Let’s Be Clear, Ron Paul Fucking Sucks. Here Are 20 Reasons Why
Before admirers of Representative Paul go crazy, I didn’t write this post (or the headline) and I don’t endorse it (neither does disinformation), but I am interested in your well argued debate as to whether or not the little red umbrella author is right about any (or all?) of his points:
Every single one of the candidates currently running for the Republican nomination is a walking disaster. But one of them, Texas congressman Ron Paul, seems to be getting a disturbing amount of support from liberals. Mostly that’s because his nut-job libertarian views happen to not sound so nutty on a handful of issues. He wants to end the War on Drugs. He is against the death penalty. He would not support a constitutional ban on gay marriage. He was opposed to the War in Iraq and wants to end all American military intervention abroad. All of that sounds pretty good to…
MSNBC Finally Has A Good Ad, About the GI Bill (Video)
EIther hell has frozen over or I have shit my pants. Comments welcome …
UPDATE: NBC has removed this ad off the internet because Disinformation is talking about it …
Bull Moose or Bull Sh*t: Is Obama Changing His Stance Towards Wall Street?
Is Obama changing?
Many in the Occupy Wall Street Movement are patting their efforts on the back, and even claiming credit for what looks like a shift by President Obama towards a more engaged campaign discussing economic fairness.
The President’s speech in Kansas was modeled on remarks made by the Republican Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt in 1910. There’s nothing like quoting a Republican for credible centrist positioning. (Note: he quotes TR, not FDR.)
Will he embrace GOP Pres Eisenhower’s warning about the Military Industrial Complex next?
Unlikely.
Richard Eskow was quick to salute the new Obama:
“Barack Obama channeled one of American history’s truly transformative figures by visiting the tiny Kansas town where Teddy Roosevelt gave his ‘New Nationalism’ speech over a century ago. It was refreshing to see the President invoke his predecessor, who was a powerful and fearless agent of change both inside and outside the White House.
“For the first time the President directly…
The First Major Electoral Victory For The Occupy Wall Street Movement?
…In South Korea, not the United States. The newly elected mayor of Seoul is Park Won Soon, a longtime activist and human rights lawyer who ran on an explicit “Occupy Wall Street platform” of challenging social inequality. Could this happen here as well? Via New Left Project:
Park Won Soon, the newly elected mayor of Seoul, is “perhaps the first politician to win with an Occupy Wall Street platform”.
Park Won Soon ran on a platform of social justice. The previous mayor of Seoul had resigned over the issue of school lunches, Park pushed for the universal provision of lunches to all Seoul school children. He also promised to direct social services to helping the poor and disadvantaged. Korea has become increasingly divided in terms of rich and poor, and Seoul has some of the richest and some of the poorest people in the country. Park pledged to be the mayor of…
Was John Lennon A Closet Republican?
Photo: Roy Kerwood (CC)
Via the Toronto Sun:
John Lennon was a closet Republican, who felt a little embarrassed by his former radicalism, at the time of his death — according to the tragic Beatles star’s last personal assistant.
Fred Seaman worked alongside the music legend from 1979 to Lennon’s death at the end of 1980 and he reveals the star was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self.
In new documentary Beatles Stories, Seaman tells filmmaker Seth Swirsky Lennon wasn’t the peace-loving militant fans thought he was while he was his assistant.
He says, “John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter.
“He’d met Reagan back, I think, in the 70s at some sporting event… Reagan was the guy who had ordered the National Guard, I believe,…
Are Your Values Right or Left? The Answer Is More Literal Than You Think
M.C. Escher, "Drawing Hands", 1948.
ScienceDaily reports:
Up equals good, happy, optimistic; down the opposite. Right is honest and trustworthy. Left, not so much. That’s what language and culture tell us. “We use mental metaphors to structure our thinking about abstract things,” says psychologist Daniel Casasanto, “One of those metaphors is space.”But we don’t all think right is right, Casasanto has found. Rather, “people associate goodness with the side they can act more fluently on.” Right-handed people prefer the product, job applicant, or extraterrestrial positioned to their right. Lefties march to a left-handed drummer. And those linguistic tropes? They probably “enshrine the preferences of the right-handed majority.”
Casasanto, of The New School for Social Research, and Evangelia G. Chrysikou, of the University of Pennsylvania, wanted to find the causes of these correlations. Does motor experience “give rise to these preferences, or are they hardwired in the brain?” If the former, “how flexible are these…
A Demographic Explanation of Why America May Never Be Great Again
Saturn Devouring His Son (de Goya).
Populist Dissatisfaction with Economy Hands Senate Seat to Millionaire Dilettante
Around 11:00 p.m. CNN called the U.S. senate race in Wisconsin for Tea Party favorite Ron Johnson, finally ending a nail-biter that saw incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold projected at within one half of one percentage point of Johnson shortly before polls closed at 8:00 p.m. local time.
