Reports give no reason for Bashar al-Assad’s decision but state TV footage shows huge crowds The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has sacked the governor of the city of Hama where 200,000 people took to the streets to protest against his regime. State TV announced the removal of the governor on Saturday. Although the report gave no reason or detail for his sacking, video footage showed the huge crowds of protesters in a central square of the provincial capital calling for an end to Assad’s rule. “The Syrian president signed a decree today relieving Doctor Ahmad Khaled Abdel Aziz of his post as governor of Hama,” the state-run Sana news agency announced. Hama was the site of an armed Islamist revolt against Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, in 1982. At least 10,000 people were killed and part of the old city was flattened when the army crushed the uprising. The protests on Friday across Syria were the largest since the uprising against Assad’s rule began nearly four months ago. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets nationwide, with human rights groups saying that at least 24 people had been killed by security forces on what was dubbed “the Friday of departure”, a slogan borrowed from the demonstrators against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt at the start of the Arab uprising. Activists claimed many were injured when police fired on protesters in the Damascus suburb of Daraya. Demonstrations were also reported in Aleppo, Latakia and Homs. Human rights campaigners estimate that more than 1,350 civilians have been killed since the uprising began in mid-March. The government says about 500 security personnel have also been killed. Days after the protests erupted in the southern city of Deraa on 18 March, Assad sacked its regional governor. Syria Bashar Al-Assad Arab and Middle East unrest Protest Middle East David Batty guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media In an interview with GBTV head correspondent Raj Nair on the streets of New York Friday, Glenn Beck explained that he despises Republicans as much as Democrats. “Ask the average person, am I Republican?” asked Beck. “I hate them… I don’t know how to say — I hate them.” Beck may have also surprised conservatives by railing against the practice known as extraordinary rendition. “Ghost planes — we’re picking people up in the middle of the night. We’re saying talk to us or we’re going to drop you off over in Egypt. That’s insane. That’s what causing all of these problems is we are sitting here looking at — picking people up and expecting them, when we march in, to say ‘oh, the Americans are here. The Americans just put him on a ghost plane and now he’s in the prison with Mubarak’s people torturing him.’ They don’t understand that. We don’t stand for anything.”
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Click here to view this media In an interview with GBTV head correspondent Raj Nair on the streets of New York Friday, Glenn Beck explained that he despises Republicans as much as Democrats. “Ask the average person, am I Republican?” asked Beck. “I hate them… I don’t know how to say — I hate them.” Beck may have also surprised conservatives by railing against the practice known as extraordinary rendition. “Ghost planes — we’re picking people up in the middle of the night. We’re saying talk to us or we’re going to drop you off over in Egypt. That’s insane. That’s what causing all of these problems is we are sitting here looking at — picking people up and expecting them, when we march in, to say ‘oh, the Americans are here. The Americans just put him on a ghost plane and now he’s in the prison with Mubarak’s people torturing him.’ They don’t understand that. We don’t stand for anything.”
