Robert Reich - The Ryan Choice

Paul Ryan is the reverse of Sarah Palin. She was all right-wing flash without much substance. He’s all right-wing substance without much flash.

Ryan is not a firebrand. He’s not smarmy. He doesn’t ooze contempt for opponents or ridicule those who disagree with him. In style and tone, he doesn’t even sound like an ideologue – until you listen to what he has to say.

It’s here — in Ryan’s views and policy judgments — we find the true ideologue. More than any other politician today, Paul Ryan exemplifies the social Darwinism at the core of today’s Republican Party: Reward the rich, penalize the poor, let everyone else fend for themselves. Dog eat dog.

Ryan’s views are crystallized in the budget he produced for House Republicans last March as chairman of the House Budget committee. That budget would cut $3.3 trillion from low-income programs over the next decade. The biggest cuts would be in Medicaid, which provides healthcare for the nation’s poor – forcing states to drop coverage for an estimated 14 million to 28 million low-income people, according to the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Ryan’s budget would also reduce food stamps for poor families by 17 percent ($135 billion) over the decade, leading to a significant increase in hunger – particularly among children. It would also reduce housing assistance, job training, and Pell grants for college tuition.

Read More:

http://robertreich.org/post/29215926175

Matt Stoller - Wisconsin Recap: Thanks to Obama, American Left Lies in Smoldering Wreckage

On Tuesday, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker humiliated his Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, by easily turning back a popular recall attempt sponsored by unions and liberal activists.  The numbers in the election, which were supposed to be close, were ugly, in favor of the Republican.  But this wasn’t just any Republican, Scott Walker is THE Republican, the politician who made his governorship a referendum on a hard right agenda, in a blue state.  Walker waged a direct and very public attack on the major constituencies of the Democratic Party, rolling back rights for women, the working class, and the young with measures such as ending collective bargaining for state employees, privatizing state assets, and repealing Wisconson’s equal pay provisions for women. His agenda provoked a fierce reaction – – Wisconsin citizens occupied the Statehouse for months -  and then a recall.

Yesterday, Walker’s agenda was ratified by the voters of Wisconsin, the state where public sector unions were born.  It’s hard to overstate how bad this is – Wisconsin is now on the road to becoming a right-to-work state, in what is likely to become a right-to-work country.  Right-to-work laws are provisions that allow individual employees to withdraw from unions, and they make it much harder for unions to organize.

And the deeper you look into the race, the worse it looks.   By calling for a recall instead of a general strike after Walker stripped collective bargaining rights and cut benefits for workers, labor and Democratic leadership in the state diverted and then subverted populist energy, channeling it into an electoral process (at least one union, one very active in the occupation of the Capitol, stood apart from the electoral stupidity).  Then, Barrett, an anti-labor centrist, won the Democratic primary by crushing his labor-backed opponent, Kathleen Falk.  Finally, Barrett himself was destroyed by Scott Walker, who outspent Barrett 7-1 with corporate money.  In other words, first, liberals lost a policy battle, then they failed to strike, then they lost a primary election, then they lost a general election to the most high-profile effective reactionary policy-maker in the country.  The conservative beat the moderate who beat the liberal.  And had Barrett won, he wouldn’t even have rolled back Walker’s agenda.  Somehow, in a no-win electoral situation, Democrats and labor managed to lose as badly as they possibly could.

Read More:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/wisconsin-recap-thanks-to-obama-american-left-lies-in-smoldering-wreckage.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Mike Whitney - The short and uninspiring "one term" career of Barack Obama

Be sure to jot-down June 1, 2012 on your calender. That's the day that Barack Obama's reelection chances went up in smoke. Friday's report from the Labor Department showed the US economy added just 69,000 jobs in May which pushed the unemployment rate back up to 8.2 percent, the first rise since June 2011. Unfortunately for Obama, there's not much he can do to turn things around before the November balloting. GOP deficit hawks are dead-set against more stimulus, so he won't be getting any money from congress. He'll just have to muddle-through as best as he can hoping that the economy picks up in the meantime. But the slowdown in China and the deteriorating debt crisis in the eurozone make that unlikely, which means that Obama's approval ratings will continue to slide until election-time, when high unemployment and flagging growth put corporate raider, Mitt Romney, in the winner's circle.

Let's face it, Obama hasn't lifted a finger to help the economy since he passed his $800 billion fiscal stimulus bill in 2009. For the last 3 years we've heard nothing but endless blabber about the phantom "recovery" and "green shoots". Blah, blah, blah. It's sickening! Meanwhile 20 million people waste their time in unemployment lines or shredding beef at Arby's for $7.50 an hour. What has Obama done to help them?

Nothing. Nada. Zippo.

Have you been following the news since the job's report came out? Obama's trying to pass the blame off on Congress. Here's what he said on Friday:

"My message to Congress is now is not time to play politics. Now is not the time to sit on your hands."

Read More:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/mike-whitney/43554/the-short-and-uninspiring-one-term-career-of-barack-obama

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

Adrian Salbuchi - Obama's Total War Doctrine: Intense and Constant Psychological Warfare. "Total War" against All Countries

President Obama promised change, but there's little of it in his war policies, which are harsher than those of George W. Bush. US drone bombings often target not just "terrorists" but all "military-age males in a strike zone as combatants." "Unless there is explicit posthumous intelligence proving otherwise", that is. As an extensive recent report in The New York Times explains, for all practical purposes Obama is applying what can best be described as a Total War Doctrine, bringing government, military and media propaganda PsyWar under one strategy.

