David Bromwich - The Strange Bipartisanship of 2009, 2011, and 2013

On June 1, in Minneapolis, the president spoke some words to supporters that ought to have left them slack-jawed. As Devin Dwyer wrote at Jake Tapper's excellent blog, Political Punch, President Obama said last Friday that "if he wins a second term the GOP 'fever' of opposition to tax hikes for deficit reduction may break." Why would the fever break? Fever is the Republican condition. Look at what they did to President Carter over the Iran hostage crisis, and what they did to President Clinton over the assault weapons ban. Has no visitor who entered the Oval Office listened to Fox Radio for half an hour in the last four years?

Obama in the same speech referred back to the better days of a Republican Party that dwelt (with whatever admixture of opportunism) somewhere in the precincts of reality: "John McCain believed in climate change. John believed in campaign finance reform. He believed in immigration reform. I mean, there were some areas where you saw some overlap." Well, but what has been the record of John McCain on all of these issues since 2009? The example proves too much.

"In this election," Obama conceded, "the Republican Party has moved in a fundamentally different direction. The center of gravity for their party has shifted." Why not say that their center of gravity has become the far right, and that the far right now controls the party with no scope for disagreement? What ought to follow from that perception is that 2012 feels like a fight because it is a fight. Obama, however, drew the opposite conclusion: "I believe that if we're successful in this election," he told his followers, "that the fever may break, because there's a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that." What evidence can he show of any continuity with a Republican tradition of common sense?

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/bipartisanship-in-2009-20_b_1571727.html

Paul McGeough - Republicans Plot to Steal White House

There's a fiendish cleverness in perpetrating a fraud in broad daylight, at the same time as you tell the people that it must be done to guard against - you guessed it - fraud.

The reality of voter fraud in the US is that it is virtually non-existent. It has been known to happen, but studies reveal its probability is less than that of being struck by lightning - just 0.0009 per cent in Washington State and a very remote 0.00004 per cent in Ohio.

So welcome to the state of Florida, where the state emblem is the hanging chad. Remember, it was here that just 537 votes in the recount drama of 2000 threw the presidency to George W. Bush.

Nothing can be left to chance. Like about 20 other Republican-controlled states, Florida has gone all out to stifle the likely Democratic vote before the presidential poll in November. Using the Bush rule of thumb, a tweak to the law that shaves the Democratic vote by just a few hundred at elections where about 10 million get to vote, is halfway to throwing the outcome.

Read More:

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/republicans-plot-to-steal-white-house-20120602-1zofk.html

Brent Budowsky - Why the right, the GOP and some Dems fear Elizabeth Warren and Occupy Wall Street

On the issues of fairness in finance, economics and consumerism, Elizabeth Warren and the Occupy Wall Street movement speak for the majority of Americans. This terrifies the right, frightens the Republicans, and worries a few Democrats who like that money from the 1 percent.

In my column this week, "Karl Rove's Grand Slam," I suggested liberals and Democrats can attack the abuses most recently seen in the JPMorgan trading losses and the Facebook IPO fiasco and attack the Supreme Court travesty in Citizens United, while also raising money from wealthy liberals and Democrats until Citizens United is overturned.

The right and the Republicans fear Occupy Wall Street and Elizabeth Warren because they know, and the numbers prove it, that a majority of voters agree with them about eliminating financial abuses that plague so many Americans. And yes, there are even some Democrats who do not speak for the majority of Democrats nationally (I do), who want the money so much they will even defend Mitt Romney on Bain Capital.

For those who want 30 percent rates on your credit cards and mortages that are unfair, feel free to oppose Elizabeth Warren and OWS. For those who want to pay your banks higher fees and get ripped off investing in IPOs, go ahead and support Scott Brown, the Tea Party and Nikki Haley, who is now in some hot water in South Carolina.

