Political Ideas

How Democratic-Party "Activism" Is Done

Daily Kos sent an email on December 6 promoting a strategy  to eliminate the “Bush” tax cuts on the wealthy:

This will really make John Boehner cry

David, please send an email to your member of the House of Representatives, telling him or her to sign the discharge petition that would force an up or down vote on ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%. Click here to send an email.

House Republican leaders are refusing to hold a vote on ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%. However, there is a way we can read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Roy Hange on Struggle for Peace in Syria and Iran

Roy Hange is a Mennonite pastor in Charlottesville, Va., who has spent 30 years studying Western Asia (the Middle East).  He has lived for 3 years in Egypt, 6 in Syria, and 1 in Iran.  Hange has taught peace building at Eastern Mennonite University and the University of Virginia.  Hange discusses prospects for peace in Syria and Iran.

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Engineer: Christiane Brown.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download or get embed code from read more

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Spelunker in Chief

Will Obama cave? How deeply will Obama cave?  Why did Obama cave again?  Were you hoping Obama would change his caving ways?  President Barack Obama, one begins to understand, must be our spelunker in chief.

But look closely into the darkness of the executive cave and the act of “caving” vanishes.  Obama never did quite swear he wouldn’t keep the “Bush” tax cuts for people with $200,000 incomes.  Obama never exactly promised to protect Medicare read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Erica Chenoweth on the Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict

Erica Chenoweth is co-author with Maria J. Stephan of “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.”  Their research finds that nonviolent action works against tyrannical rule with a higher success rate than violence and with longer-lasting results.  Their book has received the 2013 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, as well as the 2012 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award, which the American Political Science Association gives annually read more

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The Normalization of Treason

How did right-wing politics in the United States survive the 1960s and 1970s and thrive beyond?  Not only did the wealthy invest in the corruption of politics, but the politicians invested in the normalization of treason.

When presidential candidate Richard Nixon sabotaged the peace process in Vietnam, President Lyndon Johnson privately called it treason and publicly kept his mouth shut. 

By the time Bush the Elder, also involved in that earlier treason, worked with Robert Gates and William read more

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Davids Oppose Israel’s Use of King David

One tool being employed by the government of Israel to evict Palestinian people from their homes is the claim that doing so will allow archaeologists to discover historical evidence of the existence of King David.  Such evidence is intended to strengthen the claim that Jews are returning to land occupied by Jews millennia ago.

Yet the living people moved off their land by Israeli expansion are denied any right to return to it.

The King David in the book of Samuel is greedy and cruel, thoughtless read more

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We Used to Make the Rich Poorer and the Poor Richer

Many of us have heard the current period referred to as a second gilded age.  Or we’ve seen the current inequality in wealth in the United States compared to that of 1929.  But we have not all given sufficient thought to what ended the first gilded age, what created greater equality, what created the reality behind that category our politicians now endlessly pretend we are all in: the middle class.  We have a sense of what went wrong at the turn of each century, but what went read more

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Howard Zinn's Echoes

We’re approaching three years since Howard Zinn left us, and to my ear his voice sounds louder all the time.  I expect that effect to continue for decades and centuries to come, because Zinn spoke to enduring needs.  He taught lessons that must be relearned over and over, as the temptations weighing against them are so strong.  And he taught those lessons better than anybody else.

We like to use the word “we,” and to include in it everything the Constitution pretends read more

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