The concept of "Total War" - war involving not just the military but all civilians irrespective of age or sex, together with the entire infrastructure of a country - became a horrible reality during the 20th century, driven for the most part by steering scientific discoveries and technological progress towards unlimited use in warfare. Total War is very much alive today and is being spearheaded by the United States and its Allies. This is being abetted on all fronts by US, European and global mainstream media that willingly oblige. 

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31265

Expert Panel Reports False Accounts of US Political and Military Leaders on 9/11

New evidence shows that the September 11th activities of former President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were falsely reported by official sources.

The 20-member 9/11 Consensus Panel analyzed evidence from press reports, FOIA requests, and archived 9/11 Commission file documents to produce eight new studies, released today.

The international Panel also discovered that four massive aerial practice exercises traditionally held in October were in full operation on 9/11. The largest, Global Guardian, held annually by NORAD and the US Strategic and Space Commands, had originally been scheduled for October 22-31but was moved, along with Vigilant Guardian, to early September.

Although senior officials claimed  no one could have predicted using hijacked planes as weapons, the military had been practicing similar exercises on 9/11 itself -- and for years before it.

The Panel, discovering widespread reports of confusion and delays in the defense response, looked into who was overseeing the air defenses after the second Tower was hit at 9:03 AM.

Read More:

http://uspolitics.einnews.com/pr_news/99336647/expert-panel-reports-false-accounts-of-u-s-political-and-military-leaders-on-9-11

Chris Hedges - Northern Light

I gave a talk last week at Canada’s Wilfrid Laurier University to the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Many in the audience had pinned small red squares of felt to their clothing. The carre rouge, or red square, has become the Canadian symbol of revolt. It comes from the French phrase carrement dans le rouge, or “squarely in the red,” referring to those crushed by debt.

The streets of Montreal are clogged nightly with as many as 100,000 protesters banging pots and pans and demanding that the old systems of power be replaced. The mass student strike in Quebec, the longest and largest student protest in Canadian history, began over the announcement of tuition hikes and has metamorphosed into what must swiftly build in the United States—a broad popular uprising. The debt obligation of Canadian university students, even with Quebec’s proposed 82 percent tuition hike over several years, is dwarfed by the huge university fees and the $1 trillion of debt faced by U.S. college students. The Canadian students have gathered widespread support because they linked their tuition protests to Quebec’s call for higher fees for health care, the firing of public sector employees, the closure of factories, the corporate exploitation of natural resources, new restrictions on union organizing, and an announced increase in the retirement age. Crowds in Montreal, now counting 110 days of protests, chant “On ne lâche pas”—“We’re not backing down.”

The Quebec government, which like the United States’ security and surveillance state is deaf to the pleas for justice and fearful of widespread unrest, has reacted by trying to stamp out the rebellion. It has arrested hundreds of protesters. The government passed Law 78, which makes demonstrations inside or near a college or university campus illegal and outlaws spontaneous demonstrations in the province. It forces those who protest to seek permission from the police and imposes fines of up to $125,000 for organizations that defy the new regulations. This, as with the international Occupy movement, has become a test of wills between a disaffected citizenry and the corporate state. The fight in Quebec is our fight. Their enemy is our enemy. And their victory is our victory.

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/northern_light_20120603/

Prof. James F. Tracy - POLICE STATE USA: The Paranoid Style of American Governance

In 1964 Harper's magazine published the now famous essay, "The Paranoid Style of American Politics," by historian and public intellectual Richard Hofstadter. Appearing in the wake of President John F. Kennedy's assassination and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater's Republican presidential nomination, the tract remains emblematic of liberal anxiety toward serious and in many cases unresolved questions regarding the forces behind American governance. "The Paranoid Style" overall helped establish the term "conspiracy theory" as perhaps the most powerful epithet in the American political lexicon.  "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds," Hofstadter wrote.

"In recent years, we have seen angry minds at work, mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated, in the Goldwater movement, how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But, behind this, I believe, there is a style of mind that is far from new, and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style, simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind." (emphasis added)

Americans typically comfort themselves in the notion that they live in a democracy, with a government that is rational, responsible, and accommodative of their needs. Yet what if the government Americans look to for protection of personal property, the creation and enforcement of fair and just laws, and defense of the nation's borders and interests abroad exhibits the paranoia Hofstadter attributed to John Birchers and Goldwater supporters, complete with deep suspicions and conspiratorial fantasies toward those it is supposed to serve and protect?

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31220

Mike Feder - Memorial Day in The Rear View Mirror (Video)

To read the great article associated with his video, Click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-feder/memorial-dayin-the-rear-v_b_1563189.html 

When was the last time--as a nation--that we observed or celebrated a national holiday without getting drunk, or fatter, or blow money we couldn't afford on some useless junk?

Now we have become the new Roman Empire--we (The President/Emperor and The Military) invade, occupy, corrupt and steal just as we please. And at home the cops beat non-violent protesters in the streets and the government spies on all of us.

So, I ask the question again: Just why did our soldiers die in The Revolutionary War, The Civil War and in World War II? I thought it was for Freedom, Equality and Justice. Maybe I got it wrong.

written and narrated by Mike Feder

video conception and creation by Todd Mathews

Listen to Mike Feder every Saturday from 5-8PM Eastern time on Sirius XM Left Channel 127 and also on Progressive Radio Network (PRN.FM): Occupied Territory (Thursdays @ 1PM ET) and The Turning Point (Mondays at 4pm ET); both shows available on podcast and Stitcher.

Mike's website is http://www.federfiles.com

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