Progressive Media Advocates
Lauren Steiner: Please help us spread the word across Los Angeles! Come with signs that say “Bruce Karsh, please don’t sell the LA Times to the Kochs” and “Bruce Karsh, our democracy is not for sale” We are gathering Thursday, May 23 for a rally and march.
Tina Dupuy: False equivalency benefits the right. A pox on both your houses disengages people from the political process and that helps Republicans. As we’ve seen in the midterms: When fewer people vote, more Republicans get into office.
Tina Dupuy: As far as Romney goes, I really don’t know who this dude is: I’ve watched dozens of speeches, read hundreds of articles and sat through 23 national debates and I can’t tell you where Romney stands on any issue.
Mark Bowen: There may be nothing any of us can do about the way the media has been completely taken over by the charter school movement’s Thought Police, but that is no excuse for those who are supposed to be progressive making it worse.
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.
John Peeler: So if current patterns holds, Romney’s backers will give him solid support in his base, but won’t be able to deliver much outside the base.
Bill Fletcher: The “circle of clowns” of Republican candidates seems increasingly intent on proving that they are the voices of ignorance, fear and irrationalism. I cannot get over it.
Ruth Rosen: Any successful movement must change the national conversation and create and dominate the terms of debate. This the Occupy movement has successfully done, for now.
Berry Craig: Anonymous bloggers with paranoic predilictions see themselves as heroes, blowing the cover off “Comrade” Obama’s “secret FEMA concentration camps” and his “clandestine UN armies.”
Brent Budowsky: Rick Perry’s impersonation of Ron Paul is caused by Perry’s panic while his campaign collapses, while terrified Republicans try to entice the freshman governor and unqualified Chris Christie to enter the race.
Caitlin Vega: It’s time to stop using this economic downturn to take away workers’ rights, eviscerate environmental protections or slash our safety net. Let’s get real about what we need to move California forward. It’s all about the jobs.
Shamus Cooke: Listening to Congress debate deficit deduction is like listening to a den of lions discuss the welfare of zebras. In both cases the debate is very one-sided.
John Peeler: The economy, like the polity, ought to be democratically controlled. Democracy should operate at the level of the firm as well as the community: employees should be owners.
Paul Hogarth: One of the Navy Seals who carried out the mission was a so-called “anchor baby” – the son of undocumented Mexican immigrants, who the American Taliban wants to strip of U.S. citizenship rights.
David Swanson: The problem is that the interests of the Israeli government, far from always representing the Israeli people, in no way represent those of the American people or the people of Virginia.
Shamus Cooke: This two-party big lie is not an accident, but an expression of a deeper held belief: that the U.S. government must be directed to meet the needs of the super wealthy who own U.S. corporations.
Andrea Nill: Over the past month, real estate mogul Donald Trump has made quite a name for himself as a right-wing birther.
Tom Degan: I now unabashedly question the geography of where the president was born, Dag nap it! If it’s good enough for Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, it’s good enough for me!
Robert Reich: I hope the President decides he has to take a stand, and the sooner the better.
Shamus Cooke:
For all the positive things Chavez has accomplished as President, he is in danger of becoming another Salvador Allende — a martyr whose death ushered in a right-wing dictatorship.
Jim Fuller: With the super rich now in control of the White House and Congress, they have begun an attack on a whole new set of goals, and those people are determined. Sherman’s march to the sea was a tea dance by comparison.
David Swanson: If our government is, uniquely among wealthy countries, denying people healthcare, shouldn’t we talk about that? How “sane” can it be to always seek out the middle ground and believe whatever propositions lie halfway between advocacy for peace and justice and advocacy for glorified racist ignorance and corporatism?
Tom Degan: Those in the extreme right who like to pretend that they’ve cornered the market on patriotism need to be exposed for what they are – ideological snake oil salesmen. All we have to do is open our eyes to see the damage that their thirty-year domination of our political conversation has done to this country.
Sylvia Moore: It seems to be far easier to punish a broadcaster for one f-bomb dropped on the air, than it is if the same on-air personality unleashed a tirade of bigoted garbage.
Tina Dupuy: Now, to drum up hysteria about this alleged rash of pregnant Mexican border hoppers, the GOP’s idea is to change the Constitution so that being without papers is treated more harshly than treason.
Berry Craig: The poll numbers hint at the biggest GOP edge: the U.S. is the most conservative country in the Western democratic world. “Liberal” — which means centrist or center-left in other industrial democracies — is as far left as mainstream American politics flows. The U.S. is the only industrial democracy that doesn’t have a significant democratic socialist or social democratic party.
Jonathan David Farley: His normally sluggish organization, which took three months even to discuss what to do, if anything, when a Life Member was receiving death threats from Klan supporters, reacted in one day when racist liars, who wanted a black woman’s head, ordered the heir of W. E. B. Du Bois to step and fetch it.
Andrea Nill: Proponents of Arizona’s new immigration law, SB-1070, have a new talking point: they are now arguing that if the Department of Justice (DOJ) is going to legally challenge SB-1070, it should also go after “sanctuary city” policies as well. “Sanctuary city” is a right-wing derisive term used to describe cities that have adopted community policing policies that prevent police from asking about the immigration status of or detaining and arresting immigrants solely for being undocumented.
Ruth Rosen: Why have American women become so active in the right wing Tea Party movement? Could it be that they are drawn to the new conservative Christian feminism publicized by Sarah Palin? Without its grassroots female supporters, the Tea Party would have far less appeal to voters who are frightened by economic insecurity, threats to moral purity and the gradual disappearance of a national white Christian culture.
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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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.