Continue reading …As Republicans continue to posture over the debt ceiling, the idea of going over Congress’ head and invoking the 14th amendment as basis to raise it automatically is gaining traction. Here’s the latest shenanigans from Republicans. After the President took them to task for taking off on vacation, Mitch McConnell issued an invitation for President Obama to meet with Republicans, but not to negotiate. No, McConnell wanted Mr. Obama to come into the room so he could ” hear directly ” why he will never get what he’s asking for. “I’d like to invite the president to come to the Capitol today to meet with Senate Republicans — any time this afternoon, if he’s available, to come on up to the Capitol,” McConnell said. “ That way he can hear directly from Senate Republicans … why what he’s proposing will not pass .” You may have heard about the “14th amendment option”, a sort of nuclear option for the executive to completely bypass Congress and rely on the language in the 14th amendment to render any legislative action on the debt ceiling moot. If you haven’t, watch the segment in the video at the top of this post where it’s explained pretty thoroughly. It’s an untested concept, but rooted in some really strong history. I cannot recommend this post enough for the backstory and history around the adoption of Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment: The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. When I first heard about this I was completely confused as to how language about the public debt became part of a constitutional amendment, which is why you really must read the post on Balkanization. Here’s a snippet: What do we learn from this history? If Wade’s speech offers the central rationale for Section Four, the goal was to remove threats of default on federal debts from partisan struggle. Reconstruction Republicans feared that Democrats, once admitted to Congress would use their majorities to default on obligations they did disliked politically. More generally, as Wade explained, “every man who has property in the public funds will feel safer when he sees that the national debt is withdrawn from the power of a Congress to repudiate it and placed under the guardianship of the Constitution than he would feel if it were left at loose ends and subject to the varying majorities which may arise in Congress.” Well, now. That seems to lend itself to a place in this Very Serious Discussion of the Very Serious Republicans to blow up the world economy for Very Partisan Reasons. Jon Chait : This means that the very existence of the debt limit is unconstitutional because it calls into question the validity of the debt. So would any other provision of law. That is a key reason why Congress created a permanent appropriation for interest payments at the same time that the Fourteenth Amendment was debated. Previously, Congress had to pass annual appropriations for interest. It goes without saying that provoking a constitutional crisis over the debt limit is a bad idea, but a debt crisis would be worse. At a minimum, the Fourteenth Amendment greatly strengthens the president’s hand in getting the debt limit increased in a timely matter. He should not be afraid to use it. Chait is gnawing around the edges of the benefits of this strategy. Let’s just say it outright. The administration has set a drop-dead date of July 22nd to get this done. Assuming Republicans keep their petulant sad faces and refuse to negotiate in any faith, much less good faith, all the White House has to do is remind them that they’re irrelevant by reminding the global bond markets that they’re irrelevant. Suddenly the hostage is breathing just a little bit easier and Republicans look like the fools that they are. We know this will spin away from the President in the media. He will be painted by sniveling Republicans as a bully and a despot. But for everyone who doesn’t want the administration to cave on Medicare and Social Security, I note that the bully pulpit was used quite successfully yesterday (despite the cries and whimpers about scoldings and the like) and the administration’s surrogates are speaking out forcefully about the usefulness of the 14th amendment solution, so it would seem to be in our benefit to have their backs on this one. It’s certainly gotten more interesting with this on the table. I’m suddenly having fun watching Mitch McConnell and John Boehner tilt at windmills.
