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The race for the Republican nomination for a candidate to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012 will probably be over within fourteen months at the most. Accordingly the race is beginning to take shape. At this time there are probably significantly more candidates exploring the possibility of a campaign, considering the race or trying to figure out whether or not they can win the nomination and the election, so the field of candidates will probably get smaller between over the next six months.
The Republican race for the nomination has the potential to be extremely entertaining and much more open with a far greater degree of uncertainty than any recent Republican nomination battle. It also has the potential to have an impact on the Republican Party for the next decade or

We humans are a competitive bunch. From time immemorial we’ve found every reason known to man to beat and bludgeon each other in the name of tribes, regions, countries, religions, even political parties, and we don’t seem the least bit inclined to stop. It’s somehow burned into our DNA to set up stakes and draw lines meant to keep us separate and superior, except, of course, when imperialism raises its uppity head and pushes one group beyond the lines of another to prove “survival of the fittest.” This may have worked for the Huns, it had much to do with the assemblage now known as the United States, but when it comes to contemporary culture and the discourse between human beings currently inhabiting our planet, all this line-drawing, head-bludgeoning, chest-puffing aggrandizement is literally beating the hell out of us.
I’m not just talking about the combatants in the Middle East, tribal Africa, Communist China or drug-lorded Mexico. I’m talking about the more mundane crowd right here in our own back yards: the cable pundits, Tea Partiers, talk radio shouters, neighborhood politicians, party opinion leaders, religious zealots, and Americans who seem to think some are more “real” than

As a former presidential appointee to the National Council of the National Endowment for the Arts, it was with particular concern that I learned of ex Governor Sarah Palin’s ‘trashing’ of both the National Endowments of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Her position went beyond the bounds of reasoned debate. To question whether the government should or should not fund these institutions is a legitimate issue of of civil discussion. But to refer to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as ‘frivolous’ institutions becomes a reflection on her wisdom and character.
Unquestionably the teaching and the support of the humanities and the arts has diminished in our progressively technologically demanding world. And it

With all the angst about the economy, the deficit, and a looming government shut-down, I’m still concerned that we’re treating symptoms rather than diagnosing the underlying disease.
I know something about this. I spent a week in the hospital last year having loads of tests done — blood work, heart scans, stress tests, sonograms. I was discharged without a diagnosis, merely with hopes that by treating the symptoms, whatever was wrong would go away. It

The Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman appeared on MSNBC’s ‘The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell’ Monday night to discuss the continuing standoff in Wisconsin, the fight over the budget in Congress, and Michael Moore.
Fineman also addressed the verbal tussle between Sarah Palin and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, wondering if Palin hasn’t begun to wear out her welcome with some Republicans.
WATCH:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

Early yesterday morning, around 1:00 AM, I had finished work for the day on my current “project” (top secret for now — sorry, no spoiler alerts!). Someone had sent me a link to a discussion Bill O’Reilly had had with Sarah Palin a few hours earlier about my belief that the money the 21st Century rich have absconded with really isn’t theirs — and that a vast chunk of it should be taken away from them.
They were referring to comments I had made earlier in the week on a small cable show called GRITtv (Part 1 and Part 2). I honestly didn’t know this was going to air that night (I had been asked to stop by and say a few words of support for a nurses union video), but I spoke from my heart about the millions of our fellow Americans who have had their homes and jobs stolen from them by a criminal class of millionaires and billionaires. It was the morning after the Oscars, at which the winner of Best Documentary for “Inside Job” stood at the microphone and declared, “I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to

During the past few weeks, the play of American politics has been particularly disturbing. Consider the willful ignorance of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, trying to convince his supporters that President Obama is “not one of us.” To that end, he suggested that President Obama’s worldview was shaped by his childhood in Kenya — or maybe it was, Indonesia — and by radical movements like the Kenyan Mau-Mau revolt. Huckabee, a potential Republican candidate for president, went on to say that President Obama’s father and grandfather molded his “foreign” ideas about how the world works. It doesn’t matter that President Obama hardly knew his father or his paternal grandfather, or that the Mau-Mau rebellion took place far from the Obama homestead in Kenya, a country President Obama first visited when he was 26 years

Politicians lose favor for many reasons. Sometimes it’s a buildup of things so overwhelming that even the under-informed get it: Sarah Palin’s increasing perception as a mean-spirited, no-nothing, money-grubbing quitter. Mitt Romney’s almost farcical flip-flopping. Or Newt Gingrich’s hypocrisy, fueled by the discovery of his own affair with a younger staffer while he was constantly chastising President Clinton about Monica

The bottom line is surprisingly simple. Filmmakers rarely make movies about boring people. Whether they aim for a fictional narrative, a documentary, a comedy, or a biopic, what attracts them is a person with spunk, flair, some kind of conflict, and a history of having overcome a major obstacle (whether it be personal, professional, medical, or situational).
In fiction, such characters emerge from creative minds who can fashion heroes to fit a story line. In real life, such characters may be found in every walk in life, but the chances are pretty good that you’ll find a live wire in

