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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! From Nixon to Sarah Palin
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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers!
From Nixon to Sarah Palin
What’s happened to the Republican Party? What’s happened to populism? Read Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair on the life and death of Nixonland, and the class politics of the war over Sarah Palin. ALSO in our new subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter, read Serge Halimi on how Russia gave Georgia and the U.S.a well-deserved black eye. PLUS Carrie Dann’s wonderful first-hand account of the fight of the Western Shoshone to reclaim their land. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents.
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Today's Stories September 6 / 7, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Linn Washington, Jr. Patrick Cockburn Gary Leupp Nancy Kurshan William Blum Michael Winship Fred Gardner Nikolas Kozloff Wajahat Ali Robert Fantina Karyn Strickler David Yearsley Richard Rhames James L. Secor Missy Beattie Eric Patton Ben Terrall Thom Rutledge Dan Bacher David Macaray Jane Stillwater Grady Harper Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend September 5, 2008 Elizabeth Walters Bill Quigley Alan Farago Dave Lindorff Ira Glunts Peter Morici Deepak Tripathi Manuel Garcia, Jr. Michael Donnelly Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day September 4, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair Paul Craig Roberts Ron Jacobs M. Junaid Levesque-Alam Andy Worthington Osama Dawoud Stephen Lendman Fidel Castro Website of the Day September 3, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Sen. Mike Gravel Vijay Prashad Nikolas Kozloff Ralph Nader Howard Lisnoff Steve Early / Cal Winslow Shepherd Bliss Bill Quigley Website of the Day
September 2, 2008 Marjorie Cohn Jonathan Cook Robert Weitzel Corey D. B. Walker John Ross Eric Walberg Judith Scherr Richard Morse B. R. Gowani Michael Greenberg Website of the Day September 1, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff C. G. Estabrook Manuel Garcia, Jr. David Macaray B. R. Gowani Saul Landau Charles Orloski Gloria La Riva Website of the Day August 30 / 31, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Bill Quigley Jeffrey St. Clair Andy Worthington Deepak Tripathi Stanley Howard Dave Lindorff Wajahat Ali Robert Fantina Josh Schlossberg Benjamin Dangl Missy Beattie Howard Lisnoff Suzan Mazur Rev. Jim Rigby David Yearsely Serge Quadruppani B.R. Gowani Richard Rhames Poets' Basement Website of the Day
August 29, 2008 Mike Whitney Brian Cloughley David Ker Thomson Joanne Mariner Neve Gordon Chris Genovali Ron Jacobs Michael Donnelly August 28, 2008 Judy Gumbo Albert Paul Cantor Saul Landau / Andy Worthington Ben Terrall Leonard Peltier Niranjan Ramakrishnan Donna J. Volatile Website of the Day
August 27, 2008 Anthony DiMaggio Jordan Flaherty Ralph Nader Melissa Checker Bob Sommer Cynthia McKinney Ali Khan M. Junaid Levesque-Alam Dave Lindorff David Macaray Website of the Day
August 26, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Michael D. Yates Paul Craig Roberts Andy Worthington Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Huwaida Arraf Joseph Grosso Sheldon Richman Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day August 25, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Bill Quigley Jonathan Cook James McEnteer Uri Avnery Will Potter Robert Jensen Stephen Lendman Wajahat Ali Carl Finamore Website of the Day August 23 / 4, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patty O'Grady Nicole Colson Steve Conn Deepak Trapathi Robert Fantina Jonathan M. Feldman Joshua Frank Osama Qashoo Howard Lisnoff David Michael Green Dave Lindorff Christopher Brauchli Alan Farago Michael Winship Richard Rhames David Rosen Patrick B. Barr Jamie Newlin Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 22, 2008 Boris Kagarlitsky Laura Carlsen Bob Barr Marwan Bishara Peter Morici Manuel Garcia, Jr. Charles Mostoller Sumbul Ali-Karamali Keith Rosenthal John F. Miglio Website of the Day August 21, 2008 Allan J. Lichtman Dave Lindorff Loserville: How Obama Blew It Ralph Nader Joanne Mariner Wajahat Ali Ron Jacobs Rostam Purzal Anthony Papa Website of the Day August 20, 2008 Michael Neumann Ray McGovern Eric