Flashback: Galloping.

New Films to Watch For, From Around the World. The most recent project along these lines is “Circus Kids,” a charming documentary and effective tale of young American circus performers who are invited to Israel to work with their Jewish and Palestinian counterparts. –Bill Meyer

On the Amazing Strides of American Women. In the comparatively short span since, American women have made astonishing progress, from legal secretaries to lawyers, from nurses to doctors; from kitchen menials to astronauts, and from USO hostesses to front-line warriors. –Sherwood Ross

Wagner-Mania Returns to LA-LA-Land. Wagner’s opera comments on many dimensions, including on true love. One can clearly see that Wagner suffered from unhappy marriages, and Lohengrin’s wedding night scene may be the most epic depiction of coitus interruptus in the entire history of art. –Ed Rampell

Gratitude in a World of Sin and Sorrow. Don’t get me wrong. I’m abun! dantly b lessed and exceedingly thankful. I just don’t want to be told when and how to show it. –Michael Sigman:

Hooray for Tales From Hollywood! Much of the play’s frustration and fun de! rives fr om the clashes between its highly cultured men/women of letters and the vulgarians at the gates who ran the motion picture industry. –Ed Rampell

The United States $pends Another Thanksgiving At War. The common 1960’s bumper sticker – “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber” – is as applicable today as then. –Randy Shaw

Ramadan: The Best Time To Discuss America’s Growing Anti-Muslim Sentiment. You have ideologues like Newt Gingrich saying building a mosque near the twin tower site is tantamount to building a Nazi building next to a Holocaust site, or building a Japanese memorial at Pearl Harbor. -Anthony Samad

Will The Public Ever Get Energized About Net Neutrality? As if the Supreme Court’s enthusiastic approval of oligarchy wasn’t enough, we’re facing another one of the biggest threats to free speech and democracy – corporate control of the Web. -Sylvia Moore:

High Stakes Teaching: The Value-Added Sham. The value-added sham won’t help parents and communities of color struggling to achieve educational equity for youth who have already been intuitively assigned a jail cell by a public school culture marching in lockstep with the teach to the test ethos. –Sikivu Hutchinson

Data Shows ICE Fails to Focus on Serious Crime. 79% of the people deported through Secure Communities are non-criminals or were picked up for lower level offenses, such as traffic offenses. -Michele Waslin

The Newtiness of Newt. Newt’s bilious public statements, along with damning quotes in the Esquire piece from his second wife (out of three, so far) Marianne and from former long-time Republican congressman Mickey Edwards, suggest that Newt’s regeneration does not appear to have included a new heart. -Michael Sigman

Did Broken Immigration System Bring Down American Apparel? Rather than crippling one of the few clothing manufacturers left in the U.S. — one that pays its workers a decent wage and has dedicated a portion of its profits to advocating for immigration reform — perhaps the focus in the absence of major reform should be on punishing those employers who make a profit by exploiting immigrant workers via the strengthening of our nation’s labor laws. –Andrea Nill

Sarah Palin Tweets Support to Schlessinger. Sarah Palin tweeted that Laura Schlessinger’s 1st amendment rights ceased to exist thanks to activists trying to silence her for using the N-word. Schlessinger’s constitutional rights were unaffected, her employability was. -Sharon Kyle

Markos Moulitsas Speaking in LA September 22nd. Markos Moulitsas, a driving force in new media and founder of The Daily Kos, will speak and sign his ground-breaking book at a free reading to support the LA Media Reform Group’s annual media summit.

America “Refudiates” Rights When Used. The controversy over building an Islamic community center near Ground Zero shows that in America, you have constitutional rights – until the second you try to use them. -Ed Rampell

Tavis Smiley Gathers Teens for 2010 Leadership Institute. Young leaders from across the country will join Tavis Smiley, Antwone Fisher and Grammy-winning gospel artist Erica Campbell for five days of leadership training. Sessions will be streamed live at www.youthtoleaders.org August 20 at 7:30 pm PST.

Obama Admin: No More Regulatory Shortcuts for Deepwater Drilling Projects. The Obama administration announced Monday that it is no longer fast-tracking offshore drilling projects in deep water by exempting them from detailed environmental review. -Marian Wang

Remaking California: Reclaiming the Public Good. The Constitutional straight-jacket that keeps the state government in gridlock and voters in despair is the same institutional structure that brought the pathetically unqualified body builder into the governorship in the first place. -Joseph Palermo

Blacks and The N-Word. But, our culture’s present-day cavalier use of the n-word speaks less about our rights to free speech and more about how we as Americans — both White and Black — have become anesthetized to the damaging and destructive use of this epithet. -Rev. Irene Monroe

Destroying America to Save It: Reflections on a Mosque. There is a more fundamental issue: if we allow our response to be governed by intolerance, we deal a hard blow to the version of America that embodies freedom of religion for all. Will we then turn in upon ourselves, resentful and repressive towards the Other, and terrified to live by our own truth? -John Peeler

Gabriel Buelna Interviews Dr. Rudy Acuña. Part 2 of Gabriel Buelna’s interview with Dr. Rudy Acuña on his efforts to challenge Arizona elected officials on the issue of immigration.

Is Print Really Dead? Those who grew up pre-Internet love the feel of a newspaper in their hands, and many cannot imagine reading a book on a computer screen. But what’s become known as the Millennial Generation, those who knew computers before they could read, do not have loyalty to the printed page. -Randy Shaw

A Permanent Housing Collapse? The housing market appears to be on a never-ending downward spiral, with the much-discussed “recovery” always around the next corner. -Shamus Cooke

In One Weekend, Tea Party, Neo-Nazis, and ‘Border Activists’ Rally behind Arizona. As proponents of SB-1070 insist that their support of the law has nothing to do with race, they can’t deny that for some people it boils down to “white people who are not afraid to stand up,” as one Tennessee rally attendee noted. -Andrea Nill

The End of Encyclopedias? Conservapedia is mainly silly, reflecting Schafly’s cranky ideas, such as that vaccines are a conspiracy to poison us. But the wider idea that science, and other kinds of knowledge, can be “liberal” or “conservative” is dangerous. This is exactly the argument that German Nazis and Soviet Communists used to reject “Jewish” or “capitalist” ideas. -Steve Hochstadt

Topic? I Don’t Need No Stinking Topic. Rubes, suckers, marks, johns, and other clubbies apparently think that tossing bottles around is the same as good bartending. Wrong. People who need juggling with their alcohol should do their drinking at the circus. -Mike Price

Shame on You, Harry Reid. When I heard about the “split” in the Democratic party between Harry Reid and President Obama regarding the building of the mosque near Ground Zero, and as I listened to Senator Reid voice his objections to the mosque, my first thought was that the Senator should know better. -Tanya Acker

On Reading the Sunday Paper. Like many people, I get some of my news these days from blogs. But I still read a daily newspaper. Had I not, I might have missed several key reports. -Ron Wolff

General Petraeus Goes to Media War. It’s already history. In mid-August 2010, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan launched a huge media campaign to prevent any substantial withdrawal of military forces the next summer. -Norman Solomon

Why Growth Is Good. If governments keep hacking away at their budgets while consumers almost everywhere are becoming more cautious about spending, global demand will shrink to the point where a worldwide dip is inevitable. -Robert Reich

Why Elvis? Elvis brought color, rhythm and soul to the white music market, which was dominated at the time by Como , Dean Martin, Tennessee Ernie, Mitch Miller and the Maguire Sisters. -H. Scott Prosterman

Living in a ‘Post-Racist’ Society. Pandering to our darkest fears about “the others” coming to our side of the island to kill us is, also, officially no longer racist. -Tina Dupuy

Why Won’t the FCC Treat Hate Speech the Same As Foul Language? It seems to be far easier to punish a broadcaster for one f-bomb dropped on the air, than it is if the same on-air personality unleashed a tirade of bigoted garbage. -Sylvia Moore

9/11 Responders Bill Not Controversial: Illegal Immigrants Were Heroes, Too. 9/11 was the single largest attack on U.S. soil, killing 3,000 Americans of every color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age and level of physical ability. Those who responded to this tragedy with total disregard for their own personal safety are unequivocally American heroes. And yes, some illegal immigrants rank among those heroes. I saw them with my own eyes. -Lucia Brawley

Civil Rights and Wrongs Onstage at Two L.A. Theatres. Art emerges out of our collective psyche to reflect our times, and it’s fascinating to see how L.A. theatre is responding to the current attack on our civil, human and constitutional rights and liberties. -Ed Rampell

Republicans Used to Like the Whole Constitution. In today’s uber-conservative Republican party, President Eisenhower would be a socialist, too, even a Red, and Nixon would be a liberal. -Berry Craig

Converting Military Restraint in Wars into an Effective National Strategy. The US should attempt to win hearts and minds in the Muslim world by ending meddling in places such as Yemen and Somalia and withdrawing forces rapidly from Iraq and Afghanistan. -Ivan Eland

U.S. Policy in Iraq Urged Indiscriminate Shooting of Civilians, Say Three Former Soldiers. Three former U.S. soldiers involved in the infamous “Collateral Murder” helicopter gunship attack on Baghdad civilians in July 2007, say that attack was nothing out of the ordinary. -Sherwood Ross

The Use and Abuse of the Fourteenth Amendment. Many conservatives are now pushing to amend the Constitution to change the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment that allocates citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. Unlike many examples of creative interpretation, this proposal would formally amend the amendment. Liberals learned in the 1970s, with the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, how hard it is to amend the Constitution; here is our chance to teach the same lesson to conservatives. -John Peeler

Mitrice Richardson: Blame the Victim. With accusations as serious has the ones currently lodged at the Sheriff’s Department, if I were Baca, I’d do anything I could to clear my Department’s name, even if it meant subjecting my deputies to a polygraph for the sake of good faith and good will towards the community. -Jasmyne Cannick

Forget Double Dip: We’re Still in One Long Big Dipper. It’s nonsense to think of the economy heading downward again into a double dip when most Americans never emerged from the first dip. We’re still in one long Big Dipper. -Robert Reich

Lessons from FDR: When the Right Cries Wolf, Bite Back. FDR viewed Social Security as part of his broader New Deal effort to humanize capitalism. Born to privilege, he understood that many business groups and wealthy people considered him a traitor to his class. They were, he thought, greedy, unenlightened, and on the wrong side of history. He was determined to take them on. -Peter Dreier and Donald Cohen

Reframing the Birthright Citizenship Debate with Facts. The truth is that majority of immigrants come to the U.S. to work, to reunite with their families, or to flee persecution—not to have children. -Seth Hoy

Santana Rocks 80th Birthday Tribute to Human Rights Icon Dolores Huerta. I echo the sentiments of Congressman Grijalva that Dolores Huerta is an integral part of America’s legacy. America and Americans are better because of her. -Linda Milazzo

Economic “Recovery?” Not for You and Me. The essential hidden fact of economics in 21st century America: What we have is exactly what the tiny economic elite, the one or two percent of richest Americans, wants us to have. -Jim Fuller

Washington May Be Broken Now, But the Future Is Up for Grabs .But lest the healthy anger of progressives during the Bush years curdle into full-blown, hide-under-the-covers depression, it’s worth asking: When did Washington work, anyway? -Michael Sigman

Why People Hate Politics. Rather than engage in discussion and debate, many politicians find it easier to demonize their opponents, rather than debate the issues. -Gautam Dutta

Meg Whitman: A New Era in California or Just Opportunistic Politics. Whitman’s Spanish-language makeover in the general election is a major shift from the tone that she struck in the GOP primary, when the challenge from conservative Steve Poizner pushed her to the right on the issue. -Wais Hassan

Supreme Court Will Hear JPL – Homeland Security Case. The Supreme Court of the United States has scheduled October 5, 2010 to hear argument on the matter of open-ended background investigations of federal contractors arising from Homeland Security Presidential Directive #12 (Nelson et al. vs NASA, No. 09-530).

