Progressive Media Advocates
Joseph Palermo: In U.S.-occupied Iraq, every car bomb, every I.E.D., every suicide bomber, and every sectarian killing that followed that sunny day in May off the San Diego coast made a mockery of Bush’s premature spiking of the proverbial football and brought deserved derision from the rest of the world.
Brent Budowsky: Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have given a pass to some of those who misused justice during the Bush years. The president should now move forcefully and promptly to fill judicial vacancies and pardon any who were unfairly treated.
Joseph Palero: Working hand-in-hand with California’s teachers, nurses, students of all ages, and the state’s labor unions, Governor Brown rallied the troops, and in doing so helped save from fiscal ruin not only the state’s public schools but also the nation’s biggest and most important system of public higher education.
Robert Reich: The Koch brothers, Karl Rove, the rabid Republican right, CEOs and Wall Street titans who want to entrench their privileges and tax advantages — all of them would like nothing better than for every progressive in America to throw in the towel.
Charley James: The nonsense Romney spouts as factual would be breathtaking if it was not so scary and he weren’t running for president.
Randy Shaw: Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan was less about pleasing the Party’s base than about trying to shift the conversation away from the issues that Obama’s campaign team have made this election about.
Joseph Palermo: Worse than Swift Boating, worse than Willie Horton, Mitt Romney is running the most craven, dishonest, and hypocritical campaign we’ve seen in contemporary American politics.
Brent Budowsky: If Rove is not colluding with Romney in violation of law, there is no law, even by the shabby standards of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United.
Robert Illes: But in many ways worse are the watery “liberals” on, say, MSNBC, especially Chris Matthews, whose main interest seems self-serving, to maintain the election as seeming like a tight horse race.
David Love: Faced with hard times, people have clear choices. Either they join forces across racial and ethnic lines and fight their common adversary, or they double down on the dumbness, thrive on misinformation and assign scapegoats.
Bill Fletcher: Karl Rove was quite correct in pointing out that the Romney road to victory, should it happen, is brought about through a demoralization of the Obama base.
Brent Budowsky: The right and the Republicans fear Occupy Wall Street and Elizabeth Warren because they know that a majority of voters agree with them about eliminating financial abuses that plague so many Americans.
Brent Budowsky: The president and Democrats seem befuddled by how to react to the Citizens United decision, while Karl Rove understands with crystal clarity.
Victoria Defrancesco Soto: Romney has yet to launch a Spanish language version of his website and has only released two Spanish language TV ads. Moreover, while these ads are in Spanish they are not unique, meaning they are simply translations of English language ads.
Tom Degan: The Grand Old Party is willing to destroy this country in order to obtain and retain power. They’ll stop at nothing in order to achieve those ends – even if there is nothing left for them to govern.
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.
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.
Victoria Defrancesco Soto: In the 2012 election cycle we will see ads targeted to left-handed political science majors at Big 12 Schools — OK, maybe not quite that specific, but close.
Joseph Palermo: The Republicans think they believe that with enough SuperPAC money and stoking up the base, along with relatively high unemployment and gas prices and millions of underwater mortgage holders, they can win a close election.
Steve Hochstadt: Karl Rove and John Boehner agree on this: We hate Obama. Obama helped Detroit. A union is involved. The revival of American cars is a Democratic success story. So take your Detroit jobs and shove ‘em.
Randy Shaw: Considering that polls show that 99% of all women and 98% of Catholic women who have had sex have used contraceptives, Democrats should follow Senator Barbara Boxer’s lead and aggressively frame the November elections around this issue.
Scott Prosterman: Karl Rove’s articulated objections to the Chrysler ad, which is paraphrased as, “How dare anyone take the high road with a positive message unless is it also trashes Obama and promotes Republican ideals.”
Wendy Block: But Stephen, my basic motivation for telling you about DISCLOSE is because when you oppose things, you lavish them with criticism on your show for the benefit of the entire Colbert Nation, which pretty much means the entire universe. I bet your opposition could – no, will — clinch our victory.
Tina Dupuy: Like the Egypt and Tunisia uprisings, Occupy Wall Street are youths worried about their futures’ downgrade. It’s about the lack of prospects in the “land of opportunity.”
Michael Sigman: With Bachmann having no chance to win the nomination, it’s shaping up as a race to the bottom between Romney and Perry, fantasies of a deus ex machina notwithstanding.
Tom Degan: When Hunter Thompson killed himself in the late winter of 2005, I could never bring myself to write about it. Although his greatest work was years behind him I couldn’t bring myself to accept the fact that he was gone forever.
Madeline Janis: The attack against LAANE is consistent with the broader effort by the right to cripple progressive causes and leaders. And as the recent assault on Planned Parenthood reminds us, they are willing to do almost anything to achieve their aim.
Randy Shaw: An obvious fact: the Republican Party is content with trying to take back the Senate in 2012 and does not see the presidential race as its top priority.
Joseph Palermo: The credibility of Anthony Weiner’s loud liberal voice in the House of Representatives, who recently showed the temerity to take on Justice Clarence Thomas for his conflict of interest in Citizens United, is now toast
Eric Garcetti Wins Los Angeles Mayoral Race! See outcome of the Los Angeles city election here.
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.”
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Pelosi on a Mission
Brent Budowsky: Great dreams ultimately come true because of conviction politicians like Nancy Pelosi. Her mission lives on. Her work is far from done.