Ryan, Akin: Two More Reasons to Vote for Obama (tags)
On the eve of the Republican National Convention, two stories — Mitt Romney's choice of arch-conservative Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan as his running mate and Missouri Congressmember and Senate candidate Todd Akin's comment that women almost never get pregnant from "legitimate rape" — highlighted the vast differences between the two major parties. No progressive can possibly still believe that it makes no difference whether the Republicans or the Democrats win this year's election in the face of the overwhelming evidence that the Republicans plan (and, if they win, will enact) a sweeping change in U.S. government that will eliminate ALL business regulation, environmental protection and civil rights for women, people of color and Queers.
Two Hard Cases, Two Bad Laws (tags)
The November 14 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of so-called "Obamacare" and the November 17 decision of the California Supreme Court that the proponents of Proposition 8 have legal standing to appeal it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court are both disasters for the progressive community. But they also highlight the conflict between general principles of justice progressives should support and tactical positions in specific cases that may work to our short-term advantage but cause us problems later on.
America's Unequal Heritage (tags)
Though a lot of the Tea Party's pretensions to be representing the original intent of the authors of the U.S. Constitution are wrong and even silly, there's one issue on which the Tea Party is right. The authors of the U.S. Constitution really did intend this country to be a limited republic, governed by an elite representing the large landowners who were the 1 percent of their day. The Constitution's principal author, James Madison, called "an equal division of property" one of the "improper or wicked projects" the Constitution was designed to prevent.
Public Workers’ Struggle Is Our Struggle (tags)
Though it ended in a setback when the Republican majority in the Wisconsin state legislature used legally dubious tactics to ram the bill through anyway, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s plan to strip his state’s public workers of the right to form unions and bargain collectively has engendered nationwide resistance from America’s increasingly embattled working class. Tens of thousands of people from Wisconsin and elsewhere flooded Madison, the state capital, and occupied the capitol building to protest Walker’s policies, and the Democrats in the Wisconsin State Senate left the state for three weeks to deny Walker and the Republicans the votes they needed to eviscerate the state’s union movement. America’s working and middle classes need to stand strong and fight back in the face of these efforts by the corporate and radical Right to deny the non-rich any voice whatsoever in America’s politics.
The following is an editorial written for the March 2011 issue of Zenger’s Newsmagazine before the uproar in Wisconsin over the bill introduced by that state’s governor, Scott Walker, which would essentially destroy public-sector unionism in that state and therefore likely be the final nail in the coffin of America’s labor movement as a whole. People — not just union workers directly affected by the proposal but others as well — have turned out in the streets and blockaded the state capitol, while “Tea Party” counter-protesters have been mobilized nationwide by talk radio and Fox News to come and support the governor. The Wisconsin protests have been compared to those that recently brought down Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak — though America’s corporate media have carefully avoided that analogy — but despite the uproar over Walker’s bill, America’s white working class has so far remained largely opposed to the progressive agenda and supportive of radical-Right attempts to destroy what’s left of America’s social safety net.
The November 2 midterm elections were not only a decisive rejection not only of the Obama administration but a full-scale endorsement of free-market economic policies and lassiez-faire capitalism — albeit by a much smaller segment of the American electorate than voted Obama and the Democrats into power in 2008. Millions of Americans voted against the party under whose watch unemployment has risen from 6.2 to 9.5 percent, and bought into the Republicans' critique that the reason for Obama's failure is he's been too much of a progressive, unduly burdening the private sector with regulation and taxation. Thanks to talk radio and Fox News, millions of Americans profoundly believe that Obama and the Democrats are far more radical than they are — and as long as they remain on the air and have their current level of influence, U.S. politics will continue to move even further Right.
In the Streets for Human Rights: A People Without Borders (tags)
The recent immigrant rights demonstration in San Diego May 1 was inspiring, but a real solution to the immigration question will come only when we can disenthrall the American people from hateful corporate propaganda that pits disadvantaged groups against each other and convinces millions of Americans that their economic and social problems are caused by people below them, not people above. So-called “illegal” immigrants are just another in the long line of scapegoats corporate and Right-wing propagandists invoke to keep people confused and lead them to challenge each other instead of their corporate overlords.
Sep 2nd, 2009 9:09 PM Despite the sweeping Democratic victories in the elections of 2006 and 2008, the Republican party in general and the radical Right in particular have reasserted themselves with a vengeance, especially regarding the health insurance reform proposals of the Obama administration and Congress. They’ve been able to tap into the same reflexive anti-government sentiment that has powered American politics at least since Ronald Reagan’s election (and arguably earlier) to block the reform proposals and set the stage for a Republican return to power that will render Obama as irrelevant historically as Carter and Clinton -- and without a mass progressive movement to push Obama and the Democrats back to the Left, the Right will succeed and triumph.
