Progressive Media Advocates
Seth Hoy: Although the President has pledged his support for the DREAM Act, mounting GOP opposition will make it increasingly difficult for Sen. Harry Reid to find the 60 votes necessary for cloture on the amendment next week, assuming the Defense Authorization bill makes it through round one, the motion to proceed, next Tuesday.
Tom Degan: Glenn Beck – The louse that roared. Does the FCC have any rules about incitement to violence? If they don’t, they really should. The other day on his nationally syndicated radio program Beck made the claim that America can expect violence in the very-near future — and that the president of the United States will be the instigator!
Robert Reich: I am continuously amazed at the GOP’s ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of potential victory. It is the gift that keeps giving.
Tom Hall: As the new Tea Bag Republicans virtually guarantee gridlock and a forced double dip depression, the voters will again turn on them, giving a chance, in 2012, to candidates who offer real solutions, real progress, real hope. If we can find any.
Robert Reich: The economy needs two whopping corporate tax cuts right now as much as someone with a serious heart condition needs Botox.
Paul Hogarth: Despite all the ranting right-wingers make about “terrorists” and how much they accuse liberals of being “un-American,” their worldview has far more in common with Islamic fundamentalism – from a violent jingoism, to the treatment of gays and women, to a rejection of science. American Taliban is a much-needed dose of reality for the upcoming election, as Republicans magnify the non-issue of a proposed Islamic community center in Manhattan.
Brent Budowsky: Make no mistake, the party of Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy is planning a new era of Nixonian and McCarthyite abuses to repeat the politics of persecution it attempted against the Clintons when Republicans had control of Congress.
Robert Reich: Republicans lack specific policies but they have a story. Obama and the Democrats have lots of specific policies but don’t have a story. That spells even more trouble for Democrats.
Robert Reich: Democrats should propose eliminating payroll taxes on the first $20,000 of income, and making up the revenue loss by applying payroll taxes to incomes above $250,000.
Michael Sigman: Newt’s bilious public statements, along with damning quotes in the Esquire piece from his second wife (out of three, so far) Marianne and from former long-time Republican congressman Mickey Edwards, suggest that Newt’s regeneration does not appear to have included a new heart.
Berry Craig: In today’s uber-conservative Republican party, President Eisenhower would be a socialist, too, even a Red, and Nixon would be a liberal.
Randy Shaw: The Republican Party and Democratic so-called “deficit hawks” attack any proposed defense cuts as “job killers.” Yet this alliance refused to save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, and have backed tax and spending policies that have cost the nation millions of jobs in recent years.
Michael Sigman: Is this just human nature, or can we be happy about our achievements without causing an equal amount of suffering in someone else?
Tom Hall: A conservative Republican judge, appointed by George H.W. Bush has done what the Tea Party activists have been demanding – he restored the Constitution. Judge Vaughn Walker held that the U.S. Constitution, and its provisions requiring equal protection of the laws, required that Proposition Hate be stricken down.
Seth Hoy: Although the Supreme Court has consistently upheld birthright citizenship, year after year restrictionist groups and legislators trot out the “repeal birthright citizenship” mantra in the hopes of adding a few more immigration extremists to their dog and pony show audience.
Tina Dupuy: Espousing virtues you don’t personally have to live up to is basically the point of being a Republican.
Steve Hochstadt: When conservative Republicans controlled Washington under George Bush, they spent government money on their pet projects with little regard for the long-term budgetary consequences. Now Republicans at the national level have made the deficit one of their major points of attack against the Democrats in preparation for the November elections.
Jerry Drucker: The gloomy, ghastly, glutted, gutted Gulf will not be able to supply many millions of Americans with food, or clean and healthy resort beach fronts, or Gulf businesses, perhaps for decades. What’s the solution to this mega problem?
Tina Dupuy: A right-of-center nation would have never embraced the extremely liberal notion of public retirement insurance for its citizens. And government-funded health care for seniors like Medicare?! That’s not “free market” – that’s not “freedom.”
Andrea Nill: Palin informed O’Reilly that she would do “whatever it takes” to secure the border, including “militarizing” the border with 10,000-15,000 National Guard troops and building a wall.
Seth Hoy: The point is that the “federal government’s responsibility”—a government which Sens. McCain and Kyl are certainly a part of—to reform our broken immigration system is being thwarted by the same senators who complain that the government isn’t doing enough.
Carl Bloice: With high unemployment and no jobs, the actions of those in Congress who hold up the extension of benefits to the unemployed are morally repugnant. making it. The fellow who said the jobs are not coming back failed to say where they went.
Jerry Drucker: Carly Fiornia, as a good lockstep Republican, would be all for turning control and regulations over to Big Oil, Big Banks, Big Wall Street, and Big Corporations.
Andrea Nill: At a recent town hall meeting in Tempe, Arizona, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) announced that President Obama is “holding border security hostage” to immigration reform. Kyl claims that Obama suggested in private that Democrats won’t secure the border because, if they do, Republicans will have no reason to support immigration reform
Michael Sigman: Roughly a third of Al’s votes came from soul and pop music lovers who believed they were voting for sexy Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Al Green, nee Albert Greene. Green, who was a superstar who sold millions of records in the ’70s, also evoked sympathy from voters who remembered he was once doused by his girlfriend in a sea of boiling grits.
Seth Hoy: while advocating for the allocation of more money and manpower to “secure the border” may make for good campaigning in an election year, experts find that beefing up the border actually does little to curb border violence. In fact, these “get tough” border initiatives—more troops, fencing and operations that target non-violent border crossers—pull valuable resources away from solving violent crimes.
Andrea Nill: Lucas Restrepo, M.D., published a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine that provided a whole new angle on the effect SB-1070 will have on the medical profession. Restrepo points out that, under the law, health care providers who treat undocumented immigrants could be considered criminals.
Seth Hoy: While President Obama and Gov. Brewer agreed that “federal inaction on a comprehensive immigration overhaul is unacceptable,” she has done nothing to substantiate that notion. Meanwhile, Gov. Brewer admits that crime is down in Arizona (as well as other border towns), even though she has repeatedly claimed that her state is “under siege” from border crime
Tina Dupuy: Because these giant corporations are getting a free pass by the very premise they create jobs, they’re in essence piling their tax burden onto their workers.
Ivan Eland: Unfortunately, even if the law is not changed, civil liberties groups already have a perpetual war on their hands–despite the decimation of the main al Qaeda group.
Rev. Irene Monroe: Not enough is ever accurately reported about hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people of color, and how issues of race, gender identity, and sexual orientation trigger the type of violence against them. Nor are the reasons for the silence around such violence often explored.
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