Offthebus

Most people of faith pray for peace, an end to poverty, disease and human suffering. For others, their God wants the good guys to have the big bomb, most of the world's oil and plenty of cash.

"Michigan has suffered this economy in its worst form. Voters blame the Democratic governor and the Democratic Party, and the Republican president and the Republican Party."

Exactly how many Republican administrations do Americans need before they realize they're all the same? Grandiose deficits. Financial compensation to buddies. Attempts to privatize everything except their own colossal business failures.

The man John McCain appointed to head his transition team, William E. Timmons, now an oil lobbyist, played a central role in the Nixon Administration's campaign to deport John Lennon in 1972.

I think Senator McCain will probably win in November because what North Americans value most is security, stability and experience, and that is McCain.

I am hopelessly addicted to Sarah Palin. I read everything I can about her. I refuse to throw away cover stories on her. I get up in the middle of the night to scan the Internet for new poll results revealing how well she is doing. Help! I can't get enough!

It's suddenly 1999 again, when we all thought that accurately calling a candidate "unqualified" would make him a laughing stock. But the joke was on us: the cheap shots generated controversy, which helped land him in the White House.

Sarah Palin took the biblical Queen Esther as her role model when she became governor, and the parallels are clear. Esther was selected queen in a beauty contest; Palin was runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant...

Was the convention director asleep? For the first few minutes of the big McCain speech, the candidate looked like an entry in Stephen Colbert's "Make John McCain Exciting Green Screen Challenge!"

As any good executive knows, compounding one costly mistake with another is the essence of bad leadership. Marriage is a bond, for life, of love and faith and commitment. Papa Levi is not ready for that.

When it comes to her past association with the Alaska Independence Party, it is not fair to suggest that Palin agrees with all of that group's political positions. It is fair to ask with what policies she does or does not agree.

Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War marched to the convention center in St. Paul yesterday, as they did in Denver, where they delivered a letter to Obama. The GOP nominee would not meet with the vets.

This time McCain's tin ear for -- and lack of commitment to -- the true worth of women invades the public sphere. He refused to choose a qualified Republican woman and, in doing so, his contempt for women is showing like an oversized slip beneath a mini-skirt.

Authorities acting under untested preventive riot statutes burst into the private residences in full riot gear, handcuffed residents and carted away computers. Bloggers Glen Greenwald and Jane Hamsher visited the homes during the raids.

This past month, before the Democratic National Convention, OffTheBus community members conducted interviews with swing voters -- and people they thou...

Those disparaging Palin's lack of achievements have forgotten that it was Palin who wrote the famous "Lumberjack Song," which of course is about life in Alaska: "I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK/I sleep all night and I work all day."

In the afternoon, you start hearing the chatter of would-be party-goers: "What lists are you on?" "Who's going to be there?" "My sister is the stylist for Tom Brokaw's publicist, I'm going to see if she can get me into the Kanye show!"

"We should have an election in which we have one candidate making the case for the global war on terror and an opponent making the case that the whole concept of global war as the response to violent Islamic radicalism is flawed."

But, at the end of the evening, I was left wanting something. The impossible something. I want that bell unrung and, if I could have written part of Hillary's speech, here's what she'd have said to us...

Anti-abortion protesters, including Randall Terry, national director of Operation Rescue, blocked the entrance to the perimeter of the Pepsi Center yesterday, holding signs aloft and praying. Thirteen were arrested.

In a week in which Democrats and the national media are focused on the Convention and the surrounding protests/parties/circus, it's worth keeping one eye on what's happening on local television in the swing states.

"She was sensitive and showed some vulnerability. I think that's who she is. What we've been seeing about her over the course of the campaign are snippets -- 30 seconds here, 10 seconds there, Republicans slicing and dicing what she's saying into the smallest 6 seconds."

At the Democratic National Convention interfaith service both secular and fundamentalist protesters were ejected from the service. One of the prot...

Recreate68 is one of the controversially-named progressive groups organizing demonstrations and other activities at the 2008 DNC in Denver. The UpT...

A small band of men have been arrested for hatching and pursuing a drug-fueled plot on Senator Obama's life. The story actually tracks back to Sunday, and a press conference on the matter is scheduled for this afternoon in Denver.