|
Latest Articles: The Water Cooler
Trust in Fox News Plummets: Poll
Post Date: 2011-01-20 11:44:35 by Brian S
4 Comments
In the space of one year, Fox News has lost its perch as the most trusted TV news network in the US and is now average at best, a new survey has found. A poll gauging public trust in TV news has found that PBS is the most trusted name in news, while trust in Fox News has dropped significantly. According to a survey from Public Policy Polling, "a year ago a plurality of Americans said they trusted Fox News. Now a plurality of them don't." In a survey taken a year ago, PPP found that Fox was the most trusted news network, with 49 percent saying they trusted the network, and 37 percent saying they did not. In the new poll, 42 percent said they trusted the network while 46 percent ...
CBS Almost Reported Reagan Was Mentally Unfit In 1986
Post Date: 2011-01-20 11:42:35 by Brian S
1 Comments
Two sons of former President Ronald Reagan have been engaged in a public disagreement over whether their father exhibited early signs of Alzheimer's disease while still in the White House. Veteran CBS reporter Leslie Stahl, who saw Reagan have mental lapses in 1986, could possibly play a role in settling that feud -- or cause it to become even bigger than it already was. In his new book, titled "My Father at 100," Ron Reagan, who's identified himself as a liberal and an atheist, wrote that in 1984, he began to "experience the nausea of a bad dream coming true" with regards to his father's mental condition. The younger Reagan added that as early as 1986, his ...
Dixie is So Gay: Surprising Census Info About Gay Parents in the South
Post Date: 2011-01-19 17:11:55 by Brian S
3 Comments
The Times has a great piece today that defies a lot of the common stereotypes of what it means to be gay in America. Since 1990, the Census has been a gold mine of information about LGBT couples for creative demographers. Despite the lack of any question about sexual orientation (hence, no info on single LGBT Americans), the 2010 Census looked at married gay couples for the first time. Times reporter Sabrinia Tavernise interviews UCLA demographer Gary Gates in this article, who challenges the idea that LGBT Americans are "all rich white guys" living in West Hollywood or the West Village. Based on recent Census findings, the article states: - Raising children by same-sex couples ...
Top Ten Horrible Things Done To Us By Outgoing Sen. Joe Lieberman
Post Date: 2011-01-19 11:59:06 by Brian S
1 Comments
Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) announced Tuesday that he would not seek reelection in 2012, and progressive Americans breathed a sigh of collective relief. It is worth reviewing the most horrible things Lieberman has done to us since he has been in office. 10. Undermined Jeffersonian ideals by joining with George W. Bush to throw government money to religious organizations. Lieberman & Bush 9. Revived, with Lynn Cheney, McCarthyite techniques in order to harass and intimidate university professors who dared attempt to explain the historical and political context for the rise of al-Qaeda and its attacks on the United States. He even put out a blacklist of 40 university professors and ...
Tea Party Unpopularity Rating Reaches All-Time High
Post Date: 2011-01-19 11:46:34 by Brian S
7 Comments
Two months after they voted in droves to topple Democrats from the House and expand Republican voices in the Senate, the tea party movement's disapproval ratings have reached a new high, according to a new ABC/Washington Post poll. Fifty-two percent of the US public had an unfavorable view of "the political movement known as the Tea Party," the survey found, as opposed to only 35 percent who approved. "Nearly three-quarters of Democrats -- including as many moderate and conservative as liberal members of the party -- have negative views of the political movement, as do half of all independents," the Post reported. The same poll conducted in September found that 45 ...
GOP Governor: Only Christians Are My Brothers
Post Date: 2011-01-18 19:48:38 by Brian S
1 Comments
Robert Bentley, the new Republican governor of Alabama, delivered an oddly exclusionary message on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Birmingham News (via Political Wire) reports: ''I was elected as a Republican candidate. But once I became governor ... I became the governor of all the people. I intend to live up to that. I am color blind." ... ''But if you have been adopted in God's family like I have, and like you have if you're a Christian and if you're saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister." ...