Walberg Fidaa Abed Daniel Haack Mike Whitney Website of the Day August 19, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Deepak Tripathi Marwan Bishara Saul Landau William S. Lind Martha Rosenberg James Brittain Pratyush Chandra David Macaray Website of the Day August 18, 2008 Tariq Ali Gary Leupp Uri Avnery John Ross Farooq Sulehria Luis Rodriguez Manuel Garcia, Jr. Noah Baker Merrill Charles Thomson Website of the Day August 16 / 17, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Deepak Tripathi Conn Hallinan Mike Whitney Robert Fantina Ray McGovern Nicole Colson Fatima Bhutto Jean-Luis Rocca David Michael Green Ramzi Kysia Dave Lindorff Lisa Martinovic Richard Rhames Don Santina Rannie Amiri Ramzy Baroud John Stanton Howard Lisnoff Ron Jacobs Seth Sandronsky Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
August 15, 2008 Steve Niva David Remington Michael Winship Paul Craig Roberts Farzana Versey Harvey Wasserman Felice Pace Julian Critchley Website of the Day August 14, 2008 Saul Landau / Conn Hallinan Mike Whitney Reza Fiyouzat Ralph Nader Christopher Brauchli The Cheerleader in China Jack Bradigan Spula Patrick Irelan John Walsh Dan Bacher Website of the Day
August 13, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts David Remington Brian Cloughley Glen Ford Brendan Cooney Dave Lindorff Tom Lewis Stan Cox Alan Farago Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day August 12, 2008 Uri Avnery Anthony DiMaggio Bill Christison Eric Walberg Kate Connolly Diane Farsetta Peter Morici Thom Rutledge Lee Patton Niranjan Ramakrishnan Website of the Day August 11, 2008 Ishmael Reed Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Douglas Kammen William Willers Greg Moses Jeff Leys Cynthia McKinney Alan Farago Website of the Day August 9 / 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Bruce Jackson Kevin Young Chris Floyd Joshua Frank Robert Fantina Brendan Cooney Mark Almond Lois Gibbs Rev. William Alberts Kathy Kelly John Ross David Michael Green Bill Moyers / Ron Jacobs Richard Rhames David Yearsley Lee Sustar Brenda Norrell Ben Terrall Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 8, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Manuel Garcia, Jr. M. Shahid Alam Andy Worthington Lawrence J. Korb David Model Alan Farago Diop Olugbala Firmin DeBrabander Website of the Day August 7, 2008 Dr. Trudy Bond William Blum Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Robert Weitzel Jacob G. Hornberger Binoy Kampmark David Macaray Howard Lisnoff Website of the Day August 6, 2008 Marc Herold Greg Moses Sheldon Rampton Kevin Young Michael Estrada Robert Weissman Dr. Susan Block Cindy Sheehan Ace Hoffman Website of the Day August 5, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Jeff Halper Patrick Cockburn Nancy Welch Peter Morici Sousan Hammad Eamon Martin Shepherd Bliss Tim Matson Website of the Day August 4, 2008 Uri Avnery Saul Landau David W. Remington Rev. Jesse Jackson Dave Lindorff Peter Morici Joanne Mariner Ramzy Baroud Christian Wright Website of the Day August 2 / 3, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler James Abourezk Andy Worthington Brian Cloughley Robert Fantina Benjamin Dangl Marlene Martin David Yearsley Fatemeh Keshavarz David Michael Green Obama as Dukakis Harvey Wasserman Jason Hribal Phyllis Pollack Laray Polk Ron Jacobs David Macaray David Rosen Dan Bacher Joe Allen Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 1, 2008 Jonathan Cook Nikolas Kozloff Rannie Amiri Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli M. K. Bhadrakumar Patrick Cockburn James J. Brittain Dan Bacher Website of the Day
July 31, 2008 Michael Hudson Carl Finamore Mike Whitney Joshua Frank Andy Worthington Ralph Nader Bill Moyers / Robert Weissman Dave Lindorff Website of the Day July 30, 2008 Brian M. Downing Chuck Spinney William S. Lind David Ker Thomson Karl Grossman Mike Whitney Martha Rosenberg James Murren Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Website of the Day July 29, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair John Ross Peter Morici Alison Weir Gary Leupp David Macaray Brenda Norrell Marjorie Cohn Eric Ruder Website of the Day July 28, 2008 Dr. Bryant Welch Kathy Kelly Mike Whitney Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli Clifton Ross Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