During that three-hour window of opportunity we held a breathless deathgrip around that slender hope over at one of Russ’s suburban canvassing centers.
The crew had literally worked their asses off for Russ — at 17 calories per minute, our 12-hour shifts of non-stop door-to-door troop rallying, we’d shed about a pound each day.
I figure that I alone must have knocked on over a thousand doors during this election cycle, reminding folks not only of what Russ has done for Wisconsin, but what Johnson’s Tea Party threatened to do to it, and…
Notes Toward a New Political Taxonomy
Noah Millman writes for the American Scene:
It has become clear to me over the years that one of the causes of persistent confusion in our political arguments is the interchangeable use of taxonomic terms that, while they may have a natural affinity, are not actually synonyms.
Three terms that tend to get used interchangeably are:
Left / Liberal / Progressive
Their counterparts on the other side of the political spectrum are treated similarly:
Right / Conservative / Reactionary
The shades of difference among the meanings of the words within the triads, however, are not minor. One can very well be extremely right-wing without being a reactionary in any meaningful sense — think of Ayn Rand. One can be extremely left-wing without being a liberal in any meaningful sense — think of Lenin.
I propose, therefore, to accentuate the differences between the words commonly lumped together, to clear up all ambiguities by assigning technical meanings to commonly-used terms,…
Forgotten Verses From “This Land is Your Land”
In 2005, I published a book with Disinformation called 50 American Revolutions You’re Not Supposed To Know: Reclaiming American Patriotism.
Hope you like what you read, for more about me, please check out my blog at www.mickeyz.net.
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If you were to open your mouth and belt out the words “this land is your land,” you could rest assured that someone nearby would add: “this land is my land.” The chorus to Woody Guthrie’s 1940 classic is common knowledge … as are the first couple of verses.
But it isn’t until you get to the later verses — the verses often omitted from official versions — that you start comprehendin’ what good ol’ Woody (1912–1967) had in mind:
As I was walkin’ I saw a sign there
And that sign said “No tresspassin’”
But on the other side, it didn’t say nothin’
Now that side was made for you and me
In the squares of the city / In the…
Exhausted Noam Chomsky Just Going To Try And Enjoy The Day For Once
Photo: Stevertigo (CC)
From the Onion. Yeah, that Onion, so progressives please try to remember where you left your sense of humor:
LEXINGTON, MA — Describing himself as “terribly exhausted,” famed linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky said Monday that he was taking a break from combating the hegemony of the American imperialist machine to try and take it easy for once.
“I just want to lie in a hammock and have a nice relaxing morning,” said the outspoken anarcho-syndicalist academic, who first came to public attention with his breakthrough 1957 book Syntactic Structures. “The systems of control designed to manufacture consent among a largely ignorant public will still be there for me to worry about tomorrow. Today, I’m just going to kick back and enjoy some much-needed Noam Time.”
“No fighting against institutional racism, no exposing the legacies of colonialist ideologies still persistent today, no standing up to the widespread dissemination of misinformation and…
Who Funds the Radical Left In America?
Steve Baldwin for the Western Center for Journalism:
Very few Americans realize there exists a large network of far left philanthropists and foundations in America dedicated to destroying the American way of life, our Christian-based culture and our free enterprise system. They seek to remove America from its constitutional foundations and move it toward a European-style socialism. Much of this effort is coordinated by a little known group called the Tides Foundation and its related group, the Tides Center.
The Strategic Principles of the Tides Foundation
Over the course of its 33 year history, the Tides network has given hundreds of millions of dollars to anti-free enterprise groups, gun control groups, anti-private property groups, abortion rights groups, homosexual groups, groups engaged in voter fraud, anti-military groups, and organizations that seek to destroy America’s constitutional basis. All told, over 100 leftist organizations have received funding from one of the two Tides groups.
Not surprisingly, this…
Bill Maher: ‘Corporatist’ Evan Bayh Is What’s Wrong With Senate (Video)
Reports Huffington Post on a Bill Maher interview with Anderson Cooper:
Evan Bayh is not a centrist, he’s a corporatist, according to Bill Maher.
Maher appeared on “Anderson Cooper 360″ Tuesday night to comment on the state of affairs in Washington, D.C. He argued that Evan Bayh, the retiring Senator from Indiana, is what’s wrong with Congress. The Senate is “where legislation goes to die,” Maher says, because “corporatist Democrats” like Bayh act like Republicans.
Maher told Cooper that politics are not polarized enough and that the U.S. lacks a real progressive party.
Robert Greenwald Attacks Kennedy Miniseries On History Channel
From the very start of our home video business, we’ve worked with director Robert Greenwald, who has become a sort of Defender of the Faith for progressive politics. It speaks volumes that when Robert takes up a cause, it lands on the front page of the New York Times (story below). I have to say I’m also delighted that Robert has highlighted the problem with much of the History Channel’s programming – it’s not history, it’s entertainment with a focus on ratings at the expense of veracity:
A new mini-series about John F. Kennedy’s presidency that is being prepared by the History channel does not yet have a cast or a premiere date. Not a frame of footage has been shot. It does, however, have prominent critics who want it brought to a halt.
