All Views Articles for 2008-archive-2008
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Larry Beinhart The New Know-Nothings It was Jesus Christ, if Matthew is to be believed, who said, "Love thine enemy." It is in that spirit that I write this belated valentine to Sarah Palin. Sarah, I love you for having revealed unto... Read more |
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Gary Younge Me, My Son and Obama: One Father's Story The day we brought my new-born son home to our Brooklyn apartment, an article in the New York Times pointed out that "a black male who drops out of high school [in the US] is 60 times more likely to... Read more |
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Jeff Cohen Studs Terkel: He’ll Never Be Silenced The irrepressible Louis "Studs" Terkel was many things – oral historian, radio and TV host, actor, activist, Bronx-born icon of Chicago, the "great listener" who was hard of hearing, Pulitzer Prize-... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald The Single Worst Expression in American Politics Joe Biden, speaking yesterday at a rally in Ohio (h/t Jonathan Schwarz ): Over the past week, Republicans have gone way over the top in my view, calling Barack Obama every name in the book, and it... Read more |
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Eve Ensler The Beginning of Hope or the End of It I spent the last month in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), much of my time in Goma. There, I was privileged to be part of the first public testimonies where women survivors of rape and sexual... Read more |
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Stanley Kutler Closing Guantanamo The U.S. government's failure to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center for alleged terrorists continues to haunt and color our standing in the world. Barack Obama and John McCain both endorsed... Read more |
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Derrick Z. Jackson Curse of the Falling Gas Prices There is no recession. So what if Americans have dying 401(k)s, are getting foreclosed on their homes, or are telling their children they cannot have their first choice for college. Never mind that... Read more |
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Katherine Coon The Food Crisis and Gender Statistics on the most recent global food crisis are well known. In the three years leading up to June 2008, food prices rose 83%. Although declining since, they are still 60% higher than in 2006... Read more |
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Bill Moyers and Michael Winship The Sounds of Voting -- and Check Writing Our Manhattan offices are in a building that also houses the New York City Board of Elections. So this is the season when we hear above our heads the sounds of heavy objects rolling across the floor... Read more |
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David Michael Green Thirty Years Too Late: The Implosion of John McCain and the Demise of the Regressive Right There are lots of good explanations for why John McCain is rapidly swirling down the toilet bowl into the sewer of political ignominy, but my all-time favorite was just published in the New York... Read more |
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Richard Eskow 100 Million Suspects In the end, the decision couldn't be clearer. This is more than just a choice between parties, or ideologies, or policy positions. It's a choice between philosophies and worldviews. It's a choice... Read more |
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John Nichols The Grand Immoderation of Studs Terkel When Studs Terkel was in the seventh grade, his teacher, Miss Henrietta Boone, asked the smart young whippersnapper who he was supporting in the presidential election of 1924. "Are you for Calvin... Read more |
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Naomi Wolf 'The End of America' Naomi Wolf's 'The End of America,' a searing indictment of George Bush's 'fascist tactics,' has been made into an equally uncompromising documentary Read more |
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Amitabh Pal Nonviolence Is The Right Choice—It Works Nonviolent resistance is not only the morally superior choice. It is also twice as effective as the violent variety. That's the startling and reassuring discovery by Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth... Read more |
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Mark Hertsgaard Wanted: A Climate Bailout What a difference an emergency makes. Scare people enough and $700 billion can materialize almost overnight. The White House can repudiate its core economic philosophy--government should leave... Read more |
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John W. Dean The Evidence Establishes, Without Question, That Republican Rule Is Dangerous Why It Is High Time to Fix This Situation, for the Good of the Nation Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Defeating McCain: Ending Not Only Neocon Policies, but Also Tactics Numerous commentators have condemned the McCain campaign's despicable -- and patently false -- attack Read more |
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Farrah Hassen Strange Strike: Bush's Illogical Policy Towards Syria With one deadly strike, the Bush administration has offered a fitting epitaph to its "might makes right" policy towards Syria — and the rest of the Middle East. Read more |
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Susan Lenfestey Fallujah's Sewer to Nowhere With the cable TV so-called news shows all a-dither over Sarah Palin's celebrity makeover, you might have missed the latest news from Iraq, where another $100 million of our tax dollars has gone into... Read more |
