In a dress rehearsal for this November’s mid-term election, Democrats and Republicans vied last week for who could denounce the banks and blame the other party the most for the giveaways to Wall Street that have swollen the public debt since September 2008, pushing the federal budget into deficit and the economy into a slump.... Read More

Ojai, California — Here in normally arid southern California, we've just endured a week of torrential rains, tornados, flash floods, and mud slides. Some roads have even turned to rivers in the great western monsoon. But these tempests are nothing compared to last week's electoral storm that greeted President Barack Obama's first anniversary in office.... Read More

Counterpunch The State of the Union address is in danger of purveying the usual euphemisms. I expect Obama to brag that he has overseen a recovery. But can there be any such thing as a jobless recovery? What has recovered are stock market averages and Wall Street bonuses, not disposable personal income or discretionary spending... Read More

Counterpunch At stake now is President Obama’s credibility as an agent for change. Voters see his main “change� thus far to have been favoritism to Wall Street. Jay Leno jokes that Obama has done the impossible: resurrected the seemingly dying Republican Party and given it the coveted label of the “Party of Change,� running against... Read More

I have a certain respect for what I see as President Obama’s clear-eyed exercises in foreign affairs triage. Obviously, his plate is full with Iraq/Iran/Pakistan/Afghanistan and keeping Europe on board for the whole global-recession-fighting deal, and the Obama administration has shown little interest in looking for solutions (or trouble) in strategic backwaters of the world... Read More

About a month before Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski appeared on PBS's Charlie Rose Show and was asked whether he thought Obama would be a good choice for president. Brzezinski paused for a minute, peered at Rose out of the corner of... Read More

Counterpunch Is this administration’s bank policy Bush-3 – or Clinton-5 or Reagan 8? After (1) threatening for eight years that the prospect of a trillion-dollar deficit spread over a generation or so is sufficient reason to stiff Social Security recipients and abolish debts to the nation’s retirees, and (2) after the Bush administration provided $8... Read More

Candidate Obama declared his determination to scale up the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, apparently in an effort to demonstrate that, despite his opposition to the Iraq war, he possessed the necessary bombs away! martial ardor to serve as America’s Commander in Chief. President Obama, in one his first acts upon taking office, explicitly authorized a... Read More

According to a nationally prominent Zionist spokesperson, former Congressman, Federal Judge, White House Counsel to President Bill Clinton and early backer of Obama, Abner Mikvner, “Barack Obama is the first Jewish President�. Introduction According to a nationally prominent Zionist spokesperson, former Congressman, Federal Judge, White House Counsel to President Bill Clinton and early backer of... Read More

The entire political spectrum ranging from the ‘libertarian’ left, through the progressive editors of the Nation to the entire far right neo-con/Zionist war party and free market Berkeley/Chicago/Harvard academics, with a single voice, hailed the election of Barack Obama as a ‘historic moment’, a ‘turning point in American history and other such histrionics. Introduction The... Read More

Obama's candidacy is over; kaput. He's already stated that he has no intention of stopping the war, so he has disqualified himself. That's his prerogative; no one put a gun to his head. His op-ed in Monday's New York Times just removes any lingering doubt about the matter. What Obama proposes is moving the central... Read More

Every four years, liberals and progressives are expected to set aside their beliefs and stand foursquare behind the Democratic Party candidate. This ritual is invariably performed in the name of party unity. It doesn't matter if the candidate is a smooth-talking politician who's willing to toss his pastor of 20 years overboard for a few... Read More

After just having read a George Will column suggesting the likelihood of an Obama presidency lasting until 2016, it dawned on me that most observers have not really reflected upon this perilous leap that we as consumers and global democrats (but not as real citizens of a functioning constitutional republic) are about to take. I... Read More

PARIS — The more things change, as the French are fond of saying, the more they remain the same. But things have really changed here in France, at least since the long ago days of my youth in the later 1950's and early 1960's, and they are no longer the same. In those bygone days,... Read More

So Barack Obama has Big Momma on the canvas. When it comes to fundraising, he has essentially beaten La Hillary at her own game, nearly matching her $26 million but with far more donors. And since we’re all a wee bit tired of her, he’s the sentimental favorite. It’s the young underdog versus the aging... Read More