The critics, including Theodore C. Sorensen, a former Kennedy adviser, say they have read the scripts for the project and that those contain errors of fact and emphasis. But like a similar controversy over a 2003 television film about Ronald Reagan, the dispute over the embryonic Kennedy series seems to say as much about the enduring place of the Kennedys as a battleground in the culture wars as it does about history itself.
The mini-series, called “The Kennedys,” is the brainchild of Joel Surnow, a creator of the Fox action show “24” and an outspoken political conservative…
Howard Zinn: Historian, Activist, Author, Teacher, Dies at 87
What an incredible lifetime of work. Reports the AP via the NY Times:
Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose book A People’s History of the United States became a million-selling leftist alternative to mainstream texts, died Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87 and lived in Auburndale, Mass. The cause was a heart attack, his daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn said.
Published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing of 5,000, A People’s History was, fittingly, a people’s best-seller, attracting a wide audience through word of mouth and reaching 1 million sales in 2003. Although Professor Zinn was writing for a general readership, his book was taught in high schools and colleges throughout the country, and numerous companion editions were published, including Voices of a People’s History, a volume for young people and a graphic novel.
A People’s History told an openly left-wing story. Professor Zinn accused Christopher Columbus and other explorers of committing genocide, picked apart presidents from Andrew Jackson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and celebrated workers, feminists and war resisters.
Glenn Beck Talks the Beatles’ “Revolution”
I actually don’t think Glenn Beck believes the Beatles were secret maoists; it’s just his latest attempt to turn the word “progressive” into the f-word. He’ll make any possible connection in order to do that. Oh well, it’s fun to play both clips together and wait and see if Glenn Beck’s head will explode:
But when you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright…
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know know it’s gonna be alright…
Why The End Of Air America Is Not The End Of Liberal Talk Radio
Steve Carney dissects what went wrong at Air America and what it means for progressive talk in the Los Angeles Times:
Coming only two days after the Republicans’ upset U.S. Senate victory in Massachusetts, the sudden demise of the Air America radio network — after a protracted illness — left liberals reeling and conservatives gloating over the failure of their competing ideology’s highest profile outlet.
But the end of Air America is not the end of liberal talk radio, nor should it be, according to observers.
“The only thing they did that was outstanding — boy, did they get a lot of PR,” said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, a trade journal of the talk-radio industry.
“The thing that was so maddening about Air America’s original programming — and they squandered their initial capital and their initial publicity — [was that] all you heard was about how bad Rush Limbaugh was and how…
Air America Calls It Quits
The lone voice of progressive talk in the radio spectrum is conceding that it just can’t attract an audience the same way that the conservatives do and will declare bankruptcy. Funny how liberal blogs are so popular in comparison…
From the Air America site:
It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon, and that the Company will file soon under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business.
The very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America’s business. This past year has seen a “perfect storm” in the media industry generally. National and local advertising revenues have fallen drastically, causing many media companies nationwide to fold or seek bankruptcy protection. From large to small, recent bankruptcies like Citadel Broadcasting and closures like…
Moyers, Moore and Maddow: Alternet Ranks the Most Influential Progressives
Interesting survey from our friends at Alternet. Congratulations to Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films for landing in the top 15, as many of you know, Disinformation has distributed several of his documentaries over the years, starting with Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War back in 2004 up to his latest Rethink Afghanistan. The Disinformation Podcast crew recently interviewed Greenwald about his latest film (Listen here).
Don Hazen writes on Alternet:
The three M’s — Bill Moyers, Michael Moore and Rachel Maddow — scored highest in a recent AlterNet survey* asking more than 5,000 readers to rate the most influential progressive media figures. Moyers, who scored 67.5, and Moore, with a 66.2 score, were very close. Maddow was a tad behind at 63.5.
It’s no surprise that Moyers, the moral sage, and Moore, the rabble-rouser, are ranked at the top. They have been popular with AlterNet readers for years. Moyers’ current show, “Bill…
Political Power Couple Susan Sarandon & Tim Robbins Split
On Zennie Abraham’s SF Gate blog:
When I read that Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins separated after 23 years together, my thoughts immediately turned to their two decades of liberal political activism. The Democratic power couple was particularly active during the 2008 Presidential Campaign.
Here’s Susan Sarandon talking about Sarah Palin at Boston University in September 2008, when she says that Palin’s views are “worrying” and would set the woman’s movement back. She also quoted actor Ed Harris, who said Palin “would be a really large footnote in the annals of moose hunting”. Saradon also expresses her thoughts on the media’s coverage of politics.
Tim Robbins was no less involved in political commentary and activism. In this video originally provided by CrooksandLiars.com, Robbins appears on Real Time with Bill Maher and really gets after Steve Hayes, who tried to claim a connection between al-Queda and Saddam Hussein…
