Articles

Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) arrives at the U.S. Capitol on June 15, 2023.  (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images) "It includes provisions to restrict access to abortion and transgender care for military members," said one advocacy group. "What an absolute disgrace." JAKE JOHNSON Four House Democrats crossed the aisle on Friday and voted for an $886 billion military policy bill containing Republican amendments aimed at rolling back abortion access and gender-affirming care for service members, as well as a measure that would bar the Pentagon—a major emitter—from carrying out President Joe Biden's climate-related executive orders. The four Democrats who joined 215 Republicans in voting yes on the National Defense Authorization Act (N...

BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Hiroshima blast and fire damage, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey map. In the spring of 2016, Barack Obama became the first sitting president to make an official visit to Hiroshima. Obama’s strange speech lacked any words of apology to the victims of the atomic bombing, one of the world’s most infamous war crimes. Indeed, Obama clung tightly to the myth that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only way to compel the surrender of Imperial Japan and saved hundreds of thousands of lives that might have been lost during a military invasion. This is bad history. Japan was on the brink of defeat before the atomic blasts and, in fact, it is now clear that the Truman Administration was rushing to use the bombs before the Soviets entered the war, fearing the...

BY JOSEPH NATOLI Photo by Patrick Tomasso Words come to meaning within the context of expression, which is time and place. Call it the stage upon which actors –words – are confined. Maybe they can break out on other stages, “back in the day” stages, but the risk here on a demanding “Be Present!” cultural stage is facing instant dismissal, like asking for pen and paper or having a home phone. You might be using a foreign language dictionary for all the good your words are doing. I am not implying there is a dictionary, like an external reference point, defining meanings we all agree upon.  In a way, we have lost our own language, not your unique way in which “You Speak Yourself!” but the old-fashioned language as a societal creation and a creator of society. I guess we ...

BY PAUL STREET You can hear the liberal Democrats clucking and see them smiling.  The “democratic American system,” they want you to know, “is working.”  Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump has been indicted for the third time and last Tuesday brought the big one: the federal indictment for January 6, for the attempted blocking of the peaceful transfer of power during and after the 2020 presidential election. But is it really working, for “democracy” and “the people” – the American System, that is? This is the Minority Rule system whose Electoral College, voter suppression, Huxleyan and Orwellian media, and overall many-sided corporate oligarchy/plutocracy let the demented orange fascist  into the world’s most powerful office in the first place. It was...

BY NICKY Image of Alejandro Cartagena. There is no use arguing that Donald Trump hasn’t existentially altered the conversation on war in this country and sweet Kali knows that I’ve tried. I’ve been crying bullshit in all caps on that swinging bologna salesman’s phony isolationist, Pat Buchanan-with-dick-jokes act since he crashed the GOP primaries on his golden escalator in 2016. The man is a pathological liar with a long and well documented career of saying quite literally everything and anything to make a buck and keep his cojones out of the fire. Just try taking a jog through the ruins of Atlantic City without a fully automatic Uzi if you don’t fucking believe me. Orange-Man-Bad’s America First strip tease was just his latest sales pitch but after eight years of George W....