NewsTrust - Presidential Election 2008 - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Palin Was Terrific

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

American Spectator - By Quin Hillyer - Jan. 17 (Opinion) - I continue to believe that Sarah Palin is not yet qualified to be president, but my admiration for her continues to grow. Her interview with Sean Hannity, just aired, was almost pitch-perfect. It was dignified. It was well-modulated. It was strong. And it was thoughtful.

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What If McCain Had Been President? And Other Climate What-Ifs | The New Republic

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New Republic - By Bradford Plumer - Jul. 24 (Opinion) - Did a climate bill ever have a chance to squeak through Congress? Could anything have saved it? Politico's Darren Samuelsohn has a piece today about the usual, tiresome round of recriminations among greens after Harry Reid killed cap-and-trade. (Okay, technically Reid's putting it off until after August recess, but the odds of survival are grim.) The underlying question, though, is a good one: Peering back over the past two years, there were a few pivot points where things might have turned out very differently.

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Obama Partnering with Afghan Gov't, But is there any there there?

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Dec. 01 (Opinion) - President Barack Obama's commitment to "finish the job" in Afghanistan by sending 55,000 US troops to that country (counting the 21,000 he dispatched last winter shortly after being inaugurated) depends heavily on a hope of building up an Afghan government and army over to which the US can eventually turn control.

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Should Obama Fire Gen. McChrystal?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Ray McGovern - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - Facing military pressure to escalate in Afghanistan, President Obama may need an inner Harry Truman.

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5 US Troops, 100 Afghans Killed; Tensions rise over Murky Election Results

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Sep. 13 (Opinion) - A wave of violence and bombings throughout Afghanistan left some 50 Afghan civilians and security forces and 5 US troops dead on Saturday , along with at least 50 Taliban dead.. The most deadly attacks took place in the Pashtun areas of Uruzgan and Qandahar in the south, and Kunar in the east. The northern province of Kunduz and the western one of Farah were also hit. Late reports from Farah speak of a major engagement between the Afghan army and the Taliban, which left 7 soldiers dead and in which 50 Taliban perished. But note that the violence was mostly in regions with significant Pashtun populations. Kunduz in the north is unusually mixed-- most northern provinces do not have that many Pashtuns, but rather are dominated by Tajiks and ...

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Measuring Success in Afghanistan

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Tom Engelhardt - Sep. 08 (Opinion) - The problem was that none of the official metrics managed to measure what mattered most in Vietnam. History may not simply repeat itself, but there's good reason to look askance at whatever set of metrics the Obama administration manages to devise. After all, as in the Vietnam years, Obama's people, too, will be mustering numbers in search of "success"; they, too, will be measuring "progress." And those numbers -- like the Vietnam era body counts -- will have to come up from below (with all the attendant pressures). By the time they reach Washington, they are likely to have the best possible patina on them.

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Obama Defends Afghanistan War; Campaigning Wraps up with Karzai calling on Warlords

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Aug. 18 (Opinion) - President Barack Obama on Monday. Ironically, as Obama spoke. Others have pointed out that Bush?s handlers would never have allowed any such thing. Hell, they unconstitutionally designated ?protest zones.? Anyway, about Afghanistan 1. Obama reiterated his pledge to get the US out of Iraq: "And we will remove all our troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. And for America, the Iraq war will end." 2. He has a new strategy in Afghanistan, announced last March. He makes three points about it: 1. "This strategy recognizes that al Qaeda and its allies had moved their base to the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan" . . . and 2. "This strategy acknowledges that military power alone will not win this war—that we also need diplomacy and development ...

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Afghanistan Votes. Who Cares?

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Registan.net - By Joshua Foust - Aug. 18 (Opinion) - This was originally posted to the World Politics Review blog. There is tremendous buzz about Afghanistan’s elections. Open up any op-ed page, and you can find countless articles about votes and democracy and Karzai not instantly winning, and whatever else. But what I don’t get is why anyone cares. Democratic elections usually rest on a few basic [...]

