I find it hard to be charitable over what I view as a complete sell out of the principles that drove the campaign of Rand’s father Ron. Rand is basically conceding that it is most important to elect a Republican -- any Republican -- as president and is willing to do whatever it takes to... Read More

As the November election approaches, I find myself faced with a dilemma. I would like to vote for the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as the better of two distasteful choices, but would have to hesitate at this point. It’s not that I’d be tempted to vote for Obama, although I can well understand the... Read More

There has been considerable buzz about the possibility that President Obama will, in part, run for reelection based on his foreign policy successes. David Ignatius of the Washington Post, who is very well plugged in to the White House, published a piece on May 10th entitled “Obama’s foreign policy: Dealing from a position of strength,�... Read More

I am currently cruising in the South Pacific, taking advantage of an opportunity to visit many of the places where my father and uncles spent 1941 through 1945 – New Zealand, the Solomons, the Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, Kiribati, and Hawaii. As part of the experience, I have been participating in various veterans’ receptions on... Read More

Mitt Romney will be the Republican to face President Obama in the fall. Tuesday night was the clincher, as the Mormon zealot won in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington DC. He may stumble on, but the Catholic zealot Rick Santorum is finished. It’s hard to detect any alluring feature in Romney’s psychic or political make-up, and... Read More

Ever since I dared criticize the Obama administration and its partisans, I’ve been getting less than friendly email messages. Supposedly I work slavishly for the GOP and spend every waking hour listening to Rush Limbaugh or trying to imitate his verbal outbursts. For the record, I’ve been attacking the GOP at the national level ever... Read More

Despite high unemployment and soaring gas prices, it seems the Obama administration may survive the November election. This is due not only to Republican infighting but also to the support given to liberal Democrats in the media, educational establishment, and entertainment industry. But even these factors may not tell everything. Perhaps more importantly, Obama and... Read More

Although not many people in high places may notice what I’m doing, I’d like to ask the following questions to three of the surviving GOP presidential contenders. First, why did Mitt Romney, as late as 2002, respond to a questionnaire from Planned Parenthood indicating that he fully supported Roe v. Wade and favored state funding... Read More

Vote? Why? What candidate in the quadiennial resurrection of the Mickey Mouse club wants to do anthing that I want done? I want to roll back the onrushing police state and return to constitutional government. The plunge into totalitarianism is a far worse danger than World War Two, in which the US was never in... Read More

He stuck his foot in his mouth a couple of times in the final days, but on Tuesday millionaire Mormon Mitt Romney cantered past the winning post in the New Hampshire primary with 39 per cent of the votes cast. Libertarian Ron Paul ran second with 23 per cent. Another millionaire Mormon, Jon Huntsman, got... Read More

This morning there was some peculiar media coverage of last night’s Republican debate. Predictably, in all sources Ron Paul coverage was significantly less than the column inches provided Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, even though he is running neck-and-neck with them in Iowa. Ron Paul was the only one to raise the issue of foreign... Read More

NEW YORK – This great city is physically in America but it’s hardly part of the United States. New York is cosmopolitan, educated, outward-looking and liberal – unlike much of the rest of inward-looking America, which considers the Big Apple a den of moral and political depravity and vice. In return, New Yorkers (I’m one),... Read More

Anyone who writes about the economy or politics will tell you that the chances of getting a 100 percent "positive" reaction to an article is virtually zilch. It just never happens. Until now. Of the 50-plus e mails I've gotten since yesterday when Counterpunch published "Is it Immoral to Vote for Obama?", not one person... Read More

Introduction: Two incumbent presidents are running for re-election in 2012, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Barack Obama in the United States. What makes these two electoral contests significant is that they represent contrasting responses to the global economic crises: Chavez following his democratic socialist program pursues policies promoting large scale long-term public investment and spending... Read More

Across two evenings this week, we've been offered America's future in a couple of visions. Neither of them offered the prime vitamin of bearable politics, the promise of good cheer and a better life at the end of a shortish tunnel. Version one came in the Republican presidential candidates' debate at the Reagan Library in... Read More

For me there are a number of good reasons to favor the candidacy of Ron Paul, but the area where he is most distinct from the other Republicans is foreign policy, where he supports desperately needed non-interventionism. The following, which appeared on the Foreign Policy website speaks for itself regarding where Rick Perry would take... Read More

In a syndicated column that was something less than objective, Matt Towery explains that “Romney has the most going for him in 2012.� According to Towery, “when staunch Republicans start considering the big prize—who can actually take the White House for the GOP—and when they see Romney ably debate Obama my guess is that even... Read More

Will Palin run? Who knows, who cares? The press is agog because the ci-devant Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate is in the midst of her bus tour up and down the East Coast. A girl has to keep an eye on her tv ratings. At present the great bus tour seems to have... Read More

The politicians are beginning to shuffle into place for next year's presidential contest. (Or out of place: Haley Barbour announced this week that he won't, after all, try for the Republican nomination.) So who have we got? We have of course got Barack Obama. At this point I see no sign that anyone in his... Read More

Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel wonders who’ll be “the GOP’s next big thing� as she considers which Republican candidate has “the prospect of defeating President Obama.� While I agree with Strassel that the party needs a “hard-charging, big-thinking-articulate new face� and that the present field of candidates is less than inspiring, I find the... Read More

Almost forever, the record for stupidity was held by Lumbo, a Cambrian trilobyte born to an early family of retarded trilobites. Lumbo also had Down’s Syndrome. It ws an unbeatable combination. Nobody and nothing was as slow as Lumbo. It was thought that he would hold the record for all time, but then came the... Read More

"I don’t know what more we could have done to win this election,� John McCain said in his concession speech in the Biltmore hotel in Phoenix. Actually there was a lot he could have done. He ran an awful campaign. Obama is now enveloped in an aura of inevitability, but let us raise a toast... Read More

In the crucial final weeks of the campaign John McCain is mostly doing only one event a day. This is the man of whom his primary care physician at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, said to journalists in a conference call last May 23: “At the present time, Sen. McCain enjoys excellent health and displays... Read More

The presidential campaign plummeted into imbecilic tedium last night in Nashville as Barack Obama and John McCain faced off in the second debate. The encounter took place against the vivid backdrop of economic catastrophe, the obvious failure of the $700 billion bailout to turn the tide, Tuesday's market averages hurtling into the abyss, a paralyzing... Read More