By Robert Scheer —Barack Obama will be re-elected not as a vindication of his policies but because the Republicans are incapable of providing a reasonable challenge to his flawed performance.
By Bill Boyarsky —Of the two top finishers in the Iowa Republican caucuses, it’s hard to tell who is worse: Mitt Romney, the eight-vote winner, or Rick Santorum.
This week on Truthdig Radio: Complicating the conventional wisdom on Mitt Romney; Catholic recruiters; banning Mexican-American education in Arizona; Mr. Fish on the political process, and Robert Scheer on Iowa.
Republicans, start your engines. With the Iowa causues in the rear-view mirror and New Hampshire and South Carolina up next, the GOP primary field has pretty much narrowed to Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. What might the great minds of “Left, Right & Center” think of these presidential wannabes?
In this clip from Thursday’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” Rolling Stone’s provocateur du jour, Matt Taibbi, weighs in on a decision by the Montana Supreme Court that could deal a substantial blow to the notorious Citizens United SCOTUS ruling of 2010, which represents at least one issue around which some conservatives and progressives can rally for change.
This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Bill Boyarsky complicates the conventional wisdom on Mitt Romney; the Rev. Madison Shockley has a beef with the Catholic Church; a judge wants to ban Mexican-American education in Arizona; Mr. Fish applies his skeptical wit to the political process, and Robert Scheer on Iowa.
Sorry about this—a 10-best list dragging along in the wake of all the others, which began appearing around Halloween. And it isn’t even a nice round 10 in number. I could come up with only six movies this year. I have my excuses. [Pictured above, Werner Herzog, director of “Into the Abyss.”]
Lauren B. Davis’ thrilling, polyphonic new novel, “Our Daily Bread,” takes us into a backwoods clan rife with child abuse and incest, and asks the question: “When does another person’s suffering become my responsibility?”
The name Steve Jobs has been sweet on the lips of techno-capitalist fankids pining for a cultural hero since long before the Apple CEO succumbed to cancer late last year. Since his death, an author and an actor have taken some of the first shots at shaping his legacy. With an eye on the man’s cruelty toward his employees at home and abroad, n+1 reviewer Gary Sernovitz tries to fill in the blanks.
For our first Truthdigger installment of 2012, we salute Daniel Ellsberg, who has taken a page from his experience with the Pentagon Papers and is still busy serving up a bracing dose of truth to power, most recently with his support of accused WikiLeaker Bradley Manning.
Better to let Iraq blow itself apart than inflict the kind of policies that have, as most commentators refuse to acknowledge, plagued the country’s entire, sorry history.
It would seem that the United States has a five-party system right now. What was done in Iowa last Tuesday could unravel in New Hampshire, but whatever happens next, the United States is more politically fractured than it has been in decades.
Here are 10 current words and phrases that my kid may never know because they might end up as relics of a lost vernacular, starting with “civil liberties.”
Barack Obama will be re-elected not as a vindication of his policies but because the Republicans are incapable of providing a reasonable challenge to his flawed performance.
Mitt Romney and his backers decided that to win in Iowa they had to destroy Newt Gingrich’s campaign. Now Gingrich looks eager—and able—to return the favor.
If the Republicans want to have a genuinely searching debate about the future of their party, they’d send Santorum and Huntsman off for the long fight.
Politicians and their flacks lie every day, but it is unusual for someone prominent to utter a totally indefensible falsehood like the whopper that just sprang from the mouth of Eric Cantor’s press secretary on national television.
Republicans weren’t the only ones irked at our nation’s leader this week. President Obama has also ruffled some feathers in the Chinese government with his newly hatched military strategy, which he announced in a rare news conference at the Pentagon on Thursday, and which apparently strikes the Chinese as a potentially unwelcome display of U.S. prowess on their side of the globe.
Obama dodges Netanyahu’s attempts to suck the U.S. into a war against Iran; Stephen Colbert’s many fictional faces are interfering with real world politics; meanwhile, the Argentine LGBT community is combatting the country’s deep-rooted stereotypes. These discoveries and more after the jump.
This will hardly be news to many, but The New York Times weighed in Wednesday about the American dream being harder to achieve for those occupying the lower socioeconomic levels of society than either their wealthier contemporaries or their counterparts from past eras.
Fresh off his historically narrow victory in Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses, Republican presidential pageant favorite Mitt Romney beefed up his attack rhetoric against his would-be opponent, Barack Obama, on Thursday by lashing out against the president’s latest big appointments.
Rep. Barney Frank may be leaving the Capitol soon, but a member of the nation’s most famous political clan could succeed him in the House of Representatives. Enter Joseph Kennedy III, stage left.
On Thursday, President Obama dropped in at the Pentagon to outline some sizable changes he’s making to America’s defense strategy in this last year of his first elected term. His plans will no doubt lay him open to criticism on the campaign trail, but at least it seems to make room for the possibility of focusing funds on the home front.
Who will tell you what's really going on with the world economic crisis?
Who will expose the alliance between Wall Street and Washington
that continues to impoverish the vast majority of Americans?
Chris Hedges and Robert Scheer, that's who—along with our entire lineup
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‘Left, Right & Center’: The (Elusive) Middle-Class Agenda
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