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Latest Articles: Opinions/Editorials
Obama’s Speech Puts GOP In A Corner
Post Date: 2011-01-26 10:57:27 by go65
0 Comments
President Obama put Republicans in something of a box last night. He oozed optimism, telling Americans in the last moments of his speech that, “From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream. That’s how we win the future.” http://abcn.ws/ffIYcE On the other hand, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., who gave the Republican response and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who delivered what was billed as the Tea Party rebuttal, both focused on the negative -- crushing deficit, the debt crisis, the ballooning size of government. “No economy can sustain such high levels of debt and taxation. The next generation will inherit a ...
A Tribute to Olbermann: Why He Is Different From the Pundits at Fox News
Post Date: 2011-01-24 12:08:44 by Ferret Mike
24 Comments
Black and white is easy; nuance is hard. Which is why it's much easier to just lump media outlets and personalities into simple boxes: left v. right, or partisan v. objective, for example. So if you want to play that game, it's easy to dismiss Keith Olbermann, who broadcast his final episode of Countdown on MSNBC Friday. It's simple to dash off a hack piece (like this one in the Daily Beast, which revealed its simple-minded bona fides by invoking the right's favorite jab at Olbermann: he used to work in -- gasp! -- sports) that lumps Olbermann in with Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, as if they all do the same thing just because they are all loud and aggressive. I know nuance ...
Seven Reasons Why The GOP Faces An Uphill Battle To Defeat Obama
Post Date: 2011-01-23 18:09:10 by Brian S
2 Comments
President Obama’s chances of winning a second term have significantly improved over the past couple of months. The election is a long way off, but the strategy sessions for Obama’s reelection are already under way. Some of the president’s senior aides, including David Axelrod, will soon be leaving Washington for Chicago to focus on one thing: making Obama a two-term president. Obama’s poll numbers have been on the rise since Republicans won 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate last November. Perhaps more importantly, Obama’s moves to distance himself from the liberal wing of his party come as 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls are moving to the right ...
Poverty and Recovery
Post Date: 2011-01-23 10:56:59 by go65
4 Comments
In 2008, the first year of the Great Recession, the number of Americans living in poverty rose by 1.7 million to nearly 47.5 million. While hugely painful, that rise wasn’t surprising given the unraveling economy. What is surprising is that recent census data show that those poverty numbers held steady in 2009, even though job loss worsened significantly that year. Clearly, the sheer scale of poverty — 15.7 percent of the country’s population — is unacceptable. But to keep millions more Americans from falling into poverty during a deep recession is a genuine accomplishment that holds a vital lesson: the safety net, fortified by stimulus, staved off an even more damaging ...
I'm declaring February a Palin-free month. Join me!
Post Date: 2011-01-21 23:34:10 by Ferret Mike
8 Comments
Though it is embarrassing to admit this in public, I can no longer hide the truth. I have a Sarah Palin problem. I have written about her in 42 columns since Sen. John McCain picked her as his vice-presidential running mate in 2008. I've mentioned her in dozens more blog posts, Web chats, and TV and radio appearances. I feel powerless to control my obsession, even though it cheapens and demeans me. But today is the first day of the rest of my life. And so, I hereby pledge that, beginning on Feb. 1, 2011, I will not mention Sarah Palin -- in print, online or on television -- for one month. Furthermore, I call on others in the news media to join me in this pledge of a Palin-free ...
Wave Goodbye To Confederate Flag's Influence On Virginia's Identity?
Post Date: 2011-01-21 12:37:50 by Brian S
1 Comments
If the Sons of Confederate Veterans were looking to do prominent Virginia Republicans a favor, they couldn't have done much better than slam them in as public a forum as possible. Which they did: The Sons held a D.C. news conference Tuesday - one day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day - to attack Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and former senator George Allen for their insufficient fealty to Virginia's Confederate heritage. Their version of it, anyway. McDonnell and Allen, said Michael Rose, the group's top official in the commonwealth, "have ignored, denied and even insulted our Virginia history and heritage." It was "Undoubtedly, A Welcomed Criticism," as Too ...