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Weekend Edition CounterPunch DiarySarah Palin and the Good BookBy ALEXANDER COCKBURN Being well schooled in scripture, Sarah Palin is certainly familiar with the Book of Kings, Chapter 1, verses 1-4 and I’m sure they have crossed her mind in recent days:
On Thursday night John McCain certainly looked stricken in years, tottering through his interminable speech, and whatever heat now nourishes him in political terms comes from Sarah, not Cindy whose inner thoughts may perhaps be more directed towards the yoga instructor in San Diego reckoned by some in the yoga community in that city to be a source of consolation to the Hensley beer heiress. McCain’s speech seemed to be me to be pretty much of a dud. It may have been watched by 40 million, but how many were awake by the time McCain reached his surprise ending, namely that in the service of his country he had experienced a terrible ordeal in a prison camp in what was once, in a long forgotten war, known as North Vietnam. Particularly hallucinating was McCain’s invective against the corruptions of Washington and Big Government – one of the two big enemies identified by Republican speechwriters in St Paul – the other being the national press which has spent twenty fawning years helping McCain cultivate the myth of his senate career as a maverick. The very morning of McCain’s speech Bloomberg News was featuring the remarks on his firm’s website of Bill Gross, manager of the world's biggest bond fund. Gross is co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co (Pimco) based in Newport Beach, Greater Los Angeles. Gross wrote that unless Big Government steps in, pronto, the whole show could go over the cliff. As Bloomberg reported him: “The U.S. government needs to start using more of its money to support markets. ‘ Unchecked, it can turn a campfire into a forest fire, a mild asset bear market into a destructive financial tsunami. If we are to prevent a continuing asset and debt liquidation of near historic proportions, we will require policies that open up the balance sheet of the U.S. Treasury.’” The very next day the government stepped in to bail out Fannie and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants. And on that same Friday Nevada regulators shut down Silver State Bank, crushed by bad loans in the South Nevada real estate market. McCain’s son Andrew had sat on the boards of Silver State Bank and of its parent, Silver State Bancorp, starting in February. He resigned in July citing "personal reasons." Andrew was also a member of the bank's audit committee. He’s the chief financial officer of Hensley & Co., the beer distributorship of which Cindy McCain is chairwoman. Memo to depositors. Avoid banks on whose boards sit the sons of Republican presidential contenders. Recall Neil Bush, one of George and Barbara’s hellspawn. Neil was a member of the board of directors of Silverado Savings and Loan ,based in Denver. Silverado went belly-up in the S&L collapse in the 1980s, and the collapse cost taxpayers $1 billion. Mismanagement was charged and Neil one of those in the firing line. He was fined $50,000 – a cost of doing business swiftly defrayed by a fundraiser. If Andrew runs into similar problems, no doubt Cindy will step up to the plate. Amid all the talk about parental responsibility in St Paul, no one including Cindy and John took on the burdensome responsibility of mentioning that John had a first wife, Carol, and three children before he decamped with Cindy. It was Carol who waited for him and raised those children while he was in the POW camp. Someone should have held up a “Remember Carol” sign in the convention hall. Incidentally, congrats to those courageous demonstrators from Code Pink and Iraq Veterans Against the War who undoubtedly threw McCain off his stride with their interventions inside the hall. Though the servile network commentators said she hit it out of the park on Wednesday night, Palin gave what one could politely call a passable speech. It’s a measure of how desperate both the delegates and the press were for excitement that they hailed it as 45 minutes worth of consummate rhetorical savagery establishing Palin as a star and leaving the Democratic ticket bloodied by her quips and insults. Listening to the speeches preceding Palin’s one could see the depths of the Republican dilemma and why John McCain made his long-odds gambler’s pick of Palin in the immediate aftermath of Obama’s