Demockracy

A Review of The Empire Strikes Out

The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold US Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad by Robert Elias, 418 Pages, The New Press, $27.95. One thing you can’t accuse Robert Elias of being is a frontrunner. On the very first page of one of the most unusual baseball books you’re going to ...

The Remarkable Resilience of This Socialism Thing

The timing was perfect – on May 1, President Obama would tell the University of Michigan graduates they ought to be able to discuss politics civilly, without fearing that people would start “Throwing around phrases like ‘socialist’ and ‘Soviet-style takeover,’ ‘fascist’ and ‘right-wing ...

Our Foreign Policy Minsky Moment

If there can be any kind of silver lining to our ongoing “Great Recession” it might be that it has elevated the level of economic discussion, at least slightly. For instance, when’s the last time you heard anyone talking about the “magic of the marketplace?” ...

Nuclear Posture Review: Oops! We Missed One!

In one of the more remarkable public course changes Washington has yet seen, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has added Israel’s name to the previously released short list of exceptions to the general policies articulated in the Pentagon’s new Nuclear Posture Review. Originally released on April 6, the Review, ...

Sarah Palin Embraces Nietzsche and Alberto Gonzales

Comics aficionados may remember Bizarro World (or something like that), an ugly, angular, twisted parallel universe in which Superman had a craggy face and was almost as evil as Glenn Beck. In contrast to the dark side, there is also a fifth dimension. A dimension not ...

Teabagger Fossils Found on Noah’s Ark!

I think I can safely assume that Teabaggers believe only white Christians go to heaven, that the Big Bang and evolution theories are Satan’s fabrication to distract us from spirituality, and that dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark. Does that about sum it up? But perhaps it ...

Sex Clubs, Nazis, Tea Parties, Oh My!

The party of "fiscal responsibility" (ignore the last eight years when a non-Democrat, non-black guy was in office) and "family values" was recently caught with its pants down and sweaty one dollar bills in hand. Of course, I'm referring to Bondage Gate, or the news that The Republican National Committee reimbursed ...

The Dilemmas of Democracy: Responding to Tainted Elections

After following Asian elections for the past year, I have noticed an emerging pattern that we are likely to see more of in the coming years around the world. Elections in Iran, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka have presented the international community with a thorny dilemma. On the one hand, these elections ...

Football and Politics

With the Super Bowl, politics, and a combination of the two leading the headlines in recent weeks, today's Politics as Unusual satirical column attempts to counter the appalling and just plain weird anti-abortion ad aired during the Super Bowl by Focus on the Family. This is the ad that I ...

American Foreign Policy Scripted by Dead German Writers?

A recent headline, “Snuff out militant Islam's lethal spark - kill bin Laden,” brought to mind a friend’s story about a graduate student he’d once had. This student had felt himself seriously wronged somewhere in the academic process and appeared obsessed with vindication. My friend’s prescription ...