Today's Stories

September 15, 2008

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

September 13 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Panic!

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Dirk Kempthorne's Closet

Wajahat Ali
Playing with the Constitution

Robert Fantina
Cheney Scales New Heights of Hypocrisy

Marcus Rediker
Notes on a Visit to the Favelas of Medellín, Colombia

Richard Neville
The Baby Killers

Ed Gaffney
Breaking the Siege of Gaza

Carla Blank
Neglecting a Grand Old Lady

P. Sainath
The Almighty and the U.S. Elections

Lee Sustar
Working Harder; Falling Further Behind

Joshua Frank
Liberalism and Its Bounds

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
The Guantanamoized Age

Dennis Loo
Shock and Awe Comes Home to Roost

Zach Zill
Squeezed Out in New York City

Omar Barghouti
So You Think You Can Dance? Israeli Profiling of African-American Dancers

Bill Quigley
Social Justice Quiz, 2008

Andy Worthington
Bush's Bitter Legacy

Stephen Dunifer
Free Radio: Liberating the Commons

Seth Sandronsky
Bailing Out Big Auto

David Yearsley
Portabella's Bach: Grim, Trite and Incredibly Boring

Patrick B. Barr
Obama's Punchless Campaign

Rannie Amiri
Tasting Ramadan

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Flight Not Taken

Richard Rhames
What, Me Reason?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Large Hadron Collider Powers Up

Poets' Basement
Deer Cloud and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Wasilla Valley PTA?

September 12, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
The Next Cuban Missile Crisis?

Michael Hudson
More Dangerous Than the A-Bomb? The Chicago School's Record of Infamy

Lloyd Miller
Palin and Alaskan Native and Tribal Rights: a Dismal Record

Steve Breyman
Georgia in NATO?

Maria Rivera
Cuba After Gustav and Ike: an Eyewitness Account

Jonathan Cook
Israel and the Dark Arts

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
U.S. Designs on Pakistan

M. Shahid Alam
The Mendacity of Missed Opportunities

Robert Weissman
Executive Pay and the "Market Economy"

Tanya Golash-Boza / David Brunsma
Immigration Raids Must Be Stopped

Website of the Day
Know Your Rights

September 11, 2008

Noam Chomsky
Towards a Second Cold War?

Sharon Smith
Afghanistan: You Call This a Good War?

Ron Jacobs
Palinomics: She Ain't No Working Class Hero

Marjorie Cohn
God, Guns and Oil: A Palin Theocracy?

Mike Whitney
Cheney in the Caucasus

Jeffery R. Webber
Bolivia: a Coup in the Making?

Paul Cantor
The Other 9/11

Peter Morici
The Surging Trade Deficit

Ray McGovern
Iran's Road Less Traveled to Nukes

Linn Washington, Jr.
Screening Mumia: The Suppression of Dissent in America

Website of the Day
Palin (Michael) for President!

September 10, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Temporary Respite from Permanent Decline

Conn Hallinan
The Return of U.S. Death Squads

Ralph Nader
Who Needs Regulations When You've Got a Golden Parachute?

Peter Morici
Can the Bailout Work?

Joanne Mariner
The Horrendous Case of Aafia Siddiqui

Laura Tate Kagel /
Jen Marlowe
The Pending Execution of Troy Davis: a Case for Clemency

Chuck Spinney
Incestuous Amplification and the Madness of King George

Dave Lindorff
Lazy Thinking and Prejudice

Scott Campbell
Where Now for Oaxaca's Social Movement?

Paul Farmer
Haiti and the Hurricanes

Anne Kilkenny
Letters from Wasilla: the Sarah Palin I Know

Website of the Day
Democrats and Zombies

September 9, 2008

Michael Colby
The Obama Poll Drop

Chellis Glendinning
Retorno a 1968: From Berkeley to Mexico City

Vijay Prashad
Losing Game

Jeffery R. Webber/
George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela From Below

David Michael Green
Country Last

Brian J. Foley
The New Face of Republican Power

John Ross
Mexican Flag Wrap

Pierre M. Sprey /
Winslow T. Wheeler
Joint Strike Fighter: Another Defense Acquisition Disaster

Nicole Colson
Sami Al-Arian's Long Road to Freedom

Marc Gardner
California's Anti-Homosexual Laws are Alive and Unwell

William S. Lind
The Baltic States and Russia: Toy Armies or Accomodation?