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-the-right-the-GOP-and-by-Brent-Budowsky-120602-781.html

Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer - How the Democrats Exploit Occupy

There has been much talk about attempts by various organizations such as the Democratic Party and some top officials in organized labor to co-opt Occupy in order to steer this movement in directions beneficial to themselves. Such attempts can hardly be surprising, given the use that many in the Republican Party made of the Tea Party people. 

 

The 99% Spring is the latest effort by those close to the Democrats to take advantage of Occupy, but the results were less than spectacular. While they trumpeted attracting somewhere in the order of 100,000 activists to participate, the resulting demonstrations in various cities numbered only in the range of several thousand people.

 

But the Democrats and their operatives in Occupy have nevertheless had an impact. In particular, they have argued that demonstrations target banks first and foremost, not the government. Of course, sometimes targeting banks is appropriate.

 

However, there are times when the goals that Occupy has embraced would indicate that the most appropriate target would be the government and politicians, not the banks. Still, the Democratic Party operatives within Occupy push for demonstrations exclusively at banks.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31190

Chris Mooney - Conservatives Attack Scientific Findings About Why They Hate Science (Helping to Confirm the Science)

Two months have passed since my new book, The Republican Brain, was published, and so far it has gotten a lot of media attention. However, the coverage has followed a noteworthy pattern: while progressives and liberals seem intrigued about what I’m saying, the so-called “mainstream” media—the CNNs of the world—have shied away from the subject.

What’s up with this? Well, a book with conclusions closely related to mine—Norman Ornstein’s and Thomas Mann’s It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism—seems as though it is being handled similarly by some in the press. And perhaps there’s a reason: Centrist (aka “mainstream”) journalists might well prefer that the findings of these books not be true.

You see, if I’m wrong, then the press can happily go on doing what it has always done: Splitting the difference between the political left and the political right, and employing “on the one hand, on the other hand” treatments that presume we’re all equally biased, all equally self-interested...just in different directions.

The trouble is, I’ve presented a substantial body of scientific evidence suggesting that this simply isn’t the case. More specifically, the science I’ve presented suggests that the political right and left are quite different animals; that they perceive the world differently and handle evidence differently; and most importantly, that the polarization and the denial of science in modern American politics are fundamentally the fault of the authoritarian right. (Mann and Ornstein argue something very similar about today’s Republican Party.)

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155646/conservatives_attack_scientific_findings_about_why_they_hate_science_%28helping_to_confirm_the_science%29

Kelley B. Vlahos - War Inc. Shifts Homeward

It’s been said many times that the war is a self-sustaining industry that requires a constant threat overseas to keep the machine thriving at home. Looking at the millions if not billions of dollars spent on securing “national special security events” against its own citizens, it’s clear that protesters have become the threat that has allowed, in part, the warfare state to flourish on American soil.

Sound dramatic? One need only to look at the lockdown of our cities during these “events” — whether it be the NATO Summit in Chicago today, or preparations to militarize the cities of Tampa and Charlotte for the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer — to see that the constitutionally protected, American tradition of protest has become a reason for law enforcement to spend their quickly evaporating budgets each year on new toys and overtime — including the latest in surveillance, crowd control gear and communications equipment, not to mention the helicopters overhead and armed vehicles on the ground.

Just as important, this threat allows the federal government to extend its own powers under the Patriot Act onto Main Street, all in the order of counterterrorism and national security.

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=150891

The amazing expanding Pentagon

When President Obama and Mitt Romney cross swords on defense policy, it can sound like a schoolyard fight: Who loves the military more? Who is tougher? Who would lead a more muscular America?

This is the way we expect candidates to talk about defense: in terms of power, force, even national pride. But increasingly, when it comes to the role the Department of Defense actually plays for the nation, it misses the point. Over the past decade, the Pentagon has become far more complex than the conversation about it would suggest. What “military” means has changed sharply as the Pentagon has acquired an immense range of new expertise. What began as the world’s most lethal strike force has grown into something much more wide-ranging and influential.

