The New Obama Is the Old Obama

January 31, 2010 By David A. Love

David A. Love: And at the Republican Party’s retreat in Baltimore, President Obama was responsible for the most compelling example of political theater in recent American history. He fielded questions from a crowded room of hostile adversaries– outnumbered, perhaps, but unmatched in intellectual firepower. The result was nothing less than a nationally-broadcast smackdown that the Republicans will not soon forget. Perhaps the president’s adversaries in the GOP, blinded by their partisanship, extremism, and dare I say racism, underestimated his capabilities.

LA Progressive: January 24 to 30, 2010

January 31, 2010 By admin

LA Progressive: January 24 to 30, 2010 — This week’s articles.

Will Faith-Based Agencies Help Haiti’s Gay Community?

January 30, 2010 By Rev. Irene Monroe

Rev. Irene Monroe: It is my hope that the many conservative faith-based groups and organizations that are now part of Haiti’s earthquake relief effort will not discriminate against Haiti’s LGBTQ community as many of them did toward New Orleans’s queer communities during Katrina.

Obama Needs To Teach The Public How to Get Out Of The Mess We’re In, But He’s Not

January 30, 2010 By Robert Reich

Robert Reich: The economic lesson President Obama ought to be teaching is that targeted tax cuts, mostly for small business, are good to the extent they give businesses a nudge toward creating more jobs. But businesses won’t begin to create lots of jobs until they have lots of customers. And that won’t happen until lots more Americans have work. The only way to get them work when businesses aren’t hiring is for government to prime the pump.

Medicare-for-All: The Answer to a President’s Call and a Nation’s Woes

January 30, 2010 By Dr. Margaret Flowers

Dr. Margaret Flowers: I was overjoyed to hear you say in your State of the Union address on Wednesday night: “But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.” My colleagues, fellow health advocates and I have been trying to meet with you for over a year now because we have an approach which will meet all of your goals and more.

What Obama Must Do, and Cannot

January 30, 2010 By Tom Hayden

Tom Hayden: Obama may succeed in withdrawing 100,000 American troops from Iraq this year, and the rest by 2012. But even this goal faces opposition from the Green Zone to the Beltway, and any peace dividend will be swallowed by Afghanistan and the Long War.

2009 Progie Nominations for Best Progressive Films & Artists

January 30, 2010 By Ed Rampell

Ed Rampell: The James Agee Cinema Circle is announcing the third annual “Progie” nominations for Best Progressive Films and Filmmakers in 2009.

The Power to Change the Debate

January 29, 2010 By Tracy Emblem

Tracy Emblem: With the recent Supreme Court 5-4 radical decision treating corporations the same as individuals and asserting that federal laws cannot limit corporate speech, legislation requiring public disclosure of lobbyist driven “grassroots” advertising campaigns is needed more than ever. Individuals have constitutional rights. Corporations are legally recognized business entities.

Why Freeze Spending on Only Part of the Budget?

January 29, 2010 By Ivan Eland

Ivan Eland: President Obama’s rationale for not including these security expenditures in his discretionary spending freeze is that he is prosecuting two wars. Aside from the obvious solution of ending the two conflicts—which are part of the “war on terror” but have had the counterproductive effect of increasing retaliatory terrorism—and cutting back the defense budget, defense spending could be reduced even if the two war efforts are sustained.

An Antidote to the Deification: Joyce Maynard’s Account of Her Life with J. D. Salinger Showed a Sad, Angry, Predatory Man

January 29, 2010 By Jules Siegel

Jules Siegel: Coming across as pompous, astoundingly unfeeling, deceptive and defiantly hypocritical, Salinger indoctrinates her with his homeopathically inspired theories about food, teaches her how to induce vomiting in order to avoid absorbing “toxins,” has her share a diet so austere that she stops menstruating, and generally makes himself the absolute center of not only her personal world but also life as we know it. In one scene, commenting scornfully on the Beatles and their Maharishi, he takes rueful credit for having created the Oriental philosophy fad, conveniently ignoring the Transcendentalists, Herman Hesse and Alan Watts, among others.

Americans and the European Way

January 29, 2010 By Randy Shaw

Randy Shaw: As someone who thinks Hill’s work could convince the uncommitted and deserves the widest possible audience, I wish he had directly confronted — through interviews, for example — those who oppose the policies that work in Europe but are still not in place in the United States. For example, it would have been helpful for Republican and Democratic Party political leaders to explain why our nation follows the lead of Papua New Guinea in still not offering paid maternity leave.

Replacing International Oppression with International Aid

January 29, 2010 By Lawrence S. Wittner

President John F. Kennedy urging University of Michigan students to support and join the Peace Corp in 1960.

Lawrence Wittner: So why should humanitarian aid be extraordinary? Why not make it routine? Long before the earthquake, Haitians were the poorest people in the hemisphere, suffering from widespread hunger, disease, and illiteracy. Could not the United States — the richest nation in the world with a public whose major anxieties (to judge from the vast attention given to weight loss) seem to result from over-eating — manage to share a bit of its affluence by regularly providing food aid to starving Haitians?

Friday Feedback: Martin Luther King Stood Up for What Is Right

January 29, 2010 By admin

I don’t care if you believe that whites are better than blacks, or if your religion teaches that the Bible says gays are immoral, you don’t have the right to oppress other citizens. You don’t have the right to deny the benefits of civil marriage to the children of gay citizens. Not in this country. That’s what makes Martin Luther King’s work so powerful – he stood up for what was ethically right, and his demands were in alignment with the Constitution of our great nation: Equal rights for all!

McClintock Press Secretary Slams Eran, Eran Talks Back

January 28, 2010 By Adam Eran

Adam Eran: Bill George, the press secretary for Congressman Tom McClintock protests that in some previous editorials, I’ve maligned his boss with “utterly preposterous charges.” Unfortunately, I’ve done my homework, and Mr. George’s specific answers are either wrong, or misleading.

Blue Dog Democrats Exposed as Frauds

January 28, 2010 By Paul Hogarth

Paul Hogarth: many Blue Dogs are in trouble because of health care, and ironically what could save their hide is a public option. Instead, they are left selling a corporate-friendly bill hashed behind closed doors that forces Americans to buy private insurance – which will only make their constituents vote Republican. That’s why so many Blue Dogs are retiring – so they can bail and become lobbyists for the insurance industry.