GOP Wants Palin To “Sit Down And Shut Up”
Post Date: 2011-01-20 14:47:11 by Brian S
2 Comments
On Tuesday, a remarkable thing happened among the possible contenders for the Republican presidential nomination: Newt Gingrich warned Sarah Palin to be more careful about her incendiary rhetoric. Yep, you read that right. Newt Gingrich, the king of incendiary rhetoric, champion of rhetorical fireballs, the emperor of verbal excess, cautioned Palin about watching her words. Watch him, interviewed by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: That’s just one more sign of how worried Republican leaders are about the prospect of a Palin presidential run. Her negatives are climbing; a recent poll gives her an unfavorable rating of 53 percent, the highest disapproval she has scored since John ...
Petty Woman
Post Date: 2011-01-19 13:32:18 by go65
1 Comments
The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cPetty Woman www.thedailyshow.comDaily Show Full EpisodesPolitical Humor & Satire BlogThe Daily Show on Facebook
The Myth Of 'American Exceptionalism' Implodes
Post Date: 2011-01-18 19:42:27 by Brian S
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Until the 1970s, US capitalism shared its spoils with American workers. But since 2008, it has made them pay for its failures Richard Wolff guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 January 2011 13.00 GMT larger | smaller Article history A homeless encampment known as Tent City, in Sacramento, California, in 2009. Since the 1970s, real wages stopped growing and the gap between rich and poor expanded as the US economy slowed down after decades of growth. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP One aspect of "American exceptionalism" was always economic. US workers, so the story went, enjoyed a rising level of real wages that afforded their families a rising ...
President Barak Obama: Toward a 21st-Century Regulatory System
Post Date: 2011-01-18 11:37:25 by Brian S
3 Comments
For two centuries, America's free market has not only been the source of dazzling ideas and path-breaking products, it has also been the greatest force for prosperity the world has ever known. That vibrant entrepreneurialism is the key to our continued global leadership and the success of our people. But throughout our history, one of the reasons the free market has worked is that we have sought the proper balance. We have preserved freedom of commerce while applying those rules and regulations necessary to protect the public against threats to our health and safety and to safeguard people and businesses from abuse. From child labor laws to the Clean Air Act to our most recent ...
Palin's egocentric umbrage
Post Date: 2011-01-18 09:17:00 by go65
2 Comments
In the spirit of civil discourse, I'd like to humbly suggest that Sarah Palin please consider being quiet for a while. Perhaps a great while. At the risk of being bold, I might observe that her faux-presidential address about the Tucson massacre seemed to fall somewhat flat, drawing comparisons to the least attractive public moments of such figures as Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. I could go so far as to observe that Palin almost seemed to portray herself as a collateral victim. Surely a former governor of Alaska - who served the better part of an entire term - would never seek to give the impression that she views any conceivable event, no matter how distant or tragic, as being All ...
The Class War Launched by America's Wealthiest Is Getting More Savage
Post Date: 2011-01-17 17:55:46 by Brian S
17 Comments
It’s the corporations and the very wealthiest against all the rest of us. We’re losing.In 1962 the wealthiest 1 percent of American households had 125 times the wealth of the median household. Now it’s 190 times as much. Is that a case of a rising tide lifting all boats, just a few of them a little bit higher? No.From 1950 to 1965, median family income rose from $24,000 a year to $38,000 a year. That’s close to 4 percent a year, close to 60 percent over 15 years. That’s a rising tide.In 1964 there was a big tax cut. That’s when things started to slow down for average people. By the mid-'70s the rise of the middle class stalled. From 1975 to 2010 median ...
The War on Logic
Post Date: 2011-01-17 12:39:48 by go65
20 Comments
My wife and I were thinking of going out for an inexpensive dinner tonight. But John Boehner, the speaker of the House, says that no matter how cheap the meal may seem, it will cost thousands of dollars once you take our monthly mortgage payments into account. Wait a minute, you may say. How can our mortgage payments be a cost of going out to eat, when we’ll have to make the same payments even if we stay home? But Mr. Boehner is adamant: our mortgage is part of the cost of our meal, and to say otherwise is just a budget gimmick. O.K., the speaker hasn’t actually weighed in on our plans for the evening. But he and his G.O.P. colleagues have lately been making exactly the ...
