Today's Stories

November 30, 2009

Gary Leupp
A "Necessary War" -- for a Gas Pipeline

Mike Whitney
Crisis in Dubai

Steven Higgs
Growing Up Toxic

November 27 - 29, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Auld Triangle Goes Jingle Jangle

Carl Ginsburg
Planning for Poverty?

Mike Whitney
Blame Larry Summers

Franklin Spinney
Obama as LBJ

Joshua Frank
Coal Kills

Saul Landau
The True Price of Oil

Heather Gray
Overtly Racist Regimes in the 20th Century

John Ross
The Timeline for a New Mexican Revolution Comes Due

David Macaray
Adventures in Polarization

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: 52 Words That Shook Washington

Shamus Cooke
The Devastating Consequences of the Corporate Health Insurance Bill

David Ker Thomson
The Transformers

Martha Rosenberg
Cash for Cheesedogs? The Recession Takes a Bite Out of Meat Consumption

Ramzy Baroud
A Paradigm Shift in Singapore?

Ron Ridenour
Post-War Internment Hell for Tamils

Amanda Mueller
Saving Grace: Negotiating Abortion and the Catholic Faith

James Rothenberg
China Kowtow

Travis Kelly
Mayday, 1960: the U2 Files

Don Monkerud
Big Beer Takes Over

Ron Jacobs
Science Fiction and Politics

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of Chinua Achebe

David Yearsley
What Father Made Us Sing Before the Turkey

Poets' Basement
Catherine Zickgraf and Mickey Z.

Website of the Weekend
Good to Be Alive

November 26, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Mumbai in the Shadow of Kashmir

Greg Moses
We Remember the Popol Vuh

Jayne Lyn Stahl
How About a War on Poverty Instead?

Jeff Cohen
Get Ready for the Obama / GOP Alliance

John Blair
The Gasification of Indiana

Ann Robertson /
Bill Leumer
A Surge in Demands on Goverment for Jobs

Farzana Versey
The American East India Company

Sam Husseini
Moral Relativism at Fort Hood: Guilt, Therapy and the System

Tom Mountain
The Truth Behind the Turkey

Website of the Day
A Thanksgiving Prayer by William S. Burroughs

November 25, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The Bush-Blair Conspiracy on Iraq

Marjorie Cohn
The Case of Lynn Stewart

Belén Fernández
An Interview with Honduran Coup General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez

Ralph Nader
Weak-Kneed in China

Rannie Amiri
The Impending Release of Gilad Shalit: What Palestinians Deserve in Return

Missy Beattie
Finish the Job?

Rob Stone, MD Health Care Delusions: Better Than Nothing?

Norm Kent
In Praise of Adam Lambert

Binoy Kampmark Handing It to France: the Sporting Trial of Thierry Henry

Ron Ridenour
International Support for Sri Lanka

Website of the Day
The Credit Card Game

November 24, 2009

Mary Lynn Cramer
Health Care Reform and the Skinning of Seniors

Dean Baker
Too Big to Kill? The Vampire Banks Rise Again

George Ciccariello-Maher
Occupy Everything! Behind the Privatization of the UC, a Riot Squad of Police

Eric Walberg
Canada's Guantanamo

Andy Thayer
Lessons From a Lynching: the Murder of Jorge Steven Lopez-Mercado

David Macaray
The Delphi Incident: How the White-Collar Tribe Got Shafted

Laura Carlsen
The Perils of Plan Mexico

Gary Leupp
Obama as Hamlet

Adam Federman
Poisoning Dimock

William S. Lind Mission Creep: Counter-Insurgency in Salinas?

Website of the Day
Geography of the Recession

November 23, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
A Trial That Will Convict Us All

Jonathan Cook
Have Israeli Spies Infiltrated International Aiports?

Edward S. Herman / David Peterson
Vulliamy's Smears

Bouthaina Shaaban
What's New? It's Always Been Like This

Helen Redmond
Health Care's Historic Flop

Rannie Amiri
Saudi Arabia's Attack on Yemen

Dave Lindorff
Abortion and Health Care

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Self-Delusionary American Tragedy

Mike Whitney
Is American Casino the Best Picture of the Year?

Mark Weisbrot
Honduran Dictatorship is a Threat to Democracy in the Hemisphere

David Michael Green
The Placeholder Presidency of Obama

November 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
CounterPunch Diary
It's Show Trial Time!

