Sharon Kyle: Cenk is viewed as a kindred spirit by many in the Caucus, partly because of his unyielding progressive stance but also because Uygur is no stranger to challenging the status quo.
Civil Disobedience as a Strategy for the Occupy Movement
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Tom Hayden: If there’s enough people and they all sit down and say “We want to appeal to a jury of our peers, which is our Constitutional right,” that’s something that should make the decision makers take pause because I don’t think juries are going to convict these people.
Voice Labor Settlement: High Drama or Foregone Conclusion?
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Michael Sigman: When a news story you know a little about comes along, the coverage in the mass media makes you wonder about everything else emanating from the world of “objective” journalism.
We Get the Media We Want
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Tina Dupuy: Especially in America where the vast majority of our media is profit and ratings driven – the media is programmed by us to give us what we want. Whether we like to admit it’s what we want or not (think stories about whoever is filling the role of a Kardashian or a Bieber).
Why Keith Left
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Mike Price: Everybody seems to have a theory about the “real” reason for Keith Olbermann’s sudden departure from MSNBC. Mine, not that anybody asked, is that it had something to do with his insistence upon reading James Thurber to us every Friday at the close of his show.
Extreme Right 3, American People 0
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Jim Fuller: With Olberman gone, MSNBC is left with Rachel Maddow, its number two star up to now, and Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell. The network executives, for a time anyway, will be comfortable with that lineup.
Devil vs Details
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Wendy Block: Frank Luntz gets paid big bucks, by the right, to play these linguistic tricks on the rest of us; it’s our job to catch his sleight-of-hand and call him on it, and to encourage all the non-political junkies we know to recognize his misdirection for what it is.
“Truth or Consequence” – How Did You THINK It Was Going to End Up?
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Scott Prosterman: The Tea Party Nation issued a statement, “We didn’t intend for this to result in violence.” Huh? How did they think it was going to end up?
Kentucky Governor Green Lights Noah’s Ark Park
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Berry Craig: The Creation Museum has been rightly ridiculed by scientists and others – including many Kentucky Christians — who don’t think evolution is “evil-lution.”
Random Thoughts
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Tom Degan: The 20th century was the American Century. The 21st will be the Chinese Century. Our representatives (from both sides of the aisle) will see to that. Get used to the idea.
It’s Only Unethical When It’s Called ‘News’
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Tina Dupuy: Why doesn’t the Left have a Fox News? Why isn’t there a liberal version of political organizing on television? There are currently nine 24-hour news stations, so why isn’t there one that’s outright for progressives?
Only in America
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Berry Craig: Like Reagan, Tea Party candidates are delivering what Tea Partiers want: simple answers to complex issues. Never mind that there never have been simple answers to complex issues.
Why Liberals Don’t Stand a Chance in the Corporate Media
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Joseph Palermo: Our political spectrum, as refracted through the lens of corporate media, runs from center-right to far-right. No wonder the conventional wisdom in Washington holds, without evidence, that the United States is a “center-right” country. Those making that argument might not be real, informed commentators — but they play them on TV.
The Politics of Taxes
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Tracy Emblem: Bush Tax cuts have conferred the most benefits, by far, on the highest-income households – those least in need of additional resources – at a time when income already is exceptionally concentrated at the top of the income spectrum.
Markos Moulitsas Speaking in LA September 22nd
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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 SEPTEMBER 22 to support the LA Media Reform Group’s annual media summit.
Progressive Media Bolstering Republican & FOX News Agenda
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Randy Shaw: Here’s a thought. What if the progressive media stopped reporting on every silly idea promoted by Sarah Palin and used that time to report on positive actions by the federal government to help people. I get emailed press releases announcing such accomplishments each day, so the stories are out there but are not covered.
There Is No Ground Zero Mosque
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Sharon Kyle: In response to Anthony Samad’s article, “Ramadan: The Best Time To Discuss America’s Growing Anti-Muslim Sentiment”, we posted a quick simple poll to gauge the sentiments of the LA Progressive community on the construction of an Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero.
“This Is Really About Tearing Obama Down”
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Berry Craig: 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.
Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance
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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.
Helen Thomas: Asking the Questions Real Democracy Demands
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Lydia Howell: When one considers how many scoundrels remain in powerful positions in both public and private life, the swiftness with which Helen Thomas was dumped after 50 years of reporting on U.S. presidents was breathtaking. More so when you listen to TV talking-heads blandly repeating corporate and Pentagon PR as “news” and Faux News blowhards like Beck and Limbaugh shamelessly make vicious slanders, perpetrate outright lies and create disinformation.
Information Terrorists Hijack Our Airwaves
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Nomiki Konst: While Obama has done an admirable job ignoring the Tea Party outbursts and outlandish claims and focusing on moving his agenda forward, Maddow, Matthews, Olbermann, Colbert, Stewart, Cooper, Crowley, Sanchez and Shultz have missed an incredible opportunity to vocalize the progressive agenda while they have the floor. For eight years, progressives were unable to bring their agenda to the table and had to constantly act on the defensive.
Outrage Is All the Rage
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Michael Sigman: It’s often momentarily satisfying to react to outrage with more outrage. For years, I’ve rooted like a sports fan for MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann when he righteously matched and even outstripped the bile of the ignorant Right. But during his recent absence from the airwaves, it’s been a tonic to follow Laurence O’Donnell’s more reasoned approach and Rachel Maddow’s measured, humorous way of skewering the opposition.
Democrats Never Had Sixty Votes; Sixty Votes Never Mattered
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Paul Hogarth: With Scott Brown now pledging to be the 41st vote to kill health care reform, Democrats cannot react by ramming through a bill before the Senate seats him. Republicans are not interested in governing; it’s time to pass a real bill through reconciliation.
New Study: Public Option Popular In Blue Dog Districts, Across Nation
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Isn’t it w-a-y past time for the president, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to call out Democrat opponents for what they are: Lying shills who are in the pocket of insurance companies, and who have no regard for the problems of their constituents.
Time Magazine Gives Glenn Beck a Rave Review
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It is a terrible disservice to Time readers to have such a glowing and legitimizing article on a person who is becoming richer each day by playing on the fear and anger of his fellow citizens in a period of economic crisis and practicing the same despicable tactics as Joseph McCarthy.
LA Progressive: August 9 to August 15, 2009
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Red-Baiting and Racism: Socialism as the New Black Bogeyman. This noise is about race. It is about “othering” a President who is seen as a symbol of white dispossession: dispossession of white hegemony, white entitlement, white expectation, and white power, unquestioned and unchallenged from the darker skinned other. -Tim Wise McClintock’s Neocon “Morality” Tortures the [...]
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Charley James Returns: Now, What Was I Saying … ?
Charley James: I’d turned my back on modern health care to wait for Godot after a virulent cancer returned for the third time. Then, traditional Chinese medicine did what regular docs couldn’t. I beat the odds and was coming back – until a 1%-er caught up with me. Over the past three years, my life got turned upside down. Just like America’s.