Change Big Donors Can Believe In

Change is at hand. Barring a repeat of the protracted Florida recount of 2000, there will be a victor soon in the U.S. presidential election.

With the economic crisis, change is something in your pocket that you want to hold on to.

McCain and Palin: To Their Eternal Shame

Outrage is a columnist's best friend.

When you're working up a good head of steam, words pour out in self-righteous anger and columns almost write themselves.

This is not one of those columns.

It started out as one, because I spent most of last week in a state of horror, anger and disgust over the way presidential candidate John McCain was running his campaign.

The Battle for Obama’s Economic Soul

The battle for Barack Obama's economic soul is on in earnest, and it has nothing to do with the "European socialism" that John McCain attempted to use as an epithet against him. The Republican quickly dropped that line of attack, perhaps because the European Union's brand of democratic socialism has proved more effective in regulating the rapacious financial markets at the heart of the economic meltdown. Besides, the socialist British Labor Party has been President Bush's most loyal supporter of the Iraq occupation that McCain has made the test of true patriotism.

That Sarah Palin Is One Unreal Alaskan

I'm sitting on my bearskin chair beside the woodstove, in Kotzebue Alaska, fifty miles above the Arctic Circle, while outside the ocean begins to freeze over. Inside I have about 49 things piling up to say to you, America. 

I'm an Alaskan -- born in an igloo, enjoy whale muktuk, all that -- and in case you aren't sick of our state by now, I'll start off with an apology for one of our residents: Sarah Palin.

Spreading the Wealth Around? Why Not?

According to the Republican candidate for U.S. president, John McCain, whose family wealth exceeds $120 million, and who owns eight houses and thirteen cars, Democrat Barack Obama poses a grave threat to our democracy and economy because he will, as he told a voter in Ohio, "spread the wealth around."

McCain Gambles Rove's Way, Making Vile Bet

"We declare this race well and truly over and congratulate all those who backed Obama."
--Paddy Power, Ireland's biggest bookmaker, Oct. 16th.

While John McCain keeps rolling gutter balls and his Slime Talk Express derails any decency and honor his campaign once claimed to represent, the Irish, as they often demonstrate, are way ahead of the game.

Paddy Power, the Dublin-based bookmaker told Reuters news service he made the "unprecedented decision" to pay on the bets he's taken so far on the U.S. presidential race.

The Republicans Embrace the Cootie Effect

Back in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, simply being friends with someone suspected of being a Communist could ruin your career.  It became known as "guilt by association."  During this year's presidential campaign, however, it's been extended to guilt by spatial proximity, which could appropriately be called the "cootie effect." If you sit on the same board, have appeared at the same event or otherwise have been in close physical proximity of someone deemed undesirable, you therefore must have been infected by their politics or, at minimum, have

Courage, Wisdom in an Age of Fear

When friends have confided their fears for Barack Obama's physical safety, I have winced and wanted to shush them. It may be a neurosis peculiar to me, but I have felt that even to speak of the possibility of such a thing - you see, I cannot say it - invites the heinous act to happen. If the prospect of Obama's being attacked has been a shadow on his run for president, last week's debate between the candidates brought light into the shadow, offering yet another revelation of why Obama is special.