like many living in Washington at the time, was fleeing my office building.

There never was a “war on terrorism.” There most definitely was a war against al-Qaeda, and we won.


By far the most stirring line in the president’s jobs speech Thursday was his acknowledgment that “the next election is 14 months away and the people who sent us here—the people who hired us to work for them—they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months.”


For $300 billion the president could do something truly different—he could eliminate unemployment altogether.


For a decade, the main questions about 9/11 have gone unanswered while the alleged perpetrators who survived the attacks have never been publicly cross-examined as to their methods and motives.


Wow, what a jittery, hair-trigger, emotional week in Egypt, the heart of the revolutionary world.


While Rick Perry was denouncing the federal government at Wednesday’s debate, he was also accepting all the financial assistance President Obama could offer his burning state.

So far the pundit (for now) has taken on three of the 8 1/2 (Palin has not declared) of his party’s candidates.

 
Ear to the Ground

U.S. and European markets played follow the leader Friday, as the three main stock indexes in both regions tumbled downward nearly 3 percent together. Among other events, analysts pointed fingers at the euro, uncertainty over President Obama’s jobs speech and doubt over Greece’s ability to address its financial problems.


Seven years into the Soviet Union’s fatal adventure in Afghanistan, U.S. President Ronald Reagan stood before the international community in West Berlin and demanded that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the wall that separated East Germany from the West. (more)


New York and Washington, D.C., police officers are ramping up security measures Friday in response to what intelligence officials are calling a specific, credible terrorist threat planned for the 10th anniversary of 9/11.


The prime minister of Turkey will visit Egypt for the first time in 15 years Monday, potentially to forge an alliance between the two countries that could ultimately isolate neighboring Israel.


Twice yearly, the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch assemble a crowd of wealthy libertarian sympathizers to raise funds for their efforts to influence government and the American public. (more)


More than 400 angry longshoremen forced their way into a grain shipping facility in Longview, Wash., on Thursday where they held security guards captive and attacked a cargo train.


In a report released this week, marine scientists from around the world said industrial deep-sea fishing should be banned because it takes much longer for those fish to repopulate than species that live closer to shore.


A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals in Virginia ruled in favor of the health care reform law Thursday, dismissing two suits. (more)

 
 
Change.org|Start Petition
 
 
Join the Liberal Blog Advertising Network
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Blogroll

Sites

     

Blogroll

 

AlterNet
Arts and Letters Daily
BuzzFlash
Center for Investigative
  Reporting

Citizens for Ethics
Democracy Now!
Human Rights Watch
KCRW: Left, Right & Center
Laura Flanders

Media Matters
Mosaic
Ms. Magazine
Progressive Book Club
TheHill.com

The Nation
The Peter B. Collins Show
Where’s Our Money?
Working for Change

Altercation
Boing Boing
Salon | Broadsheet
BuzzMachine

Cursor
Daily Kos
Feministing

Blogroll Continued

     

Advertise Liberally
Blogroll

 

The Huffington Post
Instapundit
LA Observed
Political Animal

Romenesko
Taegan Goddard's
  Political Wire

TalkLeft

Talking Points Memo
Tapped
The Largest Minority
The Notion

Think Progress
Wonkette

BRAD Blog
Crooks and Liars
Informed Comment
SirotaBlog

           

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2011 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.