Alexander Cockburn from Creators Syndicate

Obama's Biden Problem for 07/17/2009

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Despite our high expectations, Vice President Joe Biden's first months in office were disappointing. This, remember, is the man who opened the more recent of his two futile runs for the presidency by saying of Obama that he was "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Yes, I mean that ...

Updated: Fri Jul 17, 2009

And You Think Sarah Palin Spouts Nonsense? for 07/24/2009

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Let me be clear," says Obama, and, as with George Bush's rapid eye movements when he was telling a lie, you know the 44th president is on the brink of some absurdity.

"Now let me be clear," he told the Russians on his recent trip. "America will not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which party or individ ...

Updated: Fri Jul 24, 2009

"A Damned Murder Inc." for 07/31/2009

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Some time in early or mid-1949, a CIA officer named Bill (his surname is blacked out in the file, which was surfaced by John Kelly in the early 1990s) asked an outside contractor for input on how to kill people. Requirements included the appearance of an accidental or purely fortuitous terminal experience suffered by the Agency's victim.

Bill's friend — internal evidence suggests h ...

Updated: Fri Jul 31, 2009

The Biden and Clinton Mutinies for 08/07/2009

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Time bombs tossed seemingly casually in the past month by his vice president and his secretary of state disclose President Obama, in the dawn of his first term, already the target of carefully meditated onslaughts by senior members of his own cabinet.

At the superficial level, Obama is presiding over an undisciplined administration; on a more realistic and sinister construction, he is fa ...

Updated: Fri Aug 07, 2009

Progressive Illusions for 08/14/2009

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

White America is never more vividly and comically racist than when trying to excuse impromptu racist utterance or deny the racism of American society, which is manifest in every number, every graph and scatter plot in the annual Statistical Abstract of the United States.

It was a former governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, regarded as an impeccable progressive in matters of race, ...

Updated: Fri Aug 14, 2009

The Right Wing's Prince of Gonzo for 08/21/2009

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The "Prince of Darkness" — aka Robert Novak — who died this week of a brain tumor, was the Hunter Thompson of the right, albeit with predictable differences. Thompson, like Rimbaud, espoused a total disordering of all the senses — with materials as varied as ayahuasca, LSD, cocaine and tequila whereas Novak stuck to booze. Thompson blew his brains out, whereas Novak ...

Updated: Fri Aug 21, 2009

Health Plans and Death Plans for 08/21/2009

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Medicine is nothing but a social science. Politics is nothing but medicine on a large scale." — Rudolf Virchow, reflecting on the revolutions of 1848 in Europe.

The first illusion to chase off the stage is that the great debate here has had much to do with health. So far, as public health is concerned, many of the biggest battles were fought and won a hundred years ago, ...

Updated: Fri Aug 21, 2009

Hollow Champion for 08/28/2009

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Teddy Kennedy's disasters were vivid. His legislative triumphs, draped in this week's obituaries with respectful homage, were far less colorful but they were actually devastating for the very constituencies — working people, organized labor — whose champion he claimed to be.

He had the most famous car accident in political history when he drove off a wooden bridge on Chappaqu ...

Updated: Fri Aug 28, 2009

Obama's Last Chance for 09/04/2009

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Back to town comes Barack Obama, to plummeting polls and sour columns rolling his presidency into the hearse. The memory doesn't offer much comfort, but the previous two Democratic presidents endured similar re-entrees to the nation's capital.

When Bill Clinton returned from his outing to Martha's Vineyard in the late summer of 1993, the collapse of his administration was already three m ...

Updated: Fri Sep 04, 2009

Obama's Big Speech: Math Trumps Rhetoric for 09/11/2009

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

If Barack Obama had delivered Wednesday night's speech to Congress three months ago, by now he might well be signing health reform into law. Ted Kennedy would have alive to supply the crucial senate vote that put the Democrats over the top.

But three months ago, Obama and his advisers were eager to avoid the debacle suffered by Hillary Clinton's health plan, which, after months of secrec ...

