krebscycle

  • The politics of Matt Tabbi’s big con

    Aside from racism, the most important source of political power for the far right in the United States is apathy and despair. The same political forces that murdered people for registering to vote in Mississippi just a few decades back and that are still desperately working on voter suppression tactics…

  • Liberals do everything wrong

    It is, plainly, the longstanding failure to protect nature that powers Lakoff’s exasperation with liberals. “They don’t understand their own moral system or the other guy’s, they don’t know what’s at stake, they don’t know about framing, they don’t know about metaphors, they don’t understand the extent to which emotion is…

  • Taft Hartley and Tough Talk Harry Truman

    Originally published (to mass teeth gnashing and denunciation) on DailyKos in 2009. Handwringing complaints about Obama’s failure to talk-tough to Republicans have been a stock-in-trade of a large number of “progressive” critics since early in the primaries. Since Harry Truman, a master of punchy rhetoric is often cited as an…

  • Expert advice and Hew Strachan

    Part of the problem, Strachan contends, is that politicians are unduly worried about allowing military leaders to give frank and open advice. He criticized the way General Stanley McCrystal was forced to resign after making unflattering remarks about his political bosses in Washington. “The concern about the military speaking out…

  • A short note on expertise and the US War in Afghanistan

    1. “How many soldiers will it take to over-run Taliban soldiers in this village?” is a highly technical military question where the officer corps provides expertise. 2. “What will it take to rally civilian support in that village and build a stable anti-Taliban community/government? ” is a very different question…

  • Why President Obama appointed Bob Gates Sec. Defense

    Bob Gates appointment as Secretary of Defense is a perfect example of Barack Obama’s deft and cold blooded governing style. The three Democratic Presidents who preceded Obama were defeated by the enormous power of the Pentagon Princes, their Congressional allies, their military industrial corporate sponsors/clients, and the captive media. Clinton…

  • President Obama, inequality, and Narrative at The Nation

    Originally published at the People’s View. December 2011 President Obama delivered a great speech on the economy and fairness in Osawatamie Kansas December 6. Osawatamie is the site where John Brown and other supporters of freedom battled pro-slavery terrorists just before the civil war and also where Theodore Roosevelt described…

  • Why US foreign policy is so stupid: Ukraine update

    It’s depressing to read Tom Nichols try to rationalize  the Iraq War and excuse its supporters (like himself). Nichols even realizes, to some degree, the exceptional mess that the Bush administration created. I supported the war, just as I supported the 1991 war. […] Nonetheless, we screwed up the execution…

  • Maybe Charles Pierce should READ the US Constitution some time

    Actually, the point is that, in all of human history, if you grant the government surveillance powers, it will use them and, in using them, expand them, and it will end up using them on its own citizens simply because that is always the path of least resistance. This is…

  • America’s Middle East Policy Collapses – and not a moment too soon

    For nearly seven decades, American efforts in the Middle East have been based on a bipartisan consensus—one of the few to be found in U.S. foreign policy—aimed at limiting Moscow’s influence in that region. This is a core interest of American foreign policy: it reflects the strategic importance of the…