Some Democrats are crowing about the fiscal cliff outcome, and criticizing Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner for not having control of his party. Yesterday, many bloggers and political pundits cast President Obama as the clear winner in the fiscal cliff showdown. But as Obama signed the new tax bill into law yesterday morning, […]
President Obama
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‘Cliff’ notes
Hold your nose and close your eyes: it looks like we’re going over the fiscal cliff. But the fight Congress is having with President Obama is a bit of a short-term distraction. The deals being discussed in Washington will do little to address the country’s real long-term economic crisis: rebuilding the US work force. Almost […]
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Petraeus scandal may pull covers off the effects of war
Fresh off his re-election, President Obama will be holding a press conference later today. Presumably he’ll want to talk about his looming battle with Congress over avoiding the fiscal cliff. But the first questions the White House press will almost certainly ask will concern the sex scandal involving his top CIA and military brass. The […]
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Racism regenerates
When President Obama was elected, millions of Americans wondered whether the country’s long history of racial turbulence was finally over. But many people, particularly some well-known African-American leaders, were quick to say: It’s a nice thought, but don’t count on it. And it seems they were right. A solid majority of Americans outwardly express prejudice […]
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War with Iran and election hype
It was a little hard to tell whether Mitt Romney was confident or confused in the foreign policy debate on Monday night. We saw the difference between a candidate’s campaign jabber and the knowledge of an experienced president. Side by side, one rings hollow and the other authentic. Romney’s eagerness to pump up Pentagon spending […]
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Truth takes an election holiday
Watching the 2012 presidential election unfold, Jack Nicholson’s great scene as Colonial Nathan Jessep in the film “A Few Good Men” comes to mind. “You can’t handle the truth,” Jessep snarls when he’s pressed about the murder of a young cadet. Something has happened to truth in this election. Is truth’s troubling absence due to […]
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Jobs conspiracy: a new low
One of the most perplexing things about this election season has been trying to understand why some conservatives have such utter contempt for President Obama. The hatred has been there from the beginning, woven with threads of controversy and thinly veiled bigotry. There was the criticism over receiving the Nobel Prize, the birth certificate controversy, […]
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Next debate, press for answers
Governor Mitt Romney’s debate performance last night has probably reenergized his campaign and given conservatives something to crow about after a month of mostly bad news. And President Obama, who often seemed intent on being restrained, is the purported loser in the first presidential debate, according to early polls. But Republicans shouldn’t get too cocky […]
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Romney trailing
Gov. Romney sold himself as the Mr. Fix It president. He was going to right all of President Obama’s many wrongs, starting with the Affordable Care Act. Now he’s scrambling to fix his own campaign by attempting to shift attention away from his comments about 47 percent of Americans not paying income taxes and viewing […]
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Romney cuts himself with his own axe
Mitt Romney may have at last made errors that he can’t overcome, even with the help of a highly financed ad campaign. The more he talks, the more he reveals that he is stunningly uninformed. Today he’s trying to deal with a video, obtained by Mother Jones Magazine, of a talk to wealthy Republican donors. […]
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Romney’s bow to the far right isn’t working
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s long and illustrious political star plummeted when the Brits rightly opposed being dragged into President George W. Bush’s Iraq War. The British tabloids began referring to Blair as W’s poodle. It wasn’t the same kind of puppetry we saw with former Russian President Medvedev and Putin, but it was […]
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Arab spring may be Romney’s fall
The bloody events in Libya on Monday night are another reminder, as if one is ever needed, of how volatile that part of the world remains. It’s also a stark reminder of how quickly the political fortunes of Western leaders can change in that neck of the woods when things go wrong. President Obama now […]
