Yay?

[prole]

MLK also grew to know through his experiences that the mere extension of political rights and equality under the law in an inherently unjust system would not result in furthering human freedom. He said so and got "caped".

[Nitrox]

MLK also grew to know through his experiences that the mere extension of political rights and equality under the law in an inherently unjust system would not result in furthering human freedom. He said so and got "caped".

 

They turned him into batman?

 

 

[pink]

Fair enough. Try restating it, cuz I couldn't dig it out of your post, which seemed to be all over the place, at least to me.

 

I grew my own (veg) garden because:

 

1) Mowing is pointless

2) The kids in the neighborhood like it

3) I hate going to the grocery store

4) Quality and variety of commercial produce blows

5) I like to learn about shit...literally.

 

1) i know you mow twinkies, don't lie.

2) and let me guess, you call it the wonderland garden ranch.

3) ur even too smug/good forthe smug/good at whole foods.

4) see exhibit 3)

5) monsanto already learned it for you

Edited September 27, 2010 by pink

[Jim]

Um...MLK aligned himself with and leveraged the capabilities of the political establishment and powerful organizations (the ACLU being one) to push the civil rights agenda over many years.

 

Oh, you mean he didn't just put a check in the mail and wait for November?

 

This is generally the extent that people want to get involved in politics - particularly from the progressive side. What? Actually do something that might interfere with my yoga class?

 

The amount of money being spent on mid-terms is going to set a record. With the flood gates open and the Republicans refusing to go along with any disclosure law corporations and PACs will have the upper hand. Unions? Pale in comparison.

 

Yea, people are generally lazy and stupid - but there should be at least some semblance of a balanced information flow in the news. There is not and it's going south. Why the hell is a twitter from Sarah Palin even news worthy - the woman is an idiot.

 

Somehow this void is going to get filled by the public soapbox that is the internet? Right. The only organizations that are doing investigative journalism are some print media - NYT, LA Times, Washington Post, Newsweek to mention a few. The internet is just full of talking heads and rehashing of news items from the Old Media. How is a democracy supposed to function when it is not informed? The balance of money, and power has shifted drastically in the past 20 years. The recent Supreme Court decision on speech/money is but one indicator.

[tvashtarkatena]

Media consolidation is an issue, but people choose where to get their information. All the reliable sources are still there and then some. You'd be better off picking a battle that you can actually fight.

 

[Jim]

And you're living in LaLa land if you don't recognize the media transformation and how people are using it. No, the same sources are not there. Traditional news sources, ones that actually conduct research, send out reporters, work on stories for months - which are newspapers, have been folding, cutting back, and consolidataing.

 

And the transition of what used to be news on TV and cable has turned into a pablem mix of infotainment and talking heads for the Fox News empire. While folks insist that the "money for speech" issue is not important and that the internet is filling the needed exchange of information - well, dude, it doesn't matter much if all that is being slung around is a dead cat. Seriously.

[Fairweather]

[j_b]

[j_b]

Big victories are a series of smaller victories. I'll take my gay weed victories over sitting around worrying about the cataclysmic end of civilization as we know it...which I think is hooey, anyway. That's an old story that crops up every now and then.

 

IN the meantime you let regressives frame the discourse on the economy (jobs) and wars, when it is rarely as easy as today to campaign on these critical issues from a progressive perspective. Democrats are betraying their campaign promises and you are not pressuring them for it.

 

All humanity has to do to cope with any global problem is voluntarily depopulate, which only takes 25 years or so. The solution is always at hand...always will be.

 

voluntarily depopulate from 6 billions in 25 years to address peak oil? climate change? the massive extinction of species? Soil loss? hmm

[j_b]

I agree that public campaign financing at the minimum amount to give a candidate a meaningful shot would be a good reform, but I don't think campaign financing matters that much, nor do I think that our system is any more broken than it ever was. Most get-out-the-vote volunteers are just that - they work for free, and in the age where anyone can make a campaign commercial with a $200 camera and post it for free, when network viewing is headed into the dirt, it's just not as big a deal as it once was.