Palin’s Other, Much Bigger ‘Jewish Problem’
Post Date: 2011-01-16 19:16:24 by Brian S
7 Comments
I facetiously noted yesterday that Sarah Palin probably wasn’t to blame for her use of the expression “blood libel” — a term associated with anti-semitism since the Middle Ages — because she had probably just picked it up from an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. As politicians like to say, I’m now “re-thinking” what I wrote because it looks like Palin has a bigger “Jewish problem” than just parroting an old expression. This morning, when I read an in-depth piece in Huffington Post, written by Jordan Zakarin, it reminded me of Palin’s long association with Wasilla Bible Church, and her stated religious views which, to this writer, ...
Americans Are Figuring Out Who Is World’s No. 1
Post Date: 2011-01-14 11:45:05 by Brian S
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Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Nine percent of Americans think Japan is the world’s top economic power, and that raises an obvious question: Huh? If we knew exactly who that current-events-challenged minority was, we could make a bundle sending them e-mails on how to redeem unclaimed fortunes in Nigerian banks. Thankfully, most Americans got it right in a Jan. 5-9 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. It’s that China, not the U.S., is on top, reflecting a marked shift in attitudes after the global financial crisis. Make that Asia in general. When John Calverley, global head of macroeconomic research at Standard Chartered Bank in New York, predicts annual world ...
As Obama Urged Unity, Palin Brought Division
Post Date: 2011-01-13 16:06:24 by Brian S
15 Comments
President Obama did not miss the moment. From the generally positive overnight reaction, Obama's speech in Tucson on Wednesday night struck just the right notes. Amid grief over a senseless tragedy and against a raging debate that threatened to further divide the country, the president urged healing and reconciliation rather than recrimination and hatred. The role of mourner-in-chief is relatively new in the history of the presidency, but it is now an important part of the job description for anyone who seeks the nation's highest office. In times of tragedy, people turn to presidents to help soothe the pain and bind the wounds, to give hope at times where there is little or resolve ...
Rattling The Cage: Still Want To Bomb Iran?
Post Date: 2011-01-13 13:40:43 by Brian S
5 Comments
If ever the term “game-changer” could be applied without fear of exaggeration, it can be applied to Meir Dagan’s statement a week ago, on his last day as Mossad chief, that Iran will not have nuclear weapons before 2015. And that’s the worst-case scenario, he told reporters and Knesset members – that’s if Israel, the US and the rest of the world suddenly take the pressure off and let Iran go on its merry way to the bomb. If, on the other hand, the campaign of covert operations – i.e. sabotage and assassination – and sanctions continues, then, Dagan said, Iran will be unable to go nuclear for many years beyond 2015. This is extraordinary news in and ...
Why the Tucson Speech Succeeded
Post Date: 2011-01-13 12:23:05 by Brian S
3 Comments
Because it was hopeful and positive, even joyous, rather than morose. The standard comparisons of the past four days have been to Ronald Reagan after the Challenger disaster and Bill Clinton after Oklahoma City. Tonight's speech matched those as a demonstration of "head of state" presence, and far exceeded them as oratory -- while being completely different in tone and nature. They, in retrospect, were mainly -- and effectively -- designed to note tragic loss. Obama turned this into a celebration -- of the people who were killed, of the values they lived by, and of the way their example could bring out the better in all of us and in our country. That is to Obama's ...
The President's Speech
Post Date: 2011-01-13 10:06:42 by go65
1 Comments
Barack Obama spoke to the city of Tucson, and to the United States of America, not so much as our President tonight, but as a member of our family. He spoke as a son--I couldn't help but think of his personal regret over not being by his mother's side when she passed as he said, "Did we spend enough time with an aging parent, we wonder." You could see the devastation insinuate itself onto, and then be quietly willed away from, his face. He spoke as a brother to his fellow public servants, killed and wounded in the events--an eager brother bringing the glad tidings the Gabrielle Giffords had opened her eyes. He repeated it, joyously, three times. But most of all, he spoke ...
