Why Is America So Mean?“The 82nd,” the man ahead of me in the security line at the Kansas City airport said. He was 64 and white, very Hank Hill and not the kind of guy you’d typically see chatting up a skinny 20-year-old Latino dude. But they were both veterans. Common ground is a given. “I was in the 82nd too,” the kid told the old man. I looked down. The kid’s legs were gone. He was standing on metal. Implausibly and heartbreakingly, white Converses adorned the tips of his prosthetic legs. High tops. On the other side of the metal detector, I caught up with the young vet (Iraq? Afghanistan?). HomeSec was giving him the whole treatment: arms stretched out, the wand, stern expressions and stupid questions. The wand beeped and beeped. The TSA guy scowled. “I’ve got titanium all the way up my spine,” the kid explained. You’re kidding me, I thought. After what he’s been through. After…

High Unemployment and High Inflation Make This Recession Different “Why is this recession different from almost all other recessions?” asked Herbert Barchoff. The economist, a former president of the Council of Economic Advisers, answered his own question: “This is not only the usual cyclical recession, but also a structural recession.” Barchoff’s dark assessment appeared in a letter to the editor of The New York Times–in June 1992. Then, like now, Americans were suffering through a long, grinding recession following a boom (under Reagan) that had primarily benefited the wealthy. There were mass layoffs. The real estate market had collapsed. Foreclosures were rampant. George H.W. Bush, who had expected to coast to reelection on the strength of his near 90 percent post-Gulf War approval ratings, projected a Herbert Hoover-like resolve to not lift a finger to alleviate the misery. The Federal Reserve cut interest rates, but it didn’t help. Six months later, angry voters fired an out-of-touch president who seemed unwilling…

THIS WEEK’S SYNDICATED COLUMN: BIGOTRY, APOLOGY, REPEAT AS NECESSARY The Rise of John McCain In the 1993 film noir “Romeo is Bleeding,” the late Roy Scheider plays a mob boss. “You know right from wrong,” he tells a hopelessly corrupt cop portrayed by Gary Oldman. “You just don’t care.” It’s a perfect summary of John McCain’s political career. Time after time, McCain weighs a decision. Then, after careful consideration, he chooses evil over good. In the short run, evil gets him what he wants. Later, when the devil comes to collect his due, McCain issues a retraction. Running for president in 2000, John McCain squared off against George W. Bush in the key South Carolina primary. Asked whether the Confederate battle flag should continue to fly over the state capitol, McCain sided with the rednecks: “Personally, I see the flag as symbol of heritage.” A few months later, he’d lost South Carolina and quit the race. He apologized–not to the…

Next Prez Must Make Bush an Unperson “No one owes obedience to a usurper government or to anyone who assumes public office in violation of the Constitution and the law. The civil population has the right to rise up in defense of the constitutional order. The acts of those who usurp public office are null and void.” –Article 46, Constitution of Peru Comedian Bill Maher is a brilliant contrarian. He dislikes George Bush. Yet his view of the stolen 2000 election is conventional, ahistorical and quintessentially American: Forget it! Move on! “Oh, Ted,” he replied when I mentioned the judicial coup d’état on his TV show, which aired October 3, 2001. “That’s so September 10th. It really is.” It has been nearly eight years since the U.S. Supreme Court violated the Constitution by installing George W. Bush as president. Their ruling was immaterial. They shouldn’t have agreed to hear Bush v. Gore in the first place. Under Article II of…

Hillary Clinton, Superdelegates, and Playing with Fire Will there be race riots if Barack Obama is denied the Democratic nomination? Despite the continuing fallout over his association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the Illinois senator has won the most state primaries, the most votes and the most delegates. Polls have him running between one and four percentage points ahead of Clinton. Four centuries after the first blacks came to America in chains, the prospect of seeing one of their own become president is so close that African-Americans can taste it. Will they sit quietly at home and change the channel if white America dashes their hopes? “One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race,” write Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Politico.com. “Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.”But what if she does? Stars, planets and a bunch of asteroids would have to fall into perfect alignment in order for…

Dem Wimp Throws His Truth-Telling Preacher Under the Bus If Americans were represented by an animal, it wouldn’t be an eagle. It would be a tiny shrew, nervous and paranoid and living in constant terror of being attacked by predators. Our national prey mentality doesn’t have much basis in reality. The last attack on U.S. soil took place two-thirds of a century ago; Hawaii wasn’t even a state at the time. Before that, you have to go back to 1846–and we provoked that one. Whatever the historical basis–or lack thereof–for this innate fearfulness, U.S. voters look to their president as a Father Protector figure–someone who, if threatened, will ferociously defend what is now called, stupidly and horribly, das Homeland. Republican candidates win elections in years when national security is a top concern. In 2004, it didn’t matter that John Kerry volunteered for, fought in, and returned with medals from Vietnam. What mattered was that he turned the other cheek to…

Why Obama’s Favorite War is Less Winnable Than Iraq Five years after the Republicans got us into war against Iraq, Democrats want to double down on a war that’s even more unjustifiable and unwinnable–the one against Afghanistan. By any measure, U.S. troops and their NATO allies are getting their asses kicked in the country that Reagan’s CIA station chief for Pakistan called “the graveyard of empires.” Afghanistan currently produces a record 93 percent of the world’s opium. Suicide bombers are killing more U.S.-aligned troops than ever. Stonings are back. The Taliban and their allies, “defeated” in 2001, control most of the country–and may recapture the capital of Kabul as early as this summer. “So,” asks The New York Times, “has Afghanistan now become a bigger security threat to the United States than Iraq?” Barack Obama’s answer is yes. He spent last year parroting the DNC’s line that Bush “took his eye off the ball” in Afghanistan when we invaded Iraq.…

THIS WEEK’S SYNDICATED COLUMN: TALK NO, VOTE YES How do Sleazy Senators Get Away With It? A weird new tactic is highlighting the troubling extent to which the news media fails to hold our elected officials accountable. First, a politician calls a press conference where he issues a strident declaration for or against a bill. Big headlines follow. Then, when the matter comes up for a vote, he votes exactly the opposite of what he had said he would. And no one pays attention. Ten years ago, not even the most outrageous legislator would attempt such brazen perfidy. Back then, “flip-flopping”–changing one’s mind about an issue, voting one way and then the other–was the worst sin a pol could commit. Now he can take to the Senate floor, shout about a proposed law being a threat to mom, God and apple pie–and the next day vote “yes,” secure in the knowledge that no reporter will call him on it. Thus…