Progressive talk, part 2

I've been getting some interesting responses to my earlier post about progressive talk shows having rightwing guests on them.  After careful consideration, I have come to this conclusion: 

Progressive talk is still blowing it.

"But, we must hear the other side to know what they're up to!" the detractors say. 

Oh really.  Progressive talk has to do this for you.

Hmmm.

You mean to tell me that listeners to progressive talk can't find a rightwing talk show to hear for themselves what they're up to?  I find that hard to believe.  OK, if Rush and O'Reilly grate on your last nerve, I can understand that.  Don't have cable or Fox News?  OK.  I can take care of that for you too, and you don't even need cable.  I know you are online because you are reading this - if you really don't know what the far right thinks after all these years of a Republican Congress and President, have I got some sites for you! 

Take a quick little trip to these two sites - WorldNetDaily.com and NewsMax.com - and there you can find all the insight you need on the thinking and "issues" of the modern "conservative movement".  Read them at your leisure.  If those two aren't enough, you can always add in CNSNews.com and thedrudgereport.com.  That should clue you right in. 

Now, if you need to have those sites debated for you, I suggest mediamatters.org and conwebwatch.com.  There's always some excellent blogs that will give you that ammo for "winning the water cooler wars" too - DailyKos.com, Firedoglake.com, Sirotablog.com, and the granddaddy of them all, Bartcop.com.  Just to name a few.

There, now there's no more need to have anyone on progressive radio from the Heritage Foundation, Richard Viguerie, Pat Buchanan, or anyone else who represents the nutcase right.  Ever.  What they have to say is already there, repeated endlessly on various rightwing radio bloviators' shows and the internet.

Why is this important?  Here's a good example:  A.N.S.W.E.R. (http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage) is organizing a large anti-Iraq war demonstration in Washington, DC on September 15th.  Hear about it?  If all your information is coming from liberal talk, I can guarantee you haven't.  Mr. Rightwing Nut gets time on liberal talk and they don't.

Things are getting better.  Big Ed Schultz offhandly offered his entire 3-hour program to any Democratic candidate who wants to come on.  Dennis Kucinich took him up on it, and all of the other candidates should too.  We need more progressive talk like that - don't just say we need to get involved, tell and show us how and where.

As to bringing on the right to fight them, I thought that was why we needed progressive talk in the first place.  Tell the right when they want to come on your progressive talk show the lyrics from that West Side Story song:

"Stick to your own kind, stick to your own kind"

 

The unquiet desperation of the trash right

Hey, guess what?  All 60%+ of us Americans are all surrender monkeys again, ready to "retreat and surrender" out of Iraq!  And if we don't stay, there'll be a bloodbath, just like there was in Vietnam!  Oh, the horror!

Or so the cowardly, stay-at-home couch war supporters say. 

I have a real simple message for them:  screw off.

As Prezidunce Bush wants to kick the occupation down the road so anybody but him gets blamed for it, the idea here is to blame the people against the war for "losing" the war.  Not the architects, not the supporters, we people who were never for Bush's Glorious War of Oil Liberation in the first place are going to be blamed for this debacle.

Yeah, right.

Here's a few things they are clinging to as they see final defeat for the neo-nuts looming:  we - the only true, white, right thinking neocon patriots - really had the right idea about Iraq, it was just handled badly.  You stupid Americans just aren't wise enough to bow to our wisdom, and it's not our fault. 

What a pantload.

Here's the real deal for the rightwing fantacists.  Iraq still had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda under Saddam, no matter how many times you repeat your lies that it was otherwise.  The war was an unnecessary war of choice that had nothing to do with protecting us and everything to do with padding your bank accounts.  There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when we went in, there are none now. The war against terrorists was in Afghanistan - the war to realize your dreams of a Middle East oil control empire is in Iraq.  I don't care if you call it a "surge" or pink cotton candy, your escalation of that imperial war is a failure.

Here's the bottom line for the rightwing bottom feeders:  You lost in 2006, and you're going to lose again in 2008.

And don't they know it!  Repub congressmen are bailing out left and right so they aren't defeated next year.  The far trash right is flailing out in all directions (they're even trying to re-write the history of Vietnam) to keep those paychecks for peddling hate coming in.  The people aren't with them, and the best they can hope for is to wring the last few dimes out of the ever-shrinking Bush cult true believers that are left.  Their leaders in the White House arebeing dismissed as delusional and out of touch by most of the country - heck, its gotten so bad for them that a majority of Americans have already said they won't trust that lip-sticked pig that will supposedly be the Petraeus "report" before it's even been fine-tuned by the GOP failed wizards and released.

So, thrash and crash and moan, righties.  The country's political pendulum was headed leftward in 2000 (combining the votes for Gore and Nader, 2000 was the first time in 20 years that the majority of the vote went center-left) - that was derailed for a while after 9/11.  You had your moment in the sun, but the pendulum has finished it's jog to the right and is headed left again.

The right didn't only lose the elections in 2006, they lost the argument well before then and it hasn't turned around for them.  Enjoy their wailing and gnashing of teeth - they're done.

 

 

 

 

Tags: Rightwing-nuts, iraq

Democratic ARRRRRGH

"The Democrats!!!  They're enough to make you scream!!!  What to do, what to do?"

Let's talk about this and do another reality check.  First of all, we won in '06 but we didn't win enough.   I know, I know - that's just excuses and we should be tougher on the Republicans and blah blah blappidy blah but there it is.  We did well in the House and weren't supposed to take the Senate...but we did.  Now we face a GOP ready and able to block whatever we do, and we just don't have the numbers to stop them.

This doesn't excuse "the Democrats" from caving on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) ..if that's what "the Democrats" actually did.  Despite the current meme going around the web, the numbers don't hold up.  There are 237 Democratic members of the House of Representatives:  41 of them voted for the Bush FISA bill as well as all of the Republicans.  28 Democratic Senators voted against the Bush FISA bill, leaving 17 Dems voting for it as well as all of the Republicans.  I don't know how you do math, but it appears that "the Democrats" voted against the bill, with a few strays going over to give the Republicans the margin of victory for their bill.  Since not even one Republican voted against this, the talking point is really that the Republicans passed the bill.

This doesn't let the minority of Democrats off the hook for letting this pass, and I know the urge is to go after these Democrats come voting time next year. 

I'm going to borrow from Air America talk show host Thom Hartmann and pass along his suggestion on how to handle this because I think this is what is going to actually work.  Instead of rooting around for primary challengers for the Democrats who voted with the GOPers, I say we send them a different message.  We contact those Democrats' offices not with anger but with this message:  We're not happy with how you voted.  We want you to vote the right way on (insert issue here) with the understanding that you have our support if you do.  Do the right thing and we'll have your back. 

All those Democrats who are in nominally conservative districts are hearing is what bad things will happen to them from the rightwing in their states and districts.  What they need to hear is that the people who voted for them support them in doing what they voted for them to do.  If all they're hearing is how they'll pay if they vote against Bush and the Republicans, they will cave.  If they hear that their support for voting the right way is not only appreciated, it will be backed up on election day they won't.

We may not give them an immediate spine implant, but we can start by giving them back support.