Obama Promises
Why Veterans Are Descending on DC to Close Gitmo
by Jon Soltz, VoteVets
Among the tragic news in Haiti, and the expected dissection of the Senate race in Massachusetts this week, there's another story going on that likely will not get as much coverage, but is still extremely important. Dozens of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans from VoteVets.org are flying into Washington, DC to join with the Campaign to Close Guantanamo in lobbying Congress to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
These veterans will deliver a letter to a number of Congressmen and Senators, co-signed by about 2000 veterans, calling for Congress to follow President Obama's lead, and move to shut down the facility that has become a blight on America's reputation.
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Massachusetts: What Happened?
How did the Massachusetts Senate race end up so close?
1. The Right Wing Noise Machine. 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, 60 minutes an hour, the Right Wing Noise Machine attacks Democrats and liberals. Their leaders are FOX and Rush Limbaugh, but there is an army behind them. To them, everything Democrats do is wrong and evil. And if the facts don't agree with their paranoia, then facts be damned. They never issue corrections or apologies, they just smear. It's who they are, it's what they do, and Democrats let them do it.
2. The Corporate Media amplifier. The "FOX Effect" extends far beyond FOX studios. Right-wing Republican Joe Scarborough gets 3 hours every morning on "liberal" MSNBC to echo FOX smears. The "gang of 4" in the White House Press Corps - Jake Tapper (ABC), Chip Reid (CBS), Chuck Todd (NBC), and Ed Henry (CNN) - throws every FOX smear directly into the face of Robert Gibbs. Just ask Van Jones.
What a Hell of a Year! Good Riddance to It!
By Dave Lindorff
You know, the year 2009 started out kind of nicely. We watched Barack Obama take the oath of office, serenaded by the awesome Aretha Franklin (wearing her awesome hat), after first hearing Pete Seeger sing the real Woody Guthrie verses to "This Land Is Your Land" on the steps of the Lincoln Monument.
Will WE Win?: A Reply to Frank Schaeffer's 'Obama Will Win'
By David Swanson at The BRAD BLOG
<!-- Variabes with GNR = 'Green News Report' related --> <!-- If DVN story and if later than June 12, 2008, add DVN graphic & "Guest Blogged by..." --> <!-- If DVN story and if later than May 1, 2009, add DVN_pg graphic & "Guest Blogged by..." --> <!-- If DVN story and if later than June 12, 2008, add DVN graphic & "Guest Blogged by..." -->
[Ed Note: On Monday, The BRAD BLOG published Frank Schaeffer's guest editorial, "Obama Will Win: Why and How His Critics from the Left and Right Will be Proven Wrong". Today, we're pleased to offer a counterpoint in reply by author David Swanson.]
Guest editorial by David Swanson
I've appreciated much of Frank Schaeffer's commentary at The BRAD BLOG but his column here this week on Obama winning was an exception. Schaeffer labels himself an "Obama supporter" and explains that Obama supporters are "sticking with our President." The language Schaeffer uses, after identifying himself as a "former religious Rightwing agitator", is helpful in illuminating a troubling pattern of thought that is widespread in our society:
"We faithful Obama supporters still trust our initial impression of him as a great, good and uniquely qualified man to lead us."
Here is faith, or at least faithfulness, explicitly entering politics through the advocacy of a recovering religious advocate. As everyone knows who has tried to recover from a pattern of thought, it is far easier to reject or reverse the specifics than it is to step outside the framework. But it is the framework that I find disturbing. I disagree with the point of view above just as much as I disagree with rightwing religious agitation, and for the same reasons. I don't want to be a faithful, trusting supporter of a uniquely great and good being.
READ THE REST AT The BRAD BLOG
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The Democrats' Health `Reform' Bill: Kill It Before It Comes to Life!
By Dave Lindorff
Give credit to Howard Dean. This still practicing physician, former
governor of Vermont, former chair of the Democratic Party and former
Democratic presidential candidate has called for progressive members of
Congress in both houses to join their Republican colleagues in killing
what he rightly says has become "an insurance company's dream."
