Chris Hedges: The World Liberal Opportunists Made

The lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, which looks set to make sweeping gains in the midterm elections, is the direct result of a collapse of liberalism. It is the product of bankrupt liberal institutions, including the press, the church, universities, labor unions, the arts and the Democratic Party. The legitimate rage being expressed by disenfranchised workers toward the college-educated liberal elite, who abetted or did nothing to halt the corporate assault on the poor and the working class of the last 30 years, is not misplaced. The liberal class is guilty. The liberal class, which continues to speak in the prim and obsolete language of policies and issues, refused to act. It failed to defend traditional liberal values during the long night of corporate assault in exchange for its position of privilege and comfort in the corporate state. The virulent right-wing backlash we now experience is an expression of the liberal class flagrant betrayal of the citizenry.

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George Monbiot: The Tea Parties, Deluded and Propelled by Billionaires

The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has seen and the biggest Astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related.

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Rebecca Solnit: Invasion of the Democracy Crushers

In fiction, these have been the modernizing years for vampires. Following the path blazed by novelist Anne Rice, in text and on screen they have become more complex, more human, and increasingly (dare I use the word) heartthrobs. Think True Blood, the Twilight series, and The Vampire Diaries. In the all-too-real and bizarre world we actually inhabit, however, the vampires have been truly regressive: think Count Dracula or Count Orlok of Nosferatu (only far, far richer). Their sole bow to modernity is that, while they -- or the monetary contributions they offer in return for political cocktails made from our national lifeblood -- still tend to skulk in the dark, they are also willing to stand in the light, teeth bared, ready to sink them in the nearest set of necks.

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Fascist America: Is This Election the Next Turn?

In August 2009, I wrote a piece titled Fascist America: Are We There Yet? that sparked much discussion on both the left and right ends of the blogosphere. In it, I argued that -- according to the best scholarship on how fascist regimes emerge -- America was on a path that was running much too close to the fail-safe point beyond which no previous democracy has ever been able to turn back from a full-on fascist state. I also noted that the then-emerging Tea Party had a lot of proto-fascist hallmarks, and that it had the potential to become a clear and present danger to the future of our democracy if it ever got enough traction to start winning elections in a big way.

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Wall Street's Tea Party

The Tea Party likes to wrap itself in "grassroots" contempt for wealthy elites, but the 12 leading Tea Party Senate candidates have accepted over $4.6 million in campaign contributions from Wall Street for the upcoming election.

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Frank Rick: The Rage Wont End on Election Day

CARL Paladino began his New York gubernatorial campaign by bragging hed clean out Albany with a baseball bat. When an ally likened his main Albany target, the (Jewish) leader of the State Assembly, to an antichrist or Hitler, he enthusiastically endorsed the slur. We also learned of Paladinos repertory of gag e-mails among them a pornographic picture of a woman having sex with a horse and a photo of an African tribal ritual captioned Obama Inauguration Rehearsal. How blind we were not to recognize that his victory in a Republican primary under the proud Tea Party banner was inevitable.

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Bill Clinton Warns Arkansas Democrats to Beware of Karl Rove Politics

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Former President Bill Clinton swung through Arkansas this week for a handful of campaign stops in his home state, taking a few hard-hitting swings at Republican opponents who are attacking his old friends running for office.

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How Did an Entire Political Party Decide to Reject Climate Change Science?

Ron Brownstein notes in a terrific new National Journal column just how striking it is to see a major American political party decide, all at once, to reject climate science in its entirety. (via Jay Rosen)

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Jim Hightower: Executive Excess

Look out, they're angry. Foaming-at-the-mouth angry. And they're lashing out, saying they won't take it anymore. As one of their leaders angrily cried, "It's a war." Indeed they're on the move to take their country back.

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Tea & Crackers: How Corporate Interests and Republican Insiders Built the Tea Party Monster

It's taken three trips to Kentucky, but I'm finally getting my Tea Party epiphany exactly where you'd expect: at a Sarah Palin rally. The red-hot mama of American exceptionalism has flown in to speak at something called the National Quartet Convention in Louisville, a gospel-music hoedown in a giant convention center filled with thousands of elderly white Southerners. Palin who earlier this morning held a closed-door fundraiser for Rand Paul, the Tea Party champion running for the U.S. Senate is railing against a GOP establishment that has just seen Tea Partiers oust entrenched Republican hacks in Delaware and New York. The dingbat revolution, it seems, is nigh.

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