Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chairman of the Senate Veteran's Affairs Committee, and one of the most persistent and effective advocates for veterans anywhere in government, was on Face The Nation this morning. He was more constrained in his response to the V.A. scandal that Ken was in his report Friday evening after Shinseki had been forced to fall on his sword.
Michael Arria, who writes for Vice’s Motherboard TV and Counterpunch, is the author of Medium Blue: The Poltics of MSNBC.
Martha Rosenberg: Your recent book takes MSNBC to task for many reporting and moral failures. One of the book’s most scathing chapters is its analysis of MSNBC’s coverage of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
Beltway pundits tend to get their opinions from their friends in the political parties and, for the most part, those opinions tend to be worthless. In the video above from her show on Tuesday, Rachel Maddow amuses herself at the expense of all the conventional wisdom that showed Southern Democrats having virtually no chance against an onslaught of top Republican recruits.
View the FOX 17 clip "Western Michigan Mothers Rally to Bring Back Our Girls" here.Everyone in the world knows the tragic story by now. Primitive, anti-education, mysogynist religious fanatics in the failed oil plutocracy of Nigeria kidnapped 276 young girls from their school and are threatening to sell them into slavery.
Most Americans never heard of Michael Grimm until the infamous "I'll break you in half like a boy" incident on the balcony of the Congress.
Last week a new name started popping up on my Twitter feed: Cliven Bundy. Before I had even processed it, he was in a standoff with federal law enforcement officials over unpaid taxes and fees and Harry Reid was calling him a domestic terrorist, Sean Hannity was egging him on to start an armed rebellion and Ted Cruz seemed to be angling to get him to run on his ticket in 2016. It looked too silly/ugly/predictable to pay any attention to. So I didn't. But it didn't go away.
Tuesday night Rachel Maddow had a couple of inspiring segments on her show dedicated to Elizabeth Warren and the release of her new book, A Fighting Chance. She included an inspiring interview, included above complements of YouTube.
Monday, Oklahoma's Republican governor, Mary Fallin, a lock-step right-wing ideologue and pawn of the Koch brothers, signed a bill fining or taxing Oklahomans who want to use solar power. It had passed both Houses of the Oklahoma legislature, and, in fact the House passed it 83-5. (Now this is a very, very red state but there are still 29 Democrats in the state House--72 Republicans-- and 12 Democrats in the state Senate--36 Republicans). Many of those Democrats, however, aren't Democrats that actual Democrats would recognize as Democrats.
Last night, Rachel Maddow's opening segment was the Scott Brown Story (above). It's an excellent piece of reportage and I recommend it. Thursday he makes his "official" declaration of candidacy to run for Senate (in New Hampshire). There are 4 other Republicans running, including an ex-New Hampshire 2-term U.S. Senator, Bob Smith. He might find it awkward using the carpetbagger charge against Brown because after he was ousted by John Sununu is the 2002 primary he moved to Florida (and ran for Senate there, unsuccessfully, in 2004 and 2010). But, awkward or not, he'll use it.
Friday, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich made the case that unemployment is still high and the economic recovery so turgid because of the failed European-style austerity measures being forced on the country by the plutocrats and oligarchs, primarily through their bought-and-paid-for conservative handmaidens in government.