Gareth Porter
New Light on the Qom Facility

Mike Whitney
The Great Stimulus Debate of '09: Crybabies need not apply

Fred Gardner
Mammography
Pushes Back

James J. Brittain
It's Really a War on the Poor
A War on Coca Nobody Believes

Jonathan Cook
Rabbi Followers 'Terror Cell in Parliament'

Alan Farago
Bulletin from the Dark Side: Florida's Republican Ultras

David Macaray
A Hindu Version of the UAW
Labor Strife in India

Binoy Kampmark
The Israeli Exception: Gilo and East Jerusalem

Ben Sonnenberg
Ashes and Diamonds
Retirement Norwegian Style

Ron Jacobs
Judge Roy Bean Takes Manhattan

David Yearsley
200,000 Testicles Offered Up to the Gods of Song

Brenda Norrell
A Border Runs Through Them:
The Struggles of the Tohono O'odham

Ron Ridenour
The Tamils and Equal Rights of Self Determination

November 19, 2009

Christopher Ketcham
The Dumbest Newspapers at the Center of the World

Shamus Cooke
A Fraudulent Jobs Summit

John V. Walsh
Impotent in China

Saul Landau
Dissidents Make Noise--Oops, News

Ralph Nader
Exiting Afghanistan

Nikolas Kozloff
Blackout in Brazil

Fred Gardner
Reputable MDs Buy NorCal Health Care

Charles R. Larson
Voices of the Silenced

John A. Murphy
Nader v. Dodd

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Obama's Gray World

November 18, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Religious Scoundrel

John Ross
Hot Oil!

Conn Hallinan
Strategic Towns: Why Gen. McChrystal's Plan Will Fail

Mike Whitney
Obama's China Junket

Ray McGovern
The Bogus Success of the Surge

Nelson P. Valdés
Cyber Cuba: Internet, Broadband and Foreign Policy

Ramzy Baroud
Globalization Unchecked

Ron Ridenour
Tamil Eelam: the Historic Right to Nationhood

November 17, 2009

Mike Whitney
Let's Get Fiscal

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Double Crossed: War Vets Deported

Brian M. Downing
Do They Subscribe to GQ at the Pentagon?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Two-Tiered Justice System

Joanne Mariner
A First Look at the Military Commisions Act

Dean Baker
Obama's Nuclear Option on the Yuan

Martha Rosenberg
Pig Hell at Wal-Mart Supplier

Danny Weil
Fear in Nicaragua

David Macaray
Retail Sales as Combat

Laura Flanders
Buried Bonanza for Over-Builders

Walter Brasch
Rush to Judgment on Terror Trials

November 16, 2009

Alan Nasser
Obama's Flawed Case Against Single Payer

Jonathan Cook
Campus Watch Copy Cats

Mark Weisbrot
Obama, China and the Dollar

Carol Miller
We Need Health Care, Not Insurance

Gary Leupp
The Andolan in Kathmandu and the Revolution to Follow

Harry Clark
Justice Goldstone at Brandeis

Ray McGovern
Shining a Light on the Roots of Terrorism

Norman Solomon
California Democrats Urge Obama to Leave Afghanistan

Ron Ridenour
Genocide in Sri Lanka

Norm Kent
Doctors Light Up

Brenda Norrell
Torture Resisters Arrested at Fort Huachuca

November 13-15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
A Man in a Hundred

Patrick Cockburn
Meet Our Afghan Ally: Stealing Money, Selling Heroin and Raping Boys

Tariq Ali
Short Cuts in Afghanistan

Douglas Lummis
Obama, Hatoyama and Okinawa

Vijay Prashad
Can the Major Speak?

