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Horton Hears a Who in Iowa: Kitsch and the Caucuses

As readers here know, I often link to Scott Horton over at Harper’s. He is very insightful and informative on certain issues, especially the corruption of the American justice system.  So it gives me no pleasure whatsoever to say that his post about the Iowa caucuses is without doubt the least insightful thing he has ever written. And I draw attention to it only because it represents so perfectly the kind of self-deluding mythological mindset that afflicts so much of American political discourse.

It

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Common Cause: Dems and Reps Unite for Imperial Overkill

Glenn Greenwald provides a snapshot of the true – and truly gargantuan nature of the American Imperium in his piece, “The bipartisan consensus on US military spending.” The facts – chiefly, that the United States spends more on its military than all of the rest of the world combined, including Russia and China – are not exactly news to anyone who has been paying attention these past many years, but it is useful to see it all set down clearly with the latest figures.
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Cold Case: The Bhutto Bump-Off

I am sojourning in a very strange country at the moment (more on this exotic expedition later), with very limited internet access (recent posts, and a few to come, were all pre-written). So I’m not able to comment on the Bhutto assassination right now. Fortunately, Winter Patriot, who has been following Pakistan’s chaotic politics closely and insightfully for a long time, has written an excellent essay on the subject, so I will simply leave you in his cold and capable hands: Yes, Extremists Killed Bhutto; But Which Extremists?

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Gored Again: Bipartisan Bagmen in Bali and Kyoto

In the interests of full disclosure, I must own up to some tenuous personal connections to Al Gore, whose Carthage homeplace was about 20 miles or so from my home in Watertown. My cousin was one of his press officers for several years, back in Gore’s House and Senate days. Gore was the very first person I ever interviewed as a college journalism student — a sit-down (obtained through the good offices of my cousin, naturally) during one of Gore’s swings through Knoxville during his first Senate run. And when Gore made his first run for the

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Stand and Deliver: Democrats Take a Bow

As some of our own astute commenters and several bloggers have pointed out, while celebrations were going on yesterday over the forced postponement of the telecom amnesty bill (also known as the “Führerprinzip Über Alles Act”), Senate Democrats again bowed to the Unitary Executive and gave him exactly what he asked for: $70 billion more in taxpayer money to continue the war crime in Iraq — and the surrender of a domestic spending package that Democrats had “insisted” must be passed.

To no one’s surprise, they

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The Green Stick: A Voice of Clarity and Truth Resurrected

I.
You open the book, you turn the page, and once again you are in that familiar drawing-room, clutching your invitation to the soiree of Anna Pavlovna Scherer and being ushered over to pay your respects to her ancient, beribboned aunt. Then you take your long-accustomed place among the guests: the pert little Princess Bolkonsky with her needlework; the suave and repulsive Prince Vasily; the celebrity exile, Viscount Mortemart; and Princess Helene, whose astonishing yet deadening beauty gleams in the shining flesh of her bare shoulders

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Annals of Liberation: Bush-Induced Distaster in Somalia Grows

Our text for today: Somalia descends into Africa’s worst crisis.This is an excellent summary of the deteriorating situation in Somalia, where Bush’s “Terror War” unleashed yet another “regime change” operation last year, using American bombers, special ops, death squads and security forces to aid an invasion of Somalia by undemocractic Ethiopia. Writing for McClatchy Newspapers – one of the very few mainstream American news organizations that still practices actual journalism – Shashank Bengali does what almost no corporate media story on Somalia I’ve seen has ever done: he notes the U.S. involvement in the very first line. In our degraded

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Democratic Process: Another Day, Another Capitulation

Industry Flexes Muscle, Weaker Energy Bill Passes (NYT)

The Democratic “opposition” in Congress – you know, the party that represents the common people, good working folk and the most vulnerable in our society: the sick, the old, the poor, the children – have just effected yet another capitulation to Money Power, gutting an energy bill that would have required Big Oil – now reaping the most gargantuan profit margins in the entire history of human enterprise – to pay a pittance in new taxes. The original bill would have also required utility

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Pitch and Woo: Shilling Under the Influence

(There is new — and more newsy — material  below this post.)

You know, we would never indulge in the shameless shilling of our wares on this site — ordinarily. But we have been corrupted by the bad example set by Jonathan Schwarz, who — obviously drawing on the devious mind-control techniques he learned at Stutts University’s Walker-Bush Business School — is hawking his ragbag of Commie propaganda, Our Kampf,

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Billionaire Bailout: Central Bank Socialism and America’s True Values

It is not exactly news that the Western world’s fetishized “free market” is actually a mixed economy, combining cradle-to-the-grave socialism for the rich with ball-breaking, bomb’s-away capitalism for everyone else. This truism was on naked display once again this week as the central banks of the United States, Britain, Switzerland, Canada and the Eurozone announced plans to provide almost $100 billion in taxpayer money to save their banking brethren from the consequences of their own greed and stupidity.

The bailout is, indirectly, a response to the mortgage crisis that

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