No serious observer of US politics thinks that Fox News is anything but a highly partisan propaganda operation that serves as the mouthpiece of the oligarchy. But they usually try to maintain a façade of being a news organization. [Read more…]
While a lot of the media focus in the run-up to the elections has been on domestic US politics, we should not ignore the fact that the government of Israel has been dropping hints of imminent war with Iran. As Stephen Walt says, Israel has raised the stakes by saying that they not only will they not let Iran develop nuclear weapons or the capability of making them, they will not even tolerate the Iranians having the theoretical capacity of doing so at some unspecified time down the road, a much lower threshold. [Read more…]
Stephen Colbert rips into a new reality show called Stars Earn Stripes.
The Colbert Report
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(This clip appeared on August 14, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan has generated much discussion of whether it will help energize the base of the Republican party and thus help them get more votes.
Cartoonist and essayist Ted Rall, no fan of Barack Obama, says that there is another aspect that is not being looked at as closely. [Read more…]
In an extraordinary raising of the stakes, the British government actually threatened to forcibly enter the Ecuadoran embassy and take Julian Assange by force. The embassy has reacted with outrage. I expect to see other South American nations enter the fray soon to try and defuse the situation. [Read more…]
It appears that Ecuador has granted political asylum to Julian Assange. The British government will likely try and keep him holed up in the embassy and prevent him from going to the airport and leaving the country. [Read more…]
DeWitt R. Thomas objected to a black bagger in a grocery store in the town of Big Sandy, Texas touching his groceries because it was “against his creed” for a “negroidal” person to touch his food. [Read more…]
I think that this logo suggested by the Democratic Underground captures the economic and political philosophy of the Republican ticket perfectly. [Read more…]
In discussing politics, I try not to pay too much attention to trivialities such as how candidates look, speak, what they wear, whether they are the kind of people I would ‘enjoy having a beer with’, etc. These are the kind of things that can fill up space and airtime on a slow news day, not requiring any research or other kinds of journalistic effort, but which do not really add to our understanding of what people stand for. But there is something peculiar about the Romney/Ryan ticket that I must get off my chest at least once. [Read more…]