Beyond the Grim Sleeper: Cut Death Penalty to Fund Criminal Investigations. Why do we continue to waste hundreds of millions of dollars on the death penalty even though it has never been proven to deter murderers and even though 1,000 killers get away with murder each year? -Aqeela Sherrills

Chamber Of Commerce Speaks Up on Immigration. Labor and business appear to agree on one thing: on its own, the $600 million border bill won’t solve any of these issues and will do little to fix the nation’s broken immigration system. -Andrea Nill

America’s Biggest Jobs Program: The U.S. Military. Having a giant undercover military jobs program is an insane way to keep Americans employed. It creates jobs we don’t need but we keep anyway because there’s no honest alternative. –Robert Reich

Overturning Prop 8: No Matter how You Feel About Gay Marriage, The Gay Marriage Ban Was Always a Constitutional Question. Regardless of what you feel about the politics of sex-same marriage, the reality is that the gay marriage ban was always a constitutional question. We just never had a constitutional answer for gay marriage, before now. –Anthony Samad

‘No Drama Obama’ Needs a Strong Second Act. The Obama administration is a welcome change from the Bush–Cheney years. However, much of what President Obama is doing appears to be an extension of Bush–Cheney values. –Walter M. Basch

Checks and Balances, Part II. Here I reveal how a coalition of sub-populations cutting in an entirely different direction (connecting selected people with powerful segments of government) can become destabilizing — possibly even undemocratic (dare I say dictatorial?). –Ron Wolff

Cowards vs. Hypocrites: Why Democratic Politicians Despise the “Professional Left”. But progressives believe the public supports more progressive stands (e.g. polls showed strong support for the public option that Obama abandoned), leaving Democrats to fend off charges that they talk about serving the public good but instead serve corporate interests inimical to the public welfare. –Randy Shaw

President John McCain’s First 18 Months in Office. President McCain has urged that the United Nations move its headquarters out of the U.S., and he has proposed that the U.S. leave the UN, which he calls “useless and corrupt”. He also has refused to meet with most foreign leaders in the White House, or to travel abroad, except for heavily guarded and secret trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. –Ted Vaill

Watch “Deficit Hawks” Rush to Defend Pentagon Bloat. The Republican Party and Democratic so-called “deficit hawks” attack any proposed defense cuts as “job killers.” Yet this alliance refused to save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, and have backed tax and spending policies that have cost the nation millions of jobs in recent years. –Randy Shaw:

Saving the Earth for Our Grandchildren. Until recently, nobody knew that the unprecedented wealth of American society carried extreme dangers for our own future. Our modern lifestyles of consumption are slowly killing the planet. -Steve Hochstadt

Something’s Wrong Somewhere: Pimps, Whores and the Glitterati Who Game The Global Empire. Moscow is choking, Pakistan is drowning, Gaza is withering, war clouds gather over Iran, Venezuela, and Korea…dead zones in the oceans…but, rejoice! Chelsea has married her investment banker! -Gary Corseri

Mortgage Foreclosures, Housing, and the Current Economic Crisis. So far, here in the U.S., over 4 million homes have been foreclosed on since mid-2006. Because consumer spending drops drastically whenever housing values decline, the entire U.S. economy has been in a tail-spin throughout this period. Over 10 million jobs have been totally eliminated due to a dramatic drop in consumer sales and the resultant decline in production.

Duke Cunningham, Tom Delay, and Jack Abramoff

Where’s the Oil? Here, There, and Everywhere. The world faces the difficult challenge of understanding exactly what has happened to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico in the uncertainty of the aftermath of the April 20 explosion of the BP Macondo wellhead. -Georgianne Nienaber

GOP: Bring Back ‘Corruption of Blood’. Now, to drum up hysteria about this alleged rash of pregnant Mexican border hoppers, the GOP’s idea is to change the Constitution so that being without papers is treated more harshly than treason. -Tina Dupuy

Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel in the Spotlight or on the Hotseat. The spotlight this week is on congressional representatives Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel. Both, accused of ethics violations. Both choosing to have their day in court – so to speak. -Sharon Kyle

The Wrong Side of History: Immigration, the GOP and the Next Generation of Voters. Notwithstanding the fact that many GOP strategists and other leaders are arguing against using immigration as a wedge issue, politicians eager for votes gravitate toward each new anti-immigrant message like moths to a flame. -Seth Hoy

Despite Extra Help, Weakest Bailed-Out Bank Still Among Worst. At the center of the ethics controversy enveloping Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, is OneUnited, the nation’s largest African-American-owned bank. -Marian Wang

What to Do About the Wars. Most analysts believe that the U.S. government will renegotiate the status of forces agreement with any new Iraqi government—making the heroic assumption that there is a new Iraqi government by next year—to leave some forces permanently in that country. -Ivan Eland

Representing: The Future of Blacks in Law Enforcement and Fire Emergency Services in Los Angeles. A conversation with the President’s of the Black Employee Associations for the L.A.P.D., Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, and Los Angeles City and County Fire Departments -Jasmyne Cannick

Why Raising Taxes on the Wealthy Helps Everyone, Including the Rich. It does not make sense to tax that lower fifty percent of the population with 2.5 percent of the the total wealth, because practically all of their income is money already in circulation. You need to take the money from the top ten percent. -Howard Roth

The Jobs Emergency. We need a response proportional to the crisis. Obama, Pelosi, and Reed should summon Congress back to Washington for action on the jobs emergency. -Robert Reich

The Maxine Waters Investigation: What Is Iran Doing in This Picture? Fox News wasted no time exploiting the WikiLeaks documents to further vilify Iran, pointing out that the documents indicate the U.S. belief that Iran is arming the Taliban insurgency. This adds another layer to Fox’s steady stream of propaganda that has flowed over the years advocating for an attack on the country, and stands as a reason why some believe the leak was staged. But what does this have to do with Rep. Maxine Waters and the House Ethics Committee? -Katherine Smith

For You To Succeed, Must Someone Else Fail? Is this just human nature, or can we be happy about our achievements without causing an equal amount of suffering in someone else? -Michael Sigman

The Net Neutrality Spat Explained. At stake is the principle of net neutrality — the idea that Internet service providers must treat all traffic equally, and not privilege certain content by giving it more, or less, bandwidth — a principle that the FCC has been more aggressive about implementing under the Obama administration. -Marian Wang

Fly Away, Mockingbird. As the armies of tolerance celebrate To Kill a Mockingbird–it’s the 50 anniversary this month—one is put in mind of a maxim by W.H. Auden: “You do not read a book,” Auden said. “A book reads you.” -John Summers

Versus China, We’re Not Even in the Right Game. We are so screwed. We simply don’t get it in the USA and EU. After three weeks spent travelling around the globe, I see that the Chinese eat our lunch while we busy ourselves in silly ideological Left vs. Right fights over control of Washington, Westminster, and Brussels. -Denis Campbell

We’re Even Deeper in the Hole. An extraordinary number of Americans are still hurting. It’s more important than ever for the US government to step in with a larger stimulus that puts more people to work and tax cuts for people who will spend them.  -Robert Reich:

Nuke U: How the University of California Is Helping to Blow Up the World. Sixty-five years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, the University of California imprimatur is an air freshener for the stench of preparations for global annihilation. -Norman Solomon

Voices from the Wetlands, In “Voices from the Wetlands,” veteran reporter Georgianne Nienaber gives a first-hand account of the damage wrecked by the BP oil well disaster on the Louisiana Delta and on the people whose families have lived there for centuries.

Gay Marriage: The Tide Is Turning. Although nobody believes that homophobia has disappeared, polls show that public support for gay rights – including marriage – has increased dramatically in the past decade, especially in the last few years. -Peter Dreier

Fast 4 Freedom. AB900 was a huge victory for the prison-industrial complex. “People are making a profit out of putting people in cages,” said Geri Silva. -Diane Lefer

Meg Whitman: Feds Shouldn’t Be Telling Arizona What To Do, Opposes Path To Legalization, It’s doubtful Whitman will start posting giant billboards in Spanish promoting her support for Arizona and her opposition to a path to legalization under any circumstances. -Andrea Nill

Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Herbert Hoover. Both Greenspan and Rubin are deficit hawks. So was Herbert Hoover and so was Hoover’s Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. And look what Hoover and Mellon got us into. When we least need him, Hoover is being exhumed. -Robert Reich

University of Phoenix: Right Out of David Mamet. Any institution that calls itself a “university” yet tells its enrollment officers to “burrow” down deep into the “pain” of its students with the aim of hooking them into government-subsidized debt to rake in the profits not only doesn’t deserve to be accredited, but should be barred from having any access to federal student aid programs. -Joseph Palermo

White House Press Corps Board Doesn’t Get It. MoveOn and CREDO hailed the decision by the association’s board to deny FOX the center seat, but the fact that this nakedly right-wing propaganda outfit masquerading as a news channel now gets to sit in the front row is still an embarrassment. -Sylvia Moore

Killing Prop Hate: What Republicans Fear. A conservative Republican judge, appointed by George H.W. Bush has done what the Tea Party activists have been demanding – he restored the Constitution. Judge Vaughn Walker held that the U.S. Constitution, and its provisions requiring equal protection of the laws, required that Proposition Hate be stricken down. =Tom Hall

The New Know-Nothings. Of course, the Republicans – and even the Tea Baggers – would have us belief that their beef is with “illegal” immigrants. But they’re not fooling anybody. Most of these neo-Know Nothings are white people who have a problem with Latinos north of the border, period. -Berry Craig

But Is It Good for the Jews? The Netanyahu government’s “might makes right” stance not only jeopardizes international Jewry, but above all endangers Israel. Unnecessarily pissing off most of the international community may not be a good survival strategy, but it is a tried and true formula for hate crimes perpetrated against those perceived as belonging to the offenders. -Ed Rampell

Dear Tea Party Member. Okay, not hate. But we surely feel sorry for sheep-like tea party puppets destroying our country for no other reason than they’re too mentally lazy to think for themselves. -Mike Price

States Might Jump Off Arizona’s Immigration Bandwagon. State legislators are citing fear of costly lawsuits and a charged political environment in which restrictive immigration legislation might not pass as factors in their decision. -Seth Hoy

“Facts are Stubborn Things” – The Value of Judge Walker’s Decision. What taking this case to trial – rather than expedited summary judgment hearings – allowed us to do was to set up a factual framework, which cannot be reversed on appeal. -Paul Hogarth

The Hidden Story Behind the Sherrod Case: USDA Racism. The rush to dismiss Shirley Sherrod based on an edited video contrasts remarkably with the tens of thousands of cases of USDA bureaucrats denying African American farmers loans, jobs, acreage, information, and courtesy who were neither dismissed or reprimanded. -Pete Daniel

Senators Graham and Kyl Buy Tickets to the Birthright Citizenship Dog and Pony Show. Although the Supreme Court has consistently upheld birthright citizenship, year after year restrictionist groups and legislators trot out the “repeal birthright citizenship” mantra in the hopes of adding a few more immigration extremists to their dog and pony show audience. -Seth Hoy

Democrats’ Little Problem. But as I’ve noted too many times to count in recent years, the “party of FDR” has developed a positive genius for taking a bottle of finely aged, twelve-year-old scotch and turning it into donkey piss. -Tom Degan

How Empathy Makes Superior Judges – and Justice. Critics ridiculed President Obama’s statement that judges should be empathetic. But as the Senate prepares to vote on the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan, legal historian Joel Goldstein argues that senators should be looking for that very quality. -Joel K. Goldstein

Ozzie Guillen Speaks Truth on Baseball’s Racial Double Standard. It’s clear that MLB fears that formally recognizing its proliferation of Spanish-speaking players by providing interpreters could cause a backlash from a predominately white male fan base that likely supports Arizona’s anti-Latino law. -Randy Shaw

The Enthusiasm Gap and You. Average Americans are hurting. But their pain isn’t coming from government. It’s coming from an economy whose benefits are concentrating ever more at the top, whose giant corporations are controlling ever more of our democratic process, and whose costs and risks are becoming ever more burdensome for the middle class and the poor. -Robert Reich

