Hail to the Chief

Right wingers are trying to foment yet more hate by spreading an outrageous chain-email with this photo that purports to show President Obama at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, listening to the national anthem without his hand over his heart.

Anyone who saw news coverage of the Veterans Day ceremony knows that Obama didn’t wear a red tie, as he does in this picture, but a blue one, and he wore a winter coat over his suit. The picture above was taken several months earlier, at a Memorial Day observation at Arlington National Cemetery. C-SPAN footage from the event shows that this photo was snapped just after Obama took the stage. “Hail to the Chief” was playing, not the national anthem. The others on the podium aren’t saluting veterans or the nation; they’re saluting the Commander-in-Chief.

LAFCO’s “Behind The Wheel”

LAFCO, the Los Angeles Filmmakers’ Cooperative, was started in 2000 when a group of underground filmmakers bought a 1985 Chevy schoolbus on eBay and coverted it into a fully self-sufficient digital studio on wheels. In 2001, three LAFCO filmmakers set out to cross the country to make films with artists, poets, and musicians across America. See all nine parts here.

Palin confuses GOP

Republican are just as baffled as everyone else by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s sudden resignation. “If this is geared for her run for the presidency in 2012, it is one of the most politically tone deaf decisions that we’ve seen,” said Stuart Roy, a Republican consultant.

Nozzle Rage

“Straight-Talk Express” Derailed

The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class

Nationally syndicated radio host and bestselling author Thom Hartmann exposes the covert war that conservatives and corporations are waging against America’s middle class, a war that’s reducing the rest of us to a politically impotent working poor. This book asks: How did this happen? Who’s benefiting? And how can we stop it?

Beginning with the Reagan administration, the U.S. government has steadily instituted policies and legislation that favor corporations over citizens. Analyzing the rhetoric and policies of the current administration’s “compassionate conservatism,” Hartmann goes on to detail the ways in which safety nets for working people (from progressive taxation to antitrust legislation to Social Security) have been steadily weakened, and argues that an empowered, educated middle class is crucial to a functioning democracy. Chapters detail the ways in which what gets called “the free market” is not really free (for good reason, he notes), how “We the People create the middle class,” how the policies of the Founding Fathers and figures like FDR still have a lot to teach us, and ways for “Leveling the Playing Field.” An intelligent critique of the contemporary plight of the middle class.
Read Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class – And What We Can Do About It.