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Bloomberg-opoly

Posted by libhom Tuesday, June 30, 2009 1 comments

Angry New Yorker has come up with a bitchy board game graphic for Bloomberg-opoly (hat tip to Hrag Vartanian).

Check It Out!

The tagline is good too:

NO MATTER HOW YOU PLAY, WITH BLOOMBERG YOU ALWAYS LOSE.

Sadly, there is way too much truth to this. Bloomberg has used a lot of money to buy the Mayor's office twice, and he is trying to buy it a third time. He really does want a monopoly on what is, theoretically, an elected office.

Too bad he is the worst NYC mayor since Jimmie Walker.

Too bad his actually record on queer issues has been homophobic.

 

From RH Reality Check 6/19/09:

Yesterday, a Republican Senator used his power to put a "hold" on a Senate Resolution originally introduced by U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) condemning violence against women's health providers, thereby blocking any vote on the resolution. Senators have the power to do this anonymously and with no explanation. This way, Republicans can get away with sorrowful expressions to the media on violence, but don't have to be put to the test of actually voting to denounce the violence against either Dr. Tiller or clinic workers generally.

One of the most galling things about this is that anonymous holds are completely illegal.

The Constitution very specifically sets out the margins by which laws are accepted or rejected. In most cases, that is a simple majority. In a few others, a two thirds vote is needed for passage. Nowhere in the Constitution does it even suggest that one senator can single handedly reject legislation. Even the presidential veto doesn't go that far.

The anonymity also is a disgustingly corrupt practice. This is the peoples' business, and the people have an absolute right to know exactly who is doing what on every legislative vote or maneuver.

I remember when Senate Democrats ran on change and the rule of law, yet they are perpetuating an illegal tactic in order to give tacit support to terrorists who attack abortion providers. Given that Harry Reid is the Democratic Party leader in the Senate, this is hardly shocking. Throughout his life, he has viciously promoted the misogynistic, racist, and heterosexist agenda of the Mormon Church/Hate Group. Reid has taken his Mormon hatred of women to a new extreme in this case, providing political cover to an act of terrorism against our country.

We need to speak out against the corruption, run a primary challenger against Reid, and vote Green if the Democrats don't start acting like Democrats instead of pro terrorism Republicans.

 

Bank Robbery

Posted by libhom Saturday, June 27, 2009 2 comments

From Yahoo! Finance 6/25/09:

Waiting for mortgage rates to once again fall below 5%? Don’t bother. Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, says those days are gone for good. But, it doesn’t mean you’ve missed your chance to act. Last week, the average 30-year mortgage rate was still a relatively low 5.38%, according to Freddie Mac.

Also, don’t forget there’s always the risk of even higher rates in the near future. As McBride puts it, “It’s like someone sets a table in front of you with a stack of cash. You have to grab the money while it’s there.” He’s got a point. A $400,000 mortgage at 6% costs just shy of $2,400 a month. That same mortgage with 5.35% rate: $2,240 – a savings of $160 a month.

Mortgage rates are rising even though the rates that the Fed is charging them for credit are staying down. Rates paid to depositors are incredibly low too. Yet, the banksters are raising the rates for mortgages.

It's similar to the story on credit cards where the banksters kept upping the interest rates and the fees. With new credit card legislation passed, the banksters are responding by trying to find other ways to steal money from people.

Where is the money going? One place is excessive salaries. For example (NY Times 6/23/09):
After all those losses and bailouts, rank-and-file employees of Citigroup are getting some good news: their salaries are going up.

The troubled banking giant, which to many symbolizes the troubles in the nation’s financial industry, intends to raise workers’ base salaries by as much as 50 percent this year to offset smaller annual bonuses, according to people with direct knowledge of the plan.

The shift means that most Citigroup employees will make as much money as they did in 2008, although some might earn more and others less. The company also plans to award millions of new stock options to employees in an effort to retain workers and neutralize a precipitous drop in the value of their stock holdings.

Before the current crisis, I would have categorically opposed nationalizing the banks. Now, it is starting to look like the banksters are going to continue to lie, cheat, and steal. If this crap keeps up, we should seriously considering taking the banks away from the banksters and turning them into public utilities.