Website of the Day
All Hope Rests with Piper Palin

September 8, 2008

Mike Whitney
An Interview with Michael Hudson on the Worsening Debt Crisis

Tariq Ali
The Godfather as President

Pam Martens
The Man Who Vetted Palin

Bill Quigley
The Weary Road Home: Displaced Poor Continue to Return to New Orleans

Malini Johar Schueller /
Ed White
Not About Me: Obamamania, Racial Porn-fest and Palinama

Robert Jensen
Pop Music and 9/11

Uri Avnery
Lonely Rider

Win McCormack
Palin Family Values

Howard Lisnoff
How Far From a Police State?

Maria C. Khoury
Taybeh Oktoberfest in Palestine

Website of the Day
Scaring Students from Voting in Virginia

September 6 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Sarah Palin and the Good Book

Jeffrey St. Clair
That Dam Senator: A River Ran Through Him

Linn Washington, Jr.
The GOP Excluded Black-Owned Businesses from Contracts at St. Paul Convention

Patrick Cockburn
Did Bush Spies Monitor Iraqi Allies?

Gary Leupp
The September 3 Attack on Pakistan: a Precursor to More War Crimes?

Nancy Kurshan
CHI-town Lowdown: Memories of 1968

William Blum
Has Obama Already Lost?

Michael Winship
The St. Paul Police vs. the Independent Media

Fred Gardner
Joe Biden, Drug Warrior

Nikolas Kozloff
Sarah Palin and the Wal-Mart Moms: the Cultural Packaging of VP Candidates

Wajahat Ali
The Cryptkeeper and His Pitbull: the Past and Future of the GOP

Robert Fantina
Change Agents?

Karyn Strickler
Palin by Comparison: Sarah and the Hillary Voters

David Yearsley
What Their Fanfares Told Us About the Candidates

Richard Rhames
Bad Campaign Moon Rising

James L. Secor
Bandwagon Politics

Missy Beattie
Missy for Vice POTUS

Eric Patton
Baseless in Obamaland

Ben Terrall
Haiti and the Washington Consensus

Thom Rutledge
Mr. Magoo and the Kind Stranger: a Serious Political Problem

Dan Bacher
Arnold and the Manufactured Drought

David Macaray
Is Union Democracy at Risk?

Jane Stillwater
The Admiral's Child: a Psychological Reason for McCain's Flip Flops

Grady Harper
Should Hunting Really be High on Our Priority List?

Poets' Basement
Wolff, Payne and Holt

Website of the Weekend
We'll See Your Sarah Palin and Raise You With Maria McKee

September 5, 2008

Elizabeth Walters
Old Fears, New Worries in Louisiana

Bill Quigley
Gustav's Path of Destruction

Alan Farago
Nothing Means Anything: The Fantasy of John and Sarah

Dave Lindorff
The Things They Left Behind (Including McCain's First Wife)

Ira Glunts
A Lesson Before Lying: How Republicans Solved Sarah Palin's Jewish Problem

Peter Morici
The Big Slump

Deepak Tripathi
Politics, Morality and the GOP: John McCain as John Major?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Energy of a Hurricane

Michael Donnelly
Change. God. POW.: a Summary of McCain's Big Speech

Martha Rosenberg
Free to Good Home, SUVs

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Air War: On Wolves and Bears

September 4, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Real McCain

Paul Craig Roberts
Who is Wrecking America?

Ron Jacobs
The Perishing Republicans, the RNC 9 and the Twin Cities Cops

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
The Soft Surge

Andy Worthington
Rendered to Egypt for Torture

Osama Dawoud
How I Lost My Fulbright Scholarship

Stephen Lendman
Katrina Redux: the Militarization of New Orleans

Fidel Castro
Hurricane as Nuclear Strike

Website of the Day
Is McCain Palin's Bitch?

September 3, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
The Fake U.S. Victory in Iraq

Sen. Mike Gravel
Good Luck, Sarah!

