Decision 2008
Cohen on Palin
There’s been much to admire in Nick Cohen’s savaging of the George Galloway-John Pilger wing of the left in Britain. But to me, the point of all this, and the reason I launched this blog almost exactly three years ago, was to shore up liberalism and social-democratic politics against attacks from the know-nothing left and the know-nothing right. Cohen has
Surge PS
Steve Coll of The New Yorker describes the situation in post-surge Iraq as “patchwork calm,” and here’s one feature of said calm: “Violent deaths of Iraqi civilians, while difficult to measure, have also dropped steeply, although the figure remains high: about five hundred per month, at a conservative estimate.” Five hundred violent deaths per month, and this is what the
Rage Against … the Machine, Obama, whatever
David Carr reports on Rage Against the Machine’s protests at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. According to Rage and its delusional followers, there is no difference between Obama and McCain. I suppose they’re waiting around for the Democratic candidate to champion Che and Mumia and the writing of crackpots like William Blum, as Rage’s website does. Way to
Palin, earmark queen
Timothy Noah explains: “[Alaska] is a state that preaches right-wing libertarianism while it practices middle-class socialism.” “A pit bull with lipstick? I’d describe Palin as a hog who recommends diet books while feeding at the trough.”
Quagmire reality check II
You’ve got to hand it to Sarah Palin: she’s got the brass balls to try to put the Iraq war in the plus column for McCain and the Republicans, trashing Obama on the campaign trail on the issue of the troop surge. As I argued here, the Iraq war did not begin in early 2007, it began in early 2003,
The contrast is clear
In his nomination speech last week, Barack Obama concluded with remarks about rebuilding a sense of “common purpose” in America. You could brush this off as mushy noble talk, but in fact it’s one of the key strengths of the Obama campaign — the drive to frame old problems in new ways and move this country out of the tired
Eye-raq, Eye-ran
Sarah Palin cannot pronounce the names of the countries she wants to fight. She uses the term “death tax” and claims to represent small-town America. She warns that al-Qaeda continues to threaten and that Obama is “worried someone won’t read them their rights” — an astonishing thing to say after this administration has rendered, tortured and killed prisoners it has