50 Years On, Eisenhower’s Warning On Military Industry Rings True
Post Date: 2011-01-18 11:27:06 by Brian S
9 Comments
The term "military-industrial complex" entered the American lexicon 50 years ago today, when President Dwight Eisenhower warned of its dangers in an unusually frank farewell speech to the nation. "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience," Ike said in a televised address on January 17, 1961. "The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all ...
AP Dismantles GOP Claim That Health Reform Will Cost Jobs
Post Date: 2011-01-18 11:23:34 by Brian S
1 Comments
As House Republicans prepare Tuesday to take up a bill repealing the sweeping health care overhaul, they face an awkward fact-check permeating the news wires that effectively dismantles their central argument against the reforms. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) argued in a recent report that the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act, enacted last March, will cause "significant job losses" in the United States -- up to 650,000, he said -- citing the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The claim is so important to the Republican Party's opposition strategy that they've titled the bill, "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act." But as Ricardo ...
Obama Lauded on Response to Tucson; 78 Percent Approve of Obama's Response, GOP Gets More of the Blame
Post Date: 2011-01-17 19:21:39 by Brian S
3 Comments
GOP Gets More of the Blame The survey more generally finds blame for the political tone spread across a variety of groups. Half the public says the Tea Party political movement and its supporters, as well as political commentators on both side of the ideological divide, have "crossed the line" in terms of attacking the other side. Forty-five percent say the Republican Party and its supporters have done the same; fewer, 39 percent, say so about the Democratic Party and its supporters, reflecting the Democrats' continued broader allegiance overall. On all of these, there are sharp divides politically and ideologically, as detailed below. Response Specifically, in terms of ...
New GOP Watchdog's Criminal Past; Rep. Issa Was Accused Of Car Theft, Arson
Post Date: 2011-01-17 19:02:26 by Brian S
2 Comments
Sounds like just the type of guy you want heading up an investigation: The New Yorker revisits old reports of criminal misdeeds by Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican congressman who will lead the House’s investigations of the Obama administration. When Issa first ran for office in 1997, a look into his past revealed multiple accusations of car theft, an arrest for possession of an unregistered gun, and allegations that he burned down his electronic-parts business to collect insurance money. A former employee also says that Issa fired him by threatening him with a gun. Issa denies the arson and blames most of the car incidents on his brother, who served time in prison. Read it at The ...
Angry Progressive Coalition to Protest Billionaire Gathering Hosted by Koch Brothers, Major Tea Party Funders
Post Date: 2011-01-17 17:52:12 by Brian S
2 Comments
Increasingly, Democrats, liberals and progressives are coming to understand that the Koch brothers, a secretive right-wing billionaire family that pours limitless money into virtually every destructive anti-democratic initiative affecting tens of millions of Americans, are "Public Enemy Number One." More and more, leaders and activists are shifting tactics and confronting the Kochs face-to-face, challenging their efforts to steal the American Dream and drown out the voices of ordinary Americans by buying our democracy, and trying to take control of civic and economic life. The Kochs' goal appears to be nothing short of transforming America into a radical right-wing, ...
Progressives To ‘Uncloak’ The Secret Financers Behind The Tea Party
Post Date: 2011-01-17 11:47:21 by Brian S
1 Comments
Progressive and liberal activists are planning at the end of the month to confront the secretive billionaire family that finances the so-called Tea party movement and a host of other right-wing causes and institutions. "Our government is supposed to be of, by and for the people. So are you ready to take it back?" an invitation for the "Uncloaking the Kochs" event asked. The Sunday, Jan. 30 event thrown by Common Cause, a nonpartisan, grassroots organization, aims to educate attendees in California on the Koch brothers who will be strategizing nearby with their mega-wealthy allies to win the 2012 elections. Afterwards, activists will rally in Rancho Mirage. "We ...
GOP Senator: Federal Ban On Child Labor Is Unconstitutional
Post Date: 2011-01-17 11:46:26 by Brian S
1 Comments
Newly minted Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said in a lecture posted to his YouTube channel that Congressional laws banning child labor are forbidden by the US Constitution. Lee, a fierce advocate for the Tenth Amendment who replaced longtime Republican incumbent Bob Bennett in the Senate this month, argued that only states have the constitutional authority to create such laws. "Congress decided it wanted to prohibit that practice, so it passed a law. No more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that law, and the Supreme Court decided a case in 1918 called Hammer v. Dagenhardt," Lee said. "In that case, the Supreme Court acknowledged something very ...
