Truthdig Isn't About Giving Up Progressive Flag

Ruth Marcus on Balancing the Budget Debate
"March of the Deficit Pandas" -- It’s possible to simultaneously worry about the debt and believe in an active and compassionate role for government. In fact, it’s required.

Amy Goodman on Japan's Nuclear Crisis
"A Warning to the World" -- A reporter, describing the devastation of one city in Japan, wrote: “It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts ... as a warning to the world.” The reporter was Wilfred Burchett, writing from Hiroshima, Japan, on Sept. 5, 1945.

William Pfaff on U.S. Isolation in Foreign Policy
"American Ignorance Keeps American Power in Check" -- The United States, without really realizing, is now back to where it was, an isolated nation. But unlike in the past, this isolation is not deliberate.

Richard Reeves on God
"The Revenge of God" -- It was in the spring of 1966 that Time magazine shocked a lot of readers with a black cover with the white question: "Is God Dead?"

Eugene Robinson on Nukes
"No Such Thing as Risk-Free Nuclear Power" -- Nuclear power was beginning to look like a panacea—a way to lessen our dependence on oil, make our energy supply more self-sufficient and significantly mitigate global warming, all at the same time. Now it looks more like a bargain with the devil.

American Values and the Art of the Possible

$636 billion for annual military spending was approved by the U.S. Senate over the weekend, with little more than a hiccup of debate from Republican "conservatives," not a peep from the Democrats, and even less coverage from the corporate mainstream media.

But $850 billion for 10 years of what is ostensibly meant to be health care reform for the health and welfare of American citizens --- all while reducing the budget deficit by $132 billion over that period, according to the CBO? "A budget buster!," shout the phony "conservatives" in the same Senate.

Anyway, there's your "American Values," in a two-part nutshell, from today's Republicans and the Democrats and corporate media who enable their madness as if it weren't so. Brad Freidman, Brad Blog