During the Bush years, progressives - rightly - criticized the Washington press corps for trading favorable coverage of the administration for access to the administration. Some reporters defended themselves by insisting that the administration created the necessity for such a quid pro quo, by effect… Read full post »

The most effective kind of propaganda - as any propagandist will tell you - is the kind that is almost completely invisible, cloaked in the argot of objectivity or worse, in the argot of a political ideology antithetical to the propaganda's message itself.

We can discount over-the-top press… Read full post »

Every now and then, rank-and-file writers, bloggers and radio hosts like myself (but by no means limited to myself) are accused of "self-promotion." This is not a charge usually leveled at very famous writers, bloggers and radio hosts, nor at television hosts (who are, almost by definition, famous) -… Read full post »

Just a few quick questions to ponder after President Obama's speech announcing a massive escalation in Afghanistan - the very first being shouldn't we be able to honestly answer these queries before mindlessly cheering on a deployment of more troops to a Central Asian war zone?

Here they are… Read full post »

"States rights" has been the divisive clarion call of the extreme right on social and civil rights issues for decades. But devolving power to the states doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can be what's known in policy circles as Progressive Federalism - an ideology whereby "governors and activist… Read full post »

I wrote a newspaper column this week noting the rank hypocrisy in political and media circles when it comes to their supposed concerns about the deficit. I noted that Tea Party protesters are among the biggest hypocrites - and chief among them is political terrorist Glenn Beck, because, as you'll see… Read full post »

In the blogosphere, we've often discussed Washington's sick fetishization of bipartisanship. Whether it's pundits or politicians, the entire D.C. Establishment has made abundantly clear that it is first and foremost interested in bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake before it is interested in the… Read full post »

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the first time yesterday suggested she may be backing off her support of the public option. According to CNN, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "said they would support any provision that increases competition and accessibility for health insurance - whether… Read full post »

Per my post and announcement last night, here's the clip of my CNN debate with David Frum about the Van Jones affair this morning. Notice that Frum has no answer for the obvious double standards. Somehow, nobody gets fired for lying us into Iraq, Tim Geithner keeps his job… Read full post »

UPDATE: I'm scheduled to be on CNN Monday morning, 9/7, at 8:30am ET to discuss this post. Tune in.

My column that was published on Friday of this week was about the difference between a political party and a political movement - and I can't say I'm happy to see the… Read full post »

Last week, I wrote a column about the coordinated effort by the Pentagon and administrations of both political parties to hide the human cost of war from the American people. As I wrote, part of that effort is about selling war as a harmless video game, and part of it is… Read full post »

Had the distinct displeasure of seeing your drivel printed in my local paper recently. Although I recognize that all liberals are drooling buffoons, I must say you are one of the more bone-stupid liberals I've ever run across. How is it, I often wonder, that all liberals are so incredibly stupid?… Read full post »

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, just as I was writing this post, Fox News did a "breaking news" segment that showed a crazed protestor screaming at Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (D). Here's the screen shot from Fox's website. I'm sure the protestor will soon be an "exclusive guest" on a Fox News program.… Read full post »

On his show last night, Keith Olbermann essentially issued a non-denial denial about the GE-MSNBC-Fox story, saying that he himself was "party to no deal" - exactly what he said in the original New York Times article. There's no reason to doubt Olbermann - however, his own personal lack of involvemen… Read full post »

The New York Times story about MSNBC's corporate parent, General Electric, forcing the network to soften its criticism of Fox News has generated a lot of buzz over the weekend. But what's so telling about the story and the residual chatter is that, with the exception of Glenn Greenwald's typically te… Read full post »

Last week, my newspaper column looked at how our media and political elites limit the scope of policy debates to very narrow, very ideologically driven parameters. In this Brave New World, the propaganda is somewhat subtle, in that there's no Big Brother overtly saying certain things can or cannot be… Read full post »

In recent posts and in my last column, I noted that there's an unspoken deal between D.C. reporters and "Blue Dog" Democrats to explain Blue Dog opposition to health insurance regulation, unionization, Wall Street reform and pollution controls as a direct outgrowth of them representing culturally con… Read full post »

My column last week generated some Official Pushback from the biggest of big media. The column focused, in part, on how the Washington press corps plays a deleterious role in distorting the parameters of our political debate around economic issues like health care and taxes. Here was the paragraph wh… Read full post »

22,000 Americans die every year because they lack adequate health care coverage. That's a basic, verifiable fact. That's about 60 Americans every day, or six 9/11's every year. Broken down to a local Colorado estimate, that's about 365 Coloradoans every year, or one Coloradoan every day - a rate of d/…

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NOTE: This is the fifth in an OpenLeft series entitled "An American Griswold In China" - a sequence of firsthand dispatches about my recent trip to China. These were written as my trip unfolded, but had to be posted now (a week after I returned home) in order to avoid any… Read full post »

NOTE: This is the fourth in a series entitled "An American Griswold In China" - a sequence of firsthand dispatches about my recent trip to China. These were written as my trip unfolded, but had to be posted now (a week after I returned home) in order to avoid any potential… Read full post »

NOTE: This is the third in a series entitled "An American Griswold In China" - a sequence of firsthand dispatches about my recent trip to China. These were written as my trip unfolded, but had to be posted now (a week after I returned home) in order to avoid any potential… Read full post »

NOTE: This is the second in a series entitled "An American Griswold In China" - a sequence of firsthand dispatches about my recent trip to China. These were written as my trip unfolded, but had to be posted now (a week after I returned home) in order to avoid any potential… Read full post »

NOTE: This is the first in a series entitled "An American Griswold In China" - a sequence of firsthand dispatches about my recent trip to China. These were written as my trip unfolded, but had to be posted now (a week after I returned home) in order to avoid any potential… Read full post »

I appeared on CNN this weekend to debate right-wing gasbag Chris Plante about the ongoing debate over torture, Gitmo, detainees and President Obama's effort to curtail the Bush administration's most egregious legal transgressions. You can watch the debate here - it's about the most heated t… Read full post »