Why the GOP’s Bizarre Attack on the 14th Amendment. it likely boils down to two things: riling up their base before November’s midterm elections and creating a toxic environment to kill any chance of the DREAM Act passing if and when it is introduced this fall. - Andrea Nill

Judge Vaughn Walker

Obama’s Summer of Discontent. Overall, Obama has been successful as the leader of Washington. Where he is failing is as the leader of the country. That’s a surprise, given his short political career, and his very impressive rhetorical skills. - John Peeler

Shirley Sherrod and Race Realities In America: We All Need a History Lesson. America so badly needs a history lesson on race right now. Not necessarily to indict, but to enlight. Then maybe we wouldn’t as susceptible to episodes like Breitbart’s and other race baiters trying to gain Rush Limbaugh-Glenn Beck type notoriety. - Anthony Samad

Stop Calling Republicans ‘Hypocrites’. Espousing virtues you don’t personally have to live up to is basically the point of being a Republican. - Tina Dupuy

Essence Magazine’s True Color. There has been a color change at Essence. After forty years of having sisters from the African Diaspora as its fashion directors, the new one — Ellianna Placas — is white. And the news is sending seismic shock waves to many of its subscribers here in the U.S. and across the globe. - Rev. Irene Monroe

Angels and Innocents. Since God sees and “forgives” everything that is petitioned, the moral universe of children is a tiny, confining funhouse of mirrors. In communities where death at an early age is considered unremarkable by mainstream media and policymakers, the deferment demanded by faith is an insurance policy against social oblivion. - Sikivu Hutchinson

Budget Cowardice Compounds Problem. When conservative Republicans controlled Washington under George Bush, they spent government money on their pet projects with little regard for the long-term budgetary consequences. Now Republicans at the national level have made the deficit one of their major points of attack against the Democrats in preparation for the November elections. - Steve Hochstadt

Origins of the Enthusiasm Gap. Whatever the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections, the activist phase of the Obama administration has likely come to a close. The President may have a fight on his hands even to hold on to what he’s already achieved because his legislative successes have been large enough to fuel strong opposition but not big enough to strengthen his support. The result could be disastrous for him and congressional Democrats. - Robert Reich

It’s the Country, Not the System, That’s Stacked Against Liberals and Progressives. Richard J. Hofstadter. The poll numbers hint at the biggest GOP edge: the U.S. is the most conservative country in the Western democratic world. “Liberal” — which means centrist or center-left in other industrial democracies — is as far left as mainstream American politics flows. The U.S. is the only industrial democracy that doesn’t have a significant democratic socialist or social democratic party. - Berry Craig

My Heart Cries for Mitch Miller. Mitch Miller, the musical maven of middle-of-the-road pop who died in Manhattan Saturday at 99, became a household name via his early-’60s TV show Sing Along With Mitch . Long before that, he — along with Frank Sinatra and a guy named Al Cernick — provided my dad, songwriter Carl Sigman, with the flukiest hit of his career. - Michael Sigman

Most Arizonans Believe SB-1070 Will Heighten Racism, White Supremacist Groups On The Rise. SB-1070 enjoys high levels of support amongst members of the National Socialist Movement. However, the majority of SB-1070 supporters are not neo-Nazis. What’s troubling is that despite the widespread belief that SB-1070 will lead to increased racism and racial profiling, the majority of Arizonans still support it. - Andrea Nill

Kure-Atoll Albatross and the trashed beach (Courtesy Algalita Foundation)

Baby Steps in Plastic Bags. But what if all hundred people at my workplace followed suit? That’s 50,000 plastic bags per year that wouldn’t be fouling the environment. Or the 800 members of my church? Another 400,000 bags not killing wildlife. All 10 million LA County residents? Five billion bags. All Californians? That’s 19 billion bags—and now e’re waist deep in the Big Plastic. - Dick Price

How the Internet Can Make It Harder to Act. For all the strengths of online engagement, people still need to gather together, eat, joke, flirt, tell their stories, attach names to faces, and ultimately build deeper levels of trust. - Paul Loeb

Progressives Face Uphill Climb Designed to Make Them Fail. In Washington, the filibuster rules in the U.S. Senate have stalled our federal agenda. In Sacramento, the two-thirds vote requirement has given us a blue state with an Alabama budget. - Paul Hogarth

Checks and Balances. Government is simply the institutionalization over time of the collective will of the people at any given moment, established with at least one essential objective in mind: the prevention of the inevitable chaos that would result in its absence. - Ron Wolff

Why We Really Shouldn’t Keep the Bush Tax Cut for the Wealthy. Restoring top earners’ marginal tax rates to what they were during the Clinton administration (36 and 39 percent) won’t inhibit their spending. That’s because they already save a large portion of what they earn, and already spend what they want to spend. - Robert Reich

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being. When my working-class white friends and fellow coaches attacked affirmative action—which they did vociferously and often—it was about preferential treatment that they saw blacks and Latinos getting on the job, especially in the civil service. - Mark Naison

Arnold Ignores Kennedy Legacy in Vetoing Farmworker Overtime. While it’s no longer news that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is a fraud (which helps explains poll numbers that are lower than George W. Bush and the pre-recall Gray Davis), his veto this week of an overtime bill for California farmworkers is particularly disgraceful. - Randy Shaw

Obama Administration Considers Bypassing Congress on Immigration Reform. Supporters of comprehensive immigration reform are certain to welcome any effort by the Obama administration to unilaterally open pathways to citizenship for many currently in the country illegally. But the draft is also sure to outrage immigration-restriction groups. - Marcus Stern

Meg Whitman Believes Arizona Law ‘Should Stand for Arizona’. Whitman’s stance on Proposition 187 is also a contradiction in itself. During her primary campaign, Whitman released an ad featuring former Gov. Pete Wilson (R-CA) who affirmed that Whitman will be “as tough as nails” on immigration. Wilson’s endorsement might have scored some points with right-wingers, but it also meant a lot to California Latinos who remember him backing Proposition 187. - Andrea Nill

Holy Wars: Putting the “Mental” into Fundamentalism. General Sherman, who burned Atlanta to the ground, rather famously and pithily said, “War is hell.” Stephen Marshall’s new documentary about religious fanaticism, Holy Wars, turns Sherman’s quote on its head with the clever tagline, “War is Heaven.” -Ed Rampell

Arizona, Lady Gaga, and the LGBTQ.munity. For queer folks threats of being locked up by the sheriff for not having an ID card carry special dangers. For LGBTQ people whose relationships cross borders for which they may not have the right paperwork, immigration is a gay rights issue. - Matthew Kavanagh

Should Citizens Be Human Beings? Citizens United Case Disenfranchises Human Beings I was talking to a friend one day about how to teach children to be fair with one another. He told me that when he was a kid, his mother had a great way of squashing fairness disputes between he and his sister. When an argument arose around someone not…. –Sharon Kyle

Macondo Wellhead Flyover: Damage Control at The Source. New Orleans film producer Bess Carrick wanted to see what the Gulf of Mexico looked like in the 48 miles between the tip of the Mississippi Delta and the blown Macondo wellhead for a series she is producing called The Barataria Chronicles. -Georgianne Nienaber

Toxic Oil Sludge Is Good as Gold for Republicans. The gloomy, ghastly, glutted, gutted Gulf will not be able to supply many millions of Americans with food, or clean and healthy resort beach fronts, or Gulf businesses, perhaps for decades. What’s the solution to this mega problem? -Jerry Drucker

“I Read, Therefore I Am:” Ode To Dr. Dolores Nehemiah. Every author in Los Angeles knew there was no greater advocate for reading than Dr. Nehemiah. Whenever she met you, she asked you, “What’s the last book you read?” Or, “What you working on? I know you’re writing!” -Anthony Samad

Sugar Ray Robinson Cared for His Opponents in the Ring. From his earliest amateur bouts on, Sugar Ray’s opponents didn’t know what hit them. Robinson won 69 of his 85 amateur bouts by knockouts, 40 of them in the first round, and never lost a fight. -Sherwood Ross

America’s Cheesiest Charttoppers Redux. Strong candidates for Part 2 included such stomach-churning charttoppers as Barry Manilow’s I Write the Songs (no, you don’t, not even this one, which was penned by Beach Boy Bruce Johnston), Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman (no, you’re not) and Starship’s We Built This City on Rock and Roll (no, you most definitely did not). -Michael Sigman

Right Wing Lies. This situation is not going to end anytime soon, I’m sorry to tell you. FOX Noise is not going anywhere, and an outright ban on half-witted extremists from the internet would be positively un-American. -Tom Degan

Fox News: The Lynchmob’s Ticket Agent. The media-manufactured spectacle that is and was the Shirley Sherrod incident tells us all we need to know about Andrew Brietbart, Fox “News” and the dangers of extremist hack media – unregulated, irresponsible and unethical – run amok. –David Love

Lame Duck Governor Fabricates Hoped-For Legacy. From the beginning, Arnold Schwarzenegger has exhibited a woeful ignorance about the role of a Governor and the role of governance. –Sheila Kuehl

Boy’s Suicide: Avoidable Tragedy? Los Angeles County Supervisors have been aware for years that several of their largest departments — Juvenile Probation and Children and Family Services among them — are dysfunctional. They claim to care — but the problems persist. There is one thing a leader does in urgent times — take urgent action!. –Ron Wolff

Countdown to Zero: Nuclear Disarmament for Dummies. Zero is also original in terms of its own, new material, which includes interviews with a number of establishment figures and others, such as: the outed CIA operative Valerie Plame. –Ed Rampell

Sex, Intersex, and the Making of “Normal”. Physicians are and have long been influenced by our larger social anxieties, especially concerning marriage and sexual desire. Medical management is fundamentally a cultural, not simply a scientific, endeavor. –Elizabeth Reis
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Failing the Test: One Question, No Answer at High School #9. The meeting was chaired pretty darn well by acting PTSA President Judi Bell. There was histrionics and name calling but no furniture or fruit was tossed and the angry multitudes did not resort to barricades School Police were not called. –Scott Folsom

Eric Bauman, Brad Parker, Paul Koretz, Dick Price, Sharon Kyle and Margie Murray

Angry Left Needs Hugs and Kisses. The angry left presumes that the president is in full control of the government, when he’s obviously not. Even George W. Bush learned that and he was a Republican. - Jules Siegel

Courage Awards: What You Missed. If you missed Valley Democrats United’s most spectacular Badge of Courage luncheon yet, you didn’t learn how one person – including you — can revolutionize progressive communication. - Wendy Block

BP’s Final Lesson. If BP emerges from this debacle fatter and happier than anyone imagined a few months ago, whatever happened to the idea of corporate accountability? Does this mean any giant corporation can wreak havoc and then get back to business as usual? -Robert Reich

Lessons of the UNITE HERE-SEIU Deal. The SEIU-UNITE HERE conflict also shows the peril of veteran labor leaders quietly deferring to destructive decisions by top union officials, a lesson that was supposed to have been learned from activists’ experience with Cesar Chavez and the UFW in the 1970’s. - Randy Shaw

wikileaks

Main Effect of the WikiLeaks Documents Is Political. So the only thing the WikiLeaks documents reveal is how persistent the post-9/11 war and nation-building fever continues to be among the foreign policy elite—even in the face of the dismal results on the ground for almost a decade and a majority opinion in America that the war is not worth fighting. - Ivan Eland

Restrictionists Confounded by Increased Deportations and the Administration’s Defense of the Constitution. ICE expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, which is nearly 10 percent more than the Bush administration’s 2008 total and 25 percent more than were deported in 2007. - Michele Waslin

Saving Water, One Drop at a Time. Americans use more water per capita than any other nation. Every time we flush the toilet, we use as much water as the average person in the developing world employs for an entire day’s cooking, cleaning, and drinking. - Steve Hochstadt

The Center-Not-Right. A right-of-center nation would have never embraced the extremely liberal notion of public retirement insurance for its citizens. And government-funded health care for seniors like Medicare?! That’s not “free market” – that’s not “freedom.” - Tina Dupuy

