Goodbye, GM
by Michael Moore
I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind? |
The 'New GM': Layoffs, Factory Closing, and Offshoring
by John Nichols
The trouble with the whole 'Nixon goes to China' theory -- which is grounded in the calculus that big progress is made when a politician goes against type to address a seemingly intractable challenge -- is that sometimes the 'bold' gesture is really just more of the same. |
Navy Vet Honored, Foiled Israeli Attack
by Ray McGovern
What’s the difference between murder and massacre?The answer is Terry Halbardier, whose bravery and ingenuity as a 23-year-old Navy seaman spelled the difference between the murder of 34 of the USS Liberty crew and the intended massacre of all 294.The date was June 8, 1967; and for the families of the 34 murdered and for the Liberty’s survivors and their families, it is a “date which will live in infamy” — like the date of an earlier surprise attack on the U.S. Navy. |
Talking to the Graduating Class About Jobs That Matter
by Stephen Elliott
It's graduation time, and thus also the time of the graduation speech, that strange ritual when someone important stands at a podium and bores the hell out of thousands of students and parents. The platitudes are endless, and who cares; every one knows the real message is an unspoken one, directed to the parents - a soothing assurance that if the university has the pull for such a famous speaker, their money these past four (or more) years was well spent. |
Abortion Doctor is a Victim of America's 'Taliban'
by Dave Lindorff
Sunday's cowardly assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller demonstrates once again that the US is not all that different from Pakistan.One thing that these two violent societies share is having a group of rabid religious fundamentalists who are each on a jihad against those in their nation with whom they disagree, and who are ready to kill and maim their enemies without mercy or hesitation. The other thing--perhaps the more dangerous thing--that they share is a government apparatus in which certain elements are overtly or surreptitiously supportive of the jihadists, and in which other elements are cowed into silence and inaction. |
Most Arabs Know This Speech Will Make Little Difference
by Robert Fisk
I suspect that what the Arab world wants to hear is that Obama will take his soldiers out of Muslim landsMore and more, it looks like the same old melody that Bush's lads used to sing. We're not against the Muslim world. In fact, we are positively for it. We want you to have democracy, up to a point. We love Arab 'moderates' and we want to reach out to you and be your friends. Sorry about Iraq. And sorry - again, up to a point - about Afghanistan and we do hope that you understand why we've got to have a little 'surge' in Helmand among all those Muslim villages with their paper-thin walls. And yes, we've made mistakes. |
Tentative deal cut for funding Iraq, Afghan wars
by Andrew Taylor
Top House and Senate Democrats reached a tentative agreement on an almost $100 billion war funding bill Monday, including a generous new line of credit for the International Monetary Fund.At the core of the measure is President Barack Obama's war funding request, which included $76 billion for Pentagon operations. But the IMF funding is a top priority of Obama, who pledged the $100 billion line of credit at April's G-20 summit in London to help developing countries deal with the troubled global economy. |
Desperately Seeking Susan
by Rick Jay
CONFLATE, if you will, the extraordinary attention lavished on the unlikely 47-year-old Scottish songstress Susan Boyle, whose rise and fall played out recently on the television program “Britain’s Got Talent,” and the reaction accorded to one Mathew Buchinger some time earlier in the Council Chambers in Edinburgh. |
The Howls of a Fading Species
by Bob Herbert
One can only hope that the hysterical howling of right-wingers against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is something approaching a death rattle for this profoundly destructive force in American life. It’s hard to fathom the heights of hypocrisy currently being scaled by the foaming-in-the-mouth crazies who are leading the charge against the nomination. Newt Gingrich, who never needed a factual basis for his ravings, rants on Twitter that Judge Sotomayor is a “Latina woman racist,” apparently unaware of his incoherence in the “Latina-woman” redundancy in this defamatory characterization. |
Does O'Reilly Bear Any Responsibility For Abortion Doctor Murder?
by Steve Young
In his commentary posted to his web site on 5/21/09 and in newspapers who use his column, Bill O’Reilly wrote…'…abortion zealots are branding pro-life people ‘anti-woman’ and ‘anti-privacy.’ The left knows it has a powerful cannon with this bigot stuff.' In labeling the Pro-Choice siders (without once using the accepted Pro-Choice moniker) as the evil-doers in this seemingly balanced no-win debate, O’Reilly neatly ignored every Pro-life side inflammatory branding of Pro-choicers such as 'baby-killers' or 'infanticide' nor mentioned any Planned Parenthood and clinic bombings or the displaying of horrific pictures of aborted fetuses or incessant comparing of legal abortions to the Holocaust. |
GM: America's Favorite Abusive Husband
by Allison Kilkenny
Man, it's sweet to be a corporation like GM in America.Only in this country would a corporation's executives have the nerve to close factories and relocate them to Mexico to exploit cheap labor, systematically work to suppress public mass transit and fuel-efficient vehicles, shelter its revenues from taxation in multiple offshore havens, and still crawl to the government weeping and crying when it needs money. |
One More (Last?) Comparison of Bush and the Third Reich
by Bob Patterson
For those overly enthusiastic Bush bashing pundits who took fiendish delight in making the conservative supporters of the 43rd President squirm by comparing George W. Bush and his henchmen (strike that word out and insert “Administration”) to the German leader who helped his country cope with the world-wide Great Depression during the Thirties, we would like to suggest one more egregious example of similarity. |
When It Comes To Media No News Is Not Good News
by Trish Purcell
Watching Andrea Mitchell interview Chuck Hagel on May 22 was a perfect microcosm of what is wrong with the way our news is delivered.As a Senator (1996-2008), Hagel served on both the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Foreign Relations Committee. An intelligent, experienced and informed person, he was well qualified to discuss the May 20 speeches given by President Obama and Dick Cheney on how to keep our country safe. But instead of having a thorough discussion with Hagel, Mitchell asked him questions, cut off his answers, pushed for yes or no responses, and ended the discussion mid-stream. Apparently the media doesn't understand that the old adage 'always leave them wanting more' does not apply to news reporting. Giving forthright, informative, and thoughtful, answers, Hagel was enlightening the public; the actual purpose of journalism. |
Progressives Divided? Not All Back Obama Policies
by Jennifer Skalka
WASHINGTON -- They might have the WH and Congress, but progressives - gathered this week for a four-day conference billed as 'America's Future Now!' - aren't universally pleased with the Obama administration.As a coalition of liberal groups announced their union today behind an unprecedented $82M grassroots and advertising campaign to push for health care reform, some consternation remains in the Democratic base about if Pres. Obama is pursuing a sweeping enough package. Others expressed dismay with his decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. |
Baucus to Meet with Single-Payer Advocates
by John S. Adams
HELENA - Sen. Max Baucus is set to meet with five single-payer health care advocates in Washington, D.C., this week.Baucus, as chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has made health care reform his top priority this session. However, Baucus has consistently said single-payer - a system in which the federal government acts as the nation's sole health insurance provider - is off the table. |