The only thing more insufferable than a high profile idiot is a high profile idiot with raging narcissism. That’s Sarah Palin.
We can’t know for sure whether or not she recognizes how unserious and unintelligent she is, but, in Palin, we can plainly see a reality show celebridoof who seems to believe that national office doesn’t require the widely accepted prerequisite of “knowing things” — especially things that squarely relate to the national office she has sought in the past and the one she will likely seek this year. Only people with clinical personality issues, well beyond the reasonably normal purview of ego, believe they can achieve the most prestigious elected offices in the United States without, at the very least, knowing basic information about the universe of those jobs.
Ego isn’t new to

The GOP is vainly searching for a qualified Presidential Candidate!
With the elections less than two years away Republicans are still sifting through a tired list of potential candidates with very little luck!
The list of potential Presidential candidates reflects the uncertainty and unrest in the new Republican Party.
It seems like every few weeks a new prospect rises within the party and another on the list loses their lustre.
The list, since Obama’s defeat of McCain in 2008, has been in flux with no less than 18 potential stars. Some have already gone supernova, permanently fading from the list. Others are soon to follow.
The current list, which includes recirculated hopefuls like Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Sarah Palin, and Presidential wannabe’s like Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, and Michele Bachmann, is a study in both inanity and insanity.
Which Republican Presidential Candidate can challenge President Obama?
As described in an article in July 2009, “Is That All You’ve Got?” some rising stars eliminated themselves before the ink was dry on their endorsements. That was the case with Bobby Jindal, Mark Sanford, and John Ensign, the latter two involved in widely publicized sex scandals.
The same is true of recently canonized Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker, who derailed his chances with a self-convicting punk phone

Mike Huckabee has not declared he is a candidate for president, but the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows he is now the favored candidate among Republicans. 25 percent of those polled supported the former Arkansas governor and Fox News contributor, edging out former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who had 21 percent in the poll.
Huckabee, who ran for president in 2008, has always played the nice guy. In his latest book he writes, “If you’ve come here looking for a personal attack on President (Barack) Obama and those in Washington, you should head to another shelf in the bookstore.” The book, which he is busy promoting, is called, A Simple Government: Twelve Things We Really Need From Washington (And a Trillion That We Don’t!).
Of course, Huckabee was a preacher in Arkansas for 12 years beginning in the early

Before there was Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Scott Walker or any of the other current radical conservatives seeking the national spotlight and perhaps the Republican nomination for president, there was Newt Gingrich. The recent boomlet around a potential presidential bid by the aging right wing revolutionary feels like a strange hybrid of the unique quirkiness that has always been part of Gingrich with nostalgia for the 1990s. Next thing you know, we’ll be talking about impeaching a Democratic president and shutting down the government. Maybe the 1990s really are back.
Ironically, in the mid-1990s, when Gingrich was at the height of his power after engineering a Republican takeover of the House or Representatives for the first time in four decades, the idea of a Gingrich presidency was

Back in October of 2008, I penned a piece for Politico predicting that Sarah Palin, despite all the hype and frothing over her selection as the first female on a Republican presidential ticket, would never get the Republican nomination for president in the future, let alone be elected president.
I pointed out that during my lifetime (I was born in 1951, if you must know), only one non-incumbent vice presidential nominee on a losing ticket — Bob Dole, who ran with President Ford in 1976 — has ever come back to win their party’s nomination, and none has ever been elected president.
And I must say, nearly every one of the lot who fit this category was a far more substantial and distinguished figure than Palin — U.S. Ambassador to the UN and former Republican Massachusetts

The front section of February 18th’s edition of The New York Times is peppered with stories about women as mothers – Sarah Palin is quoted as saying, characteristically, that women, and moms specifically, are most qualified for handling the trials of the American presidency. And Michele Bachman criticizes Michele Obama for her promotion of breastfeeding as part of her effort to reduce childhood obesity. Characteristically, she is inaccurate when she speaks of Ms. Obama’s attempt to create what she calls a “nanny” state.
I was chagrinned, although not entirely surprised to also see the story chronicling Congress’s attempt to defund the best help for mothers and families in America and around the world: Planned

In the U.K., the group Wild Palms’ album Until Spring is getting all kinds of critical nods and experiencing some major success. On the band’s music, NME said, “Grandiose and melancholic… an expansive, romantic new sound for Wild Palms,” “(They) owe more to Disintegration-era Cure and Warp Records than Wire or Gang Of Four,” commented Mojo, “Deeply odd and deeply wonderful,” added Sunday Times, and Artrocker declared, “Virtually a phone call from Jesus himself.”
Here in the U.S., Wild Palms’ Until Spring will debut on April 12th, but HuffPost has been given the premiere of the single “To The Lighthouse” presented here, airing for the first time in this territory.
WILD PALMS – “To The Lighthouse”
Wild Palms – To The Lighthouse by One Little Indian Records
A Conversation with Susan Werner
Mike Ragogna: Hi Susan, how and where are you?
Susan Werner: I’m doing great, I’m in Chicago. It’s a cloudy day but not too cold