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Election Review, Part 3: The West

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Real Clear Politics - By Jay Cost, Sean Trende - Jan. 18 (Opinion) - Today we continue our analysis of the 2008 election with a review of the Western Region. This Census Bureau region consists of two divisions: the Pacific West and the Mountain West. Pacific West The Pacific West is unique if for no other reason than two of its five states were the home states of Presidential candidates. Because of this, it is difficult to analyze these states' voting patterns. Given the state of McCain's Alaska polling before the Republican convention, it seems unlikely that he would have won the state by twenty points without Palin on the ticket. Similarly, Obama's ties to Hawaii probably added to his 40-point victory there. In other words, because of the personal nature of the vote in these small states, we just can't glean too much useful information from them.

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Obama Does and Doesn't Fulfill King's Dream

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Earl Ofari Hutchinson - Jan. 18 (Editorial) - The unchallenged article of faith is that the election of President Barack Obama fulfills Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that the content of character should trump skin color. King uttered the words in his March on Washington speech in 1963. We'll hear that said time and again in the march up to the King national holiday January 19 and Obama's inauguration the next day.

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Works, Not Words

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New Republic - By Nathan J. Diament - Dec. 29 (Opinion) - In office, Obama has a chance to show his sensitivity to religious voters' concerns, and, in some cases, advance policies that are important to them, without sacrificing Democratic principles.

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Senator Coleman, Give Yourself Two Christmas Presents - Acceptance & Peace

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Yvonne R. Davis - Dec. 27 (Opinion) - Sir, I want to know if you would kindly consider giving yourself two Christmas presents this year - 1. Acceptance of what is meant to be wrapped in a big white bow and 2. Peace of Mind dressed in gold wrapping paper with yellow ribbons.

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How the hell did Rick Warren get inauguration tickets?

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Mike Madden - Dec. 19 (Opinion) - So about the only thing less surprising than the outrage that news of Warren's selection to give the invocation at Obama's inauguration is prompting among gay activists, liberals and Obama supporters generally is probably Warren's appearance on the program in the first place.

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Embrace What You Have In Common With Rick Warren

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Lee Stranahan - Dec. 18 (Opinion) - Apparently, Barack Obama meant what he said about our politics being too small for our problems. With job layoffs and new miserable financial statistics being announced every day, how else can we explain the press and some Republicans being endlessly fascinated with the non-connection between between Obama and Blagojevich? How else does one explain the thrashing about of some progressives over the idea of Pastor Rick Warren saying a few minutes of prayer at Obama's inauguration? The answer is simple; we currently practice a mighty small politics in the United States.

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The 2008 Election in Verse

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By John Lundberg - Dec. 07 (Review) - Calvin Trillin, responding to Daily Show host John Stewart's impish description of his new book in verse on the 2008 election Deciding the Next Decider, joked, "You made me feel like one of those guys who's done the Palace of Versaille in beer cans." No, John Milton he isn't. Trillin is a comedic writer with a gift for light verse. And it was clear from last week's Daily Show interview that he understands that his latest project--chronicling politics in rhyming couplets--is a little goofy. He refers to his book in a tongue-in-cheek fashion as "epic" (it is, in fact, written in heroic verse). But while the author himself calls it doggerel, as you'll see from these excerpts on John McCain, his verse can be very biting:

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Noam Chomsky: "What Next? The Elections, the Economy, and the World"

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Noam Chomsky - Nov. 24 (Interview) - 80% of the population say that the country’s going in the wrong direction. About 80% say the government doesn’t work to the benefit of the people, it works for the few and the special interests. A startling 94% complain that the government doesn’t pay any attention to the public will, and on like that. Under conditions like that, you would expect a landslide to a opposition almost whoever they are. And there wasn’t one. So one might ask why wasn’t there a landslide? That goes off in an interesting direction. And other respects the outcome was pretty familiar. So once again, the election was essentially bought. 9 out of 10 of the victors outspent their opponents.

