The mainstream media is to blame for Donald Trump’s rise, but not for the reasons most people think – By Neal Gabler – It is more than a little ironic that the Republican Establishment and the mainstream media are both now in full panic mode over the possibility of Donald Trump winning the GOP nomination.…
EDITORIAL – MOBILE, Ala. – We hate to be the bearer of bad news and all. But not only did Donald Trump dominate the Super Tuesday vote across the country and win Alabama with 43 percent of the Republican votes cast. And not only did Hillary Clinton dominate the day across the country and win…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – A friend of mine woke up Sunday morning, stretched and conveyed a nightmare scenario. He said he dreamed there was a “Huuuge” tanker ship headed for America like the Titanic loaded with tar sands crude headed toward a giant, melting glacier shaped like America. On the front…
By Robert Reich – Step back from the campaign fray for just a moment and consider the enormity of what’s already occurred. A 74-year-old Jew from Vermont who describes himself as a democratic socialist, who wasn’t even a Democrat until recently, has come within a whisker of beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, routed…
By Robert Reich – 1. Cruz is more fanatical. Sure, Trump is a bully and bigot, but he doesn’t hew to any sharp ideological line. Cruz is a fierce ideologue: He denies the existence of man-made climate change, rejects same-sex marriage, wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, believes the 2nd amendment guarantees everyone a…
By Robert Reich – A few days ago, Neel Kashkari – now president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, who was the senior Treasury Department official in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations helping to save the big Wall Street banks – said “I believe the biggest banks are still too big to…
By Eugene Robinson – The South Carolina Republican primary may well be Jeb Bush’s last stand. He described the situation — polls show him trailing badly, following weak performances in Iowa and New Hampshire — in typical Bushian syntax: “It’s all been decided, apparently,” he harrumphed this week in Summerville, a town near Charleston. “The…
By Robert Reich – I’m writing to you today to announce the death of the Republican Party. It is no longer a living, vital, animate organization. It died in 2016. RIP. It has been replaced by warring tribes: Evangelicals opposed to abortion, gay marriage, and science. Libertarians opposed to any government constraint on private behavior.…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – The political left in America is being misled by a Presbyterian minister named Chris Hedges, who writes for the leftist blog Truthdig. In a column published on Valentines Day, this self-described socialist attacks Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Why? Because Sanders had the gall to…
Editor’s Note: In 1988 The Economist invited the philosopher Karl Popper to write an article on democracy. It appeared in the issue of April 23rd that year and made the case for a two-party system. As America’s presidential race begins, we are republishing it, below. The first book in English by Professor Sir Karl Popper…
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.†— William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2 – The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — It’s Joe Cain Day, the Sunday before Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras Day, when some people on the Gulf Coast feast before some Christians observe a…
By Robert Reich – In 2008, when then-Senator Barack Obama promised progressive change if elected President, his primary opponent, then-Senator Hillary Clinton, derided him. “The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect,†she…
By Edgar Wilson – America has another chance to learn from developing regions threatened by a dangerous virus. The mosquito-borne Zika virus, normally found across central Africa and Southeast Asia, has been turning up in more and more countries throughout the Americas, with its biggest footprint in Brazil. In roughly three-quarters of all cases, Zika…
By Michael Moore – When I was a child, they said there was no way this majority-Protestant country of ours would ever elect a Catholic as president. And then John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected president. The next decade, they said America would not elect a president from the Deep South. The last person to do…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – It looks like the insurgent occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon is winding down. While it could be viewed as more tragic than funny, especially for the wildlife, it strikes me as bordering on hilarious that the remaining cowardly cowboys who are ready to…
By Robert Reich – The Democratic contest has repeatedly been characterized as a choice between Hillary Clinton’s “pragmatism†and Bernie Sanders’s “idealism†– with the not-so-subtle message that realists choose pragmatism over idealism. But this way of framing the choice ignores the biggest reality of all: the unprecedented, and increasing, concentration of income, wealth and…
By Walter Simon – We seem to be a society living in denial when it comes to a lot of things. It’s as if we are sitting there eating and drinking at a downtown restaurant, lost in the enjoyment of the immediate surroundings, but since our world is obviously become like the Twilight Zone we…
Connecting the Dots – By Glynn Wilson – I’ve been wondering when someone would mention the television ad for Senator Richard Shelby of Tuscaloosa, who is running for reelection in 2016 in spite of his age. He will be 81-years-old on election day and 87 if he lives to finish his term. I’ve been seeing…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – If the people of Alabama are really willing to depend on a pathetic monopoly news organization like al.com, the new conservative corporate entity owned by the Newhouse brothers in New York who won the newspaper circulation wars in the last half of the 20th century but hide…
By Walter Simon – BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The last time I was in the vicinity of the Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham was in the winter of 2012 at the occupy camp we set up, wrapping around the corner sidewalk of 20th and 5th avenue north in front of the entrance to Regions bank. The bus…
