The above is a well-translated clip of a Chilean television report from earlier on Sunday. It’s shot in the quake-stricken city of Concepcion as a local supermarket was being looted.  I saw the rest of the report on a live stream, which does not appear here and there is a lot missing. In that part [...]

Since the moment the monster quake hit in Chile I sort of self-appointed myself as a translator/aggregator for Chile-related Twitter activity.  You can find my long list of tweets here. I’m a former translator to Chilean president Salvador Allende and have been married into a Chilean family for 36 years so it’s a place I [...]

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I watched and listened enough to today’s heath care “summit” to conclude who won the prize as A-hole of the day. And the answer is the smarmy House Republican Whip Eric Cantor. Here he is at what is supposed to be bi-partisan round table during which one is supposed to at least pretend to want [...]

Every morning I awake excited and enthusiastic to work with young journalists at USC. I am not among the hand-wringers who fret over the future of public information. Indeed, count me among those who literally can’t wait for the Old to be replaced by the New. We will lose nothing and gain much. I had [...]

Continuing with the poker analogy I used in last night’s posting, we now know the hand that Barack Obama is holding, It’s not Pocket Rockets but it’s the next best thing. The plan the  Obama White House  unveiled today is far from bullet-proof, it is not perfection by any means, but it is, in fact, [...]

I pretty much agree with the always insightful E.J. Dionne that this week and what comes or doesn’t come out of the Thursday health care summit is make or break time for the next three years of our political life.  If the Democrats and Obama don’t bust up the furniture and roll over the Republican [...]

I guess I could have written about the freak show this past week at the CPAC conference, but I imagine you all got your fill without me.  I do think this coming week is more or less D-Day for national health care and I will be blogging about this fairly intensely.  It’ sort of the [...]

First things first: I’ve updated my latest post on my Repoter War Stories blog and have finally gotten to my meeting Idi Amin and getting strafed by the Israelis. Read it or Idi will eat you. Now, on to the real news. One year after its passage, today is the Official Let’s Pretend to Debate [...]

I was sad to hear that the Great Evan Bayh was waiting until his term was over in order to retire from the U.S. Senate.  Couldn’t he do us all a favor and just get the fug out of Dodge, like, tomorrow? The unmitigated gall of the original Nowhere Man to whine and moan that [...]

As soon some real politics resumes in this country, hopefully, in the next day or so, I will resume regular posting here. Meanwhile, as threatened a few weeks ago, I’ve started a separate blog where I’m doing nothing except collecting all the war stories I lived through during more than 35 years as a reporter. [...]

What is it with John McCain? He can’t run for Prez again. He already made a fool of himself once by picking Palin as V.P Is he really just out of it? Or is he simply scared of a primary challenge from winger J.D. Hayworth? How else to explain this?

I’m not sure where this picture was taken. It looks a lot like Panama City or Rio De Janeiro. But it could just as well be Chicago or Los Angeles. I have been quite critical of the way the Obama administration has handled the economic crisis. Mostly in its insufficient response. But responding poorly to [...]

Hey!  Does somebody out there want to interpret the sum-up of this  latest Washington  Post poll? A new Washington Post-ABC News poll suggests that the public is frustrated by the bickering and recriminations. According to the survey, 57 percent of Americans consider the loss of the Senate Democrats’ filibuster-proof supermajority a “good thing,” but few [...]

I’m too busy editing other folks’ material right now to be posting much if my own. Luckily my students have been producing such great copy, all I have to do is repost it. Here is a truly great piece by reporter Hillel Aron on Yosi Sergant, the former NEA Communications Director and top Obama Hipster [...]

One of the editorialists for our USC-based Neon Tommy has written a zinger about Comandante Chavez‘ bass-ackwards view of the Web. You know you are in trouble when a “people’s government” is afraid of the people Tweeting. Read it here.

All of a sudden it has become fashionable for worried liberals to start pandering to the Tea Party fringies, saying how their anger and frustration is understandable and rational.  Please count me OUT of that absurd trend. The Washington Post wrote a “news story” that is little but a thinly-veiled press release for the National [...]

Without further comment:

An Open Letter to Our Fellow Americans 460 tweets TOP1K retweet ShareThis February 3, 2010 We live in a world that increasingly demands more dialogue than monologue. President Obama’s January 29th question-and-answer session with Republican leaders gave the public a remarkable window into the state of our union and governing process. It was riveting and [...]

No poofters among this sweaty bunch of fierce, manly soldiers. That much you can bank on.  At least none that were public. You know than men never had sex with men in the year 1356. A comforting thought we’ve made zero progress on that front in, say, the last 7-800 years. And if such Real [...]