Amid the din and excitement surrounding the resignation of General McChrystal and the nomination of General Petraeus to replace him, I haven’t heard or read much speculation by the experts or the pundits on who will replace Petraeus at Central Command—CENTCOM. There are some exceptions. One newspaper, The Stars and Stripes, addresses the issue in an interesting way. In its June 23 edition, under the headline,...

The deadline pressure felt by daily newspapers and TV’s evening news is probably a contributing factor to what I call “he said, she said”* journalism. Another pressure, of course, is that of “objectivity.” The former often results in superficial reporting. The later, in my opinion, in a false sense of controversy. No where is this phenomena more evident than in how U.S. media report...

Is it better to be rich in America, or in Germany, Japan and the Nordic countries? According to this article by Financial Times Deutschland columnist Thomas Fricke, recent evidence demonstrates that compared to countries with less income inequality, being rich in America can be dangerous to your health. For the Financial Times Deutschland, Thomas Fricke writes in part: For nearly 30 years, it was the recurring...

Some time in the last 24 hours, MoveOn.org has eliminated all traces of its infamous ad slamming Gen. David Petraeus as “General Betray-Us”.  The cover-up is probably in response to President Obama’s selection of Petraeus as the new head of his signature national security campaign in Afghanistan.  But the cover-up also raises disturbing questions about MoveOn.org and its supporters.  How...

For someone who served under Patton in World War II and lived through the MacArthur mess over Korea, the text of McChrystal’s self-immolation in Rolling Stone still comes as a mild shock–a hard-to-believe-it’s-not-parody of macho gone mad in an era when top generals have learned to be as smooth as Petraeus, who sold Bush’s Iraq Surge without getting his hair mussed by the media. McChrystal,...

To fire General Stanley McChrystal or not to fire General Stanley McChrystal? That is President Barack Obama’s question — and big, fat dilemma. Do we now need more evidence that smug punditry written with certitude actually has a short shelf-life, polls are snapshots in time, and partisan scenarios about the future will miss key factors that are invisible (until they become visible)? Today President...

Is there a problem with the officiating at the FIFA World Cup? After the Americans were inexplicably denied the winning goal against Slovenia by a Malian referee and Germany lost against Serbia due to the peculiarities of a Spanish official, Thomas Hummel of Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung sheds some light on whether there’s more to the controversy than just the usual frustration. From Sueddeutsche...

I have not contributed much to the Moderate Voice during 2010 while I actively posted numerous submissions during 2009. This is due to a variety of factors that some TMV contributors and readers might understand and others may simply dismiss as just worthless excuses. Throughout 2010, I have continued to read TMV once a day, sometimes dropping by twice as it adds new posts far more frequently than all other...

Six decades after a commanding general lost his job for bad-mouthing Harry Truman’s conduct of the Korean War, another is in the White House today apologizing for deriding Obama officials over the conflict in Afghanistan. But Stanley McChrystal is no Douglas MacArthur, a mythic figure after his triumphal World War II return to the Philippines and a consummate military politician who played Congress like...

What amazes me is that a magazine article not scheduled to be published until Friday has created a foreign policy crisis that undermines the direction the U.S. has taken in Afghanistan. I’m talking about the Rolling Stone article leaked in advance to the Associated Press and other media outlets that the top commander in Afghanistan is displeased with the president and U.S. diplomats who he and his aids...

Joe has already commented on this developing story. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, was ordered back to Washington on Tuesday after a magazine article portrayed him and his staff as openly contemptuous of some senior members of the Obama administration, the United States ambassador to Afghanistan and senior European officials. I’m now waiting for the backlash against the...

Hot on the heels of this German editorial roundup headlined Will Obama Be 21st Century Jimmy Carter?, comes this article from France’s Le Figaro. It’s a narrative picking up steam both here and abroad. As French columnist Pierre Rousselin points out, comparing President Obama to Jimmy Carter isn’t just for U.S. neoconservatives anymore. For Le Figaro, Rousselin writes in part: Comparisons...

