UnCommon Sense TV - “Framing The Public Debate” A look at what the term ‘framing’ means in political discourse, and how it is used to influence people’s perceptions and perspectives on the issues of the day. Why citizens believe what they do about specific issues is often directly related to how that issue is presented to them in the first place. Featured on the program is exclusive USTV coverage of a presentation by professor George Lakoff, director of the Rockridge Institute, and author of numerous books on the topic, including “Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate” and “Metaphors We Live By” (taped at the Free Press National Conference on Media Reform). The program also discusses some of the specific techniques on how framing actually works and of the influence that private, corporately-funded think tanks have in helping to shape our nation’s populace’s perception of the issues of the day.

UnCommon Sense TV - “State of the Union” A somewhat irreverent yet critical analysis of President Bush’s 2005 State of the Union address.

WATCH THE PROGAM

Interesting idea. I hope Jones and company are able to help drive this into being (though can we please drop the whole ‘czar’ thing for once and for all? Monarchical terminology with autocratic overtones is just simply un-American).

A call for President-elect Barack Obama to give the arts and humanities a Cabinet-level post — perhaps even create a secretary of culture — is gaining momentum.

By yesterday, 76,000 people had signed an online petition, started by two New York musicians who were inspired by producer Quincy Jones . In a radio interview in November, Jones said the country needed a minister of culture, like France, Germany or Finland has.

Read the complete report in The Washington Post

Something from Michael Moore which resonates rather personally.

Windows of opportunity are being opened, if just for a moment. Time to move through them and onward.

We may, just possibly, also see a time of refreshing openness, enlightenment and creativity. The arts and the artists will not be seen as the enemy. Perhaps art will be explored in order to discover the greater truths. When FDR was ushered in with his landslide in 1932, what followed was Frank Capra and Preston Sturgis, Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck, Dorothea Lange and Orson Welles. All week long I have been inundated with media asking me, “gee, Mike, what will you do now that Bush is gone?” Are they kidding? What will it be like to work and create in an environment that nurtures and supports film and the arts, science and invention, and the freedom to be whatever you want to be? Watch a thousand flowers bloom! We’ve entered a new era, and if I could sum up our collective first thought of this new era, it is this: Anything Is Possible.

Here’s to things being possible, and moving from a realm of defensive reaction to one of creative response.

Read The Full Essay Here

I am very glad to see the pathetic criminal Bush marginalized so badly by this own kind that he would be so unwelcome at ANY political rally.

Some predictions:

(1) The Teamsters Union will organize WalMart Distribution Centers within six months of the inaugural.

(2) The Fox “views” Channel will find a few “liberals” to take some air space on their satellite network along with the radio stations that carry “conservative” messages. The “fairness” doctine will be feared by the AM worms worse than AIDS.

(3) Obama will have his “nerve tried” by Pakistan. Pakistan will soon learn that Obama can be a killer but one who practices proportional response; something Bush and his neo-con pimps never understood.

(4) Iraq will “seek a new status of forces agreement” whereby the U.S. leaves. The Shia and Sunni will settle the score themselves.

(5) Iran will agree to a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue.

(6) Israel will not have carte blanc in the middle east as they used to. Obama you can believe will be more pragmatic.

(7) Deep economic recession with a rebound at the end of 2010.

(8) The Democrats if successful in curing the economic troubles we face will see a twenty year control of the House and Senate.

(9) Look for Evita (Hilliary Clinton) to be nominated to the Supreme Court.

(10) A serious assassination attempt will probably occur within the next three years.

(11) The electrical grid will be the first priority of infrastructure jobs to be created by Obama.

- Posted by Scott Velniak

Why don’t we see this kind of analysis on Wall Street Week or The News Hour with Jim Lehrer? Oh…yeah…that’s right. Never mind.