Besides, the banksters themselves have made it clear that they aren't competent run their banks.

 

If Atheists Ruled the World

(Hat tip to Radical Atheist)



Yep, these are actual comments by fundies in online forums.

 

Obama Keeps Discharging Queers

Posted by libhom Thursday, June 25, 2009 4 comments

Hat Tip for the graphic goes to Traveling Man Rick's Blog.



Obama looking sillyAt least they are putting "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in quotes. DADT is a more draconian version of the military ban than the one that Reagan put into place. It has the force of law, rather than being an executive order too, which makes it more difficult to change. Thanks Bill Clinton.

Anyway, an aspect of the Obama administration's enforcement that is particularly galling is their law enforcement priorities. They are going full out to enforce the military ban and discharge queers, but Bush regime war criminals are not being prosecuted for crimes against humanity. There are plenty of banksters, broksters, and mortgage brokers who already should have been prosecuted for fraud, yet most of them are not facing any well deserved criminal charges.

When it comes to the military ban, the Obama Administration says the law is the law. When it comes to wealthy and well connected criminals guilty of truly heinous offenses, the Obama people say that we need to look forward, not backward.

This is total bullshit.

Photo: jurvetson

 

My Most Immediate Problems with the Sarkozy War on Burqas

Posted by libhom Wednesday, June 24, 2009 3 comments

The ideology behind burqas is offensive. It is based on the Muslim belief that women have this sinister sexual power over men that must be defeated by covering women up as much as possible. Female skin and female sexuality are treated as evil menaces, which is incredibly misogynistic.

You might think that I would be all about the policy of French President Sarkozy's effort to get rid of the symbols of misogyny. I see practical problems. If Burqas are banned, will women wearing them be fined or otherwise punished? This would be grossly unfair since most Muslim women who wear the garments are being coerced by men to do so. They can face abuse or being ostracized. Being ostracized in immigrant communities can be extremely damaging, given how dependent immigrants often are upon each other and how closely knit those communities can be.

Another problem I have is that I'm not keen on the state telling us what we can and cannot wear. Laws against (or mandating) burqas are part of a larger problem which includes laws against public nudity, mandating school uniforms, and banning low riding pants. People really should be able to wear as much or as little clothing as they wish.

However, I can understand the cultural discomfort that covering faces and obscuring body language can create for people in Western societies. We use these signals to evaluate peoples' behavior and establish trust or distrust as part of our culture. When immigrants come to foreign lands, they should try to accommodate the cultures of the countries as much as they reasonably can. Religion is no excuse. Muslim men who come to Western countries and insist on burqas or veiling are acting like ugly Americans.

I also understand how hard the French have fought for a secular society and freedom from the oppression of the Catholic Church. They enforce their wall between church and state much more stringently and correctly than we do here in the US. Immigrants to France should realize that the French have earned their status as a largely secular society and respect that.

While I don't see much good coming from legislation banning burqas, I do think that Muslim immigrants in Western countries need to understand that burqas and other forms of veiling are inconsiderate and inappropriate here. If they want to live in societies oriented around Islam, they need to go elsewhere.

 

Scalia Should Retire

Posted by libhom Tuesday, June 23, 2009 1 comments

At 73, Justice Scalia is at an age where he would have faced mandatory retirement here in New York three years ago. His court opinions always have been deranged, so diagnosing whether or not he suffers senile dementia from afar would be difficult. However, questions about his mental health certainly should be asked by the media.

When you consider his age and the fact that Scalia is morbidly obese, you have to wonder whether staying on the court is good for his health, given the stress and responsibility that go with the position.

The man has had years to attack the Constitution and American values. He'll be infamous for centuries due to his role in the theft of the 2000 presidential election. It's time for him to give up and go home.

 

Now that there is new credit card legislation, the banksters are finding new ways to steal. It is enhancing the level of anger at "credit card companies" who are actually banks.

One site that has chronicled bankster misconduct in this area for some time is www.newcreditrules.com. That blog's approach is less hostile than some.