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Naomi Klein The Bailout: Bush's Final Pillage In the final days of the election, many Republicans seem to have given up the fight for power. But that doesn't mean they are relaxing. If you want to see real Republican elbow grease, check out the... Read more |
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Dave Lindorff The End Is at Hand (to Leftist Conspiracy Theories) With the polls continuing to show Barack Obama holding a steady or even growing lead heading into Election Day, especially in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, New... Read more |
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Robert Fisk Scandal of Six Held in Guantanamo Even After Bush Plot Claim Is Dropped No evidence that men living in Bosnia plotted attack on Sarajevo embassy Read more |
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George Curry High Court's Future at Stake Obama and McCain show radically different approaches to the kind of justices they would nominate to the Supreme Court. Read more |
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Andrew J. Bacevich Expanding War, Contracting Meaning The Next President and the Global War on Terror Read more |
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David Sirota Should an Obama Presidency Be Bill Clinton's Third Term? I was on Fox News yesterday to discuss the state of the campaign. Read more |
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Conn Hallinan Latin America's New Consensus When the Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz said the great tragedy of Mexico was that it was so far from God and so close to the United States, the comment summed up the long and tortured relationship... Read more |
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Ted Rall The First Rule of Re-Election Is Don't Think About Re-Election Why Obama Should Consider Himself a One-Term President Read more |
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Donna Smith Big Insurance Shows Its Hand – Or at Least Its Finger When the day began, I sipped coffee with Hilda and Krikor Sarkisyan of Northridge, California, in a hotel restaurant as we waited to go confront the Cigna executives who denied their 17-year-old... Read more |
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Amy Goodman Election Protection Election Day approaches, and with it a test of our election system's integrity. Who will be allowed to vote; who will be barred? Who will get paper ballots; who will use electronic voting machines?... Read more |
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Rob Richie and Adam Fogel Universal Voter Registration as the Real Answer to Fraud Concerns Blaming ACORN for our voter registration system is a classic failure of missing the forest for the trees. Amidst accusations of ACORN putting our democracy in jeopardy, few are asking why private... Read more |
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Jim Goodman Will a New Administration Give Us the 'Safest Food Supply in the World'? How many times have we been told we have the safest food supply in the world? Do we really? I suppose it depends on the comparison. Somalia? Kenya? Eritrea? In developing countries close to two... Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler The Time Has Come President-elect Obama . . . I’m daring my own heart to write these words, to let hope’s preview ignite me for an instant. Despite all my reservations (Afghanistan) and all my fears (how will they try... Read more |
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Fred Pearce Time to Bury the 'Clean Coal' Myth Who came up with the term "clean coal"? It is the most toxic phrase in the greenwash lexicon. George W Bush, by promising to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the pursuit of advanced "clean"... Read more |
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Johann Hari How We Fuel Africa's Bloodiest War What is rarely mentioned is the great global heist of Congo's resources Read more |
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Donald Cohen The Education of Alan Greenspan Greenspan 1963: Writing in Ayn Rand's Objectivist Newsletter, Greenspan declared as myth the idea that businessmen "would attempt to sell unsafe food and drugs, fraudulent securities, and shoddy... Read more |
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Jennifer Fenton Peace Activist Cindy Sheehan Seeks to Unseat Nancy Pelosi for Betraying the Constitution Imagine what would happen if the nations of the world spent as much on development as on building machines of war. Imagine a world where every human being would live in freedom and dignity. Imagine a... Read more |
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Organic, Labor, & Fair Trade Movements Open Letter to Whole Foods Market John Mackey CEO Whole Foods Market, Inc. 550 Bowie Street Austin, TX 78703-4644 Mr. Mackey: Read more |
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Diane Farsetta Our Country Deserves Better: The Russo Marsh Crowd Bashes Obama from Coast to Coast "Barack and socialism? No, our country deserves better," implored Mark Williams. It was only a few minutes into the October 22 rally staged by Our Country Deserves Better, a political action... Read more |
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Robert S. Eshelman Meeting Myself in Bucks County Pennsylvania in the Political (and Personal) Crucible Read more |
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Hendrik Hertzberg Like, Socialism Sometimes, when a political campaign has run out of ideas and senses that the prize is slipping through its fingers, it rolls up a sleeve and plunges an arm, shoulder deep, right down to the bottom... Read more |