Vijay Prashad
The Indian Left and the Indo-US Nuclear Deal

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin, Hunting and the American Psyche

Ralph Nader
Repeal Taft-Hartley

Howard Lisnoff
Forty Years in the Streets (And They're Still Beating Up Journalists)

Steve Early / Cal Winslow
Can SEIU Members Exorcize the Purple Shades of Jackie Presser?

Shepherd Bliss
A Field Report From Slow Food Nation

Bill Quigley
Living in the Car After Gustav

Website of the Day
Growing Up Okie: an Interview with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

September 2, 2008

Marjorie Cohn
Raiding Democracy in St. Paul

Jonathan Cook
Palestinian Village Faces Army Reign of Terror

Robert Weitzel
Biden and Israel

Corey D. B. Walker
Where Do We Go From Here?

John Ross
The Kidnapping Boom in Mexico

Eric Walberg
Wag the Dog in Georgia

Judith Scherr
No Day in Court for Ronald Dauphin

Richard Morse
Haiti, 2008

B. R. Gowani
What If the Israel Lobby was the African-American Lobby?

Michael Greenberg
Loofah Day in Cleveland

Website of the Day
Thanks for the Memories!

September 1, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Making a Killing in Iraq: McCain and the Telecoms

C. G. Estabrook
The War Will Go On

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Will a Russo-American Nuclear War Happen (Soon)?

David Macaray
An Elegy for Labor Day

B. R. Gowani
The Lobby as Juggernaut

Saul Landau
Real Gold Winners

Charles Orloski
Going Down to Hell's Cul-de-Sac

Gloria La Riva
Profit and Disaster in New Orleans

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Factory

August 30 / 31, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Speech; McCain's Palinomy

Bill Quigley
Gustav is Coming

Jeffrey St. Clair
Valley Boy: The Rise and Fall of Richard Pombo

Andy Worthington
Shining a Light on the Dark Prison

Deepak Tripathi
The Race for the White House: Notes From a European Observer

Stanley Howard
A Prisoner's Tale of Abuse

Dave Lindorff
Troopergate in Alaska

Wajahat Ali
Palin on the Prowl: a Cougar for the PUMAs?

Robert Fantina
McCain and Palin

Josh Schlossberg
A Bias for Life: the Role of the Environmentalist

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Voting

Missy Beattie
Stars, Stripes, War and Shame

Howard Lisnoff
Better Cuba Than Florida?

Suzan Mazur
Rethinking Evolution with Stuart Newman

Rev. Jim Rigby
What Would Jesus Ride to the Conventions?

David Yearsely
Katy Perry Meets Mozart

Serge Quadruppani
Italy's Years of Lead

B.R. Gowani
What If the Israeli Lobby Was the Islamic Lobby?

Richard Rhames
Empty Political Calories

Poets' Basement
Holt, Davies, Corsale and Landau

Website of the Day
Return of the Druids

August 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
How the Chicago Boys Wrecked the Economy

Brian Cloughley
Resurgent Russia

David Ker Thomson
Jacko and Me: Dispatches From Fifty

Joanne Mariner
A UK Window on CIA Abuses

Neve Gordon
The Ordeal of Sahar Vardi, Refusenik

Chris Genovali
Of Whales and Off-Shore Drilling

Ron Jacobs
What's a Godfearing Country to Do?

Michael Donnelly
Honest Abe in Denver?

August 28, 2008

Judy Gumbo Albert
The Battle of Chicago

Paul Cantor
Who Killed Victor Jara?

Saul Landau /
Farrah Hassen
Axis of Evil Defeats Neocons

Andy Worthington
Clearing Out Guantánamo

Ben Terrall
Return to Port-au-Prince

Leonard Peltier
Message to Obama: Symbolism Alone Will Not Bring Change

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Miasma of Bi-Partisanship

Donna J. Volatile
The Obama Construct

Website of the Day
Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker and Maya Angelou on the Meaning of Obama

August 27, 2008

Anthony DiMaggio
The Myths of Joe Biden

Jordan Flaherty
Three Years After Katrina

Ralph Nader
The Politics of Avoidance

Melissa Checker
Carbon Offsets, More Harm Than Good?

