Why has President Obama fallen short after his first year in office? According to Brazilian newspaper Estadao, it all comes down to a failure to communicate. Estadao’s editorial on the president’s first year in office says in part: Cerebral, averse to confrontation, forgetful that the political polarization of the United States is profound and long-lasting, and finally, imprisoned by the priority...

Glenn Greenwald’s article about the automatic, unquestioned exemption of military spending from inclusion in the spending freeze Barack Obama reportedly plans to announce in the SOTU tomorrow evening has this stunning pie chart:

It sounds like a crazy question, but it’s coming from Andrew Exum, formerly an infantry officers and Army Ranger. Exum’s comments are a response to Leon Panetta’s insistence that no one should blame either a CIA officer or a soldier who is killed in the line of duty. Panetta assumes that [it] is beyond the pale to say that Marines or U.S. soldiers died in a firefight due to poor war-fighting...

UPDATED WITH PART 2 OF CNN INTERVIEW. Marc Thiessen was on CNN yesterday to promote his new book, which judging from the title – Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack — and the buzz about it on the right, is a 376-page defense of torture. He and Philippe Sands, the British author of Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of...

President Barack Obama’s acknowledgement that “we have somehow lost the sense of direct contact with the Americans on their core values” may be too little too late in the world’s eyes. Obama has extended a hand of dialogue to many countries, including enemies, but they will grasp it only if they feel that his other hand has a firm grip on power within the US. Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts...

The BBC World Service has a unique daily discussion program, “World Have Your Say,” where the BBC provides a platform for a world-wide discussion of topics of general interest, and facilitates live exchanges between and among BBC staff, invited guests, and callers from all over the world. Today’s subject was, of course, the Haiti catastrophe—more specifically how “Once again, in a crisis, the world...

My extensive business and legal background causes me to read a wide variety of publications on the Internet every day. I often find very good political analysis on many different business journals that is welcomed balance to the many extremely partisan political blogs out there. Naturally TMV is a excellent alternative to the extremism. Our country has abandoned a reasonably regulated free enterprise system...

This gives a whole new meaning to “Kill a Commy an infidel for Christ.”

To see an article in China’s state-sanctioned media like this one is rare indeed – and it may signal a real sea-change in U.S.-China relations. Indeed, given the amount of U.S. debt Beijing holds, one might call it downright chilling. For China’s state-controlled Geographic Times, columnist Long Tao, described as a ‘senior strategic commentator,’ writes in part: In 30 years of...

The Two-Handed Wedgie by Will Durst Just when you think we got enough to worry about, along comes a big, old raging controversy over airports utilizing full-body scanning machines that can see through fliers’ clothing all the way down to our naughty bits. Let me tell you where I stand on this brouhaha: I don’t care. Haha. In the whole modesty versus safety argument, you can count on me to crawl behind the...

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Political fundraising letters are always a great target for blog posts. Most of my political mail is from conservatives, but I still get some liberal envelopes, possibly because of my subscription to the New Republic. This week, I was very flattered to receive a letter from Bill Clinton, who addressed me as “Dear Friend.” One of the most noticeable things about Bill’s letter was what it didn’t...

According to the lively Spanish blog Barcepundit, the FBI seems to have a kind of fixation in using parts of Spanish Communist party leader Gaspar Llamazares’ head and hair in its composite photos of Al Qaeda terrorists. No, this is not a joke. DETAILS ARE HERE.

Guest post by Jared Stancombe Jared Stancombe, a 2009 graduate of Indiana University, is currently an analyst for a U.S. government agency responsible for national security. He is also in the officer selection process for the U.S. Marine Corps. He lives in Washington, D.C. With the turn of the decade into 2010, many Americans are hopeful with respect to what the new decade will bring. However, those within...

Military Times has posted a list of the 16 best military books of the decade. Regrettably, I can only say that I’ve read two-and-a-half of them. The first is The Unforgiving Minute, by my classmate and friend Craig Mullaney, which made the NYT bestseller list. Since I have a small cameo in the book, I must agree that it’s a superb work in all regards. The half book I read is One Bullet Away, by...

The NY Times has stirred the pot by asking this question on the front page of its latest Week in Review. Bob Stein suggests this is just a tread-worn conservative talking point with no merit to speak of. Yet strangely, the Times didn’t even bother to ask any actual conservatives whether Obama has gone soft. Instead, prominent liberals provided the necessary grist for the mill: Leslie H. Gelb, president...

Is President Barack Obama flexing his “Jeffersonian muscle” in foreign policy? Glenn Reynolds, aka, Instapundit has this 12-minute PJTV interview with Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for Foreign Policy HERE.

The global commentary about the movie Avatar keeps on coming – and one might say, getting stranger. Along with reports that Russian communists want to have James Cameron arrested for pilfering the work of Russian science fiction writers, this article from Bolivia likens the film’s main character to Jesus Christ. For the BolPress of Bolivia, columnist Huascar Vega Ledo writes in part: The word “avatar”...

This is the third post on today’s big news in the Netherlands, the release of the Davids Commission report on its investigation into the Dutch government’s decision-making process and policies during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. My previous posts were based on my own translations of Dutch reports in the Dutch newspaper the NRC Handeslblad. In translating politically sensitive documents and articles...

Don’t expect the Federal and State governments to create many new jobs in the public or private sectors this year or this decade. Don’t expect the Private sector to care about hiring the tens of millions of Americans when new technologies have made many U.S. jobs obsolete, the remaining employees can be coerced to work even harder out of fear, and the other good jobs have been successfully outsourced to...

Under the heading, “Blankenende [the Dutch Prime Minister] had no grasp on Iraq policy,” the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad publishes additional comments and reactions to today’s unveiling of the Davids Commission report on the Dutch government’s policies leading up to the Iraq invasion. The following are some translated excerpts. The entire translation will be available at Watching America (watchingamerica.com)...

The “Davids Commission,” an independent Dutch commission chaired by Willibrord Davis, former head of the Dutch Supreme Court, released its 551-page report today on the Dutch government’s decisions surrounding the invasion of Iraq. The report, months in the making, provides the results of an investigation into the political support given by the Netherlands to the Bush administration’s decision to...

“Like every Democratic president since John F. Kennedy,” the New York Times declares, “President Obama is battling the perception that he’s a wimp on national security,” That “perception” has haunted Democrats in the White House even before JFK, when Harry Truman ordered government employees to sign loathsome loyalty oaths in order to counter McCarthy era charges that he...

AIR INSPECTOR: ‘DO YOU HAVE ANY LIQUIDS IN HERE?’ TERRORIST: ‘NO’ For many people outside the United States, the following sentence summarizes America’s reaction to the attempted terrorist bombing on Christmas Day: “Fourteen countries have been penalized because of the failures of U.S. intelligence.” After fleshing out this conviction, Raul Sohr of Chile’s La...

Recruiment goes on at al-Qaeda … Two weeks after al-Qaeda’s Christmas day bombing attempt, the theme of terrorism continues to dominate global commentary about the United States. Today we posted two articles on the theme, one from France’s Liberation about the abysmal failure of Osama bin Laden, and another from Brazil’s Folha about the silarly devastating failure of political economist...