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Former party chief executive in Scotland says Huhne must go over ‘conspiracy’ to protect nuclear industry A prominent Liberal Democrat has called for Chris Huhne to resign immediately as energy and climate change secretary after emails were released detailing his officials’ efforts to co-ordinate a PR response to the Fukushima disaster with the nuclear industry . Civil servants in the energy and business departments were apparently trying to minimise the impact of the disaster on public support for nuclear power. Andy Myles, the party’s former chief executive in Scotland, said: “This deliberate and (sadly) very effective attempt to ‘calm’ the reporting of the true story of Fukushima is a terrible betrayal of liberal values. In my view it is not acceptable that a Liberal Democrat cabinet minister presides over a department deeply involved in a blatant conspiracy designed to manipulate the truth in order to protect corporate interests”. The leader of the Lib Dems in the European parliament, Fiona Hall, said nuclear plans should be put on hold. “These emails corroborate my own impression that there has been a strange silence in the UK following the Fukushima disaster … in the UK, new nuclear sites have been announced before the results of the Europe-wide review of nuclear safety has been completed. Today’s news strengthens the case for the government to halt new nuclear plans until an independent and transparent review has been conducted.” Liberal Democrats Liberal-Conservative coalition Nuclear power Energy Japan disaster Rob Edwards guardian.co.uk
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New constitution the monarch’s response to demands for greater freedoms resulting from the Middle East unrest Moroccans voted on Friday on whether to adopt a new constitution that the king has championed as an answer to demands for greater freedoms – but that protesters say will still leave the monarch firmly in control. The referendum on the constitution is near certain to result in a resounding yes vote, like all past referendums in this North African country and generally throughout the Arab world. It is buoyed by a huge media and government campaign, and is seen by some as a way to tentatively open up Moroccan politics, while heading off the kind of tumultuous regime change seen elsewhere in the region. Some voters at the country’s nearly 40,000 polling stations described the ballot as a vote of confidence in King Mohammed VI, a 47-year-old who assumed the throne in 1999 and is seen as a relatively modern monarch. Preliminary results are expected after polls close Friday night. A popular tourist destination, the generally stable, Muslim kingdom is a staunch US ally in a strategic swath of northern Africa that has suffered terrorist attacks – and in recent months, popular uprisings against autocratic regimes. Morocco, like the rest of the Middle East, was swept by pro-democracy demonstrations at the beginning of the year, protesting a lack of freedoms, weak economy and political corruption. The king, however, seems to have managed the popular disaffection by presenting a new constitution that guarantees the rights of women and minorities, and increases the powers of the parliament and judiciary, ostensibly at the expense of his own. Protests have continued nevertheless, and the 20 February pro-democracy movement has called for a boycott. It insists that the new constitution leaves the king firmly in power and will be little different from its predecessor. Their voices have been drowned out as nearly every political party, newspaper and television station has for the past several weeks pressed for Moroccans to vote in favour of the constitution. The monarch was among those voting, casting his ballot in a chic Rabat neighbourhood and, like every other voter, his voting card and ID were checked against the list. He voted with his brother, Prince Moulay Rachid. Crowds were small but steady at voting stations in a working class neighbourhood of Sale, outside the capital, Rabat. Voters were given two pieces of paper – one for a yes vote and one for a no vote – and placed one in an envelope which they put into the urn. The yes ballot was white, and the no ballot light blue, so that illiterate voters could participate. In the Moroccan countryside, voter turnout was stronger in the morning, before a searing heat descended. Officials at different voting stations said turnout was around 25% to 35% by late morning. Cafile Roqiya, a 54-year-old in glasses and a headscarf in the town of Benslimane, said she was voting yes “because there has been much progress”. “It is much better than before. The king keeps us stable and at peace amidst much upheaval,” she said. On the eve of the referendum, a pro-democracy demonstration of a few hundred people was swamped by thousands of government supporters who had been bussed in for the occasion wearing matching T-shirts supporting the constitution. The activists had to take refuge in a gas station under the protection of police while they were hounded by raucous pro-government demonstrators who threw eggs at them and called them “traitors” and “agents”. During the weekly prayers on 24 June, imams in the mosque read out sermons issued by the government urging Moroccans to vote yes as an act of faith. In cities around the country, banners paid for by local merchants exhort people to come out and vote, a practice seen throughout the Arab world when governments call a referendum and local businessmen want to stay in the good graces of officialdom. Most observers agree