Even before an ex-aide to former Gov. Sarah Palin had sold his memoir, the book — “Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years” — has now been leaked to the media, including a reporter at Alaska Dispatch on Thursday night.
“Blind Allegiance” is the story of Palin aide and confidant Frank Bailey’s time spent working for the governor, from when she announced she was running for governor until her abrupt resignation in 2009. Heavily relying on e-mails between Bailey, Sarah and ex-First Dude Todd Palin, his memoir begins near the end of Palin’s governorship with the following line:
And the book ends with an epiphany. Bailey writes:
Bailey, a former Alaska Airlines employee, was plucked from obscurity when he volunteered for Palin’s campaign for

Hello darlings. I’ve been rather ill all week, and saw my Doctor (one J. Kervorkin. I often disagree with his recommended course of treatment though) this

In a phone call from her undisclosed location to his undisclosed location, Sarah Palin both congratulated and thanked the former President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, for taking her advice. WikiLeaks leaked that Mrs. Palin had shared with then-President Mubarak her Plan A on how to gain maximum publicity when quitting public office.
“To create suspense,” she allegedly said, “you must leak that you’re leaving and then surprise them and don’t

Last fourth of July, while sitting in the living room of my historic farm house in Lenox, Massachusetts, which was built by Elijah Northrup in 1770 — a fourth-generation American — I thought about the Berkshire regiment and the American Revolution. Since the house was a tavern during the revolutionary war period I imagined that it must have hosted some lively conversation about the oppressive rule of King George the 3rd and the rising sentiment for rebellion, especially in Lenox. In 1774 the Berkshires issued the Lenox Covenant, one of the first formal acts of defiance against the Crown’s taxation without representation. It was a courageous act that exposed the signers to prosecution and hanging should the revolution

A is for Arianna and Tim Armstrong, who are changing the face of American journalism as AOL bets $315 million that HuffPost can help it compete in the brave new world of the Internet. Also, Al-Jazeera, which is changing the way the world sees the Arab world and the way the Arab world sees itself, and Afghanistan, for obvious reasons.
B is for House Speaker John Boehner, whose inability to rein in Tea Party-backed budget-cutters is enough to make a grown man cry. Also, the FY 2012 budget that President Obama will unveil on Valentine’s Day that calls for tough love to reduce the federal deficit by $1.1 trillion over the next ten years; and BlackBerry, the ubiquitous, addictive and time-wasting multitasking tool.
C is for China, as Mao’s successors struggle to prove that capitalism and communism can co-exist and elevate it to superpower status; Also, new White House mouthpiece and ex-journalist Jay Carney, who’s already finding it’s easier to question presidential decisions than to explain them; and Craigslist, which you shouldn’t use to send shirtless photos to “Women Seeking Men.”
D is for Davos, the Swiss ski resort where important global leaders gather each January at the World Economic Forum and accomplish little while reassuring themselves they are important global leaders.
E is for Egypt, of course, the future of the Middle East hangs in the balance in the land of the Pharaohs after Mubarak resigns, but the outcome is harder to read than the

Hold up. Slow down. If you wait a half a second, there’ll be time for me to hop on the Ronald Reagan 100th birth anniversary bandwagon, onto which I plan on leaping with both feet. Well, to be honest, not so much jumping on, as using a Sherman Tank to slam sideways into it, then soaking the floor-boards with fermented cabbage shreds marinated in red wine vinegar infused deer

A Feminist Tea Party was held in New York City today, hosted by New York-based visual artists Caitlin Rueter and Suzanne Stroebe.
At “Ask Me, I Will Tell,” a panel sponsored by the Women’s Caucus for Art’s LIVEspace at the College Art Association’s Annual Conference, in the unlikely space of a narrow hotel conference room, Rueter and Stroebe offered panelists and the assembled audience of dedicated feminist women of all ages (and two hardy men!) a proper high tea complete with porcelain cups, slices of lemon, miniature pink-iced cupcakes, strawberries, and ginger cake. As always for these occasions, they were dressed in elegant 1950s clothing to slyly poke fun at the Tea Party movement’s apparent nostalgia for a time when women were still ladies, and women’s liberation was still but a gleam in their mother’s eye.
In the face of the bizarre “Mama Grizzly” equation between feminism and shooting moose, Rueter and Stroebe began their “A Feminist Tea Party” project last year as a response to the provocation of the Tea Party Movement

“Show us your papers” has become the divisive de facto shorthand for critics of humane immigration policies, and in recent years for critics of our current president too. (In case you haven’t heard, apparently some people believe President Obama may not have been born in this country.) But I’d like to suggest that perhaps they and the rest of us should consider asking candidates for office to “Show us your passport” instead.
I began thinking about this after a friend sent me an article that confirmed that only 30% of Americans actually own a passport. Based on those stats it dawned on me that there are likely plenty of elected officials who have never set foot outside of this