Commentary: State Supreme Court Hears Prop. 8 Cases (tags)
Not everything that is unjust is therefore unconstitutional. That's the lesson the progressive community should learn from the California Supreme Court's oral hearings on Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage recently approved by a narrow majority of California voters. Instead of relying on the courts to secure our rights, we should be doing education, direct action and other tactics to win majority support for equality.
Somalia: US Foreign Policy and Gangsterism + Leaked emails (tags)
The failed UN/US intervention of 1993 led directly to the triumph of the warlords, who plundered, raped, and murdered their way through the streets of Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, and reduced the country to Mad Max territory. The same deadly chaos - made in the US - now again foments more hate.
Mark Dankof to Al Ahram on Bush, PNAC, and the Coming War With Iran (tags)
Old Right Topic News editor Mark Dankof tells Al Ahram of Egypt why the Real American Right opposes George Bush, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and the coming war with Iran.
Alito Confirmation: A Straussian Neocon Fait Accompli (tags)
if I was a betting man, I'd say this is precisely what will happen: another nine eleven, possibly one of a larger magnitude, will put the finishing touches on the murder of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
The Strauss Factor and the War Without End (tags)
Using the neo-con takeover as a successful blueprint, we can build another kind of victory, not the war without end but the end of war - a victory for the people and the Earth.
Who's watching the watchers? How the ADL and SPLC have moved into goosestepping tandem with the FBI to observe the people..
A Bush/Rove plan to OUTLAW homosexuality (& dissent)? (tags)
In the wake of an election riddled with irregularities, before most states have certified their election results, with recounts being called for in several states, and long before the Electoral College has cast the only deciding "vote" for President, the Bush Gang is reportedly cooking up plans to continue marching toward religious dictatorship while shredding what's left of the Constitution. Read up, spread the word--and PLEASE DONATE NOW to the recount effort!
Universal fascism, freedom betrayed: What is Mr. Bush doing in your name? (tags)
In every age...the ultimate sources of war are the beliefs of those in power: their idea about what is of most fundamental importance and may therefore ultimately be worth a war. -- Evan Luard,
An Interview with Eustace Mullins (tags)
This author's world, like yours, changed forever on that September morning in 2001. I knew immediately that we were being lied to, but like all members of my generation, I had very little real information upon which to draw. The vapid explanations of the government, relayed through an owned media, were the incantations of a defrocked priesthood in my eyes and those of my peers.
Who deserves to be mourned in America? part II (tags)
Was the settlement of white colonists on Native-American land a just and beautiful cause? If so, what are we to make of the Israeli Zionists' attempted colonization of Palestine?
Ann Coulters Crummy New Screed (Character Assassination) (tags)
In short, Ann Coulter has once again revealed herself as one of the most destructive forces in American politics, repeatedly making outrageously irrational arguments and demonstrably false claims. "Treason" is the culmination of a dismaying trend toward factually misleading and inflammatory books from pundits such as Michael Moore, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage. These authors may delight partisans and make their publishers rich, but their work impoverishes our political discourse.
"On June 3, the columnist Ann Coulter addressed a Republican women’s club in Jacksonville, Florida (see Anthony Gancarski, "An Evening with Ann Coulter"). In the course of her diatribe ... Coulter proclaimed that the Middle East is now 'George Bush’s bitch.' 'Bitch' in this sense is prison talk for the victim of homosexual rape.
The Curious Case Of 'Neoconservative' (tags)
"How can something exist and not exist both at the same time? The answer: by being neoconservative." How can one be a Trotskyite and claim to be a Conservative at the same time. Why by being a NeoCon.
Right-wingers claim African American Muslims are dangerous (tags)
When Roy Innis joined the Libertarian Party in 1998, he told Party officials, "You have the kind of principles this country needs more of." More recently Innis alerted DOJ representatives about the potential for an "alliance" between Middle Eastern terrorists and domestic black Islamists.
Our Troops "They Died For Ariel Sharon" , (tags)
"Our troops will be fighting a proxy war in Iraq, and beyond, not to protect U.S. citizens from terrorist attacks, but to make the world safe for Israel. When the dead are buried, let the following be inscribed on their tombstones: They died for Ariel Sharon."
Our Troops "They Died For Ariel Sharon" (tags)
"Our troops will be fighting a proxy war in Iraq, and beyond, not to protect U.S. citizens from terrorist attacks, but to make the world safe for Israel. When the dead are buried, let the following be inscribed on their tombstones: They died for Ariel Sharon."