Bob Sommer
Blaming the Sixties

Cynthia McKinney
How the Democrats Helped Bush Hijack the Country

Ali Khan
Pakistan's Flawed Presidency

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
The Only Good Muslim is the Anti-Muslim

Dave Lindorff
Strip-Search Nation

David Macaray
Labor's Hard Lessons

Website of the Day
Stagnant Income in an Eroding Economy

August 26, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
The Big Questions About Iraq

Michael D. Yates
Obama and the Working Class

Paul Craig Roberts
Is War With Russia on the Agenda?

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Suicide Report

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson
Obama's Promised Land?

Huwaida Arraf
Sailing into Gaza

Joseph Grosso
Back to the Future: New York's Housing Crisis

Sheldon Richman
What About the Ossetians?

Binoy Kampmark
Impasse at Singur

Website of the Day
Taser Bait in Denver

August 25, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
US Out of Iraq by "2011"

Bill Quigley
Katrina, the Pain Index

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Outposts Seal Death of Palestinian State

James McEnteer
Death by Paranoia

Uri Avnery
The Devil's Hoof

Will Potter
The State Deparment's Green Scare Wing

Robert Jensen
Technological Fundamentalism

Stephen Lendman
Reinventing the Evil Empire

Wajahat Ali
Biden His Time

Carl Finamore
The Future of Trade Unions in China

Website of the Day
Don't Blow Up the Mountain, Boys

August 23 / 4, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
"Change," "Hope"...Why They Must be Talking About Joe Biden!

Jeffrey St. Clair
Killing Salmon with Paul O'Neill: Power, Profits and the Future of the Columbia River

Patty O'Grady
John McCain in a New Context: Why the Senator is No War Hero

Nicole Colson
Obama and Big Corn

Steve Conn
Obama and the Mining Cartel

Deepak Trapathi
Pakistan in Uncertain Times

Robert Fantina
Once Upon a Time in America: a McCain Administration

Jonathan M. Feldman
Obamanomics: Does the Left Have Anything to Say?

Joshua Frank
Targeting Pelosi (and the War Machine): an Interview with Cindy Sheehan

Osama Qashoo
Sailing to Gaza

Howard Lisnoff
The Long Silence: American Jews and the Palestinians

David Michael Green
Sen. McShame and the Wreckage: John McCain Discovers America

Dave Lindorff
Why Not Let the Republicans Deal With This Mess?

Christopher Brauchli
A Banner Month for Passports

Alan Farago
Who Crippled the Government?

Michael Winship
Cash Register Conventions

Richard Rhames
Vlad the Derailer: Can Putin Save America From Itself?

David Rosen
The Culture Wars Are Over: But Culture Warriors Are Still Terrorizing America

Patrick B. Barr
Don't Try to Tame the Lightning Bolt

Jamie Newlin
Western Turf Wars: the Politics of Public Lands Ranching

Poets' Basement
Glendinning, McEnteer and Bonner

Website of the Weekend
Cafe Reconcile, New Orleans

August 22, 2008

Boris Kagarlitsky
Fallout from the Georgian War

Laura Carlsen
Obama and Latin America: Change or Continuity?

Bob Barr
No War for Georgia

Marwan Bishara
From Russia with Love: Putin Hits Georgia, Bloodies Bush

Peter Morici
Is the Fed Still a Central Bank?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Big Heat

Charles Mostoller
The Battle for the Amazon

Sumbul Ali-Karamali
Obama is Not a Muslim: But Would It Be So Terrible If He Were?

Keith Rosenthal
Standing Up to Union-Bashing

John F. Miglio
The Devolution of the Baby Boom Generation

Website of the Day
Fire Sale in the Markets!

August 21, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
Is Georgia 2008 a Repeat of Hungary 1956?

Dave Lindorff Loserville: How Obama Blew It

Ralph Nader
The Problem with Problem Banks

Joanne Mariner
The Military Commissions, So Far

Wajahat Ali
Descent Into Chaos: an Interview with Ahmed Rashid on Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Taliban

Ron Jacobs
Georgia and Historical Farce

Rostam Purzal
The Left and Iran

Anthony Papa
Unlocking the Power of Art to Counter Injustice

Website of the Day
Rocky Mountain Way

August 20, 2008

Michael Neumann
Russia and Georgia: Proportion and Distortion

Ray McGovern
Musharraf Out Like Nixon

Eric Walberg
Georgia's Ossetian Debacle

Fidaa Abed
Blocking a Gazan's Path to San Diego

Daniel Haack
The Pentagon's Most Prolific Pundit

Mike Whitney
Greenback Surges, Euro Shrivels

Website of the Day
Hands Off South Africa's Centre for Civil Society

August 19, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for Nuclear War?