Greg Jaffe-The Washington Post

State of Denial: After the Big Leak, Spinning for War. And if, these days, “U.S. troops in the field” are not as inclined to express “frustration at having to fight a war without sufficient resources,” the latest boosts of Pentagon outlays for war in Afghanistan merely reflect the unhinged escalation of a war effort that should not exist. - Norman Soloman

Room for Progressives In Today’s Democratic Party? Regrettably, at this time, there is virtually no Left to counter the Tea Party and other right-wing forces: not a labor movement, a women’s movement, a peace movement—no counterattack from anywhere (although the immigrant-rights movement is a possible exception). - Gene Rothman

SB-1070 Sponsor: Sanction Mormon Church for Undocumented Stand. State Senator Russell Pearce rejected the Mormon church’s teaching of compassion and helping those in need and stated that he would support sanctioning or criminalizing fellow Mormons who “deliberately” aid undocumented immigrants. - Andrea Nill

SEIU-UNITE HERE Settlement Reached. After an 18-month battle that began with SEIU believing it could affect a hostile takeover of its once close union ally, the two unions reached a settlement yesterday almost entirely on UNITE HERE’s terms. - Randy Shaw

Turning the Tables at Netroots Nation: ICE Checkpoint Forces Participants to Think about Profiling. About ten of us, including several undocumented DREAM students, wore navy blue shirts and affixed paper ICE badges and patches to our hats and shirts. We stopped anyone who looked “European” and let all others pass without hindrance. - Will Coley

America’s Cheesiest Charttoppers. Revisiting some of the greatest records that never made the pop charts was a heavenly experience. But like so many of life’s pleasures, it was backed with an annoying flip side: Long-suppressed neuronal connections were re-activated, and I became obsessed with the most appalling music ever to worm its way into the Top 10. - Michael Sigman

Harry Reid’s Senate: Where Progressive Legislation Goes to Die. For years, House Democrats have joked that House Republicans are the “opposition” but the Senate is the “enemy” – and it’s easy to understand why. - Paul Hogarth

Are Teachers and Democrats Headed for Divorce? The Democrats continue on the road to corporate-inspired charter schools, using the tried and true method of “stronger teacher evaluations” to undermine “underperforming” schools and teachers — thus opening the door wide to private charter schools with their non-union workforce. - Shamus Cooke

Baseball Justice. Major League Baseball’s corporate mentality, its failure to deal with widespread drug use, and its decline in popularity among America’s youth (more of whom now play soccer than Little League baseball), don’t reflect well on what its pooh-bahs still call the “national pastime.” - Peter Dreier

The Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits from Jobs. Higher corporate profits no longer lead to higher employment. We’re witnessing a great decoupling of company profits from jobs. - Robert Reich

Ready or Not. Here They Come! Youth Reentry from Probation. As our Probation Department moves in the direction of reform, the good news is that the department recognizes the need for reentry services for kids coming out of the system–often traumatized, unable to read and write, set free on the mean streets in an abysmal job market while carrying the stigma of lockup. - Diane Lefer

Rachel Maddow and Amy Goodman Get Their Butts Kicked. We are in a battle that we are losing because we are overly entertained, we’re not paying attention, and we continue to buy stuff and information that is not good for us. - Sharon Kyle

Ending Gaza Blockade Might Help Israel as Much as Gaza. In the wake of Israel’s botched attack on a Turkish ship bringing relief to Gazans from Israel’s (and Egypt’s) economic blockade of Gaza, the Israelis have responded to intensely negative world opinion by relaxing the blockade. That move may help Israel as much as Gazans. Ending the counterproductive economic embargo and blockade would help both parties even more. - Ivan Eland

Why AIDS Activists Are Asking United Nations To Investigate Obama’s Trade Policy. If we drive up the cost of drugs, fewer people get them and we waste hundreds of millions of dollars in US-taxpayer dollars to boot. President Obama promised to support the rights of countries to make low-cost AIDS medicines available to their people, but instead his trade representative is threatening countries who are doing just that. - Matthew Kavanagh

Ed Ruscha’s Los Angeles: When Los Angeles Got No Respect. Ed Ruscha’s Los Angeles addresses the art establishment’s diminishing of Los Angeles’ broader impact, and offers rare insight into the Los Angeles of the 1960’s and 70’s, though perhaps not greater appreciation for Ed Ruscha’s vision of the city. - Randy Shaw

NAACP President Ben Jealous Should Resign for Assisting in the Sherrod Assault. His normally sluggish organization, which took three months even to discuss what to do, if anything, when a Life Member was receiving death threats from Klan supporters, reacted in one day when racist liars, who wanted a black woman’s head, ordered the heir of W. E. B. Du Bois to step and fetch it. - Jonathan David Farley

Healing the Black-White Divide on Homophobia. McClurkin is a classic example why homophobia is an ongoing problem in the African American community, and it must be challenged at every opportunity. - Rev. Irene Monroe

Eugene Robinson

“This Is Really About Tearing Obama Down”. A few of the purveyors of this bigoted nonsense might actually believe it. Most of them, however, are merely seeking political gain by inviting white voters to question the motives and good faith of the nation’s first African-American president. This is really about tearing Barack Obama down. -Berry Craig

Netroots Focus on Better Democrats. Four years after the first netroots convention, the bloggers are back in Vegas – with an eye on the November 2010 elections. Voters still want change like they did in 2006 and 2008, but now that Democrats control both Congress and the White House there’s a real fear that Republicans could benefit. -Paul Hogarth

Gulf Fisheries Opened: Safe or BP Politics, PR and Sock Puppetry? Is the Obama administration and BP engaging in politics and PR with a dangerous twist? -Georgianne Nienaber

Arizona’s New Law Upends Federal Priorities. While the proponents of SB1070 say that Arizona will help ICE enforce immigration laws, the fact is that it would impinge upon ICE’s ability to fulfill its mandate, set enforcement priorities, and allocate resources effectively. -Michele Waslin

Robert Gibbs Blew It on Shirley Sherrod Attack. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs showed poor press management skills in handling the whole Shirley Sherrod saga. He allowed the media frame to shift quickly to the missteps of the administration rather than emphasizing the underhanded, contrived, and racist actions of Andrew Breitbart and his fellow travelers at Fox News. -Joseph Palermo

Parade Rest. I’m an old guy with a bad leg, a mine-shattered spine, and a damn hose in my nose. I have no choice. The case of emphysema I won for smoking several million cigarettes has moved into its final stage. All life may be terminal, but emphysema writes its own last act - Mike Price

Political Wrangling Aside, We’re In This Together. I believe that as a society we are moving away from a desire to solve problems cooperatively toward a single-minded motivation to defeat opponents. Political conflict has spread into “culture wars,” in which other people’s choice of newspaper or dinner beverage, or their attitude toward recycling or marriage makes them our enemy - Steve Hochstadt

Dysfunctional Politics Begets Suicidal Policies. The Republican party faithful care little about the lives of everyday people. But they do care about their corporate benefactors. They claim to care so much about deficit reduction that they do not want to extend unemployment benefits, yet they want to extend the very tax cuts that wrecked the U.S. economy - David Love

A Hoop Dream, Politics & the Long Reach of High Tech Money. Capitalism hasn’t gone away and internet technology hasn’t fundamentally changed its nature. The growing wealth inequality is as present in the lands just south of San Francisco as it is in the country as a whole - Carl Bloice

Cut Death Penalty, Save California $126 Million a Year. The California Supreme Court ‘sentenced’ our state’s taxpayers to an additional debt of $180,000 more per year last week - Ramona Ripston

Fishing and Breathing BP’s Oil: What’s “Safe?”. No one knows for certain what are “safe” levels of dispersants, oil, and VOCs in the air and water. There was no baseline to begin with, agencies are overlapping or not doing their jobs, and there are still 80 days worth of oil and dispersants in the Gulf to contend with - Georgianne Nienaber

West Side of Pier-Wide Shot Copyright June 7, 2010 Nick Zantop

Why Tea Party Chairman Mark Williams Got Kicked Out. Don’t look for Tea Party activists to try to run racists hiding in their ranks out of the movement. For they can no more disavow the racists in their own Party than they could disavow their white grandfathers that raised them but said things that made them “uncomfortable.” They’ll just have to learn to keep their unspoken truths to themselves - Anthony Samad

Shirley Sherrod, Andrew Breitbart and Post Racial America. The swift reaction of the Obama administration in the notorious incident of Shirley Sherrod is an indication that the fear of the accusation of racism against white Americans has spread into official Washington - Mario Solis-Marich

Of Junk Food and Junk News. Cable news starts with a story, removes the grain and nuance then mainlines the fury. It’s all high-fructose hyperbole all the time - Tina Dupuy

Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance. Author Alexander Zaitchik sits down with Keith Olbermann to discuss his new book, “Common Nonsense, Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance”. Zaitchik tells Olbermann that we shouldn’t misinterpret Beck’s recent dip in ratings to mean that he is losing popularity

We’re in a One-and-a-Half Dip Recession. The President should stop talking and acting on anything else – not the deficit, not energy, not the environment, not immigration, not implementing the health care law, not education. He should make the whole upcoming mid-term election a national referendum on putting Americans back to work, and his jobs bill. Are you for it or against it?.  -Robert Reich

40 Is the New 15: Don’t Trust Anyone Under 40. The new musical 40 is the New 15 has the distinction of being the first musical produced by the Academy for New Musical Theatre, while a workshop presentation of it was, deservedly, nominated for a GLAAD Media Award - Ed Rampell

To LA’s New Probation Chief: Condolences on Your Appointment. Why would anyone take on the challenge of cleaning up a department long known for abusing rather than helping the kids in its custody, losing track of money and ID badges, punishing whistleblowers and protecting wrongdoers?. Diane Lefer

J.D. Hayworth Challenges Administration on Immigration Enforcement Weeks Before National Guard Deploys to Border. Campaign politics aside, challenging the Obama Administration on immigration enforcement—an issue that immigration advocates have criticized the President as being too heavy-handed on, in fact—just doesn’t make sense - Seth Hoy

In this July 2, 2010 photo, Mischelle Mitchell looks online for job listings at the at the Oakland Career Center in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Student Anti-Sweatshop Activists Win Historic Breakthrough. Numerous experts argue that the global “race to the bottom” is inevitable and beyond the power of activists to change. Fortunately, student anti-sweatshop activists ignored these claims, and have now defied the conventional wisdom - Randy Shaw

Jobless Benefits Battle Holds Millions of Americans Hostage. A group of mostly Republican lawmakers refuses to reauthorize an extension of $33 billion in unemployment benefits. And in blocking the legislation during desperate times, they are holding 2.5 million Americans hostage, all for a political stunt. T. David Love

Elisabeth Bumiller: Wrong on the Tonkin Gulf Incident. If Bumiller really believes that her peers in the establishment press in February/March 1968 were expressing “widespread skepticism” about the facts concerning the Gulf of Tonkin Incident then shouldn’t she have been a little more “skeptical” herself when her good friend Condi Rice (along with Rummy and Cheney and the rest of the gang) were launching their own pretext for invading Iraq?.  -Joseph Palermo

Democrats Doomed If They Run as Incumbents. The anti-incumbent mood is not confined to the racist Tea Parties on the Right – but is just as potent on the Left, where progressives are disenchanted by a President who promised hope and change, only to capitulate to Joe Lieberman to pass a health care bill that requires us to all buy private insurance - Paul Hogarth

Labor Fights Back for Living Wages, Jobs For All. Employers are exploiting fears of joblessness by demanding workers take wage cuts and reductions or eliminations in benefits. The millions of unemployed are giving corporations an excuse to slash wages, since desperate workers will work for almost anything - Shamus Cooke

Howard Zinn’s the Bomb. The late Howard Zinn’s new book The Bomb is a brilliant little dissection of some of the central myths of our militarized society - David Swanson

