The political action fund of VoteVets.org, a veterans advocacy organization that helps elect politicians that will support US troops and veterans' issues, released three new ads this week targeting Republican candidates for failing to side with veterans on several key issues.

In his book, The Opinion Makers, David W. Moore devotes his entire 4th chapter, title Inscrutable Elections, to showing how the "polls often present a highly misleading if not outright false picture of how the candidates are faring and what voters are thinking."

At a news conference in Luxembourg, the communist parties from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg this week called for a new financial institution that will serve the interests of the people, not maximum profits.

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill (H R 7081) that approves the 123 agreement, but which is contradictory to the assurance given by the prime minister to the nation. An identical version is before the US Senate for voting.

John McCain is losing the health care debate. It is not just that his plan is a boondoggle for insurance companies or that it aims to demolish the employment-based health insurance system and force tens of millions of working families onto the individual insurance market.

Many readers of this publication have already decided to vote for Barack Obama. Indeed, there are several good reasons to vote for Obama, reasons resonating with leftist values.

The economic crisis continues to escalate and it is a crisis of the capitalist system as the system has devolved in the US and globally in recent decades. It is not a crisis of “Wall Street” aka the stock market or “finance” aka the banks.

With the United States bailout package now through Congress, Steve Fraser’s extended essay Wall Street – America’s Dream Palace provided an interesting diversion from the many possible realities that may yet arise.

The US financial crisis has increased unemployment, reduced money remittances from abroad and affected Central American exports to that country, despite the Free Trade Agreement, according to the Secretariat of Central American Economic Integration.

"Ecumenical institutions and current religions in Cuba enjoy the freedoms and essential constitutional guarantees for their well functioning and for achieving their goals.


“Las instituciones ecuménicas y las religiones presentes en Cuba, gozan de las libertades y las garantías constitucionales esenciales para su buen funcionamiento y para el logro de sus objetivos.

Sarah Palin has real and documented connections to the Alaska Independence Party, which is far more extremist than even the most far right of the Republican Party.

Bicycle commuting has long been a symbol of greener living, and it is great exercise, too. But most people are probably not up to commutes much beyond five or 10 miles one-way in the interest of time and in not arriving at work too pooped (or sweaty) to pop.

In chapter three of David W. Moore's book, The Opinion Makers, the author explains how and why the polls so often go wrong and why even though the pollsters know how to end the problem they refuse to do so.

I was quite pleased about that because, as you mention, most people know me as a political song writer, and I think sometimes my love songs get out of the loop. The best ones, I think, are ones that can be seen as both love songs and political songs.

The Rosenberg “atomic spy” case is 58 years old, yet its reverberations are still being felt. It is still being used to either justify or condemn some of the worst excesses of the Cold War period. This past September, the release of previously secret grand jury testimony that appears to further exonerate Ethel Rosenberg and an alleged "admission" by Morton Sobell made news.

Often reading like a murder mystery, Paul Preston's narrative on the Spanish civil war sweeps the reader along with vivid and sympathetic descriptions of his subjects.

Many of us may be too dependent on over-the-counter painkillers to treat the occasional headache, especially given the side effects of such drugs. Ibuprofen can increase the risk of heart and circulation problems and is also tough on the digestive tract.

Beginning with adolescence, my political formation was oriented in the ideological direction of Marxism. It was natural, being that my thinking was influenced by an atmosphere of active critical resistance.

Carmine Pisano was a worker. His skin was brown from the California sun. His arms were stout and muscular, and his frame was short and sturdy. His dark brown hair, though it was beginning to thin out a little at the top – at forty-two you expected such things – was still abundant and wavy.