that the real signs of change for Morocco will come with how the new constitution is implemented. “We say yes to the constitution, but how it turns out in practice, well that’s another struggle,” said Saadeddin al-Othmani, a top official in the Islamist Development and Justice party, which like most political parties supports the new constitution. Al-Othmani sees it as a beginning of reform and Morocco’s own way of responding to the Arab Spring – not by toppling their leader or repressing the people, but through gradual measures. The February 20 movement, and the groups that support it, including smaller labour unions, leftist parties and the country’s banned Justice and Charity Islamist movement, lack al-Othmani’s faith in the process. They see the king’s 9 March speech and three-month consultation period before the new constitution was presented 17 June as the latest in a long line of cosmetic touches to an absolute monarchy. “We want to liberate the country from the state’s monopoly on politics and economy,” said Mohammed Lekrari, a leader of the Democratic Confederation of Labour, a union representing around 800,000 public sector workers. “We would like to leave the Middle Ages.” There is a whiff of medieval in the frenzied hype around the need for a yes vote, says his colleague Othmane Baqa, because a vote for a constitution is being seen as a vote for the king – like the oath of allegiance, the “baya,” given to Muslim kings for hundreds of years and still practiced annually in Morocco. “They want this baya through the referendum, so all Morocco must swear allegiance,” he said. “It becomes a vote for unity and the king.” Morocco Arab and Middle East unrest Africa guardian.co.uk
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Latest volume of former spin doctor’s diary reveals Blair accused Prince Charles of ‘screwing’ the government Tony Blair believed that the Prince of Wales publicly interfered in sensitive areas of government policy in a manner that sometimes stepped over the constitutional boundaries historically respected by the royal family, according to Alastair Campbell. In extracts from the latest volume of his diaries, published in the Guardian today and on Monday, the former No 10 communications director writes that Blair became so exasperated he once privately accused the prince of “screwing us”. Campbell, a teetotaller, also discloses in today’s extracts that the pressure of working in Downing Street became so great that he started drinking again around the turn of the millennium. He never told Blair. The main focus of today’s extracts confirms what ministers across the spectrum have long complained of in private: the Prince of Wales regularly attempts to influence government policy, usually in long handwritten letters. In the most detailed account of the prince’s interventions, Campbell suggests that the heir to the throne even displayed signs of disapproving of the government. Campbell indicates that at one point Blair raised his concerns with the Queen. “While publicly we stayed supportive, TB said Charles had to understand there were limits to the extent to which they could play politics with him,” Campbell wrote on 31 October 1999 of a meeting between Blair and the prince after he took Prince William on a provocative day’s foxhunting. “He said it was 90 minutes of pretty hard talk, not just about hunting.” Campbell writes that Blair became angry when the prince: • Made “deeply unhelpful” interventions during the foot and mouth crisis in 2001. Campbell wrote on 16 March 2001: “TB said he knew exactly what he was doing. He also asked whether Charles had ever considered help when 6,000 jobs were lost at Corus [the steel manufacturer]. He said this was all about screwing us and trying to get up the message that we weren’t generous enough to the farmers.” • Boycotted a banquet in 1999 for Jiang Zemin, then president of China, a decision criticised by Blair as “silly”. In a long paper to Blair the prince wrote: “I feel very strongly about it.” • Challenged Blair on plans to outlaw foxhunting. In what Campbell described as a “long note on hunting” in late 1999, the prince said it was good for the environment. • Declared in the same note that hereditary peers, the majority of whom were abolished by Labour in 1999, had much to offer. Campbell wrote that the prince had said “menacingly”: “We don’t really want to be like the continentals, now do we?” • Insisted that he had to speak out about GM foods after Downing Street had made clear its unhappiness with what Campbell describes as a “dreadful” Mail on Sunday article. In the same note to Blair the prince wrote: “I cannot stay silent.” Campbell said Blair was furious with the prince’s Mail on Sunday article in May 1999. “He was pretty wound up about it, said it was a straightforward anti-science position, the same argument that says if God intended us to fly he would have given us wings. It certainly had a feel of grandstanding.” Campbell writes that Blair thought the prince had a political