SB-1070 Proponents Accuse DOJ for Not Going After ‘Sanctuary Cities’. Proponents of Arizona’s new immigration law, SB-1070, have a new talking point: they are now arguing that if the Department of Justice (DOJ) is going to legally challenge SB-1070, it should also go after “sanctuary city” policies as well. “Sanctuary city” is a right-wing derisive term used to describe cities that have adopted community policing policies that prevent police from asking about the immigration status of or detaining and arresting immigrants solely for being undocumented - Andrea Nill

Pentagon’s Growing Robot Capability an Ominous Development. The Pentagon is rapidly improving its ability to fight wars with robots. This capability is “bringing about the most profound transformation of warfare since the advent of the atom bomb,” says Scientific American, and raises “a host of ethical and legal issues.”. Sherwood Ross

Pistol-Packing Politicians and the Prince of Peace. Now one office seeker from the Wild West is appearing in a TV commercial, shooting guns and invoking the Almighty. She’s Machine Gun Gorman, an uber-conservative candidate for Congress in the Arizona Republican primary - Berry Craig

Gulf Oil Disaster: A Tragedy of the Commons. The Tragedy of the Commons teaches us that private companies can’t regulate themselves because this eventually leads to the tragedies we see in the Gulf of Mexico and the financial tragedies in the global economy - Donald Price

Spinning the Truth. We have learned to expect our political leaders to adopt partisan positions on every possible issue, subordinating facts to ideology, truth to political advantage. We can no longer believe even the basic biographical “facts” that they claim qualify them for office - Steve Hochstadt

Bread and Circuses and Animal Rights. I remember during small kid days the arrival of Ringling Bros.’ in New York, and the elephant march up one of Manhattan’s avenues – an irresistible photo op if ever there was one – to Madison Square Garden, where I’d join thousands of other “children of all ages” to watch the thrilling spectacle - Ed Rampell

Parents & Community Involvement at Mt. Washington Elementary School – By Invitation Only. The parents in this complex and diverse system are firm believers in LAUSD’s mission: “to create critical thinkers prepared to participate in a diverse and complex society.” And it can’t get any more complex than LAUSD - Nina Zippay and Fernando J. Orozco

President Palin? Take the Poll. Of course, it is possible that Palin’s celebrity will never be more than that – celebrity and she’d be clobbered if she were to actually enter the bid for the presidency. But, so far, things have been working out pretty well for Sarah Palin - Sharon Kyle

DNA and ‘The Banality of Evil’. Because Franklin and Turner are black male killers of black women, it is safe to say that there will be no cable-ready film made psychoanalyzing their childhoods, no Lifetime channel melodrama on the lives and last days of their victims trumpeted in flashy national billboard campaigns, and no pathos inspiring media blitz chronicling the anguish that these murders elicited in South L.A. communities. -Sikivu Hutchinson

Sarah Running in 2012. What if we were to wake up on the morning after the election to find the jackasses on FOX and Friends beside themselves with glee, chanting like rabid little myna birds , “PRESIDENT-ELECT PALIN! PRESIDENT-ELECT PALIN!” -Tom Degan

Big Media At It Again: Broadcasters Want FCC to Let Them Own Even More. As if the proposed Comcast/NBC Universal merger just wasn’t enough, the nation’s big broadcasters are strapping on the feed bag, ready to engorge themselves with more tasty snacks of the public’s television and radio airwaves. -Sylvia Moore

New Finance Bill: Mountain of Legislative Paper, Molehill of Reform. The American people will continue to have to foot the bill for the mistakes of Wall Street’s biggest banks because the legislation does nothing to diminish the economic and political power of these giants. -Robert Reich

What Teabaggers Owe Liberals. Get it straight: the best remedy for what ails America is to pay working people fairly. It is the toil and dollars of the American people that made America great. -Sherwood Ross

Soccer Bombing Should Not Prompt More U.S. Meddling. The synchronized and unconscionable bombings by the Somali group al-Shabab—of people doing nothing more than watching soccer games in Kampala, Uganda—counterintuitively illustrates why the United States should not be fighting Islamic militancy worldwide. Many of America’s editorial writers are screaming for stepped-up U.S. counterterrorism strikes in Somalia against the group. This option would be the worst possible course of action. -Ivan Eland

When Teachers Unions Back War Escalations. There is nothing altruistic in the idea of peace activists helping workers and the unemployed here at home. That’s how you build a movement for any political end, and that’s how you keep our young people from becoming cannon fodder. - David Swanson

California NAACP Right to Support Legalized Marijuana Prop 19. The California NAACP is under fire when it should be applauded for its courage. Alice Huffman is carrying out the mission of her organization, ensuring that it protects civil rights and remains relevant in changing times. Should we expect her to do less? - David Love

The Right Side of History: Religious Leaders Urge Immigration Reform. Conservative religious leaders made the case for common sense solutions to our immigration system—comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) that secures our borders, follows the rule of law and provides a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. - Seth Hoy

Ex-Gay Minister Drives Gays From Boston’s Gospelfest. With Pastor Donnie McClurkin, the poster boy for African American ex-gay ministries, who spews anti-gay religion-based vitriol, billed as the main event, many in the African American lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) communities will not be in attendance at this year’s event. And neither will the mayor. - Rev. Irene Monroe

Why We Can’t Rely on Foreign Consumers to Rescue American Jobs. Trade can’t possibly be a source of new American jobs. To the contrary, it reduces overall demand in the United States. - Robert Reich

Undocumented Youth Pin DREAMs on Congressional Action. Research has shown that the DREAM Act would be a boon to the economy and the U.S. workforce. Moreover, the DREAM Act create an opportunity for many young people to get on the path to permanent legal status, improve their education, invest in themselves and their communities, and serve their country. - Michelle Waslin

Pot Smokers: The Only Group in History Asking to Be Taxed More. Could pot smokers be the only group in the history of the world to want to be taxed? To hope to be taxed? To specifically ask the government to tax them more? - Tina Dupuy

What Free Enterprise Nation Actually Means. “Free Enterprise” actually means is doling out private government contracts with less transparency. Shamefully, the mainstream media routinely prints “data” created by corporate advocacy front groups that are not truly “independent” and have an agenda contrary to the American people at large. - Tracy Emblem

The LeBron to Miami Free Agency Decision: Curt Flood and Oscar Robertson Must Be Proud. The players in this free agency cycle leveraged the owners to the hilt, as well they should’ve. They are talent that makes the league profit. And they’re not slaves. Curt Flood is smiling from above. One day, the owners are going to get over it and put him in the baseball Hall of Fame. - Anthony Samad

Movies Ignore Corporate Wrongdoers, Populist Messages. Many believe that Hollywood films provide escapist entertainment, and should not be seen as sending political messages. We are told that studios are about making money, and that they would make tribute films to Karl Marx if that were good for the box office. Well, the historic record and the films of 2010 say otherwise. - Randy Shaw

10 More That Shoulda Made The Top 10. Somewhere out there may be an Amerika identical to ours except for one thing: Great records that never made the pop charts on our shores — whether due to a twist of fate or a lack of payola — comprise the smash hits and timeless classics in that far-off realm. - Michael Sigman

The Root of Economic Fragility and Political Anger. We’re back to the same ominous trend as before the Great Recession: a larger and larger share of total income going to the very top while the vast middle class continues to lose ground. - Robert Reich

California’s Class Warfare Heats Up. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently submitted a “budget” to the legislature that eliminates CalWORKS, the state’s highly successful welfare-to-work program that is needed now more than ever. This move would make California the only state in the nation to dismantle its safety net. - Joseph Palermo

Sarah Palin Tells Bill O’Reilly What She Would Do About Immigration As ‘President Palin’. Palin informed O’Reilly that she would do “whatever it takes” to secure the border, including “militarizing” the border with 10,000-15,000 National Guard troops and building a wall. – Andrea Nill

Misrepresenting the Left: We Are Not Liberals. From the New York Times to FOX News, the portrayal of the US Democratic party and Barack Obama as leftist is creating a perception in the US populace that leftists are ineffective politicos who have no principles they won’t modify. - Ton Jacobs

Abel Maldonado: Poster Child for Prop 25. As Gavin Newsom runs for Lieutenant Governor, he would be wise to make the passage of Proposition 25 a central part of his campaign – which ends the “two-thirds rule” for passing a budget. Because there is no better poster child for how Sacramento’s dysfunction has thrown the state off a cliff than Abel Maldonado – Newsom’s Republican opponent. - Paul Hogarth

Report Questions NGO Accountability in Haiti. A new report by the Disaster Accountability Project (DAP), there is a “shocking lack of transparency” by relief organizations that have received upwards of $1.3 billion for Haiti aid. - Georgianne Nienaber

Latino Voters Not Muted. The folks in charge of Democratic political strategies decided last year that immigration should not be a topic in this year’s fall elections. The head in the sand strategy was so pervasively accepted that Democratic controlled state legislatures like Colorado dumped key immigration agenda items in an ill-fated attempt to mute the debate and top Presidential advisors encouraged postponement of immigration reform. As it turns out you can’t easily quiet 14 million families and their friends. - Mario Solis-Marich

Angelina Jolie’s Salt

An Article of Faith. And what about O’Reilly’s “alone time” fantasy, fake writer Ann Coulter? Can you imagine her piggish self-interest in social climbing the dregs of Long Island society has anything at all to do with genuine patriotism? - Michaelangelo Price

The Tea Party and the New Right-Wing Christian Feminism. Why have American women become so active in the right wing Tea Party movement? Could it be that they are drawn to the new conservative Christian feminism publicized by Sarah Palin? Without its grassroots female supporters, the Tea Party would have far less appeal to voters who are frightened by economic insecurity, threats to moral purity and the gradual disappearance of a national white Christian culture. - Ruth Rosen

Why So Few Progressive Mayors?. Progressive candidates develop a laundry list of public programs that energize the progressive base. But this agenda is seen as economically unrealistic by the business community and more moderate voters, who are then easily persuaded that the progressive mayoral candidate will increase their taxes to achieve their goals. - Randy Shaw

Open Web Platform for Gulf Oil Spill Beats Media Boom Ban. Shortly after the Transocean/Deepwater Horizon wellhead exploded, Benjamin assembled a volunteer group of technology and web design experts, journalists, legal and business professionals and ordinary individuals who wanted to help with the spill crisis. - Georgianne Nienaber

Brad Sherman’s Middle-East Town Hall Rife With Fear and Aggression. Not surprisingly in this election year, Brad Sherman is ginning up his Jewish constituency (who usually vote), and Jews in general (who usually donate), with his unrelenting support for Israel – including Israel’s controversial boarding of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla’s Mavi Mara and its killing of eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish American citizen – an act internationally condemned by all nations except Israel’s steadfast ally, the United States. - Linda Milazzo

Profiles in Cowardice. Naysayers can hide at their computer keyboards and snipe away like Wild West back-shooters. The cyber-bushwhackers are safe in the knowledge that nobody knows who they are. My guess is a lot of them wouldn’t write what they write if they had to sign it. - Berry Craig

Clockwise from top: John Lindsay, Harold Washington, Art Agnos & Antonio Villaraigosa.