triumphant final evening in Denver. Up to the microphone stepped McCain’s erstwhile rivals – Romney, Huckabee and Giuliani – and aside from ritual homage to the heroism of John McCain, found nothing better to do with their time than flail away at Big Government and the liberals in the national press corps. There’s a problem here of course, which is that Big Government in Washington has been run by the Bush White House for the last eight years, and by a Republican Congress for six of these eight, and by the US Supreme Court, of whom all but two justices were appointed by Republican presidents. Attacks on the elite pinko press always go down well with the rubes but don’t really furnish the high octane fuel necessary to send McCain surging past Obama. A week ago McCain made the assessment that the Republican Party’s Christian base didn’t trust him and the Undecideds saw him as just the sort of Washington insider Romney and others were scheduled to deride in St Paul. On the spur of the moment he bet on Palin and tossed a new soap opera into the fall schedule. Sarah Palin is part of a frontier myth that goes back to the earliest years of the Republic: the beautiful, intrepid frontierswoman, shoulder to shoulder with her man, firing at the redskins circling the wagon and dispatching the roaring grizzly with a steady aim as it towers over her infant’s cradle. Tie this to the equally potent myth of the ordinary PTA mom taking on the corrupt good old boys running City Hall and the allure becomes irresistible. Throw in her manly husband Todd, equally at home on his snowmobile, in his fishing boat or dandling Trig the baby with Down syndrome, top off with Palin’s Pentecostal faith and 100 per cent No to abortion for any reason and you can see why McCain thought Palin worth the throw. Her task: to energize the Republican base and – as a working class woman – to capture some crucial undecided votes in such battlegrounds as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Europeans awed that a woman wedded to creationism and a big fan of shooting wolves and polar bears from helicopters might be one step away from the Oval Office should remember that the very popular Ronald Reagan – another western governor inexperienced in international affairs -- sat inside the Oval Office for eight years, having publicly affirmed on more than one occasion that he believed the Final Judgement would occur in his life time, probably in Megiddo. Like Reagan, Palin has a very good sense of political timing. She outmaneuvered the most powerful politicians in Alaska in four short years and has won the esteem of Alaskans by hitting the oil companies with a higher profits tax and distributing some of the take to the citizenry. Like most soap operas, albeit a good deal faster, the story line developed several complexities. There’s the custody feud with Palin’s former brother-in-law cop which prompted governor Palin to try to get the man bounced from his job. Getting cops bounced from their jobs is usually fine in my book. There’s the pregnant elder daughter Bristol and her boyfriend Levi Johnson, a lad who looked, at the Convention, like a deer caught in the headlights of Todd and Sarah’s Ford 350 Pick-up. Just like Obama, Sarah has a pastor problem. In her case it’s Larry Kroon, pastor of the Wasilla Bible Church, which is where the Palin family heads on Sunday. Three weeks ago Kroon made his pulpit available to David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus and a man who has said terrorist attacks on Israelis are God's "judgment of unbelief" on Jews who haven't embraced Christianity. Kroon says that Sarah Palin was in church that day. Palin is pressed to distance herself from Kroon, same way though far less urgently, as Obama was forced to toss his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, over the side. It’s one thing to say, as Palin has publicly, that both the Iraq war and the natural gas pipeline she’s pressing for (as is Obama) are both God’s will, another to urge all Jews to become Christians or court damnation. AIPAC and kindred outfits still, despite all his efforts, don’t really trust Obama which is partly why he picked Joe Biden. They similarly don’t really trust the woman who might be a heartbeat away from the presidency, since she once sported a Buchanan button, and worships chez Kroon. In St Paul the usual ceremonial innoculation took place: an agreeble