Carl Ginsburg
Cornering the Market on Ambition

Manuel García, Jr.
The Purpose is Pork

Rannie Amiri
The Disastrous Presidency of Mahmoud Abbas

Mary Lynn Cramer
Death By Denial: the Militarization of Mental Health

Fred Gardner
Pot Doc Down

Dave Lindorff
Health Care Reform: DOA

Robert Jensen
How I Stopped Hating Thanksgiving and Learned to be Afraid

David Macaray
Wal-Mart Death Stampede Revisited

Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing Timberland: Nike Foe Jeff Ballinger Zeros in on a New Target

Ron Jacobs
No More Star Spangled Eyes

David Model
NATO's Chimerical Enemy in Afghanistan

John V. Walsh
Godless China: What Obama Will Find

Jon Mitchell
Beggars' Belief

Stuart Easterling
Blaming the Narcos in Mexico

Dan Bacher
Big Oil Takes Over Marine "Protection" in California

Franklin Lamb
Lebanese Students Advise Obama on How to Get It Right

Farzana Versey
Moderns, Models and Martyrs

Charles R. Larson
War, Peace and Paramilitaries in Colombia

Saul Landau
The Coen Bros. Brutalize Job

David Yearsley
When the Cirque Meets the Beatles

Lorenzo Wolff
At the Side of the Frontman

Poets' Basement
Blaine, Rivas and Cox

November 12, 2009

Robert Weissman
Maniacal Deregulation

Franklin Spinney
The Afghan War Question

Nadia Hijab
After Fort Hood

Afshin Rattansi
Night Vision: Why US Sanctions on Syria Will Kill American Soldiers

Paul Craig Roberts
America's Dismal Future

Ralph Nader
Failing the People on Health Care

Belén Fernández
Tourists of the Honduran Counter-Revolution

Allan J. Lichtman
A National Peacemaker's Day

Dave Lindorff
President Peacenik's War

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Headline of the Year

November 11, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Crafting of a Loophole

Mike Whitney
A Small "d" Depression

Rev. Jesse Jackson
Where's the Jobs Stimulus?

Jeff Nygaard
Iranian Irrationality? Maybe Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Regime Reneges on Political Deal

James Ridgeway
The End of the Little Red Cars: Memories of East Berlin

Eamonn McCann
Blood on Their Hands

Michael Ortiz Hill
Unbecoming War and Terrorism

Shepherd Bliss
From Oklahoma City to Fort Hood

Walter Brasch
"This is Jenna Bush Reporting ... "

November 10, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape

Dean Baker
How to Raise $140 Billion a Year From Wall Street Banks

Rose Ann DeMoro
The Truth About the House Health Care Bill

Ramzy Baroud
Inch by Inch, House by House: How Israel Won the Settlement Battle...Again

Peter Lee
The Dalai Lama Sticks His Thumb in the Dragon's Eye

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Workers

Roberto Rodriguez
Running Past PTSD (Or My Susto Profundo)

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Self-Dismembering F-35

Alan Farago
The Rising Tide

Joseph Grosso
The Legacy of Albert Parsons

November 9, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Leave Afghanistan to the Afghans

Linn Washington
Fox Finds a New Black Boogeyman

Carl Ginsburg
To be Young and Unemployed Forever

Jeff Leys
War Funding, 2010

John A. Murphy
Can Lieberman Save Single Payer? Why Progressives Should Back a Filibuster

John Halle
Bard and the Lobby: Final Thoughts on the Kovel Affair

Bouthaina Shaaban
Clinton Dances With Netanyahu

James Ridgeway
Heath Care: Winning a Battle, Losing the War

Dave Lindorff
The Kafka Economy

David Macaray
The Philadelphia Transit Strike

Stephen Fleischman
The Tea Party System

Website of the Day
Cap-and-Trade: The Huge Mistake

November 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Too Fat to Fight

Mark Grueter
Inside the American University of Iraq

Paul Craig Roberts
The Evil Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Friendly Fire

Gareth Porter
Karzai's Cabinet of Warlords

Mike Whitney
The Battle of Seattle, 10 Years Later

James Bovard
How the Media Enables Government Lies

Dean Baker
Don't Touch the Banks!

Robert Lawless
Empires and the Sullying of Anthropology

Saul Landau
Afghanistan: a War Without Logic

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Black Ops and Fort Hood

Stephanie Westbrook
My Memories of Fort Hood

M. Shahid Alam
How Eurocentric Are You?

Marc Levy
Walking With Mr. Muhammad

Franklin Lamb
Obama's Mid-East Mess

Ron Jacobs
A New Map of Hell

David Ker Thomson
Afternoon With Tulip

John V. Whitbeck
Moment of Truth

Julien Mercille
Drugs and Afghanistan: the UN's Misleading Report

Rannie Amiri
Egypt's Next Unelected President?

