by Isaiah J. Poole | Mar 10, 2008 | Blog
by Isaiah J. Poole | Mar 10, 2008 | Blog
Pollster Celinda Lake says that this year can be as pivotal for progressives as 1980 was for conservatives—but only if the progressive movement takes crucial steps to solidify its ideological narrative and sell it to voters. We can't take political victory for...
by Bill Scher | Mar 10, 2008 | Blog
Disturbing job losses. Contentious fight over whether telecom companies can break the law and violate consumer privacy without accountability. Critical legislation that could put us on the path to a clean energy future. None of these issues raised by the Watchdog...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 9, 2008 | Blog
I’m sure this has been covered by everyone and his brother, but I couldn’t help being amused by this study suggesting that conservatives are happier than liberals. But before any conservatives start gloating, there’s another thing to consider. Being happy is a cinch,...
by Bill Scher | Mar 8, 2008 | Blog
Every Friday in our Weekend Watchdog feature, we post suggested questions for scheduled Sunday guests. You can add your own questions in the comment thread. We'll also include contact information for the shows, so we can let them know what their viewers want asked....
by Isaiah J. Poole | Mar 7, 2008 | Blog
You would think that after the latest dismal jobs report that the Bush administration would stop the spinning. But, no. For two straight months, the Bureau of of Labor Statistics confirms, the economy has been losing jobs, and most acutely the kinds of jobs, such as...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 6, 2008 | Blog
Part Five of a series. Something's happening out there. It's happening quietly in some places and not-so-quietly in others. It's happening around kitchen tables and in living rooms across the country, as Americans come to grips with new — or, to them,...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Mar 5, 2008 | Blog
A stubborn conservative minority in the U.S. Senate in December stood in the way of sensible energy legislation that would shift tax breaks away from Big Oil, which doesn't need them, and toward renewable energy companies that do. All indications are they would do it...
by Sara Robinson | Mar 5, 2008 | Blog
This is Part II of a series on the strategies used by the conservatives to promote their worldview, and the lessons progressives can learn from them to promote our own. Part I is here. As we saw in the previous post, the entire conservative movement was organized...
by Terrance Heath | Mar 4, 2008 | Blog
Part Four of a series. Let's return, once more, to our metaphorical intersection from parts two and three of the series. Except, where we once imagined a doomed pedestrian just preparing to cross the intersection, let's imagine a group of pedestrians stuck in the...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Mar 4, 2008 | Blog
Like an “American Idol” reject, John McCain keeps warbling George W. Bush’s greatest flops. The latest is Social Security privatization, a proposal so roundly rejected by the American people when Bush tried to foist it on the nation in 2005 that even a solidly...
by Sara Robinson | Feb 29, 2008 | Blog
Make no mistake: When the conservatives set out to take over America 30 years ago, they were working off of a well-thought-out plan. The plan was put in place by a wide variety of thinkers—but three of the main strategists were Howard Phillips, Richard Viguerie,...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 29, 2008 | Blog
One in 100 is bad enough. One in nine is a full-blown national tragedy — one aided and abetted by conservative ideology. You know, if you've read today's headlines, that the "one in 100" figure represents the percentage of American adults now serving time in prison,...
by Terrance Heath | Feb 27, 2008 | Blog
Part Three of a series. Let's return to our metaphorical street corner from the previous post, because to understand the current economic crisis it might help to consider how many have been run down at that economic intersection, as conservatism stands by and watches....
by Terrance Heath | Feb 27, 2008 | Blog
It's rare that Americans speak up and speak clearly about what we want, and that Washington has in hand a plan that delivers it. In its latest issue, Consumer Reports has published some survey results that spell out six health care reforms the majority of Americans...
by Anne Thompson | Feb 26, 2008 | Blog
This song, recorded and produced by Campaign for America's Future, is adapted from Willie Nelson's anthem "A Peaceful Solution." Nelson welcomed people to re-record the song in their own styles, create new lyrics and use the song to promote peace and justice. Below...
by Bill Scher | Feb 25, 2008 | Blog
Another weak performance for the Sunday shows, failing to ask the key Watchdog queries. Neither CBS' Face The Nation or Fox News Sunday pressed McCain's top campaign aides about their vocation as corporate lobbyists and the inherent conflict of interest that presents...
by Terrance Heath | Feb 25, 2008 | Blog
Part Two of a series. Consider this scenario. You're standing at a busy street corner when you see someone about to step off the curb right into the path of an oncoming bus. You have just enough time and you're close enough to reach out and stop them before it's too...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 25, 2008 | Blog
Folk singer Pete Seeger's book, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," includes a tribute to the people who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that recalls the spirit of fortitude and hope of the early civil rights movement — and asks us to recapture it in a post...
by Bill Scher | Feb 22, 2008 | Blog
Every Friday in our Weekend Watchdog feature, we post suggested questions for scheduled Sunday guests. You can add your own questions in the comment thread. We'll also include contact information for the shows, so we can let them know what their viewers want asked....
