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HOW MITT ROMNEY DODGED THE DRAFT — H. Bruce Franklin remembers Romney from his Stanford days and lays out exactly how he and his father ensured he would evade service in the war which, at Stanford, he was demonstrating for. Andrew Cockburn gives CounterPunchers a compelling investigation of the rise of automated warfare and of the Drones, their vast costs and constant failures. Wei Zhang assesses the social and health costs of China’s incredible GDP growth.
Archives by Tag 'Obama'
Barack Obama is coming to the town where I live. Like most other towns he will visit this election year, the state this town is in voted for Mr. Obama in 2008. It is a state full of Democrats and liberals. Many of those Democ...
Ezra Klein, the bright, young, economic policy columnist for the “Washington Post” believes that Obama came out ahead last year in the “administration’s bitter, high-stakes negotiations with the Republicans in Congress.”
He cites four ...
At this time of year it is not uncommon to become wistful and look back at the time that has passed, but oddly enough, I find myself becoming nostalgic for the time of the last Bush administration. I remember it as a time when people still expressed opposition to a regime...
The arguments for attacking Iran are crazy, like those for attacking Iraq in response to 9-11. But that does not mean such an attack by the American and/or the Israelis will not occur.
Indeed, I think the political pressure for such an attack is increasing. My ...
Ten years ago in America, War Party fervor was on the rise, the media was in tow, and many a liberal was on board. Thus began the Bush-Cheney era, one of the darkest moments in American history. Those years seem like only yesterday, probably because on matters of subs...
It’s not too cool to be ridiculed
But you brought this upon yourself
The world is tired of pacifiers
We want the truth and nothing else
And we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right f...
Anyone who writes about the economy or politics will tell you that the chances of getting a 100 percent “positive” reaction to an article is virtually zilch. It just never happens.
Until now. Of the 50-plus e mails I’ve gotten since yesterday when...
I don’t like mixing politics with morality, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. What I mean is this: how can anyone cast a ballot for a man who they know will continue to kill people in other countries merely to advance US policy objectives? That’s the quest...
For the last decade, I have been haunted by voices from the other side of death. In this way, back in 2003 I transcribed ...
“Change We Can Believe In.” Those fine words fooled a lot of people in 2008. Now they stick in the craw even of Obama apologists for whom all the hopes dashed over the past three years are the fault of Tea Party-Republican obstructionists. Expect to hear a billi...
It was just three short years ago when much of the United States, and the rest of the world, thrilled to the idea of the ‘audacity of hope’ and ‘change we can believe in.’ After eight disastrous years of President George Bush, years of escalating poverty, war, fea...
Veterans for Peace (VFP), a progressive organization if ever there was one, took the courageous step of voting for the “impeachment of President Barack H. Obama for war crimes” at its annual national convention in Portland Oregon in August. The resolution, which cal...
The White House that shook in last Tuesday’s earthquake has been home to its present incumbent for 32 months. Obama wasn’t around to watch the furniture shake. He’s up on Martha’s Vineyard for the third year in a row, with Michelle and their two daughters, bunkere...
Philip Levine has just been named the new U.S. Poet Laureate. How should we interpret that? Did President Obama, who’s been a profound disappointment to organized labor, believe he could partially redeem himself in labor’s eyes by naming Levine, long celebrated as...
In 2009, my son went to Washington, DC. He was among hundreds of thousands swept to excitement by an unprecedented moment. I discouraged—didn’t want him on the road. Probably, had I been his age, 22, I’d have driven all night, too. It was one hell of a party...
THE FABLE OF OBAMA AND THE SAND
We are trekking through the Sahara at noon, canteens empty, dying of thirst. The Republicans cry: look! Look at the beautiful lake! We’re saved! Let’s kneel down and drink our fill! The scouts report: sadly, it’s a ...
It is hard to believe but just a few years ago one could still say the words “audacity of hope” without irony. That has become impossible now that the author of those words has become the world’s foremost destroyer of hope. But even in a context w...
President Obama’s speech violated one of his most important campaign promises: to “end the mind-set that leads to war.”
To the contrary, his announcement of a token shift of 10,000 soldiers leaving by the end of 2011,...
When Obama came into power, there were roughly 35,000 American troops in Afghanistan. Within two years, he tripled that number. Now, Obama announces that 10,000 soldiers will come home by the end of 2011, and 33,000 by the end of next summer. He surges twic...
In the seven weeks since the killing of Osama bin Laden, pundits and experts of many stripes have concluded that his death represents a marker of genuine significance in the story of America’s encounter with terrorism. Peter Bergen, a bin Laden exper...
The meticulous Harvard Law Review editors should be rolling over in their footnotes. The recidivist violations of constitutional and statutory requirements by their celebrated predecessor at that journal ? Barack Obama has reached Orwellian dimensions in th...
This month marks the 44th anniversary of the Six-Day War between Israel and the bordering states of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. It was this conflict in June of 1967 which has shaped Arab-Israeli relations ever since, primarily because of Israel’s continue...
During Barack Obama’s presidency, we’ve witnessed a convergence of paths, a union of pathologies. Obama is Bush. Bush is Obama. One could have been fashioned from the other’s rib. Mission position accomplished. Mission expanded.
...
The arguments made to “legalize” war, torture, warrantless spying, and other crimes by John Yoo and Jay Bybee and their gang are looking rational, well-reasoned, and impeccably researched in comparison with Obama’s latest “legalizati...
Cleverly, the Washington establishment seeks to reorder events so that it can take credit for things it did not do and pass on the blame for things it did do. President Barack Obama not only wants to share the Arab Spring’s glory but, with the Group o...