session with representatives of AIPAC and Senator Joe Lieberman, where Paln presumably made all the usual protestations, whereupon AIPAC tied a “Inspected and Passed as Fit for Public Consumption” label to her wrist. This Boadicea of the Backwoods will probably finesse such problems, since she’s shown she can be politically flexible. As governor of Alaska she’s already avoided opportunities to press for anti-gay legislation and for promotion of creationism in schools. As a political performer Palin’s best act so far on the national stage was her more impromptu speech in Ohio when McCain first announced his choice. At St Paul on Wednesday her Minnie Mouse-like nasal timbre soon became irksome and she blew the timing on many of the lines in the rambling address she’d been handed. But if Palin can woo and win voters along the Ohio valley and north of Pittsburgh – exactly where Hillary Clinton did well – she could help McCain pull out a win on November 4. In that event she will have a 40 per cent chance to take over as President, according to the statistical index established by Prof John F. Banzaff of George Washington University Law School. According to Banzaff, McCain would have only 80 per cent odds of living out his presidency and a much higher risk of becoming disabled from a variety of conditions, including a stroke or Alzheimer’s. Of course Reagan was so gaga as he neared the end of his term that his aides apparently considered invoking the 25th Amendment, to have him wheeled out of the Oval Office. I’m sure we’d survive a Palin presidency, perhaps more surely than a McCain one, given his uncontrollable temper. Here at CounterPunch we’ve had plenty of emails from progressive types worrying that Palin represents the footfall of fascism, as though the fascist instinct thrives with especial vigor on a diet of mooseburger and faith in the verities of the Holy Bible. This seems to me to stem from snobbery and class prejudice. Mencken would have had a high old time lampooning Palin as a linthead and a creationist treading in the spoor of William Jennings Bryan. Give me Bryan over McKinley any day. Bryan was the one who opposed eugenics, the secular scientific fantasy of its era, espoused by the rationalist academic Woodrow Wilson and the cream of the liberal intellectual establishment at that time. The Frenzy Over PalinLiberals and progressives flood our inbox with vitriol about the comely Alaskan, but they sure like looking at her photo, most particularly the photoshopped one of her in a patriotic bikini toting a long gun. Is Palin a consummation of Rick Perlstein’s analysis in his book Nixonland, that Nixonland “has not ended yet”, that Americans are as ready to kill each other in cold blood as they were forty years ago”. Is Palin is the new Spiro Agnew, (whose speeches were written in part by Palin’s admirer, Pat Buchanan? ) Of course the American landscape is rent by the vast fissures of race and class. Politicians exploited them long before Nixon was born and they exploit them still. Hillary Clinton addressed the same constituencies and the same fears as the Alabama populist demagogue George Wallace did, back in the late 1960s . A major card in John McCain’s hand features the color of Obama’s skin, and it’s not at all inconceivable that this card could put him into the White House. These burning questions are addressed in two pieces by your CounterPunch editors in the latest issue of our newsletter and I strongly recommend you subscribe. You’ll be able to read a piece on Palin by Jeffrey St Clair and myself, looking at some of the hypocrisies on display in the torrents of abuse for the Alaskan governor. Take the example of sex education. Remember Jocelyn Elders, Clinton’s surgeon general. When she spoke publicly about the merits of masturbation and condoms, she was immediately fired. I also review Perlstein’s book, now being invoked as a prophesy of the Great Beast Re-Awakened. Also in this exciting newsletter, a wonderful piece on ongoing fascism in America as prosecuted by every US president, namely the theft of the lands of the Western Shoshone. The story is told wuth extraordinary eloquence by Carrie Dann, herself a Shoshone. And we wrap up the newsletter with a sharp post mortem by Serge Halimi on Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia, which redounded so greatly to Russia’s advantage.
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