Grains Gone Wild
by Paul Krugman
These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way — and it’s hurting a lot more people.I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending. |
Those Crazy Kagans, America's Most War-Lovingest Family
by Gregg Gordon
If you're a devoted C-Span viewer like me, you've witnessed a blurrying parade of people named Kagan stomp across your screens the past few years. They show up at endless forums sponsored by neocon front groups like the American Enterprise Institute. Their Wall Street Journal op-eds are read on the Washington Journal morning call-in show. And at this point, network founder Brian Lamb has hosted the entire brood on his Sunday night Q&A interview show. |
Bush? A Foreign Policy Legacy?
by Jon Faulkner
This headline appeared, appropriately enough, on MSN’s home page on April Fool’s Day. “Bush seeks to salvage his foreign policy legacy.” Someone must have told Bush that as a soon to be former President of the U.S. his administration would be judged for its contributions to its citizens, and whether or not it left the world a better place. Learned people will carefully select the Bush man’s shining moments, such as they are. Their criteria for assessing his presidency is ultimately very simple and only asks, “Of what use was this man?” |
Promoting equality = Buying into the "homosexual agenda"?
by Mary Shaw
The right-wingers certainly do like to exaggerate and twist things -- especially when it comes to sex. For some reason, they love to worry about what consenting adults are doing in the privacy of their own bedrooms, and they want to dictate whom you can love and whom you cannot. |
Listen to the General (No, Not Petraeus!)
by Dave Lindorff
In a couple days, Americans will be deluged with effusive, praise-filled stories in what passes for news organizations, print and electronic, in the US, quoting Gen. David Petraeus on the glories of his and President Bush's brilliant so-called "surge" strategy in Iraq. |
French president not quite a son of a Bush
by Eric Margolis
As a key NATO meeting opened last week in Romania, parliamentary and media debate was raging in Paris over President Nicholas Sarkozy's unpopular decision to dispatch a battalion of elite troops to Afghanistan. This is the "rescue mission" long ballyhooed by Ottawa that is supposed to relieve beleaguered Canadian troops around Kandahar. |
Hillary Low-balled Bill's Pay in Forms
by Robert Parry
In her disclosure forms for the U.S. Senate and her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton downplayed Bill Clinton’s income from two key financial backers, billionaire investor Ronald Burkle and consumer-data executive Vinod Gupta, when compared with the Clintons’ recently released tax filings. |
Gaza Running on Near Empty
by Mohammed Omer
Ayman Eid stands as motionless as his orange Hyundai taxi. Never mind taking a passenger somewhere, Ayman has no idea how he will ever get home.The queue at the petrol station seems endless. Drivers have run out of petrol even to queue up in their cars; they just queue up themselves, empty cans in hand. Only the lucky leave with a full can by the end of a day. |
Rice to be McCain's Vice President? Not so fast
by John Byrne
Could Condoleezza Rice be John McCain's running mate?A day after a top former Bush spokesman in Iraq remarked that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is actively campaigning for McCain's vice presidential ticket, Sen. John McCain remained mum after receiving a question about her possible candidacy on his campaign jet. |
Ohio Hospital Contests a Story Clinton Tells
by Deborah Sontag
Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee. |
Diana killed by drivers' negligence
by CNN
The inquest into the death of Princess Diana in a Paris car crash in 1997 returned a verdict of unlawful killing on Monday, blaming "grossly negligent" driving by her chauffeur and pursuing photographers for the car wreck. Coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker, holding the inquest into the deaths of Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, had earlier Monday told the 11 jurors that he would accept a verdict if nine of them agreed. The jury had been deliberating since last Wednesday, April 2. |
Book: McCain temper boiled over in '92 tirade, called wife a 'cunt'
by Nick Juliano
John McCain's temper is well documented. He's called opponents and colleagues "shitheads," "assholes" and in at least one case "a fucking jerk."But a new book on the presumptive Republican nominee will air perhaps the most shocking angry exchange to date. |
