A year ago, Washington rumors had Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton switching jobs for 2012, and that was before the Tea Party wrecking crew came in, brought government to a standstill and created an anti-Obama climate that threatens a hostile takeover of the White House next year. (President Perry? Cain? A compliant Romney?) The idea was dismissed out of hand back then, even though Bob Woodward, after months researching...

I have made it perfectly clear in my posts and comments that I disapprove of Rick Perry for his performance as Texas governor, for his poor and petty performance in the presidential debates and for the policies he would pursue should he be elected President. I may have made some fun of him, such as with his Pet Rock at his family’s ranch and I may have used some less than kind words to express my dislike...

As reported here at TMV and several other sources, including the BBC, commanders for Libya’s transitional authorities say they have captured a wounded Col Qaddafi after claiming control of Sirte, Qaddafi’s birthplace. If true, this would come exactly two months after Libyan rebels captured the Libyan capital and overran Qaddafi’s fortified compound in Tripoli. In a post reporting on the Libyan rebels...

The candidate who gained most from a Republican bickerfest in Las Vegas was the one who saved airfare and stayed in New Hampshire talking to voters face to face. At the very least, Jon Huntsman was not embarrassed by squabbling on the stage. It started with Rick Santorum introducing himself as someone who was going to catch the redeye to be with his daughter in the hospital and quickly went downhill in political...

Rupert Murdoch seems sufficiently recovered from his Fleet Street troubles to be tapping into the Wall Street protesters with the full weight of his attack journalism. Yesterday he takes down the Journal paywall to tell us all: “In interviews, protesters show that they are leftists out of step with most American voters. Yet Democrats are embracing them anyway.” A former Bill Clinton pollster, based on results...

NEW YORK CITY. — In these days of globalization it certainly fits our times: Occupy Wall Street has now gone global. Pat Bagley, Salt Lake TribuneWelcome to New York, a city with more stoops than a talk show host convention. “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” say the lyrics of “New York, New York,” and Occupy Wall Street has made it here. Local newspapers are crammed with long stories...

One wonders what would have happened for Cain if he made jokes about lynching black people who make no effort to work…but then later, much later, he said ‘awwwwww, that was a joke, and America needs to get a sense of humor.’ Unfortunately, Cain himself is becoming not a leader, but is seen as a reason to laugh as he blunders along trying to find his way into a presidential nomination. He had...

Force-feeding was an unexpected subject this weekend as Herman Cain aces a “Meet the Press” grilling while gourmands stuff themselves with soon-to-be-illegal foie gras at a Los Angeles eat-in protest. David Gregory does little to ruffle the candidate’s smooth-as-pate patter, even as Associated Press reveals that Cain’s “economic ideas, support and organization have close ties to two billionaire brothers...

What is at the root of what’s wrong with our economy and our civil society? Weaving the issue of the U.S. death penalty into the global financial crisis, columnist Guido Rossi of Italy’s Il Sole 24 Ore is unequivocal: our system of ‘financial capitalism’ has slowly but surely eaten away at the fabric of society, which demands protecting the rights of not only the powerful and well-connected,...

Call it propaganda or call it delusion, but Tehran is crowing about not only predicting Occupy Wall Street and allied groups, but says it considers itself primarily responsible for all the unrest – Eastern and Western – since the Arab Spring began. So could it be that the protests which began in New York on September 17 and have now spread across the developed world reflect a yearning to reject...

Sometimes the Left Brain (the one that controls the right side and “logical” language functions) needs to take a break. Luckily, the Right Brain (the “spatial” non-linear side that controls the left side of the body) is sometimes up to the task. Drawings by Hart Williams (in his alter- persona as Hesperion Wug) from September and early October. Horny Toad (or Horned Frog in Texas) —...

Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain can get lots of dough (for making pizza and campaign contributions) and poll numbers (they are increasing seemingly with each poll and he is the GOP front-runner in one) but — to use a now-trite Rodney Dangerfield line — he can’t get no response, from most pundits and even conservative talk show hosts. To be sure, pundits are impressed with how...

Rush Limbaugh has jumped himself: he has now jumped something bigger than a shark or a whale.

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Is Steve Jobs and the success he engendered the perfect demonstration of how far off track the global financial system has gotten? According to columnist León Bendesky of Mexico’s La Jornada, innovation and creating new products that consitute progress requires the availablity of credit, an element of buisiness that banks have rejected in favor of sophisticated financial instruments that generate little...

Patrick J. Buchanan's "Suicide of A Superpower," "Will America Survive to 2025?"Pat Buchanan’s latest book, “Suicide of a Superpower,” will undoubtedly irk many. We recently received an advance copy of the audio book from Macmillan Audio, read by Buchanan himself, and I must say, it’s interesting, and classic Pat Buchanan — gloom and doom — with maximum...

By WALTER BRASCH Newspaper columnist Ann Coulter, spreading the lies of the extreme right wing, called the Occupy Wall Street protestors, “tattooed, body-pierced, sunken-chested 19-year-olds getting in fights with the police for fun.” She claimed the protestors, now in the thousands in New York, are “directionless losers [who] pose for cameras while uttering random liberal clichés lacking any reason or...

I did little research before this eighth (yes, eighth! and that doesn’t even include the Twitter debate) Republican presidential primary candidates’ debate. Check out this list for videos of each of them. Luckily, I keep myself pretty immersed in news on a daily basis between online, radio, newspapers, a senior in high school who wishes he could vote and a sixth grader who made it onto student council...

Has Washington concocted a tale of Iranian terror in order to, a) divert the anger of the American people over the behavior of government leaders and financial officials, b) ruin Iran’s reputation among neighboring states, particularly with Saudi Arabia, c) divert the Arab Spring from following the example of the Iranian Revolution and, d) help Israel out of its current isolation? According to this news...

That Huffington Post headline was the lead for one of its many celebrity stories that I noticed this morning. I admit to perusing HuffPo a few times a week to give balance to my daily readings of various Internet news blogs. One savvy woman creatively used the free content from many talented writers to make herself a multi-millionaire – beyond what she had achieved through her earlier divorce proceedings....

After seeing that Occupy Wall Street protestors are organizing a hackathon, I googled to find out if the Tea Party had ever done such a thing and came up with predictable results. The fact that coders are getting involved to build tools around the protests suggests a level of sophistication and maturation around the movement that many are still failing to recognize. Simon Owens is a PR consultant and journalist....

Occupy Wall Street protests have been growing exponentially since the first demonstrators began filling Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan on September 17. The reasons are pretty obvious: * The overreaction of the NYPD to demonstrations marching onto the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1 got the attention of the mainstream news media, which had largely ignored the protests. There’s nothing like some indiscriminately...

The next debate may have to carry fact-check subtitles but, to get the flavor of this one, the Caucus blog parses some of the more flagrant examples of Truthiness. My favorite is Newt Gingrich’s inversion of an advisory on prostate tests for men from a policy that could save lives and needless suffering into an example of Sarah Palin’s death panels, which was named “The Lie of the Year” in 2009 by an...

What is it about mainland China that prevents the emergence of innovators like Steve Jobs? While in the West it seems obvious that a lack of free speech, free expression and free association puts China at a disadvantage, this editorial from Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po shows that Beijing still has a way to go before it accepts that in order to unleash the creative power of its people, it will have to loosen...

Mushrooming from lower Manhattan, the inchoate backlash brings expectable reactions in Washington from Democratic cheerleading to GOP hypocrisy. As Eric Cantor calls protesters “a mob…pitting Americans against Americans,” Nancy Pelosi reminds the Tea Party toad, “I didn’t hear him say anything when the Tea Party was out demonstrating, actually spitting on members of Congress right here in the Capitol,...