Russ McBee

This week's TennViews roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers is here. The bailout and the presidential debate dominated the blogs this week. My favorite quote came from Steve at WhitesCreek Journal: I don't know that much about this stuff, but according to one Democratic Congressman calls to Congress are running about 50-50 on the bailout...50% ...

Via Newscoma on Twitter, here's Wanda Sykes on the bailout and Sarah Palin: Just watch the whole thing. It's five and a half minutes of hilarious stuff I wish I'd said.

John McCain is desperately trying to avoid a debate with Barack Obama (and is even more terrified of the prospect of his incompetent running mate debating her opponent), so he is using the current financial crisis to justify suspending his campaign. He proposes going back to DC to grandstand for the cameras and pretend like his deregulatory past ...

After John Edwards's strong second-place finish in last night's Iowa caucus, he had this to say: [C]orporate greed has got a stranglehold on America. And unless and until we have a president in the proud tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, who has a little backbone, who has some strength, who has some fight, who's ...

Democratic candidates for the Presidency would do well to pay attention to the fundamental, structural issues facing the American workforce, issues which have so far been given short shrift by most of the candidates. First, the quality of the workplace: It would be positively revelatory to hear a presidential candidate truly speak to the ...

Not surprisingly, Republican Fred Thompson wants to do away with Social Security and replace it with a privatized system which would benefit those in the upper income brackets and penalize the poor and middle class: Thompson's plan draws on ideas favored by conservatives: a reduction in benefits, rather than an increase in payroll taxes; and a ...

This article provides an in-depth survey of the current state of international arms trading. A couple of choice quotes: Vast government subsidies are sought after in the pursuit of arms trading. US and European corporations receive enormous tax breaks and even lend money to other countries to purchase weapons from them. Therefore tax payers ...

Two mostly unrelated things struck me today. First, of course, was the news of Al Gore and the IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Any man who can push right wing zealots and their libertarian enablers to extremes of rage merely by winning an award is OK in my book. The fact that he's doing so by promoting science over greed and fact over dogma ...

So, what kind of country do we want, and what kind of people do we want to be? We can either continue making the mistakes of the past, pretending they never happened, or we can really apply ourselves and solve the problems that face us. That's the choice we're facing when we vote in 2008. We face daunting crises with Iraq, global warming, ...

Shockingly, Bush wants to hand out even more corporate welfare: President Bush said yesterday that he is considering a fresh plan to cut tax rates for U.S. corporations to make them more competitive around the world, an initiative that could further inflame a battle with the Democratic Congress over spending and taxes and help define the ...