Most refreshing in this interview is the discussion of ‘externalities’, that pesky little aspect to ‘free market economics’ that most people not only don’t factor into the equation, but aren’t even aware of. I don’t know how many devotees who extol the virtues of ‘the market society’ whom I’ve run into who don’t even have a clue on how externalities affect every aspect of our society and what the true costs are to how our economy is run (and most importantly, who is really profiting from it).

The real deficit we are experiencing is not so much an economic deficit but rather a democratic deficit.

Watch the interview with Noam Chomsky from The Real News Network

American’s who believe that it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks will be unpleasantly educated as to the true nature of such a belief. ‘Blowback’ will become a term that will become more and more sadly understood amongst more and more Americans over time.

Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.

————

Even if it’s not ethnic prejudice, but some other aspect of the culture wars, that proves decisive, the point still holds. For America to make a decision as grave as this one - while the planet boils and with the US fighting two wars - on the trivial basis that a hockey mom is likable and seems down to earth, would be to convey a lack of seriousness, a fleeing from reality, that does indeed suggest a nation in, to quote Weisberg, “historical decline”. Let’s not forget, McCain’s campaign manager boasts that this election is “not about the issues.”

Of course I know that even to mention Obama’s support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the “candidate of Europe” and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today’s America, that the world’s esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it.

Read The Full Article From The Guardian U.K.

Commentary from Greg Gordon posted by the Benton Foundation…

Sen John McCain (R-AZ) broadcasts his affection for President Theodore Roosevelt (R), but his opposition to regulating the local telephone industry suggests that he may not share the former president’s passion for busting huge corporate trusts. Unlike President Roosevelt, who railed against “malefactors of great wealth,” McCain’s positions frequently have echoed those of the giant regional Bell phone companies, now consolidated as AT&T, Verizon and Quest, the big survivors of the telecommunications wars of the last quarter-century. McCain’s opposition to the 1996 Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act, intended to spur competition by pressuring the Bells to lease their lines and switches to competitors cheaply, offers a window into how he might view regulation of other markets as president. The Arizona senator characterizes his unsuccessful stand against the measure, and his later attempts to thwart its implementation, as in keeping with his commitment to free markets and his maverick positions on behalf of American consumers. He was the only Republican senator to vote against the legislation. Critics charge, however, that McCain backed an approach to telecommunications that’s limited competition and kept prices high. They note that executives of the big three telecommunications giants and their lobbyists have raised and donated millions of dollars for his political committees.

Read The Original Posting

That’s my recommendation.

If they are going to act like lemmings, then they should have the lemming for their symbol.

The Democrats should keep the jackass.

That’s my opinion.

- Stephen Bickford, East Hartford, CT

Eliot Spitzer and America’s Ethical Perversity
by Rabbi Michael Lerner

The cross-the-political-spectrum attacks on Eliot Spitzer and the intensity of the demands that he resign his office show just how far the Right-wing sexual moralizing has been able to trump any other kind of ethical reasoning in American society.

Going to a prostitute is legal in some states and some countries around the world, and is often the very arrangement that saves families from splitting up whose sexual energies have diminished but whose love is intact. It’s not uncommon for men (and now increasingly women as well) who have achieved great power in our society by adopting an outer show of ruthless pursuit of power and influence (even, as in Spitzer’s case, if the power is aimed at pursuing laudable ends) to feel a deep emptiness and loneliness that is not addressed by friends or spouse, and hence to seek some kind of outside connection no matter how superficial that is not bound by previous rules and roles. Nevertheless, I and many others in the religious and spiritual world oppose that practice when it involves adultery or prostitution, because it depends on the objectification of another human being, so that sex is disconnected in ways that it should not be from a significant encounter with the spirit of God in the other or a deep recognition that is the only real way to overcome existential or situational alienation.

