Today's Stories

September 27 / 28, 2008

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

Weekend Edition
September 27 / 28, 2008

You Call This Leadership?

McCain and the Economy

By ROBERT FANTINA

As the U.S. economy implodes, following decades of unregulated greed and legalized abuses, President George Bush vainly attempts to stave off yet another black mark on his disgraceful legacy. In a desperate attempt to gain bipartisan support for a $700 billion golden parachute for Wall Street, paid for by Main Street, this most partisan of presidents invited the two major party candidates to succeed him to the White House. Why the media has made such a fuss about Arizona Senator John McCain and Illinois Senator Barack Obama returning to Washington to do the work they were elected to do is a mystery not to be solved here. But the gesture from Mr. Bush, like so much of his eight-year reign of terror, concluded in failure.

Prior to this supposedly momentous meeting, Mr. McCain had suggested postponing the first of his three debates with Mr. Obama. This, apparently, was his attempt to show his leadership, and how he puts the needs of the nation above such petty political considerations as to who is better qualified to lead the U.S. out of the disastrous mess Mr. Bush has led it into. Cynics may suggest that it is really only an effort by the awkward and poorly spoken Mr. McCain to postpone his face-to-face meeting with Mr. Obama, considered one of the greatest orators in generations. Be that as it may, Mr. McCain rushed to the nation’s capitol to lend his self-admitted limited knowledge and expertise about economic issues to help resolve to most severe economic crisis the world has faced in ninety years.

The outcome, unfortunately, was not quite what Mr. McCain had apparently hoped. He was first undercut by Mr. Obama, who disdained his suggestion to postpone the debate and suspend both campaigns, saying that a president should be able to handle more than one important thing at a time. Then, for all his rushing to Washington to wave his magic wand and bring about a bipartisan solution, CNN reported the following: “Multiple sources said McCain didn't say much. Two Democratic leadership aides said he didn’t speak until 43 minutes into the meeting.” So much for his gamble that his presence at the discussions might be more than noticed. And then, by his own admission, he seemed to admit that he had failed. USA Today reported that he “issued a statement acknowledging that a bipartisan White House meeting he appeared to have sought to help showcase his leadership skills on the economy had devolved into a ‘contentious shouting match.’”

Later on in the day he reverted to that tried and true political gesture, the making of a statement that does not commit to anything. The same publication reported that Mr. McCain’s campaign issued a statement that said the Republican nominee “did not attack any proposal or endorse any plan.” Further, he urged “all sides … to cooperate and build a bipartisan consensus for a solution that protects taxpayers.” One wonders exactly what it was he said at the White House meeting after sitting in stunned silence for 43 minutes. Perhaps he spoke up and urged all sides to cooperate and build a bipartisan consensus. That would certainly grease the wheels and having everyone rushing to a sensible, bipartisan resolution.

So all in all, the economic meltdown has not shone a very complimentary light onto the elderly Mr. McCain. As late as January of this year, he said this: “I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.” It appears from Mr. McCain’s dismal participation in the White House economic emergency session that his education still has a long way to go.

Yet that quotation raises some additional questions. Mr. McCain claimed to be knowledgeable about military and foreign policy. One wonders how he came about that knowledge. Does his foreign policy expertise come from his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam? While one might reasonably wonder how that experience helps to increase military policy expertise, Mr. McCain dredges up those experiences to explain everything from his first failed marriage to his taste in music. Why not throw in military policy as well?  One might further ask what in his supposed vast expertise of military and foreign policy matters caused him to support from day one, until today, the infamous, disastrous, immoral and obscene war against the once-sovereign nation of Iraq.

But his selection of a running mate sheds some light on his education. Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, has implied that she is knowledgeable about Russia because, after all, one can see that nation from parts of Alaska. What further credentials are needed?

So let’s see now what we can all learn from this. First, Mr. McCain cannot multi-task: the ability to debate Mr. Obama cannot be contemplated when there is a major White House meeting scheduled at which he must sit in perplexed silence. Second, he shows his leadership skills in a manner typical of most U.S. presidents and members of Congress, by issuing a statement on one of the most significant issues facing the U.S. today that commits to nothing, offends no one and accomplishes nothing. Third, he still hasn’t a clue about the major workings, much less the complicated intricacies, of the largest economy in the world. Fourth, when he doesn’t have Governor Palin salivating at his side to use her novelty to draw attention from him, his many weaknesses as a potential world leader become painfully evident.

If ever there were a case for a political party to be experiencing buyer’s remorse, the Republicans must now be scrambling to see what the return policy is on their presidential candidate. Although nearly the entire lot that sought the nomination seemed to be dredged up from the bargain basement and put on display in order to make room for some revised models that somehow never made it from the factory, the one selected by the Republicans now appears to be the least desirable. And they have coupled that selection with an atrocious mismatch, and while bravely attempting to say they are pleased with this peculiar grouping (after all, they have found that there is no return policy), one hopes that, after Election Day, they will simply put it into a closet and forget about it.

Fortunately, the U.S. voter has a somewhat better, although more limited, selection to choose from. While only two ‘products’ are on prominent display (several others are barely noticed), one far outshines the other. Unlike the Republican Party decision-makers, the voters can reject the aged and incompetent Mr. McCain and his frantic running mate, and select the reasoned, intelligent Mr. Obama and his highly-qualified, long-experienced running mate. Mr. Obama’s election to the presidency will not be Nirvana, which is the apparent belief of many of his most ardent supports, but neither will it be Armageddon. A McCain president might take the world dangerously close to the latter.

Robert Fantina is author of 'Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776--2006. 

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