Visual source: Newseum
E.J. Dionne Jr. examines the case of Mitt Romney and the go-for-broke election:
Republicans want to play down the implications of what they would do in power and paint Obama as someone he isn’t. Normally, this strategy wouldn’t work. But this is a moment when abnormal levels of economic turmoil are feeding a profound mistrust of government. Conservatives are making a large bet that if ever there was a year when they could mainstream out-of-the-mainstream ideas, this is it.
Doyle MacManus says
Don't expect to see kindler, gentler political ads:
It would be nice to think that this year's Olympics might turn into the occasion for a domestic political truce, a summer vacation from the ferocious character attacks each side has been leveling at the other's candidate.
But it's not going to happen. Why? Because negative advertising works.
Paul Krugman expresses his big doubts about the Euro's survival in
Crash of the Bumblebee.
Richard A. Muller describes The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic, his own, in a piece that has a lot of tongues wagging:
My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.
Haaretz Editorial Board warns Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
Don't Interfere:
If Obama manages to stay in the White House, Romney's visit won't contribute to his confidence in Israel's prime minister. If Romney is elected president, he will presumably follow in the footsteps of previous Republican presidents, who placed American interests ahead of both the ideology of the Jewish right and the policy of the Israeli right. Therefore, Netanyahu must serve Israel's interests by refraining from crude intervention in the American election campaign.
Danny Danon calls
Mitt Romney: A true friend of Israel:
Obama, on the other hand, has been anything but resolute in his support for Israel since he was elected in 2008. In his now infamous Cairo Speech, the president put the onus of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict squarely on the shoulders of what was once called America’s only true ally in the Middle East.
Alan Dershowitz disagrees in
No ‘buyer’s remorse’ for voting for Obama:
I believe President Obama when he says that Iran will not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons on his watch.
Josh Harkinson explains the
4 Ways That Democrats Want To Cut Taxes On The Rich:
The big debate in Washington right now centers around whether or not to "tax the rich." This week, Senate Democrats passed a plan to cut income taxes on the middle class while increasing them on families that make more than $250,000 a year. Next week, House Republicans will push through a bill to extend (the erstwhile "temporary") Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class and the rich. But scratch beneath the surface of these dueling tax plans, and it quickly becomes clear that the GOP isn't the only party in Congress that wants to help the rich get richer. As Ezra Klein notes at Wonkblog, the cumulative effect of Democratic tax proposals will most likely be a $17,000 tax cut for the top 1 percent of earners (compared to a $75,000 tax cut under the GOP plan).
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Greg Mitchell asks,
Will the Web Dominate the 2012 Campaign (Again)?
The rules of the game have been changed forever—by technology. [2008] was more than the “YouTube Election,” as some dubbed it, or “The Facebook Election” or “hyper-politics.” James Rainey, the longtime media reporter for the Los Angeles Times, declared that there is a “new-media revolution that is remaking presidential campaigns. Online videos can dominate the evening news. Or an unpublished novelist ‘with absolutely no journalism training’ can alter the national debate,” a reference to Mayhill Fowler.
In June, the alleged Obama “terrorist fist bump” went from viral to The View in just three days. Fortunately, the candidate was able to laugh it off, which was certainly not the case after the Reverend Wright videos went viral—another example of the unpredictable power of web politics. More evidence: after wrapping up the nomination in June 2008, the Obama campaign launched an extensive website devoted solely to shooting down viral rumors and innuendo.
“What’s different this year is that the entire political and media establishment has finally woken up to the fact that the internet is now a major player in the world of politics and our democracy,” said Andrew Rasiej, co-founder of the TechPresident blog and annual Personal Democracy Forum. “We are watching a conversion of our politics from the twentieth century to the twenty-first.”
Jason Farago writes that
James Holmes' dehumanization threatens to obscure causes of violence:
Americans, sadly, have a tendency to dismiss attempts at understanding people like Holmes as a bleeding-heart exercise in criminal sympathy. Columbine was the exception. Usually, we refuse to reckon with the complex causes of violence, let alone its future prevention, and instantly inscribe these crimes into a framework of inexplicable evil. Think of Timothy McVeigh, who spent years being radicalized in anti-government circles – and yet, after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was considered only an "all-American monster".
Barry Goldman says more needs to be done about
Reining in the "banksters":
Our society is one that produces both gangsters and "banksters." They tend to come from different neighborhoods, but we don't seem to be able to avoid producing either one. They are failures of our civilization. But having produced them, and knowing how much mayhem they can cause, it is inexcusably stupid to leave them unsupervised.
Joe Brewer raises the question,
How Will the 99% Deal with the Psychopaths in the 1%?
The global economy we have today is built on a deep history of top-down hierarchies that promote domination and control. There have been plenty of feudal lords, warrior chieftains, and violent dictators throughout the last 6000 years of burgeoning civilization. The modern era saw the ascension of “ corporate personhood ” as an amoral entity enshrined into law by an 1886 ruling of the US Supreme Court. This provided a new mechanism for mobilizing capital by the moneyed elites to deploy their wealth into the realm of public policy and civil society — creating the dysfunctional economic system we must now contend with as we struggle to address global challenges.
Eugene Robinson admits he doesn't often have praise for former President George W. Bush, but he does in
Bush and His Open Heart:
But if Africa is gaining ground against AIDS, history will note that it was Bush, more than any other individual, who turned the tide. The man who called himself the Decider will be held accountable for a host of calamitous decisions. But for opening his heart to Africa, he deserves nothing but gratitude and praise.