Bleeding Hearts Vs Heartless Beasts
The President's leftward lean in his Address made hardy liberals' hearts beat faster, while Boehner's stony, silent stare made you wonder if his heart beat at all.
Increasing the minimum wage, cap-and-trade, immigration reform, pay equity, gun controlwere all valentines to progressive partners, while Rubio proved more heartless than heart-throb.
Investing in education, infrastructure, science, Obama wrote a love letter to the future. Saying that we're better off on our own, Rand Paul wrote a break-up note with reality.
On this Valentines Day, the direction of our nation may be as simple as following our hearts: we'd rather be called bleeding heart liberals than conservatives without beating hearts at all.
If it's bleeding hearts vs heartless beasts, we know who will be our Valentine.
Your heart needn't bleed alone as there are plenty of like-minded lefties ready to share politics and a drink
at your local progressive social club.
DRINKING LIBERALLY Find - or start - a chapter near you.
Barely a year after the defeat of SOPA, Congress is back to testing the waters for legislation that many internet users believe to be in violation of their fundamental rights to privacy and free expression.
CISPA, a bill that would make it easier for corporations and the government to share internet users’ personal data, was officially re-introduced in the House on Wednesday. It’s already being rushed forward in the legislative process. The House Intelligence Committee is holding a full hearing on the bill today at 10 am. They will hear from four witnesses — all from the business sector and all known supporters of CISPA. No experts with concerns about privacy issues in the bill were invited to address the committee. Read more
For updates on the State of the Union tonight, probably best-practice is to follow along with our lists on the micropublishing service ::
- #opengov & civic engagement & open-data leaders
For video background see last Sunday’s edition of ‘
Up with Chris Hayes’, the most substantive & empirically-accountable news show on cable TV. A lot of people prefer the popular social networking service, we keep a
beachhead there too.
Read more
Last week, I drove up to my state’s capital, Olympia, to lobby on Arts & Heritage Day. I was the Team Captain for the Washington State Arts Alliance for several legislative districts, and a representative for the nonprofit arts organization I work for. My oldest son went with me as an ambassador for his school. Wearing gold stars of arts advocacy, we were ready to tell our elected leaders a thing or two about the value of culture, both economically and socially.
Except that’s not what happened.
Instead, my son and I were schooled in the finer points of state budgets, taxation, and funding by our fearless leaders. Taking their time to teach us about how government works, my legislators sent my son and me away better citizens. Needless to say, I was in love! Read more
I am sure that most of us care about our children, we care about other people’s children, and we care what happens to them. Still, children around the world are
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Why Some Children Never Seem to Matter appeared first on
Fidlerten Place.
I thought I would start by listing a group of ideas that are held by the majority of educated Americans. If after you read them you think that no, these are “liberal” ideas, think again. In fact, if you were a Nixon voter, you probably agreed to all of them but the one on climate change, which was unknown at the time. In fact, these are not political ideas at all.
Noah’s Ark is just a fable
Evolution is the founding principal of modern biology (and so modern medicine).
The science is strong that the burning of fossil fuels has started climate change.
Tax rate changes within a narrow range have little to do with the rate of growth in our economy.
Cutting tax rates does not pay for itself through growth.
Gasoline prices are set on the world market and will not be influenced significantly by US oil production.
The free market leads to the fairest price. It does nothing else. Read more
It’s Saturday February 9th! Do you know where your podcast is? On this day in history back in 2009, a few loose-screw Americans formed what we ended up calling the Tea Party thanks in large part to the funding and support of right-wing think tanks like FreedomWorks and ideologues like Dick Armey who oversaw the Tea Party’s perplexing (and totally manufactured) rise across the political landscape. Four years later, the Tea Party (having fulfilled its purpose as a punchline of choice to comics the world over) has dissolved into the impotent, irrelevant, waste-o’-space guano bucket we always knew it was. Thus, in honor of what is sure to be the last year of even Tea Party members taking the Tea Party serious, we’re delighted to share with you a letter we sent to Tea Party members back in 2009 in response to their solicitation to join the Tea Party. Enjoy.