Those namby-pamby, self-described "progressives" in the Democratic
Party who claim that the health bill can still be saved with the
inclusion of a fake, carefully circumscribed and thoroughly emasculated
"public option" government insurance plan that at best would only be
able to offer lousy coverage at high rates to a small number of
self-employed poor people are wrong. This supposed attempt at reforming
the US health care system--the costliest and least effective in the
developed world--is simply past saving.
WTF? Obama Gets the Nobel Peace Prize?
By Dave Lindorff
It’s not as much of a travesty as when Henry Kissinger, a war criminal of the first order who was an architect of the latter stages of the Indochina War, and was personally responsible for the slaughter of well over a million innocent people, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, while that war was still raging, but the awarding of the latest Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama is travesty enough.
We’re talking about a man whose practically first act upon taking office early this year was to escalate the ugly and pointless war in Afghanistan with the addition of some 20,000 troops, and who, even as the Nobel committee was discussing his award, was meeting with his military and political advisors to consider expanding that war even further, both in Afghanistan and across the border into Pakistan.
There Are Really Two Questions: 1) Which Side are the Democrats on? and 2) Which Side are the Labor Unions on?
By Dave Lindorff
It is refreshing to hear the new head of the AFL-CIO, former
mineworker and Mineworkers President Richard Trumka, get mad at
sell-out Democrats and make a threat not to “support” them next year.
As Trumka pointed out in a talk to the Center for American Progress
this week, for years, Democratic politicians, and the Democrats as a
Party, have counted on the labor movement to get out the vote of its
membership on Election Day, only to turn on workers after getting to
Washington, on the issues that really matter, like jobs-killing free
trade agreements, the gutting of bankruptcy law and credit law
protections, and, most recently, the undermining of needed labor law
reform.
Trumka, quoting from a famous Florence Reece mineworkers song popularized by Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger, said that going
forward, Democrats will have to make it clear to labor “Which side are
you on?”
Say 'Good-bye' to the Nice Health Care Reform, Kids
By Dave Lindorff
Of course I could be wrong. Congress could turn around and pass
some cockamamie scheme to kick the issue of health care reform down the
road, offering some kind of minimal insurance coverage to a few million
more people, and cracking down on this or that particularly egregious
health provider rip-off, and then staging a “mission accomplished”
photo op.
But real health care reform of the kind that Democratic candidates
were promising during last year’s presidential campaign is dead, killed
by the timidity of the promiser-in-chief, President Barack Obama (and
by the massive corruption of the Democrats in Congress, who hav e
accepted the tainted coin of the health care industry).
CIA’s Lies About Secret Program Should Have Congress In Open Revolt
By Dave Lindorff
If this were the democracy that the Founding Fathers thought they
were creating, word from CIA Director Leon Panetta that his agency had
lied to Congress and specifically that it had lied repeatedly from
9-11-2001 through the end of 2008 concerning an as-yet undisclosed
secret program, would have virtually every member of Congress in a
state of rebellion, demanding answers.
After all, the CIA is required by law to report to at least the
majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees and to the majority and minority leaders of both houses of
Congress about such things.
But not only did the spy agency not report on what it was up to; it lied about what it was up to.
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Using the Economic Crisis to Attack Workers: Employers Undermine Stimulus Program
By Dave Lindorff
Reports are starting to appear suggesting that laid-off or
underemployed Americans, and the long-term unemployed, are losing
patience with the Obama administration’s and Congress’ economic
stimulus plan, which thus far has not done anything to arrest the
growth of unemployment, now at close to 20 percent of the US workforce,
at least as unemployment used to honestly be counted in the 1970s and
early 1980s.
While millions of jobs have been lost since the beginning of this
year alone, the number of jobs that have been created as a result of
the Obama administration’s signature $780-billion stimulus spending
package is under 150,000—a far cry from the 3.5 million that were
promised when the bill was being put before Congress.
