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Beck’s Subtext: Expand the Right-Center White Front

September 1st, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Uncategorized

 

Beck's Rally: Onward Christian Soldiers

By Clay Claiborne

Progressive America Rising via Daily KOS

To hear Glenn Beck tell it, America is on a mission from the Christian God. He should know because not only does he talk to God, they have conversations. God even sent him $600,000 [miraculously appeared after pray] to help with the rally expenses. Now God wants you to do your part!


According to Beck, the country was founded by Pilgrims that were motivated by a love of liberty and a search for religious freedom. They didn't really want to come here but God made them do it. No other motivation for the founding of the new world could be considered. The search for gold, the desire for other people's lands, a suitable place to employ slave labor, etc., played no role in his historical narrative. George Washington wanted no more than to be a simple farmer [who owned slaves, I would add.] before he was called by Christ to led the army and then the country. So often during this three hour Glenn Beck fundraiser, he reminded me of Father Merrin in the Exorcist: "The power of Christ compels you, The power of Christ compels you." We simply have no choice in these matters. It is our duty to God. In this modern day version of Manifest Destiny, America is not just entitled to rule the world, it is compelled by Christ to do so. It is the 'white man's burden' for the post racial era.


And just as the profit motive had nothing to do with the founding of the United States, so it has nothing to do with our wars. All have been fought for altruistic motives and on the side of the angels. The millions that have died at the hands of American arms in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, El Salvador, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere play no role in this narrative. Other than as the objects of our gifts of Freedom and Democracy... no that's not quite right ... shall we say our conveyance of the Almighty's universal gifts of Freedom & Democracy, they don't exist. The Tea Party was at the Reflecting Pool to honor the warrior not fret over his victim.

Sarah Palin, "the proud mother of a combat vet" led off by telling us that the "warrior's stories are America's story." "Just a mom" Sarah Palin had the honor of introducing three heroes from America's Wars. As she introduced them, each of these heroes was brought out on stage amidst much applause and flag waving. The first was from Iraq. She told a story about how once his squad didn't kill a group of civilians but should have.

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Critical Problem for 2010: When Younger Voters Get Angry, They Stay Home

August 22nd, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in elections, youth and students

Young 'Millennial' Voters,

Hot Issues and Progressive Politics

by DemFromCT

DailyKOS

Young Americans are the linchpin of a new progressive era in American politics. So why aren't Democrats paying more attention to them?

That was the lead to an essay by E.J. Dionne in February as part of a series of articles he wrote outlining a huge problem. The younger voters (millennials, aka Gen Y, Gen Next, echo boomers, etc) are more liberal, less white and more accepting than their elders, but there's a catch, as EJ outlines:

Pew poll on millennials

 

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Proto-Fascist Update: Right Wing Using Anti-Islam Bigotry to Divide and Conquer

August 21st, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in elections, racism, rightwing

 

Fallout of Hate Is Spreading

Across America from 9/11 Site

By Joshua Holland
Progressive America Rising via AlterNet August 21, 2010,

Scientists building the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos referred to the coordinates where a test device was detonated as “point zero.” When the horror of nuclear warfare was unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the term “Ground Zero” entered our lexicon. The expression has come to mean the epicenter of a catastrophic event, be it a nuclear detonation, a disease epidemic or an earthquake. It is the point from which damage spreads, whether it’s radioactive fallout or a deadly contagion.

That the site of the World Trade Center has come to be known as Ground Zero illustrates how the American public has come to fetishize the attacks of 9/11. It’s not an apt analog for the physical destruction that resulted from the attacks on the World Trade Center. But it is an appropriate metaphor for the virulent and socially acceptable bigotry against Muslim Americans that has radiated out from Ground Zero and spread across the United States.

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Al Gore: Time for Tens of Thousands in the Streets Over Climate Crisis

August 18th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Green Energy, pushing obama

Gore calls for major protests

on climate change inaction

By Russell Berman

The Hill

08/17/10 - Former Vice President Gore is calling for major rallies to protest congressional inaction on climate change.

In a post on his personal blog headlined “The Movement We Need,” Gore linked to and quoted from an Australian wire service report that “tens of thousands of protesters … have taken to the streets across Australia to urge the major political parties to take action on climate change.”

“Across the world, when politicians fail to take action to solve the climate crisis, people are taking action,” Gore wrote.

He added after excerpting the news report: “It is my hope we see activism like this here in the United States.”