Deepak Tripathi
A New Age of Torture

Marwan Bishara
The Politics of Evil in the US Elections

Saul Landau
Baseball Diplomacy or Just Baseball?

William S. Lind
Leave Georgia Alone, George

Martha Rosenberg
Whole Foods and Other Food Offenders

James Brittain
The Road to Tyranny in Colombia

Pratyush Chandra
Krugman's Great Illusion

David Macaray
AFSCME's Strike Against the University of California

Website of the Day
McCain Plagiarizing Solzhenitsyn

September 15, 2008

Senator Milquetoast Obama

The Democrats Do Poland

By DAVID MICHAEL GREEN

Historically, the country of Poland has always been assigned the same role in the theater of international politics.

Its kinda like the unnamed actor in the red shirt who beams down to the planet with Kirk and Scotty and the rest of the regular gang.  He’s only there for one (fleeting) reason.  You know he’s gonna get zapped by the local evil alien.

If you’re Poland, you’re expected to do two things.  One is to get smashed by one or perhaps even several of your vastly more powerful neighbors.  The other is to then be occupied, or perhaps even simply swallowed up wholesale.

Over time, the Poles even got good at this themselves, sometimes assisting in their own annihilation with techniques like the liberum veto, an innovation which allowed any (and every) member of parliament to unilaterally bring the legislative session to a close and vacate all legislation already passed to that point.  Sort of like the veto-driven ineffectiveness of the UN Security Council on steroids.

Except for one difference.  When the UN gets it wrong, there’s little chance that someone will sail up the East River, invade mid-Manhattan, and occupy Turtle Bay.  Poland, on the other hand...

With a record like, what I’m wondering is, why does the Democratic Party feel compelled to be Poland every four years (and often in-between, as well)?  What’s up with nominating one wholly cerebral, completely unflappable, painfully careful, mind-numbingly deliberative, thermostatically-controlled, cool-customer candidate after another, eh?  Yo!  Hey!  Memo to the DNC:  We’ve done the Mondale/Dukakis/Gore/Kerry thing, okay?  We’ve covered that particular motif.  We’ve seen that movie and all the cash cow sequels too.  We know what it looks like, and we know how it turns out.  Enough with the stiffies, okay?  Could you possibly send something else out of central casting, just once per half century?  Even just for the novelty of it?

I tell ya, right now it’s a good goddam thing that I can’t reach into my television set and throttle Barack Freakin’ Milquetoast Obama.  Sometimes I don’t know who sickens me more:  Sarah Palin, the smug lying hypocrite whom I’m afraid is going to occupy the rest of my future on this planet (which may be very short, after all, if that is indeed to be the case), or Barack Obama, who can’t seem to get a single sentence past his lips without fourteen caveats and thirty-seven um’s, ah’s and uh’s, and who wouldn’t know a killer sound bite if it hit him upside-the-haid.  And, by the way, there are a whole bunch (more) of those nasty things headed in exactly that direction as we speak.

What’s with this clown?  And please don’t tell me any more about the brilliance of the people running his campaign.  The campaign chooses when to make statements and field questions from reporters.  Has no one on the bus ever thought to arm him with a killer line or two before exits to face the press gaggle?  Has no speech coach ever taught him how to make a definitive statement, without hesitations or parentheticals, that drives home strength and conviction in like about six to eight forceful words?  Look, I support the guy.  I wanna see him win.  But what does it mean when a supporter like me is watching him supposedly parrying the body blows and mocking taunts the GOP are sending his direction, and falls asleep somewhere between the verb and the object in any given sentence?

Could somebody please show him the gut-wrenching tape of Dukakis responding to the horrifying rape question he was asked in one of the 1988 debates?!?!  Memo to Barack:  robots don’t win!  Even in 2008.  Nor should they.  You know, if you can’t even muster a little indignation when someone is out there lying about you and kicking you around with condescending smugness, I wouldn’t even want you for my dad, let alone my president.  (And don’t ever forget, by the way, it doesn’t take a PhD in political psychology to know how much voters see presidents as daddy figures.)

