By Denis Campbell
As US healthcare reform passage draws near, my mailbox fills with incoherent Right Wing hate screed and rage. Meanwhile the Obama Administration and Democratic controlled US Congress seem unwilling to buck the echo chamber and do the right thing.
The public located outside the 24 sq. miles of fantasy surrounded by reality known as [...]

by Sean Quinn, correspondent for fivethirtyeight.com.
“I slept and woke to the crazy exultant sounds of music and Dean and Marylou talking and the great green land rolling by. ‘Where are we?’ ‘Just passed the tip of Florida, man. Florida!”  
– Jack Kerouac, “On the Road” 
In Florida, the vote needs to be protected. Barack Obama supporter [...]

by Charley James
It might be the supreme, ironic, twist of Republicans efforts to keep people from voting. It turns out that Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher – the infamous Joe the Plumber – may not be able to vote. 
The Republican Party in Ohio lost a battle it took all the way to the US Supreme Court to [...]

 
by Charley James
In the 1960s, Presidential campaigns played “dirty tricks” on each other but they were usually limited to things such as sending 100 pizza’s to the opponent’s campaign office in a small town where there might not be 100 residents let alone 100 volunteers to pay the bill.
Dick Tuck, dubbed “the Democrat’s pixie” by [...]

 
by Denis Campbell
This has been a depressing week. The ugly, angry mobs surrounding McCain – Palin, the potential, as my colleague Charley James writes, for last second raw racist 527 group adverts, a deeply divided country dragged into and immersed in yet another banal and trivial ‘business as usual’ political campaign instead of seriously debating [...]

Tim Russert and his lo-tech dry erase white board will not be with us this election night. Chuck Todd, NBC political director, master of polls and fairly well grounded prognosticator has a cool new toy from MSNBC’s partners at Microsoft. It rivals the cool touch screen Anderson Cooper plays with over at CNN.
 
The problem, [...]

Even in a global economy business decisions taken that affect key election swing states can give a global multinational CEO indigestion. As with most issues, could the sub-context be more important than the headline? Economically one can see the business logic. German owned DHL Express wants UPS to replace ABX Air and Astar Air Cargo [...]

Forget global tours and best global warming policy. The real race this fall is the ‘chatzky’ race – which candidate has and sells the best ‘stuff’ on their website. In that key race Team Obama has a 5:1 merchandising lead. His well organised field staff knows how to blanket and flog every area to raise [...]