WNYC Video - "New York 2009"

Produced by Beth Fertig, mixed by Wayne Shulmister, and edited by Karen Frillmann. Online montage by Stephen Nessen.

source: WNYC News Blog

Moulitsas v Tancredo - Fighting for the Soul of America

Here's MSNBC's David Schuster asking ex-GOP Congressman Tom Tancredo some tough questions. Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos totally upsets Tancredo's apple cart while presenting his point of view.


I think, in his elitist mind, Tom Tancredo fancies himself a King facing down a peasant like Markos Moulitsas. I don't feel one bit sorry for Mr. Tancredo here. When faced with an uncomfortable truth about the past that may, in his mind, hurt his future political power and standing, Tancredo runs away as if he is above the truth. In the 18th Century, that kind of elitism is what we fought against when we fought for and became a nation of our common hopes. Over the past two decades, there has been so much incivility that has been LED and PROMOTED by the likes of the right wing, including current House minority leader John Boehner, ex-Congressman and 2008 Presidential candidate Tancredo, and company - and they are complete hypocrites and elitists to think that the truth can't rightly be presented right back to them after so many years of following SCOTUS Clarence Thomas' advice that civility often must be"left behind in the pursuit of civic virtue."

This is a fight for the soul of America and we must not fear our necessary honesty if it means a threat to the destruction of the virtues we personally cherish.

Boehner and GOP lead Teabaggers as hypocrites

Currently down 81 seats in the House and 20 seats in the Senate, Republicans represent a minority of Americans in Congress. However, they continue to contend that they stand with mainstream America in opposing the Democrats' "tax and spend" agenda, including health care reform. [Real Clear Politics]

Under our U.S. system, political legitimacy is now and has always MEANT to come from democratic elections.

Teabaggers are being led by high-powered elected leaders in the halls of Congress aiming to destroy the very system that got them where THEY are. What hypocrites! They ask citizens to ignore the will of the People, hoping to wipe clean the memory of the political capital legitimately due to the People who elected and who support the President and a Congress that is willing to work toward common goals.

You may dismiss John Boehner as crazy (or stupid) - but don't be fooled. Here is a House Minority Leader INCITING a revolution that is destructive to the legitimacy of the system that facilitates our good faith laws.

Teabaggers don't want their leaders to act in good faith toward the common goals of citizens. They express a will to KILL common goals. It means more to them for a progressive-friendly President to fail than to actually find ways to save our economy and increase the safety net for millions of American citizens who live paycheck to paycheck praying no one in their family gets seriously ill because they know the costs to cover health care for such an illness will economically finish them off.

Boehner and his ilk see gain in the next electoral cycle as paramount to working for the People. MSM, infected with a curse of "moderate bias" - are not tackling the story to help us see things as they are. The GOP is willfully going rogue. It's hurting our country terribly at a time when we face years of fighting economic disaster due to the ideology of the Far Right who sought to drown (and nearly have succeeded in drowning) our government - yours and mine - in the bathtub of their own politics and self-interest. Hypocrisy often comes from a desire to hide from others actual motives or feelings. Boehner and his right wing Company in Congress are not hiding their completely party-biased motives very well while willfully rebelling in complete denial about the People's right to expect their political will to be carried out by those they elect. I can just imagine what the people in Boehner's home district who voted for Obama last Fall must be thinking of the orange-faced hypocrite right now.


WHAT IS BOEHNER IS LEADING? HE EITHER DOESN'T KNOW OR REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE HATRED HE IS ENCOURAGING!

Huffington on Obama, Plouffe, and Media - One Year Later

When Arianna Huffington says, in her most recent column where she discusses President Obama one year after his election and 2008 Obama campaign manager David Plouffe's new book, "Most of the attention the book has gotten so far has focused on the so-called sexy parts," I am reminded of just how valuable she (and HuffPo) are in a media environment where we are NOT, as we SHOULD be if the Fourth Estate was fulfilling a solemn implied promise to citizens, called upon to be critical thinkers, but instead prodded and assaulted with sexy tidbits from otherwise useful books. Imagine what the greater public is failing to learn for all of Mr. Plouffe's efforts. Commitment to selling ads and editing what passes for news in accordance with sales is obviously the Fourth Estate's main implied promise as things stand. I hope a new model for the news platform at which I expect we'll arrive after the digital revolution has revealed new economic opportunity will bring best practices in journalism back. Leave endless gossip for The National Enquirer!

Virginia Foxx NC-5 Does Not Represent the Mayberry I Know

This is so sick it's hard to believe it's not a schtick. Health care costs must come down or this already-struggling U.S. economy will be dragged down in a disastrous way. Don't these blabbering one-track minded ideologues care about what happens, in reality, to the American families who will suffer the brunt of sure hardship if Congress members continue to refuse to work in a serious manner with one another and if they continue support doing nothing to curb ever-rising costs? They're looking more like clowns every day. Cue up "The Entry of the Gladiators."

Andy Borowitz Quote [Sarah Palin]

"Tuesday Gratitude Thought: This is the one-year anniversary of Sarah Palin not being elected."

~ Andy Borowitz

For Healthier Democracy: I Hope the Polls are Wrong in NY District 23

NYT political reporter Adam Nagourney is reporting that "Most polls suggest Democrats will lose the upstate New York House race." I hope the voters of NY Dist 23 will elect Bill Owens today. He's much closer, in his platform of ideas, to what they'd embraced when they supported Dede Scozzafava. To me, it seems to go against all small-d democratic principles to have strangers from almost anywhere EXCEPT your voting district to come in and sway the local party to throw out the candidate preferred by people in their own community and replace her with an extremist man who, the last I checked, was supported by 5% local contributions and 95% outside-district money. In the end, it's not up to me or anyone outside the district. The voters of Dist 23 will be the ones to say whether or not they believe it was all right with them to have their process shattered by outsiders. If they do defeat Owens, I fear for the future of healthy democracy in ANY of our districts.

Love Can Build A Bridge by The Judds

The Sun Shines Down on All of Creation [photo]

The Sun Shines Down on All of Creation
photo by Jude Nagurney Camwell