A Concise Analysis If Ever There Was One

Bipartisanship Is Just Another Word For The Rich Ganging Up Against The Rest of Us

Joseph Palermo in the Huffington Post tells it like it is.

Bush/Cheney III?

Pretty much.

Indeed

This Speaks For Itself, Really

Credit to Mr. John Estes for spotting this. Terrifying yet priceless!

The Beat Goes On

Tiarks's 1st Law of the Institutional Economics of Sexual Depravity in action again.

Spot-on

For this US ex-pat, who feels more alienated from his former country with each news report from what is becoming literally the front lines of the healthcare "debate", this just absolutely nails it.

Chilling, But Unsurprising

Maria Allwine writes a first-hand account for Buzzflash on the surge of hatred on the streets that signals a rising tide of fascism amongst right-wing anti-healthcare protesters in the US.

More on the Wingnuts/Teabaggers Healthcare Reform Circus

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post hits the nail squarely on the head. Bravo!

Sitting Here in My Safe European Home...

Just when your correspondent was beginning to think that, well, maybe going back to live in the US wouldn't be such an unattractive proposition after all, and that the power and influence of the God, guns and guts crew who wrecked the place were finally on the wane, along comes a timely reminder of the sort of reason he decided to leave to begin with.

The values of a country where a significant percentage of the population is happy to profess the idea that maintaining and, indeed, increasing corporate profit is a more legitimate and noble undertaking than providing even the most basic standards of human decency and compassion are not values that this author will ever share or understand. Shame about the right-wing fundies because there's so much that is good about the US and some of its other professed values like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

After the Watershed

Bob Sommer looks back on the political watershed eight years ago when the American democratic republic was suspended in favour of (at least) eight years of kleptocracy and dictatorship. Never again, Information Landmine hopes, although we note that Jeb Bush is reportedly already thinking about what lies ahead in 2012 or '16.

Suddenly, It All Makes Terrible Sense

So, there Information Landmine was, mulling over the ridiculousness of the McCain campaign's half-assed effort to bring Sarah Palin up to speed with foreign policy by putting her through a whirlwind session of meeting seven sympathetic Heads of State in the course of 48 hours at last week's opening of the UN General Assembly, when suddenly it all clicked into place:

Of course we've seen this before!



Our shocking-but-all-too-logical conclusion: McCain, inspired by Rex Harrison's iconic performance as Professor Henry Higgins, has a bet going with his cronies down at the VFW hall that he can take a simple, unsophisticated backwoods girl and, with only 60 days of intensive tutelage, pass her off to all and sundry as a bona fide world-leader-in-waiting.

So far, however, it's not fooling anyone outside of the usual yahoos from the "family values" crowd. "Professor" McCain, it would appear, has a lot more work to do.

Not All of the US Media is Sleepwalking

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News clearly gets it when it comes to the comical-but-nevertheless-sinister-and-loathesome Gov. Sarah Palin. But will American voters get it or will they swallow the line that she is somehow a mainstream and credible candidate for the second highest office in the land? We will await the answer - or at least Diebold's answer - in November.

Uh-oh!

Look out, here we go again!

McCain Brings in the Attack Dogs

With a key Karl Rove disciple now running the show, expect the McCain campaign to start playing a nastier brand of political hardball shortly. A fairly tepid campaign is about to get a whole lot uglier, a whole lot dirtier and a whole lot more divisive. But can a divisive political strategy win again or are Americans finally sick of such manufactured discord? We'll find out in November but in the meantime, to his credit, Obama still largely appears to be running his own campaign on more positive themes.

I would pay money to watch that Primary

Apropos of nothing except that I really need to stop wasting my time looking at right-wing blogs (and American wing blogs at that), I found this comment by one of Ross Douthat's readers much, much better than the post that inspired it. The topic is under what conditions the Republicans could explode as a political coalition:

One intriguing and rather sci-fi possibility is if biotechnology, or the interaction of technology and the human body and the environment more broadly, becomes a much more salient issue down the road. I could imagine one party becoming much more protectionist and preservationist (anti-globalization, anti-abortion, anti-genetics, pro-union, pro-religion) while the other becomes much more quote-unquote libertarian, no matter what (pro-business, lightly anti-state, pro-genetic manipulation [even in humans], pro-gay rights, globalist, pro-immigration, MOR secularist).

Green Huckabites vs. Dawkinsite Free-traders? How 'bout it?

Someone tell Charles Stross to get to work on it.

Tellin' it like it is!

To Mr. Olberman: THANK YOU!!!

An Emerging Democratic Majority, But Will It Matter?

The Washington Post features an op-ed piece on an emerging Democratic majority throughout US politics. While this kind of thing gives hope that the great national nightmare brought on by the era of Republican fascism may be coming to a close, renewal will only be possible if the Democrats finally, and improbably, grow a collective spine and reverse the policy of appeasement that has been so shamefully apparent under the "leadership" of Harry Reid in the Senate and Nancy Pelosi in the House of Representatives.

Here's to a thorough national political fumigation in 2008 and beyond!

Local Republican Backlash Against Ron Paul

Just as Ron Paul gathers momentum nationally among grassroots Republicans, at local level in his own home district the populist Texan presidential and Congressional candidate is beginning to suffer a backlash from the usual cast of unrepentant warmongers and religious fanatics who make up the GOP core in the nation's Bible Belt. The reason? His criticism of the conduct of the Iraq War, which apparently "undermines the troops", of course.

Information Landmine's favourite part of the article illuminates GOP extremism quite succinctly:

"[One of Paul's local opponents] is gathering endorsements of local officials, embarking on a fundraising effort and hoping his record on the Friendswood council makes an impression with GOP primary voters. At the city level, he pressed for property tax refunds and advocated stopping the funding of water conservation education kits for fourth-graders so the money could instead go to a Pearland pastor for sexual abstinence education for junior high school students."

We do indeed live, as per the traditional Chinese curse, "in interesting times".

An Even More Embarrassing Republican U.S. President?

Hard to believe, but it might be possible should Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee find his way into the White House come January 2009.

While pardoning Keith Richards for ancient driving offences might be kind of cool, having a president who rejects science in favour of superstition - or, rather, another president who does that - is something that the self-proclaimed World's Greatest Democracy (tm) simply cannot afford.