For some time now, various "reporters" and on-air personalities on the Fox News Network have failed to report the full story or relevant facts, instead indulging in race baiting in order to exploit people's fears and crank up the fringe of their audience. This was exemplified by Glenn Beck's nightly assault on Van Jones earlier this year. Recently, Fox has cranked up stories about the Department of Justice's decision not to prosecute a voter intimidation case against a Black Panther group and even worse, calls for Atty. General Holder's resignation. And now, the Sherrod Debacle.
Turns out Van Jones' name was added to a website without his permission, a fact the group finally admitted some time after he resigned. And maybe he said some things about the Republican Party that he shouldn't have -- but that has nothing to do with the fact that he is a brilliant environmental organizer. It also turns out that it was the Bush Administration who decided not to prosecute the case against the black panthers because as Bush's Assistant Attorney General Perez testified, "the facts did not constitute a prosecutable violation of the criminal statues, and under the Obama Administration Justice Department a judgment was won in a civil case.
And by now we all know how the Sherrod story went down. Despite his claims to the contrary on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace didn't have his facts quite right. As a media matters study showed, Fox News did in fact spend a lot of air-time on July 19th and 20th cranking up the false story. Not to mention that foxnews.com bragged that shortly after they posted a "report" about the video Mrs. Sherrod resigned.
None of this is new. I don't believe all or even most of the Republican party voters are racist, but going at least as far back as Lee Atwater, the Willie Horton ads, and the attacks on John McCain in the South Carolina primaries in both 2000 and 2008, the immigration debate in 2006, there is a persistent willingness in the Republican party to use race baiting for electoral advantage. The fact is, this is racist behavior.
Now if the Tea Party, which is not a professional group of politicians have the decency to repudiate the racist fringe in their group, why can't the Republicans? Obviously they think this approach works on the margins, but even if this stuff works, it sure doesn't produce good leaders or a civil society, and it certainly doesn't produce a stronger America, it produces an even more polarized and angry America. It's that willingness to put party ahead of country that has the Republicans in such low regard.
There are lessons to be learned here. Tom Vilsack stated the first one best: don't make decisions without all the facts. To that I would add: consider the source. If it is a group of individuals or a corporation that has chronically ignored the facts and engaged in race baiting in the past, they are likely to do it again. A report by Fox News, Breitbart or Matt Drudge, ought to have -- as it does in most people's minds -- little credibility.
The second lesson is harder. Stand up for what you believe in. I admire Nancy Pelosi because she is tough, gets things done, and doesn't take crap from the right wing or any one else. After the year and a half this country has just been through, it is pretty obvious that the right-wing has no intention of cooperating with anyone, and that they will do anything to regain power, just as they were willing to do anything to hold on to it. The only reasonable approach is to stand up to them as you would any group of bullies. Call them out for what they do- or don't do as the case may be. If the Tea Party can call out some of their own members, surely we can call out a group of people who have put their party ahead of their country.
I have often said the biggest problem with the Democrats is that we are not tough enough. Now is the time to be tough. The fact is that the stimulus package has reduced unemployment from where it would have otherwise been in this Bush-induced recession (based on policies most of the Republicans now in Congress voted for). The fact is, as 60 members of the House and the CBO showed last week, the Public Option, or Medicare Buy-in, as it should more correctly be called, would have reduced the deficit over ten years by an additional $68 million dollars. The fact is that President Obama -- despite Republicans killing the climate change bill -- has done more in 18 months to change America's approach to the environment and green jobs than any president in memory.
The fact is that if we are going to tackle the deficit, it makes no sense to cut taxes for people with plenty of money while we tell people who depend on Social Security and Medicare that they have to do with less, or to play games with unemployment insurance for those who need it most.
The fact is that the Democrats won the election in 2008. The Republicans refuse to do anything for the country except say "no". That means we have to work hard and do what we believe is right. And we have to stop apologizing for it. We have to stand up for what we believe in and stop trying to make deals with people who cannot be trusted to make deals for the good of our country. It's not too late to win in 2010. Conviction politics works. Just ask the right wing!
Russell Bishop: Is There Any Integrity Or Honesty Out There?