John Ross
Legalize It!

David Michael Green
Can You Hear Us Now?

Carl Finamore
Strike One for Hotels in San Francisco

Farzana Versey
The Farce of Fatwas and Political Expediency

Missy Comley Beattie
No to Single Payer, Yes to Prayer?

Charles R. Larson
Business as Usual in India

David Yearsley
Anna Magdalena, Music and the Art of Dying

Kim Nicolini
"Paranormal Activity:" a DIY Horror Film

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Devreaux Baker

November 5, 2009

Pam Martens
The Fire Sale of America

Vijay Prashad
The Great Heretic

Brian Gallagher
The Soldiers From Standard Oil: Harvard, ROTC and American Foreign Policy

Norman Solomon
The Next Phase in Health Care Apartheid

Nadia Hijab
The Battle for Palestinian Representation

Joseph Shansky
And the Winner in Honduras is ... the United States?

Andy Thayer
Questions and Answers From Maine

Tracy Rosenberg
Pacifica and the Barbarians Who Pay the Bills

Website of the Day
All Folked Up

November 4, 2009

Stan Cox
The Inflated Promise of Natural Gas

Andy Worthington From Gitmo to Palau: Who are the Uighurs?

Robert Weissman
The Medicare-for-All Moment

Susan Galleymore
Of Veterans and Volunteers

Ralph Nader
Hoh's Afghanistan Warning

Michael Leonardi
Italy's Secret Ships of Poison

Bitta Mistofi
Death to No One: Isolating and Taunting Iran Will Only Empower the Regime

Robert Bryce
From Lahore to Copenhagen

Martha Rosenberg
Is Your Doctor's Continuing Ed Funded by Drug Makers?

Dave Lindorff
Democrats Crash and Burn

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Backtrackers

November 3, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
The Delegitimization of Karzai

Mike Whitney
Why the Crisis Isn't Going Away

Franklin C. Spinney
Katrina and the Paralysis of Fear

Laura Carlsen
The Little Coup That Couldn't

Serge Halimi
Don't Blame the Internet

John Stanton
Social Decay in America

Sophia Weeks
A Guatemalan Lament

Dave Lindorff
Country Joe, Kenny Rogers and Obama

November 2, 2009

Steven Higgs
Autism Spikes, Toxins Suspected

Ishmael Reed
White in America: Behind the Scenes at CNN

David Macaray
UAW Members Vote Down Ford; and the Media Attacked the Union

Bouthaina Shaaban
Settler Colonialism: Return to the Middle Ages

David Michael Green
Coming to Get You

David Swanson
The Two Percent Robustness

Ellen Brown
Cutting Wall Street Out

Adam Federman
Trading the Watershed to Trash the Catskills

James McEnteer
Doppleganger Politics: Star Wars, Clone Wars

Stephen Fleischman
Foot in the Door: Capitalism and Health Care

Website of the Day
Secret California Park Giveaway

October 30 - Nov. 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Long Gaze of the State

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Facing Down the Machine: Mike Roselle Draws a Line

Carl Ginsburg
Living in the Shadow of Yankee Stadium

Mike Whitney
Obama Goes Wobbly Over More Stimulus

Joe Bageant
The Iron Cheer of Empire

Gareth Porter
Security By Warlords: the CIA's Afghan Payroll

Saul Landau
The Cuban Embargo

Anthony DiMaggio
Conspiracy, Inc.: Wild Tales From the Reactionary Right

Dave Lindorff
Happy Talk Amid the Wreckage: Stocks Up, Jobs Down

Rannie Amiri
The Spooks of Beirut

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Afghan Travelogue

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Who Will Reform the Health Care Reform?

