Are We Witnessing the First Stages of a Violent
Right-Wing Open Rebellion George Tiller Is Not a Lone Victim.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Christine Bowman

A "pro-lifer" fires a bullet point-blank into a doctor's head in a church foyer, then lands a 30-minute interview with CNN from inside his jail. Not to be outdone, a lifelong, anti-Semitic White supremacist opens fire with a rifle and kills a Black Holocaust Memorial Museum security guard in a building filled with school children and tourists. What's next from right-wing extremists?

read more

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

The Purposes of Violence

Digby paints the bigger picture:

You've undoubtedly heard by now that a white supremacist tried to shoot up the Holocaust Museum today.

It's pretty clear that the right wing has lost whatever restraint it had and that the ongoing paroxysms of violent, extreme rhetoric are having their effect. The crocodile tears of the anti-abortion forces after the Tiller assassination notwithstanding, it's also pretty clear that they know this violence is effective. If you want to paralyze a society and force people to capitulate out of fear of random violence, nothing beats terrorism.

And once the right gets everybody looking over their shoulders, they'll misdirect the citizenry and run to the rescue with calls for "law and order." (Recall that the violence of the 60s didn't originate with the left --- it originated with racist cops unleashing hell on non-violent protesters.) It's working great with the deficit.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Sen. Kent Conrad Proposes Yet Another Way to Kill
a Public Health Option

The NYT describes a proposal by Sen. Kent Conrad to create member-owned "co-ops" to provide insurance for small business and individuals not covered in other ways. Whatever its other merits, this is not a decent alternative to a robust public health[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/5705

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

News Corp. forms ‘diversity community
council’ in response to chimpanzee cartoon controversy.

During the debate on the economic recovery package shortly after President Obama assumed office, News Corp’s New York Post ran a cartoon likening Obama to a dead chimpanzee. After protests and extended criticism, the Post editorialized that they apologize “to those who were offended by the image” while News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch later issued a personal apology. Now, the company has formed a diversity council in response the controversy:

News Corp. has agreed to form an external diversity council after meeting with civil rights groups about a New York Post cartoon that critics said likened President Barack Obama to a dead chimpanzee.

The company will form a “diversity community council” in New York City that will meet with senior company executives twice a year, NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous said Wednesday. It also will include a statement of commitment to diversity in its annual report.

Representatives from the NAACP, Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, the National Urban League, and 100 Black Men of America met with News Corp. executives on May 19, but it is unclear how diverse the council will be.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

VA-Gov: Cons phoning it in

GOPAC's statement on yesterday's primary victory of Creigh Deeds:

GOPAC Chairman Frank Donatelli stated, "Creigh Deeds has done more to raise taxes and destroy the jobs of working Virginians than any Democrat ever nominated for governor. Two examples are his 30% increase in Virginia's gas tax and consistently voting to give more power to union bosses and less to workers.  He is better suited to be Governor of Massachusetts than of Virginia."

Do they just take the same press release and swap out the names? Taxes blah blah blah union bosses blah blah blah Massachusetts!

Republicans have gotten their asses handed to them the last two election cycles, and they haven't changed a single page in their playbook. Well, maybe they deleted the typical line about guns given Deeds' unimpeachable pro-gun record, but other than that ... the same old crap they've been feeding people the last 20 years, to obvious lack of recent success.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

The Day in 100 Seconds: Shooting at The Holocaust
Museum

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/talking-points-memo/~3/Z4rPnyOT0BA/the_day_in_100_
seconds_shooting_at_the_holocaust_m.php

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

RushmoreDrive.com to shut down

After barely a year in existence the black oriented search site RushmoreDrive.com is shutting down.Read the entire story here:http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/blacknewsblackviews.htmlPosted in african american, information, Internet, tech, Web Tagged: african american, African American web sites, black search engines, black web sites, Internet, RushmoreDrive, RushmoreDrive.com is shutting down, search, tech, technology, Web, Web 2.0 [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://glciii.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/rushmoredrive-com-to-shut-down/

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Contessa Brewer cuts the mic! Why exactly does
anyone put a jackass like John Ziegler on the air

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player! DOWNLOADS: (4)
PLAYS: (90)

Two words come to mind every time John Ziegler appears on TV: Braying. Jackass.

