By Robert Reich – In this holiday season it’s especially appropriate to acknowledge how many Americans don’t have steady work. The so-called “share economy” includes independent contractors, temporary workers, the self-employed, part-timers, freelancers, and free agents. Most file 1099s rather than W2s, for tax purposes. It’s estimated that in five years over 40 percent of…
By Eugene Robinson – The Republican presidential candidates and the far-right echo chamber have made “politically correct” an all-purpose dismissal for facts and opinions they don’t want to hear. Take Donald Trump’s claim that when the World Trade Center towers collapsed on 9/11, “I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of…
By Glynn Wilson – When we were young and naive, back in the day before the Bush Years, we consumed the government and American history text books that told us how the judicial branch of government is supposed to be above politics. When I first set foot in a newsroom across the street from a…
By Juan Cole – As Donald Trump supporters beat a ‘Black Lives Matter’ protester at a rally in Birmingham, Ala., Trump himself reminded us of the dark days when a paranoid J. Edgar Hoover had the FBI monitor the Rev. Martin Luther King and black Churches of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “I want surveillance…
By William Greider – At his inauguration in 1981, Ronald Reagan declared that “government is not the solution — government is the problem.” The election of 2016 will tell us whether the American people are ready to overthrow the tyranny of that reactionary proposition. I know it’s possible — but only if the Democratic Party…
By Elizabeth Warren – Over the past four years, millions of people have fled their homes in Syria, running for their lives. In recent months, the steady stream of refugees has been a flood that has swept across Europe. Every day, refugees set out on a journey hundreds of miles, from Syria to the Turkish…
By Robert Reich – The next president of the United States will confront a virulent jihadist threat, mounting effects of climate change, and an economy becoming ever more unequal. We’re going to need an especially wise and able leader. Yet our process for choosing that person is a circus, and several leading candidates are clowns.…
By Robert Reich – The other night I phoned a former Republican member of Congress with whom I’d worked in the 1990s on various pieces of legislation. I consider him a friend. I wanted his take on the Republican candidates because I felt I needed a reality check. Was I becoming excessively crotchety and partisan,…
By Walter Simon – I’m not much of a football fan. But due to circumstances beyond my control, I ended up in a house watching the Alabama-LSU game last night and something dawned on me. In American football, we have it all ass backwards. The defense should be called the offense, and the offense is…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – I don’t know if Americans or Southerners are incredibly gullible or just stupid, or if local news outlets are to blame. But we had a good laugh Saturday night when the sportscasters fell for the line calling the Alabama-LSU game (Alabama won, 30-16) “The Game of the…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – It seems old stories never die. They just keep going round and around, circling further from the truth as time goes by. I just got off the phone with a producer in New York who wants to interview me, again, about the political prosecution of former Alabama…
Secret Vistas – By Glynn Wilson – MARION, Va. – Listening to a babbling brook running behind the campground in this state park just as the sun went down on Halloween, I could have sworn I heard a small female child crying off in the distance, moaning “hungry mother, hungry mother.” Back during the pioneer…
By Eugene Robinson – Jeb Bush deserves headlines from Wednesday’s anarchic GOP debate, but not the good kind. Something like: “Is Bush Finished?” The evening in Boulder, Colorado, will be remembered for interruptions, non sequiturs, mangled facts and general chaos. But the most significant impact may have been to dramatically lengthen the odds that Bush,…
Secret Vistas – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – My eyes and my soul are drawn to one event in nature more than any other. Autumn color. I could play the innocent and talk about this natural beauty like describing playing in mud puddles as a youth and wax eloquent about the uniqueness of…
Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – I’ve been pretty skeptical about the substantive differences between our two political parties for awhile. Having said that, I still believe the Democratic party is the lesser of two evils. So it it makes complete angry sense to me to avail myself of every opportunity to to mock,…
By E.J. Dionne Jr. – WASHINGTON, D.C. – It was a withdrawal speech that sounded like an announcement speech, and it perfectly captured the aching ambivalence of Joe Biden. He wanted to run for president. He had his issues. He had President Obama’s record and was proud to defend it. And the man who noted…
Totally Missing the New Media Conversation and the Peoples’ Political Pulse – By Edgar Wilson – Far from leading the conversation, the mainstream media is missing it entirely. Preconceived narratives surrounding political dynasties, some sort of manifest destiny, and the most predictable sort of ebbs and flows of primary polls have driven coverage away from…
By Robert Reich – Giant Wall Street banks continue to threaten the wellbeing of millions of Americans, but what to do? Bernie Sanders says break them up and resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act that once separated investment from commercial banking. Hillary Clinton says charge them a bit more and oversee them more carefully. Most Republicans say…
A Day That Will Live in Infamy – The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – I woke up this morning with a fitful start. It promised to be a depressing day. But it was a beautiful morning in the campground thanks to a cool front that passed through the region with…
By David Underhill – MOBILE, Ala – The temptation was too great for New Yorker satirist Andy Borowitz. Photos of Donald Trump’s August 21 campaign rally at the football stadium here showed a throng so white it might have been a convention of albinos. Perhaps a spy agency’s scanning technology could pick out a few…