Obama Brings It Home
Post Date: 2011-01-13 10:01:11 by go65
0 Comments
Maybe President Obama was saving the magic for a time when we really needed it. We’ve been complaining for two years about the lack of music and passion in his big speeches. But if he’d moved the country when he was talking about health care or bailing out the auto industry, perhaps his words wouldn’t have been as powerful as they were when he was trying to lift the country up after the tragedy in Tucson. “Our hearts are broken, and yet our hearts also have reason for fullness,” he said, in a call to action that finally moved the nation’s focus forward. The days after the shootings had a depressing political rhythm. There was the call for civility, followed ...
Palin Fails the Test - Sarah Palin's response to the Tucson shooting is defensive, illogical, distracting—and late.
Post Date: 2011-01-12 19:53:54 by Ferret Mike
1 Comments
Sarah Palin's name has risen and fallen in concert with the Tucson shooting that injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. As Charles Krauthammer argues, she has been unfairly tied to a madman's rampage. Perhaps this is the post-hoc political burden when you traffic in images and talk of guns. Unfair, yes—but then, politics isn't fair. And it's also true that this moment presents an opportunity for Palin. We judge our politicians in part on what they make of unfair circumstances, on how they rise to an occasion. Palin did not do well. Her statement on the shooting and our political discourse, blasted out on all her social media channels, arrived as the national conversation was ...
Poor, Poor Sarah
Post Date: 2011-01-12 19:48:53 by Brian S
0 Comments
So let me get this straight.Twenty people were gunned down at a supermarket in Arizona on Saturday. Six were killed, including a nine-year-old girl. Fourteen others were wounded, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was the main target of the attack, and who was shot through the head. She is currently lying in a hospital bed with half of her skull removed because brain swelling from her bullet wound could kill her.Twenty people shot.Six killed.Fourteen wounded.And guess what?It appears Sarah Palin is the principal victim of the shooting. No, really.Don't believe me? Watch the video she posted to her Facebook page. There she sits, in front of a fireplace and beside an American flag ...
The Rise Of Fanatical 'Israeli Ayatollahs' Is A Godsend For Anti-Zionists
Post Date: 2011-01-12 18:48:13 by Brian S
0 Comments
Last week, Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman compared Turkey with Iran before the 1979 Islamic revolution. But if Mr Lieberman were to be honest, he’d recognise that the greater threat to Israel from rising religious fundamentalism comes from within – on an almost daily basis. At the same time as he was doing his tough-guy act with the Turks, Israel’s High Court was buckling to the fait accompli of sexually segregated bus services (women at the back) on over 100 state bus routes, demanded by an emboldened ultra-orthodox community. On the same day, an Israeli activist who defied orthodox Jewish custom by leading a group of women in open prayer at ...
Fort Hood Terror v. Neocon Arizona Terror
Post Date: 2011-01-12 14:30:11 by Brian S
0 Comments
When news of the 2009 Fort Hood Massacre broke, the most tenuous evidence was used to paint the killing as the work of Al Qaeda and other Islamic groups. (Fox) “The murders at Ft. Hood are about the radicalization of individuals by an extremist ideology — jihadism — which fuels acts of terror,” writes Walid Phares at FoxNews.com’s Fox Forum. But suggestions that Sarah Palin-Glenn Beck-Michele Bachmann-gun-toting Tea Partiers-Jesse Kelly’s “shoot a fully automatic M1683; to “get on target for victory” might constitute a “radicalization of individuals by an extremist ideology” evoke expressed shock and outrage by the neocons. At the ...
FOX "News" Pushes Antisemitism Angle Knowing the Shooter Was Jewish
Post Date: 2011-01-12 11:41:08 by Jack
3 Comments
Whatreallyhappened reports that FOX was informed that the shooter is Jewish, but they've shut down the comments section and refused to correct this story. www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1320522/pg1 Latest on shooting of Congresswoman Giffords...motivation: anti Semitic and she was the target Greta Van Susteren | January 9, 2011 8:11 AM Below is a note from my FNC colleague Jennifer Griffin: (by the way, the fact that my blogs focus on Congresswoman Giffords in no way is meant to take away from the other victims and their families. The tragedy is immeasurable and words inadequate.) ---- Per Griffin This is an internal memo obtained by Fox News put out by DHS compiling ...
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