Today, the Pentagon is the chief agent of nearly all American foreign policy, and a major player in domestic policy as well. Its planning staff is charting approaches not only toward China but toward Latin America, Africa, and much of the Middle East. It’s in part a development agency, and in part a diplomatic one, providing America’s main avenue of contact with Africa and with pivotal oil-producing regimes. It has convened battalions of agriculture specialists, development experts, and economic analysts that dwarf the resources at the disposal of USAID or the State Department. It’s responsible for protecting America’s computer networks. In May of this year, the Pentagon announced it was creating its own new clandestine intelligence service. And the Pentagon has emerged as a surprisingly progressive voice in energy policy, openly acknowledging climate change and funding research into renewable energy sources.

Read More:

http://articles.boston.com/2012-05-27/ideas/31837499_1_foreign-policy-pentagon-schoolyard-fight

Jack A. Smith - American Politics: THE ELECTIONS WON'T BRING PROGRESSIVE CHANGE, SO WHAT CAN?

Less than six months before the November presidential elections in an exceptionally distressed United States the narrow, unpleasant parameters of political possibility are emerging. Two alternatives confront the American people, both to the right of center

1. If President Barack Obama is reelected, with the Democratic Party retaining control of at least one chamber of Congress, there probably will be four more years of economic stagnation, high unemployment, increasing poverty and inequality, more wars, erosions of civil liberties and global warming.

2. If Mitt Romney is elected, with the right/far right Republican Party dominating either House or Senate, every particular of the travail afflicting the country today will be multiplied, with emphasis on fulfilling the desires of the 1% at the expense of the 99%.

What else could be expected during the present conservative era? Paul Krugman, the liberal Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, recently described Obama, whom he supports, as having ruled like "a moderate Republican circa 1992." Viewing the ultra-conservatives, African American professor and left intellectual Cornell West detected "creeping fascism."

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31042

Marc McDonald - How Right-Wingers Took Over Wikipedia

Wikipedia is one of the most useful sites on the Web. It's a fantastic reference source that provides an incredible wealth of data on an endless variety of topics.

A big strength of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit any article. If, for example, an expert on quantum mechanics happens to notice a small factual error in the Wikipedia article on that topic, he or she can easily fix it on the spot. By harnessing the power of the knowledge of millions of people, Wikipedia has grown into the world's biggest reference resource.

However, Wikipedia's strength is also its biggest flaw. The very fact that anyone can edit an article means that errors, spin and bias can easily creep into the Wikipedia database.

If you're looking to read up on millions of disparate topics, from aardvarks to Frank Zappa, Wikipedia can offer you an enormous amount of helpful info that is reasonably free of bias.

But there's one big exception: articles on current political figures and topics.

Here, Wikipedia falls woefully short in its goal of providing a "neutral point of view."

Read More:

http://www.beggarscanbechoosers.com/2012/05/how-right-wingers-took-over-wikipedia.html

Mehdi Hasan - Sadly Barack Obama, like Mitt Romney, is an apologist for the 1%

Poor Mitt Romney. Despite defeating a weird and wacky line-up of candidates in a gruelling Republican primary race, and despite selling himself as "the CEO president", he can't seem to shake off his image as a slash-and-burn private equity boss, a modern-day incarnation of Gordon Gekko.

It hasn't escaped his opponents' attention. In 2008, Romney's then rival for the nomination, Mike Huckabee, mocked him for looking like "the guy who laid you off". Last year, during his own brief and bizarre bid for the presidency, the billionaire entrepreneur Donald Trump ridiculed Romney as "a funds guy" who would "buy companies … close companies [and] get rid of the jobs". And, last week, Team Obama released a campaign ad attacking Romney's private equity firm, Bain Capital, and referring to the Republican candidate as a "vampire".

In a show of co-ordinated faux outrage, Republicans have since called on the president to disown such attack ads. But drawing attention to Romney's record as a corporate raider is fair game. As co-founder and chief executive of Bain Capital, Romney did make hundreds of millions of dollars from private equity deals, and did lay off hundreds of workers in the process.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/24/barack-obama-mitt-romney-apologist