agenda because he was upset by the former prime minister’s speech to the Labour conference in October 1999 in which he attacked the “forces of conservatism”. He wrote on 1 November 1999: “TB said he bought the line that because we were modernising, that meant we were determined to do away with all traditions but he had to understand that some traditions that did not change and evolve would die. It all had the feel of a deliberate strategy, to win and strengthen media support by putting himself at arm’s length from TB and a lot of the changes we were making.” Campbell added: “TB felt he had been really stung by the forces of conservatism speech. He said they felt much more vulnerable than in reality they are. We know they still have the power to ‘keep us in our place’ but they don’t always see it like that.” Blair even appeared to have raised his concerns with the Queen. On 1 June 1999, shortly after publication of the prince’s article, Campbell wrote: “TB saw the Queen and seemingly didn’t push too hard re Charles but he was very pissed off.” Campbell said last night that the anger in the Blair team was mainly caused by the prince’s media operation under Mark Bolland, his deputy private secretary between 1997 and 2002. Matters improved when Paddy Harverson, the prince’s head of communications, joined his team in 2004. Campbell told the Guardian: “Tony Blair valued their regular private conversations and respects Prince Charles’s right to speak up on important issues. But this was a period when it seemed Charles’s media team was proactively and publicly setting them at odds on some of the government’s most difficult issues – not just hunting, where the differences were well known, but GM food, China, and agriculture. “When Paddy Harverson [Bolland's successor] came in, things improved greatly. It might seem ironic me complaining about the media operation but just as I felt Charlie Whelan gave Gordon Brown problems so I thought the same of Mark Bolland at times for the Prince of Wales.” Clarence House declined to comment. Power and Responsibility: The Alastair Campbell Diaries, Volume Three, cover the years 1999-2001. Tony Blair Prince Charles Labour Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Pat Buchanan Defends Tax Cuts for Private Jets and Pretends Poor People Don’t Pay Any Taxes
July 1, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media MSNBC finally took Mark Halperin off the air for all the wrong reasons this week after he said President Obama acted like a “dick” because he dared to call out the Republicans for acting like spoiled children during these debt ceiling talks. I wonder what it would take to get this racist relic Pat Buchanan to finally leave their airways as well? The mild mannered Martin Bashir, who actually did a good job of calling out Mitch McConnell the previous day with his revisionist history on who’s to blame for our deficit skyrocketing, found himself outgunned by the volatile and aggressive Pat Buchanan during this segment where Buchanan was brought on to discuss the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, and where Buchanan insisted that Republicans should stick to their guns no matter what and force Democrats and President Obama to accept massive budget cuts with absolutely no increases in taxes, even if those taxes are on a privileged few, like private jet owners. Here’s how that interview went down. BASHIR: Well, let’s focus for a moment on those tax hikes. The president said he wants to get rid of tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires, corporate jets, only, okay? Republicans say they’re not the only ones with so-called sacred cows that are being protected and we know that. Meanwhile it’s the everyday American that’s suffering while both sides are as it were pointing fingers at each other. So how does this situation resolve itself? Tell me. BUCHANAN: First you’re… Obama is engaged and the president I should say is engaged in class warfare in some little form of demagoguery. Now I know corporate jets are fine to make fun of. I don’t ride around on one. I’m a successful individual. If Pat Buchanan thinks getting rid of tax cuts for jet owners is class warfare, maybe someone should ask him to go read this post at Think Progress where it shows just who is actually winning that war — Since 2009, 88 Percent Of Income Growth Went To Corporate Profits, Just One Percent Went To Wages . BASHIR: We’re talking about two billion dollars, or actually around between two and three billion dollars. BUCHANAN: Let me tell you what Martin. I went down, you know when we had the famous luxury tax, I went to a boat factory in Georgia where they had working class guys who built luxury sort of big yachts, big boats for rich people. They used to build eight a year, twelve a year, they were building one. Because the luxury tax meant they moved the building to Mexico. These taxes have an impact. But let me ask you this. Is it fair? Is it just that fifty one percent of all American wage earners don’t pay a