Progressive Media Advocates
Charley James: When the GOP convention is gaveled to order, America will see the largest collection of anti-knowledge know-nothings to gather under one roof since Pope Urban VIII and his Inquisition minions met to condemn Galilei Galileo for writing that the earth revolved around the sun.
Brent Budowsky: An Obama-Clinton ticket would increase the president’s popular and electoral votes. It would increase voter turnout for Democrats and elect more Democrats to the House and Senate.
Brent Budowsky: Obama 2.0 is singing on key to the real America, talking about matters they care about, battling for policies that will better their lives, championing the American notion of fair play and taking to voters a narrative that is clear, consistent and compelling.
Why are today’s politicians drawn to Theodore Roosevelt? Is it his political beliefs and achievements? No, says historian Rosemarie Ostler. It is more likely his pugnacious personality and his pungent way with words.
President Barack Obama: I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules.
Tina Dupuy: Historians agree the best Republican President was also the first: Abraham Lincoln. Who’s second runner up? Which President has represented Republican values best? Easy. President Barack Obama.
Tom Degan: It’s interesting to speculate what Lincoln and Roosevelt would make of their party today. It’s not much of a stretch to say that the both of them would be just a tad dismayed to see that it has been overtaken by half-wits and crazy people.
Jerry Drucker: There’s nothing coy about the GOP’s chortling copious concepts concerning constant corrupt collaboration created by cunning, conniving, crooked cronies and calculating cohorts, conveniently ignoring the conflict of interest law.
Stephen Hess: Looking back, a wonderful perch at the Brookings Institution for nearly four decades has allowed me to write books I have wanted to write, almost equally divided by subject between the presidency and the news media; for sheer fun, however, I recommend political cartoons.
Tom Degan: Then there is the core of the Democratic vote, the so-called “base”. Like the half-witted six-year-old who didn’t receive the toy he wanted for Christmas, they’re in the process of having a blue-faced tantrum. Because they didn’t get all of that nice hope and change stuff that Barack Obama promised them two years ago, they’re just going to stay home and sulk on Election Day.
Brent Budowsky: Harry Reid led Senate Democrats to a large majority in historic elections, while Senate Republicans obstruct everything to negate those elections, which has never been done in the history of the republic. Voters who want more action to create more jobs should vote for more Harry Reids, and fewer Senate Republicans.
Joel K. Goldstein: Critics ridiculed President Obama’s statement that judges should be empathetic. But as the Senate prepares to vote on the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan, legal historian Joel Goldstein argues that senators should be looking for that very quality.
Robert Reich: Tuesday night, President Obama did not call for a tax on carbon. He didn’t even ask the Senate to pass the cap-and-trade legislation that emerged from the House. Instead, he said there were lots of good ideas out there and he’s willing to consider any of them — which seemed more like a way of declaring cap-and-trade dead.
Walter Moss: We can grant that capitalism can have many beneficial effects and that other systems like socialism can have their defects, nevertheless the essence of capitalism is the selling of goods and services and making a profit, and it has no higher moral goal. Essentially an economic system, it provides no adequate answers for how to deal with such problems as unsafe working conditions, unfair business practices, pollution and other environmental degradation, public health, slum housing, or the abuse of child labor. This absence of any higher comprehensive social philosophy led to efforts to supplement it by providing an overall philosophy of the public good. This absence led to Progressivism.
Steven Conn: A Republican member of Congress wants to remove the visage of Ulysses S. Grant from the $50 bill and substitute Ronald Reagan. But why? Historian Steven Conn speculates that the party wants to make its past match its present orthodoxy.
One of the reasons so many of us worked so tirelessly for nearly two exhausting years was because of your long-standing commitment to genuine change in the way health care is delivered and paid for in the United States.
I have concluded that Republicans are, by their very nature, cowards. Let us look at the evidence. First, instead of fighting a war that we really should have been fighting (like addressing real issues about who we are in the world community), we went to a trumped up war based upon lies and innuendo in [...]
The Congress of the United States began in the City of New York on March 4, 1789, and in order to prevent an abuse of its powers, created the Bill of Rights, consisting of the first 10 Amendments of the Constitution. This was done to extend public confidence in the Government to best ensure the [...]
Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers: Now there is no need to cut essential services with extreme austerity; instead there is an opportunity to invest in a new, sustainable economy based on clean energy and to correct so much of the misdirection of the nation.
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.
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
Obama’s Peace Prize Continues Tradition of Dubious Choices
Only a few commentators, including the president, seemed to sheepishly realize the irony of his receiving the prize shortly after escalating one war and while continuing to fight another. You would have thought that the escalation alone would have been enough to satisfy all of the warheads at home; but to stanch the domestic fallout from being associated with too much peace, Obama, when accepting the peace award, gave a speech defending war.