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brodie commented on the diary post What’s Sad about Geraldine Ferraro’s Death by Teddy Partridge.
The first woman to get our party’s nom for P is very unlikely to have a 100% pure liberal-left track record. But since coming to the senate, Gillibrand has in fact begun to shed some of her former cautiously centrist attitudes and is emerging as a star for the center-left/liberal wing, though no one with [...]
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brodie commented on the diary post What’s Sad about Geraldine Ferraro’s Death by Teddy Partridge.
I thought Dems in 1984 did a poor job of defending her and of highlighting the double standard being established for a female candidate to have to answer for her husband’s business practices. For sure though, the Mondale people should have been more on top of that angle and been a little more prepared to [...]
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brodie commented on the blog post John Fund: Reagan “Willed Himself” to Overcome Poverty
Anyone see the HBO doc on Reagan last night? Eugene Jarecki, of “Why We Fight” fame, produced it.
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brodie commented on the blog post John Fund: Reagan “Willed Himself” to Overcome Poverty
Nancy apparently consulted her astrologer as to when Ronnie should be inaugurated as CA gov. The answer: midnight. And it was done, or just a few minutes after. Little noted by the press, btw.
Imagine if Jerry Brown, then or now, had tried such a wacky thing. MSM would have gone nuts with nonstop 24/7 coverage of flaky moonbeam governor too eccentric or “out of step” even for California.
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brodie commented on the blog post John Fund: Reagan “Willed Himself” to Overcome Poverty
Agree on all points.
As to better organizing by the Goopers or sticktoittiveness, again check. Though it doesn’t hurt their efforts at false revisionism of the Reagan presidency that they have a compliant corp media to work with — recall how they were all on “bended knee” (Mark Hertsgaard) for him during his presidency — with one major network, GE-owned NBC, a former major employer of Reagan.
Dems have no such built-in propaganda advantage, and have to hope for a few positive media scraps thrown their way re FDR or JFK.
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brodie commented on the blog post John Fund: Reagan “Willed Himself” to Overcome Poverty
Some reasons re FDR: 1) birthday of January 30 too close in time to Presidents Day in Feb; 2) birth year of 1882 meant his centennial celebration in the MSM happened before cable tv got big.
JFK: media attention almost always on date of his assassination not birth
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brodie commented on the blog post Tahrir Square the Scene of a Street Fight
Another honest reporter, CNN’s Ben Wedeman: “Govt-sanctioned lynch mob”. “Govt has more than a million people in its security apparatus, but none apparently deployed to prevent today’s violence.” “Deliberate decision to allow this.”
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brodie commented on the blog post Tahrir Square the Scene of a Street Fight
Not exactly. Coop got his current 360 gig in 2003 (wiki), two years before Katrina.
Kudos to him both for his honest and direct reporting from NOLA during Katrina, and today for courage in trying to cover the protest on the ground and for reporting honestly about the rent-a-mob thugs from the pro-Mubarak side.
My main complaint about Coop stateside is in some of his political discussions when he too easily falls into that well-known MSM false equivalency mode.
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brodie commented on the blog post History in the (Re)Making
Ike maybe — and he claims to have been against Truman’s dropping of the atomic bombs — but Nixon sure didn’t show much empathy for the many thousands of Vietnamese he was bombing the hell out of from 1969-73.
As for Michael Nesmith, the dude really lucked out. Mother invents Liquid Paper. Gets ultracushy and well-compensated gig goofin off on the Monkees when even Stephen Stills was turned down for show. And then writes Linda Ronstadt’s best song, her first hit Different Drum.
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brodie commented on the blog post Sunday in Egypt: Who Will Decide the Future?
Could be propaganda or could be troubling for protestors: Antiquities and Giza Plateau Supreme Overseer Zahi Hawass, a Mubarak loyalist, just interviewed on BBC, says he expects protests to diminish within a couple of days, with Mubarak regime in full control by next week and will stay in power for the good of the people.
This combined with an apparent govt crackdown on Al Jaz, is not good news for democracy.
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brodie commented on the blog post FDL Book Salon Welcomes Mark Hertsgaard, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth
Mark, it seems like the global warming/climate change advocates have been losing the public education/PR battle roughly since not long after Al Gore and his team won an Oscar® for their fine film An Inconvenient Truth. Since then the polls I’ve seen show a dip in public acknowledgement of g.w.
Meanwhile, Gore has sort of disappeared, going off on his endless speechmaking around the world, and has only been in the news lately for negative, personal reasons — huge house(s) with huge energy needs, massages, divorce.
