Archive for the ‘President Obama’ tag
Inappropriate nostalgia, Ray Kelly says blacks “understopped” by police, Obama admin to appeal Plan B ruling
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Allison and Jamie engage in some inappropriate nostalgia and talk about America’s fucked up priorities in which brave, good people go to jail and are punished while the architects of war and financial destruction are rewarded. Also, the Obama administration plans to appeal a judge’s Plan B ruling, the NYPD’s Ray Kelly says blacks are “understopped” by police, and a Tennessee commissioner refuses to apologize for an anti-Muslim picture he shared on Facebook.
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Jeremy Scahill on his new book “Dirty Wars” and the hidden truth behind America’s covert wars
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Author and investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill (@jeremyscahill) joins the show for the full hour to discuss his new book and film “Dirty Wars” (dirtywars.org) about the hidden truth behind America’s covert wars.
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Congress undermines USPS, letter from Guantanamo, “Connect the dots!”
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Allison and Jamie discuss how Congress is undermining the U.S. Postal Service, the New York Times publishing a powerful letter from a Guantanamo prisoner that indicts President Obama on his role in keeping Gitmo open, poverty in America, the NYPD still being awful, two-tier justice in the U.S., and some early reports on the Boston explosions.
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Journalist Will Potter on ‘Ag Gag’ laws, President Obama OKs cuts to Social Security
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Journalist Will Potter (@will_potter) joins the show to discuss ‘Ag Gag’ laws and animal activists being labeled domestic terrorists. Next, Allison and Jamie discuss President Obama OKing cuts to Social Security.
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Bye-bye Due Process: from global drone assassinations to indefinite legal limbo
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Allison and Jamie discuss the DOJ’s legal explanation for tossing away due process, and how that effort affects protesters domestically, as well, badass Malala Yousufzai, and how some lawmakers are quietly working behind the scenes to legalize marijuana. Finally, many sheriffs have stated they’ll refuse to enforce any federal gun regulations. What’s the right balance between state and federal powers?
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Obama won. Now, let’s talk about drones, workers’ rights, and negotiations with Iran
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Allison and Jamie discuss Obama’s victory, and how this hopefully means we can now go on to discuss things like drones, workers’ rights, and negotiations with Iran. Also, Allison talks abot Occupy Sandy, and Jamie shares a weird story involving a mullet.
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The UN & federal government are closed, but here’s a new Citizen Radio on election time stupidity & drones
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Allison and Jamie discuss how some of your fellow liberals turn into idiots come election time, an activist charged with “inciting racial hatred” for unfurling a Palestinian flag, Imran Khan detained and interrogated over drone views, and many, many stories about drones, and one more about why the NYPD is terrible.
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On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
In my opinion, this is a perfect example of the dangers of looking at real world jobs numbers in a lab environment. Money line:
One thing it’s worth observing here is that over the long-term the impact on jobs of any kind of international economic agreement is going to be zero.
[snip]
Which is to say that over the long-term, the vast majority of able-bodied adults in a country who want jobs are going to find jobs.
See, because on a long enough timeline, you either find employment eventually, or die, or something. Anyway, it gets taken care of. Eventually. Shut up.
The UAW essentially sold-out 159,000 jobs to secure…800 jobs. And Yglesias is probably right that many of those hundreds of thousands of real-life people will get jobs somewhere. They may be shitty jobs with much lower pay, and no benefits, but they’ll scrape by. Their kids may not be able to go to college, thereby creating generational poverty, but we can deal with that later. Elongate the timeline!
The gray period in between losing your job and finding employment (or not) — those years spent struggling, making one heartbreaking sacrifice after another — somehow don’t make it onto a lot of wonks’ charts.
Yglesias closes:
So the question we’re really asking with trade policy is “does it help us increase our growth rate?”
Ask yourself the questions that really matter, people.
The doves never won
Here is another typically useless column from Ross Douthat, who makes the absurd claim that the doves in the Democratic base are more powerful actors than the president himself. He also says everyone (Centrists, liberals, Republicans) are is mad at the president.
First of all, I’ve seen and read way too many centrist Democrats licking Obama’s boots to believe there’re angry mobs of Talking Points Memo readers ready to storm the White House.
Also, like “Progressives,” “Centrist Democrats” is an amorphous term. I don’t believe Mary Landrieu has the same political agenda as, say, the people who were really psyched to vote for the first black president. There’s a difference between fighting to push the president rightward in order to satisfying a corporate agenda, and ignoring the president’s various grievances because you think he’s a super swell dude, and you wish him the best. One is evil, the other is wilfully ignorant.
But it’s probably true that some in the center, and on the left, no longer trust Obama, but that’s not because the centrist Democrats and true liberals are equally powerful. If the doves had any real power, Obama wouldn’t have been able to escalate in Afghanistan, and there wouldn’t still be 50,000+ troops, not to mention private mercenaries, left stationed in Iraq. Erik Prince would be in jail, Gitmo would have been closed, the Pentagon budget wouldn’t be so huge, and I can go on, and on about why this premise is so fucking stupid.
Where is the unhallowed ground?
Mike Blake/Reuters
A few days ago, I (along with Citizen Radio co-host Jamie Kilstein) debated a pair of Conservatives at a show run by comedian Scott Blakeman. The contentious topic of discussion was – surprise, surprise – the Cordoba House. The Conservatives’ reoccurring claim was that Ground Zero is hallowed ground – a familiar talking point to anyone who has been following the news.
Of course, I pointed out that the Cordoba House is not a mosque – it’s actually a cultural center – more like a YMCA, and that it’s not at Ground Zero. The Cordoba House would be located in Lower Manhattan where there are already two other mosques. But these facts didn’t really make a dent. The Conservatives kept coming back to this claim that Lower Manhattan – all of it, not just Ground Zero – is somehow “hallowed ground.”
This mock piety is really a cover for Islamophobia. Time and again, the Conservatives reiterated that Islam is a radical, violent religion, and they kept asking where the moderate Muslims were to protest the extremist behavior displayed on 9/11. Ironically, the group proposing the Cordoba house is one of the moderate groups. The community center would have invited people of all races and religions to use their facilities – something radical extremists frown upon.
And there are lots of moderate Muslim groups. To name only a few: the World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE), Center for Eurasian Policy at the Hudson Institute Farid Ghadry, Reform Party of Syria Manda Zand Ervin, Alliance of Iranian Women, The Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, Arab Reformists Project, American Islamic Forum for Democracy, and Inter-Religious Affairs for the Islamic Supreme Council of America. These groups met last year with Rep. Sue Myrick for the expressed purpose of “stamping out extremism” in their communities and around the world.
But despite the existence of these groups, the Conservatives kept demanding a Million Muslim March upon the White House to prove their devotion to the U. S. of A. I suggested a purity test. They didn’t seem amused. I asked what the quota of “Good Muslims” is – the magical number of moderate groups it would take to soothe their nerves. Again, they didn’t seem to have a specific number in mind.