Contessa Brewer had him on MSNBC this morning to talk about David Letterman's rude and sexist remarks about Sarah Palin. But it quickly became obvious that Ziegler wasn't going on MSNBC to talk about the subject -- he was there so he could bash MSNBC for six minutes or so.

And he was his usual a-hole self. It's really a sight to behold; the man's capacity for self-humiliation seems bottomless.

My favorite part comes when he whines that MSNBC is trying to depict the Republican Party as the party of aging white males.

Gee, I wonder where they could have gotten that idea:

A 52% majority of those surveyed [all adults] couldn?t come up with a name when asked to specify ?the main person? who speaks for Republicans today. Of those who could, the top response was radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh (13%), followed in order by former vice president Dick Cheney, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former House speaker Newt Gingrich. Former president George W. Bush ranked fifth, at 3%.

So the dominant faces of the Republican Party are all men, all white, all conservative and all old enough to join AARP, ranging in age from 58 (Limbaugh) to 72 (McCain). They include some of the country?s most strident voices on issues from Sonia Sotomayor?s nomination to the Supreme Court to President Obama?s policies at home and abroad. Two are retired from politics, and one has never been a candidate.

There's also the flaming a-hole demographic. It looks like Ziegler has that one covered.

Ziegler: ...and surprise, surprise, she gave an incredibly classy answer showing far more class than clearly most people on this network have,"

Brewer: I don't really know what to do with that. Honestly, I'm here to give you an opportunity, I consider myself a common sense thinker, I haven't attacked you, and for you to come on and use those sort of insults, insults me.

..cut the mic please.

(Please donate to C&L's 2009 fundraiser if you can. We need your support.)

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Obama's proposed "say on pay" is a waste of time

Give it up already. The Brits already have a number of examples this year alone where these non-binding voters voted against pay raises and take a guess what has happened? Yep, the executives thumbed their nose at the voters and did what they damned well please. Obama is pathetically out of touch with this proposal. Wall Street business owns this White House. Say on pay only gives a few other suckers hope that something might change. It won't. Period. Not going to happen. Take a stand or do nothing but not this. At least his other proposal about compensation committees is OK but say on pay only makes Obama look like a fool and a big one at that.

The Obama administration proposed legislation today to empower shareholders and the Securities and Exchange Commission to exercise more oversight over executive compensation at all publicly traded firms.

Under a so-called "say-on-pay" proposal, shareholders would be given the right to vote each year on whether an executive compensation package should be approved. While the results would be non-binding, administration officials say they hope the effort would pressure firms to rein in lavish pay. Companies would also be required to submit vote tallies in a filing with the SEC.

A second proposal would authorize the SEC to ensure that compensation committees at companies act independently in setting executive pay. Members of these committees would not be able to take any fees from their respective firms other than what they make for serving on the panels. Attorneys or consultants that help members in their work must be hired by and report to the committee rather than the chief executive of a firm.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

For Selling Out a News Program for Coffee,
Morning Joe Wins BuzzFlash's Media Putz of the Week

BUZZFLASH MEDIA PUTZ OF THE WEEK

"Morning Joe"

For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.

Commercials are flooding our TV shows. Not alongside them like in commercial breaks, but actually in the shows themselves. Product placements are designed to "get past the hype" or "break through the cloud of advertising." They seem to be more designed to annoy us in practice, but selling out is the trend.

But when it comes to news shows, there are supposed to be boundaries of ethics and taste. But not on Morning Joe, "brewed by Starbucks."

Yes, the MSNBC morning news program is now hawking Starbucks as part of its morning news(?) programming. The reported price tag on the deal is more than $10 million.

It would be difficult to imagine that Starbucks would pay $10 million just to have coffee cups visible on the set of the basic cable morning show. Sure enough, as part of the [wink] deal, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski gave a softball interview to founder and CEO Howard Schultz. But even that doesn't buy $10 million worth of product placement.

As Jon Stewart and "The Daily Show" (above) pointed out last week, there was unofficial commercials scattered throughout the morning program. And unlike commercial breaks, Starbucks doesn't have to compete with other commercials.

But "Morning Joe" is a news show. And even if you pretend that Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist are not "journalists," Brzezinski is as is contributor and noted alleged plagiarist Mike Barnicle.

read more

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!