by Tula Connell | Feb 22, 2008 | Blog, Economy
The union movement is turning green. Not with envy, but with an escalating sense that the nation must work to address climate change and that we must be part of the effort to create good jobs that also are green jobs. Last December, an unprecedented delegation of...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 21, 2008 | Blog, Minimum Wage
You may not agree, as Sara Robinson provocatively suggests, that the country is primed for revolution. But there is no doubt that large numbers of middle-class people are mad, really mad, about the damage Bush-league conservatism has done to the country and to their...
by Sara Robinson | Feb 20, 2008 | Blog, Minimum Wage
"Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable." — John F. Kennedy There's one thing for sure: 2008 isn't anything like politics as usual. The corporate media (with their unerring eye for the obvious point) is fixated on the...
by Terrance Heath | Feb 19, 2008 | Blog
Part One of a series. When George W. Bush first spoke of "the ownership society," he led most Americans to believe, and many did believe, that he was talking about them. Now, four years later, it's easy to conclude that the president, his party and conservatism itself...
by Bill Scher | Feb 18, 2008 | Blog
The Sunday shows strike out again for the Watchdog. Not only did Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace fail to press Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell on the White House support for immunity for telecom companies that allegedly violated consumer privacy at...
by Roger Hickey | Feb 17, 2008 | Blog
Last week, the Economic Policy Institute released an important analysis of Jacob Hacker’s Health Care for America (HCFA) plan by the respected health economics team at the Lewin Group. As you can read in the EPI press release, Lewin found that HCFA would cover...
by Bill Scher | Feb 15, 2008 | Blog
Every Friday in our Weekend Watchdog feature, we post suggested questions for scheduled Sunday guests. You can add your own questions in the comment thread. We'll also include contact information for the shows, so we can let them know what their viewers want asked....
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 14, 2008 | Blog
The nation’s legions of homeless or near-homeless veterans make a mockery of all of those “support the troops” bumper stickers and other symbols of faux patriotism conservative blowhards like to flaunt — which is why right-wing mouthpiece Bill O’Reilly of the...
by Sara Robinson | Feb 11, 2008 | Blog
In the previous post, I looked at ten of the most common myths that get bandied about whenever Americans drag Canada into their ongoing discussions about healthcare. In this follow-up, I'd like to address a few of the larger assumptions that Americans make about...
by Bill Scher | Feb 11, 2008 | Blog
The failure that is the Bush Administration is so stark that even Fox News Sunday can't look away, scoring one for the Watchdog. Host Chris Wallace asked President Bush that since the "Republican nominee" will likely "have to carry along and deal with a faltering...
by Bill Scher | Feb 8, 2008 | Blog
Every Friday in our Weekend Watchdog feature, we post suggested questions for scheduled Sunday guests. You can add your own questions in the comment thread. We'll also include contact information for the shows, so we can let them know what their viewers want asked....
by Robert Borosage | Feb 8, 2008 | Blog
President Bush addressed the Conservative Political Action Committee gathering in Washington today, and, according to the White House, he told the group that our "peace and prosperity" are at stake in the upcoming election. Eerily Orwellian, Mr. President. For a...
by Terrance Heath | Feb 7, 2008 | Blog
There are natural disasters and man-made disasters. There are those who look upon the aftermath of disaster and see things as they should be. We call them conservatives. As I write this, the seeds of disaster and an aftermath of Katrina-like proportions have been and...
by Robert Borosage | Feb 7, 2008 | Blog
David Frum, noted neocon and former Bush adviser, who is generally wrong about just about everything, just penned a lament for the Financial Times on the coming “Democratic sea-change.” This time, Frum gets it right. “Conservative ascendancy is coming to an end.” The...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 7, 2008 | Blog
Our friend Bill Moyers is asking an interesting question: “What’s the one book you wish the winning presidential candidate would take to the White House?” For the next few hours, Moyers is inviting people to post responses on his blog. He will share the top responses,...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 7, 2008 | Blog
Once again, an obstinate Republican minority in the Senate vetoes the majority will, this time on a stimulus package that had bipartisan legislative and broad public support. Forty senators voted to filibuster the Senate version of the plan, a combination of tax...
by Bill Scher | Feb 6, 2008 | Blog
NPR's Bryant Park Project had me on today to analyze the Super Tuesday's results, along with Dan McClaughlin of RedState.com. I offered that even if a Clinton-Obama race becomes protracted while John McCain effectively becomes the GOP nominee, Democratic voters remain...
by Sara Robinson | Feb 4, 2008 | Blog
2008 is shaping up to be the election year that we finally get to have the Great American Healthcare Debate again. Harry and Louise are back with a vengeance. Conservatives are rumbling around the talk show circuit bellowing about the socialist threat to the (literal)...
by Sara Robinson | Feb 4, 2008 | Blog
2008 is shaping up to be the election year that we finally get to have the Great American Healthcare Debate again. Harry and Louise are back with a vengeance. Conservatives are rumbling around the talk show circuit bellowing about the socialist threat to the (literal)...
by Isaiah J. Poole | Feb 4, 2008 | Blog
As a detailed outline of how the government will spend your tax dollars in fiscal year 2009, which starts October 1, the budget submitted to Congress by President Bush on Monday is virtually worthless. But as a way to contrast the misplaced — and, frankly, immoral —...
