Rick Shenkman – Ted Cruz’s Stone-Age Brain and Yours

After Senator Ted Cruz suggested that the United States begin carpet bombing Islamic State (IS) forces in Syria, the reaction was swift. Hillary Clinton mocked candidates who use “bluster and bigotry.” Jeb Bush insisted the idea was “foolish.”  Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, tweeted: “You can’t carpet bomb an insurgency out of existence. This is just silly.” When …

Chelsea Gilmour – The Clintons’ Paid-Speech Bonanza

Hillary Clinton is said to be buoyant over her prospects to become the next U.S. President, as Republicans feud over Donald Trump’s disruptive campaign and Sen. Bernie Sanders fails to articulate a clear foreign policy, but perhaps the biggest obstacle still confronting the ex-Secretary of State is her own record as a beneficiary of rich and powerful corporate interests. “The …

Amy Lieberman and Susanne Rust – Big Oil braced for global warming while it fought regulations

A few weeks before seminal climate change talks in Kyoto back in 1997, Mobil Oil took out a bluntly worded advertisement in the New York Times and Washington Post. “Let’s face it: The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil,” the ad said. “Scientists cannot predict with certainty …

David Swanson – Probing Bernie Sanders’s Identity

Every time I write about a book about Bernie Sanders, somebody sends me a better one. If this keeps up, by the time his campaign is over I should be reading the best book ever written and be completely out of touch with reality. The latest isThe Bern Identity by Will Bunch. These books don’t make me like Bernie Sanders …

David Masciotra – Why the Christian Right Is so at Home With Donald Trump’s Bloated Narcissism

One of the questions vexing the mediocre punditry of American discourse is how Donald Trump—a former star of the tabloids with a track record of scandal and little history of religious affiliation—is polling so well with evangelical Christians. Poll results vary, but Trump consistently has 20 to 30 percent support among Christian conservatives. The numbers are impressive considering his opponents include Ben …

Paul Craig Roberts – Why WWIII Is On The Horizon

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 gave birth to a dangerous American ideology called neoconservativism. The Soviet Union had served as a constraint on US unilateral action. With the removal of this constraint on Washington, neoconservatives declared their agenda of US world hegemony. America was now the “sole superpower,” the “unipower,” that could act without restraint anywhere in …

SIMON MALOY – The GOP’s bleak demographic destiny: How to win the White House when all your voters are dying

A big part of what made the 2012 election so much fun was the fact that Mitt Romney and pretty much every Republican and conservative who supported his candidacy were utterly and unshakably confident that they had the election in the bag. Gallup and Rasmussen had Romney up, the campaign’s internal polling said Mitt was going to win, and all …

Graham E. Fuller – Seeing ‘Evil’ Everywhere

It is depressing to witness the ongoing vitriolic voices of vituperation spewing out over the airwaves these days in what passes as “political debate,” especially in Republican circles. Depressing also to know that we still have nearly a year more to go of this same political circus of infotainment whose chief purpose really is to distract the public from the …

Robert Parry – Neocons Object to Syrian Democracy

The Washington Post’s editorial board is livid that President Barack Obama appears to have accepted the Russian position that the Syrian people should decide for themselves who their future leaders should be – when the Post seems to prefer that the choice be made by neoconservative think tanks in Washington or other outsiders. So, in a furious editorial on Friday, the Post …