Remember in November- Hispanic Americans

Here's some information about why the Hispanic vote could play a crucial role in this years election. In an op/ed piece at Politico, Martin Frost asks: Can GOP ever win Latino vote?

Romney captured the Cuban vote in the Florida primary, this doesn’t mean the GOP can win Latino votes this fall. Unlike other Latino voters, Cuban-Americans are reliably Republican.

The vast majority of Latinos in other states, however, are not from Cuba. Many are from Mexico, as well as Central America and Puerto Rico. Even in Florida, there is now a significant number of non-Cuban Latinos, who tend to vote Democratic.

Second, assuming Romney is the Republican nominee, he has a lot of ground to make up with Latinos after being pushed far to the right on the immigration issue during the early primaries and caucuses.

Many Latinos are culturally conservative, patriotic and remarkably entrepreneurial. On paper, this sounds like fertile territory for the GOP. But once Latinos have heard the GOP’s strong anti-immigrant rhetoric, they may well stop listening to anything else Republicans have to say.

Rupert Murdoch, Ratings and The Yellow Journalism of Fox News 2/2

Roger Ailes, President of Fox News

by Nomad

In the first part of a two-part series which was first posted at Politicalgates earlier this year, we examined the intricate and intimidating Murdoch connections and how watching Fox News apparently makes you more ignorant than watching no news at all.

In spite of the near continual boasting at Fox News, some (real) reporters have dared to question the Fox News ratings. Their suspicions were aroused by the simple fact that the numbers made little sense. Was it actually plausible?

How is it, they wonder, that Fox News can be so consistently in the lead despite their obvious niche programming focus on a narrow segment of the viewing audience. The decidedly right-of-center bias of Fox News corresponds to a rather small portion of the national electorate. Republican favorability has been hovering in the mid-twenties for years. So how does this negligible slice of the market translate into such a disproportionate ratings advantage?

Rupert Murdoch, Ratings and The Yellow Journalism of Fox News 1/2

(Originally posted at PoliticalGates earlier this year.)

by Nomad

At the turn of the century, writers searching for the soul of America looked at the country through the new lenses and found much to criticize. While the nation had become a world power with a great navy and mounting wealth, the journalists sought to prove that much of the wealth was gained through cheap labor that kept the laboring class subservient, poor and unhealthy.

Millionaires... had developed a powerful economy enjoyed by the few. What rights should workers have? What education should be afforded child laborers? What quality and safety were afforded the working class in their homes, their food? Through the lens of these news ideologies, early twentieth century journalists re-examined the relationships among politicians, business tycoons, and laborers.

The Public Press, 1900-1945: The History of American Journalism, by Leonard Ray Teel

That quote refers to a time over a hundred years ago - fondly called the Progressive Era- and yet what has changed since that golden age of journalism? 

In some ways, America as a nation is stuck in the right-turn lane.  

A full century has passed and the battle between the wealthy- now super-wealthy- and the middle laboring class- now called the 99%- has re-commenced. Or has it ever really ended? 
One essential difference is, of course, the state of American journalism- the once disinterested crusader for the people’s interests. The press- along with the promise of reform it once represented- has been absorbed into the system and what's left when the capitalists got through with it is, well,  Fox News and CNN.

Beyond Flip-Flopping: Is Romney Just a Liar?

By Nomad

Here we are with only 193 days before the election night and Mitt Romney appears to have the Republican nomination wrapped up. This hellishly long vetting process, with endless, needless debates and primaries run amok, has been an inglorious examination of a variety of political failures. 

From Newt Gingrich's impossible pomposity and Rick Santorum's often unnerving tendency to sound as tolerant as your average Iranian mullah, to Rick Perry's bout with unexpected amnesia in mid-sentence. 

With all that maneuvering, jostling and elbowing, what has emerged out of the muck is a candidate who will, quite literally say anything to get elected. Although this tendency has long been a handicap of Romney, the history of modern American politics has perhaps not seen anything quite like this character. 

Whether the candidate of yore was liked or not, a voter could feel reasonably certain what his core values were. (There were exceptions, of course. Nixon for example.) 

With Romney, it has been a question of wind direction.

