July 12, 2009 archive

The Ultimate Organizer: An Interview With ACORN’s Founder Wade Rathke

Photobucket

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.


It seems no matter which political party in America holds the majority, a Washington/Wall Street corporate centric axis dominates policy making. Indeed, Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin recently observed that banks, “Frankly Own the Place.” Among liberal-progressive activists like myself, this condition has facilitated a confrontational mindset.


Our experience suggests that the power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a few will not be voluntarily relinquished. Hence, everything from healthcare reform to bankruptcy protection for aggrieved homeowners is perceived by many of us as a high stakes pitched battle between struggling families and feculent corporate behemoths. Although activism has certainly facilitated important victories on behalf of working people, fighting for economic justice often seems analogous to climbing an endless wall.

Israel to hire pro-Israel “Internet Warriors”

Israel, upon seeing that its war crimes are decidedly unpopular, has decided to fight back by hiring people to go into the blogosphere and make comments supportive of Israel’s tactics.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articl…


The Foreign Ministry unveiled a new plan this week: Paying talkbackers to post pro-Israel responses on websites worldwide. A total of NIS 600,000 (roughly $150,000) will be earmarked to the establishment of an “Internet warfare” squad.

Gotta love that, a “warfare” squad.  Sure, it’s a war.  It’s a war against the truth, that is.

The article continues:


The sad truth is that had Israeli citizens believed that their State is doing the right thing, they would have made sure to explain it out of their own accord. Without being paid.

Foreign Ministry officials are fighting what they see as a terrible and scary monster: the Palestinian public relations monster. Yet nothing can be done to defeat it, regardless of how many foolish inventions will be introduced and how many bright communication students will be hired.

The reason is that good PR cannot make the reality in the occupied territories prettier. Children are being killed, homes are being bombed, and families are starved. Yet nonetheless, the Foreign Ministry wants to try to change the situation. And they have willing partners. “Where do I submit a CV?” wrote one respondent. “I’m fluent in several languages and I’m able to spew forth bullshit for hours on end.”

Here we call that “putting lipstick on a pig”.  

I wonder what term they have for it there.

I would like someone to post this over at Dailykos and watch the heads explode of the dozen or so noise-makers who already seem to be doing this there.   You know who they are if you’ve ever seen any comment that in any way DARES to criticize the actions of Israel, no matter how godawful those actions may be.

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

Now with World News.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Cheney ordered intel withheld from Congress: senator

Reuters

17 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The CIA withheld information from Congress about a secret counterterrorism program on orders from former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, a leading U.S. senator said on Sunday.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein told Fox News Sunday that CIA Director Leon Panetta disclosed Cheney’s involvement when he briefed members of Congress two weeks ago. She said Panetta told them he had canceled the program.

President Barack Obama appointed Panetta to head the agency early this year. The still-secret program, which The New York Times said never became operational, began after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Whatever Happened to the Left?

This is an essay about observations, so it’s not going to be sourced to the Mainstream Press that has served as propagandists and gatekeepers to the political status quo for too damned long. These are observations of political trends I’ve noted over more than 40 years of certifiable adulthood, strong interest in all things political, several oaths to protect and defend the Constitution (thus Laws of the Land), and a 40-year marriage to a political sci-guy who is even more obsessed with politics than I am.

The last time the left side of the political spectrum wielded significant political power was back during the dark days of VietNam in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It gained effective – though not much status quo – political power through the efforts of activists who motivated the young in high schools and on college campuses across the country, where the cannon fodder for the right’s dirty little opium war could be Shanghai’d by the draft. This meant that your average Mom and Pop America had a personal stake in the war, and they were darned sick of flag-draped coffins and burying pieces of their children shipped home from rice patties in a far-away country they couldn’t even find on a map. For no better reason than somebody’s terror of dominoes that might interfere with the drug supply and the M-I complex’s desire to make a fortune battle-testing cool shit like Napalm and 2,000# bombs and fancy new fighter jets. Hey, they’d been shafted by the end of the space race, and had to do something to justify their incestuous existence.

Oddly enough, it turned out to be Tricky Dick’s very own generals (plus spooks) who ended up taking him down, even though he made a valiant effort to save himself by abruptly ending a war nobody on this side of the Pacific ever could have ‘won’. That was back in an era when most of the military old-timers – the career officers who served at the Pentagon and commanded the conscripted troops – still took their oaths of service seriously, and they didn’t like what was going on any more than the students who had no choice or their parents did. You don’t really believe it was just a “third-rate burglary” at the Watergate that did Nixon in, do you?

Rats getting that sinking feeling

Crossposted at daily kos

From http://thinkprogress.org/

    This is the beginning of the end.

    NOW IS THE TIME TO YELL LOUDER!

    YELL LIKE YOU’VE NEVER YELLED BEFORE.

    The ship is sinking.

    Watch the rats look for a place to hide.

    Now, what do we need to do to give the Monsters of the Bush/Dick years that push right off the edge?

    Comments below will provide more details.

Nearly Wordless



Burst

Stand A Little Rain – Open Thread

Stand A Little Rain – Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

It’s simply amazing, how Obstructionists operate

also posted on the kos

It’s simply amazing, how Obstructionists operate

Step Right Up!

This magic elixir, will solve everything —

It’s called “More of the Same”

(aka “Private Insurance knows best.”)

It’s simply amazing what Paid Shills will say

to keep their Wealthy Patrons rolling in clover.

Sunday music retrospective: Deep Purple

Deep Purple



Hush



Black Night

“Young” GOP meltdown

http://www.thedailybeast.com/b…

Meghan McCain

http://www.thedailybeast.com/b…

I think she could be talked into joining the Dem’s

FDR Destroys GOP, Sen. Hatch on “Obamanopoly”

Crossposted at daily kos

    “A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.”  

~ President Franklin Delanor Roosevelt

   After almost 80 years, the GOP has hardly changed.

    The richest man in the world. The new king of the hill. I know you won’t find this financial titan in the lists of Forbes magazines lists of the world’s billionaires. He hasn’t started a mega computer software company like Bill Gates, nor has he made shrewd investments like Warren Buffet or even inherited his money like the Walton family of Walmart fame. No, the billions amassed over the years by these business magnates are chump change compared to our current champ.  

    If you’d rather not sit through the whole video you can fast forward to the FDR pwnage of the modern day GOP at the bottom of this diary, or you can follow the detailed FAILure below the fold. Honestly, we need FDR’s voice now more than ever.

Two articles on Honduras

The first, Honduras: US-backed mediation legitimizes military coup, by Bill Van Auken via World Socialist Web Site:

The talks convened in the Costa Rican capital San José on Thursday with the purported aim of resolving the political crisis unleashed by the June 28 coup in neighboring Honduras, are shaping up as a farce. The apparent object of this fraudulent exercise is to legitimize the military overthrow of the elected president of Honduras and realize the aims of Washington and the predominant sections of the right-wing Honduran oligarchy.

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