Gore noted he trained activists in Australia to deliver the slideshow that formed the basis for the documentary film that won him an Academy Award. A representative of Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection addressed the rally in Sydney.

Gore has in recent weeks stepped up his criticism of the Senate for its inability to pass a comprehensive energy and climate bill that would put a price on carbon. In a conference call with environmental activists last week, he reportedly said “the United States government in its entirety, largely because of the opposition in the United States Senate to taking action on clean energy and a solution to the climate crisis, has failed us.”

Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/114717-al-gore-calls-for-us-protests-on-climate-change-inaction



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‘Cheap Labor Conservatives’ – A Proper Label for Blue Dogs, the GOP and the Tea Party

August 17th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Unemployment, elections, rightwing

Defeat the Right Wing in Three Minutes With

Truth in Labeling and the 'Cheap Labor' Frame

By Conceptual Guerilla

Have you got three minutes. Because that's all you need to learn how to defeat the Republican Right. Just read through this handy guide and you'll have everything you need to successfully debunk right-wing propaganda.

It's really that simple. First, you have to beat their ideology, which really isn't that difficult. At bottom, conservatives believe in a social hierarchy of "haves" and "have nots" that I call "corporate feudalism". They have taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a "respectable" sounding ideology. That ideology is pure hogwash, and you can prove it.

But you have to do more than defeat the ideology. You have to defeat the "drum beat". You have to defeat the "propaganda machine", that brainwashes people with their slogans and catch-phrases. You've heard those slogans."Less government", "personal responsibility" and lots of flag waving. They are "shorthand" for an entire worldview, and the right has been pounding their slogans out into the public domain for getting on forty years.

So you need a really good slogan – a "counter-slogan" really, to "deprogram" the brainwashed. You need a "magic bullet" that quickly and efficiently destroys the effectiveness of their "drum beat". You need your own "drum beat" that sums up the right's position. Only your "drum beat" exposes the ugly reality of right-wing philosophy – the reality their slogans are meant to hide. Our slogan contains the governing concept that explains the entire right-wing agenda. That's why it works. You can see it in every policy, and virtually all of Republican rhetoric. And it's so easy to remember, and captures the essence of the Republican Right so well, we can pin it on them like a "scarlet letter".

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Keeping Smoke In Your Eyes: Right Wing Using Islam To Win in 2010

August 16th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in elections, rightwing

 

Shameless Schemers Like Sarah Palin,

the Tea Partiers and Right-Wing Christians

Start a New Religious War Against Muslims

By David Rosen
Progressive America Rising via CounterPunch
Aug 15, 2010 - The building of a Muslim community center in an abandoned building two blocks from the site of New York’s former World Trade Center has become the latest controversy in America’s long fought religious wars. The construction of the center, often referred to as a mosque, has become the latest rallying issue for the Christian right, Tea Party proponents and Republican operatives in their war to impose moralistic and corporatist values on America.

It is too early to know how the Muslim center issue will be resolved, but it is clear that the rantings of Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Abe Foxman (of the Anti-Defamation League) and others have played an important role pushing a local issue into the center-stage of national politics. Since the horrendous attacks of 9/11, Muslims in general and American Muslims in particular have been the targets of an undeclared religious war promoted by Christian fundamentalists and self-serving Republicans. For some among these religious zealots, Islam is a threat to their belief that the U.S. is a white Protestant nation. Over the last four centuries, Quakers, Mormons, Catholics, Jews and many others have been targets of religious persecution, often the victims of imprisonments, hangings, lynchings and other acts of violence.

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Reagan’s Stockman: It’s Worse Than You Think, Class War Is Coming Soon

August 11th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Unemployment, financial crisis, rightwing

 

Reagan insider: 'GOP destroyed U.S. economy'

Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts.

Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline

By Paul B. Farrell

MarketWatch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- "How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy." Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse."

Get it? Not "destroying." The GOP has already "destroyed" the U.S. economy, setting up an "American Apocalypse."

Jobs recovery could take years


In the wake of Friday's disappointing jobs report, Neal Lipschutz and Phil Izzo discuss new predictions that it could be many years before the nation's unemployment rate reaches pre-recession levels.

Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats' Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider -- someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology -- says about America, helps all of us better understand how America's toxic partisan-politics "holy war" is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.