Rev. William E. Alberts
God's Favorite Team (and Nation and Religion)

Alvaro Huerta
The Abominable Mr. Dobbs

Martha Rosenberg
Marketing Drugs to Psychoneurotics

Binoy Kampmark
Don't Give Us Your Wretched: Refugee Policy in OZ

Norm Kent
Not Just Zig-Zag Any More: Medical Marijuana Goes Mainstream

Charles R. Larson Roth's "The Humbling:" Nothing Like a Novel From an Old Pro

Ron Jacobs
One Man's Truth, Another Man's Lies

David Yearsley
Not Loud Enough by Half

Lorenzo Wolff
The Vulnerability of Lauryn Hill

Kim Nicolini
"Big Fan:" Football, Class and Sexuality in America

Poets' Basement
Davies, Heyen and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Coal Country Music

October 29, 2009

Michael Neumann
Criticism of Israel: a Wonderful Hiding Place

Mike Whitney
Housing Rebound? Not So Fast

Gary Leupp
Matthew Hoh Speaks Truth to Power

Conn Hallinan
Roman Roads and Modern Emperors

Marshall Auerback
Obama's Bogus Populism: Pay Curbs and Bank Loans

Laura Flanders
Palin's Pet Doug Hoffman Has Taliban Ties

Eamonn McCann
The War Criminal Vote: Blair or Karadzic for EU President?

David Macaray
Strange Invaders: Can Ignorance and Arrogance Win Hearts and Minds?

Mark Weisbrot
When Small Countries Lead the Way

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Complicity in Torture Challenged

Christopher Brauchli
Will the Pope Bring the Taliban Into His Flock?

Website of the Day
The USS Liberty Affair and the Problem of Truth in History

October 28, 2009

Moshe Adler
How to Reduce Unemployment, Rebuild the Middle Class and Free Ourselves From Wall Street

Dave Lindorff
America's Drug Crisis: Brought to You by the CIA

Frank Joseph Smecker
Agaisnt Prometheus: an Interview with Derrick Jensen on Science and Technology

Alexandra Early
What a "Jobless" Recovery Means for Young Workers

M. Shahid Alam
Israeli Exceptionalism

Vijay Prashad
Sahelian Blowback: What's Happening in Mali?

John Ross
Three Years Later, Brad Will is Still Dead

Franklin Lamb
A Rare Victory for Lebanon's Palestinians

Gregory Travis
The Dismal Science: Elinor Ostrom's Nobel

Susan Galleymore
Peace Cycle to Palestine

Website of the Day
Newspaper Decline, a Graphic Display

October 27, 2009

Mike Whitney
Black Tuesday and How We Got Out of It

Patrick Cockburn
Bombs Will Go Off in Baghdad, Whether the US is There or Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Coup Myths Dispelled

Alan Farago
Power Plays in Florida: Rate Increases, Nukes and Deception

Ralph Nader
Obama: Form Letters and Business as Usual

Dave Lindorff
Pentagon Dirty Bombers: DU in America

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Danger of Towing the Line Behind Israel

Brian M. Downing Elections in Afghanistan, the Second Time Around

Iain Boal
How You Can Save Pacifica

Carl Finamore
Hotel Workers and the Law of Momentum

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Here Comes That Third Party: Palin and the Constitutionalists

Website of the Day
How Bank of America Charges for Perfect Credit

October 26, 2009

Bill Quigley /
Deborah Popowski
When Gitmo and Abu Ghraib Come Home

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?

Uri Avnery
A Tsunami Called Goldstone

Mike Whitney
Will the Dollar Remain the World's Reserve Currency in Five Years?

Michael Snedeker
The Execution of Cameron Willingham

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Dirty War on Immigrants

David Michael Green
Paranoia for Breakfast

Martha Rosenberg
Gagging Michael Pollan

Patrick Bond
Gridlock on the Way to Copenhagen

Binoy Kampmark
Heading for the Tiber

Website of the Day
Goldman Sachs Abandons Kittens

November 30, 2009

Tweedle Destruction and Tweedle Disaster

How Dare You Clean Up Our Mess?

By DAVID MICHAEL GREEN

One of the few things that irritates me more than Barack Obama is Barack Obama’s critics.

Or, at least, some of them.  I’m one of his biggest un-fans, and in that sense I join legions of progressives heartsick in watching this right-wing president either doing nothing at all, or doing nothing at all that we ever would want.

But, of course, Obama’s biggest opposition comes from the lunatics on the right, who basically hate him for what is essentially the crime of not being Republican.  Given that his policies are so similar to George W. Bush’s, I really think that’s it – even more than any race-based vitriol.

That’s fine, in principle.  Since Obama sends me ballistic with enormous frequency, I can hardly begrudge them the same privilege.

Unless, of course, I were to be hypocritical.

