Roundup: Media's Take

Wesley Clark: Obama must learn from Vietnam

[Wesley Clark is a former supreme commander of NATO, led the alliance of military forces in the Kosovo war (1999) and is a senior fellow at the Ron Burkle Center at UCLA.] Much has been done in six months to deal with the ongoing war in Afghanistan. We have restated that our aim is to eliminate the threat of Al Qaeda; built a new leadership team, including Special Representative Richard Holbrooke; reinforced our troop strength and adjusted our tactics; and have begun augmenting our

Cameron Duodu: Obama must unlearn the past if he is to succeed in Africa

[Cameron Duodu is a Ghanaian writer.] I have a confession to make: as I stood for the American national anthem during President Barack Obama's address to the Ghana Parliament on 11 July 2009, I felt the pleasing sensation of being present at a momentous moment in human history. Formerly, when I heard the US national anthem, I sneered, for whereas great athletes like Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis had advertised American prowess world-wide, they were largely relegated to – i

Larry Allen Brown: A Rebuttal to Dick Armey's OpEd in the Wall Street Journal

[Mr. Brown is a professional musician and teacher. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama along with his wife Kathryn and their two dogs, Murphy and Dipstick. Larry's website is http://Larryallenbrown.com.] Mr. Armey, you wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Washington could use less Keynes, and more Hayek." I took you to be a conservative. Am I wrong about this? If you are a conservat

Jon Wiener: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business

[Wiener teaches American history at UC Irvine and is a contributing editor to the Nation.] The Retail Revolution How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business Nelson Lichtenstein Metropolitan Books: 312 pp., $25 Bentonville, Ark., may be unknown to most Americans, but it is the center of the world for some 750 corporations that manufacture consumer goods -- because Bentonville is the legendary home office of Wal-M

Sara Robinson: Fascist America: Are We There Yet?

[Sara Robinson is one of the few trained social futurists in North America, and will complete her MS in Futures Studies from the University of Houston in 2009. Her skill set includes trend analysis, scenario development, futures research, social change theories, systems thinking, and strategic planning. She holds a BA in Journalism from the USC Annenberg School of Communication, and has worked as a columnist or editor for several national magazines.] All through the dark years of the Bush

Humberto Fontova: Cuba's Healthcare a model for the U.S. says CNN

[Humberto Fontova recieved his Masters Degree from Tulane University in Latin American Studies. He is a journalist and author. Humberto has appeared on such shows as The O'Reilly Factor with Bill O'Reilly, Hannity and Colmes, Fox and Friends, The Dennis Miller Show and various shows for Telemundo.] The CNN report included clips from Michael Moore's Sicko as CNN's Morgan Neill, on location in a Potemkin Havana hospital, gushed about Cuban healthcare's"impressive statistics.""Cuba's i

Todd Wilkinson: A history of presidential visits to Yellowstone National Park

[Information provided by Yellowstone historian Lee Whittlesey] From Chester Arthur to Barack Obama, American presidents have come to the peace and quiet and grandeur of Yellowstone, a refreshing change from the political heat and conflict of Washington. 1883 — Eleven years after Yellowstone was created and just seven years after the nearby Battle of the Little Bighorn between the U.S. Cavalry and three native American tribes, Chester Arthur rides on horseback through Ye

Devin Nunes: It's Fish Versus Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley

[Mr. Nunes is a Republican congressman representing California's 21st district.] In 1931, a severe drought began that within a few years engulfed the Oklahoma panhandle and a third of the Great Plains in a "Dust Bowl." Tens of thousands of people fled the region—many traveling to California along Route 66, which John Steinbeck called "the mother road, the road of flight" in "The Grapes of Wrath." A lot of the "Okies" settled in th

Joe Conason: Winston Churchill was a Bolshevik

[Joe Conason writes a weekly column for Salon and the New York Observer. His new book is "It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush." ] Long before many of today’s frothing right-wing demagogues were born, American conservatives came to idolize Winston Churchill, the late Tory prime minister whose wartime leadership of the British people transformed into the living symbol of democracy armed. That reputation was cemented by his legendary Missouri speech in

