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Harry Truman

Afghanistan, "So It Goes"

Joseph A. Palermo | Posted 12.02.2009 | Politics

Read More: Obama Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Obama's Afghanistan Speech, Kurt Vonnegut, Afghan War, President Barack Obama, Lydnon Johnson, Karzai, Vietnamization, Surge, Ptsd, Tet Offensive, Afghanistan Counterinsurgency, Afghanistan Policy, West Point Academy, Vietnam, Richard Nixon, U.S. Military Policy, Harry Truman, 2012 Presidential Election, 2010 Midterm Elections, Politics News
Joseph A. Palermo

As with Vietnam, the problem in Afghanistan is political, not military. The United States can stay there forever if we want to -- but is it worth it?

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An Open Letter To President Obama On Afghanistan

Michael Moore | Posted 11.30.2009 | World

Read More: William Westmoreland, War in Afghanistan, Afghanistan Surge, Afghanistan, Harry Truman, George W. Bush, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Stanley McChrystal, Vietnam, Election, Douglas MacArthur, Mikhail Gorbachev, Withdrawal, Barack Obama, Michael Moore, World News
Michael Moore

When we elected Obama we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought he would stop the madness -- the killing and the insanity.

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What Obama Is Up Against

Russ Baker | Posted 11.04.2009 | Politics

Read More: John F. Kennedy, Central Intelligence Agency, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, Military Industrial Complex, Harry Truman, President Obama, George W. Bush, Obama, Bob Woodward, Bush Administration Torture, Robert Gates, George H.W. Bush, Richard Nixon, National Security, Gerald Ford, Nancy Pelosi, Congressional Oversight, Fdr, Hamid Karzai, Bill Clinton, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Afghanistan War, Iraq War, Bush Administration, Dwight Eisenhower, Cia, Military Spending, Stanley McChrystal, Jimmy Carter, Prescott Bush, Allen Dulles, Lyndon Johnson, Iraq, Torture, Politics News
Russ Baker

We Americans harbor a quaint belief that a new president takes charge of a government that eagerly awaits his next command. But that's not how things work at the top, especially where "national security" is concerned.

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Health "Insurance": A Criminal Enterprise

Jacob M. Appel | Posted 11.02.2009 | Politics

Read More: Medical Ethics, Law, Politics, Human Rights, Crime, Harry Truman, Health Care Reform, Henry Waxman, Health Insurance, Bioethics, Health Care, Medicine, Barack Obama, Politics News
Jacob M. Appel

I have little doubt that the day will soon arrive when the CEOs of health "insurers" are dragged before Congress to face the same sort of interrogation to which the Waxman Hearings subjected Big Tobacco in the 1990s.

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Networking Governments

Gary Hart | Posted 10.22.2009 | World

Read More: Government, Public Policy, Epidemic, International Relations, World War II, Cold War, Swine Flue, Harry Truman, World News
Gary Hart

More can be done in linking national research laboratories, networking financial regulatory regimes, linking universities, networking environmental protection efforts, and the list goes on.

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New Rule: Everyone Deserves Equal Rights

Bill Maher | Posted 10.10.2009 | Comedy

Read More: Equal Rights, GGay Nation, Teabaggers, Rush Limbaugh, Big Gay Speech, Acorn, Harry Truman, Congress, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, Hbo, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Goldman Sachs, Oprah Winfrey, Gay Rights, Bill Ayers, Glenn Beck, Tea Party, Bill Maher, Bill Maher New Rule, Comedy News
Bill Maher

This weekend is the perfect time for Obama to announce he's repealing "don't ask, don't tell" and committing to a full-throated endorsement of gay marriage. But of course that's not going to happen.

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Memo to Obama: Dismiss McChrystal

Michael Carmichael | Posted 10.06.2009 | Politics

Read More: Al-Qa'eda, Vice President Biden, Robert Gates, International Institutite of Strategic Studies, Harry Truman, Stanley McChrystal, Douglas MacArthur, Barack Obama, Afghanistan War, Politics News
Michael Carmichael

When Truman realized that General MacArthur was insubordinate, he dismissed him. When General McChrystal spoke out in London, he usurped the power of the president to design and execute foreign policy.

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Who's Leading the DADT Debate?

Aubrey Sarvis | Posted 11.30.2009 | Politics

Read More: Bill Clinton, House of Representatives, Congress, Joint Forces Quarterly, George W. Bush, Harry Truman, Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral Mike Mullen, Obama Pentagon, Afghanistan War, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, H.R. 1283, Senate, Dadt, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Politics News
Aubrey Sarvis

it is one thing to give the Pentagon considerable weight and another thing altogether to let it dictate the timing and terms of the debate, and the final decision.

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Do the Ten Commandments Support Gays in the Military?

