Whatever Spielberg says — there’s no comparing an empty-suit like Obama to a radical like Lincoln. I thought about writing a critique of Aaron Bady’s mostly very good review of Lincoln for a long time this morning. It was a tough call: I do have some enamel left on my teeth and I can think of nothing [...]

Speech in Springfield, IL  June 26, 1857: They have him in his prison house; they have searched his person, and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him, and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, [...]

Sasha and Malia have some mighty big boots to fill: While Elliott Roosevelt operated from Gander in August 1941, FDR detached him and brother Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. to attend the Argentia (Atlantic Charter) summit between Churchill and FDR. In January 1943, Roosevelt accompanied FDR as a military attaché to the Casablanca meeting and the [...]

My favorite Cockburn passage and something we do at Jacobin, as well. I asked the future leader what I asked all interns as a matter of form, “Eddie, is your hate pure?” The man who first asked me that question was the late Jim Goode, editor of Penthouse. Like Playboy, Penthouse would pay good money [...]

There’s a new Boomer vs. Millennial piece over at Esquire making its way across the intertubes. If you hadn’t noticed, wringing one’s hands about Baby Boomers gorging themselves on the syrupy sweet hopes and dreams of the young’ns is the newest game in town. And though I’ve had my say on the topic, you just [...]

“I wouldn’t want to be twenty-years-old now. I fear for what’s coming.” – Hunter S. Thompson, 2003 Generational analysis is bullshit. Or so I’m told. Fit for netroots liberals and horoscope clippers, maybe.  And to be fair, it’s mostly thinktank types who’ve been profiting off that whole Millennials Rising genre. One of the authors of [...]

Melissa Harris-Perry’s latest piece for The Nation: President Obama has experienced a swift and steep decline in support among white Americans—from 61 percent in 2009 to 33 percent now. I believe much of that decline can be attributed to their disappointment that choosing a black man for president did not prove to be salvific for [...]

Recently, Alexander Cockburn declared a ceasefire in his ongoing war against “green fascism” long enough to write something that oughta be translated into a hundred languages and leafleted from planes: These days a dwindling number of leftists learn their political economy from Marx. Into the theoretical and strategic void has crept a diffuse, peripatic conspiracist view of [...]