Old slumpy part II

It’s Michigan day, where Hillary is running pretty much alone for no delegates on the Democrat side. Why would she do that?
On the Republican side, Huckabee and McCain, the frontrunners (!?), are competing for votes from Americans who have been screwed hard and repeatedly by pro-corporate policy, including free trade generally and water [...]

Free speech video

Two great videos posted at Salon today, in seperate sections of the site but on the same topic: the right to free expression. The first, above, is an interview conducted by the Canadian government with neo-con Canadian publisher Ezra Levant as part of a hate speech inquiry that would prosecute him for publishing the Danish [...]

Sista Souljah reprise?

Is Hill playing the race card? The Washington Post’s Marjorie Valbrun makes a pretty good case that it is starting to look that way. There’s the innuendo and backdoor references to Obama drug use. Then the careless reference to MLK that drew on the idea that if you want to get something done, you gotta [...]

It’s good to be liberal… minded

Those invaluable awkward precious party moments engineered semiconsciously by you.

Gitmo jumpsuit solidarity day

This Friday, tomorrow, January 11th, marks the sixth anniversary of the first arrivals at the extra-legal detainment center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The ACLU is calling for worldwide protest Friday to pressure the Administration to close the prison down— to either charge the men being held there and bring evidence against them in a true [...]

Hang all the pollsters!

What happened? Barack Obama’s win in Iowa generated a widespread sense of pride, the press reporting all variety of “man on the street” testimonials to feelings of optimism in the wake of the victory. Whatever we all personally thought of Obama as a candidate, his winning in the 95 percent white rural state strongly suggested [...]

Not so much NH

Hillary won in NH. So that’s what it is. The significant thing is that the youth vote was again a major factor. According to CIRCLE, the youth turnout rate more than doubled since 2004, rising to 43 percent compared to 18 percent in 2004 and 28 percent in 2000. More than that, among Democrats, 18- [...]

New Hampshire notes

KEENE, N.H. (Main Street, Coffee Shops, My Car)— What follows are some very rough notes from Granite State Primary Day. Sate slogan: “Live Free or Die!” Do the Republicans know that, I wonder. Does Mitt “the most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive” Romney know that?

2:00pm
I park my car on [...]

Soulja girl

[kml_flashembed movie="http://embed.break.com/NDI0Mzc4" height="392" width="464" /]

Been too long since you’ve enjoyed a cringe? Feeling assured that hip-hop has yet to reach its low-water mark in its journey through mainstream American culture? Curious as to whether there’s a TV watching situation that could actually make you think of Jillian Barberie as a model of professionalism?
If you answered [...]

Change in the air (and no emissions)

The possibility that a new president would demand genuine auto industry evolution. Now that’d be real change.

American Idol president

More on the ATT&T and Rock the Vote partnership we reported on a couple weeks ago… Here’s a video on the collaboration as it was announced in the weeks before the Iowa caucus. The idea is to get young people to text each other about politics and thus motivate each other to express [...]

Coolness and candor in New Hampshire

KEENE, N.H.— “Change” has trumped all of the other 2008 campaign buzz-words— words like “experience” “trust” “reliability.” It has come to dominate the rhetoric on the campaign trail and conversations across party lines. It was “change” that catapulted Obama to victory in Iowa, pushed Edwards into a second-place finish and edged its way into Hillary’s [...]

Undercurrent

“Griz is the heavily medicated ex-Marine sniper on the other end of the line.” Chpt One of a great American nonfiction e-novelette by Jim Gabour.

The “change” candidates

In New Hampshire, the days before primary voters head to the polls, all the candidates are looking to ride the wave of Iowa-generated Obama Momentum by talking about change, a mostly laughable word in the mouths of U.S. politicians on any day and ironically hilarious in the case of Mitt Romney, a sudden “change” candidate [...]

Wire’s end

The final season begins tonight. It’s the last chapter of HBO’s “visual novel” of institutional dysfunction, and this time it’s all about media dysfunction, about the “press,” that is, the so-called watchdog of democracy, which most would agree has mostly gone off dozing or gnawing at table scraps, for the past few decades, found its [...]