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Tim Hancock Chilling Echo of the Past Once again a dreadful conflict is looming in eastern Congo's North Kivu region. We must stop it Read more |
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David Morris Voter Fraud? No, Voter Suppression Both issues have been studied. Only one is an actual problem, but it's not getting the attention. Read more |
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Chioma Oruh Northcom, Africom and Other Threats Why remember May 4, 1970 in October 2008? It is the day that a clear message was sent with military might that Americans are not immune from attacks felt around the world. Read more |
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Roger Doiron Message to the Next President: Eat the View! Senators McCain and Obama, you've spent much of the past two weeks trying to win Joe the Plumber's support when you could have won many more votes by addressing me: Roger the Gardener. There are 90... Read more |
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Chris Johnson Restoring Hope: Viewing the World From the Ground-Up After engaging in many conversations about the plight of this country and the world over the weekend, I felt a little worn down. All of the issues that surround the Presidential election combined... Read more |
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Robert Scheer Just How Dumb Are White Males? Let me now defend white males. We can't possibly be as dumb as the polls showing we are John McCain's most reliable voting base would indicate. Do we white men believe for an instant that a vote for... Read more |
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Robert Rudney Lessons Learned from the 1932-1933 Presidential Transition The four-month Presidential transition from Hoover to FDR illustrates the perils of a government changeover during a time of economic crisis. There is much we can learn from it today; doubtless,... Read more |
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Matthew Rothschild Bush Invades Syria. Take His War Warrant Away Bush just attacked another country over the weekend, this time Syria. Not enough that he's got our troops bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not enough that he's attacking sites in Pakistan. No,... Read more |
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Greg Palast Drinking the ACORN Kool-Aid: How Cries of Voter Fraud Cover Up GOP Elections Theft Virtually the entire mainstream electronic media drank ACORN Kool-Aid this month brewed up by the Republican National Committee. Almost no one seriously challenged John McCain's comical assertions... Read more |
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Christopher Cooper And Everybody’s Shouting, 'Which Side Are You On?' It is the nature of our fortnightly meetings here that I must sometimes anticipate what will be even as I work toward our mutual understanding of what is (this newspaper venue being obviously and... Read more |
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Johann Hari The Republicans' Dirty Secret... Torture So what will be left of the Republican Party after next week's US election? The answer lies in the sands of Florida, where the sunshine-state Republicans have nominated an unrepentant torturer as... Read more |
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Craig Aaron and Josh Stearns Is America Still a Beacon for Press Freedom? The United States of America -- land of the free, home of the First Amendment -- is supposed to be a beacon for the rest of the world. So where do we stand in the latest global rankings of press... Read more |
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Helen Thomas Bush Again Breaks Wall Between Church, State Is there anything more that the administration can do to ignore the spirit of the U.S. Constitution before President Bush leaves office? The New York Times has revealed that a 2007 memorandum by the... Read more |
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Charles Knight and Chris Toensing Yes, We Really Must Talk With Iran If American troops are ever to come home from Iraq and Iraqis are to have a decent chance at peace and prosperity, the United States must open up a new chapter in its Middle Eastern diplomacy. The... Read more |
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Jeanmarie Simpson Like It Or Not, Change Is Coming Last week, Common Dreams published an essay of mine titled "The Revolution Has Arrived." I suggested that the time had come for hippy ideals to be fully engaged, since so much of what that movement... Read more |
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Dean Baker Greenspan Says, 'Who Could Have Known?' That's right, the former Maestro told Congress last week, when asked about the meltdown of the housing bubble and the resulting financial crisis, "we're not smart enough as people. We just cannot see... Read more |
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Darci Andresen Talkin ‘Bout My Generation The Election: Clash or Mash of Ages? Read more |
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Gore Vidal John McCain in the Echo Chamber October proved to be the cruelest month, for that was the time that Sen. McCain, he of the round, blank, Little Orphan Annie eyes, chose to try out a number of weird lies about Barack Obama... Read more |
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George Monbiot How These Gibbering Numbskulls Came to Dominate Washington The degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies Read more |
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Phyllis Bennis Tenuous Agreement on Maintaining US Troops in Iraq Despite the recent surge of attention to the U.S.-Iraqi negotiations over an agreement to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for years into the future, the resulting agreement or lack of agreement is likely to... Read more |
