David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

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

OH FOR THE GOOD OLD DAYS! The Republican Party has long been the party of war, and one has to go all the way back to Herbert Hoover, a committed pacifist, to find a Republican president who was not a hawk. Dwight Eisenhower gets a slide both because he inherited the Korean conflict and probably understood the horrors of war better than any president since George Washington. So it is no surprise that...

If Republicans understood what was going on behind the scenes with the U.S. military they’d probably blow a gasket. As Nicholas Kristof notes, the armed forces are downright liberal and socialist, which is to say that in many respects they represent the antithesis of contemporary Republicanism. First of all, they are a huge melting pot that draws soldiers, sailors and airmen from diverse backgrounds,...

by Walter Brasch Christopher Kenneth Frison is seven months old. He’s too young to understand Father’s Day. And he’s certainly far too young to be able to get an allowance or a job to buy a card and a nice gift. He isn’t too young to be able to hug his father. But he won’t ever be able to do that again. Not today. Not next year. Not ever. His father, 1st Lt. Demetrius M. Frison,...

Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe: The Afghanistan War costs American taxpayers more than $2 billion a week at a time when communities are falling apart, and our mayors are fed up. On Monday, the United States Conference of Mayors is expected to pass a resolution calling for a speedy end of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars so we can use those funds here at home. The mayors are exactly right. Read the rest...

Is the United States behind the recent uptick of violent attacks in Iraq? According to columnist Tamam Abdulhamid of Iraq’s Kitabat, this appears to be part of U.S. a strategy to convince Iraqi lawmakers and military officials that American forces are still needed in the country. For Iraq’s Kitabat, Tamam Abdulhamid writes in part: What do the increasing frequency of such attacks and the rising...

Our Quote of the Day comes from columnist David Ignatius who says the U.S. Pakistani “affair” is over but not the relationship during this period that seems to have a parade of news stories leaving many to wonder how the U.S. can still call Pakistan a trustworthy ally. He writes: After the cooling-off period, the relationship will be different — with a greater show of respect for Pakistani...

Al Qaeda has named a replacement to its killed leader Osama bin Laden — and it’s no surprise but does clarify Al Qaeda after bin Laden: Al-Qaeda named Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant, as leader after the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was killed in a U.S. raid in Pakistan last month. Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon, has for years been al- Qaeda’s public face, with video...

Three years ago, Barack Obama was campaigning against dumb wars while John McCain was musing about staying in Iraq a hundred years. Now Republican hopefuls pound the President about military moves in the Middle East even as John Boehner warns him to get Congressional approval for his action in Libya by this weekend or face being in violation of the War Powers Act. Behind this scramble of traditional hawks and...

Here’s yet another sign of deteriorating U.S-Pakistan relations, the increasing question mark over the trustworthiness of Pakistan as an American intelligence ally, and yet another reason why Pakistan is going to face increasing resistance from Congress. The New York Times reports taht Pakistan has arrested CIA informants in the raid that got Osama bin Laden. But Pakistan has just now denied that the key...

Unbeknownst to much of the U.S. public, the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection admitted last week to 95 cases of corruption within his agency related to drug trafficking, undocumented immigrants and money laundering by organized crime groups in Mexico. In other words, U.S. customs officials are being bribed. According to this editorial from Mexico’s La Jornada, this is more proof of the dangerous...

Is there a shadowy group of men and women, who behind closed doors decide the course of human events and even history? For Switzerland’s Tages Anzeiger, columnist Markus Diem Meier writes that the truth is likely far more frightening: no one can can control global events, and even the Bilderbergers, who just ended their annual meeting, are shaped by rather than shapers of events. For the Tages Anzeiger,...

Will the U.N. General Assembly recognize a Palestinian state when it reconvenes in September? And if it does, what will the fallout when the United States – as President Obama has said it will do – vetoes the resolution? For Spain’s El Pais, columnist Louis Bassets warns that one of the consequences may be an even greater gulf between America and Europe. For El Pais, Louis Bassets writes in...

Would you—if you were a politician—be thrilled to get a thank you letter from Osama bin Laden? Well, according to the New York Times, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi has sent exactly such a letter to members of Congress. The three-page letter thanks members of Congress for criticizing President Obama last week over his involvement in the NATO-led military campaign in Libya: “I want to express my sincere...

President Obama is to blame for the "hollowing out of the trans-Atlantic partnership", which has degenerated into "empty symbolism" to the effect that "there is no alliance on any of the major issues of the day." This is the thesis of Russell Berman, professor at Stanford and senior policy fellow at the Hoover Institution. Writing for the popular online magazine The Daily Beast,...

A very smart and respected co-blogger on TMV (who happens to live a modest drive from me in Arizona) recently broached the subject of the former Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican Vice-Presidential Candidate. I agree that she’s great at self-promotion . She’s a very successful self-made entrepreneur because she fully understands America’s 24/7 info-entertainment news Media. She knows how to play the...

When a top-secret Defense Department analysis of the Vietnam War, which caused a legal uproar 40 years ago, was recently made public, the government said it was keeping 11 words secret, then changed its mind and published the 7000 pages in full. Now a guessing game is vexing the even the leaker, Daniel Ellsberg, and the lead author of the report, Leslie Gelb, who can’t find them in the mountain of words. It...

Along with the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the Zionists, the Bilderberg Group is a member of that august club of organizations that in the minds of conspiracy theorists around the world, are at the helm of global affairs. According to this article from Switzerland’s Suedostschweiz, which includes a letter from Swiss MP Dominique Baettig calling for the arrest of U.S. officials, the group is rumored...

I continue my new series of quoting from and linking to various Internet sites that I consider thoughtful and worth reading. As with TMV, these sites honestly attempt to be informative, moderate, and overall non-ideological. Dave Cohen of Pittsburgh, PA posted today on his blog “The Decline of the Empire” (www.declineoftheempire.com) the following analysis: Politics Is Irrelevant To America’s Fate Like...

The President is hinting at a declare-victory-and-leave strategy, once proposed for Vietnam and more recently for Iraq, to end our decade-long war in Afghanistan. In a TV interview, he says, “By killing Osama bin Laden, getting al Qaeda back on its heels, stabilizing much of the country in Afghanistan so that the Taliban can’t take it over…it’s now time for us to recognize that we’ve...

About three years ago, I took then-Presidential candidate John McCain to task for saying during a town hall meeting that it “would be fine with” him if the U.S. military stayed in Iraq for “a hundred years.” I was not only taken aback by McCain’s apparent level of comfort with prolonging a war where we were losing young Americans on a daily basis, but also by his continued, stubborn...

Is Mexican President Calderon too cozy with the United States and its involvement in his country? La Jornada columnist Javier Jimenez Espriu writes that Calderon’s apparent self-comparison to staunch U.S. ally Winston Churchill and rumors of U.S. military activities in Mexico are causes of great concern. For Mexico’s La Jornada, columnist Javier Jimenez Espriu writes in part: I’m worried by...

The nation’s economy is stagnant and many think it may tank again. The official high unemployment masks the even higher “unofficial” one most Americans see. The President appears to be out-of-touch with reality and continues to act as a tool of Wall Street. There is low voter approval for the Incumbent and most Democratic policies. With all this news, Republicans should be making plans to take...

Are offers of Western aid to the Arab revolutions a shell game designed to benefit the world’s wealthiest nations at the expense of Arabs demanding freedom and justice? Columnist H. Sulayman of Algeria’s El Khabar writes that the G8 countries are pretending to side with Arab peoples after decades of taking benefit from their oppression. For Algeria’s El Khabar, columnist H. Sulayman writes...