 

Political apathy and lack of participation is a much bigger deal, IMO.

 

Political apathy and lack of participation is usually due to the system being rigged, in our case by the increasingly consolidated corporate media, the 2 corporate party system, corporate financing of politicians, etc ..

 

[prole]

I present to you....

 

....the teabagger movement.

 

From "End the Fed" to "Restoring America" in 60 seconds. These hoopleheads will be too dumb to figure out they got played.

[j_b]

You give them too much credit for being sincere. It's a small group of extremists given a bullhorn by the corporate media.

[prole]

You give them too much credit for being sincere. It's a small group of extremists given a bullhorn by the corporate media.

 

And you don't give them enough. There was some genuine anti-establishment sentiment within the movement at the beginning and there was a great deal being said about not being coopted and "we're grassroots, we don't have a Party" and screw Sarah Palin's $400 a plate dinners. You don't hear any of that now. If they haven't been completely folded in already, they certainly will be if they're elected. It remains to be seen whether an independent, more radical strain reemerges on the right when teabagger candidates inevitably merge with the status quo "mainstream" Republicans and their material welfare continues to erode. It sure hasn't happened with liberals after the Obama disappointment...

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

I present to you....

 

....the teabagger movement.

 

From "End the Fed" to "Restoring America" in 60 seconds. These hoopleheads will be too dumb to figure out they got played.

 

I know. I first introduced that idea to this forum. Why?

 

Because I'm awesome.

 

The media is what it is and there isn't fuck all any of us can do about it. Vetting news and information is still a personal responsibility, last time I checked. It's all out there...far more accessible, varied in viewpoint, and critiqued than ever before.

 

So STFU about 'the media' and get to work, cunties.

 

 

[j_b]

You give them too much credit for being sincere. It's a small group of extremists given a bullhorn by the corporate media.

 

And you don't give them enough. There was some genuine anti-establishment sentiment within the movement at the beginning and there was a great deal being said about not being coopted and "we're grassroots, we don't have a Party" and screw Sarah Palin's $400 a plate dinners.

 

From the start it was the brainchild of libertarian think tanks and media pundits (CATO, EFF, CNBC, Malkin, etc ..) who are allies of corporatists and against Obama's stimulus but who somehow cheered for 8 years of George W "big Government" Bush.

[j_b]

The media is what it is and there isn't fuck all any of us can do about it. Vetting news and information is still a personal responsibility, last time I checked. It's all out there...far more accessible, varied in viewpoint, and critiqued than ever before.

 

healthy food has always been available if you were willing to do the work but it hasn't prevented most to eat shit. The issue is ease of access. A grunt isn't going to sort sources of news. First, he'd have to realize the pablum he is served is mostly propaganda.

 

So STFU about 'the media' and get to work, cunties.

 

and ignore how they manufacture consent?

[j_b]

From the start it was the brainchild of libertarian think tanks and media pundits (CATO, EFF, CNBC, Malkin, etc ..) who are allies of corporatists and against Obama's stimulus but who somehow cheered for 8 years of George W "big Government" Bush.

 

"Who first proposed holding tea party events? When did major conservative organizations get involved? And how much support have they gained along the way?

 

The answer to the first question is "FreedomWorks." The answer to the second question is "right from the start." And the answer to the last question is "less than you'd expect, given the months of hype."

 

The first tea-partyish events occurred in February in Seattle, WA, Denver, CO, and Mesa, AZ around the time President Obama signed the stimulus bill into law, but they didn't have an explicitly tea-based theme. If they had a theme of any kind it was "pork" and government waste. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin wrote a post about the Seattle protest called "From the Boston Tea Party to your neighborhood pork protest." And in Denver, protesters shouted, "No more pork!" By and large, though, the events lacked a unifying issue.