Here’s Obama the other day, um and ahs deleted, reacting in deadpan monotone to the freak show of the GOP convention:  “They spent a lot of time trying to run me down and not necessarily telling the truth, but what they didn’t talk about is you – what you’re going through in your lives, what your friends and neighbors are going through.”

Excuse me??  “Trying to run me down”??  “Trying to”??  “Not necessarily telling the truth”??  “Not necessarily”??  Are you freakin’ kidding me, Jack?  What, are you trying to carefully avoid a slander lawsuit here, or something?  What would happen if they called you a pedophile or a genocidal maniac?  Would they graduate to being “arguably conceivably disengenuous” in your estimation?  Or would that be a little too emotionally uncontrolled?

Obama goes on to say “This is not about personalities”, that it’s about issues.  Oh boy.  I wish he had just uttered drivel like that in the primaries, so I could have stuffed my nose with cotton and wrapped duct tape around my head forty or fifty times, then voted for Hillary.  Now he brings out the fool routine?  Can this guy who wowed everyone at Harvard Law really be so incredibly naive?  Does he really imagine that the McCain camp is going to fight on his turf?  That was a lot friendlier ground for them four years ago and the same people running this campaign didn’t do it then.  Instead, they took a genuine war hero and a guy whose daddy got him a free ride state-side (for which he then didn’t even bother to show up), and managed to switch the two in the public mind.  By election day, people thought Kerry’s war record was dubious and Bush – the guy on the aircraft carrier wearing a flight suit – was a hero.  Hey, Barack, do you think magicians like this are going to take on an inexperienced, sorta anti-war, supposedly liberal, flip-flopping wimpy black Democrat with a Muslim name on the field of policy issues, when they look idiotic on every single one?  Dude, they’re not Democrats, okay?  They don’t give a shit about anything but the money, and therefore, also about winning.

Here’s what Obama should have said, instead:  “What we saw last week is a Republican Party desperate to find any way possible to regain your trust long enough to win the presidency for four more years, even if they have to lie in order to do it.  What we saw, in speaker after speaker, were in fact lies which are an insult to your intelligence.  They hid Bush and Cheney in the basement, hoping you wouldn’t realize that they are the ones who, with the help of John McCain, have brought you the last eight years of disaster.  They skipped the traditional tribute video, where their president would be adoringly lauded for keeping us prosperous with lots of jobs and a strong economy, for being a wise commander-in-chief, for fighting and winning our wars quickly and skillfully, for careful diplomacy and building America’s regard in the world, for protecting us during national disaster and for balancing the budget.”

“I could go on and on, but you know better than I.  They won’t talk about their past because it’s precisely the same as the future they’re offering, and they know you’d never buy it if they told the truth.  These are the very same people – Karl Rove and his trainees – who ridiculed Al Gore and gave us George W. Bush.  Who smeared the service record of John Kerry, and saddled us with another four years of Bush.  Now they think they can fool us again, which is why they spent so much of their convention talking about me, and so much of that time lying.”

“If that’s what you want, you know where to go for four more years of the same.  I’m not sure most of us can afford it, but we do have the option to continue on the path we’ve been on, with a new version of the same old president, a guy who voted for just about every bit of it.  Or you can reject the fear, deceit and pandering they’re peddling, and vote for a genuine improvement in America, and a candidate who doesn’t laugh at you behind your back while he’s playing you for a fool.  If you’re ready to take back this country from the liars and the thieves, I’m ready to work with you.”

Or something to that effect.

The list of mealy-mouthed Obama comments, uttered stutteringly, from which a punch line could only possibly be extracted with the assistance of an electron microscope to parse the wheat from the chaff, is legion.  To which he is now adding stupid gaffes.  He recently said, despite Palin’s lipstick line from her speech, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”  How incredibly stupid was that?  Look, the Rove playbook includes hammering and distorting everything the opponent says, constantly keeping them on the defensive, and his protégé, Steve “Bullet Head” Schmidt, is now handling it perfectly within the morality-free zone otherwise known as the McCain campaign.  If you attack Palin’s record in any way, you’re sexist!  If you point out she was mayor of a town of 8,000 people, you’re an elitist snob who looks down at good, god-fearing, Americans with small town values.  And so on, and so on.  Pretty soon you’re afraid to say anything, and you start looking like Mike Dukakis, so confused about what you stand for and who you are that you have to whip out your driver’s license every once in a while to remind yourself.  “Oh yeah, it says here that my name is Barack Obama, so I guess that must be who I am.”