"Dear Fellow New Tea Party Members, Read more
Recently, since the new Congress has taken their seats, there has been some bipartisanship efforts that have come forward mostly from the Senate, even on some major issues, such as
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A Congress of Hope or a Congress Divided appeared first on
Fidlerten Place.
After years of attacks by unmanned drones -- a practice that has seeded fear & enmity -- it takes a confirmation hearing for the Senate
to finally question the White House about it.
After years of increasing tension & confusion for non-documented workers in the US,
a group of GOP lawmakers finally speak for reform, but maybe not as loudly as those who oppose it.
After debt ceiling struggles, Super Committee foibles and Grand Bargain scuttles created sequestration, Congress is now talking about avoiding the crisis
of severe cuts that they themselves created.
They act like a bunch of unmanned crafts -- maybe it's a Congress made up of drones.
Even when they are poor at legislating, they still prove pretty adept at droning...
Instead of droning, join for discussion, and choose a drink instead of drone
as you share a night with like-minded lefties at your local progressive social club.
DRINKING LIBERALLY Find - or start - a chapter near you.
"The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance." --Samuel Butler
Rush Limbaugh has been spouting bile unchecked for many years, but the reaction to his obscene tirades against Sandra Fluke in February of 2012 set off an unprecedented grass roots movement which nears its one year anniversary with no signs of slowing. What has come to be known as StopRush serves both to educate often unwitting advertisers of the show about Limbaugh's hateful rhetoric and to offer consumers the opportunity to make informed decisions about where to spend their money. Read more
Public polling shows that a majority of Americans now support legalizing marijuana, but will Congress even consider taking pot off the banned substances list?
Today, two members of the House — Rep. Jared Polis [D, CO] and Rep. Earl Blumenauer [D, OR] — are introducing legislation to change the federal marijuana laws. One bill would regulate marijuana like alcohol, and another would establish a federal marijuana tax (article will be updated with links to bills shortly, so check back). The introduction of the bills is a first step, but it doesn’t mean that there is broader institutional interest in Congress for taking up the issue of legalizing pot.
There is one big reason why Congress is not likely to take this issue up: they don’t want to bother the corporations that they rely on for funding. Read more
Mr. Pierre deserves to be on this Bead-Reader’s list. He is way out of touch with the world he lives in and his paranoia affects way too many people. First
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Bead-Reader #2 – NRA Chief Wayne LaPierre Speaks Only for Gun Makers and Buyers appeared first on
.
With President Barack Obama currently in the process of filling vacancies in his cabinet—already one current United States Senator has gotten the nod—and with the retirement of Senators Rockefeller, Harkin, and Chambliss, there has been a good amount of chatter about the ramifications of opening up a U.S. Senate seat. While every state is a unique case, we started wondering what the actual numerical advantage is when it comes to incumbency.
The answer is 7 or 10, or 9 or 16, depending on the situation. While this is a little less prophetic than the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life (42 for all the non-Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fans out there), there is an interesting pattern that has developed over the past six years or so. Read more
Many of us grow enlightened while some remain in the dark — when it comes to understanding anything about gay people. For one thing, a gay person is no more
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Boy Scouts of America: Openly Gay People More Trustworthy appeared first on
.
Flipping through radio stations last weekend, the dial stopped briefly on a Right Wing commentator. On hearing the man’s voice, I was instantly pushed into a state of angry defiance. Complaining bitterly to my friend about how stupid and deluded the radio personality was, I sounded nearly as pissed off as he did. Why the strong response on my part? I wondered.
Reflecting on the moment, I realized I experienced a momentary flashback to childhood, when I was verbally abused. The Right Wing commentator sounded exactly like my abuser- the words they said differed slightly, but the message was the same: hatred.
Right Wing pundits, like Limbaugh and Beck, have an identical tone in their voice as an abuser telling his/her victim she is worthless, shameful, or whatever. I call it “spewing garbage,” but I’ve also heard it called “spitting venom.” Whatever it’s called, the language has the sole purpose of bringing down one person or group of people while elevating another. It is aggressive, hateful, and I argue, evil. Whether spoken in a home or on a radio station, it is the same: language of the losers. Read more