A relatively new word that I just discovered is plasectomy. It is defined in the Urban Dictionary as follows:

The process of cutting up or otherwise destroying credit cards as part of a plan to become debt-free, most commonly through financial adviser Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover" plan.


Here are some of the more entertaining ones from YouTube.







The weird thing is that a Faux News personality was leading the populist anger against the "credit card companies." Liberals need to get much better attuned to perfectly legitimate populist anger and direct it at the banksters who are responsible for the problem.

At least one lefty is getting a clue about this. Here's a fun Ted Rall animation on the subject.

The Video Huffington Post and YouTube Censored

Posted by libhom Monday, June 22, 2009 3 comments

Update: Now, Vimeo has taken the video too.
Someone has uploaded it on another YouTube account. I suspect YouTube will have trouble keeping it off for too long.



(Hat tip to Ten Percent)

Feeling The Hate In Jerusalem -- The Censored Video from Max Blumenthal on Vimeo.



This video has generated a lot of controversy by exposing racism in Israel. It's not pleasant, but people need to know about this. Besides, YouTube should not be a rightist only service.

Max Blumenthal did the video, and he has done a lot of good work exposing rightist Christian bigotry in the past. Rightist Jewish bigotry seems to be a taboo subject. In many ways, it's even more shameful that the Huffington Post censored one of their regular contributors in this fashion. I haven't been to that site since. More from Blumenthal's blog:
Youtube has removed my video, “Feeling The Hate In Jerusalem,” on the baseless grounds that it contains “inappropriate content.” They have offered me no further explanation and have stonewalled my inquiries and attempts to rectify the situation. Thus they have censored a video that contains far less inflammatory content than thousands of video they are already hosting. Why? I won’t ascribe motives to Youtube I am unable to confirm, but it is clear there is an active campaign by right-wing Jewish elements to suppress the video by filing a flood of complaints with Youtube. At the same time these elements have attempted to paint me as a self-hating Jew determined to foment anti-Semitism. I answered this last charge to Ha’aretz (read the barely coherent article here) last week: “I have received death threats from people, mainly ones calling me a self-hating Jew. I am self-hating, but my self-hatred has nothing to do with me being Jewish.”

At least he is keeping his sense of humor.

Jewish Voices for Peace has asked its members to email YouTube (or use their online form) and demand that the video go back up there. Good on them. Fighting racism is important.

 

What the Fundamentalist Government Is Doing in Iran

Posted by libhom Sunday, June 21, 2009 2 comments

Hat tip to at-Largely (Warning: the footage is graphic.):





The brutality of the corrupt, fundamentalist government in Iran reminds us of why we must resist the Christian Right.

 

Pissed Off at the Democrats? Let Them Know

Posted by libhom Saturday, June 20, 2009 10 comments

From the war on Iraq to the pandering to the banksters to the vicious homophobia, Democratic Party "leaders" have been behaving in a reprehensible (and Republican) manner. It's time to start making noise now rather than waiting forever to give these people "a chance." Here's some contact information:

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
Phone (202) 224-2447
Fax (202) 969-0354
info@dscc.org

Democratic National Committee
202-863-8000
http://www.democrats.org/page/s/contactissues

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
(202) 863-1500
http://www.dccc.org/page/s/contact

White House
Comments: 202-456-1111
http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/

Office of the Speaker
(202) 225-0100
http://speaker.house.gov/contact/

American politicians are not the only ones who get rewarded handsomely by corporate interests when they leave office. Tony Blair, a Labor Party Prime Minister in the UK whose policies were quite conservative and corporatist, is a prime example. From Global Research 10/30/08:

As the stock market has plummeted and the housing market has slumped, the man who as Prime Minister championed the “light-touch” system of financial regulation blamed by some for the current crisis is enjoying an unprecedented boom of his own.

Mr Blair receives £84,000 of taxpayers’ money to run a private office and is entitled to an annual pension of £63,468, but this pales to insignificance beside his private earnings. He has made £4.6 million from his memoirs, an estimated £2 million from JPMorgan Chase — including bonus — and £500,000 from Zurich Financial Services. On top of that he has exceeded the $9.2 million (£5.8 million) that Mr Clinton earned, according to his wife Hillary’s financial disclosures, from speeches in his first year outside the White House.

