Search Results for: Presidential Candidates

The GE Presidential Debate

By David Swanson

MSNBC, owned by weapons-maker General Electric, opened Thursday night’s debate with the unavoidable topic of Iraq, and unavoidably allowed each of the eight candidates on the stage to address it. Two of them, Congressman Dennis Kucinich and former Senator Mike Gravel, spoke in favor of ending the war. Kucinich advocated cutting off the funding. Gravel proposed passing a law to make it a felony to remain in Iraq.

Of course, it’s also a felony to spy in violation read more

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Cable Television Perfects Presidential Coverage

June 9, 2004

It’s official. Cable television has now completely and thoroughly covered presidential politics, fully informing all Americans of all the issues, positions, promises, and disputes. That job completed, one cable channel has moved on to the important public function of making shit up.

No, I don’t mean Fox News. I’m referring to Showtime’s new presidential election reality TV show, in which 12 “candidates” will pretend to run for president. What could read more

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The Pro-Peace Case to Stop Changing Our Clocks

The first reason I’d like the United States to drop the whole ordeal of changing clocks twice a year is that it causes endless confusion and missed meetings for groups, organizations, and events that are not contained within the little 4% of humanity that lives in the United States. To make cross-border zoom meetings work, you have to either get people in the United States to learn what Coordinated Universal Time is, or make 96% of the world change their meeting times because the United States read more

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I Don’t Care How Old Our Horribly Awful Elected Officials Are

Biden and Trump are shattering the records — previously held by Clinton and Trump — for unpopular top presidential candidates. Professional election gurus who thought Trump had become too unpopular now think he has a shot because Biden is just as unpopular.

Pollsters have the numbers to show that most people think these guys are too old, and most media outlets offer up their elderliness as a key explanation for their unpopularity. I’m not convinced.

If Biden or Trump were championing read more

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Despite Yemen Exit, Bipartisan Push For New Cold War Continues

From By Any Means Necessary

Biden declares end of “offensive support” for Yemen war; Election could return Ecuador to left; NHL teams cancel games amid COVID outbreak

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by David Swanson, activist, journalist, radio host, Executive Director of World Beyond War and author of the new book “Leaving World War II Behind,” to discuss the Biden administration’s announcement that the US government read more

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How Do You Blow the Whistle on a Whole Society?

By David Swanson
Remarks at Peace Center, Los Angeles, January 18, 2020
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Another Video
Yet Another Video

Like perhaps most people who visit Los Angeles, I consider it my duty to offer a brilliant new idea for a film script. My idea is in the genre of science-fiction mafia, a genre that I think has not been sufficiently exploited. In this film, the protagonist wakes up to the fact that without knowing it, he has somehow joined the mafia. I expect people to be able to relate to the story because read more

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Why Is Trump the Only Candidate With a Budget Proposal?

An important job of any U.S. president is to propose an annual budget to Congress. Shouldn’t it be a basic job of every presidential candidate to propose one to the public? Isn’t a budget a critical moral and political document outlining what chunk of our public treasury should go to education or environmental protection or war?

The basic outline of such a budget could consist of a list or a pie chart communicating — in dollar amounts and/or percentages — how much government spending read more

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What Does the U.S. Public Think of Its Government Arming and Bombing the World?

Data for Progress for quite a while appeared to be yet another U.S. PEP group (Progressive Except for Peace). They were producing useful polling reports on all sorts of topics as if 96% of humanity didn’t exist. Foreign policy just couldn’t be found. They told me they were just getting around to it. You still can’t find it from the homepage of their website (or at least it’s beyond my navigational skills), but Data for Progress read more

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How the U.S. Institute of Peace Avoids Peace in Afghanistan

Four years ago, I wrote this after a meeting at the U.S. Institute of Peace:

“The president of USIP Nancy Lindborg had an odd response when I suggested that inviting Senator Tom Cotton to come speak at USIP on the need for a longer war on Afghanistan was a problem. She said USIP had to please Congress. OK, fine. Then she added that she believed there was room to disagree about exactly how we were going to make peace in Afghanistan, that there was more than one possible path to peace. Of course read more

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This Is Really Not a Drill

On Wednesday, the first 10 of the 20 Democrats whom the corporate media is permitting into what they call debates were asked what the greatest threat to the United States is. A worthy and funny answer would have been “MSNBC.” Another worthy and funny answer would have been “Donald Trump,” which was in fact Jay Inslee’s answer — and he made clear elsewhere in the event that climate collapse is also his answer. A worthy answer, though nobody would have understood read more

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