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The Green Way Out Dept: Some of Them Know, But Face Too Much Greed and Too Little Courage

August 8th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Green Energy, structural reform

Green Recovery

A New Program to Create Good Jobs

and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy

Large windmills and solar panels in Atlantic City; the wind farm consists of five windmills that generate 7.5 megawatts, enough energy to power approximately 2,500 homes.

SOURCE: AP/Mel Evans

By John Podesta

Read the full report (pdf)

Written in 2008

The signs are clear: Our economy is in trouble. Falling home prices, foreclosures, bank failures, a weaker dollar, rising prices for gas, food, and steel, and layoffs in banking, construction, and manufacturing sectors are all indicators of serious economic strain—following a long period in which the middle class went nowhere even while the economy grew as a whole. What’s more, evidence suggests the current downturn will continue for at least another year.

At the same time, we face a growing climate crisis that will require us to rapidly invest in new energy infrastructure, cleaner sources of power, and more efficient use of electricity and fuels in order to cut global warming pollution. There is much work to be done in building smart solutions at a scale and speed that is bold enough to meet this gathering challenge.

It is time for a new vision for the economic revitalization of the nation and a restoration of American leadership in the world. We must seize this precious opportunity to mobilize the country and the international community toward a brighter, more prosperous future. At the heart of this opportunity is clean energy, remaking the vast energy systems that power the nation and the world. We must fundamentally change the way we produce and consume energy and dramatically reduce our dependence on oil. The economic opportunities provided by such a transformation are vast, not to mention the national security benefits of reducing oil dependence and the pressing need to fight global warming. The time for action is now.

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Jobs for All Dept: Dump the GOP’s Neoliberal Kool-Aid Down the Drain

August 6th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Jobs, elections, rightwing, trade unions

First Punish The Unemployed,

Then Declare War On The Employed

By Jason Linkins

Huffington Post

August 6, 2010 - Over the past few months, Congressional Republicans and skittish Democrats who've lingered too long at the Deficit Panic Kool-Aid Stand have made life extraordinarily difficult for the most vulnerable members of society -- the nation's unemployed.

Rather than extend unemployment benefits so that the millions of Americans who are out there busting their humps to find the needle-in-a-haystack that is a job of any kind, they've demanded that those benefits be offset, essentially punishing the unemployed for the deficits they giddily ran up for years.

It's been pretty embarrassing to watch, frankly. But at least no one's out there running on an actual platform of kicking those who have managed to secure employment out of work, right?

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Where is the Class Struggle? Are We Prisoners of Old Ideas?

August 2nd, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in poverty, trade unions

Solidarity Rally at Workers Occupation of Republic Windows

 

Class Struggle & the Crisis in the U.S.:

A Look at Social and Economic Effects

Restructuring and Methods of Adapting

 

By  Henri Simon

Introduction

The text below first appeared in ECHANGES, No, 130, Autumn 2009 as part one of a three part series on the social effects of the crisis in the U.S . We’ve shortened the original French, cutting background material on US public sector finances and social programs and correcting minor factual errors. With its focus on actions not usually considered “political” in the traditional use of the word, we think this text makes an important contribution to understanding the full ramifications of the crisis and the responses to it within the US.

We hope the question at the end, “what weight should be put on the proliferation of resistances?” stimulates wider debate, discussion and research on the larger question which frames it: do these actions in some way, despite “not following traditional paths…testify by their existence and forms to (changing) something in the capitalist system” or “are they only adaptations, helping the system overcome the crisis without changing basics?”

Most events described here took place in the earlier phase of the crisis. For several months, roughly beginning with the first bank bailouts and in the fall of 2008, through the Republic Windows occupation and ending in the spring of 2009, it seemed like a larger social explosion was building. However, even as unemployment, foreclosures and evictions remain at record highs, little in the way of the open mass action predicted by many in the traditional left has taken place. Many actions mentioned in the text, like the bank occupations, have since died out, or are no longer as visible.

But if traditional forms of class struggle can’t yet be detected, there are signs that on the micro-level, in the areas where individual resistance merges into the collective so well identified in this text, subtle but real changes are brewing. A good example is the May 31, 2010 New York Times article, “Owners Stop Paying Mortgages and Stop Fretting,” describing how, “ A growing number of people whose homes are in foreclosure are refusing to slink away in shame. They are fashioning a sort of homemade mortgage modification, one that brings their payments all the way down to zero. They use the money they save to get back on their feet or just get by.

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