I have had numerous arguments with friends who are strong president Obama supporters over his asserting the right to kill whoever he chooses anywhere on the globe, using drones as the main weapon. These people defend such powers by saying that Obama is a good man and that they trust that he will use this power sparingly and only if he is sure that the people thus murdered are bad people and that it was necessary to kill them to ‘keep America safe’. [Read more…]

It has long been a mantra, especially in the media, that the US is fundamentally a center-right country. This assertion is routinely made by conservatives, who argue that any policy that is ostensibly liberal is going against this consensus and should be viewed as an aberration, and that Democratic electoral wins are statistical fluctuations that do not change this underlying reality. But is this statement true? [Read more…]

Mitt Romney damaged himself considerably with his infamous 47% speech, suggesting that this number of people in the US were shiftless layabouts who just wanted to mooch off the hard work of the rest and were the ones who would vote for Obama no matter what. [Read more…]

In the run-up to the elections, I contrasted the predictions of the poll-aggregators (who base their conclusions on the results of opinion polls) and those of political scientists, who argue that voter preferences are more accurately predicted by the so-called ‘fundamentals’ of the economy like the GDP, the increase of disposable income, unemployment levels, etc., all of which can be measured objectively. We know that the poll-aggregators were very successful in predicting the outcome. So how did the fundamentals models fare? [Read more…]

The current flare-up in the Middle East has for the moment shifted Iran to the background. But you can be sure that once the immediate violence ends and we return to the stalemate of Israel enforcing a cruel blockade and siege of the people in Gaza that has caused such hardship, proponents of a military attack on Iran will be back, relentlessly beating the drums for yet another war. [Read more…]

Given the recent heightened interest in the Latino community after the election, Rep. Luis Gutierrez introduces his Republican colleagues in Congress to the real Latinos in the US, as distinct from the imaginary Latinos that were portrayed during the election.