“I can tell you that Tony Blair has already made more money than that,” a speaking industry source said. “He is now probably the highest-paid public speaker in the world.”

What was Blair doing for the banksters at JP Morgan Chase? (From CNN 1/10/08)
Blair will work with JP Morgan Chase, a firm with assets of $1.5 trillion and operations in more than 50 countries. He will advise the bank on global political and strategic issues, a company statement said.

"We operate our business all over the world, and Tony Blair will bring our leaders and clients a unique and invaluable global perspective that is especially critical in turbulent times like these," said Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of the company, in the statement.

You are forgiven if this sounds like a bullshit job to you. Of course, Bush's poodle isn't the only politician to do feed at this trough. (Again CNN)
Advisory jobs such as the one Blair has accepted are popular among former world leaders. His predecessor as prime minister, John Major, took a position with the Carlyle Group, a private investment house, as did former U.S. President George H.W. Bush.

What did (does?) Blair do for Zurich Financial Services Group? Their press release doesn't exactly make it sound impressive.
As part of the agreement, Mr. Blair will advise Zurich’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) James J. Schiro, and provide general guidance on developments and trends in the international political environment.

Specifically, he will help advise and collaborate with Zurich on its Climate Initiative announced last week, and work closely with its newly launched Climate Change Advisory Council...

Global Warming is a very serious problem, but it isn't like Blair has any real expertise on it. He's a political hack, not a climate scientist.

Blair's ability to obtain ludicrously high speaking fees reminds me of the outlandish speaking fees Bill Clinton gets and Ronald Reagan got. This time I'll quote myself.
Speaking fees have bothered me for some time now. After presidents leave office, they can get enormous amounts of money for showing up and talking at events for wealthy interests. This has the potential to act as indirect bribery, since politicians know about this source of personal wealth and have a huge incentive to put corporate interests above the public interest when they are in the White House.

Ronald Reagan cashed in on this big time, as did Bill Clinton. The Washington Post itemized the $31 million in speaking fees Clinton got from 2001-2005.

It turns out my concerns are relevant to international politics as well.

While I can't confirm reports that Blair got a job at the infamous Carlyle Group, I can confirm that he is getting outlandish speaking fees from them. (Telegraph 10/29/08)
Mr Blair has become a particular favourite with the Washington-based Carlyle Group. Next month he will address a conference of its European investors in Paris about "geopolitics". He addressed a similar conference for Carlyle in Dubai in February.

Carlyle Group is a leading private equity investor in the military. Its board has been graced by both Presidents Bush and its former European chairman was Sir John Major.

The PEU Report asked some interesting questions about whether US taxpayers are paying for the Carlyle engagements.
The story failed to mention Carlyle's role supplying the federal government on far more than the military front. How does Tony's speaking fee get passed on to the various Carlyle subs? The title of the speech could fit in new subsidiary Booz, Allen, Hamilton's niche. Does it work it's way through their cost accounting systems, such that the taxpayer foots the bill?

Speaking of public money, what about Blair's payments from JP Morgan Chase? They paid off the TARP money recently, but that still amounts to a low interest loan granted by you and me just when those banksters needed it the most. That money was lent out to credit card holders at astronomical interest rates. Who knows how much public money they have gotten from the Federal Reserve, since its bailout program has been done in complete and disturbing secrecy?

If you have a Chase Credit card, you might want to consider that some of those ridiculous fees you have been paying may have ended up in Tony Blair's pocket.

 

Ahmedinejad Is Becoming Iran's Bush

Posted by libhom Friday, June 19, 2009 3 comments

Before the election rigging in Iran, Iranian President Ahmedinejad had a lot in common with George W. Bush. Like Bush was, Ahmedinejad is:

- A religious extremist

- Horribly corrupt

- Heterosexist

- Belligerent

- Supremely arrogant

- Misogynistic

- Subordinate to more powerful leaders

- Nutty right wing

- Happy to demagogue

- A poser, pretending to be a man of the people

- In bed with the nuclear power industry

If Ahmedinejad illegally occupies the presidency of Iran, he will be even more like his idol.