CAN YOU DO THIS WITH YOUR TAP WATER? The new documentary, Gasland, won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and premieres on HBO tonight. In it, filmmaker Josh Fox takes on a 24 state journey to examine the environmental and health consequences of natural gas drilling. His focus is Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the process by which millions of gallons of water and chemicals are shot at high...

Politics as Usual, Exponential Factor Four by Will Durst In an age of relentless change, it’s heartening to be able to count on a few simple things. Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann ranting and raving one pulse short of an aneurism. Water flowing downhill. Congress holding hearings whose only point is to express the indignant depths of their public outrage even though our chances of learning anything is less...

I won’t mince words. The feigned outrage that CEO Tony Hayward went sailing one day after he was removed from daily operations of the BP blowout disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is childish and misplaced. What’s he supposed to do? Take a BBC camera crew into the Church of England and show his repentance? Would that make the BP bashers feel better? The guy is toast. Rapping him for taking his son to...

Here’s CBS’s Bob Schieffer on the high price of gaffes — and why he believes Barack Obama’s speech from the Oval Office fell flat: Schieffer has a point on the modern Presidency. And no matter who is President the stage is now set for frequent muliti-media and multi-platform appearances, coupled by strident talk show-ed opposition (Republicans will face the same thing from Progressive...

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is making it clear he considers Republican Rep. Joe Barton’s apology to British Petroleum and charge that the $20 billion damage-mitigation escrow account was the result of a White House “shakedown” to be a political gift that will keep on giving. His comments on ABC News’ The Week come amid a slew of mainstream prominent pundits who had been supportive...

Barry Rubin and many others have spoken forcefully, eloquently and spiritedly about the absolute and undeniable rights of Israel to exist and of the Israelis to live peacefully and securely within the borders of their own country. As a person who totally subscribes to those tenets; as a person who has Jewish roots and ancestry; and as a person who has seen a great number of his ancestors—almost an entire...

Man, this is a tough day for us wordsmiths. Kathy Gil, a colleague of mine, admonishes us for referring to the Gulf of Mexico disaster as an oil “spill.” The New York Times yawns from an historical perspective, the Gulf of Mexico disaster may not be America’s worst as we are told by our president. And, Robin Koerner, publisher of a website that translates foreign news into English, suggests...

A “senior administration official” has confirmed to CBS News that the Department of Justice plans to file a legal challenge to Arizona’s “Papers, Please” anti-immigration law, SB1070 — as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced yesterday, in a rather oddly chosen venue: her trip to Ecuador.

Yes, Virginia — the are “real” journalists still out there who’ll ask the tough questions, persist in questioning a public figure who tries not to give an answer after the figure has made an assertion elsewhere that he or she is trying to downplay, and is not doing a public relations spot but playing the traditional role of reporter as proxy for a readership/broadcast audience that wants...

File this under Mexicans are Stupid and Gullible Department in the minds of white politicians. In California, Republican governor candidate Meg Whitman is releasing a new Spanish language television ad. Translated, it beckons, in part: “Meg Whitman is a different kind of candidate. She is a business leader ready to fix Sacramento, ready to create more jobs and better schools in California. She respects...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from Philadelphia Inquirer columnist and blogger Dick Polman on Texas Rep. Joe Barton’s apology for apologizing to BP’s CEO Tony “I can’t recall” Hayward: Nobody should be fooled by Joe Barton’s staged apology yesterday afternoon. Granted, the Texas Republican congressman disavowed his morning lament about how the Obama White House had...

Once the howling mob forms wielding tar, feathers, and pitchforks, anyone who is even suspected of defending the intended target might get lynched too. That is the lesson being learned by Republican Representative Joe Barton right now, as he struggles desperately to backpedal from his comments in a House hearing apologizing to the BP CEO for the $20 billion “shakedown” by the White House. Barton...

Cowboy Down Raging Moderate, by Will Durst The same way that crème brulée is unlike pork rinds, and a Lincoln Town Car is not a pickup truck, so is Barack Obama not George Bush. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons Barack Obama is currently president is because he’s SO not George Bush. He might just be the most UnBushish politician currently in possession of a Y chromosome with the possible exception...