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September 4, 2010
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Featured Reports
AP / Mark Lennihan

Waking Up in the 1930s

In the year 2010, America once again embraced the bread line, and the neatly dressed, solidly middle class folk who queue up are just becoming reconciled to a stark new reality.
Featured Reports
AP / Altaf Qadri

More Mao Than Thou: What the Hell Is Happening in Nepal?

Nepal's dysfunctional politics reflects the deep antagonism between the Maoists, Leninists, Marxists and socialists who are all fighting for control.
Featured Reports
AP / Karim Kadim

Two Wars Don’t Make a Right

President Obama’s attempt to put the best face on the ignominious U.S. occupation of Iraq will not hide what he and the rest of the world well know.
 
A/V Booth

Is it all over for Obama or can he revive and ride his ’08 caravan of hope through the upcoming midterm election, not to mention his next presidential bid? Does anyone still think invading Iraq wasn’t a mistake, now that our combat troops have “withdrawn”?

The Truthdig columnist begins this speech to the Veterans for Peace convention by saying, “Physical courage is something you see on a battlefield. Moral courage you almost never see.”

Certain of his less charitable constituents may have referred to him as “Borin’ Orrin” in the past, but longtime Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch has done something pretty interesting in relation to the Park 51 Muslim community center ...

 
Arts and Culture

Developing an appreciation for jazz is partly a matter of understanding how it is influenced by other forces of life, as this review of a new book by Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux notes, and how the music plays—and breaks—with form.


American servicemen and -women stationed on U.S. Army and Air Force bases around the world won’t have the option of playing one video game in particular, Electronic Arts’ “Medal of Honor,” because it gives players the option of ... (continued)


A man holding three hostages at the Silver Spring, Md., headquarters of the Discovery Channel
was shot to death by police Wednesday. The gunman ... (continued)

 
Digs

The Questions Education Reformers Aren’t Asking

Mike Rose notes that no one in power is asking fundamental questions about the purpose of education and whether much-hyped reforms might do more harm than good.

 
 
Reports

In the year 2010, America once again embraced the bread line, and the neatly dressed, solidly middle class, once working folk who queue up are just becoming reconciled to a stark new reality.


After we were told seven years ago that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” you might think the press would question the government’s martial stagecraft.

Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they’re ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans—for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt.

Indulge me, please, while I rant about my new least favorite word: shed. Not as in dog hair. As in jobs. As in, “The economy shed (fill in the blank) jobs last month.”


Nepal’s parliament will attempt to elect a prime minister, the sixth try in almost three months. The impasse reflects the deep antagonism between the Maoists, Leninists, Marxists and socialists who are all fighting for control.

There is no serious reason to consider direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority anything other than a political pantomime, although believers—if such remain—may pray for a miracle.


By insisting Tuesday evening that “it’s time to turn the page,” President Obama was talking about more than the Iraq War, and doing much more than reviving one of his most effective slogans from the 2008 campaign.


The carnage is not yet complete, and President Barack Obama’s attempt to put the best face on the ignominious U.S. occupation of Iraq will not hide what he and the rest of the world well know.


Once he tasted the realities of political life, Thomas Jefferson had harsh words for the free press. What would he have made of the irresponsible, shoddy, pernicious zeal that passes for news today?

 
Ear to the Ground

Soaring bread prices have sparked riots around Mozambique’s capital city of Maputo, but worse still is the fact that police killed at least six people and used live ammunition because—wait for it—they “ran out of rubber bullets.”

Gulf oil spill

New estimates of the cost of the BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico have jumped to a staggering $8 billion, up $2 billion in August alone as the company announced it had already paid out almost $400 million in claims to individuals affected by the spill.


Adding to the more than 28,000 people who have already died in Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s nearly 4-year-old war on drugs, 27 suspected drug cartel gunmen have been killed by the Mexican army in the border state of Tamaulipas after a suspected Zeta drug ring training camp was spotted from the air.


It turns out that maybe being young and liberal isn’t necessarily in our blood after all. Despite historical trends that peg young people as Democrats, a new Pew Research survey suggests that recent economic woes have led fewer 18- to 29-year-olds to identify themselves as Democrats.


Today on the list: the sound and fury of Sarah Palin, Abraham Lincoln’s gay tendencies and Jan Brewer’s WTF debate.


The mood in Washington on Thursday, the first day of revived peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, was decidedly optimistic, with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ...


To all pundits, politicians and journalists who got everything wrong about the Iraq War, fear not. You may have no credibility, but Fox News is your refuge and your benefactor. As Media Matters documents, the propaganda network has only added to its collection of mendacious war boosters since helping to launch the Iraq disaster.

 
 
 

 
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A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
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