 

It's Official: Gordon Brown Is a Tory

Posted by libhom Friday, June 12, 2009 4 comments

In case you had any doubt... (Guardian 6/12/09)

Britain is to review the legal basis of its relations with Bermuda following a transatlantic row over the resettlement of Guantánamo detainees on the Caribbean island.

The US transfer to Bermuda of four Chinese Muslims, known as Uighurs, represents an acute embarrassment for the British government, which is supposed to oversee the foreign and security policy of the British overseas territory.

In angry telephone exchanges with Bermuda's prime minister, Ewart Brown, UK officials have contested his right to negotiate the transfer of the four Uighurs from US custody without consulting Britain.

It's disgusting that de facto GOP President Barack Obama is treating the Uighurs like pariahs, despite the fact that they have been known to be perfectly innocent for years. Now, Gordon Brown is joining in the hysteria.

Sigh.

 

The movie was well written for the most part, but I was really bothered by one aspect of the plot that I found disturbing and gratuitous.

I know the producers and writers wanted to change the Spock character to explore more of his human side. I think that could be really interesting. What I object to is the way they did it: destroying Vulcan and killing billions of Vulcans.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's fiction. Nothing of the kind really happened. But, after so many Iraqis have been killed in the war on that country, mass slaughter storylines are not so entertaining to me anymore. When art imitates life, it can get dicey.

The only "ism" hollywood believes in is plagiarism.
-Dorothy Parker

This fabulous quote is my other reason for objecting to the destruction of Vulcan. It seems like a stolen storyline from Battlestar Galactica.

I also have this nagging sense that it would have been more interesting to move the Star Trek franchise forward in time instead of backward.

There definitely were some good points. Chris Pine is a much better actor than William Shatner (who isn't?). Uhura isn't just wallpaper anymore. The new Checkoff is much more interesting.

 

The corporate media want us to merely wring our hands after a Christian Right extremist attacked the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. And, yes, the white supremacists are Bible thumpers, despite claims from Christian Right propaganda to the contrary. We need to learn from this and start to take action as a country.

1) Private Gun Ownership Should Be Banned:

Guns are becoming favored tools of terrorists, not only in the US, but also in India during the Mumbai attacks. There are no legitimate reasons for private gun ownership, and the Second Amendment only applies to government sponsored militia. The security guard killed today joins roughly 30,000 people in this country killed every year by guns.

2) Fundamentalist Christianity Is Getting Desperate and Dangerous:

With numbers and fervor declining after the AWOL Rapture and with their political party in shambles, the Christian Right is realizing that they will never really be able to shove their religion down peoples' throats using the democratic process. The teabagger rhetoric often is inflammatory and violent, as is the case with the anti abortion rhetoric. However, the rightists are getting less content with rhetorical venting.

3) There Needs to Be Accountability of the Corporate Sponsors of Rightist Hate:

People should boycott Rush Limbaugh, Faux News, and other media outlets that promote the inflammatory rhetoric that caused today's shooting and the murder of Dr. Tiller. More importantly, we should start boycotting their advertisers. Remember, people opposed to this kind of bigotry are perfectly reasonable in using our First Amendment rights to fight back.

 

The US corporate media seems to be portraying Gordon Brown's problems as having to do with insufficient political skills. Yet, Brown replaced Tony Blair, who was wildly unpopular, before the financial crisis took place.

Looking at American television when Tony Blair was usually shown licking the boots of George W. Bush, it is easy to forget how Blair usually projected himself to domestic audiences in the UK on the BBC. Instead of sniveling and humiliating himself, on domestic matters, Blair was charismatic and forceful. He was clever, and his handlers always had just the sound bite to keep the opposition at bay.

The problem was that charisma, a strong personality, and great sound bites war thin after years of Thatcherite policies. It wasn't bad enough that he humiliated the UK by genuflecting and appeasing an unelected tyrant like George W. Bush on the international stage. Blair also favored watered down versions of Tory policies that disposed the majority of the British population. Sugar coating dispossession can't work indefinitely.

