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Rhetoric is one thing that the stop-and-start global diplomacy over climate change has never lacked. It's the strength of political principle that has been the truly threatened resource. For eight years, that was largely the fault of the U.S. Under former President George W. Bush, U.S. diplomats played an obstructionist role in climate-change talks, and even before Bush's arrival, the country failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol - the international treaty intended to curb global warming. The U.S. Senate rejected the pact by a cool 95-0, and Bush later pulled it off the table...
...started expressing anxiety. No, not just about whether the new President could right the economy or reform health care. The burning question for the Obama age: What the heck were political comedians going to do? For eight years they had enjoyed a comedic gift from the gods in George W. Bush, whose bumbling presidency provided even richer material than the cartoonish excesses of the Clinton years. But Obama, with his obvious smarts, low-key style and (most important) ability to catch the prevailing tone of irony and laugh at himself, has left the comics with little to hang their punch...
...gave rise to stand-up social commentators like George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Robert Klein. By the '80s, however, stand-up had mostly retreated to the home front (Roseanne Barr), the trivia of everyday life (Jerry Seinfeld) and the carefully nonpartisan "topical" jokes of Johnny Carson. In the George W. Bush years, political comedy came back in style, not just for late-night hosts like David Letterman and Jon Stewart - who are far more willing than Carson was to let their (usually left-of-center) political views show through - but also for the foot soldiers of the comedy clubs, where...
...many people would have predicted this. There are some Democrats who will never forgive Kerry for his 2004 loss to George W. Bush, and nearly five years later it is still a sensitive subject for him. "We did pretty damn well against an incumbent President, under very, very difficult circumstances," he prickles when asked about it. He took the loss hard. He skulked around the Senate for months, casting wary eyes on his colleagues and reporters alike. Friends say he talked in 2005 about leaving the Senate when his fourth term came to an end in 2008. Not until...
Washington's silence on the issue is telling. In 2006, Mexico's Congress approved a bill with almost exactly the same provisions. However, the Administration of George W. Bush immediately complained about the measure and then President Vicente Fox refused to sign it into law. In contrast, officials of the Obama Administration have been decidedly guarded in commenting on the new legislation. When asked about it in his visit to Mexico last month, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said he would "wait and see." Many view such a change as evidence that Washington is finally reconsidering its confrontational war on drugs...