Baker & Flanders talk debt ceilings and credit ratings and who made Standard and Poors our financial managers anyway? On the Ed Show with Ed Schultz, MSNBC, July 27.

The war on drugs is the engine of 21st century discrimination that has brought Jim Crow with us into the age of Obama.

Talk may not heal all that ails us - and our politics - but it's certainly true that where abortion's concerned, we could do with less grandstanding about "gag rules" and more honest listening - and talk.

The Economic Policy Institute notes that for the poorest 40 percent of 65-and-older households, Social Security payouts constitute more than four-fifths of total income - and as RN Deborah Burger points out, patients are already making deadly choices between medications, rent and food.

"The American people should see that corporations have abandoned them long ago," says scientist, environmentalist, and food justice activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, named one of the seven most influential women in the world by Forbes magazine. "The people will have to rebuild democracy as a living democracy."

The lobbyists and their pals in the media would have us believe the big corporations will leave this country if asked to pay their fair share. We've heard that story before.

To hear the debate over union rights in Washington, you'd think workers' rights had nothing to do with people's safety, only profits and threats to the same. The struggle of seven nurses in Brownsville Texas puts a different spin on things.

Starting this year an American will turn 65 every eight seconds. (Thank the boomers.) While Barack Obama is calling on Democrats to accept "trimming benefits" for the future's sake, seven hundred people are gathering in Washington at the Hilton today with a very different approach.

Even before the budget debate -- and the breathtakingly bad June jobs numbers -- AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was warning fair-weather Democrats not to count on organized labor's blank check.

Van Jones's new mobilization is collecting suggestions for rebuilding the American Dream.