Progressive Media Advocates
Victoria Defrancesco Soto: Moving forward here’s your three-pronged Latino action plan – hold the line with the Cuban vote, throw in the towel with the Latino Democratic vote, and fire up the Republican and Republican leaning Mexican voters in the West as if you’re life depended on it because well, politically it does.
Victoria Defrancesco Soto: Gingrich is in that sweet spot to the right of Romney and to the left of Santorum. It is in this spot that Romney needs to concern himself.
Tom Hayden: The catastrophic spectacles of American troops urinating on Afghan bodies and burning Korans has provided Obama a new opportunity to cast the Afghanistan war as a hopeless cause.
Walter Moss: The main reason that Obama is not at “war” with the Catholic Church is that the U. S. bishops ARE NOT the Catholic Church in the United States.
John Peeler: The Republican primary electorate is predominantly reactionary, far-right-wing, on both economic and social issues, so it should not be so surprising that they are warming to Santorum.
Kathleen Peine: Really, my only issue with a Newt Gingrich open marriage would be an assurance that I, as an American, would not have to participate.
Anthony Samad: By intellectualizing racism, Gingrich is leaving his signature card with Americans that still have a race problem with Obama. We can’t let it work.
Friday Feedback: This week, an article by Steve Hochstadt, Do Republican Candidates Like Most Americans?, drew a series of comments, supportive and not. We’ll lead with Steve’s aggregate response, then include the observations by others he comments on.
Robert Reich: No responsible Democrat should be pleased at the prospect that Gingrich could get the GOP nomination. The future of America is too important to accept even a small risk of a Gingrich presidency.
Robert Reich: Never before in the history of American politics has a single couple given more money to a single candidate and had a bigger impact than Sheldon Adelson and his wife – all courtesy of the Supreme Court and its grotesque decisions that speech is money.
Tom Degan: Newt had spent the entire primary subtly pressing all of the right racial buttons and it worked out for him better than even he anticipated.
Steve Hochstadt: The Republican presidential candidates were talking to a minority of Americans, telling them they were the only true patriots. The rest of us, poor, gay, black, unionized, believers in science, supporters of a fair tax system, we were disdained.
Carl Matthes: It came as no surprise to gay men and lesbians that if ultra-conservatives kept digging around in this year’s barrel of Republican candidates, past Trump, Bachmann, Cain, Perry and even Gingrich, they would eventually reach Rick Santorum.
With one statement on Thursday, Newt Gingrich, who constantly reminds voters about his past as a college professor, managed to mangle the facts while resorting to old-fashioned racist stereotypes to gain votes. With his poll numbers sinking, and his presidential campaign desperate, Gingrich told a crowd at a senior citizens center in Plymouth, New Hampshire, “I’m prepared, [...]
Brent Budowsky: As President Obama and Democrats battle during this holiday season to enact a tax cut for the 99 percent of Americans who constitute the heart of the nation, House Republicans are making a seismic political blunder reminiscent of the self-destructive overreaching of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) that rejuvenated the Clinton presidency during the 1990s.
Randy Shaw: Occupy Wall Street’s emergence in September raised progressive spirits, as has the unexpected rise of Newt Gingrich as the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination. Here’s my list of the top ten best and worst political events that occurred across the nation in 2011.
Julie Driscoll: I promised my son that I would never protest or condemn or belittle this war, that I would never dishonor his service by reducing it to foolishness.
Tina Dupuy: Gingrich has a dark vision for a Shining City Upon a Hill: where poor children work in place of union labor. It’s basically the 20th century played in reverse.
Robert Reich: Gingrich has tried to defend himself by saying Freddy paid him as a “historian,” but anyone with half a brain knows Freddy wasn’t interested in history.
Michael Sigman: When the Newt boomlet fades, there may yet be a role for Gingrich in public life. Given his obsession with such words as “fundamentally,” “profoundly,” “desperately” and “dramatically,” how about Ambassador of Adverb Abuse?
Berry Craig: Will religious rightists forgive Gingrich for his serial adultery? He is on his third marriage. Gingrich cheated on wives one and two and ditched them for his paramours.
Berry Craig: Historically, labor-haters like Gingrich have tried to divide workers by skill, race, gender, religion, ethnicity and nationality. Today, the wedge issues include abortion, school prayer, guns and gay marriage.
Robert Reich: The Republican establishment doesn’t get it. Celebrity is part of The Palin Strategy – as is avoiding the insider game. She doesn’t want to do what Huckabee, Pawlenty, Gingrich, or Romney have to do. She has an outside game.
Tina Dupuy: Gingrich’s schtick is Scorched Earth meets Straw Man. He not only incinerates the hypothetical Straw Man – he also verbally salts the soil where the Straw Man’s make-believe family lives after razing their made-up home.
Paul Loeb: It’s been a frustrating time since November 2008, but our challenge is to spend less time bemoaning our disappointments and more energy engaging with ordinary citizens the way so many of us did a year and a half ago. If we give people enough ways to act on our present crises, we never know how history might turn.
Randy Shaw: Now that cities offer walkable, bicycle-friendly, public transit-available neighborhoods with desirable restaurants and a high quality of life, the poor are being shunted to car-dependent suburban areas in economic decline.
Julie Driscoll: Call me crazy, but I believe firmly that the statutory laws are in place for a reason – to prevent the exploitation of young men and women who don’t have the ability to make informed decisions, who don’t have the ability to “consent.”
Lauren Steiner: Please help us spread the word across Los Angeles! Come with signs that say “Bruce Karsh, please don’t sell the LA Times to the Kochs” and “Bruce Karsh, our democracy is not for sale” We are gathering Thursday, May 23 for a rally and march.
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Top 10 Most Read: The Coming Revolt
This week, Fordham professor Mark Naison’s article “The Coming Revolt: When Will the Sleeping Giant Awake?” took top honors as the week’s most read piece.