The Laura Flanders Show starts in moments, here's the line up for tonight's show:
Want to fight back and win? We'll talk to people who did just that! PAUL WEST on Rain Forest Action Network's, successful kids-based campaign to pressure banks to stop underwriting global warming. Then EILEEN CLANCY, documentary film maker and member of I-Witness Video, the group whose footage got 90 percent of RNC-related arrests thrown out of court and may even result in criminal charges against the police. Plus LINDA BYRKET, whose video evidence of the Ohio voting debacle, was put into the Congressional Record, by Rep. John Conyers, D-MI. Then, Revolutionary dub poet, LINTON KWESI JOHNSON talks about his new DVD and CD titled, "Live in Paris with The Dennis Bovell Dub Band."
Quick note for A Winding Road and Folding Star's entry Wednesday about the state of the Democratic Party:
At this point in our history, we should all be painfully aware that we do not exist alone in this world, that the actions of our Government have global repercussions. The United States can only continue to play the bully for so long before it finds out that as big and as tough as it may be, when all the other kids on the playground team up against it, it's in trouble.The Bush Administration has made a habit of alienating the rest of the world and the confirmation of Bolton is going to take us one more giant step down that path.
We're facing just under four more years of Bush and Co, and who knows how many more wars they're cooking up. It's quite obvious to most who are paying attention that they have plans for Iran in the very immediate future.
Do we want a bully like Bolton at the UN trying to sell a war to an organization he believes doesn't exist at all, except as the pawn of the United States? Someone who blows a gasket when what he personally believes can't be backed up by intelligence agencies and wants the analyst who dared speak the truth fired?
Thanks to Bush & Co, we've already demonstrated to the rest of the world that we're either a country willing to lie our way into war or, best case scenario, a country that has incredibly faulty intelligence agencies. We need to be rebuilding our credibility now. We need someone with at least a shred of their own personal credibility who believes in what the United Nations stands for, someone who won't rush to embrace questionable intelligence for questionable means.
As I noted yesterday, this all really comes down to Senator Chafee. While he is a moderate Republican, the man seems so far to be bending to party pressure, making noises in tune with his Republican colleagues on the Committee. [. . .]
It would be nice to see Republicans in Congress show more backbone for a change, to see them realize that they're not George W. Bush's personal staff. They're there to provide a CHECK and BALANCE to Bush.
But with the majority of the Republican Party controlled by the far right, it's usually a cold day in hell if we're seeing any real independent leadership in Congress these days from anyone on the Right.
I'm just as fed up with many of the Democrats, by the way, for falling into general party thought rather than thinking for themselves.
Today, I heard Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Minority Leader, proudly note that his party has come to the Hill to Legislate. As an example, he used the fact that they helped pass legislation that had been in the works for decades. He named the Class Action Fairness Act specifically.
You remember that one, right? The Bill that stripped the state courts of the right to rule on class action lawsuits against corporations, and moved them directly to the far more Corporation friendly Federal Courts.
This is something that Senator Reid notes proudly as his party coming to the Hill to Legislate?? This slap in the face to all working class Americans, this giant tongue kiss to Corporate America?So, Reid is really saying that his party has come to the Hill to Legislate for Corporate Interests. But, wait, the Republicans already cornered that market, didn't they? So where does that leave the rest of us?
Where are the true leaders who put what's right above what the party dictates is the thing to do??
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