Which is perhaps the single most nauseating attribute of our good friends on the regressive right.  You know the rules.  One set of sexual standards for us, another for them behind closed doors.  Big thumping militarist patriotism when our kids go off to war, rather less when it’s their turn.  Itsy-bitsy small government ideology for the lil’ folk, Washington as a great big candy-covered sugar teat for them.  Etc., etc.

Nowhere does this astonishingly brazen hypocrisy manifest itself more plainly nowadays than in the criticisms of Obama from the right.  And nowhere can you find more ridiculous and more historically myopic claims than from these folk (another favorite trait of theirs).  It is as if we’re supposed to believe – which pretty much all of the right’s regresso-bots actually seem to – that history began on January 20th of this year.  Hey, no wonder they’re so angry!  It was all just dandy until Obama came in and wrecked everything in sight!

The biggest claim of this sort concerns deficit spending, of course.  I must say, I’m glad people are worried about this.  The amount of debt that we’re currently handing off to our children is astronomical, and what’s worse, it’s rising rapidly.  All that said, there are just a few inconsistencies in this line of attack that are more than just a bit irritating.

To begin with, where the hell have these people been?  While the deficits currently being wracked up are huge, they are only dangerous and they are only onerous because of the mountain of existing debt onto which they’re being added.  They are the proverbial straws breaking the camel’s back.
American government has been running in the red for eons, but it took the regressive movement coming to power in order to turn those debts into killer quantities.  The beloved Saint Reagan pioneered the path here, by tripling the national debt in his eight years in office, and doing so through the combination of giant tax cuts for the wealthy (and thus equally giant revenue cuts for the government), along with massive military spending increases.  Woo-hoo!  It’s a party, everybody!

It didn’t take magic to figure out what the result would be.  In fact, it took magic to imagine it could be anything different.  Which is why George Bush (not the Satan one, but the father of the Satan one) called it “voodoo economics”.  At least that’s what he called it when he was running against Reagan for the 1980 presidential nomination of the Precambrian Party.  When he lost that battle and desperately wanted instead to become Reagan’s running mate, he somehow stopped making that particular critique.  Magically, Reagan’s unchanged plan rapidly became perfectly sound economics for vice presidential nominee Bush.  You might call that one of the greatest sellouts of the public interest in all of American history.  Indeed, since he did it in pursuit of his own personal interests, you might even call it an act of treason.  But then, of course, you would have to be a sentient human being to do so, which lets out just about all of the nice people over on the right.  So Reagan gets a pass.

Then the Little Bush comes along and does Reagan one better.  He inherited the greatest budget surplus in American history and instantly turned it into the greatest deficit in history.  Nice work!  And he did it the old fashioned way, handing enormous tax relief to the already wealthy – and equally robust ‘revenue relief’ to the federal treasury – while spending huge chunks of cash on the military.  Bush also figured out a great way to funnel tons of money to his pals in the pharmaceutical industry, through a prescription drug bill which just incidentally also happened to provide a small benefit for American seniors.  The cost for that puppy was entirely and completely unfunded in the legislation (can you say, “not deficit neutral”?).  The Bush people lied to their own party in Congress about it when they promised that the total bill would not exceed $400 billion in cost over ten years time.  Then they told the administration’s Medicare actuary, who knew the truth, that they would fire him if he testified before Congress.  Now, a couple years later, the bill is priced at one trillion bucks over ten years.  And, again, every one of those trillion dollars is completely unfunded.  Which is to say, borrowed.

Contrast this to what the Democrats are doing on healthcare today.  It is, to my mind, very much an incomplete bill, at best, and possibly a prescription for ruin if insurance companies go on a pricing binge after it’s passed, which they’ve actually already begun doing before it’s passed.  But, whatever its other serious flaws, it make a fairly earnest attempt at fully paying for itself, and – a few gimmicky budget tricks aside – largely succeeds.  According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the bill now being considered by the Senate would actually reduce the annual federal deficit slightly.

And yet regresso-atavists are apoplectic at the giant damage that Obama’s healthcare bill will do to the deficit!  Even though it won’t.  And they were silent about the major damage that Bush’s bill did to the deficit!  Even though it did.  Nor did we hear boo from them as Bush doubled the size of the national debt in eight years.  Somehow, borrowing is only a problem when a Democrat does it.  In fact, it would appear that borrowing is even a problem when a Democrat doesn’t do it.  Go figure.  Maybe it’s the Democrat part that turns out to be problematic.  I’m just thinkin’ out loud here...

