It’s Time to Start Treating Cuba as a Neighbor
The American government persists in shutting out communist Cuba while welcoming communist Vietnam and China. It’s time to bring Cuba aboard.
The American government persists in shutting out communist Cuba while welcoming communist Vietnam and China. It’s time to bring Cuba aboard.
Reporting on the recent Assad defiant speech and a recent story on Russia’s role in the Syrian civil war. Syria may explode
There is no conceivable outcome in which GOP opposition to Chuck Hagel ends happily for Republicans
Hilary Clinton, felled by a concussion, is under attack by Republicans for depriving them of an opportunity to subject her to the Inquisition
Even when compared to 2012’s other conservative ranters and spewers, a sour-faced lot if there ever was one, Muslim-baiter Pamela Geller stands out.
Glenn Beck takes the new Egyptian Constitution as an opportunity to push his UN conspiracy and to predict a US dictator within 5 years
Facts crash into belief where Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system is concerned. How could Obama have paid for it when he hates Israel?
In calling in a missing paper report I was surprised to learn that my small newspaper used an overseas call center to respond to my concerns
Israel could not have attacked Gaza without the tacit consent of the American government, which persists in seeing Israel as the victim
It’s time to remind Mitt mid debate that he actually did call Russia our number one geopolitical foe while he was ignoring al Qaeda.
After irritating Spain during the Denver debate by getting his facts wrong, the AP Says Mitt Romney might need a crash course in diplomacy 101.
Charlie Rangel said what everyone is thinking after Romney foreign policy/statesman debacles with Putin, Britain, Poland, Israel, Iran and now Libya, adding, ‘We just cannot afford that type of incompetency.’
Putin claims that Romney’s comments about Russia being our ‘number one geopolitical foe’ justify Russia’s opposition to the US’s European missile defense plans.
John Kerry exposed the Romney-Ryan foreign policy as the neocon shell game that it is, contrasting it with the steady hand of Barack Obama
A Palestinian official accused Romney of racism based on his speech today in which he suggested that the Israeli culture is more advanced than the Palestinian culture.
The Democrats release RomneyShambles video and Olympic winner Carl Lewis said Romney should have just stayed home if he didn’t know what to say.
Romney insulted Britain by questioning their readiness to host the Olympic games, which enraged PM Cameron, and then gaffed and called labour leader Ed Miliband Mr. Leader.
Mitt Romney managed to internationally embarrass himself without leaving the United States when he twisted the comments of Australian foreign minister Bob Carr into an attack on Obama.
We as Americans should learn from the dramatic lessons of Paraguay just how powerful the unchecked hand of corporations can be.
There are many reasons to vote for Barack Obama in 2012, and very few to vote against him, given the alternatives
Republicans go through life trying to find excuses to avoid the responsibility of shared humanity and citizenship. Ms. Sobchak, like many other women both here and in Russia, demonstrates the ability to not only embrace that shared humanity, but by doing so to become a better human being, and a better citizen
It is no surprise that Talibangelicals can compare women to livestock, as State Rep. Terry England did recently in Georgia. Livestock can’t control their own bodies, so why should women? It’s how God wants it, after all.
Today during their live press conference, UK Prime Minister Cameron praised President Obama on his Iran strategy, saying Obama’s “tough, reasonable approach has united the world” behind the sanctions. It’s Cameron Day at the White House, as President Obama welcomes British Prime Minister David Cameron for a day of meetings about Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and…
Argentina is demanding the “return” of the Falkand Islands, which are British territory and inhabited by English-speaking British citizens.
In the latest gaffe by a GOP presidential hopeful, Rick Perry singled out America’s ally Turkey, claiming it is led by Islamic terrorists
After a trial lasting a year, a Tel Aviv district court comprised of a panel of judges has found Israel’s former president, Iranian-born Moshe Katsav, 65, guilty of rape and sexual harassment in a case filed four years ago by three women who worked for him. Katsav was Israel’s eight president, a position of largely ceremonial powers, but was forced to resign in 2007.
In a world gone crazy from Tea Party zealots incessant screaming over reasonable people to Jim De Mint’s reading problems holding up all business on the Senate floor, we don’t often get our moments of zen or, in this case, Christmas spirit. But here it is. Evincing the true spirit of Christmas in Montreal, Muslims volunteered to serve Christmas Eve Dinner to the Old Brewery Mission.
They call it Civil War Politics, and the death of it may be one of the only positive things to come out of the recession in Ireland. The term does not exactly conjure appealing images in the mind’s eye.
