This article on the politics of the debt crisis in Politico tells you everything that is wrong, everything that is blind, everything that is STUPID about conventional Beltway reporting. Glenn Thrush is no dummy and there is some authentically good reporting here. And at least one of the premises of the piece should be admired: [...]

To those of you who have inquired… I am still here.  Just swamped with a summer project and some other stuff.  Health is fine. Spirits are high. Life is good.  Will be back blogging sometime in a week or two.  Thanks to all who have asked.

This was inevitable, at least to those who were not living in denial.  So Anthony Weiner was sending out explicit pix of his weenie to women who were NOT asking to see the member’s member. And this while his wife is pregnant. Any of you who argued that his “personal life” doesn’t matter now ready [...]

Looks like the Anthony Weiner show has aroused me from my blog slumber. Thanks, Tony! Look, I don’t this think has much to do in any sense with the greater good of the nation. And I have no idea whatsoever to what degree Weiner is emotionally unstable.  Maybe he’s just a bit randy and careless. [...]

If my memory serves me right it was just about a year and half ago that the Chattering Class ruled Scott Btown’s victory as proof-positive that the tide was turning against the Obama administration and that Republicans were resurgent. The Tea Party was brewing and bubbling and Brown presaged a “correction” after the 2008 Democratic [...]

[caption id="attachment_4956" align="alignleft" width="650" caption="Allende's corpse. September 11, 1973."][/caption] Almost 40 years after his death, the body of former Chilean President Salvador Allende was exhumed today under judicial order of a new forensic investigation.  What scant coverage of this event exists mostly misses the point. This is NOT primarily about determining whether he was killed [...]

What do you see as the most pressing problem in the inner city today? The parenting problem. A lot of minorities have such a problem with the single-parent situation. The parents are the single most important influence on a child, followed by education and the peer group. The number of single parents in the U.S. [...]

Poor Mr. Strauss-Kahn.  The dirty old man who has been heading up the IMF seems to have gotten his dongle caught in a wringer and instead of being the next President of France he seems headed for being the plate du jour in some New York state pen. There’s much one can say about the [...]

I wasn’t sure if I was having an nightmare or was just suffering a hangover from some discouraging poker play late Saturday night, but I awoke Sunday morn to see a zombie actually talking on network TV! There was newly announced presidential candidate Newt Gingrich yammering away on Meet The Press (as if he had [...]

President Obama offered up a campaign-style impassioned speech Tuesday in El Paso demanding comprehensive immigration reform. Too bad it’s an empty promise. To paraphrase the president’s recent remarks on a different subject, anybody who really believes there’s going to be any meaningful reform in the near future “needs their head examined.” There is going to [...]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy I very much enjoyed Lawrence O’Donnell’s ditty tonight on Cuba (see video above). He pointed out an amusing parallel between the Island and the Empire. Something both countries have in common. Even as Cuba moves toward more and more capitalist measures, Raul Castro [...]

I was sort of waiting for this. Noam Chomsky coming out in public to declare that Osama Bin Laden was an “unarmed victim” and, better, to strongly suggest he just might also be innocent i.e. that he’s just bullshitting when he claims credit for the Al Qaeda attacks. Chomsky argues: In April 2002, the head [...]

My one and only daughter, Natasha Vargas-Cooper, publishes an opinion piece in this Sunday’s New York Times about the impact, good and bad, of cops and firefighters moving to the front of the current labor war sweeping the Midwest. We Work Hard, but Who’s Complaining? By NATASHA VARGAS-COOPER Published: April 2, 2011Los Angeles WHEN a [...]

This photo, with me on the left, dates from happier times — at least for me.  This shot was taken in 1984 or so when the man in the middle, Father Miguel D’Escoto, was serving as foreign minister for the Nicaraguan Sandinista government (the woman on the right is one of his nieces).  Despite the [...]

The Libyan revolutionary forces, under western air cover, are now rapidly pushing back Gaddafi’s lines and advancing westward. The momentum has once again shifted and there are few betting on the regime’s future. Would the Left actually be disappointed if the intervention was swift and successful and not a prolonged quagmire that embroiled U.S. imperialism [...]

The footage being carried by CNN and others of how an alleged rape victim is manhandled and brazenly kidnapped by the thugs in the Libyan security forces tells you all you want to know about the character of the regime. In any civilized country in the world, the outburst of this woman would have not [...]

Marxist scholar Gilbert Achcar grew up in Lebanon, and is currently Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London.  Some of the argument contained in this piece is shoe-horned into some rigid ideological boxes, but the core of his thesis is a potent rebuke to the knee-jerk “no [...]

An excellent and lucid piece. I think Judis hits all the right points including questions about consultation with Congress. I think that an important and not insignificant issue. Unfortunately, for the last 30 years BOTH political parties have totally punted on exercising congressional power over the waging of war. That’s not an excuse for Obama’s [...]

If you want to oppose the military intervention in Libya because you think a) the U.S. should never intervene anywhere under any conditions b)  this intervention will lead to a quagmire ground war with U.S. troops c) you are a simple isolationist d) you don’t give a flip about Arabs d) we cannot afford this [...]