Ex-Bush Speechwriter Denounces Right’s 'Paranoid Narratives’ About Obama
Post Date: 2011-01-17 11:45:04 by Brian S
0 Comments
Conservative David Frum on Sunday criticized some on the right for embracing "false and paranoid narratives" about President Barack Obama that he said were contributing to a toxic political climate. "The thing I worry about is not rhetoric. It’s the construction of paranoid narratives," Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush who now runs his own blog, said on CNN's "Reliable Sources." "When people say that Barack Obama is deliberately trying to destroy the economy of the United States in order to overthrow the constitution and lead us to a Marxist dictatorship – you can say that without a single harsh syllable or negative ...
RNC Vote Shows Limits Of John Boehner's Reach
Post Date: 2011-01-15 12:27:28 by Brian S
0 Comments
Members of the Republican National Committee sent a clear message Friday to the rest of the GOP when they elected Reince Priebus as their new chairman: There’s at least one corner of the Republican Party that’s beyond House Speaker John Boehner’s reach. Boehner worked hard to prop up the candidacy of longtime operative Maria Cino, a veteran campaign hand who held senior offices at the RNC and the National Republican Congressional Committee. But in the end, it wasn’t Boehner — the highest-ranking Republican official in the country — who decided the race to replace RNC Chairman Michael Steele. Rather, it was an aggressive and assertive collection of RNC ...
Tea Party Group Took Thousands Of Dollars From Dead Woman, Records Reveal
Post Date: 2011-01-14 15:41:02 by Brian S
9 Comments
Someone out there wants the tea parties to stay well funded, and they're willing to break the law to ensure it. The California-based Tea Party Express has been getting donations from a dead woman for more than two years, records released Friday showed. Joan Snyder Holmes died of cancer on Feb. 1, 2007, but gave the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, the group's political action committee, donations totaling $2,500 in 2009, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics. In Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, the PAC reported receiving an additional lump sum donation of $5,000 in September. The FEC has no record of Joan Holmes making any reportable contributions to ...
Tucson Shooting Victim Blames Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Sharron Angle
Post Date: 2011-01-14 15:23:38 by Brian S
21 Comments
A wounded survivor of the Tucson shooting that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is blaming Sarah Palin, House Speaker John Boehner, Fox TV host Glenn Beck, and former Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle for the tragedy. “It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Eric Fuller said in an interview with Democracy NOW. “Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled — senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all, even 9-year-old girls,” he added, referring to the death of Christina Taylor Green. Fuller, a ...
O'Reilly: I Defended Palin -- So Why Won't She Come On My Show?
Post Date: 2011-01-14 15:02:43 by Brian S
0 Comments
Last night on The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly displayed a sensitive side. Nominally, O'Reilly had fellow Fox Host Gretchen Carlson and Republican strategist Margaret Hoover on to discuss why Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) have "avoided" the media since the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 18 others in Tucson last Saturday. But it quickly became clear that O'Reilly was really only interested in talking about why the two women haven't been on his show. "Why not come on and kick it around?" O'Reilly said, after noting that Palin was slated to appear on Sean Hannity's show on Monday. O'Reilly said ...
Fox News Anchor Advocates Internet ID System To ‘Tone Down The Viciousness’
Post Date: 2011-01-14 14:52:53 by Brian S
2 Comments
The host of the Fox News Channel's "On The Record With Greta Van Susteren" suggested an identification system for Internet users seeking to post and comment at online venues, predicting it would lighten up the national dialogue. "I guarantee this would tone down the viciousness on the internet (and not step on the First Amendment)" was how she titled a post on her FoxNews.com blog "GretaWire." It was a response to a wide-ranging national debate on partisan rancor sparked by the tragic shootings last Saturday of twenty people in Tucson, Arizona, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was critically wounded. Greta Van Susteren's solution was to ...
