TheNextReport

I Bought a Wooden Whistle that Wouldn't Whistle - I Bought a Steel Whistle and it Still Wouldn't Whistle. You would think that the GOP would have learned its lesson about shallowness with Sarah Palin's failed candidacy. The governor of Alaska was chosen by the Republican Party to be its nominee for president in response to Hillary Clinton's run for the White House. It is perhaps easy to forget in the wake of Barack Obama's revolutionary election just how much Ms. Clinton groundbreaking run as the first viable woman presidential candidate shook the world of American politics. So what did the GOP do to counter the notoriety the Democrats garnered for a landmark act on the political stage? They got one of their own. The fact that a presidential candidate may need certain qualities that transcend the mere fact of gender mattered little to the Republican managers, steeped as they were in the plastic culture of Madison Avenue and certain of the shallowness of the American...

The General Tosses the Coin What was General David Petreus doing tossing the coin at the Super Bowl? It seems odd that the man who George Bush relied on to run the war in Iraq would appear like a wax figure at the nation's annual sports spectacle. I suppose the NFL producers of the Big Show thought it was a way to honor American service men and women by proxy, having their general determine who gets the kickoff. Yet, amidst the pomp and circumstance of the occasion, few seemed to care about the general's role in prolonging the conflict with his "stay the course" recommendations during his tenure in Baghdad. After more than 4,000 American lives lost and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead or wounded, after billions of dollars spent on a mistake, there is something profoundly unsettling about the inability of Americans to separate tragedy from entertainment.

Stimule Us Can anyone be surprised that not one Republican in the House voted for the Obama stimulus package? In the midst of the worst economic crisis to hit the country since the Great Depression, a crisis brought about largely by the de-regulation philosophy of the Republican party, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republican leadership have opted to return to the strategy of Newt Gingrich and walk in lock-step like lemmings over the political cliff. They do this, not surprisingly, while asking the rest of the country to follow. It is truly astonishing that in the midst of global financial collapse, Republican leaders are once again peddling trickle-down economics - read tax cuts for the wealthy - as the answer to our economic needs. By opposing the rescue plan laid out be the administration, the GOP seems determined to gamble that electorate hasn't yet wised up, that in spite of the election of a new president and Congress, voters still don't understand wh...

Farewell and Good Riddance: George W. Bush said his goodbyes to the nation last night, telling us of all the successes of his administration as Vice-president Dick Cheney nodded out in the audience. One couldn't have expected more than this ultimate, final insult from the august team that has brought the country the blessings of war and financial ruin. These last eight years should stand as a bitter lesson, not only to all Americans, but to all of those around the world who have been convinced that democracy has value. The lesson should read: Do not elect ignorant people to office; require standards of basic intelligence and ethics from your leaders; don't elect businessmen; do not be fooled by those who play with your fears while their hands are in your pockets.

Drill Baby Drill Now that the price of gasoline has dropped below two dollars a gallon and the country is focusing on the overall disaster we know as the US economy, what happened to all of the frenzied calls for expanded oil drilling that characterized the presidential election? It wasn't terribly long ago that both Democrats and Republicans, both Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, were insisting that new oil wells would play a vital role in the energy scheme of a new administration. Dire predictions of dwindling supply, accelerating demand and runaway prices at the pump drove the political discourse. In poll after poll, Americans voiced their support of drilling off the coasts of California, Florida and other previously prohibited locations, convinced there was no alternative. The Alaskan Wildlife Refuge, long considered sacrosanct by those who cherish the environment, was clearly in jeopardy. All the while, oil companies reported record earnings as the Bush administration repeatedly blo...

WE HAVE OVERCOME The tears in Jesse Jackson’s eyes said it all. Centuries of pain cleansed; damaged faith in humanity salvaged; a prophet’s dream redeemed. The election of Barack Obama as America’s first African American president has rained like a beneficent storm over a long parched waste land, offering relief to millions of people of color and others around the world who have believed in the value of racial equality and who yearn for human solidarity. Mr. Obama’s accomplishment is a testament to his grace and intelligence, to his unflappable demeanor and to his unparalleled oratorical gifts. He scaled a mountain burdened with history and human ignorance in a country that gave little indication it was truly ready for the change that he represented. Many thought that America wasn’t enlightened enough for a man of Obama’s caliber. I was one of them. There is something eminently biblical to Senator Obama’s victory. At the moment when the world’s economy has fallen apart, a new leade...

The Redistributor in Chief It is certainly an embarrassment. The ease with which John McCain and his team have elicited jeers from his supporters at the mention of “sharing the wealth” is an apt indicator of the brain damage sustained by a certain portion of the American populace over the years. With its roots in the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s, the McCain campaign has pushed the buttons of the Cold War, tarring Barak Obama as a “socialist” for advocating what has been a part of the American landscape since 1903: the graduated income tax that places a larger tax burden on citizens with greater wealth. After enduring years of Bush administration policies that effectively transferred inordinate amounts of the nation’s wealth to those already wealthy, after witnessing the handover of $700 billion in a bailout of investment bankers and Wall Street manipulators, after seeing the loss of millions of jobs and the foreclosure of millions of homes, one would think that the great majorit...