Portia Siegelbaum: As Castro Turns 83, Cuba Caught Between Past, Future

[Portia Siegelbaum is a CBS News producer reporting from Havana, Cuba.] Former Cuban President Fidel Castro turns 83 Thursday, his birthday defying all predictions of his death. Those predictions escalated in frequency and frenzy following his collapse and intestinal surgery at the end of July 2006. At exactly midnight, Cuban television interrupted all programming to put on a three-minute photo and video montage of Castro's life, accompanied by patriotic music. Included

Jay Janson: No Hillary Apology For Ike Ordering the Murder of Lumumba

[Jay Janson is a musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, England and the US, and now resides in New York City.] On Tuesday, Secretary of State Clinton, while visiting the war torn Congo, couldn't have apologized for President Eisenhower ordering the first Prime Minister of a free Congo to be"eliminated" even if she would have wanted to, because it has never been officially admitted, (declass

Michael Gerson: At the Town Halls, Trivializing Evil

[Michael Gerson is an op-ed columnist for The Washington Post and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.] During live television coverage of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, novelist Gore Vidal famously called William F. Buckley a "crypto-Nazi." To which Buckley famously replied (in addition to other choice words), "Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered." Buckley later a

Benjamin F. Carlson: Spoiling for a Bush-Cheney Fight

The former vice-president plans to slam Bush in his memoir, and pundits are oddly eager. Dick Cheney, the most powerful American vice-president in history, thinks his considered opinion was ignored under Bush's second term. His upcoming memoir, as reported by Barton Gellman in this morning's Washington Post, purports to detail the inconveniences he believed he suffered. These include: *Bush bowed to hostile public opinion *Bush "moved away" from him on waterb

Rami G. Khouri: Perpetual and collective failures

[Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and US citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is the Director of the Issam Fares Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut as well as editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper. He is an internationally syndicated political columnist and author.] Two opposing trends were affirmed in Israel and Palestine this week, and one of them must disappear.

Steven Plaut: The 14 Lies Blocking Peace in the Middle East

[Steven Plaut is a professor at the Graduate School of the Business Administration at the University of Haifa and is a columnist for the Jewish Press.] If a Martian were suddenly to land on earth and start listening to and reading the mainstream media, he would form the impression that the entire Middle East conflict were due to Israel building some settlements in land that much of the world thinks should become a Palestinian state. A near-consensus exists among the governments of t

Healthcare A Priority For Richard Nixon

[Jonathan Movroydis recently graduated from the University of California, Irvine. His research and writing interests include political ideology, religion, and their respective impact on domestic and world politics.] Flashback thirty-five years, and you have a national healthcare debate that involves RN. On the CBS Evening News in 1974, Washington correspondent Daniel Schorr provided a compare and contrast between President Nixon’s plan for expanding private insurance c

John S. Baker and Elliott Stonecipher: Our Unconstitutional Census

[Mr. Baker teaches constitutional law at Louisiana State University. Mr. Stonecipher is a Louisiana pollster and demographic analyst.] Next year’s census will determine the apportionment of House members and Electoral College votes for each state. To accomplish these vital constitutional purposes, the enumeration should count only citizens and persons who are legal, permanent residents. But it won’t. Instead, the U.S. Census Bureau is set to count all persons physicall

Paul Begala: Health Care Reform: Progress Over Perfection

[Paul Begala is a Democratic strategist and political analyst, was a political consultant to President Bill Clinton during the 1993-94 health-reform effort and later served as counselor to the president. He is an affiliated professor of public policy at Georgetown University.] ...Progressive politics is, in my view, a movement, not a monument. We cannot achieve perfection in this life, and if that is our goal we will always be frustrated. The right has far more modest goals: At eve

Christopher Walker: A Decade of Putinism

[Mr. Walker is director of studies at Freedom House and the editor of "Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians" (Freedom House, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, 2009).] Ten years ago on Sunday, Russia's Duma confirmed Vladimir Putin as prime minister. The vote took place only one week after then-President Boris Yeltsin had nominated the little-known former KGB operative for the post. Yeltsin's surprise resignation only four months later left

Daniel Mandel: Israel's Self-Inflicted Woes

When foreign pressure mounts on Israel, Israelis, still an embattled people, tend rightly to criticize those applying the pressure. Yet they often neglect their own role in stimulating a climate of foreign pressure. The Oslo process greatly augmented this ruinous pattern. Today, Israel is under pressure from the Obama administration to freeze all settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and to proceed with the creation of a Palestinian state. Most om