nickel, in federal income taxes. And half the nation of free loaders pays not a nickel in federal income tax. And twenty three million of them get checks, earned income tax credits they call them, from the government. You can’t carry half the nation, the one percent, you know, Morton Zuckermann can’t carry the nation on his back. If Pat Buchanan has ever spent one minute actually talking to anyone that has worked in a factory, I’d like to hear from those people he supposedly talked to. It’s really disgusting to hear him defending tax cuts for the richest among us while claiming that there are poor lazy slackers out there that don’t pay any taxes just because they don’t pay federal income tax. I already addressed this issue when Republican Jim DeMint told that same lie on Hannity’s show here — Jim DeMint Repeats the ‘Half of Americans Pay No Federal Income Tax’ Big Lie About Taxes . As I noted there, Joshua Holland wrote a great post on just how much most Americans pay in taxes and how we’ve basically got a flat tax in America right now when you look at all of the taxes Americans pay. Pat Buchanan would like to pretend that the least among us are lazy, no good, slackers that don’t want to do their share to contribute to our tax base. Shame on him and shame on MSNBC for keeping this racist liar on the air. He’s as harmful to our democracy and to what should be a press that tells us the truth instead of lying and demagoguing as anyone on our airways and if MSNBC thinks Mark Halperin should be pulled off the air for giving what might be an honest opinion of President Obama and heaven forbid using the word “dick”, it would be nice if they took another look at their pundits who regularly do a greater disservice to the American public, and that is lying to them on a daily basis. Whether it’s the likes of Buchanan and his ilk still being allowed to come on the air and lie daily or a great deal of the rest of them either playing the all sides are equal game with pundits who have little use for the truth, but political spin instead, or lies of omission where they ignore stories daily that are of national importance to viewers and fill it up with bullshit like some murder trial no one gives a damn about, MSNBC and CNN and Fox do the public a great disservice on a daily basis by calling the majority of their coverage “news.” Maybe if we somehow manage to break these companies up that are monopolizing our airways with garbage about 80 or 90% of the time plus, we’ll break that cycle, but I’ve pretty much lost hope of that happening any time soon. In the mean time, we get treated to the likes of Pat Buchanan being considered anyone the public should take seriously or listen to when this relic of a racist should have been booted off the air a long time ago and their “polite” pundit Bashir giving him a chance to repeat a whole lot of conservative talking points that go unchallenged. Shameful, just shameful. When Pat Buchanan is allowed to pretend like Mort Zuckermann of all people is carrying the weight of our tax burden on his back and he’s not immediately called out for that nonsense, you’re not watching news. You’re watching right wing propaganda. Heaven forbid the rich S.O.B. should be asked to be paying a few more dollars in taxes instead of taking it out of the hides of seniors, or in Pat’s mind, those lazy, listless tax avoiding poor who haven’t quite given enough yet so Mort Zuckermann can get his tax break to make it to The McLaughlin Group to pretend like he’s a liberal on one of their panels where Eleanore Clift gets gets beaten up on four to one by Buchanan and his friends.
Continue reading …Pat Buchanan Defends Tax Cuts for Private Jets and Pretends Poor People Don’t Pay Any Taxes
July 1, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media MSNBC finally took Mark Halperin off the air for all the wrong reasons this week after he said President Obama acted like a “dick” because he dared to call out the Republicans for acting like spoiled children during these debt ceiling talks. I wonder what it would take to get this racist relic Pat Buchanan to finally leave their airways as well? The mild mannered Martin Bashir, who actually did a good job of calling out Mitch McConnell the previous day with his revisionist history on who’s to blame for our deficit skyrocketing, found himself outgunned by the volatile and aggressive Pat Buchanan during this segment where Buchanan was brought on to discuss the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, and where Buchanan insisted that Republicans should stick to their guns no matter what and force Democrats and President Obama to accept massive budget cuts with absolutely no increases in taxes, even if those taxes are on a privileged few, like private jet owners. Here’s how that interview went down. BASHIR: Well, let’s focus for a moment on those tax hikes. The president said he wants to get rid of tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires, corporate jets, only, okay? Republicans say they’re not