Progressive Media Advocates
Tina Dupuy: The U.S. just spent a trillion dollars “liberating” Muslims in two countries and helping them democratically elect leaders. You’d think we’d all be super pro-Muslim judging by our national budget. But no, “Muslim” has a negative connotation because of terrorists on 9/11.
Mike Price: I’m an old guy with a bad leg, a mine-shattered spine, and a damn hose in my nose. I have no choice. The case of emphysema I won for smoking several million cigarettes has moved into its final stage. All life may be terminal, but emphysema writes its own last act.
Sherwood Ross: The Pentagon is rapidly improving its ability to fight wars with robots. This capability is “bringing about the most profound transformation of warfare since the advent of the atom bomb,” says Scientific American, and raises “a host of ethical and legal issues.”
Adam Eran: Consume-atives proclaim we should cut something but seldom propose anything specific. The plan is for bankruptcy court to sort that out, rather than making consume-atives a target for blame. “Take 10% off the top” is another, meaningless Republican proposal in recent budget negotiations. What does that mean, though? Let 10% of the prisoners out? Only treat 90% of the sewage?
K. Danielle Edwards: By the time I’d reached high school, no longer chunky, I’d developed a fat phobia that resulted in all sorts of unhealthy behaviors. I skipped meals, counted calories, restricted my diet, filled up on water, and did cardio most days of the week. I got into single-digit clothes sizes and seriously challenged my genetic predisposition toward curves and muscle. My practices probably resulted in me depriving myself of an extra inch of height
Seth Hoy: After weeks of negative press, calls for boycotts, and talk of legal challenges to Arizona’s law, Gov. Brewer is on the defensive—as evidenced by trotting out Sarah Palin to launch a new website. For the most part, Palin used Arizona’s controversy as a soap box for her Tea Party talking points—Washington: broken, President: bad, Sarah: good.
Charley James: Almost unnoticed in the haze of big oil’s petro-fumes, GasLand explores how the natural gas industry’s push to drill more wells may be responsible for as much environmental harm to individual people as big oil is to the globe.
Brad Parker: Americans, behavior-modified to trust advertising, swimming in the dead pool of propaganda environmentally disguised as benign advertising and Infotainment, continue to cop to the Triangulating Fog Machine’s all sizzle no steak obfuscation. The only question left to ask, now that the confidence game is more widely known, is – will they keep buying it like a beaten dog or wake up and demand their money and government back?
No where in this war-torn nation do we find a focus on principles that the United States claims to prize so much. The people I met with didn’t ask for a new election: they asked, “Where is the democracy?”
While the health insurance industry’s immoral, amoral and, sometimes, illegal treatment of policyholders is an appropriate prime culprit and target in the current push for reform, the fact is that physicians, hospitals and drug companies are getting an undeserved pass by much of the media.
While ICE claims they are targeting serious criminals, the majority of persons ICE identifies and deports do not actually have any serious criminal records.
There is an admirable strain of pacifism among many Democrats, especially among Democratic activists. Every rational, compassionate individual dislikes war and seeks to avoid it whenever and wherever possible. Yet there are circumstances in which war can be justified from a moral standpoint as well as that of national interest.
Michael Moore’s newest film explores a taboo question that will make the right wing go apeshit yet again: What price does America pay for its love of capitalism?
Like abuses of legitimate rank, the use of illegitimate rank is a source of humiliation and indignity. Both expressions of rankism are indefensible violations of human dignity.
nd at home, from the likes of Salazar and Vilsack, we get a nondescript ‘balanced’ approach to environmental stresses – kind of like my adolescent son’s diet – half health food, half junk food.
Complaining to Fox News, or even CNN about Lou Dobbs, for instance, does not always seem productive. Boycotting sponsors/advertisers seems a stronger way to protest.
From the time Barack Obama became a fixture on the national stage, I have eyed Michelle Obama with an uneven mix of appreciation and disappointment. It’s not about her fashion sense, though she’s been ridiculed for accentuating her hips and baring her toned arms by folks with twisted aesthetic sensibilities and outright hate. It’s not [...]
Meet one of the “winners” from the Association for Alternative Newsweeklies 2009 awards. The above inflammatory PW cover art is for the AAN award-winning article Hater Nation, an article on an anonymous letter received by the PW threatening Obama’s life. (hmmmm, could troll Aaron Proctor be the author of this letter?? he and Joe were [...]
Is Fox News host Glenn Beck our own Father Charles Coughlin, the “radio priest” who railed against Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s? That’s become a common refrain among liberals, who hear echoes of Coughlin in Beck’s attacks on President Obama. Conservatives recoil at the charge, of course, noting that Coughlin vilified Jews. No matter [...]
Jay Severin, a radical right-wing talk show radio host from Boston, has been indefinitely kicked off the air after making some brazen comments, including calling Mexicans “primitives” and “women with mustaches and VD” who “leech” off the U.S.. More specifically, Boston’s WTKK-FM decided to suspend Jay Severin after the following comments sparked deep concern among [...]
In a recent online town hall meeting at the White House, President Obama was asked by the online audience whether he thought legalizing marijuana would create jobs and help the economy. It was the most popular question asked at the meeting.
For those of you worried about militant radical homosexuals, you can rest easy because Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, a “newly reorganized national organization devoted exclusively to exposing and countering the homosexual activist agenda,” is out to protect you. AFTAH seeks a “single-minded determination” to oppose “the radical homosexual agenda (while) standing for God-ordained sexuality [...]
by Charley James – By now, no one should be surprised that the White House is taking its usual, uneven and heavy-handed approach in reacting to the gargantuan Israeli shock-and-awe bombing of densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip.
by Sherwood Ross – In violation of its pledge to the United Nations not to recruit children into the military, the Pentagon “regularly target(s) children under 17,” the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) says.
The Human Rights Campaign has a list of many California businesses that gave money to support to Proposition 8 campaign. Outraged, betrayed, offended, and legally diminished GLBT citizens and their allies across the country are fighting back against the absence of equality in the US for all by refusing to spend their dollars with companies [...]
The Los Angeles Times has rarely offered a fair and balanced portrayal of the black community. It usually was (is) a strategic player in the witch hunt to depose black leaders, no matter who they were (are). Whether it was former Lt Governor Mervyn Dymally, the late Mayor Tom Bradley, former Police Chief Willie Williams, [...]
I grew up in the Twin Cities, a prosperous and bucolic community hard on the banks of the Mississippi, the last major metropolitan area until you Lewis-and-Clark yourself over the Rockies. Minneapolis and St. Paul are filled with wide, tree-lined streets, good schools, close-knit families, a welcoming spirit, pride in a deep civic commitment, home [...]
By Tad Daley — I once asked a journalist friend, who had been chained inside the courtroom every single day of the O.J. Simpson trial, the obvious question. “Did he do it?” Or had the LAPD, instead, planted a boatload full of fake “evidence,” in an effort to frame the famous defendant? “How do you [...]
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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Poizner Smears Whitman for Sharing Obama’s Immigration Position in California Governor’s Race
Andrea Christina Nill: A businessman like Poizner should also be sensitive to the fact that California could risk losing $164.2 billion in expenditures, $72.9 billion in economic output, and approximately 717,000 jobs if it removed all of its undocumented immigrants.