It's become common to hear that the Republicans are just "the party of No," with no ideas beyond obstructing the Democratic agenda. But Arun Gupta of the Indypendent has a new piece out at Truthout.org where he questions that view.
The Republicans have deftly turned being the “Party of No” into a positive stance: They signal to their base they are working to defeat an alien ideology while defending real Americans and traditional values and institutions.
Arun joins Laura in studio to discuss his piece, the "party of No" strategy, and where the Left is in all of this.
The popular TV show 24, which many argued was a conservative, pro-war and pro-torture program, had its finale this week. Barry Eisler, who used to work for the CIA, argues that the Right has done a better job of seeding its ideology into American pop culture, from television and movies to books. Eisler is now a novelist himself, and his new book Inside Out is based on real events involving the disappearance of videotapes documenting American torture of suspected terrorists.
Eisler joins us in studio to discuss the way that the media is complicit in issues of war and torture, and how progressives can use fiction and art to fight for our own ideals.
"This is my backyard, you shouldn't take a risk in it," says Troy Wetzel, Louisiana charter boat captain, to conservationist Rick Steiner of the BP oil spill. In this clip from our friends at Greenpeace, Wetzel takes Steiner out on his boat to see the immediate effects on the water and the community of the oil that continues, over a month in, to gush out into the Gulf of Mexico.
Finally, it's over a year into an Obama administration, and already that word “compromise” has been heard too much. Yet when the news hit Monday night that the administration had agreed to a compromise that would see Congress voting on overturning Don't Ask Don't Tell, hopes rose again.
The Republican leadership and the Corporate Backers know they have to create the new party to blame the coming deluge on.
They’re creating their equivalent of the NAZI party. That party and its stooge leaders will go down in history as the cause of all the US demise.
The Republicans will be able to retreat their brand and themselves into the background and watch the swashbuckling they’ve unleashed. What else is new here?
This is exactly what Willy and Nicky thought they would get away with when they led the masses to WWI. They did get caught out, but did the real backers of Hitler? They just moved away somewhere else and their US business partners and bankers facilitated that move by buying their assets at fire sales! Loads of them have done it before in the past seeding violence between people on the ground, throwing the match and then getting out of OZ on their hot air balloons.
By planck on May 26th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Obama is violating campaign promises because he is not driving. Please look into factors pointing to this and start interviewing people about what looks obvious from his appointments and outcomes.
It is very clear who is driving and whom the Supreme Court backs in all of this years of illegal war, incipient imperceptible removal of civil rights, etc etc.
Timothy Dickenson covered the assassination of JFK and how Warren commission was a coverup, or the undoing of Nixon. He , Jeremy and Ellsberg all cover the CIA’s sources of illicit money outside the Congress and Administration which are used against Pols and . Plenty of others cover it too. Interview Peter Dale Scott. You may have had him on before…can’t remember, or was that RealNewsNetwork?
You need to get to the bottom of these factors underlying these campaign about faces. This is the real story of our times, all the rest is the usual surface noise created by this political /media machine they’ve got going. We’ll never have another candidate in power whose moves will be so opposite what we wanted, voted for, and what he told us.
By planck on May 26th, 2010 at 3:59 pm