Of course, that’s just good old fashioned regressive hypocrisy at work, though the outrage on the right is insulting for another reason as well.  People can say whatever they want about Barack Obama.  (And, clearly, that’s exactly what they do – without the slightest regard to fact.)  But you have to be desperately self-deceiving to believe that he came to office wanting to start off his presidency by spending $800 billion on some hodgepodge stimulus bill, and wanting to become the new owner of American automobile, insurance and banking companies.  I don’t think Obama has any more desire to gobble up the American private sector than did Herbert Hoover.  Why would he?  It’s not like he’s making money off the deal.  And if he did want to own corporations, why would he be grabbing only companies that are such total train-wrecks?

How deluded do you have to be to think that the president of the United States has some sort of bizarre jones for owning imploding corporations?  And how absurdly unbalanced do you have to be to believe it’s all just a coincidence that it’s happening right now?  And that the only companies that the government is buying are those which have been dropped from 150 story buildings and were inches from the ground at the time that Obama stepped in?

This is historical myopia to the point of psychosis.  The lunatics on the right have completely divorced Obama’s actions from the context in which they took place.  It’s like pretending there’s no difference between murder and self-defense.  Perhaps they’ve not heard, but despite the fact that they both involve killing another person, one is done without justification and the other is completely justified and even highly admired.

Like so much that goes on in Starboardville, it makes no sense whatsoever.  Unless, of course, you realize that the real logic is actually about avoiding sense.  Hence the tenacious embrace of dogma, the facts be damned.  In this particular case, what the facts show is that regressive economic policies drove the economy off the cliff, and are still now causing enormous pain for huge numbers of people worldwide.  How unbelievably cheeky is it, therefore, for the Neanderthal Set to come along and trash the very people who have rescued the economy from the mega-crisis they themselves bequeathed to all of us?  You’d think that after all the damage they’re responsible for creating these nice folks would have the decency to go crawl off into the closet and hide for a century or two.  Ah, but that would be to misunderstand profoundly the movement we’re dealing with here.

The facts show that regressive policies drove the economy over the cliff, alright.  And what the facts also show is that the only thing that prevented it from smashing headlong into the ground 300 feet below was the federal government’s intervention.  Meanwhile, what was the right’s prescription to deal with the outrageous mess they themselves had made?

That’s a third way in which their critiques of the current government’s policies are so obscene.  What is their alternative?  Near as I can tell, it’s do nothing.  Or, give some additional huge tax breaks to the wealthy – which also means do nothing, but while adding even more to the national debt.

Isn’t it bad enough that these lovely folks and their lovely policies have wrecked the country?  Isn’t even worse that they get so agitated at the people trying to repair the damage that they foam at the mouth in rage?  Yes and yes.  But it’s a still greater crime yet that the folks shredding the folks fixing have absolutely no solutions of their own to offer as alternatives to the nightmare they’ve created.

It actually gets worse from there, however.  It isn’t a nightmare they’ve created, but rather nightmares.  The economy is only Problem One.  Then there are the wars, the environment, education, infrastructure, debt, human rights and lots more.

We are talking here about a country deep in multiple crises.  Maybe Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt had more on their plates when they assumed the presidency.  Maybe.  But if they did, only they did.  Obama came into office with the country just about going off the rails in just about every way possible.  And the people who gave him – and us – these disasters have done nothing but criticize him in the fiercest manner from the get-go.

Worse is that their reckless critiques are gaining traction everyday, and the Obama presidency is sinking rapidly.  This is chiefly because Obama seems incapable of mounting an effective communications strategy, incapable of advocating for his policy preferences, and incapable even of defending his administration against the most scurrilous and deceitful of attacks.

That adds salt to the already grievous wound, but worst of all is that he really is one of them.  A close examination of his policies quickly reveals that they run the gamut from regressive economics to regressive foreign policy to regressive human rights and beyond.

Maybe that’s why the president has such a hard time defending himself from the insane and obscene critiques of the hypocritical, historically myopic, and alternative-lacking regressive right.  He’s merely the kinder, gentler version of them.

Lucky us.  Once we had a choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Now it’s Tweedle-Destruction and Tweedle-Disaster.

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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