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Leonard Pitts Jr. Capital Punishment Is Wrong, Unfair This is a rewrite. In the column originally prepared for this space, I said that Troy Davis was scheduled to die Monday -- to be killed, actually, by an executioner for the state of Georgia. But --... Read more |
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Ian Williams The West Is Red: While rebuking 'European style socialism' John McCain neglects to mention that Europeans enjoy a higher quality of life John McCain accuses Barack Obama of wanting "European style socialism" in the US. If only. Apart from the irony that the Bush administration is effectively nationalising the commanding heights of the... Read more |
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Nick Turse The Trillion Dollar Tag Sale How the Pentagon Could Help Bail Out America Read more |
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Mike Farrell The Ugly America "You really do hate America!" This was the parting shot from a man I had just debated on a television show shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Because he's a notorious right-wing blowhard, I laughed... Read more |
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Marc Kielburger and Craig Kielburger Ordinary Americans Left Out of Bailout Mark Seifert tours reporters around streets more reminiscent of Baghdad than Cleveland, Ohio. They are deserted. The homes are boarded up, covered in graffiti. Once residential neighbourhoods, they... Read more |
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John Brown The Pentagon's New Iraq Propaganda The US is spending $300m to 'engage and inspire' Iraqis. That's not the way to win hearts and minds Read more |
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Rita Arditti Why Cancer's Gaining on Us For all the pink ribbons, breast-cancer awareness events, fund-raisers, and celebrations of "survivorship," the facts remain grim. In this country, a woman's lifetime risk of breast cancer is one in... Read more |
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Rosa Maria Pegueros He Has a Gun and He Votes For twelve years, I lived in Sunland, in the Verdugo Hills, the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains just north of Los Angeles. It was a white, working-class neighborhood where some folks still... Read more |
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Norman Solomon Needed for This Election: A Great Rejection It could be a start -- a clear national rejection of the extreme right-wing brew that has saturated the executive branch for nearly eight years. What's emerging for Election Day is a common front... Read more |
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Ira Chernus Lefties for Obama: The Final Round My column " Lefties for Obama " evoked a storm of criticism from readers who see no real difference between the two major parties. " Lefties for Obama: Round Two ," listing a bunch of issues where... Read more |
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Robert Freeman The Dirty Little Secret in McCain’s 'Socialism' Charge John McCain’s drowning campaign has grasped at the straw of “socialism” to try to smear Barack Obama’s economic proposals. The dirty little secret is that socialism is much more characteristic of... Read more |
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Chris Hedges Populism Arising—but Will It Be the Killer Kind? The old assumptions and paradigms about capitalism and free markets are dead. A new, virulent populism, still inchoate, is slowly and painfully rising to take their place. This populism will... Read more |
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Danny Schechter Fixing the Crisis Is Not So Easy Five Problems Block Government Success Read more |
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Scott Boehm Manufacturing Sympathy: Sarah Palin, Special Needs and Identity Politics As the older brother of someone with Down Syndrome, I've been intrigued by Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's use of her son Trig during the campaign. It's strange to listen to her... Read more |
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David Michael Green Remind Me Again – Who Won The Cold War? Okay, you're gonna need to fasten your seatbelt for this one. Hear's a quiz for you: Who was the third most ‘socialist' president in American history? Read more |
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Mitchell Rofsky Obama's Tax Plan: Who's Really Rich, and Why Does It Matter? Does an income of $250,000 really make one "rich," as Barack Obama says? That's the point at which taxes would begin to go up under Obama's tax plan, and that's the annual income he cited in August... Read more |
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Linda LeTendre Waging Peace: Not Guilty! We finally received a verdict on Friday afternoon at about 11:30. Half of us were guilty and half of us were not guilty. Unfortunately, I was in the not guilty half. Read more |
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Paul Krugman Desperately Seeking Seriousness Maybe the polls and the conventional wisdom are all wrong, and John McCain will pull off a stunning upset. But right now the election looks like a blue sweep: a solid victory, maybe even a landslide... Read more |
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Haroon Siddiqui Prejudice in a Post-9/11 World The mere mention of Muslims, especially in the context of terrorism, brings out the worst in some people. The bigotry is not restricted to the United States but present in Canada as well, albeit on a... Read more |
