Past Campaigns

A few days ago, I mentioned a line from an old science teacher: "If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist."

In what passes for corporate journalism in American, this concept has taken the form of, "If we don't report on it, it didn't happen."

That certainly was the case for the emergency protest organized by a coalition of anti-war organizations under the banner EndUSWars.org, which saw over 1000 people gather on short notice in the bitter cold on Lafayette Park opposite the White House to protest President Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan on Saturday, Dec. 12.

By Dave Lindorff

Bill Clinton was the worst thing to happen to the Democratic Party
and to progressives since that racist warmonger Woodrow Wilson won the
presidency and dragged the US into the utterly pointless and incredibly
bloody First World War.

Clinton, by posing as a progressive, confused and undermined, and
ultimately betrayed the liberal/progressive wing of the party,
shattering what was left of the New Deal coalition and leaving the
American left adrift and riven by the conflict between those who
thought the Democratic Party was the only viable vehicle for
progressive reform and those who thought it was hopelessly in the grip
of corporate interests.

Barack Obama offers the hope of bringing that era of debilitating confusion to an end.

By David Swanson

Trying to squeeze any sort of peace on earth out of our government in Washington has been a steep uphill climb for years. For the most part we no longer have representatives in Congress, because of the corruption of money, the weakness of the media, and the strength of parties. There are not 535 opinions on Capitol Hill on truly important matters, but 2. Our supposed representatives work for their party leaders, not for us. Luckily, one of the two parties claims to want to work for us.

When the Democrats were in the minority and out of the White House, they told us they wanted to work for us but needed to be in the majority. So, in 2006, we put them there. Then they told us that they really wished they could work for us but they needed bigger majorities and the White House. So, in 2008/2009, we gave them those things, and deprived them of two key excuses for inaction. We took away the veto excuse and the filibuster excuse.

To: Friends of ACORN
From: Steven Kest, Executive Director
Re: News from Nevada
Date: May 4, 2009

Politicians in Nevada are at it again. Seven months after executing a carefully staged raid on the Las Vegas ACORN office - a publicity stunt purporting to gather evidence of “voter fraud” in ACORN’s 2008 voter registration drive - Nevada’s attorney general and secretary of state today announced that they were filing a complaint against ACORN and two voter registration managers. Specifically, the complaint alleges that ACORN implemented a “corporate mandated quota system,” and that bonuses were paid for exceeding this quota, in violation of a Nevada statute that prohibits payment based on the total number of registrations.

By Dave Lindorff

President Barack Obama was so obviously pleased to have five-term
Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announce that he was
switching party affiliation and joining the Democratic Party that the
president missed an opportunity to make sure that his new BFF in the
Senate was also a backer of the issues that Obama ran on in the
presidential campaign.

Indeed, while President Obama was quick to offer Sen. Specter his
backing and even to offer to help him with fund-raising in his quest
for re-election in 2010, he said nothing at all about any quid-pro-quo.

This is not only unfortunate. It is irresponsible.