GOP Leader Endorses Bipartisan Seating At State Of The Union
Post Date: 2011-01-14 14:14:02 by Brian S
0 Comments
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Friday endorsed the idea for mixed seating at the State of the Union address. He joked he may get to sit next to Democratic whip Steny Hoyer (Md.). “Steny Hoyer and I try to talk quite often and I would enjoy sitting next to him. I’d go sit by them [Democrats]. It’s an opportunity here and I think the American public would find it as a positive one,” he said. Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) originally proposed ending the tradition of divided seating for the president's State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. Lawmakers usually sit on their respective sides of the aisle, although there is no assigned ...
Nader: Progressive-Libertarian Alliance ‘The Most Exciting New Political Dynamic’ In US
Post Date: 2011-01-14 12:09:34 by Brian S
0 Comments
Prepare for the rise of libertarian progressives. That was the message earlier in the week from trends analyst Gerald Celente, who predicted that the rapid acceleration of wealth into the coffers of the ultra-rich would drive a global youth resistance movement in 2011 and reformat long-held political boundaries. And then there were two. Longtime American politics gadfly Ralph Nader, a man of many ideas almost diametrically opposed by most libertarian conservatives, said Wednesday that he sees a coming convergence of liberals, progressives and libertarian conservatives in the wake of a worsening financial crisis and dogged partisanship that's put the government into gridlock. Speaking ...
Poll: Obama A Better President Than Bush [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2011-01-13 12:36:25 by Brian S
41 Comments
Voters believe that Barack Obama has been a better president than George W. Bush and think that the country would be worse off if Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had won the 2008 election, according to a new poll. A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday showed that voters think Obama's time in the White House has been better than Bush's by a 46-30 percent margin. Twenty-two percent said they are about the same. Forty-one percent of voters also say that the country would be in worse shape if McCain was in the Oval Office. The poll shows Obama in a stronger political position than he was on the eve of the 2010 midterm elections, when he conceded that his party took a ...
What violent rhetoric? Another right-wing nutcase arrested for threatening congressman. Was O'Reilly the inspiration?
Post Date: 2011-01-13 12:28:00 by Brian S
2 Comments
Gee, and here I thought that all this talk about violent rhetoric was just a figment of our liberal imaginations: One arrested in threats against Seattle congressmanA California man accused of threatening to kill Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott has been arrested and charged in federal court. Charles Turner Habermann -- a 32-year-old Palm Springs, Calif., resident with a $3 million trust fund -- was arrested Wednesday morning on allegations that he made threatening phone calls to the office of the Seattle Democrat late last year. Federal authorities contend Habermann admitted to making the calls because he was angry about taxes, but said he wouldn't risk losing his trust fund by ...
("Weeper of the House") Boehner to Host RNC Party During Tucson Memorial
Post Date: 2011-01-12 19:09:02 by Brian S
0 Comments
Speaker John Boehner will host a cocktail party for the Republican National Committee at the same time that President Barack Obama will be addressing the nation at the memorial service for victims of the Tucson shooting. The Ohio Republican is holding a 7 p.m. cocktail reception Wednesday night for 168 RNC members, who are in the Washington area for an annual meeting. The event is sponsored by Boehner’s political action committee and will take place at Maryland’s National Harbor resort. The RNC party coincides with the 8 p.m. EST memorial ceremony at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where Obama will honor the victims of Saturday’s shooting rampage that left six dead and ...
Jewish Republicans Muted On Palin's 'Blood Libel' Comment
Post Date: 2011-01-12 15:28:08 by Brian S
9 Comments
Jewish Republicans had a muted reaction Wednesday to Sarah Palin's accusation that the media manufactured a "blood libel" while covering the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). The term "blood libel" refers to historical, false accusations that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish children for religious purposes. Persecutors of the Jews employed a "blood libel" mentality to justify acts of violence against them. Additionally, Giffords is Jewish. Former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, a member of the Republican Jewish Coalition's board of directors, did not address Palin's use of the phrase "blood libel" but said ...
Latest [Newer] 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [Older]
|