The Vanishing American Consumer and the Coming Trade War. We’re unlikely to see a repeat of the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariffs that worsened and lengthened the Great Depression. But you can forget trade-opening agreements. In Toronto last week, the G-20 leaders dropped their 2009 pledge to finish the Doha round this year. In the U.S., agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Columbia are languishing. - Robert Reich

Conservatives Repeat False Claim That Phoenix Is ‘Kidnapping Capital of the World’. Mike Huckabee defended SB-1070, telling Greta Van Susteren that Arizona was perfectly justified in passing the draconian immigration law partly because the state is the “number one kidnapping capital in the world.” - Andrea Nill

The Other Lincoln. But thank you Madame Lincoln for the clarity of the political landscape, and the Democratic Party. This insane healthcare debate is when we knew the “60-vote majority” was useless. - Robert Illes

Arizona Senators Decry DOJ Lawsuit Yet Won’t Support Immigration Reform. The point is that the “federal government’s responsibility”—a government which Sens. McCain and Kyl are certainly a part of—to reform our broken immigration system is being thwarted by the same senators who complain that the government isn’t doing enough. - Seth Hoy

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Mehserle-Grant Verdict Aftermath: Oakland Lives Another Day

With Elephants in the Room, Where’s the “Liberal Media?” BP had a hand in the Exxon Valdez. BP also operates a pipeline across Alaska’s wilderness areas that ruptured. The investigators found that BP had refused to do routine inspections and maintenance. -Tom Hall

Margaret Spellings, Arne Duncan — What’s the Difference? Nobody in power seems to be listening to what teachers have to say about how best to improve public education. The Administration is telling teachers that all those envelopes they licked, and all those doors they knocked on, and all those phone calls they made to help elect Obama in 2008 were nothing but a goddamned waste of time. -Joseph Palermo

Racially Biased SAT Speaks to a Broken Education System. Is the SAT racially biased? The College Board says score disparities are due to educational inequities but the Harvard Educational Review disagrees. -David Love

A Modest Proposal for Financing Higher Education in California. The brilliantly simple/simply brilliant solution: re-designate our Cal State and University of California campuses as prisons. Since a goodly number of the current student population regards them as such anyway, it should not be too big a stretch. -John MacMurray

Winona LaDuke Pledges Help for Native Tribes Facing BP Oil. LaDuke slammed the Minnesota Ottertail Power Company for being “punitive” in its refusal to allow the White Earth Recovery Project to supply its own power and have some to sell to the rest of the grid. Minnesota has the strictest electrical inspection standards in the United States. -Georgianne Nienaber

Thurgood: Laurence Fishburne’s One-Man Show Brings History to Life. Written by George Stevens, Jr., Thurgood is a perfect specimen of the one-man show format, with all the right ingredients. -Ed Rampell

Oscar Grant Case Verdict – Involuntary Manslaughter. The verdict has been handed down in the case of Oscar Grant. Johannes Mehserle has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, the lesser of the three charges he was facing. The former BART officer shot unarmed 22 yr old Oscar Grant who was returning from New Year’s Eve celebrations on January 1, 2009. –Sharon Kyle

Winona LaDuke at White Earth Reservation

Crooks & Liars Founder Indicts Right’s “Insane” Response to Obama. John Amato Speaking at LA Media Reform Fundraiser in Beverly Hills on July 16: In Over the Cliff: How Obama’s Election Drove the American Right Insane, John Amato and coauthor David Neiwert show that the Tea Party “movement” was not the organic uprising it was made to appear, but rather was kick-started by FOX News and follows in a long tradition of movement conservative activism that harkens back to the street theater days of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist.

Headless Corpses, Phantom Crimes Rates, & the Sarah Palin of the Desert. Jan Brewer is a lousy Governor. As Brewer positions herself as the new darling of the GOP her handlers are wishing that anti-immigrant passions will obfuscate any real analysis of her performance as an appointed head of a State. However any objective view of her performance to date indicates that Jan Brewer is the Sarah Palin of the Desert. -Mario Solis-Marich

Use Twitter and Facebook — Or Else! So while I’m not sold on Facebook (a venue where Lady Gaga’s record 10 million “fans“ exceeds that of President Obama), I am seriously considering opening a Twitter account. After all, how can I resist creating another “platform” for marketing? -Randy Shaw

An Illiberal Education and Southern Politics. Dinesh D’Souza, Nikki Haley, and Bobby Jindal have proven what the late comedian Richard Pryor once mocked with great aplomb in his 1975 comedy album, Is it Something I Said? He noted that the first thing that the Vietnamese boat people learned in an ESL class was how to say, “nigger…. so that they could become good citizens.” -Randal Jelks

Is It the Apocalypse or Just the End of Western Civilization? I suppose the point of all this is that stuffing as many hot dogs into one’s mouth as possible in 10 minutes is good, clean, healthy fun, and that all young Americans should aspire to such ambitions. If you get really good at it, you can turn pro and sign endorsement contracts. After all, eaters are athletes. -H. Scott Prosterman

The Theory of “Structural” Unemployment and the Jobs That Aren’t Coming Back. The actions of those in Congress that have held up the extension of benefits to the long-term unemployed are not only politically reactionary but also morally repugnant. It’s easy to understand their continued assault on the concept of empathy; they don’t have any and don’t think anyone else should. And, as far as working women and men being on the “wrong” side of history, well that depends on who’s making it. The fellow who said the jobs are not coming back failed to say where they went. -Carl Bloice

A Grand Fourth. FDR spoke about “four essential freedoms” on January 6, 1941, naming 1) freedom of speech and expression; 2) freedom of every person to worship in his own way; 3) freedom from want; and 4) freedom from fear — which he explained was related to a reduction of armaments and the lack of physical aggression against any other country in the world. -Ron Wolff

Jury Deliberates: Oscar Grant’s Family Speaks Out. Oakland and Los Angeles residents are preparing for a verdict in the Johannes Mehserle shooting of Oscar Grant. Family and friends are filled with apprehension and hope. In this exclusive interview, members of Oscar Grant’s family talk frankly about the case, politicians, community activists and life without Oscar as they wait to hear the verdict. -Jasmyne Cannick

EPA, Coast Guard, and BP PR Tied to Airborne Corexit Denials. So, dispersants are clearly present in the air, both over sea and land. If Unified Command is suggesting that oil spill responders might want to reconsider using respirators, why have we been told by the EPA, at a press conference, that there are no dispersants in the air? -Georgianne Nienaber

Did We Cause the Big Crash? We American homeowners appear as co-conspirators in many judgments about what caused the crash. In these interpretations, many of us were greedy for wanting bigger homes than we deserved, foolish to have then bought larger houses than we could afford, and stupid for agreeing to the low-interest/low-payment scams of mortgage sellers. -Steve Hochstadt

California NAACP’s Endorses Legalizing Marijuana: Is It Me, or Is Somebody High for Real This Time, Okay, this is America, where opportunity abounds—no laws appear to be broken but the appearance of impropriety of a state chapter civil rights group endorsing initiatives its president is paid to run couldn’t be more clear. But this is way out of bounds for the NAACP. The only one that looks high on this endorsement is the NAACP. Legalize marijuana, for real? -Anthony Samad

Looking for an Echo: 10 That Shoulda Made The Top 10. If the multiverse theory holds, there’s a land far, far away exactly like ours except that the following cuts — which never made it to American pop charts — would be as much a part of our musical DNA as the songs endlessly repeated in movies, oldies radio and commercials in our neck of the cosmological woods. -Michael Sigman

Prop 25 Most Essential Part of November Ballot. Proposition 25 was put on by labor unions and the Democratic Party, and political consultant Roger Salazar has been retained. Liberal bloggers and other progressives are skeptical, with some going so far as to claim it doesn’t make sense to get a majority for the budget – if raising taxes we need would still require a two-thirds vote. -Paul Hogarth

Did You Barbecue Pig or Pug This Fourth? The reason we eat cows, pigs, lamb, chickens, fish, and not dogs, cats, hamsters, and parakeets, according to Joy, is because our selective belief systems are supported by emotional and cultural responses that tell us some animals are edible while others are not. -Rev. Irene Monroe

The Great American Disconnect. Whatever happened to truth, justice and the American Way? We gave it away. We said good bye to it when we stopped investing in ourselves and our society. We walked away from our nation when we thought it was better to be a flag-waving corporation and that taxes were the end of the freedom train. No New Taxes is the cry of simple-minded people who don’t invest in their nation. -Wayne Williams

Kyl Now Admits Obama Is ‘Doing A Lot’ To Secure the Border, But It’s a Question of ‘Strategy’. However, according to Kyl, securing the border is like the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. “It’s not enough to say ‘gee, we have a lot of people down there’ — the question is but are you succeeding,” explained Kyl. Kyl believes it boils down to “different strategies that need to be employed.” -Andrea Nill

Car;eme Carter

In the Last Decade, Extreme Weather Deaths Outnumbered War Casualties. And as far as Fiorina’s focus on terrorism killing – well, an average of 42 Americans die from being struck by lightning every year. As opposed to – well, almost none from terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11. -Tina Dupuy

LA Film Festival 2010: Freakonomics. Freakonomics is a great documentary adaptation of Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt’s bestselling book that applies statistical and economics theory to various phenomena, finding extraordinary explanations and insights. Master documentarians direct various segments linked to interviews with the co-authors. -Ed Rampell

Can America Again Become An Imagine-Nation? Roger Nygard’s new documentary The Nature of Existence gives us a good-natured glimpse into the imaginations of brilliant thinkers from science, religion and other disciplines on life’s fundamental questions. If we try to let our imaginations run free and work shoulder to shoulder on real problems instead of fantasizing about self-aggrandizement — my own particular fave being high school basketball greatness — maybe we can become an imagine-nation and begin to turn things around. -Michael Sigman

Facing the Future as a Media Felon on the Gulf Coast. The United States Coast Guard considers me a felon now, because I “willfully” want to obtain more photos like these to show you the utter devastation occurring in Barataria Bay, Louisiana as a result of the BP oil catastrophe. -Georgianne Nienaber

Clockwise: Frederick Douglass, Malia Obama, Thomas Jefferson, Ron Kovic

Should Journalists Cozy Up to Power or Uncover the Truth? Hastings, a freelance reporter, is being criticized for exposing the insults and embarrassing behavior. Lara Logan, a foreign correspondent for CBS, blasted Hastings on CNN for what she felt was a breach of trust on his part that could possibly damage journalists’ relations with the military. -Sylvia Moore

LA Film Festival 2010: Night Catches Us. Set in 1976 Philadelphia after the heyday of the Black Panther Party, this film noir-ish feature depicts the fallout involvement in the Black liberation cause has on ex-Panthers and others. -Ed Rampell

Could Consume-atives Be Deficient? Consume-atives proclaim we should cut something but seldom propose anything specific. The plan is for bankruptcy court to sort that out, rather than making consume-atives a target for blame. “Take 10% off the top” is another, meaningless Republican proposal in recent budget negotiations. What does that mean, though? Let 10% of the prisoners out? Only treat 90% of the sewage? -Adam Eran

Slouching Toward a Lousy Recovery at Best. The people who are suffering the most from the failure of public officials and the greed of large bankers are the least able to endure it. Unemployment among people with four-year college degrees is barely over 5 percent; among high-school dropouts it’s over 25 percent. -Robert Reich

In Defense of Ethnic Studies and American History. Amidst the recent assaults on ethnic studies in Arizona and beyond that propagate a myth that such programs are divisive and exclusionary, I now find myself seeking to defend and justify their importance, and to wrestle with their place in American history. -Simon Balto

Unanimous Conformity in the Senate. Every living senator voted Wednesday to approve Gen. David Petraeus as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Call it the unanimity of lemmings – except the senators and their families aren’t the ones who’ll keep plunging into the sea. -Norman Solomon

Jefferson: Founding Father and Connoisseur. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, also set the standard for American-style conspicuous consumption. Historian Wade Graham discusses Jefferson’s paradoxical combination of politics and home improvement. -Wade Graham

Immigrant Women: The Silent Victims of a Broken Immigration System. Without immigration reforms, many immigrant women will continue to lack economic access, experience separation from their families, and be subjected to exploitation and criminal activity. -Michele Waslin

It’s Plain Whose Country the Government-Haters “Want Back”. It makes most Republicans and Tea Baggers hopping mad when somebody suggests that outright racism, or pandering to racism, underlies most of their anti-government rhetoric. But there is no denying the GOP is what the Democrats used to be — mostly the white folks’ party. -Berry Craig

LA Film Festival 2010: One Lucky Elephant. Lisa Leeman’s documentary One Lucky Elephant is similar to the 1990s fact-based features Buddy and Gorillas in the Mist starring, respectively, Rene Russo and Sigourney Weaver, as humans living closely with wild animals. All three films study the paradigm of inter-species relationships. -Ed Rampell

