Author of New Book Attacking Obama Called 'Luminary' by Rising Star of White Confederate Media
Media Matters is now reporting that author Jerome Corsi, whose smear book of Barack Obama sits atop the NYT best-seller list, is scheduled to appear on the radio show 'Political Cesspool' Aug. 17, 2008. Political Cesspool is a widely recognized white supremacist radio show whose host James Edwards regularly maligns Jews and African Americans, decries miscegenation, and has both interviewed and expressed admiration for widely recognized white supremacist leaders including David Duke and Gordon Lee Baum.
The smear merchants who lied about John Kerry being a traitor to tip the 2004 election are at it again with a book about Barack Obama. I am not going to link to the book, but the author is Jerome Corsi. He appeared recently on Larry King's show in a debate with Paul Waldman, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and a specialist on debunking right-wing propaganda.
This summer there is a big opportunity for the Democratic Party to win the debate on energy. To do so, however, everyone from grassroots activists to presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama will have to resist being drawn into a useless fight about 'drilling' and launch the big discussion that focuses voters on the daunting, but very American challenges we face.
How do we do that?
In today's post, I offer a few suggestions not just on how to reframe the debate on 'energy,' but how to win it. The takeaway concept I repeat over and over again is big story. What is the big story in the energy debate? Who controls the big story in the current debate? Who benefits from one big story versus another big story?
To win the debate on energy, Democrats need to go beyond giving advice on car maintenance (e.g., inflate your tires), and push a big story about: rapid redesign.
After about four years of running Frameshop, I am starting to see a crossroads up ahead. I have no plans to 'end' Frameshop in a formal sense. Nonetheless, when I started Frameshop four years ago, what I had in mind explicitly was the restoration of a Democratic Party majority in all three branches of government. The big problem that drew me into the analysis of political narratives is no longer a big problem, per se, but has become a challenge of closing out the deal. An end game. I am still going to work hard to make sure Barack Obama wins the White House--as are all of you (ehem...)--but now is the time to think out loud about new directions, new goals, new objectives.
Beyond the initial, senseless tragedy of innocent peoplemurdered by Jim Adkisson in a Tennessee church, two disturbing facts about the killer were brought to light by the Knoxville police.
Fact one: the police found a four-page letter written by Adkisson in which he cited his hatred for 'the Liberal Movement' as motivation for the crime.
Fact two: the police found various writings by right-wing pundits known for their violent rhetoric on TV and radio present in Adkisson's home, including books by Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and Bill O'Reilly.
Sunday's mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church raise a difficult question for this country and, subsequently, for the progressive netroots: Will we take a stand against violent rhetoric?
So far, the answer is 'Not really.'
We need to do better. The progressive blogs need to emphatically condemn violent rhetoric in American politics, and we need to do it with the passionate and unified voice this urgent problem demands.
In 1994, I worked for one year as an intern at Yad Vashem, the campus of Holocaust museums, memorials, and research facilities in Jerusalem. At Yad Vashem I was trained as a museum guide, worked with a team of Holocaust survivors to accession relics from towns destroyed by the Nazis, and assisted the curators on several exhibitions. "You get to Israel by plane," the locals used to say to me. "But you enter through Yad Vashem." Even today, tourists who visit Israel typically go to Yad Vashem their first day. I went there for a year.
I am finally back from Netroots Nation and finished with the backlog of stuff piled up on my desk. My first thought as I turn back to blogging: Lord Almighty! How will I ever find the words to thank Gina Cooper for all that she did?!?!
And then I came up with a solution: the readers of this website are going to do it for me.
As you all know, after establishing and executively directing YearlyKos and Netroots Nation from birth through its three years of infancy, Gina Cooper has passed on the reins to the next generation of netrooots leadership (TBD).
So, here we go: this entire thread is dedicated, purpose built, specifically for, focused on, and ready to accept your heartfelt "Thank You!!" to Gina Cooper for all she gave of herself over these past years so that a ragtag group of idealists with laptops could get out of their chairs, fly across the country, and quietly, but steadily, turn themselves into a living, breathing, political movement.
On this July 4, I don't really have much to add to all that has been said over the past few weeks. What I would like to contribute instead are a few songs. Well...it's actually the same song sung in two variations: once by the person who wrote the original, but felt moved by politics to sing it in a different way; another by a different person who also felt moved by politics to sing it in his own way--with the hope that nobody would ever have to sing it again.