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Bill Ayers talks back

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Walter Shapiro - Nov. 17 (Interview) - Proving yet again that there are indeed second and even third acts in American lives, Bill Ayers had transformed himself over a quarter of a century from an on-the-run-from-the-law member of the Weather Underground to a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. But because of a single event -- a 1995 coffee that he and his wife gave for fledgling state Senate candidate Barack Obama -- Ayers again found himself in the cross hairs of history.

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Progressive Patriotism

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Warren Goldstein - Nov. 17 (Comment) - I was listening to my local NPR station when the host asked, "Is there a new progressive patriotism in America?" Calls flooded in proclaiming a resounding Yes, and I began figuring out how to put an American flag on my front door.

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Obama's team had foresight to deliver Florida

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

St. Petersburg Times - By Adam C. Smith - Nov. 16 (Opinion) - Now that Barack Obama is president-elect and Florida is blue on the electoral map, it's easy to forget how things started. Here in Clinton country, it was crazy for prominent Florida Democrats to embrace Obama's candidacy. And for an underdog campaign fixated on Iowa and other early primary states, Florida was a distant outpost and an afterthought.

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A Quick Sigh of Relief, Now Let's Get to Work Rebuilding Reproductive Rights

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Nancy Northup - Nov. 13 (Comment) - The election of Barack Obama heralds at long last a season of promise and opportunity: the chance to improve the lives of millions of Americans and people throughout the world by ending the Bush administration's horrific war on women and making reproductive health a priority for U.S. law and policy. Yet earlier this fall, I said that no matter who won in November, those of us on the front lines of the fight for reproductive rights and health care would have our work cut out for us.

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Filibuster-Proof Democratic Majority Hinges on 3 Undecided Senate Races

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Paul Demko, Shannyn Moore - Nov. 12 (Interview) - Three Senate races still hang in the balance—Georgia, Alaska and Minnesota—with a filibuster-proof, sixty-seat Democratic supermajority at stake. We get reports from Anchorage and Minneapolis. [

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Can Obama Pull Off a Historic Presidential Double Play?

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Arianna Huffington - Nov. 11 (Opinion) - You know something extraordinary is happening when even Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Joe Lieberman trip over themselves -- and their hastily discarded invective -- to say nice things about Obama and the "tremendous signal" sent by his election. Sure, it's easy to see their encomiums as purely tactical attempts not to be on the wrong side of history, but they are more than that. They also demonstrate how certain moments and certain individuals are able to bring the best out in people -- even people who have shown us some of the worst aspects of human character. Because, hard though it may be to accept, the best and the worst reside in each of us, side-by-side.

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America Is a Center-Left Country No Matter How Much the Corporate Media Say Otherwise

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Joshua Holland - Nov. 10 (Editorial) - Outside of a few social issues, Americans are firmly in the progressive camp, but that hasn't prevented a lot of bloviating to the contrary.

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Alaska On eBay? Election Numbers Update

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Shannyn Moore - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - You don't have to be a coroner to smell a corpse. Alaska needs an election autopsy STAT. The stench persists. When Democracy's infected, there is nothing benign about it. I know Alaska. I know we keep voting for self-professed corrupt bastards. I know it took the FBI to start scrubbing the corruption out of our state legislature. I sat through the trials of men who had sold their votes cheap to big oil.

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California Youth Defeat ‘Lock ‘em Up’ Politics

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New America Media - By Raj Jayadev - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - Eclipsed by the enormity of a nation voting in a black President, and a statewide cultural war over gay marriage, is that fact that California registered one the most dramatic and significant shifts in attitude over incarceration policies in state history this past election. The quintessential “tough on crime” initiative, Proposition 6, was overwhelmingly rejected by voters across the state, a count of 70 percent to 30 percent, and did not win a majority in a single county. With little news coverage, and no commercials on either side leading up to the election, the trouncing of Prop. 6 was a near unadulterated reflection of California's new mind-set on criminal justice policies. The numbers point to a repudiation of “lock 'em all up” politics that has dominated the state for decades.

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