Now that our presidential nominees are set, the partisan battles in the media and online have shifted into general election mode. Even before the Democratic nomination was sealed, the DNC sent e-mails and press releases criticizing John McCain as running for Bush’s third term, accusing him of wanting to wage 100 years of war, being in the pocket of lobbyists, calling his campaign “sleazy” and so on. Exaggeration, spin and character attacks are clearly, from this year’s primary campaign,...
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Obama’s unwilling Falstaff
“I know thee not, old man: Fall to thy Prayers: How ill white haires become a Foole, and Jester? I have long dream’d of such a kinde of man, So surfeit-swell’d, so old, and so prophane: But being awake, I do despise my dreame.” – Henry IV Part 2 There is certainly no shortage of commentary on the recent statements by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, new denunciations by Senator Barack Obama, and the continuing damage the Obama campaign is suffering...
Is Senator John Kerry also “Bush/Cheney Lite”?
Early in this presidential race, Senator Barack Obama abandoned his promise to run a positive campaign by labelling Senator Hillary Clinton with the ultimate insult to a Democrat: he called her “Bush/Cheney Lite”. The reason? Only one issue, which he has repeated over and over (in lieu of a real foreign policy debate): that she voted for the authorization of force in 2002, an authorization which was promised as leverage to get UN inspectors back into Iraq, but which...
Hillary’s Green Agenda
As the sound-bites and gotchas from the earliest presidential debates have been repeated over and over by the media in this election cycle, many critical and complex topics have gotten at best cursory treatment. One such topic is the environment: the crises we’re facing, the accomplishments of the candidates, and the plans that they have put forward on issues like green energy, global warming, pollution, and wildlife conservation. Hillary’s agenda Hillary Clinton has stressed repeatedly, and in detail, a...
A Prediction I Don’t Want to Make: President McCain
Several months ago I predicted a serious schism in the Democratic party if the Edwards and Obama campaigns continued on their chosen courses. When it comes to national politics and decisions that directly affect the health and wealth of the nation, there’s little consolation in saying “I told you so” when something goes wrong. I have heartfelt concerns about the course of our national government, its whacked-out priorities and the terrible human and material expense of war, its off-kilter...
Feminism, and a Blues Apology
There is a lot of violence in the world, a lot of physical assault and murder, and a lot of hateful abuse. Many times folks on the left treat a statement like that as a picture of something far away, something going on in countries ruined by imperialism and corporate rapaciousness and other sinister institutional evils. Or it’s something that wardens to do inmates and cops do to protesters. Or the hateful abuse is something the right-wing does with...
Hillary and Iraq
Of all of the many reasons to support a Democrat for President of the U.S. in 2008, one of the most vital is to start to bring to a close the reckless bloodbath that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and friends opened up in Iraq. From the safety of our homes we only know the starkest hints, the remote and officially released surfaces of the ongoing violence, the toll on American soldiers, the millions of Iraqi refugees, and the tens...
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