That’s certainly part of the drill, and there are three things you have to do to win in that environment.  First, establish message discipline.  Know what you want to say, know why, per your strategy, and say it, and only it, all day, perhaps all day every day.  This is where the lipstick comment and most everything else that is coming out of Obama’s mouth these days is astonishing.  Did anyone not figure that maybe talking about putting lipstick on a pig would be incredibly stupid, and be used in television ads to alienate women voters?!?!  The second thing you do – and I can’t say that Democrats have ever tried any of these three, let alone all of them – is never relent when your carefully chosen message is attacked.  Indeed, you should have gamed this out in advance, so that when that predicted and predictable attack comes, you’re prepared to double down, and fire back.  Hard.  Each time you yield ground, especially on your own turf, you yield credibility and you yield votes.  Finally, for crissakes, here’s a concept:  Go on offense!!  McCain and Palin and Bush and the GOP are what the military would call ‘target-rich opportunities’.  Go after these people and make them play defense.

Speaking of which, whatever happened to Joe What’s-His-Name, picked by Obama more than three weeks ago to be his running mate?  Can anyone think of a single memorable line he’s uttered since then?  Has anyone even seen this guy?  Is he back in Delaware shoring up the campaign for his simultaneously-ballot-listed Senate seat, or what?  Pretty much the one thing I liked about the Biden pick was the promise that Joe would go out there and take a few bites out of the GOP.  Excuse me, sir, but is it too late to get a refund?

Speaking of which, I’m one of many people right now who are contemplating donating money and time to the Obama campaign.  Here’s where I stand.  If this guy gets elected, I doubt he’ll do much, and certainly little that he isn’t forced into by the tides of history.  Like Clinton, my guess is he’ll spend four or eight years making nice speeches and ineffectively fighting the vast right-wing conspiracy, which – as it did for Bill as well – will begin harassing him from day one and never, ever, let up.  Additionally, whatever promise Obama once offered as a progressive he has now pretty much eviscerated on the campaign trail.  So, let’s just say that enthusiasm isn’t much part of the equation any more.

In the end, he gets my vote because he is not Bush and not McCain, and because if historical circumstances are powerful enough he probably has it within him to be bold, and therefore great, and therefore also to smother the scourge of regressive politics in its own stinking pool of pus for a generation or so.  That ain’t a ringing endorsement, let me tell you.  And I, along with many others of the same ilk I’m sure, have no intention of once again (thank you Mr. Kerry, thank you Mr. Dukakis) investing a single dollar or a single hour in a campaign when the guy at the top won’t bark, won’t bite, and won’t fight.  Especially in 2008.  Dukakis at least had the excuse of the true patriot, believing that in the America he loved a good and competent person like himself could never be defeated by a sick bastard like Lee Atwater, let alone based on lies about the pledge of allegiance and the ACLU, or by using overt symbols of racism.  But Mr. Obama – Senator Barackis Dukakis – that was FIVE elections ago, okay?

I am despondent this week, I must say, as I survey the wreckage of American democracy.  It’s not that I care so much about Obama winning.  Whatever tenuous enthusiasm I once had for him has waned to near nothing.  It  has much more to do with the fact that a public that is demonstrably sick of the status quo could yet once again be fooled by the same old practitioners of the dark arts, employing the same old insulting techniques, into willfully voting for another four years of precisely the same folks who’ve made them miserable.  It’s truly astonishing.  Can these people really not figure out the ruse being applied to them?  Are they, at long last, actually incapable of being insulted?

I give in already, okay?  Yes, yes, Santayana was right!  Y’all no longer need to prove to me that those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.  I accept the premise.  Point taken.

Couldn’t we move on to another lesson, by now?  How about that little ditty on Munich?

You know, the one were those who try to play nice with fascist thugs become their breakfast just a few months later.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.  He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.  More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.

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