Moreover, the trade in women for sexual purposes has frequently led to rape and abuse and the kidnapping of young women who are sold into sexual slavery. All of these outrageous practices are abhorrent and should be challenged. The flaunting of sexuality in the media, and the implicit message that the only real satisfaction comes from having the most physically attractive people as sexual partners, not only generates huge dissatisfaction even as it allows corporate advertise to become predators manipulating our personal sense of inadequacy to sell their products, but also generates desires that feed the sexual trade in women. Given this larger social context, until sexual satisfaction is so broadly available in our society that no one has to pay for it and so deeply tied to love that no one is objectified in the process, this kind of exploitation of women and degradation of sex is likely to continue. All of these practices foster the sexual predators of the contemporary world.

So Eliot Spitzer deserves to be critiqued and ought to be doing deep atonement for what he did. His previous moral arrogance and willingness when he had power to do so to prosecute others for their participation in creating prostitution rings makes him an easy target. We, in turn, might practice the forgiveness that our religious and spiritual traditions preach, particularly those of us who have been willing to honeslty face how flawed we ourselves are, and how at times we ourselves fail to embody in our actual practice with others the values that we publicly espouse. Humility and compassion are also part of the path of a spiritual progressive.

But the intensity of the critique of the N.Y. governor, tied with the demand that he resign, shows more about American society’s ethical perversity than about Spitzer.

The President of the U.S. and the Vice President, working in concert with several other high ranking officers of our government, lied and distorted to get us involved in a war that has led to the death of over a million Iraqis, the displacement of 3 million more, the death of 4,000 Americans and the wounding of tens of thousands more. After token opposition in Congress, our elected representatives have overwhelmingly passed budgets funding this war, rather than refuse to fund any military projects until the President stopped the war and withdrew the troops.

Meanwhile, our government has overtly engaged in torture, wiretapping of our phones, and violation of our human rights and the rights of people around the world. Senator Diane Feinstein and Senator Charles Schumer votes to confirm as Attonrey General a right-wing judge who refused to repudiate these crimes.

The U.S. government has rejected every attempt to implement the Kyoto environmental agreements or to work out new agreements sufficiently strong to reverse environmental destruction that is certain to lead to new levels of flooding particularly in several poor countries around the world. The consequence: tens of millions of deaths.

The Clinton Administration pushed, along with corporate support, a set of trade agreements that have devastated the farmers of many developing countries, forcing many off their farms and into city slums where their daughters and sons are often sold into sexual slavery. The global economic system we have fostered has led to increasing gaps between the rich and the poor, so that over one out of every three people on the planet lives on less than $2 a day, 1.5 billion live on less than one dollar a day, and over 15,000 children die every day from malnutrition-related diseases and inadequate availability of medicine that is hoarded by the rich countries who can afford the prices made to ensure huge profits to the pharmaceutical industry.

Health insurance companies and private medical profiteers are doing all they can to ensure that there will be no health care for tens of millions of Americans, unless that is provided in ways that guarantee corporate super-profits and thereby guarantee that the cost of health care paid through taxes will be huge and create anger at all government social welfare and well-being programs, leading to their likely de-funding.

People in the US have faced severe economic crises on a regional and soon on a national level because corporations move their centers of production to countries in Asia where they can exploit workers with less government or union interference and where they can destroy the environment with less societal restraints. Wild to achieve greater profits, corporations and the rich have managed to support politicians who lower the taxes on the rich, in the process bankrupting the public sector or severely reducing its ability to provide enough funds for quality education, health care, libraries, public transportation, and social welfare.

That there is no outcry for these government officials and corporate leaders to resign immediately or be impeached, that there is no moral outrage at the entire system that produces this impact, is America’s ethical perversity. Instead, the only crime against humanity that the media takes seriously and the politicians fear is being exposed for personal sexual immorality. While everyone basks in their own self-righteous demands on Spitzer, we all allow media and elected officials to fundamentally distort our ethical vision and play out our morality on the smallest of possible stages while ignoring the global and personal consequences of our larger ethical failures.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine, Chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue-without-walls in San Francisco and Berkeley, and author of The Left Hand of
God. He welcomes comments at RabbiLerner@tiikkun.org