Howard Dean - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Howard Dean Doubles Down on Fox Comments: If You Race-Bait, You're Racist
I have no idea why I keep reading comments like "Progressives believe everything gov't should give us everything" and "Progressive economics are unsustainable" - well, other than the typical RW mis-information factory. I read a piece by a Kucinich campaigner in 2008, describing how people would scoff when he came to their door but if he talked to them about the Kucinich platform, the people were very surprised to find that they believed in and supported most of it. We need to break past the MSM lock on the voters' perceptions, belittling Progressive candidates and misrepresenting them to the voters.
That would be undermining the President. I don't know what a "reversal of imperial presidency" even means. He also didn't promise to cut NAFTA. He said it was "bad", but later cooled down the rhetoric.
I still regret what the DNC did to your campaign in 2004. They did our country a great diservice and we are paying for it big time and will continue to pay for it for a long time to come.
This, from the man who once quipped to a room full of Democrats that Republicans couldn't get people of color into a room unless you count the wait staff.
Real classy.
Better yet, are you selfish on purpose?
The assumption is that an individual will take the steps necessary to be self-sufficient by working in an occupation that they can contribute and be compensated to pay their own way.
In the past, the American culture prized personal responsibility and looked down on the willingness and desire to take without producing more than they consumed.
"Neo-isolationist idealism?" What the hey are you talking about?
–noun (in U.S. politics)
a revival of isolationism arising from increased anti-Soviet and anti-European sentiment and a reluctance to involve the nation in further political and military commitments abroad.
The choices are not limited to involvement versus non-involvement. There are differences in how we may involve ourselves abroad. Ironically, the two Bush presidents demonstrated opposite ways of involvement. While Bush Junior was about "You're either with us or against us," Bush Senior did nothing militarily until (a) after Iraq violated international law with its invasion of Kuwait, and (b) he had used diplomacy to build an enormous alliance of the most powerful industrial nations in Europe and around the world. Plus, Bush Senior had the wisdom to heed the advice of his "Sun Tzu Taoist" generals to not invade Bagdad because that would become a quagmire.
There are times when we need to be involved in peace keeping, but seldom if ever should we do it without the overwhelming support of our friends and allies. Isolationism as a foreign policy has only a history of failure-- it's the ostrich with its head in the sand-- an unrealistic utopian ideal.
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Easy on the adulation of Bush, Sr.. His (pointless) "splendid little war" in Panama featured the first use of tortuously loud music (a slippery slope if there ever was one). Liberating Kuwait was in the vital interest of its nationals, not Americans. Bush Sr. hyperbolically crowed in the aftermath: "We've licked the Vietnam Syndrome for good".
Our nation is blessed: a continental republic nestled between massive oceans and with friendly neighbors (save for the proud island nation, Cuba, which hasn’t threated us since 1962).
The only serious threat to our national security since 1945, the USSR, dissolved itself in 1991.
It's in America’s DNA to be wary of “foreign entanglements”, per George Washington.
In the 20th Century, only WW2 presented an unequivocal threat to our sovereignty. After Pearl Harbor a member of the Joint Chiefs of staff told President Roosevelt: “If the Japanese invade now, they’ll get the all the way to Chicago before we can stop them.” Under those circumstances (only), Americans declare war.
All the empire-building that's happened since the end of the Cold War is contrary to American values and common sense.
Lately, multiple elements (with differing motives) have created a faux Cold War with the peoples of the Islamic world. This is a Tuchmanesque March of Folly.
Bi-coastal liberals, together with traditional Midwestern isolationist Americans in the flyover states, will repudiate this prescription for terrorism and endless war.
Eric C. Jacobson
Public Interest Lawyer
Culver City, California
http://www.libdems.us
Dean's sidelines cheerleading for "conviction politics" from the Democratic Party is nonsensical. What matters is that all elected Democratic elites (those actually playing politics) LOOK, ACT like and ARE political quislings who privately support the Republicans' worldview and policies, albeit sans the "rough edges". Indeed Obama and his team ardently promote this theme.
This capitulation to the premises of the rightist movement goes all the way back to the days following the end of Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic Party leadership (in 1945) and the decline of Eleanor Roosevelt's influence in the 1950s.
A progressive third party -- a "choice not an echo" to the "bad cop" Republicans and the "good cop" Democrats -- could work a realignment of American politics by combining Rooseveltian liberalism at home (favored by coastal liberal Democrats) with traditional "Mid-western" isolationism in foreign and defense policy (favored by the majority of Americans in the "flyover" states).
