Lauren Windsor: I am competing to win a scholarship to an important political media conference, Netroots Nation, and I need your help.
Occupy the Ballot: A Public Forum on Popular Movements and Independent Politics
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A meeting of the minds with a range of community organizers including Ron Gochez, Marcy Winograd, Bilal Ali, Michael Feinstein, Kim MaGill and others and organizers who are working to develop alternatives to the current corporate-dominated political system.
The Great Realignment
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Brent Budowsky: President Obama blew it, but he can still lead Democrats to a landslide victory in 2012 by understanding the sources of the third great realignment in more than a century, which should have been realized after his election in 2008.
Forum: Getting Money Out of Politics – Tuesday, July 10th
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ACLU-SC Pasadena/Foothiils Chapter forum on Getting Money Out of Politics, with Mary Beth Fiedler of Move to Amend LA and Stephen Rohde, ACLU Southern California board member — Tuesday, July 10, 7 p.m., Pasadena
Welcome to the New Normal America
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Joseph Palermo: Wall Street banks should be pouring money into Obama’s reelection since he’s been so good to them, and the neocons should be rejoicing in his establishing precedent for more unchecked executive power.
What Should Government Do?
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Steve Hochstadt: Unless Iran actually puts our nation in mortal danger, declaring war on Iran would violate the trust that Americans put in our government. It’s what our government shouldn’t do.
How Democrats Exploit Occupy
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Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer: The 99% Spring is the latest effort by those close to the Democrats to take advantage of Occupy, but the results were less than spectacular.
California Primary Election: Most Boring Ever
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Randy Shaw: Expect a record percentage of absentee votes next week, which might lead to calls to make June contests vote by mail only.
Latino Vote: Romney Is Lost in Translation
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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.
Ideological Amplification: When Ideology Turns Toxic
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Charles Hayes: Ideological amplification in politics is analogous to conflict-ridden emotion on steroids: the only purpose served is to move each side further and further apart.
Mexican Spring: Occupy Moves South
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Unai Montes-Irueste: Mexico’s youth, the leaders of the “Mexican Spring,” are not copycats, they are building on a foundation that activists laid over one year before the “Arab Spring.”
Can Obama Stop Casino Capitalism?
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Shamus Cooke: The banking oligarchy is so intertwined with the political and economic establishment that real regulatory change cannot happen until the system itself is transformed from below, by a powerful social movement. Pleading to politicians to fix so-called Casino Capitalism is increasingly naive.
Trust Me: You Believe in Gun Control
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Tina Dupuy: Just like cutting taxes doesn’t increase revenue—making gun ownership unlimited doesn’t make us safer. It’s a lie. A fairy tale of the gun lobby. Completely unsupported by data or logic. A falsehood.
Extreme Partisanship Leaves Voters with a Dilemma
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Steve Hochstadt: One of the facts of small town American life, which is often held up as the American ideal, is that nasty partisan politics are tempered by the bonds of friendship and the need to get along with your neighbors.
Austerity Fails: The First Domino Falls in Greece
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Shamus Cooke: Unity in an economically polarized country like Greece is impossible, especially when the continued existence of the bankers and wealthy rests on the continued suffering of everybody else.
Government “Debt” Isn’t What You Think
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Worrying about government debt is like worrying about the monster under the bed. The issue isn’t debt, it’s power.
Black Ministers Follow Obama on Same-Sex Marriage Stance
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Rev. Irene Monroe: For African-American ministers, the liability of Obama losing his 2012 re-election bid is far greater than being publicly outed for not being in lockstep with their homophobic brethren.
Obama’s Evolving Position on Same-Sex Marriage Similar to Lincoln’s Evolution on Antislavery
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Like Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama has been “tardy.” Pushed by developments beyond his control, Obama’s public positions on marriage equality have continued to progress, though gradually.
The Great Populist Wave
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Brent Budowsky: It is time for the true champions of the 99 percent to launch the largest voter-registration, -mobilization and -turnout campaign in the history of freedom.
Save Money by Ending Costly Alliances
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Ivan Eland: I noted that if the United States continues to provide other nations’ security, they have no incentive to provide their own. After all, if someone offered to pay your mortgage, why would you pay it?
Dreaming of Hillary in 2016?
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Victoria Defrancesco Soto: If the Democratic primary were to be held today Hillary Clinton would receive 57 percent of the vote with Vice President Biden coming in at a distant second with less than 20 percent.
America Heads Back to the Future
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Randy Shaw: Many white Americans yearn for the days when racism was not “an issue.” White attitudes toward George Zimmerman’s actions confirm this.
Right-Wing Supreme Court Judges Join GOP War on Women
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Brent Budowsky: If the Supreme Court throws out the healthcare law as unconstitutional it will foment a powerful political backlash and escalate the judicial front in the war against women.
Can New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez Fix GOP Ladies’ Problem?
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Victoria Defrancesco Soto: Its going to take more than seeing a fellow woman on the presidential ticket to woo Independent and Democratic leaning women, but then again didn’t the GOP already learn that lesson?
Trim the Fringe and There’s No GOP Left
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Berry Craig: The Republican food fight for the presidential nomination has proved “moderate” is as dirty a word as “liberal” in the tea party-tilting GOP.
C-SPAN Is America
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Brent Budowsky: While our politics have become a shouting match of pander and slander, name-calling and talking points, celebrity media and instant misanalysis, C-SPAN shines as an exemplar of what a free press in a free nation should be.
Kony 2012, Does Social Media Oversimplify?
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Matthew Kavanagh: From Twitter trending to the front page of The New York Times to public statements by the White House and the Pentagon, the Kony 2012 campaign has shown the power of social media to affect U.S. public debate – but what about the dangers of oversimplification?
What We Can Learn from Surveys
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Steve Hochstadt: Once the enforced segregation of black and gay Americans into closets and ghettos was broken, discriminatory ideas have lost their persuasive power.
Americans Elect: The Political eHarmony
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Victoria Defrancesco Soto: In late spring of this year, Americans Elect will hold a primary consisting of three rounds of online balloting where the six candidates with the most votes will emerge. Anyone can vote as long as they are a registered voter.
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Friday Feedback: Same-Sex Marriage Ban Bigotry
This week, Reggie Brown comments on Sheria Reid’s article, “Same-Sex Marriage Ban: Bigotry Isn’t Only a Southern Brew” which addresses the banning of same-sex marriage in 31 states.