the only ones with so-called sacred cows that are being protected and we know that. Meanwhile it’s the everyday American that’s suffering while both sides are as it were pointing fingers at each other. So how does this situation resolve itself? Tell me. BUCHANAN: First you’re… Obama is engaged and the president I should say is engaged in class warfare in some little form of demagoguery. Now I know corporate jets are fine to make fun of. I don’t ride around on one. I’m a successful individual. If Pat Buchanan thinks getting rid of tax cuts for jet owners is class warfare, maybe someone should ask him to go read this post at Think Progress where it shows just who is actually winning that war — Since 2009, 88 Percent Of Income Growth Went To Corporate Profits, Just One Percent Went To Wages . BASHIR: We’re talking about two billion dollars, or actually around between two and three billion dollars. BUCHANAN: Let me tell you what Martin. I went down, you know when we had the famous luxury tax, I went to a boat factory in Georgia where they had working class guys who built luxury sort of big yachts, big boats for rich people. They used to build eight a year, twelve a year, they were building one. Because the luxury tax meant they moved the building to Mexico. These taxes have an impact. But let me ask you this. Is it fair? Is it just that fifty one percent of all American wage earners don’t pay a nickel, in federal income taxes. And half the nation of free loaders pays not a nickel in federal income tax. And twenty three million of them get checks, earned income tax credits they call them, from the government. You can’t carry half the nation, the one percent, you know, Morton Zuckermann can’t carry the nation on his back. If Pat Buchanan has ever spent one minute actually talking to anyone that has worked in a factory, I’d like to hear from those people he supposedly talked to. It’s really disgusting to hear him defending tax cuts for the richest among us while claiming that there are poor lazy slackers out there that don’t pay any taxes just because they don’t pay federal income tax. I already addressed this issue when Republican Jim DeMint told that same lie on Hannity’s show here — Jim DeMint Repeats the ‘Half of Americans Pay No Federal Income Tax’ Big Lie About Taxes . As I noted there, Joshua Holland wrote a great post on just how much most Americans pay in taxes and how we’ve basically got a flat tax in America right now when you look at all of the taxes Americans pay. Pat Buchanan would like to pretend that the least among us are lazy, no good, slackers that don’t want to do their share to contribute to our tax base. Shame on him and shame on MSNBC for keeping this racist liar on the air. He’s as harmful to our democracy and to what should be a press that tells us the truth instead of lying and demagoguing as anyone on our airways and if MSNBC thinks Mark Halperin should be pulled off the air for giving what might be an honest opinion of President Obama and heaven forbid using the word “dick”, it would be nice if they took another look at their pundits who regularly do a greater disservice to the American public, and that is lying to them on a daily basis. Whether it’s the likes of Buchanan and his ilk still being allowed to come on the air and lie daily or a great deal of the rest of them either playing the all sides are equal game with pundits who have little use for the truth, but political spin instead, or lies of omission where they ignore stories daily that are of national importance to viewers and fill it up with bullshit like some murder trial no one gives a damn about, MSNBC and CNN and Fox do the public a great disservice on a daily basis by calling the majority of their coverage “news.” Maybe if we somehow manage to break these companies up that are monopolizing our airways with garbage about 80 or 90% of the time plus, we’ll break that cycle, but I’ve pretty much lost hope of that happening any time soon. In the mean time, we get treated to the likes of Pat Buchanan being considered anyone the public should take seriously or listen to when this relic of a racist should have been booted off the air a long time ago and their “polite” pundit Bashir giving him a chance to repeat a whole lot of conservative talking points that go unchallenged. Shameful, just shameful. When Pat Buchanan is allowed to pretend like Mort Zuckermann of all people is carrying the weight of our tax burden on his back and he’s not immediately called out for that nonsense, you’re not watching news. You’re watching right wing propaganda. Heaven forbid the rich S.O.B. should be asked to be paying a few more dollars in taxes instead of taking it out of the hides of seniors, or in Pat’s mind, those lazy, listless tax avoiding poor who haven’t quite given enough yet so Mort Zuckermann can get his tax break to make it to The McLaughlin Group to pretend like he’s a liberal on one of their panels where Eleanore Clift gets gets beaten up on four to one by Buchanan and his friends.