Updated: Fri Sep 11, 2009

Welcome to the National Asylum for 09/18/2009

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Was there ever a society so saturated with lunacy as ours? One expects modulated nuttiness from the better element, particularly those inhabiting the corporate and legislative spheres, but these days, insanity is pervasive, spreading through all classes and walks of life. For years, we have been treated to pinstriped fugitives from the asylum like Pete Peterson urging the nation into ruin by sl ...

Updated: Fri Sep 18, 2009

Insanity Trumps Common Sense in Afghan Policy Fight for 09/25/2009

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The ripest moment of absurdity last week was the spectacle of Pentagon officials berating The Washington Post for publishing the supposedly confidential assessment of the situation in Afghanistan, prepared by General Stanley McChrystal, America's Man in Charge of that doomed adventure.

The Pentagon asked the Post to cut certain passages on the ground that they would compromise national s ...

Updated: Fri Sep 25, 2009

The Booster for 10/02/2009

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Obama is by nature a booster — like the first stage of the missile lofting its payload into the upper atmosphere. A huge bang, a mighty whoosh and then a few miles up, a fizzle as the Obama-booster burns out and drops back to earth. Who knows what happened to the payload? He doesn't seem to have much stamina or even strategy for getting useful things done. No wonder he leaped on the " ...

Updated: Fri Oct 02, 2009

War and (Nobel) Peace for 10/09/2009

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

I suppose we should not begrudge Barack Obama his Nobel Peace Prize, though it represents a radical break in tradition, since he's only had slightly less than nine months to discharge his imperial duties, most concretely through the agency of high explosives in the Hindukush whereas laureates like Henry Kissinger had been diligently slaughtering people across the world for years.

Woodrow ...

Updated: Fri Oct 09, 2009

A Gift from the Ramparts of Capital… for 10/16/2009

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Of the four U.S. presidents who have been given a Nobel Prize — Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama — the one who's shown the cleanest pair of heels when it comes to escaping the world's guffaws for the absurdity of the award is Jimmy Carter.

It's easy to throw mud at TR. The excuse for his prize, awarded in 1906, was his role in ending the Russo-Ja ...

Updated: Fri Oct 16, 2009

All the Populism Money Can Buy for 10/23/2009

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Across the country last weekend, there were antiwar demonstrations, modest in turnout, but hopefully a warning to Obama that war without end or reason in Afghanistan, plus 40,000 more troops to Kabul, is not why people voted for him.

I spoke at our own little rally in my local town of Eureka, Calif. My neighbor Ellen Taylor decided to spice up the proceedings by having a guillotin ...

Updated: Fri Oct 23, 2009

The Right To Remain Naked? for 10/30/2009

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Just how funny was that story of the man in Fairfax County, Va., who got up early on Monday morning, Oct. 19, walked naked into his own kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee? The next significant thing that happed to 29-year-old Eric Williamson is the local cops arriving to charge him with indecent exposure. It turns out that while he was brewing the coffee, a mother was taking her 7-year-old ...

Updated: Fri Oct 30, 2009

Blow-Up for 11/06/2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

If Jonathan Swift traveled to the United States today, he would surely ditch the little guys, the big guys and the horses and just feature Gulliver being squashed flat by enormously fat people.

I suppose I first noticed how fat Americans were getting about a decade ago. Along supermarket aisles, you'd see the odd whale unhappily chugging along on a mini-kart, pulling fat-enhancers off th ...

Updated: Fri Nov 06, 2009

A Year of Obama for 11/13/2009

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

A year after Obama's triumphant election, hauling substantial majorities in the House and Senate on his coattails, the progressive sector sits trying to warm its hands before the bonfire of all its hopes. An awful "health reform" bill has cleared the House and is now headed for marriage with some even more ghastly Senate version from which we may be saved only by a filibustering Liebe ...

Updated: Fri Nov 13, 2009

It's Show Trial Time! for 11/20/2009

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

You can't please all of the people all of the time, but President Obama and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, have got nearer than most to pulling it off. A week ago, Holder announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators will soon go on trial in federal court in New York for planning the attacks of September 11, 2001. After a week's uproar, it's fair to conclude that th ...

Updated: Fri Nov 20, 2009