Quote Smackdown: Ann Coulter vs. Stephen Hawking

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Related articles

• Ann Coulter On O'Reilly: Every Black American Should Get A Gun, Join The NRA (mediaite.com)
• Ann Coulter: Elizabeth Warren 'The New Sex Symbol Of The Democratic Party, The Way Janet Reno Once Was.' (mediaite.com)

"Nobody Could Have Predicted it": Bush Administration's Shocking 911 Lie

                Condoleezza Rice

by Nomad
One of the more glaring discrepancies of the terrorist attacks on September 2001 has gone virtually unreported. Not only were authorities well aware that hijacked planes could be used by terrorists as weapons, the information had been widely available to the public since 1993.

During a May 16, 2002 press briefing, speaking about the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking."

This defense was used repeatedly by the administration and few reporters never seemed to bother to question it.
According to one source,

White House spokesman Tony Fratto showed that Rice's talking point had legs. Spoon-fed last month by Fox News anchor Jon Scott's suggestion that "nobody was thinking that there’d be terrorists flying 767s into buildings at that point," Fratto reliably coughed up the laughably discredited sound bite:

"That’s true. I mean, no one could have anticipated that kind of attack - or very few people."

Asteroid Mining Enterprise: Billion Dollar Boondoggle or Breakthrough to the Future?

by Nomad

Remember this date. Today- April 24 2012- could be the day that the commercial exploitation of outer space began in earnest. No, seriously.

Speculation along those lines has had the Net buzzing for the last week or so. Planetary Resources Inc., founded earlier this year,  will be making a formal announcement of its plans at an event Tuesday in Seattle. Things are somewhat vague with an earlier press release stating only that the proposed operation   would "overlay two critical sectors—space exploration and natural resources—to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP" and "help ensure humanity's prosperity."

Evangelical Religion’s War on Common Sense

by Nomad

Hostility and Antipathy

During their failed runs for the Republican nomination in this year’s presidential election, GOP candidates such as Gingrich and Santorum, made the shocking claim that Obama was waging a war on religion. That sort of nonsense might play well to the average Fox News watchers who seem to be fully prepared to swallow any anti-Obama rhetoric, no matter how preposterous.

Naturally this meme was picked up by conservative religious leaders, eager to make a name for their crusade against the evils of secularism and the horrors of the separation of Church and State.

As Mother Jones reports:

Gary Marx, the executive director of Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition, sent out a fundraising letter this month urging people to sign a petition fighting Obama's "war on religion," writing: "The Obama Administration's actions are evidence of a pattern of hostility towards religious institutions and an antipathy to uphold and protect the nation's most fundamental founding principles."

Despite showing precious little in the way of evidence of Obama's hostility, apart from not taking orders from the Church, people like Marx are allowed to promote this claim without anybody challenging them. 

Mitt Romney and the NRA: The Conning of the GOP Voters

by Nomad

Damn the historical record! To hell with what I said in my past. I'll say anything! I'll do anything! I am severely conservative, Darn it.

That seems to be the line that Mitt Romney thinks will carry him to the White House. And it's entertaining for your average progressive liberal to watch Romney attempt to con his own party into believing he has somehow actually changed- reversed every one of his positions.

The latest scrubbing redacting and erasing involves the National Rifle Association (NRA). Speaking National Rifle Association's annual convention in St. Louis with an estimated 70,000 people in attendance, Romney last weekend made every attempt to win the hearts and minds of gun owners.

America's Dystopian Future? You Have Been Warned.

Artwork by Masakatsu Sashie

by Nomad

It's getting increasingly more difficult to decide what is science fiction and what is the real world. I stumbled across a couple of stories that might give us an unpleasant foreshadowing of things to come if things keep going the way they are now. One note of caution, however: this kind of speculation is not for the paranoid.

Discover Magazine has a story ( Seeing Crime Before It Happens ) that could have been snatched from the Philip K. Dick novel, "Minority Report.

Ladies, Listen Carefully: A Free Poster

I based this poster design on some of the old war posters.  I thought that don't-mess-with-this-gal look fit the bill quite nicely. "Bent on revenge" is how I would describe that expression on her face. This poster is free for anybody who wants to download it. 

There are only 203 days left until the next election. Some people are counting on the public (and especially women) to be forgetful or distracted by the time November rolls around. It's possible but I hope not. 

The Quote Game: Who on Earth Said That?

Like a game of "Pin the tail on the Donkey," the Quote Game pins the quote on the person. 

Time for a little game. An afternoon diversion. I have collected these quotes by the famous and the infamous and I realized that without more information, it's becoming harder and harder to know the difference.
Take your best shot. The answers are given at the end.

