My rapid response to the first presidential debate:
It was once said of George W. Bush that watching him get through a debate is like watching [...]

My comprehensive 7300 word-long feature piece on the California Indian Gambling industry is now posted at L.A. Weekly. Please take a look at the whole piece.
I cover the three-way battle now underway to control the expansion of California's Indian casinos that — in terms of revenue"�will surpass Nevada by the end of this decade. [...]

American soldiers are now dying in Iraq so that country can get to elections in January. But no one wants to ask what those elections will achieve, if anything. Time to talk about that, I think.
New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks argues today that the 1982 election in El Salvador organized by the [...]

Hardly a day goes by when some or another lefty email blast clogging up my Inbox doesn't denounce, revile, indict, or curse Christopher Hitchens.
I got tired of this ritual a long time ago. Not only because I count Christopher as a friend. But also because I admire his intelligence and talent — even while [...]

The former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was formally interrogated on Saturday about his role in the disappearance of twenty among more than a thousand victims who vanished in the hands of his security forces.
The half-hour session took place in Pinochet's mansion and was conducted by the courageous Chilean investigative magistrate, Juan Guzman. I had [...]

Millions of words are being spewed and spent on the current presidential election. But over a luncheon today at USC, former New Yorker staff writer and prolific author Lawrence Weschler neatly summed up the whole affair in one nifty paragraph. I wasn't taking notes, but paraphrasing very closely this is what he said:
We're currently conducting [...]

Photo: 1966. Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky Reassures LBJ: "Don't Worry. Be Happy!"
What a fool I've been. I thought we were spending $200 billion and investing untold number of American lives to help bolster the Iraqi government. But apparently I had it wrong. Turns out to be the other way around. The Iraqi government is [...]

Did anyone notice what George W. Bush mumbled yesterday when he was asked
about a National Intelligence Estimate (read CIA) n July that said the best to be expected in Iraq was a tenuous stability and that the country might descend into civil war?
Bush's dumbfounding answer:
"The CIA laid out several scenarios that said life could [...]

Sometime Tuesday evening we hit a milestone on this blog when we crossed the mark of 250,000 total visitors since we started up a little less than six months ago.
During that first month of April there were sometimes as few as 50 or 75 visits per day.
That figure built quickly. It was boosted by some [...]

Six weeks out from the election, finally, John Kerry moved aggressively toward defining his position on Iraq in a major address he gave today at NYU. He blasted the Bush administration for what he called its "colossal failures of judgement." That's obvious, isn't it?
Now, if only Kerry could delay the election until the [...]

Take a look at the text below in italics. These are excerpts from a new column just written by"� well"� you guess. Is it Howard Dean? Jesse Jackson? One thing for sure, we know it's not John Kerry:

When Baghdad fell, Gen. John Abizaid estimated the number of enemy insurgents at about 5,000. After a [...]

I'll keep this short. It's far too beautiful a day to dwell on things that set my teeth chattering -- like Naomi Klein.
But alas, Klein -- who has been a respected luminary among a young generation of dissidents-- now seems to be headed defintively around the bend.
After her piece of a few weeks ago flakking [...]

The conventional wisdom is that we're in the home stretch of the election. To me it feels more and more like the Twilight Zone.
Sorry to pummel this dead and decaying horse, but the Kerry campaign now has a new message every day, meaning no message at all. Today, it was all about Halliburton.
Give [...]

Finally an incisive piece on why the Bush National Guard story is a net loser for the Democrats. A veteran contrarian lefty, writer Doug Ireland skewers the DNC for being dumb enough to actually invest in the campaign to "prove"� that Bush"� that Bush.. um"�what? Got into the National Guard thanks to Poppy? And then [...]

The real winner of the coming election in November -- either way-- will be the top drawer corporate donors that underwrite both major political parties.
John Kerry may be a Brahmin windsurfer married to a billionaire. And GW Bush was certainly born into one of the most powerful families in America. But the real elites [...]

Looks like the war in Iraq is finally turning a corner.
Against us, that is.
"It is beginning to look like, and feel like, civil war"� says Guardian Baghdad correspondent Luke Harding.
Indeed. As I write, 70% of Iraq remains plunged in darkness. Fiery attacks on a national oil pipeline earlier today melted high-tension [...]

Just what the Democrats needed in this dire moment. Who comes along to save them and drive the ultimate stake into the heart of George W. Bush other than:
G-R-AY-D-O-N C-A-R-T-E-R!!!
Or for those more in the know, Graydon Fucking Carter. I just saw him on MSNBC pitching his new anti-Bush book (the [...]

I refused to get drawn into the "debate" over Bush's National Guard records. I just don't care. This election campaign continues to be about nothing. And this records stuff is a whole lot more about that nothingness.
We ought to talking about, say, today's gruesome body count of 80 or more dead coming out of [...]

That didn't take long, now, did it? On Friday the Washington Post carried a high-profile piece openly suggesting that it's time to stick a fork in the Kerry campaign. And in Sunday's New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd follows suit. Both pieces single out Shrummie — Kerry confidante, veteran consultant, campaign profiteer and [...]

Some scenes from Santiago, Chile September 11, 1973.
Photos:
-- The presidential palace in flames in downtown Santiago is where I had my office on that morning.
-- The man in the helmet, President Salvador Allende, was my boss. He killed himself a few hours after this picture was taken.
--The four men seated around the table [...]