Demockracy

Balloon, Ballooned, Hot Air: This Week in Flight

Just when you thought things couldn't get any crazier, there was this past week. When Rush Limbaugh gets the bronze for hot air, it's strange days indeed. Hence my new cartoon, the week in flight - a mylar, a silicone cougar, and a martyr balloon: Balloon Boy Week

Review of Capitalism: A Love Story

Michael Moore’s latest documentary is of course anything but a love story. From the first seconds of the film to well into the last reel, Moore pulls no punches. As is usual for a Moore film, sob stories are intermixed with sobering visuals and powerful factoids. One moment we are ...

GOP Demands to see Nobel Committee’s Birth Certificate

When the news broke earlier that sitting American (or is it Kenyan or Indonesian?) President Barack Obama was bequeathed with the Nobel Peace Prize, I naturally assumed that the Rush Limbaugh's head would explode and the Republican Party would be stuck with a gargantuan body instead of a party head. ...

Obama Does Not Want to Kill Your Grandma: Health Care Speech Thoughts

After capping off an important but casual speech to American school children in Virginia about the benefits of injecting socialism into their water fountains, Big O headed back to Washington to deliver perhaps the biggest and most important speech in his presidency regarding the particulars of his seemingly intractable plan ...

Why Another Karzai Government May be Bad for Afghanistan

If you read the news (in the US anyway) it is common knowledge that what is most important in the current Afghan elections is not necessarily who wins, but that the elections be seen as legitimate and transparent by the Afghan public as well as the international community. Now, almost ...

Kennedy: Policy Over Politics

Over the last two weeks, I’ve heard countless arguments about what the death of Ted Kennedy means to everything from health care to bipartisanship to the legacy of the New Deal to overall themes of leadership and compromise in Washington. At least in the mainstream media, there has been little ...

Obama is from America, Birthers are from Kookistan

If there’s ever been a phenomenal, breathtakingly ludicrous political fringe, excluding the organization that actively pursues legislation that legalizes man-boy love, it would have to be the “birthers”. Boy, I really yearn for the days of Karl Rove. I’m referring of course to a noisome movement of obstreperous ultra-right wing nut jobs ...

Review of Underground: My Life With SDS and the Weathermen

Underground: My Life With SDS and the Weathermen by Mark Rudd 324 pages, Morrow, $25.99 In mentioning to people that I was reviewing his book, I’ve been surprised to find Mark Rudd less widely remembered than I’d expected. It appears that if you didn’t arrive in college by a certain point, you don’t ...

History Matters: Understanding Current Iranian Relations

In light of the recent unrest in Iran and heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, it is important to understand the historical path that has led us to this point. In this light, I recently had the honor of reading Tim Werner's book, Legacy of Ashes, the history of ...

From Bangkok to Bangalore, What Isn’t Outsourced?

In an age of shrinking economies and a time when it seems nothing is made in the USA anymore except financial scandals, many pundits say the question is not what is outsourced but simply what is not. In California, a state with governance marred by bankruptcy and disputes between Governor ...