Is there a future role for Gore, and a different one which could change around the current negative trends towards public ignorance?
Does our side lack for a strong public persona who can carry the banner with passion and authority?
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brodie commented on the diary post From Military-Industrial Complex to Permanent War State by Gareth Porter.
Check. Ike, probably for budgetary reasons, also vastly increased our nuclear arsenal, at the expense of conventional armaments, and since he’d also put the nuclear strike button in the hands of military instead of civilian leaders (JFK and SecDef McNamara would later change this to civilian only) he made this country’s security dependent on the [...]
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brodie commented on the diary post From Military-Industrial Complex to Permanent War State by Gareth Porter.
Ike slow on the uptake re McCarthy? Or just fearful of the political repercussions if he had spoken out? But he was slow on the uptake on another matter — in early 1953, just after taking office, when Stalin suddenly died. PM CHurchill urgently cabled Ike that he was getting signals the new SOviet leaders [...]
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brodie commented on the blog post Jeh Johnson’s Full Remarks at Pentagon on Martin Luther King and Afghanistan
We know the Vietnam War was a phony war started with a False Flag Op, The Gulf of Tonkin attack. Martin opposed this war firmly and he would be just as opposed to the Afghan and Irak Forever Wars.
Agree, but most people don’t know that MLK showed very early and courageous opposition to LBJ’s War, in March 1965 with public comments against the bombing which LBJ had just begun, and as he called for a negotiated political settlement to the conflict. Later in ’65 in internal talks with the SCLC board, he called for a public position by the org which would allow for the NLF to participate in the settlement talks. This was too much for the more moderate, cautious SCLC leadership, and they voted Dr King’s proposal down.
By the end of ’65, feeling media heat and oppo from his own SCLC, and not wanting to upset his initially good relations with LBJ, MLK pulled back from publicly opposing the war (and would until Mar ’67) in order to concentrate more on economic equality issues.
But the record shows he was one of the early war opponents nonetheless, and at a time — at the very outset of Lyndon Johnson’s sudden escalation of the war — when not every public figure of liberal bent opposed the escalation or was sure about what to think of it.
Extremely unlikely that such a moral peace-loving man with keen and even prescient notions of a prior unfolding war, and someone so sensitive to the way war robs society of resources badly needed at home, could possibly endorse the unending and massively costly conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan.
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brodie commented on the diary post Jane Hamsher on Last Word: This is How You Win by Scarecrow.
Well done, Jane. You came prepared with specifics — not always the case with libs who often appear on teevee armed only with generalities — went through them briskly but clearly, and got your points across forcefully. And in the doing, you might have set a record for cable talk show guests in speaking for [...]
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brodie commented on the diary post Stan Greenberg: Afghanistan War Likely Cause of Primary Challenge by Robert Naiman.
Extremely unlikely. Not unless, a year, year and a half from now, the economy still awful, O still perceived as spending too much energy catering to Wall St and futilely seeking GOP votes that aren’t there, then, if you begin to see a parade of major A-A leaders step up to the mics and say [...]
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brodie commented on the diary post Stan Greenberg: Afghanistan War Likely Cause of Primary Challenge by Robert Naiman.
Actually, tan, the triggering event, the immediate proximate cause, was RFK’s entry, not McC or the war. He had the just-started Paris peace talks to cover his left flank manageably enough, he thought, but an opponent like RFK with his larger range of liberal issues and greater personal appeal, that was something Johnson feared. So [...]
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brodie commented on the diary post Stan Greenberg: Afghanistan War Likely Cause of Primary Challenge by Robert Naiman.
Well, I might vote for Valerie Plame …
Or Elizabeth Kucinich, if only …
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brodie commented on the diary post Stan Greenberg: Afghanistan War Likely Cause of Primary Challenge by Robert Naiman.
Teddy, LBJ didn’t withdraw because of McC’s strong 2d place finish in NH, nor am I at all convinced with the line, sounding like something written by a Johnson loyalist found on a plaque on a wall in the LBJ Library, that he “withdrew to seek peace in our time, full-time.” (actually that sounds like [...]
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brodie commented on the diary post Stan Greenberg: Afghanistan War Likely Cause of Primary Challenge by Robert Naiman.
Disagree slightly. LBJ’s “Wise Men” advisers, previously gung-ho about Johnson’s policy, suddenly changed course in March 1968 and advised him the war would be unwinnable even with an additional 200k troops. But I’m not sure a peace settlement under Johnson was close, nor am I convinced he himself had truly stopped believing in his policy. [...]
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