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Joseph L. Galloway Republicans Summon Ugly Old Ghosts This is an autumn of great discontent as not just the United States, but the entire world trembles on the brink of an economic recession that may bring the kind of pain that's known only to the... Read more |
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David Corn Alan Shrugged: Greenspan, Ayn Rand and Their God That Failed In a historic moment, former Fed chair Alan Greenspan acknowledged he had been wrong for years to assume that government regulation was bad for markets. Whoops—there goes decades of Ayn Rand down the drain. Read more |
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Katha Pollitt Still Lots of Right-Wing Mayhem to Go Around The right seems to have decided that the culture war, like just about everything else, sells better if promoted by attractive youthful spokesmoms. Goodbye Pat Buchanan, hello Sarah Palin -- and an... Read more |
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Linda Hirshman Obama Echoes New Deal to Counter 'Greed is Good' Democrat uses novel argument to remind citizens why they should care for each other Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli John the Candidate Meets Joe the Plumber When I make a mistake it’s a beaut. — Fiorello Henry La Guardia, responding to a reminder that he had appointed Judge O’Brien whom he was criticizing. Read more |
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Bill McKibben What the Next American Leader Needs to do to Deal with Global Warming The election campaign has (unofficially) lasted almost two years. It's featured endless discussions on health care, the housing crisis, and who should get blamed for something their minister said... Read more |
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Mark Morford When History Spanks Where were you when that incredible thing happened? How will you respond? Read more |
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Donna Smith Quenching the Thirst for a Better America AKRON, Ohio - It is a ground swell to be sure. I hear and see a thirst for real hope in America and for the kind of freedom many of us have not had for many years. I have been traveling the country... Read more |
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David Morse Can Georgia Do Right? Troy Davis: What the Stay of Execution Means? Read more |
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Nat Hentoff Nine Executioners "The assessment of the death penalty, however well designed the system for doing so, remains a human endeavor with a consequent risk of error that may not be remediable." - Judge Carolyn King of the... Read more |
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Michael Schwartz Wrecked Iraq What the Good News From Iraq Really Means Read more |
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Ellen Bravo A Rescue Package for Working Women Wall Street tycoons behave irresponsibly, bring the country to financial brink, hold out their hands for an eleven-figure bailout -- and lobbyists applaud that as a rescue. Women achieve daily... Read more |
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John Pilger Under Cover of Racist Myth, a New Land Grab in Australia Claims of child abuse are proving a fertile pretext to menace the Aboriginal communities lying in the way of uranium mining Read more |
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Frida Berrigan Too Many Guns We've heard a lot about gun control and the second amendment in this election season. A McCain-Palin poster , featuring Alaska's 44-year-old governor with a big gun and the viewer in her rifle sights... Read more |
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David Sirota McCain Banking on a Confederacy of Dunces Is John McCain stupid, or does he believe we are? That's the question as he criticizes Barack Obama for allegedly trying to "redistribute the wealth" with a plan to lower taxes on the middle class... Read more |
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John Nichols Michele Bachmann Versus Paul Wellstone After she was elected to the U.S. House in 2006 as a very conservative in 2006, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann -- who had already stirred more than her share of controversy -- compared... Read more |
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Dave Skoloda Economy Needs to Become More Local In an earlier period of hard times for Americans, my grandmother Florence I. Skoloda sat at her kitchen table and noted in her little blue diary that she had paid $20 on her grocery bill having just... Read more |
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Stan Cox Thinking About Shrinking: A Green Path Through Hard Times? As the most serious economic crisis in 80 years rolls across the planet, financial panic has shoved food shortages, public-health emergencies, and ecological disasters into the background. With... Read more |
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Dan Coleman 2008 Is Not the Year for McKinney or Nader We've all had the experience: you get off the interstate looking for food and are confronted with the choice of food-like commodities at the gas station's convenience store or food-like commodities... Read more |
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Robert Barkley Jr. Grandfather’s Apology Dear Spencer, Sarah, and Brooke: First, I must tell you once again that I love you dearly. And the same was and is true of my two children who are, with their spouses, your parents. But in their case... Read more |
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Sally Kohn Why I Love Taxes -- And Why Most Americans Do, Too Over the last 40 decades, conservatives have launched a concerted attack on taxes with such success that now candidates of both parties reliably compete with each other to prove who is more anti-tax... Read more |