Just because I find George W. Bush distasteful doesn’t mean I have to either excuse or defend John Kerry. In this age of television, Bush is a guy who seems a lot dumber than he actually is (he got a 1206 score on his SAT — about 100 points more than I did, but then [...]

Any doubts that Barack Obama is not seriously considering a presidential run (on 2008 or later) should now be put to rest. The guy apparently already has a War Room to retaliate against negative publicity. Investigative reporter Ken Silverstein has a piece (in hard copy only) in the November issue of Harper’s detailing some of [...]

Sad to think that the mid-term elections will have come and gone a mere nine days from now. These final days of a national campaign are of an extraordinary nature. A blithely apolitical America becomes intensely, if only temporarily, inflamed with partisan fever and you can actually here snatches of unprompted political debate in a [...]

Here is my just-published review of the political crime fiction novel “The Uncomfortable Dead,” co-authored by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos. (Disclaimer: Paco’s a long-time bud).

Less than two weeks out from the midterms, the political picture here in California continues to look fuzzy for Democrats — at least in the statewide races. Democrat Phil Angelides’ gubernatorial campaign is all but officially over. Someone just has to do the dirtywork of burying the remains. The latest  independent poll shows him down [...]

The Conventional Wisdom on the “progressive” left is that Democrats do better if they run to the left; that the more they speak to the (mostly mythical) “Democratic values,” the more they don’t ape the Republicans, the stronger they will be. I’ve said before that while this theory — like Western Civilization itself– is a [...]

I’m not sure what the problem is here. What’s the problem with Michael J. Fox using his illness for political ends when Rush Limbaugh has built his entire career on publicly displayng his own sickness? In any case, it’s a fair guess that Limbaugh’s outburst has now made a Democratic senate win in Missouri much [...]

“We will restore honor and integrity to the White House.” “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” “Mission Accomplished.” “Freedom is on the march.” “As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” “We will stay the course.”

Marc Cooper on October 22: “Things have turned so undeniably grim in Iraq that even the President is distancing himself from the President — and he’s not even running for re-election!” Maureen Dowd on October 25: “Things have become so dire for the Republicans now even Bush is distancing himself from Bush.” Bill Moyers Once [...]

In a quest to bite into the Latino vote,  President George W. Bush broke open the frozen immigration debate in January 2004 by boldly calling for a guest worker program and comprehensive reform.  Now, after mostly cowardly capitulating to the House fence-builders in his own party, the President (and the GOP in general) is facing [...]

To paraphrase the sitcom jingo I spent much of my youth humming: ” A course is a course, of course of course, and no one can change the course, of course; that is, of course, unless the course is set by the famous Mr. Bush.” Things have turned so undeniably grim in Iraq that even [...]

I’m once again working in a remote, secret location while on assignment. In the meantime, my latest L.A. Weekly column is out and posted. In it I look at the under-the-radar move by the Bushies last week to outlaw Internet gambling. Not a big deal you think? Well, apart from their broader agenda on this [...]

Conditions in Iraq are “doing remarkably well” the Vice-President of the United States said today.  Apparently, the uniformed Iraqi death squads that kidnapped 13 carloads of victims and the AK-47-toting gangs flooding Sunni communities didn’t get the Veep’s message. Someone a whole lot smarter than Dick Cheney, British liberal hawk Norm Geras has some much [...]

Turns out that many of those delegates who last month applauded and cheered Hugo Chavez’ juvenile speech before the UN find him to be more reliable as a lounge act rather than as a diplomat. In the end, they still believe that consensus rather than confrontation is more in the spirit of the UN and [...]

The great Baldemar Huerta, aka Freddy Fender has died at age 69. I’ve been a big fan of Freddy’s since his popular breakthrough in the 1970′s. When I lived in Buenos Aires in 1975-76 I had a total of two LP’s in my pathetic collection: Cream’s Disraeli Gears, and Freddy Fender’s Before the Next Teardrop [...]

Monday’s Washington Post carries a story from Baghdad that makes the blood run cold. Indeed, it’s rather numbing to see how many hair-raising lines of info can be crammed into just one report. “Militias allied with Iraq’s Shiite-led government roamed roads north of Baghdad, seeking out and attacking Sunni Arab targets Sunday, police and hospital [...]

That tree you didn’t hear fall in the forest today was Air America, finally declaring bankruptcy. You can read the court filing here. The failing network says it’s going to stay on the air while it goes through “reorganization.” My bet, and that of my friends who actually understand the world of radio, is that [...]

The 2008 presidential race just got a whole lot better. Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner has just formally withdrawn — long before 95 out of 100 Americans ever noticed we was running. Warner bought himself center-stage at last spring’s DailyKos convention, springing for a $75,000 top-of-the-Stratosphere party in which he delicately dipped hundreds of otherwise [...]

The new study compiled by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimating Iraqi civilian war deaths at 655,000 couldn’t possibly be credible. “I don’t consider it a credible report,” said George W. Bush. And if there’s ever an expert on things not credible it is certainly Mr. Bush. Especially when it comes to [...]

When you run for President you have to make a lot of compromises. No one escapes that logic, at least no one who intends to actually win. But John McCain has gone way way too far as of late. I’ve never been squeamish in confessing a certain admiration for him. I made no illusions about [...]