Sep 09 2009
Analyzing the Presidency: Rightwing Assaults and Progressive Responses
| the entire program
Even though the benign content of President Obama’s Back-to-School speech yesterday defused much of the right-wing brouhaha leading up to it, the White House in general seems completely unprepared for the conservative onslaught. Whether it’s a controversy about Obama’s birthplace, made-up horror stories of death panels, or the communist background of Green Jobs czar Van Jones, the …
Even though the benign content of President Obama’s Back-to-School speech yesterday defused much of the right-wing brouhaha leading up to it, the White House in general seems completely unprepared for the conservative onslaught. Whether it’s a controversy about Obama’s birthplace, made-up horror stories of death panels, or the communist background of Green Jobs czar Van Jones, the …
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The furor around President Obama’s Back-to-School speech among some Republicans and conservatives was mostly neutralized after it was apparent that motivation to stay in school was the primary message. It stayed firmly in the tradition set by Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush who also addressed students with the message of responsibility and academic achievement. But the …
Disneyland hotel workers, in an effort to draw attention to their ongoing labor dispute over health insurance, are planning to stage a protest ‘sick-in.’ Without a union contract for over a year and a half, workers, as well as their supporters, will be dressed as Disney characters for tomorrow’s action in Anaheim scheduled to coincide with a D23 …
Even as Afghan incumbent Hamid Karzai was declared the winner of the presidential elections, a UN-backed election commission announced today that there was clear evidence of widespread fraud. An unnamed senior Western diplomat told the New York Times that as many as 800 fake polling sites turned in hundreds of thousands of votes for Karzai on election day, calling …
The California State Assembly, in a rare effort to amend a social program slated for deep cuts, passed a bill on Friday aimed at bolstering Healthy Families. With some bipartisan support, and with an expected signature from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, nearly 700,000 children will be saved from being cut from the program that provides government subsidized medical coverage …
Palestinian American film maker Cherien Dabis’s debut feature Amreeka opens this weeks in Southern California theaters. Set in 2003 during the first weeks of the US invasion of Iraq, Amreeka is the story of a single mother Muna from the West Bank, who with her teenage son Fadi, immigrates to the US after concluding that life under Israeli occupation …
The city of Los Angeles this week announced a major new prescription drug bulk purchasing plan to lower costs for residents. A five-year long effort by a number of advocacy organizations working with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, finally resulted in success, at a time when the spiraling costs of prescription drugs figure prominently in the health care reform debate. …
A week-long farmers’ strike is slated to end today in Argentina in the latest battle in a long-running dispute between the agricultural sector and the government. During the strike, nearly 300,000 farmers represented by four different farm organizations, stopped livestock and grain sales in an attempt to shutdown Argentine export operations. The strike came in response to what …