Bruce Feiler | Posted 11.15.2009 | Politics

Read More: Don't Ask Don't Tell, Gays in the Military, Bill Clinton, Bible, Harry Truman, Moses, Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy, Ten Commandments, Politics News
Bruce Feiler

The Ten Commandments do not mention homosexuality. But the Five Books of Moses do, in ways that have plagued homosexuals for centuries.

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The Silence of the Republicans

Lincoln Mitchell | Posted 11.13.2009 | Politics

Read More: George Bush, Birthers, President Obama, Rush Limbaugh, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Truman, Joe Wilson, Harry Reid, Republicans, Franklin Roosevelt, Democratic Party, Democrats, Republican Party, Nazi, Barack Obama, Politics News
Lincoln Mitchell

A clear line can be drawn from the red-baiting and Muslim-baiting of Obama during the campaign to the birther movement and the accusation that the president was a Nazi to Joe Wilson's behavior.

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He Roped the Dopes

Bill Cunningham | Posted 11.09.2009 | Politics

Read More: Rope-a-Dope, Health Care, Muhammed Ali, President Obama, Harry Truman, Politics News
Bill Cunningham

Tonight, we saw a leader, unafraid to stand and deliver...not a political document, but a platform that all who care about real reform, can support and amend and work for.

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Putting the 'Change' Back in "Change You Can Believe In": The Two Faces of Barack Obama

Marshall Auerback | Posted 10.19.2009 | Politics

Read More: Incrementalism, Dnc, Wall Street Bailout, Bankruptcy, Politico, Divorce, Public Option, Afghanistan, War in Afghanistan, Warren Christopher, JP Morgan, 1930s, Democrats, Jamie Dimon, Harry Truman, Government, Change, White House, 1980s, Barack Obama, Bailout, Washington, Health Care Reform, Opinion Polls, Gop, Richard Nixon, Paul Krugman, Health Care, Republicans, Politics News
Marshall Auerback

A broad number of polls indicate that progressive opinion, particularly in the area of health care, is much more profoundly aligned with popular opinion than the damp squib of a proposal currently being championed by the president.

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What's So "Public" About the Public Option?

Jeffrey Feldman | Posted 10.17.2009 | Politics

Read More: Medicare, Lyndon Johnson, Public Option, Town Hall Meetings, Health Care, Harry Truman, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Politics News
Jeffrey Feldman

The shifting definition of "public option" is not accidental, but is emerging from the perception by Democrats in the House that the August recess caused them great damage.

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Remembering Ted Kennedy's Early Career

Danny Miller | Posted 09.26.2009 | Politics

Read More: U.S. Senate, Massachusetts, Health Care, Voting Rights, Harry Truman, Ted Kennedy, Politics News
Danny Miller

Ironically, it was President Kennedy's assassination less than a year into Ted's first term that really allowed the younger Kennedy to find his place on the national stage.

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Hollywood and Hiroshima: When the White House Censored the First Nuclear Film

Greg Mitchell | Posted 09.10.2009 | Media

Read More: Hiroshima, Nuclear, Hollywood, A-Bomb, Harry Truman, Dr. Strangelove, Rhapsody in August, Black Rain, The War Game, The Beginning of the End, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Media News
Greg Mitchell

Creative artists of every variety have made incisive, satiric or powerful statements about nuclear threat. What they share, with rare exceptions, is an avoidance of the specific subject of Hiroshima.

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Hiroshima Day: America Has Been Asleep at the Wheel for 64 Years

Daniel Ellsberg | Posted 09.06.2009 | Politics

Read More: Manhattan Project, H Bomb, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Hiroshima, Hiroshima Anniversary, World War II, Nagasaki, Nuclear Bomb, Pentagon, Nazi Bomb, Truman Hiroshima, Harry Truman, Soviets, President Jimmy Carter, President Truman, Russian Nuclear Posture, Pentagon Papers, Politics News
Daniel Ellsberg

I was one of many in the late '50s misled and recruited into the nuclear arms race by exaggerated and deliberately manipulated, fears of Soviet intentions and crash efforts.