I love this song. It is, in my mind, the greatest folk song ever sung. Hard to say exactly why I feel that way. For some reason, every year on July 4 I find myself looking for it, listening to it, and trying to understand why it means so much to me.
Without a doubt, one of the greatest achievements of the netroots has been the creation of new forums where citizens and elected leaders sit together and talk about the future of the country. If Thomas Jefferson could have seen the Leadership Forum at last year's YK in Chicago, he would have nodded in approval and said, "That's exactly what I meant by 'We The People.'"
Well, this year, the organizers at Netroots Nation have stepped up again, organizing another citizen-driven forum called: Ask The Speaker. Last year, we spoke with the Democratic candidates for President. This year, we will spend an entire keynote session in conversation with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Sometimes I can hardly believe how far the netroots has come, and in such a short amount of time. Amazing!
Over the past few days I have read a great many heartfelt diaries on all sides of the FISA debate. There is a full range of views out there, despite the effort of a small minority of bloggers and media figures to convince us that this is a simple, black-'n-white issue.
The FISA bill and the position of the Democratic presidential nominee on that bill has tipped progressives into a real crisis--and it deserve a serious moment of pause to understand exactly what that crisis is.
The issue we are debating, passionately and at times painfully is: loyalty.
I just finished reading all 157 pages of the DC v. Heller (PDF 1.2MB), including the Scalia opinion and the dissents by Stevens and Breyer, and I have to tell everyone: the feud between an MSNBC anchor and a blogger--as much as I respect both of them--does not add up to a hill of beans compared to the startling degree to which this 2nd Amendment case has undermined the basic concept on which our democracy is founded:
citizenship
I don't normally write smack-down diaries telling everyone to wake the heck up and stop throwing pies, but this is one of those moments where it is necessary.
DC v. Heller is not just a bad ruling. It puts the court's imprimatur on a concept of citizenship that is fundamentally counter to the principles on which this country was founded. It, is, a, nightmare.
This week, right-wing pundit and leader of the 'beat your children' movement, Dr. James Dobson, accused Sen. Barack Obama of committing violence against Biblical teachings.
Despite Dobson being a best-selling self-help guru famous for advising parents to whip their children with sticks, every mainstream media outlet somehow managed to overlook this fact. Instead, media coverage of Dobson's remarks stripped him any and all potential controversy with respect to his views on parenting and child beating, describing him instead with the vague and anodyne term 'Evangelical.'
True--Dobson is a leading voice of sorts amongst some Evangelical Christians. Still, the question the media should be posing to the public is not about his religion, but about his violent views of parenting:
Should a man who pushes parents to use pain to train their children have a prominent place in the 2008 President election or American politics at all?
Giuliani and Gingrich Sabotage Civic Debate Using Arguments From Their Best-Selling Books
This past week, America saw two familiar figures impose violent rhetoric into the Presidential debate on behalf of John McCain: Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani. It was a textbook example of the right-wing effort to use violent language not just to distract the public, but to undermine the attempt by citizens to have a pragmatic discussion with an eye towards solving problems.
FOX News Hires Mike Huckabee, Month After Ex Gov Joked About Assassination of Sen. Obama
**APPLICANTS WANTED: Profitable broadcast news corporation seeks on air personality with proven record of debasing civic debate. Must be willing to use violent rhetoric and tell off-color jokes that would warrant Secret Service investigations if said by an ordinary citizen. Preference given to failed presidential candidates who have also joked about assassinating their opponents. Benefits include: medical, dental, plus chance to undermine American deliberative democracy.
[A winning nickname for John McCain--Lickspittle? Hmmm... J]
In her newest syndicated column, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter calls the U.S. occupation in Iraq "a stunning success," awards President Bush the status of "moral giant," and trashes Sen. John McCain as one of "the weakest members of the herd."
Since 2001, right-wing pundits have increasingly used offensive and violent rhetoric to humiliate Democratic Party candidates and politicians and to undermine political debate of important issues. Coulter's attack on Sen. McCain confirms a rising trend of right-wing pundits using this tactic of humiliation and violent language to brand Sen. McCain a danger to the safety and well-being of the country.
One of the best indicators of John McCain's weakness in the general election is the questioning of his manhood by right-wing pundits.
Rush Limbaugh--who likes to dress up as a general and command his listener's to foment political violence--took time out this week to besmirch McCain's maleness, wondering aloud during if the Republican candidate could really count as 'a man' in the wake of his speech in New Orleans (link).
