Politics

Dick Cheney, Pitcher of Warm Spit

In my house, last night's vice presidential debate lost out to the latest episode of The Wire after an hour. The event had about as much chance of influencing voters as the position papers on each candidate's Web site. You'd have to be a political junkie like me to watch the veepstakes, and people who mainline elections already know who we're voting for.I do, however, give Cheney a slight nod as the winner. He radiates battle-tested authority and experience, making it hard to lay a glove on him ... (read more)

2004/10/06

No Debate Over Who Won

I almost skipped Thursday's presidential debate, expecting that Bush would be viewed as the winner regardless of what happened onstage in Miami. In any event where extemporaneous thinking is required, Bush benefits from the soft bigotry of low expectations -- one right-wing blogger declared him the winner because he referred to so many foreign leaders by name and got all of them correct.Combine that with the relentless GOP spin machine and distrust of intellectualism among many voters, and ... (read more)

2004/10/02

Swift Boat Veterans for Slander

In a history of political dirty tricks, Dick Meyer of CBS News reveals something new about the infamous Willie Horton ad from the 1988 Bush/Dukakis race: Historical footnote: Horton actually went by William, not Willie, and is referred as William in all legal documents; the ad makers thought Willie sounded scarier and blacker. A 1992 essay by Kathleen Hall Jamieson provides additional background on the name switch: ... his given name is William, he calls himself William, court records cite him ... (read more)

2004/08/27

Rally the Faithful, Annoy Everyone Else

With 85 days to go until Election Day, two odd stories from the campaign trail: In Davenport, Iowa, President Bush bought ears of raw corn and took a bite out of one, telling a reporter that "it's really good." After witnessing this culinary oddness, a Reuters reporter asked for a reaction from an expert who majored in corn: Raw corn is typically fed to livestock, but Irvin Anderson, a professor of corn physiology and biochemistry at Iowa State University, said some people liked it raw. "Most ... (read more)

2004/08/10

Bush's Taxing Day in Ohio

Energized by the Democratic National Convention, I'm going to spend more time following the frenetic presidential campaigns during the last days of the race (93 and counting). During a stop in Canton, Ohio, on Saturday, one of the swing states hit hardest by the sour economy, President Bush tried to cast doubt on Kerry's plan to roll back the tax cuts for Americans earning over $200,000 to invest in health care, education, and job creation: "He said he's only going to raise taxes on the ... (read more)

2004/08/01

On PalestineChronicle.Com, Editor Ramzy Baroud takes heart in world-wide anti-war demonstrations, quoting Chomsky: "There's never been a time that I can think of when there's been such massive opposition to a war before it was even started." ... (read more)

2003/02/19

Brendan Steinhauser, a University of Texas at Austin student journalist, calls Chomsky a seditious, deceitful "ayatollah of anti-American hate" in an article for David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine: About a thousand or so radical students appeared to be in an almost hypnotic state as they listened to Chomsky's anti-American statements. ... [H]e seems to be advocating "direct action" to bring about a radical change in the nature of the U.S. system of government. Many young people certainly ... (read more)

2003/02/19