The makers of Swing Vote have pulled off a rare double play, producing a smart political satire that is also heartfelt and moving. It's also a film that turns out to be remarkably relevant to the 2008 race. Kevin Costner plays "Bud" Johnson, a man who has stopped believing that he can make a difference or that politics matters, and has simply given up. His character is a powerful stand-in for the 83 million eligible Americans who didn't vote in 2004, and is precisely the kind of voter the Obama campaign should be targeting. Reaching America's Buds is more critical than ever; if we don't, and if the Buds keep turning away, disheartened and disillusioned, we will never see real change.
Big oil et al are not really the "drill" team; it's just a land grab, orchestrated while they still have friends in very high places. And it won't do a damn thing to the price of gas at the pump.
Is there is an antidote to what has come and what lies ahead in the racial minefield of the 2008 election? I believe there is, but it runs against the instincts of most Democratic consultants.
ABC News was probably duped on a story of huge importance, putting Iraqi fingerprints on anthrax attacks that actually came from the U.S at a time when the case for war was beginning to get traction.
This is easily the best energy plan ever put forward by a nominee of either party. By comparison, the plan of John "Nothing but Nukes" McCain plan is a joke.
As the credit crunch plays out, one central theme is becoming very obvious: deregulation has gone way too far.
The president worked the crowd like it was 1999. It might as well have been -- he's clearly in his element here.
With the continued reports of water leaking and puddling in backyards on the supposedly protected side of the 17th St. Canal -- reports the Corps is still scrambling (my word) to explain -- New Orleans is once again forced to ask: is this the best America can do?
Maybe it will take the justice system -- the one Nancy Grace so vaingloriously touts herself as the defender of -- to do what greedy network executives are unwilling to: force her off the air.
The Obama campaign's new mantra is that McCain is "an honorable man running a dishonorable campaign." Lame is more like it -- and out of sync with the real guy.
The broader challenge for Senator Obama is to make voters aware of the fact that even many well-intentioned individuals harbor unconscious, anti-black biases.
I've been asked again and again for my response to the now infamous McCain celebrity ad. I actually have three responses.
In highlighting the West's capricious appetite for stories of genocide in Africa and political and religious intolerance and killings in Asia, the Olympics have inadvertently revealed our own moral bankruptcy.