1. Today Christians ... stand at the head of [this country]... I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit ... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the *poison of immorality* which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of *liberal excess* during the past ... (few) years.

a. Newt Gingrich
b. Sarah Palin
c. Rick Santorum
d. Adolph Hitler
e. Jerry Falwell

In the Absence of Justice

(Source)

St. Augustine tells us that "In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?" 

As the these articles illustrate, when there are two standards of justice, then there is none at all. You cannot allow the major offenders to loot and steal with impunity while the needy are punished simply for attempting to secure their daily bread. 

And a nation with no justice is an illegitimate state. The expectation of fairness, of being given a fair hearing in a court of law is the lowest standard for a civilized society. 
As Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford Alan Ryan writes: 

Justice is the most "political" or institutional of the virtues. The legitimacy of a state rests upon its claim to do justice.  

Nomadic Roundup: Three Attempts to Silence Dissent

by Nomad

Three stories caught the endlessly roving blue eye of Nomad. The theme to this round-up is the attempts by the power-holders to silence dissent. From the silly and clumsy, to the heavy-handed and counter-productive and finally to the technical and sophisticated. 

Let's start in Arizona:

Caperton, writing for the blog Feministe, throws a spotlight on the recently drafted Arizona bill essentially outlawing the Internet. This has to be the most embarrassingly ignorant thing that politicians have come up with ..er, this week regarding the Internet.

Koch Brothers Exposed: Film Trailer

by Nomad

Never in American history has there been a more organized and well-funded threat against the democratic process, the health and safety of all Americans and the impartiality of the Supreme Court. The Koch brothers have single handedly managed to corrupt two of the three branches of government and in the 2012, are seeking to make it three for three. Seriously. It makes all of the other threats America has faced small in comparison. 

 

Gandhi vs. Rush Limbaugh

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MEK and the Hypocrisy of the Anti-Terrorism War-Mongers

by Nomad

John Bolton

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, writing for the New Yorker, has uncovered evidence that suggests that the United States military trained the People's Mujahedin of Iran or also known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) in the deserts of Nevada in 2005.

Bush Hypocrisy

The Hersh article, Our Men in Iran? is, by any definition, an eye-opener and reveals the full extent of Bush administration’s hypocrisy of its so-called war on terror. 
According to Hersh,  the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site about 65 miles outside of Las Vegas, was used as a clandestine training base for a terrorist group.

It was here that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K.
The M.E.K. had its beginnings as a Marxist-Islamist student-led group and, in the nineteen-seventies, it was linked to the assassination of six American citizens. It was initially part of the broad-based revolution that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran. But, within a few years, the group was waging a bloody internal war with the ruling clerics, and, in 1997, it was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. [emphasis mine]

A Bit of Perspective

Courtesy of Truthdig and Mr.Fish 

Good News! Kind People have Survived

Why is this man taking off his clothes in a public place? Before you click on the link below, I'd like to hear your best guess. It's not hard to figure out but it helps to be in the right frame of mind. Positive, I mean.

Strip Search: the Supreme Court's Attack on the Fourth Amendment

by Nomad

In yet another questionable ruling, the Supreme Court has decided in a 5-4 vote that police departments have every right to demand a strip search from any person they arrested, even for minor offenses, “before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.” 

To clarify (somewhat) the meaning of the terms: According to Daphne Ha, writing for the Fordham Law Review:

A strip search is “[a] search of a person conducted after that person’s clothes have been removed, the purpose usu[ally] being to find any contraband the person might be hiding.”

Strip searches generally do not involve scrutiny of body cavities. However, policies in correctional facilities tend to include visual body cavity searches under the broad term “strip searches,” and only distinguish between visual and physical body cavity searches. This definitional problem is aggravated when courts describe strip search policies without clarifying whether a search includes a visual search of body cavities.

Facts You Should Know: Between Religion and Fear

(courtesy of http://cdn.front.moveon.org )

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The Shocking and Unnecessary Death of Kenneth Chamberlain

The Trayvon Martin case has deservedly attracted a great deal of attention. One incident that has received far less attention is this November 2011 event in White Plains, New York. 

First things first. My condolences to the Chamberlain family and friends. I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like but I do wish them well. From all that we know, they have every right to be angry and to ask for justice.

Sarah Palin vs. Madonna

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