The British Liberal Democrats have given American progressives a blueprint to roughly emulate. If not us, who? If not now, when?
Eric C. Jacobson
Public Interest Lawyer
Culver City, California
http://www.libdems.us
Your claim that Dems are GOP in disguise is ignorant of what the Dems have already accomplished in the 18 months of Obama's administration.
• Rescued US Auto industry.
• SCHIP for 4 million more children
• Ended tax benefits to corporations outsourcing American jobs.
• Passed health reform.
• Extended benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.
• Withdrawal of 1//3 of US troops from Iraq.
• Ended stop-loss enlistment policy.
• Phased out F-22 and other costly outdated weapons systems.
• Removed restrictions on stem-cell research, and funded it.
• Funded high-speed, broadband Internet access for K-12 schools
• $789 billion economic stimulus,
• Rescued US financial and banking industry, which repaid most of TARP with interest.
• Ended US torture policy.
• EPA poised to regulate Co2
• New consumer protections from credit card industry’s predatory practices.
• Medicare may now negotiate price with drug manufacturers.
• Increased pay and benefits for military.
• Reengaged in diplomacy.
• Established a new cyber security office.
• Ended no-bid defense contracts.
• Appointment of first Latina to Supreme Court.
• $100 billion into national infrastructure and transportation system.
• $60 billion in spending and incentives for renewable and clean energy.
• Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act - equal pay for equal work for women.
• Nuclear arms deal with Russia reducing both countries` arsenals by a third.
• Global nuclear nonproliferation initiative.
• Passed Hate Crimes Prevention Act
• Passed sweeping financial regulation
• Extended unemployment benefits to 2 million long-term unemployed
Thank you for the post. Republicans will hate it so you know you wrote
a relevant post. Nice going.
fanned & faved
That rarely rises above "Liar, liar, pants on fire" or "I'm rubber, you're glue." They have no rebuttals. Oh, wait, they do, but they're all War Crimes.
Fanned & faved
"...indulging in race baiting in order to exploit people's fears and crank up the fringe of their audience. This was exemplified by Glenn Beck's nightly assault on Van Jones earlier this year."
Actually, it was about Mr. Jones's communist/marxist background.
1991 - Leading member of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement
Their 'manifesto:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070719020533/http://leftspot.com/blog/files/docs/STORMSummation.pdf
As much as you want to play the "R" card Mr. Dean, it won't help you here.
I haven't seen anything indicating his ideology has changed, only exchanging the 'radical pose for the radical ends."
If someone claims to be a "Marxist who believes in democracy," what's the big threat to the land of the free?
Mainly because this is a republic, not a democracy. Democracy will ultimately lead to anarchy.
From Wikipedia:
In 1992, still a law student at Yale, Jones was a volunteer legal monitor for protest of the Rodney King verdict in San Francisco. He and other protesters were arrested. The DA later dropped the charges against Jones, and the arrested protesters, including Jones, won a small legal settlement. Jones later said that "the incident deepened my disaffection with the system and accelerated my political radicalization." In October 2005 Jones said he was "a rowdy nationalist"[14] before the King verdict was announced, but that by August of that year (1992) he was a communist.[14] His activism was motivated by racial inequality in Connecticut: "I was seeing kids at Yale do drugs and talk about it openly, and have nothing happen to them...And then... kids three blocks away, in the housing projects, doing the same drugs, in smaller amounts, go to prison."
When he graduated from law school, Jones gave up plans to take a job in Washington, D.C., and moved to San Francisco instead.[14] He got involved with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a socialist group whose official Points of Unity "upheld revolutionary democracy, revolutionary feminism, revolutionary internationalism, the central role of the working class, urban Marxism, and Third World Communism." While associated with STORM, Jones actively began protesting police brutality.
Let's forget for a moment what was mentioned in the Machete 48 blog. Anyone that is involved with an organization that upheld, "revolutionary democracy...revolutionary internationalism...urban Marxism, and Third World Communism is what?
A marxist?
A communist?
Somehow it's not ok for folks like Beck to be alarmed by someone with this background because of their politics...la raza trumps criticism?
Again, it was never about what Mr. Dean said it was.