Afghanistan Again. After nine years of war the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan lacks support at home and is widely recognized as a drain on the domestic economy in a time of severe economic contraction. The billions of dollars in U.S. economic assistance to the Hamid Karzai government has created an unsustainable class of Afghans who are dependent upon the American largesse and military presence that would be impossible to sustain by local taxes. It is a puppet government that wouldn’t last a day without American arms and money. -Joseph Palermo

The 4th of July. In 1852, legendary abolistionist and former slave Federick Douglass who was known for his extraordinary oratory skills was asked to give a speech at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  That speech became one of his better known pieces and stands as a reminder that the 4th of July does. –Sharon Kyle

The Second Coming of Petraeus

Supreme Court Hearings: What’s at Stake. I don’t know about you, but after watching the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, I was given the distinct impression that Thurgood Marshall was being subjected to a criminal trial, post-mortem, by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. -David A. Love

San Francisco Values. In some parts of the country, the words “Nancy Pelosi” and “Barbara Boxer” are dirty words. They symbolize divisiveness, alienation, big government, taxes. All over the country people are giving Tea Parties so they can socialize over crumpets and vent their anger about Pelosi and Boxer and their San Francisco values. -H. Scott Prosterman

Border More Secure than Ever: Now What? Once again, those who call for “enforcement first” have been put on the spot. Will any amount of enforcement ever be enough to move them to the next step? Will they continue to move the goalposts? Or will they finally recognize that comprehensive immigration reform is ultimately about securing our borders? -Michele Waslin

Chatty Catty Carly. As a good lockstep Republican, Fiorina would be all for turning all control and regulations over to Big Oil, Big Banks, Big Wall Street, and Big Corporations because the corporate obscenely paid CEOs know best what’s good for the American people, and the corporations who are now “persons.” -Jerry Drucker

LA Film Festival 2010: Space Tourists. Today, due to the collapse of the USSR, the industry that put the first creatures and human into the cosmos has largely been reduced to providing Yankee billionaires with an extraterrestrial playground – for, of course, a fee: $20 million per launch. -Ed Rampell

Media Contributes to Victim Mentality as Gulf Struggles. Journalists have a responsibility to examine the science and it will not be easy. The public has a responsibility to learn more about their environment. It is obvious that government is not looking out for Gulf Coast residents. Communities will be forced to step in and do independent monitoring - Georgianne Nienaber

Crooks & Liars Founder Indicts Right’s “Insane” Response to Obama. John Amato Speaking at LA Media Reform Fundraiser in Beverly Hills on July 16: In Over the Cliff: How Obama’s Election Drove the American Right Insane, John Amato and coauthor David Neiwert show that the Tea Party “movement” was not the organic uprising it was made to appear, but rather was kick-started by FOX News and follows in a long tradition of movement conservative activism that harkens back to the street theater days of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist

Technology as a System: An Approach to Creating Jobs. It has become a very cruel world out there, and latecomers are cruelly left out. Until a new economic order emerges, only the technologically aware have a chance to prosper. We hope our approach will help us to that end - Robert Letcher

Eight Ways You Can Stop Rankism. If you’re patronizing a store or restaurant, avoid the mistake of thinking that because “the customer is king” you can be a tyrant. The majority of servers and clerks are doing their jobs as best they can, often under trying conditions and a great deal of pressure - Robert Fuller

Hey! Where’s Dick? Dick Cheney’s days as a “beloved elder statesman” are seriously numbered. Very soon it will become apparent to damned near everybody (Tea Partiers excluded of course) what a hideous, dreadful mistake it was to send these people to Washington ten years ago. Take that to the bank - Tom Degan

LA Film Festival 2010: A Small Act. This beautiful, moving film goes on to show the eventual meeting(s) of Mburu and his benefactor, who had no idea a charity was named after her. Nor that this Holocaust survivor’s small act of generosity would enable Mburu to play a role in campaigning ethnic cleansing around the world as a U.N. international civil servant, including at his native Kenya - Ed Rampell

What’s Wrong With Kagan’s Confirmation Hearings. Elena Kagan now faces a Senate Judiciary Committee intent on getting her to reveal how she would decide as a Supreme Court justice. Historian Kathleen Gronnerud explains how today’s inquiries are far from the process envisioned by the Founders - Kathleen Gronnerud

Saving LA’s African Marketplace. The City of Los Angeles is trying to charge the festival over $180,000 to hold the African Marketplace for two weeks, in a public park. Now we know the City is having a hard time…but $180,000??? For what?
Anthony Samad<

People Helping People Who Need People. I knew coffee wasn’t good for me, but I kept drinking it. For several years, I did it socially, and even purchased it myself on a few occasions. Finally, I gave it up, at the same time I gave up booze, tobacco and other harsh substances. Coffee was interfering with my clear consciousness, and I could feel how it interfered with my sense of Oneness with the Universe - Scott Prosterman

Arizona Legislator on Difference Between Her and Jan Brewer: ‘I Believe In The Facts’. Brewer has also defended her decision to sign off on SB-1070 by stating that Arizona is “under siege” by Mexican drug cartels and undocumented immigrants and has repeatedly slammed the federal government for not securing the border - Andrea Nill

Taliban’s Time Horizon Longer Than America’s. The only solution is to cut the U.S. losses and leave Afghanistan for good. The good news is that removal of U.S. occupation forces from a Muslim land might actually reduce blowback anti-U.S. terrorism around the world - Ivan Eland

LA Film Festival 2010: Camera, Camera; Madagascar, A Journey Diary; Sylvester Stallone. This refreshingly formal elegance compliments Madagascar’s content, as a visitor is invited by Natives to witness and participate in some sort of indigenous rituals that have to do with something like raising the dead. The short reminded me a lot of my time in another French colony, Tahiti, in terms of its delightful ukulele-sounding music, “bizarre” (to outsiders’ eyes) customs, language, local people, etc - Ed Rampell

Pink Princesses, Blue Commandos. Regardless of whether they are custodians or corporate execs, women continue to be saddled with the majority of child care, housework, and adult caregiving. The minute a working mother hits the door, down time is sacrificed for cleaning, parenting, cooking and counseling duties. Sacrifice becomes a woman’s life creed. And it is this message that store flotillas of pink baby dolls, strollers and play houses instill in little sacrificial princesses in training - Sikivu Hutchinson

Senator Orin Hatch: Judicial Activism Cuts Both Ways. Speaking of judicial activism – both United States Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia are members of a Federalist Society – an organization that advocates a roll back of civil rights - Tracy Emblem

Can Slake Quench LA’s Media Thirst? Joe Donnelly and Laurie Ochoa — the deputy editor and editor, respectively, of LA Weekly until both were forced out by corporate overlords from Phoenix in recent years — have joined forces to produce the debut issue of the quarterly Slake Los Angeles. It’s a gorgeous, 232-page quarterly mix of journalism, fiction, poetry, photography and art - Michael Sigman

Are We Not Patriots, Too?. As LGBTQ Americans, our patriotism is not recognized. But one of our community’s greatest moments of patriotism was the Stonewall Riots of June 27–29, 1969, in New York City’s Greenwich Village. We celebrate their heroism every day as out-of-the-closet people who are intentionally visible in various facets of American life - Rev. Irene Monroe

Look at Our Yellow Ribbons. What strikes me about the photo is that they really knew how to end wars back then. For example: they used to end wars…back then. There was a global conflict followed by a resolution. Beginning. Middle. End. Done. Birthrate skyrockets - Tina Dupuy

LA Film Festival 2010: Dog Sweat. Readers may remember President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s dubious remarks about gays at a Columbia University forum in 2007, and In Dog Sweat Keshavarz dares point his camera directly at the homosexual scene in Tehran, where same sex relationships are probably more controversial than gay marriage is here - Ed Rampell

Images in the Sand Connect Our Global Community. We who are selfish, who sacrifice our planet to fulfill desires not related to sustainment, are earth-perps. Every drowned polar bear incriminates us. Every oil asphyxiated dolphin, pelican and turtle inculpates us. Every decapitated mountain besmirches us. Every toxic landfill debases us - Linda Milazzo

Poison Populism: Rand Paul’s Tea Party Brew. While some observers have attempted to portray the Tea Party as a populist uprising against the prevailing powers, traditional populist movements support workers’ right to organize. Questions about where the Tea Party stands on workers’ right to organize and collectively bargain for better wages and benefits have now been put to rest – and they are far from any notion of populism!
Bill Londrigan

Not Just Another Cliche Thriller: Just Another Cliche Beginning. Like I said, dark and stormy with thunder pounding out a maniacal back-beat under the fierce snap-crackling of lightning that slammed against the Truckee River like a homicidal laser beam stabbing through dead-weight Indian-summer air, so screw you, Mrs. Randall, English Composition 101, who said run-on sentences don’t work - Mike Price

Corporate Election Machine Fires Up. On Jan. 21, 2010, the day the Supreme (now Extreme) Court under John Roberts declared that corporations and the very rich had a right to speak louder than the rest of us during campaigns, it was immediately clear that representative democracy in this country would be a thing of the past. The rich, already enormously powerful, were going to own the system outright - Jim Fuller

Double Trouble, Oil and Bubble: Something Slick This Way Comes. Spill doesn’t sound too bad and yet we continue to call this mess in the Gulf a spill. This is not a spill; this is a catastrophe of unheard of proportions. This is so detrimental that the effects and impact are not going to be fully known for years to come. So detrimental that BP still does not know how much is “spilling” into our oceans - Mary Pallant

LA Film Festival 2010: Mahler on the Couch. Mahler On the Couch is co-written and co-directed by that rarity, a father and son team, Percy (1987’s Bagdad Cafe) and Felix Adlon. Their German language movie reminds me of 1976’s The Seven-Percent- Solution based on Nicholas Meyer’s novel about Sherlock Holmes (Nicol Williamson) being treated by Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin) - Ed Rampell

Flash!! Two Conservatives Think Rationally. It is always a bit of a shock when a well-know conservative says something sensible, so imagine how stunned I was in this past week when TWO (count ‘em!) prominent rightist talking heads talked sense - John Peeler

Texas GOP Is a Grand Old Piece of Work. On the issue of family values, whatever that means, the Republican’s policy paper condemns homosexuality and opposes the legalization of sodomy and supports a prohibition on all pornography and strip clubs. Further, they would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple, or for a civil official to perform a same-sex marriage ceremony - David Love

Sarah Palin Chides Students at CSU Stanislaus. Sarah Palin spoke at California State University Stanislaus in spite of the controversy that arose when her speaking contract at this pubic institution was arranged out of the pubic’s view - Sharon Kyle

United Farm Workers Encourage Americans To ‘Take Our Jobs’. Contrary to what the anti-immigrant right might suggest, despite a major recession, most farmers and ranchers are still struggling to find the workers they need. “Comprehensive immigration reform is needed, so that America’s farmers and ranchers can continue to produce an abundant supply of safe, healthy food, as well as renewable fuels and fiber for our nation,” writes Ron Gaskill, director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation - Andrea Nill

LA Film Festival: Farewell, My Lovely. Mensink said it took her up to 13 years to make what she called a “puzzle” of a film, piecing together the jigsaw motion picture pieces of found footage, including shots from only one feature film, Dirigible, a 1931 thriller made by none other than Frank Capra - Ed Rampell

Free Speech Down the Rabbit Hole. This Supreme Court ruling effectively says “military actions are the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy.” Or to be more blunt: U.S. might makes right and there is no alternative to the use of military power - Lydia Howell

The Tea Party — Again. Rand Paul discovered that most of his fellow Republicans disagreed with his idea that a significant part of the civil rights triumph of the 1960s was wrong. That led him and the Republican Party into a whole new strategy of pretending that past statements don’t exist and only allowing these very conservative candidates to appear in front of friendly media hosts, who will not ask about them - Steve Hockstadt

