Political Ideas

The Next Step in Caring

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Airport resistance is the biggest step forward by the U.S. public in years.

Why do I say that? Because this is unfunded, largely unpartisan activism that is largely selfless, largely focused on helping unknown strangers, driven by compassion and love, not political ideology, greed, or vengeance, and in line with activism around the globe. It’s also targeted at the location of the harm, directly resisting the injustice, and achieving immediate partial successes, including very meaningful successes read more

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Be Glad the White House Comment Line Is Closed

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The White House comment phone line directs people to kindly go away and think about what losers they are. Oops, sorry, I mean it directs people not to leave any comments. Instead it says to use a White House web form or to send a message through a White House Facebook account (which has no messaging capability). I’m not inclined to use the web form, because I doubt anyone reads it and I’d rather not be added to a White House email list.

If I’m going to publish a comment to the read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Sarah Van Gelder on The Revolution Where You Live

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-sarah-van-gelder-on-the-revolution-where-you-live

As co-founder and executive director of Yes! Magazine, Sarah van Gelder leads the framing and development of each issue of Yes! and writes a column introducing each issue. Sarah blogs at Yes! and Huffington Post, writes articles and does interviews for Yes! Magazine, and speaks on leading-edge innovations that show that another world read more

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Six Things We Should Do Better As Everything Gets Worse

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Here I am in occupied DC. The White House looks like a Green Zone. There was a time when you could walk up to it. Caravans of police cars and black SUVs zoom by with sirens blaring and everyone else forced aside. Do people look outraged? No, they grin and admire. We need more democratic perspectives. Here are six.

1. Get active around policy not personality. And try to nudge newly active or re-activated people in that direction. To take one example of thousands, we should be cheering read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Antonia Juhasz on Tillerson, Trump, and Oil

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-antonia-juhasz-on-tillerson-trump-and-oil

Antonia Juhasz is an energy analyst, author, and investigative reporter. She recently wrote a profile of Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for In These Times magazine. We discuss Tillerson and the oil spill he floated in on. See also:
http://www.antoniajuhasz.net

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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Talk Nation Radio: Millions Lose Their Minds Over Russia

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-millions-lose-their-minds-over-russia

This week on Talk Nation Radio: millions of Americans lose their everloving minds over unproven accusations against Russia, the ACLU and CAIR publish claim that war on Iraq has been to protect the U.S. Bill of Rights, and a torture report gets buried.

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.

Pacifica stations can also read more

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Allegations Against Russia Less Credible Every Day

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The U.S. government has now generated numerous news stories and released multiple “reports” aimed at persuading us that Vladimir Putin is to blame for Donald Trump becoming president. U.S. media has dutifully informed us that the case has been made. What has been made is the case for writing your own news coverage. The “reports” from the “intelligence community” are no lengthier than the New York Times and Washington Post articles about them. read more

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Yes, Positivity, Pangloss, Partisanship, Propaganda, and Populism

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Eight years ago Yes! Magazine published a political platform of progressive policies, along with polling showing strong majority support for each proposal. Now, eight years later, we can show almost total failure to advance any of the proposals, most of which were focused on the U.S. federal government.

Where there have been any small successes, they have mostly come at the state or local level or outside the United States. New York State just took a step toward free college and Washington State read more

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Fantasies About Russia Could Doom Opposition to Trump

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To many Democrats for whom killing a million people in Iraq just didn’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense, and who considered Obama’s bombing of eight nations and the creation of the drone murder program to be praiseworthy, Trump will be impeachable on Day 1.

Indeed Trump should be impeached on Day 1, but the same Democrats who found the one nominee who could lose to Trump will find the one argument for impeachment that can explode in their own faces. Here’s read more

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Russians, By Fling — To the tune of "Russians" by Sting

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In Liberal America, there’s a growing feeling of hysteria

Conditioned to accept whatever’s claimed

As long as it’s Donald and the Russians blamed

Mr. Putin says he’ll be friends with you

I don’t subscribe to this point of view

It would be such an ignorant thing to do

If the Russians hate their children too

How can I risk my little boy with Oppenheimer’s deadly toy

There is no monopoly in common sense

On either side of all the missile defense

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Va State Senator Creigh Deeds Says He Has No Intention of Supporting Any Muslim Registry

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I emailed my Virginia state senator Creigh Deeds:  
As a constituent I urge you to join state legislators and governors from around the United States and issue a public statement opposing a Muslim registry and mass deportations. Please let me know that you have done so. Thank you.
He wrote back:  

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Yes, Dubya, Now I Miss You

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When George W. Bush made the case for attacking and destroying the nation of Iraq, he made claims that, if true, would have justified nothing. And he proposed as evidence for those claims fraudulent, implausible, and even ridiculous pieces of information. But he was expected to produce evidence. There was no assumption that he should simply be taken on faith.

Those standards are gone.

The common wisdom that Vladimir Putin hacked into Democratic and Republican emails and fed the Democratic ones to read more

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Monday Morning Bernie Backing

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The growing push to defeat Trump by any of the following means:

  • Taking the CIA’s warmongering on faith and blaming Vladimir Putin for everything,
  • Accusing the FBI,
  • Pressing for majority rule despite the electoral college,
  • Protesting voters being stripped from the rolls,
  • Objecting to intimidation at the polls,
  • Trying to undo the blocking of votes by those lacking IDs,
  • Remedying broken and insufficient and unverifiable machines,
  • Counting paper ballots where they exist,
  • Threatening impeachment over Trump’s unconstitutional presents and emoluments from foreign nations unless he sells his foreign businesses,
  • Arguing for disqualification on the ground of mental illness,
  • Praying and fantasizing,

would be far more energized and popular if the “defeated” candidate were Bernie Sanders, who — judging by all existing polling (and theorizing what his general election campaign would have looked like) — would almost certainly not have been defeated by any means in the first place.

It’s worth thinking for a moment what could have been done differently. The corporate media could have not acted like the corporate read more

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Think Politicians Are Trying to Scare You? You're Not Paranoid.

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Part I. Personal

Wednesday evening I answered the phone, and a man pretending to work for the local sheriff’s department asked me to identify myself, told me that the call would be recorded because it might be used against me in a court of law, and ordered me to get a pen and paper. He spoke fast and unclearly and with lots of strange background noises. He claimed that I had failed to appear for jury duty and I would be arrested if I didn’t do what he said. (I’d received no notice read more

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If Phil Ochs Were Alive, Though I'd Not Wish It on Him

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I cried when they mocked Donna Brazile
Tears ran down my spine
And I cried when Joe Biden stepped aside
As though I’d lost a father of mine
But Chelsea Manning got what was coming
She got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, i’m a liberal

I go to white BLM rallies
I arrive in my new hybrid car
I back GLBTQ in the Army
I love all immigrants from afar
But don’t talk about revolution
That’s going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, i’m a liberal

I read more

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