Progressive Media Advocates
Michael Sigman: So, to test the theory that my sense of self needn’t include the political shenanigans of the moment, my New Year’s resolutions are: a) To cut, by at least half, the time I spend following political news, polls, etc; and b) To actually do something — like organizing, phone banking or writing more for websites and newsletters.
Tom Degan: Listening to some of them defending the the secession ball was amusing, to say the least. In their minds, the War Between the States had not a thing to do with human bondage. It was all about “states rights”. Oh, brother!
Tina Dupuy: Nothing shatters one’s contentment more quickly than that ever-looping commercial in which a guy buys his wife a bow-wrapped $100K Lexus as a “surprise.” Every time it airs I think to myself, “My husband would have to put just that bow on layaway, and I’d still KNOW.”
Andrea Nill: Hatch’s flip-flop may have something to do with the fact that he’s up for reelection in 2012 and has already been identified as the tea party’s next target.
Andrea Nill: Immediately before the vote failed, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) took the Senate floor to tell the young DREAMers who have come to his office that they were “wasting their time” because the border hasn’t been secured.
Tom Degan: The president, far from being the Progressive warrior his base was praying for when we elected him two years ago, appears hell bent on caving into their demands.
Randy Shaw: After his decision to freeze federal salaries – not as part of any broader budget and tax deal, but unilaterally – it’s clear that the President is far more politically clueless than previously thought.
Tina Dupuy: Palin is now our nation’s only full-time professional duelist. She fights with everyone. Her entire post-quitting career is centered on flame wars, most of which she starts.
Paul Loeb: Do Senators like Olympia Snowe, Scott Brown, Susan Collins, and Mark Kirk really want to open themselves up to unlimited anonymous attack ads, where they can’t even turn the mud potential primary opponents will be slinging into a potential electoral liability?
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.
Charles Hayes: If America is going to have a better future, we need to put our Stone Age feelings of exceptional identity aside and intellectually guard ourselves against emotional manipulation while reasoning our way forward.
Tom Hayden: The peace bloc – activist groups, anti-war Congress members, writers and artists, here and across the NATO – can exercise a massive drag against the war-making machine through 2012 as long as the wars remain deeply unpopular.
Robert Reich: GE’s Mr. Immelt may be unhappy with President Obama, but he’ll be far unhappier if the tea party takes over the GOP.
The vast majority of Americans never supported a “privatize-and-pillage” attack on Social Security. Yet many of the Republican candidates in 2010 are on record supporting all manner of schemes to dismember Social Security.
Tina Dupuy: Here’s the thing about women candidates: they are more interesting to the press than their male counterparts. The media just likes them more. There’s an obsession with female candidates’ gaffes.
Craig Williams: The countless ads by Whitman in the current California gubernatorial race lead most people to believe that she’s been creating lots of jobs. But when you take a close look at what her company EBAY actually does, on balance she may well be the jobs killer.
Here we go again. I just received my “Official Sample Ballot” in the mail. I open it and scan each page. I see the list of candidates running for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, controller, treasurer, and so on. I know, without any doubt who I will be casting my vote for in all of the races except one. Which one?. . . You guessed it. THE JUDGES!!!!
Seth Hoy: Maybe Congressional promises to keep fighting for the DREAM Act are enough; maybe they aren’t. But what the DREAMers can take heart in is the energy and enthusiasm they reverberated through the Senate this week.
Andrea Nill: Levin also noted that the Senate has debated amendments to the bill on a number of issues. One of those amendments was introduced by McCain.
Tina Dupuy: The fact is: Obama is a good president. He’s a centrist who is somewhere between what mouth-foamers on either extreme say about him. He does listen to all viewpoints, which makes people of some viewpoints – ironically – dislike him. He’s not the villain the insane Right says he is, nor is he the do-nothing turncoat the insane Left says he is.
Steve Hochstadt: These days it seems like only political allegiance determines judgments about whether people are good or bad. I want to be judged by how I act, not how I vote, by whether I tell the truth, how I treat my neighbors, how I live in my community, how well I take care of my mother. (Hi, Ma.)
Steve Ybarra: The Big O is doing what he said he was going to do. Am I the only one that noticed that the last combat brigade in Iraq came home? We got health care, we got bank reform, and we got money to fix stuff. The only problem is that the Republicants want to keep it from being spent.
Articles by Robert Reich, Anthony Samad, Walter M. Basch, Ron Wolff, Randy Shaw, Ted Vaill, Randy Shaw, Steve Hochstadt, Gary Corseri, Georgianne Nienaber, Tina Dupuy, Sharon Kyle, Seth Hoy, Marian Wang, Ivan Eland, Jasmyne Cannick, Howard Roth, Katherine Smith, Michael Sigman, John Summers, Denis Campbell, Norman Solomon, Peter Dreier, Diane Lefer, Andrea Nill, Joseph Palermo, Jim Fuller, Gautam Dutta, Wais Hassan, and Aqeela Sherrills
Gautam Dutta: Rather than engage in discussion and debate, many politicians find it easier to demonize their opponents, rather than debate the issues.
Ted Vaill: 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.
Victoria Defrancesco Soto: The issue trifecta of Benghazi, the IRS audits, and the AP investigations has resuscitated the near moribund Tea Party. While each of these issues deals with different agencies and actors they share the common denominator of heightening distrust in the government.
RJ Eskow: Dimon isn’t the cause of our economic problems. He’s merely a symptom. He’s no more responsible for the wreckage he leaves behind than a surfer is responsible for the undertow of the wave he’s riding. Dimon may lack moral sensitivity, but then, that’s the character that got him where he is today.
Randy Shaw: Garcetti kept the progressive base he earned from this City Council record and combined it with conservative San Fernando Valley voters angry at the Valley-based Greuel for her campaign receiving million of dollars from unions representing Department of Water and Power workers.
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