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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
Archives by Tag 'Mitt Romney'
After studying the 1967 U.S. urban riots, the Kerner Commission’s report indicted White America’s institutions and society for creating and condoning a destructive environment of segregation and poverty in the racial ghettos, and warned, “Our nation is moving toward...
There’s the apocryphal Indian story where the swami is asked what holds up the world. When he answers, “A turtle,” the follow-up question becomes, “What’s holding up the turtle?” And the swami’s answer: “It’s turtles all the way down.”
The R...
The most remarkable aspect of the now widely watched video of an “off-the-cuff” Romney, paradoxically enough, was just how unremarkable his recorded comments really were.
Sure, Romney managed to slur as parasitic all those who fe...
Now we will be stuck with him [Obama] for another four years because Mitt the unfit can’t get his shit together.
Anonymous GOP strategist, Capitol Hill Blue, Sep...
You know the quadrennial refrain: Americans are politically “polarized.” Half of us are ranting right-wing Torquemadists, the other half are raving left-wing Jacobins, and by implication the country faces a stark binary choice between those two approaches to g...
The recently deceased Reverend Moon ain’t got ish on American politicians when it comes to mesmerizing the masses. I mean, Moon could only get, what, a million couple to wed, sans courtship, dinners, drinks and kisses, and even without a common language, but an American...
May 1966. Mitt Romney is just finishing his first—and only—year at Stanford. I’m a 32-year-old ex-Strategic Air Command navigator and intelligence officer, now an associate professor in Stanford’s English Department and something of an anti-Vietnam War activis...
We survived eight years under George W. Bush, albeit seriously wounded by his two wars and a destroyed economy that resulted from his martial efforts. This year we watched Mitt Romney buy and maneuver his way into the 2012 Republican presidential candidacy. At the Republi...
Excuse me, not “slaves.” How could I be so callously imprecise? For slavery has long been outlawed. I’d call you simply employees, but seeing how you aren’t likely employees of mine, that too would seem presumptuous. The public relations specialists will fig...
Does anyone remember when National Public Radio was an independent voice?
During the 1980s NPR was continually on the case of the Reagan administration. NPR certainly had a Democratic slant, and a lot of its reporting about the Reagan administration was one-sided. ...
The US financial rot spread, causing a global economic crisis with catastrophic results: no jobs, millions of property owners bankrupt, waning social security. That was five years ago. Now it is quite possible that the next incumbent of the White House may be Willard Mitt...
Tampa and Beyond.
Last week, I was a delegate to the Republican National Convention.
First, two disclaimers: (1) In writing about proceedings in Tampa, I’m speaking for myself, not for my state delegation, state party, or any other group. (2) ...
Even Sinclair Lewis—first American winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1930)—got it right. In ...
Awkwardness seems to be a defining characteristic of the Mitt Romney campaign to be the next United States president and of his China policy, as well as of the candidate himself.
Certainly, Romney does not have an easy row to hoe. A moderate Mormon plutocrat who se...
Tampa.
I’m a delegate to the Republican National Convention.
First, two disclaimers: (1) In writing about proceedings in Tampa, I’m speaking for myself, not for my state delegation, state party, or any other group. (2) Any criticism of Mitt ...
Recent revelations about Mitt Romney’s highly profitable company Bain Capital help connect the dots between offshore tax shelters, shady investors; and the role that ill-gotten gains plays in today’s casino-like finance capital.
Both the Los Angeles Times and H...
GOP presumptive presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as noted in my previous piece, Mitt’s Big Secret, is probably stonewalling demands that he release his 2009 and earlier IRS filings because th...
We cannot remedy the large racial achievement gaps in American education if we continue to close our eyes to the continued racial segregation of schools, owing primarily to the continued segregation of our neighborhoods. We pretend that this segregation is nobody’s ...
If a campaign can self-destruct in an inferno of imbecility, then this must surely provide a good recipe for it. Aiken’s grasp of reality, at least when it comes to those of the opposite gender, is slim, caricatured and severe. Enter then, the disastrous move that r...
When a craven of buffoons and bigots disguised in the bodies of Birthers figured that anyone with dark skin and a foreign name had to be born outside the U.S., Barack Obama provided a birth certificate. Not just the usual “short form,” but a state-certified copy of th...
A lot of theories have been put forward to try and explain why Romney has allowed his campaign to become bedeviled by charges of tax dodging, but what if what he is hiding is felonious tax fraud?
Okay, so he’s taken the legal option of delaying filing his 201...
When we talk about
settling the world’s problems,
we’re barking up the wrong tree.
The world is perfect. It’s a mess.
It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straig...
Gaeta, Italy.
Romney’s choice of the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan, as his running mate mirrors John McCain’s disastrous choice of Sarah Palin four years ago, although Ryan is probably a more able politician. B...
As an American abroad at the London Olympics, Mitt Romney stated on worldwide television that there are “disconcerting” aspects to the current Games. Not quite endearing himself to the Brits, on NBC from London, he criticized the security, the immigration control, a...
“Well, it’s time for Harry to put up or shut up. Harry’s going to have to describe who it is he spoke with because of course, that’s totally and completely wrong.”
...