Once Blair wore out of his welcome, Labor replaced him with the seemingly earnest Gordon Brown. However, Brown favored the same Thatcher-lite policies that he helped implement as a member of Blair's cabinet. This contributed to the depth of despair when the global economic crises arrived, and it also contributed to Brown's inability to act in a forceful way to intervene in the economy that both major parties had been moving in a laissez faire direction for decades.

The Conservative Party is winning the local and EU elections by not losing ground in the polling while Labor is losing a tremendous amount of votes to third parties. Neither party would be close to a majority of seats in the more significant House of Commons if not for the winner take all system in Britain that inevitably gives bizarre results when there are third parties. Proportional representation is a much more reasonable electoral system, yet the British seem to dislike it as much as we do. The upshot is that the Tories are gaining power without gaining support.

The media are focused on the improved performance of far right parties, but they are ignoring the improved performance of the Greens. The main lesson to be learned is that people in the UK want a real alternative to the Pepsi vs. Coke politics of the Conservative and Labor Parties.

Sound familiar?

It should. Obama, like Bill Clinton, is governing more like a Republican than a Democrat, to put it mildly. He has more time politically than Brown because the GOP is in a state of disarray, ceding much of its leadership to gargantuan loudmouth whose mind seems to still be terribly altered by Oxycontin. Gopper rhetoric reminds one of the British National Party. While sentiments like that have more adherents here than in the UK, it isn't a strategy to build a majority or to even put up a strong national fight.

American liberals could easily start electing Green or independent liberal candidates in certain House Districts. However, these American liberals, like the British left, seem to be too beaten down by the atrocities of Bush (or Thatcher in the UK) and corporate media propaganda to mount serious political challenges where the opportunities exist (e.g. in Nancy Pelosi's district or in several districts here in NYC).

The danger of a gutless left adrift with a sense of helplessness is that the only real alternatives to the Crest vs. Colgate politics we are getting here in the US are coming from the far right.

 

This great American patriot has been the target of terrorism by anti American religious extremists for decades. Here are Dr. Tiller's own words.



It's important not to treat this as a flavor of the month story and forget about it. It's important to remember a heroic figure like Dr. Tiller who died defending freedom.

Equally important is condemning and countering absurd rhetoric involving "unborn children" and claims that "abortion is murder." This usage of Hitler's Big Lie tactic will continue to incite acts of terrorism like the ones Tiller faced for many years until he was murdered by an unforgivably evil human being.

 

From CNET 6/2/09:

Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday that it is looking into an issue in which users of Internet Explorer 6 are forced into having Bing as their default search engine.

"We are aware of the issue with Bing on machines running IE6 and are investigating a solution," Microsoft said in a statement. "This issue is not impacting IE7 and IE8 users."

Although it is only affecting its older browser, many people still use IE6 and Microsoft has faced a lot of regulatory scrutiny over how default search preferences are set and changed within Internet Explorer.

A lot of people use older browsers because they can't afford to upgrade their computers to be able to run newer browsers, a problem that is affecting more people because of the terrible economy.

Here are some more tech details from Search Engine Land 6/2/09:
It appears that Bing is overriding the default search provider set by users of Internet Explorer 6. Several IE6 users have complained that since Bing launched, the search provided went from Google (which they set manually) to Bing. To makes things even worse, when the user tries to set the search provider back from Bing to Google, it doesn’t allow them.

Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, is an improvement over it's old search, which was execrable. It's getting close to comparable to Yahoo now, but it still isn't as good as Google. Microsoft must have figured this out and decided to give itself a captive audience.

If not for the corruption of the Bush regime, Microsoft would have been broken up into several companies under our antitrust laws. This still needs to happen. Our economy is damaged by Microsoft's use of anticompetitive tactics to make its low quality products market dominant.

Breaking up Microsoft is part of restoring the rule of law to this country and should be included as part of any serious economic recovery plan.

 

Catholics Have the Power to Change Their Church

Posted by libhom Thursday, June 04, 2009 9 comments

Pro-Choice Catholics don't have to put up with the anti abortion jihads of a clergy which is supposed to represent them. All they have to do to stop this nonsense is to put pieces of paper instead of money in the collection plates. The pieces of paper would say.

