Joseph Palermo: The hate brigades have taken aim at Ms. Crowley not because she showed “bias” or was “wrong” about the facts or exceeded the role of moderator, but because she performed a genuine act of journalism in front of 65 million viewers.
The Debate We Never Had
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Joe Palermo: It has become clear by now that the Republican candidate for president, Mitt Romney, views American society as an aggregate of atomized individuals each seeking to maximize personal gain
Jeremy Lin’s America
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Brent Budowsky: Notwithstanding the endless echo chamber of political insiders and slashing attacks that is called our public discourse, the wonderful story of Jeremy Lin tells us far more about America than partisan debates or talking heads.
Shutting Cities Down: Now and Then
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Lee Fang: The American political and economic system is falling apart. No matter who wins an election, in many cases, the outcomes are the same: well-heeled corporate interests dictate policy.
Social Security and The Koch Lies
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The Koch brothers have poured millions of dollars into conservative think tanks that crank out studies claiming Social Security is going broke. Their solutions – raise the retirement age and turn your contributions over to the casino of Wall Street. The short and gripping video from Brave New Films, “Social Security Echo Chamber,” traces the origins of these Koch-funded lies.
Time, Politics, and Change
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Charles Hayes: When I think about the prospects of individuals standing up these days and making some kind of a qualitative political difference in the world, I can’t help, but wonder what it must have been like to be an Abolitionist in 1850, trying to change popular sentiment about slavery, or a suffragette, arguing for women’s rights.
The American Jobs Emergency Requires Action
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Robert Reich: Not only do we need extended unemployment benefits. We need a new WPA, modeled after the WPA of the Great Depression, to put jobless Americans to work. We need a national infrastructure bank to rebuild our crumbling highways and water and sewer systems, thereby putting additional people back to work.
The Tragedy of Under-Reaching
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Norman Solomon: We need to build a grassroots progressive movement — wide, deep and strong enough to fight the right and challenge the corporate center of the Democratic Party.
How the Internet Can Make It Harder to Act
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Paul Loeb: 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.
Michael Brown Spins the Gulf Oil Spill Catastrophe
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Joseph Palermo: So that’s what our political discourse has sunk to? Discredited figures like Brownie are on TV jockeying for partisan gain, milking a national tragedy that is probably going to change forever the ecosystem of the Gulf Coast? Brownie uses a catastrophe that threatens many of the nation’s most important waterways and will probably be a grave setback to any national economic recovery to score pitiful political points against the Democrats? Who are these people?
Does Anyone, Anywhere Have Real Courage?
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Denis Campbell: When someone has to choose between health coverage and paying their home mortgage, what kind of a moral choice is that? How can any nation that pays nearly 18% of its GDP for healthcare not have the best coverage in the world covering everyone?
UK Perspective: Where Have You Gone Teddy, Tip, and Ronnie?
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President Obama presented a strong hybrid speech last night. He reached out to Republicans who clearly will not vote for it, encouraged Democrats to grow a spine, and went back to his community organising sharp elbowed Chicago political style.
Glenn Beck vs. Van Jones: McCarthyism Enters the 21st Century
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What Glenn Beck, Roger Ailes, and their allies did in drumming Van Jones out of the government was an example of 21st century McCarthyism. They smeared Jones’ past political remarks and associations the same way Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn smeared a young Boston lawyer named Fred Fisher for being a member of the National Lawyers Guild.
Beware Authoritative “Inside Washington” Sources Who Say The Public Option is Dead
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Sometimes reform has to occur in a big way, everything or nothing, if it’s to happen at all. That’s the way it is with health care reform at this stage. Every moving piece is related to every other one. That’s also why a public option is necessary.
Media Tries to Undermine Obama Agenda
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Barack Obama has been President for eight weeks, and much of the traditional media remains incapable of making sense of his agenda. In one corner we have hosts like Hardball’s Chris Matthews, who appears to be compensating for pro-Obama campaign comments by giving excessive voice to the president’s critics. Or we have CNN’s John King, [...]
Republicans: Spare Me Your Newfound “Fiscal Responsibility”
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At his press conference on Monday, President Barack Obama had to remind Mara Liasson of Fox News and NPR that it was the Republicans who doubled the national debt over the past eight years and it’s a little strange to be hearing lectures from them now about how to be fiscally responsible. That interchange was [...]
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No Good News for Democrats Because There’s No Good News
Joseph Palermo: Yet it’s hard to believe that the American people this November are going to return the party to power that not too long ago lied the nation into war, doubled the national debt, and collapsed the economy.