 

That all changed on February 19, when CNBC commentator Rick Santelli erupted in anger on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, and proposed a "Chicago Tea Party" for traders to protest the government's plan to provide mortgage assistance to distressed homeowners.

 

The idea took hold and on February 27, a handful of cities across the country hosted gatherings that involved genuine tea (or at least the use of the word "tea"). One of those tea parties occurred from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. on Friday February 27, in Tampa, FL, organized according to the website Tampa Bay Online, by "John Hendricks, a Tampa-based consultant."

 

John Hendricks turns out to be John Hendrix, who by phone earlier today described the events as completely spontaneous. "These are independent groups, not coordinated," he says, "and most of the people, including myself, have never done anything like this." He even said that two distinct groups in Tampa emerged simultaneously--both called the "Tampa Tea Party," each unbeknown to the other.

 

I asked him where the idea came from. "Tom Gaithens," Hendrix said. "He's with FreedomWorks."

 

"Oh really?"

 

"He sent an email out with his network of contacts to see who could help."

 

The event, Hendrix said, drew somewhere in the ballpark of 200 protesters, and there were, by his count, 88 people on hand at peak. That's not very many people. Henke may be right, in a sense, about the distinction between astroturf events and genuine protests--but this appears to be, at best, somewhere in between the two. There was certainly not enough burning furor about the stimulus bill or the bank bailouts in Tampa to drive residents into the streets without the help of Dick Armey's 501 group.

 

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/freedomworks-long-history-of-teabagging.php

[j_b]

EFF was the main organization behind the proto-tea party protest in Seattle in feb 2009. Main sources of funding for EFF? Coors, Scaife, Walton, and on ...

[prole]

None of which was (or is) common knowledge to most of the people attending the events. Nor were literature, events, or leadership speaking directly to a pro-corporate agenda. The people that attended those events were responding to and mobilizing on the basis of an anti-establishment message and I think that's important for the Left to recognize. Yes, it's shot through with racism and is mostly composed of white middle class men that were not so mobilized when Bush was in power. It also has the potential to appeal to a broader swath in the vacuum created by a Left that's either retreated from economic issues or is complicit in the debacle. What gains the pro-corporate teabaggers have made by peeling off working and middle class voters worried about their futures is an immediate failure of the Left to speak to, and more importantly, address those issues. Simply drawing attention to the funding sources of tea-rallies while ignoring the fact that people are actually showing up to them would be a lost opportunity to learn something.

Edited September 27, 2010 by prole

[tvashtarkatena]

Well, there's an election right around the corner, so there'll be ample opportunity to pour boiling oil on the marauding Kochsmoking zombie hordes.

 

Or you can watch the fun from the comfort of your yoga mat.

 

 

[j_b]

It's a little late to address the tea-party "movement". Their job of creating the impression there is popular opposition to Obama's policies from the right is achieved. As Prole says, without any opposition from the left (and the help from corporate media), they were able to position themselves as the populist alternative to Obama's policies (however ridiculous that may seem). I am afraid that as obvious as that lesson may appear, it is lost on those who steer Move-on and the like. I don't agree however that the anti-gov/anti-tax drivel is anti-establishment or not addressing directly a pro-corporate agenda. Most of these people wouldn't have shown up at rallies pressuring Obama from the left, others would have but not them.

[prole]

I might be wrong, but I've mostly understood anti-tax drivel (for working folks) as misplaced anger for stagnant wages in the face of rising prices and the fact that people are paying for things that used to be free. For middle-class white-flight refugees it's always been coded racism: "I'm not paying for those people". For the former there's an opportunity to shift the narrative. For the latter, well they can go fuck themselves.

[j_b]

I might be wrong too, but I expect not to find too many people simply lashing back at the increase in their tax burden thanks to regressive taxation, in a small movement mostly composed of Bush dead-enders and scared old-folks (fear-mongering works).

[Weekend_Climberz]

You all might want to be careful what you say. You do realize we're being watched, right?

[billcoe]