Continue reading …‘The Playboy Club’ Anti-Porn Groups Boycott: Pink Cross, Morality In Media Protest NBC Show
July 1, 2011 No Comment
NBC thought they’d be getting a major hit with this coming fall’s new stylized 60s drama, “The Playboy Club.” So far, the early returns have mostly involved some major controversy. Of course, when it comes to TV, the latter often leads to the former. Starring Eddie Cibrian as a shady yet charming lawyer and Amber Heard as a new employee at the original Chicago Playboy Club, the show is an hourlong drama meant to mimic the style and feel of “Mad Men.” Having already weathered the storm of KSL, a Church of Latter-day Saints-owned Salt Lake City affiliate refusing to air the show (it was eventually picked up by a MyNetworkTV affiliate in the city), NBC has been hit with concurrent protests by two religious, anti-porn groups, who are calling for viewers to sign petitions against the show’s broadcast, and promising to boycott advertising sponsors. Pink Cross, “a faith-based IRS approved 501(c)(3) public charity dedicated to reaching out to adult industry workers offering emotional, financial and transitional support,” which was founded by former adult star-turned-religiously rehabbed anti-porn crusader Shelley Lubben, is participating in an online petition against the show. “What’s shown in ‘The Playboy Club’ is not real–Playboy definitely damages people. It’s pornography, it’s sex trafficking and it exploits women,” Lubben told Fox411.com. “The series looks like it’s all cute, taking place back in the old days — it seems harmless, but then they show a quick clip of three people going at it in the bathroom. NBC is breaking the law with this show — they’re not meeting FCC standards.” Of course, NBC has released a pilot for the show and very little else, meaning that the quick clip — and the Playboy brand — is probably all Pink Cross has to go on when it comes to basing their allegations. That’s something that Morality In Media, another religious group joining Pink Cross in its protest, seemed to acknowledge in a statement. “Since the 50s, sleazy Hugh Hefner and his Playboy Magazine has pushed a philosophy which dictated that, to the ‘sophisticated man,’ the female is a mere toy to be used, abused and discarded. That philosophy has inflicted unimaginable harm to our society, now documented by years of research. The harms of pornography include addiction of children and adults, violence against women, sexual trafficking, increased child pornography, destruction of marriages, and so much more,” the group’s president, Patrick A. Trueman, said. Morality in Media is leading the War Against Illegal Pornography protest, of which Pink Cross is a part. Later in their statement, Morality in Media alleges that Playboy used to be considered “soft-core porn,” while the FCC forbids the broadcast of hardcore porn. How they expect the hardcore guideline to regulate the soft-core issue remains to be seen, though Scott Pierce, a Salt Lake City TV critic, in his response to the NBC affiliate’s refusal to air the show in that city, insisted that there is far more objectionable content on broadcast television. I can say without hesitation that every episode of “Law & Order: SVU” is more “adult” than the pilot of “The Playboy Club.” And KSL has aired almost 300 episodes of that show. … The obvious message KSL is sending is – we don’t care if a show is adult as long as it doesn’t have the word “Playboy” in the title. And if this one had been called, “The Gentleman’s Club” and didn’t have the bunny ears and tails, it would be airing on Ch. 5 this fall. Advocacy protests against television shows are a time-honored tradition, of course; it seems that each year, new shows are chosen for boycotting for their allegedly offensive material. Last season, it was an MTV adaptation of a British show, the racy, teen sex-laden “Skins,” that drew the ire of protestors, though “The Playboy Club,” with its public airwave chasteness and age of consent actors, shares little in common with that show. Still, after withering criticism and the significant loss of advertisers, MTV opted to not bring that show back for a second season. What has been left unsaid in the protests, but could be fueling the issue from within, is the “Playboy Club” cast. The show stars Eddie Cibrian, who famously had an affair with LeAnn Rimes before divorcing his wife to marry the country singer, and Amber Heard, who recently came out as a lesbian. WATCH:
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