If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
Sen. Richard Lugar's loss in the Indiana Republican primary last week raises a number of troubling issues about the current state of politics and the future of governance in our country.
After the election those votes which we so freely give will not mean as much as those that have been bought. The corporations, the PACs, the special interest groups that dominate the elections will be heard and the voice of the voter ignored and forgotten.
I felt sadness a year ago at the sight of Americans celebrating the death of anyone -- even the man largely responsible for the murder of my husband. Now, I feel sadness witnessing President Obama resort to the same campaign tactics of George W. Bush.
Progressives cannot blame the president for our highly militarized culture in which masculinity has been conflated with martial violence and military prowess. The roots of this tradition are so deep President Obama can't do much to soften it.
It didn't take long. On the heels of the Jimmy Fallon appearance by President Obama, an attack ad hit the Internet and the airwaves, depicting President Obama as a celebrity president whose policies had failed young people.
On April 27 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to place broadcasters' political files online. This brings vital election data into the 21st century, allowing the public to see political spending on TV ads across the nation in nearly real time. But there are limits to the rule.
Two intrepid journalism students from Kent State -- Megan Closser and Shanice Dunning -- took me up on my challenge to visit their local TV stations and uncover data behind the political ads they run.
While they may have a point about the magnitude of cash flowing into negative ads this time around, and while they may indeed have a point about the insidiousness of corporate money in American political campaigns, the nastiness itself is really nothing new.
Imagine if you turned on your TV set someday soon and were greeted by Sesame Street, brought to you by the letter C, for "creeping campaign cash corruption." Perhaps that's a bit of a stretch, but as the late William F. Buckley, Jr., used to say, the point survives the exaggeration.
During the Cold War, we coined the phrase Mutually Assured Destruction. Campaign politics is an equally MAD world, but its effects are not hypothetical, and mutual deterrence is not working.
The Republicans cannot seem to make up their mind about which Hollywood remake they want to cast Barack Obama in. Luckily, they have several villainous genres to choose from.
Let stations know that the poison they're pouring into our political bloodstream has to stop, and so does their obstinate refusal to keep us from knowing who's paying for it.
If the 2012 election involves way too much money and way too little substance, we have no one but ourselves to blame.
Today, voters in ten states will voice their preferences in the GOP's presidential nomination battle. But this year, the so-called Super Tuesday primary is shaping up to be just another act in the new blockbuster, Attack of the Super PACs.
President Obama's (non-coordinated) "Priorities USA Action" is the latest Super PAC whose organizers have to used the phrase "unilateral disarmament" ...