Today on Glenn Beck’s radio show he and his friends were discussing the Assange situation. It turns out that Sex by Surprise is a GOOD thing! Sure, it may or may not involve continuing sex after a condom breaks even as the woman asks you to stop, but we can’t let the Nanny state tell us what to do! Turns out, nothing says pro-family like a little Sex by Surprise!
Meet Pia Kjærsgaard. Pia is a woman who is going places. Specifically, she is going to the salon to have her hair bleached an even starker blond – but after that, she’s going to pose for a photo shoot wrapped in the Danish flag, and then she is going to make a heroic stand against the foreign hordes who threaten to overrun her fairy tale vision of a Denmark where everyone is a Lutheran, monarchist, pork-eating blonde. Pia is trying very hard to be the Danish Sarah Palin.
Mitch McConnell and his Republican brethren are holding legislation hostage until the Democrats give them tax cuts for the rich. They claimed that this pledge didn’t include the START treaty, and then like clockwork, they started denouncing the START treaty. Democrats are beginning to realize that negotiating with Republicans “is almost like negotiating with terrorists”.
Sarah Palin has made it to the big time; she’s now being called out for her unpatriotic behavior by international media. Yesterday, the Russian paper Pravda eviscerated Sarah Palin for her unrelenting attacks upon the democratically elected President, at a time when America needs to stand together, united.
This week saw what has been described as the largest demonstration in the history of the Irish state, as an estimated 150,000 people marched through Dublin city centre to protest the Irish government’s draconian new austerity budget and the arrival of the IMF. They came from all over the country and from all walks of life, united in the belief that there is a better way to deal with Ireland’s economic woes. The march had been arranged by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
So it has finally happened. It has been called the blackest day in Irish history and the fall of the Irish Republic: after a tumultuous series of denials, spin and secret discussions, the IMF and the European Union has intervened to try to stop the death spiral of the Irish economy.
Even if Fianna Fail were able to muster the political will, it would be a monumental task for the State to prosecute bankers of the failed Irish zombie banks, notably Anglo-Irish, because proof thresholds required in white collar crime cases are extremely high in Ireland. In fact, the Irish Independent reports in the same article that Ireland has never seen a successful prosecution for insider trading. Ever.
Scotland Yard’s evidence indicated that hundreds of celebrities, government officials, soccer stars, etc had been targets of Murdoch’s News of the World cell phone hackers. Scotland Yard looked the other way as Murdoch hacked into phones of both private citizens and the Royal Family, and again as Murdoch’s editor was installed as communications aide to Tory PM Cameron.
The media (and the Left) are running with the meme that the draw down in Iraq is mere “rebranding” of the war. They buttress this notion with sarcastic references to the “combat troops” leaving Iraq. This misunderstanding is the fault of whoever started to report the drawdown as “combat troops leaving Iraq.” Combat troops have left Iraq, but we still have 50,000 combat troops there. They are no longer there in a combat role, however.
Sarah Palin uses Twitter and Facebook to throw a lit match onto the heightened tensions with Afghans over the Qur’an burning by falsely accusing an Afghan candidate of calling for the death of US Children. Into the craven echoing emptiness of what used to be the moral center of the Republican Party, I now ask just when will they stop trying to harm this country?
yesterday, after weeks of ginning up hate, we had the RNC talking point denial of stoking violence memo via Sarah Palin’s Facebook Page and Boehner tried it on ABC News’ Good Morning America –a mistake- he was obviously more concerned with his tan than any sort of real leadership on this issue and he sounded like a spoiled frat boy. The one thing we heard in all of their CYA talking points puppetry was a rather petty and obvious comparison of burning books to building a community center. Today is the day when we are supposed to forget how we got here.
Both top US commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, and one of his deputies, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, are warning Americans that burning the Quran will endanger the troops in Afghanistan (and around the world), who are there fighting a war started by Republican President George Bush. A fearful nation awaits a leader from the Republican Party to grow enough courage to take a stand for us and for our troops and their mission.
It’s a question of productivity versus happiness as the ultimate judge of the welfare of nations. Yes, this is an argument for a socially just Democracy, or as I like to call it, civilization. Nic Marks must surely be a socialist. At TEDGlobal 2010 he suggested that we would be better off to measure success by happiness rather than productivity. Cue the crazy jihad nut job dance from the Right (plus a Glenn Beck cry fest), but meanwhile, I ask you on this Labor Day, have you ever been to a country where they valued overall contentment of the people over their productivity? Because once you’ve seen it in action, it’s hard to deny the validity of Marks’ inspiration.