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Bad Dreams From My Grandfather

Daniel Bruno Sanz | Posted 09.05.2009 | Living

Read More: Martini Movies, Francois Truffaut, Variety Magazine, On the Beach, Julius Rosenberg, Reagan, James Anderson, Al-Queda, Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Los Ultimos Cinco, Enrico Fermi, Charles Bronson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Stepin Fetchit, The Day the World Ended, Wille Zur Macht, Manhattan Project, Emperor Hirohito, Mokusatsu, Taliban, Carl Sagan, Mulholland Highway, Cosmos, William Phipps, Rod Serling, Pearl Harbor, Suzuki Kantaro, Harry Truman, Lord of the Flies, Genesis, Hiroshima, Arch Oboler, Leo Szilard, Klaus Fuchs, Potsdam Decleration, Douglass Macarthur, Nagasaki, Nietzsche, H.G. Welles, The Day After, Stalin, Orson Welles, James Weldon Johnson, Charles Lampkin, Uranium Fission, Fahrenhei 451, Nuclear Holocaust, Lavrentii Beria, Fat Man, Twilight Zone, William Golding, Red Army, Will Smith, Elizabeth Montgomery, Mao Tse-Tung, North Korea, African-American Poetry, 5ive, Schopenhauer, Manchuria, Gyokuon-Hoso, Semipalatinsk, Five, The Late Show, Living News
Daniel Bruno Sanz

Shadowy non-state actors contemplate flattening an American city with a device smuggled into the United States at one hundred possible ports of entry.

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They Opposed Medicare Too

Rep. Rush Holt | Posted 08.31.2009 | Politics

Read More: Health Care Reform, Universal Health Care, Lyndon Johnson, Medicare, Health Care, Harry Truman, Politics News
Rep. Rush Holt

Although Medicare now is widely seen as a successful program for helping Americans access health care, it was very controversial when it was passed. The same arguments against health care reform today were made then.

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Dennis Perrin Sounds Off on Jon Stewart, Barack Obama, and The Nation

Christian Avard | Posted 06.18.2009 | Entertainment

Read More: Palestine, The Nation, Firedoglakecom, Gaza, Jon Stewart, Harry Truman, Glenn Greenwald, Israel, Viacom, Democratic Party, The Daily Show, Barack Obama, Torture, Jane Hamsher, Entertainment News
Christian Avard

Dennis Perrin: I would like to see more direct action but I knew early on in the Obama administration that it was just not going to happen.

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The Air Force One Fly-Over And The Obama Presidency's New Age Of Accountability

Raymond J. Learsy | Posted 06.11.2009 | Politics

Read More: General McArthur, Air Force One, World, Katrina, George C. Marshall, Louis-Caldera, Executive Branch, Obama Air Force One, George W. Bush, Harry Truman, Air Force One Flyover, Barack Obama, Politics News
Raymond J. Learsy

President Obama, acting without equivocation, has put his administration on notice. Nothing less than competence and dedicated service to the nation is expected. The Bush buddy years are at end.

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Time to Pass HR 1283 and Let Gays Serve in the Military

Sam Sedaei | Posted 06.07.2009 | Politics

Read More: Gays in the Military, Desegregation, Jerome Johnson, Troops, Army, Military, Gays, Barack Obama, Harry Truman, Politics News
Sam Sedaei

It is hard to believe that this country continues to debate simple issues of discrimination in 2009.

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Why Did Jon Stewart Apologize?

Dennis Perrin | Posted 06.03.2009 | Media

Read More: Jon Stewart, Hiroshima, Comedy Central, George W. Bush, Harry Truman, Snl, War Criminal, The Daily Show, Media News
Dennis Perrin

Nothing sets domestic reactionaries off like a "media elite liberal" like Stewart besmirching our nation's fine name and God-fearing reputation.

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Learning From History On Health Care Reform

Sahil Kapur | Posted 05.28.2009 | Politics

Read More: Bill Clinton, Health Care for America Now, Liberals, Harry Truman, Progressives, Obama Administration, Afl-Cio, Medicaid, Reagan Era, Single Payer Health Care, Obama Health Care, Barack Obama, Universal Health Care, Conservatives, Clinton Health Care Plan, Red Scare, Hillary Clinton, Health Care Reform, Medicare, Aarp, Democrat Party, Republican Party, Politics News
Sahil Kapur

The most transformative health care overhauls that succeeded in the last century employed the same strategy: build on what we've got and let the changes happen organically.

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America's Self-Defeating Attitude on Health Care Reform

Sahil Kapur | Posted 05.21.2009 | Politics

Read More: Pharmaceutical Industry, Health Care Costs, National Health Reform, Health Care Reform, Universal Health Care, American Medical Association, Health Insurance, Insurance Companies, Health Care, Obama Health Care, Anti-Government, Socialized Medicine, Bill Clinton, Harry Truman, Clinton Health Security Act, Barack Obama, Clinton-Care, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Health, Politics News
Sahil Kapur

The current system encourages exclusion of those who need medical care the most, and only government has the power to restructure these incentives.

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Seize the Net: Save the Net

Leslie Harris | Posted 05.04.2009 | Politics

Read More: Cybersecurity, Commerce Department, Internet, Steel, Harry Truman, President Obama, Intenet, National Security, Computers, Politics News
Leslie Harris

Earlier this week, two Senators introduced a bill that gives the President the power to seize and shut down the Internet or any other "critical infrastructure " in the "interest of national security."

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