Anti Choice

        =

No Money

Do you really think Ratzinger would give up his fancy frocks and dress in normal priestly drab? Do you really think this pontiff and other church higher ups would give up their lives of luxury to oppose abortion?

Catholics are not helpless and powerless.

 

What Is Left Populism?

Posted by libhom Tuesday, June 02, 2009 2 comments

In comments on GDAEman's blog, I discussed the idea of promoting left populism. GDAEman alluded to the fact that I hadn't described the term.

I see left populism as a view of politics that promotes progressive values in the context of peoples' daily lives. It promotes freedom, justice, and equality in practical terms based on peoples' struggles rather than on abstract theory. It recognizes that activists who have worked on issues for decades have given more thought to solutions than abstract generalists relying on theories. If you want to see a good example of left populism, go to Michael Moore's website.

One must be careful to contrast left and right populism. Right populism glorifies peoples' prejudices to distract them from their interests. Left populism combats prejudice on its own merit, but also condemns it in the context of the politics of distraction. Much of the promotion of various "isms" in the corporate media is a variation of the pickpocket's trick of having an accomplice bump into or otherwise distract a victim who won't know that his or her valuables are being stolen until it is too late.

Right populism tries to discuss class as an aspect of an ethnic group or other minority, leaving the vast majority of the economic elites free from any scrutiny at all. The Sarah Palins of the world talk about the working class regularly, but pretend that their most dangerous enemies are other working class people. Sound suspicious?

Obviously, this is a cursory introduction to the notion of left populism. But, it is important to start a discussion. Far right and conservative elites control the Republican and Democratic Parties respectively. Their policies and arrogance are creating a tremendous amount of legitimate anger in this country. That anger needs to be acknowledged and addressed productively rather than being dismissed. The latter is just too dangerous.

In a sign of just how dishonest the anti abortion movement is, some of them have put up an anti choice website at prochoice.com. The website is full of the deceptive propaganda which motivated Dr. Tiller's killer.

Those people really are monsters.

 

Take Action to Support Abortion Rights

Posted by libhom Monday, June 01, 2009 1 comments

woman with sign that says I am pro choice and so is my motherThere is something seriously wrong with you if you are not outraged by the murder of a great American patriot, Dr. George Tiller, by the anti choice movement. It is important to show these monsters that their terrorist tactics will only strengthen the resolve of patriotic Americans to support inalienable right of women to have abortions.

Here are some actions you can take to fight back against the fundamentalist terrorists.

1)Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is:
It takes money to fight the misogynistic, racist, and terrorist agenda of the Christian Right. Here are some donation links for organizations who are fighting the good fight to keep America free.

Medical Students for Choice

NARAL Pro Choice America

National Abortion Federation

Planned Parenthood (You may also want to support your local chapter)





2)Tell Your Senators to Support Two Pro Choice Nominees:
From NARAL's Action Alert:
NARAL Pro-Choice America is still working to confirm two more key Obama nominees—Judge David Hamilton and Prof. Dawn Johnsen —and to stop anti-choice attacks on these nominees simply because they've taken pro-choice positions. The New York Times and Los Angeles Times have both noted some of the challenges we face.

Learn about the nominees, and then take action!

About the Nominees

Judge David Hamilton - President Obama nominated Judge David Hamilton, a district court judge in Indiana, to serve on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Prof. Dawn Johnsen - President Obama nominated Professor Dawn Johnsen to the position of assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), Department of Justice

Urge your senators to confirm Hamilton and Johnsen when they come up for floor votes.



3)Don't Let the Senate Defund Planned Parenthood:
Planned Parenthood Action is trying to protect Planned Parenthood's funding from Sen. David Vitter who supports "family values" except when he is banging prostitutes.
In a direct attack, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) offered an amendment to the Appropriations Act that would block Planned Parenthood health centers from receiving federal funds from Title X, the nation’s family planning program.

This move is an unconstitutional, completely unfounded attack on the nation’s leading source of reproductive health care information and services. In these difficult economic times, we need to make reproductive health care services more available for low-income, uninsured, and underinsured women — not less.

Take Action Now!



Photos: Clockworknate

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