And then yesterday, as the President got ready to announce the last combat troops were out of Iraq, and the nation could finally let out its war-weary breath on one front, Republicans had the nerve, the unmitigated gall, to warn the President of the United States to not take “credit” for Iraq. Instead of acknowledging these sacrifices over your mistake, instead of fighting for Veterans’ benefits, instead of finding one damn thing to be positive about, Republicans can not stop being ungrateful, petty, small-minded, empty-hearted partisan hacks.
In the world of climate change legislation, everyone seems to be waiting for somebody else to act first. Thus, few are willing to lead; the rest are hesitant to follow. The United States, with a unique opportunity to lead the drive to save the planet, has chosen neither to lead nor to follow.
I don’t know about you, but for years, I’ve been secretly longing for that Time Life moment post World War II; the kiss of a returning soldier, the final exhale of an exhausted nation. I can’t say that I pictured a happy America, but I had imagined a unified America. But we aren’t going to get that moment, because there was a war in between WWII and Iraq. We’re scared. Not only have we’ve been lied to rather recently (WMD), but we’re battling with our national scars from our defeat in Vietnam.
Now that the last US combat brigade has driven into Kuwait, it is an appropriate time to look back at the Iraq War and to reflect on how it matters a great deal who we elect as our leaders. There are lessons to be learned, and we owe it to future generations to heed them.
The criticism of leaving Iraq comes from all sides. For the Left the troops can’t get out fast enough, and to the Right the troops should never leave at all. The Iraq War is a moral dilemma that has divided America for seven plus years. As it winds down, it’s time to start healing.
During his year a half as President, the nation, struggling under the weight of epic economic woes, easily tossed their hope and change by the wayside. Cynicism was the mood of the day. In August 2010, Americans find themselves a nation so battered by economic troubles and weary of war that they are unaware that our President is keeping his word on Iraq.
Unwilling to let any chance for more publicity via her specialty of moral poutrage sprinkled over Dim-Sum pass her by, Sarah Palin takes to her facebook page to decry the Pentagon’s decision yesterday to dis-invite Franklin Graham from National Prayer Day. In doing so, Palin demonstrates yet again how little she thinks/knows of the law, inviting satire as the only possible rebuttal available to all reading citizens.
After the historic Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty signed the previous week between the United States and Russia, the seemingly logical next step was to get as many nations together as possible to be on the same page. The threat of nuclear weapons getting into the wrong hands like al Qaeda or rogue nations like North Korea or Iran, who are currently developing nuclear weapons, should be of grave concern to the entire world.
The ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Jim Inhofe, made a scathingly embarrassing appearance in Copenhagen. While the senator didn’t have any meetings scheduled in Copenhagen, he managed to put together an impromptu press conference, during which he took it upon himself to announce that “global warming was a hoax perpetrated on the world by the UN” and sold to Americans “by the Hollywood elite.”
People don’t seem to get the origin of the Nobel Peace Prize, because all over the internet, you will read:
“How can they do that?”
They can do that because that was the intention of the prize….from the beginning. And it is THEIR prize. It is privately funded. They can do whatever they want. It was intended for visionaries, not necessarily an “accomplishment”.
After all, peace starts as a belief. Having the vision for a nuclear free world is huge. It starts there. Did W have that commitment? did John McCain? No. Even Hilary Clinton didn’t embrace peace as the ideal the way Obama did and does. So, it is rather special, in point of fact.
Obama Wins the Nobel Peace Prize and the “Right†Align Themselves with Taliban in Opposition to US President. The self-described “conservativesâ€/aka, hatriots can’t feel proud of their country if it means anything good for their President. Now, at last, the GOP has aligned themselves with the Taliban for all to see.
Republicans have sold the meme that they just need more “time†to draft a good health care reform bill. More time? They had control of the House, Senate and WH for 6 years and they never even brought this issue up! They’ve had all summer to review the various plans and come up with an idea. Heck, they took us into a pre-emptive war with a sovereign nation quicker than that!
In what’s been described as the “American Ding Dong goes to Hong Kong” by astute international posters, Mrs Sarah Palin (failed beauty contestant, failed VP candidate, and aborted first term Governor) has been asked to speak at the CLSA Investment Convention in Hong Kong, where she will give a speech on a topic such as geopolitics.