Kurt Eichenwald has written a book and made all the talk shows, Cooper to Stewart. It is fine and mildly helpful in terms of understanding what those disastrous years of the last decade in part comprised. But he begins with 9/11, so he has walked into my kitchen. I have a number of thoughts, but am still unable to say if what he and many others have done, was done honorably. Continue reading
Robert Caro is a dinosaur, and we should be thankful. So we have it from no lesser than Charles McGrath on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. Caro’s work is brilliant. So we have it from former President William Jefferson Clinton in the cover article of the New York Times Book Review. In appearances all across America’s media, Robert Caro is praised and saluted for his most recent installment, the fourth, of his proposed five volume work on Lyndon Baines Johnson, who, according to Caro and most of the rest of the world, brought us as a nation so much good, though he may not have been.
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At what point should a president realize that it just hasn’t worked out as he had planned; that he is going to be incapable of delivering what he told himself he wanted? Did Barack Obama not understand, before he took the oath that there were powerful forces at play in this land and that their interests are not those of the people, and, giving him every benefit of the doubt, not those of Barack Obama? Where was Barack in 1994 when the insurance lobby spent $300 million dollars, by one account, to defeat Clinton’s mess of a healthcare bill which was in its essence a series of gifts to the very companies that paid that money? What explains the administration’s utter lack of preparedness for the fight that has been going on for the first year of his presidency over healthcare? Continue reading
1. One assumes that you, Senator Mc Cain, would agree that committing American forces in a war is the most serious decision and the most substantial test of judgment faced by any president.
2. The record suggests that even today you concur with the Bush-Cheney decision to go to war in Iraq.
3. One assumes that you agree that the reasons employed by the Administration to create support for the war were largely concocted lies vigorously sold as the truth, or premises founded on willful ignorance, sold equally vigorously. Continue reading
I think that Edward R. Murrow would be applauding loudly, that in the midst of the cowered sheep of American mainstream media, a voice of outrage speaks his mind, looking straight into the eye of power. Keith Olbermann may bring a tablespoon too much sanctimony to the dish for everyone’s taste, but anyone who denies themselves these moments, cheats themselves of an opportunity to be uplifted by a public act of courage. The depth and breadth of the spine that it takes to engage in such talking of truth to power is difficult to gauge, not sitting in the chair in front of the cameras. Quite considerable, I am thinking. Continue reading
Dear Senator Clinton,
It is very easy to be a dispenser of advice. It is very easy to suggest selflessness on someone else’s part. It is extremely easy to advocate a courageous stand when one’s own backside or reputation or historical achievement or marriage does not hang in the balance. In the event there is doubt about any of these claims, keep reading. Continue reading
Hillary is a member of the power elite. Her husband has been a member the Trilateral Commission since at least 1991 and the two have attended the Bilderberg Conference, one hundred and thirty or so inhabitants of the world’s most rarified air. Those groups have been driving the interests of Empire since they were created. They are peopled by the most powerful and fantastically wealthy human beings on the planet. They conduct their business in utter secrecy. As groups they have been worried, almost to the point of saying so, about the problem of democracy since the 1960’s. They are the global status quo, and every one of their members and associates have benefited enormously from the vast and growing inequalities in all of the world’s countries. Maybe Hillary will act against her fellows’ interests. Continue reading
Let us accept that Senator Clinton means it when she says that if she knew then what she knows now, she would not have voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. It seems fair then to judge her performance since that vote to see what may be learned about her governing philosophy or her political tendencies.
She said that the case for the use of force was credible. This brief will mention, but put to the side a number of factors which should have given her more pause than they did: Continue reading
The ends of years have always been the cause for some backward looking. The past twelve months have provided some insights into the nature of the rock that comprises the sheer cliff that those of us who believe that the government was complicit in the attacks of 9/11 are trying to scale. Very hard to get a handhold. But then Eisenhower had no idea how the guys he put at the bottom of the cliffs of Normandy were going to get to the top. He just knew that if he put brave men there, they would get the job done. One bridles at the comparison, but on the other hand” Continue reading
Moments of turmoil and chaos are moments of opportunity. George Bush and his war in Iraq have presented this nation with its most difficult moment in seventy years. The next election may be seen as our chance to climb out of the coffin. Yet with this election we are offered the possibility of maybe an even more abominable abyss. Hillary Clinton presents herself as our savior. Almost nothing could be further from the truth. Continue reading