Johannes Mehersele

Oscar Grant Trial: Armed and Dangerous. The murder charge played well with the furious community, but given how hard it will be to prove intent in this case beyond a reasonable doubt to twelve jurors, did the DA’s office think the more serious charge would make an acquittal more likely? -Diane Lefer

Napolitano Announces Next Steps for Southwest Border . Although Secretary Napolitano trumpeted DHS’s new border initiatives as well as past achievements, she also acknowledged that the border can never be hermetically sealed and that stalling immigration reform by highlighting border security issues is not the answer to our immigration problems. -Seth Hoy

Nurses Have Whitman on the Run.Two weeks into her general election campaign, Meg Whitman has already proved that she has not followed politics in recent years. How else to explain her already picking a fight with CNA and Rose Ann DeMoro that the candidate cannot win, and that makes her look worse with each passing day? -Randy Shaw

Turkey’s Policy Toward Iran Is Worth Emulating. The sad truth is that if Iran wants a nuclear weapon, it will likely eventually get one. So the United States should quit wasting valuable political capital beseeching, threatening, and horse-trading with China, Russia, and other UN Security Council members to incrementally ratchet up likely futile multilateral economic sanctions against Iran. -Ivan Eland

The Presidents and the McGenerals. Gen. McChrystal is far from the first general to scoff at the White House. His fate echoes that of Generals MacArthur and McClellan but the comparison ends there, says historian Kenneth Weisbrode, because today there’s a greater reliance on the military in foreign relations. -Kenneth Weisbode

The New Normal: High Unemployment. With unemployment so common that it’s widely seen as a long-term fact of life, a tacit fatalism has seeped into political discourse and the mass media. In short, what should be unacceptable has gained acceptance. -Norman Solomon

Discrimination: Alive and Well. I don’t quarrel with the Boy Scouts’ right to determine its own membership qualifications, although I think what they’ve done is short-sighted in the least and actually downright bigoted. (Other organizations serving young people — the Girl Scouts, Campfire, Boys and Girls Clubs, and probably a host of others — have seen the light.) What I don’t understand is the desire to celebrate and applaud discrimination, unless of course you approve of those views yourself. -Ron Wolff

Religion’s Ugly Head. fAfter speaking directly with God, the current Leading Prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 86-year-old Boyd Packer revealed last year that Mormons must form an alliance with Catholic Bishops in California to stop the desecration of Christian teaching. The aim of this unholy alliance? Stop same-sex marriage. -Carl Matthes

How Big Oil Controlled the U.S. Photovoltaic Industry. Big Oil bought and controlled the alternative energy business because Big Oil’s main business is and has always been oil, gas, coal and petrochemical profits first. The “private sector” stimulated was the mergers and buy-outs of smaller photovoltaic research and development companies by Big Oil companies. -Tracy Emblem

Two Rants, No Waiting.Chris Matthews turned in a rock-solid, expressive, impressive, straight-down-the-middle performance that night on Leno’s private turf, and Jay seemed to be both surprised and a smidge taken aback by it all. -Mike Price

Coveting Riches on the Great Rare Earth Highway. The military propagandists needed to come up with something to distract attention from the reality that things are going badly in Afghanistan, very badly. Public opinion in the U.S. has soured toward the war. Every other country that has troops on the battlefields is under tremendous popular pressure to withdraw them. -Carl Bloice

Kyl Accuses Obama Of Holding Border Security Hostage To Immigration Reform As Border Crime Drops. At a recent town hall meeting in Tempe, Arizona, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) announced that President Obama is “holding border security hostage” to immigration reform. Kyl claims that Obama suggested in private that Democrats won’t secure the border because, if they do, Republicans will have no reason to support immigration reform -Andrea Nill

Maxine Waters

Proposed Comcast Takeover of NBC Universal Will Hurt Diversity, Critics Say. Waters’ spotlight on the near white-wash of the NBC fall shows was a highlight of Monday’s hearing, which was heavily focused on how the proposed merger may affect diversity within the entertainment business. -Sylvia Moore

From Great Man to Great Screwup: Behind the McChrystal Uproar. For months, the McChrystal star had been slipping. A few days before the Rolling Stone piece caused a sudden plunge from war-making grace, Time Magazine’s conventional-wisdom weathervane Joe Klein was notably down on McChrystal’s results: “Six months after Barack Obama announced his new Afghan strategy in a speech at West Point, the policy seems stymied.” -Norman Solomon

President Obama, BP, “Shake-downs” and Runaway “Joes:” Now I Know The Republicans Are Crazy. For a long time, we’ve known that the Republican Party was perceived as insensitive to the circumstances of the poor. We’ve seen it with Katrina, and with other policies that required special attention to the populous (including cutting off unemployment extensions this week). Now we can say that the Republican Party is just being unreasonable. I’d go as far as to call them, crazy. -Anthony Samad

BP’s Other Gifts to America—and to the World. At this point, we might well wonder if it was such a good idea to overthrow a democratic, secular nationalist like Mossadeq to preserve the profits of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now renamed BP). Indeed, given the sordid record of BP and other giant oil companies, we might wonder why we tolerate them at all. -Lawrence Wittner

Michael Tomasky’s Despairing Take on American History. Tomasky argues that many of President Obama’s harshest critics on the left are reacting that way because they don’t want to admit to themselves that the “feelings of invincibility and redemption” after the 2008 election “were misplaced,” and that “the power and euphoria were somehow counterfeit.” -Joseph Palermo

“Los Angels” at LAFilm Festival, Friday, 25 June: Director Thomas Napper Illuminates Skid Row. Serendipitously, perhaps even miraculously, a second movie had been made; a documentary originally titled THE CHORUS as a take-off on THE SOLOIST, that was now titled LOST ANGELS. It was an expose dedicated entirely to Skid Row and to the extras employed on THE SOLOIST. Joe Wright was an Executive Producer. Susan Klos, author of the above email, who’d read my article, was a Co-Executive Producer, and Thomas Napper, a long-time associate of Joe Wright, lovingly and patiently directed. -Linda Milazzo

Dude, Let Students Help Make Those Teacher Cuts. Because our school makes these cuts strictly on seniority, it’s always the newer teachers who go, the ones who connect so much better with us students. Athough we like and respect our older, more experienced teachers, these younger ones are more flexible in their teaching plans and are closer to us in age, so they understand us so much better. So we’re terribly sad to see their teaching careers end, at least for now. -Nea Friberg-Price & Jed Von Dielingen

Pointing Our Oily Finger. The reason we’ve got oil rigs drilling a mile deep into the ocean and fouling Alaska’s wilderness is because you and I insist on filling up our car’s gas tank anytime we want, right to the top, at a fraction of the cost others around the world pay, almost as an inalienable right. It’s why we’ve got soldiers dying in Afghanistan and Iraq these many years down the road, too, you know. -Dick Price

Oil-Soaked Dolphins Struggle in Lousiana’s Barataria Bay. Toxic poisons are stalking the dolphins in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, and no one is discussing or reporting the fact that the oiled mammals are struggling in the waters near Grand Terre Island. There are no published photos or videos that we have been able to find, and no stories that describe the oil-encrusted dorsal fins and odd behavior that suggest an under-reported or deliberately hidden environmental catastrophe. -Georgianne Nienaber

Progressive Critics Help Obama and Democrats. Holding self-identified “progressive” politicians like Barack Obama accountable for fulfilling campaign commitments actually improves the chances for progressive election victories, as it pressures Democrats to satisfy their base. And as the critical midterm elections approach, ensuring this grassroots base is motivated and mobilizable by holding Obama and Congressional Democrats accountable is even more imperative. -Randy Shaw

Carmen Miranda, The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat. Magi Avila is Here’s your Miranda warning: You have the right to be charmed, beguiled and to go bananas during the Hollywood stage production of Carmen Miranda, The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat. Magi Avila incarnates the 1940s dancing and singing sensation of stage, screen and nightclubs who personified Latin America for a generation of U.S. audiences. -Ed Rampell

Exploit This Tragedy. The “don’t exploit this tragedy” knee-jerk catch-all phrase is absolutely meaningless. In American politics, we rule by crisis. There is no political will to act unless something is burning, melting or spewing. We don’t plan for the future – we brace for it. -Tina Dupuy

Alvin Greene’s South Carolina Win: The Inside Scoop. Roughly a third of Al’s votes came from soul and pop music lovers who believed they were voting for sexy Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Al Green, nee Albert Greene. Green, who was a superstar who sold millions of records in the ’70s, also evoked sympathy from voters who remembered he was once doused by his girlfriend in a sea of boiling grits. -Michael Sigman

Jerry Brown, Eucalyptus Trees, Esalen, and More. Unlike today, there were politically strong progressive movements during the Brown era that operated outside the Democratic Party establishment. Brown had strong backing among environmentalists, tenants, those focused on “appropriate” technology, and the United Farm Workers (UFW). -Randy Shaw

Fighting the Orange Tide. Not so long ago, you would most likely call a Democrat running for office in many parts of Orange County quixotic if not just flat foolish. Beth Krom, a lifelong Democrat who has won five consecutive local elections in Irvine—the crustiest of upper crust Orange County—begs to differ. -Dick Price

SB 1070 “Gets Tough” on Arizona’s Housing Market. According to the Arizona Republic, housing experts anticipate that SB 1070 will not only drive illegal immigrants out of the state, but legal residents and potential new homebuyers with them—“departures from a state where growth is the economic foundation.” -Seth Hoy

Ten Suggestions for Effective Activism. When I was updating Soul of a Citizen, an activist rabbi who was teaching the book at Florida Gulf Coast University suggested I gather togetherthe Ten Commandments for effective citizen engagement. -Paul Loeb

Why China’s Currency Announcement Is Hockum. Don’t be fooled into thinking that US companies will continue to make big profits from sales in China. China allows big U.S. and foreign companies to sell in China on condition that production takes place in China – often in joint ventures with Chinese companies. It wasn’t American know-how, so it can eventually replace the US firms with China firms. -Robert Reich

Respecting Teachers. If the goal is to improve our public education system–and there is no organization or institution that cannot be improved in some way–then the most straightforward way to accomplish this is to give the highly-trained, highly-motivated professionals in the classrooms the resources they need, and let them do the job they were hired for. -John MacMurray

Deliver Us from Ignorance: Freedom’s Higher Meaning. As is often said in America, anyone has the right to sleep under a bridge, the rich included, although the rich seldom take advantage of the opportunity. If people can’t quit their low-paying jobs for fear of losing their health insurance, are they free? What about individuals who are so inhibited by what others might think of them they never do anything they really want to do, but instead restrict their life choices to only those acts that they believe will gain them social approval? Are such people really free? How about the groups with which we identify—have you ever considered how they might influence our idea of freedom? -Charles Hayes

Arizona Shooting of Latino Man Considered a Hate Crime. At this point, it’s difficult to verify what role, if any, SB-1070 played in Varela’s death. However, chances are the law has made an already toxic atmosphere worse. A growing number of Latinos are already the targets of discrimination and hate crimes in the U.S. SB-1070 has only exploited the public’s frustration with federal government inaction and played to their worst instincts. -Andrea Nill

Peak Oil 102: What To Do Now. A recent U.N. study found that raising livestock caused more climate change than all human transportation combined. Currently U.S. agriculture is not even “solar.” We burn ten calories of petroleum to produce one calorie of food. -Adam Eran

“Why Is the Media So Anti-Union?” Generally, the smaller a paper or TV or radio station is, the greater its bias against unions. Their anti-unionism is sometimes as plain as their front doors, which are often plastered with decals or stickers proudly proclaiming chamber membership. The fact that the chamber is openly pro-business and anti-union apparently doesn’t trouble local media owners about conflicts of interest. -Berry Craig

Joe Barton and the Big Big Debate. Representative Joe Barton’s apology to Tony Hayward for what he termed a “shakedown” of BP by the White House in order to get BP’s agreement to a $20 billion escrow fund, was the best thing to happen to BP since April 20, and the best boost for the White House in months. What possessed Barton, the ranking Republican on Energy and Commerce? -Robert Reich