Cliff Schecter explained how President Obama responded to protester Medea Benjamin’s interruption of his speech, Obama’s encouraging rhetoric on winding down the “War on Terror”, why Signature Drone strikes are indefensible, why President Obama could have acted much faster on … Continue reading
We have arrived at another Casual Friday which means that our resident political maestro Cliff Schecter (@Cliffschecter) will be joining us to discuss the weeks news and Matthew Film Guy (@langdonboom) will give us some new movie recommendations.
Click through for more:
Elite Squad 1
Elite Squad 2
Using Amazon in Europe? you can still support the show
instructions here
The Majority Report is a daily political talk show hosted by Sam Seder. Call in to the show M-F 12 Noon EST: 646-257-3920. Add us all over the web! Read more
We will never sell or give your email address to anyone! Sign Up Today!
12:00 pm
Sam,
I’m so excited. I get to listen live today.
Great shows so far this week.
I would enjoy getting your and Cliff’s feedback on the latest GDP report. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/the-hobbled-recovery/
Dave Perrett
majority reporter.
12:21 pm
Sam Stein @samsteinhp
12:21 pm
GuardianUS @GuardianUS
12:45 pm
Back then, weren’t the neocons bragging that the Arab Spring was a result of W’s Iraq war and was a good thing? Couldn’t find a link to any of that. Oh, never mind. Found it in the last paragraph of your link!
12:43 pm
Greg Sargent @ThePlumLineGS
Agree with @ggreenwald: Rahm should not ban a business from expanding in Chicago b/c of owner’s anti-gay views: http://www.salon.com/2012/07/26/rahm_emanuels_free_speech_attack/
1:00 pm
yes Sam I remember that to
“Mr Jaws” by Dicky Goodman
1:32 pm
Yes, I remember that “record”! I think I even had the old vinyl 45 LOL
6:54 pm
Oooops it’s Dickie Goodman
October 1975
http://youtu.be/hWDLMETsF2U
6:59 pm
Ooops It’s Dickie Goodman
October 1975
7:07 pm
“Mr. Jaws”
http://youtu.be/hWDLMETsF2U
The Summer of ’75 was one of my favorites.
1:26 pm
Cliff had the same reaction to Mitt’s missteps about the Olympics I did, which is that Mitt had been instructed by his campaign to use the opportunity to toot his own horn about his own Olympic accomplishments. Of course, Romney was so ham-handed about it he achieved the opposite – you could almost see the cue cards flipping in his head.
As to the Chick-Fil-A kerfuffle, in addition to the free speech issue, I’d rather have the CEO for Chick-Fil-A flapping his gums or beak or whatever about his political views, because I’d prefer to be able to vote with my wallet instead of funding companies run by bigots. Just my two cents!
1:29 pm
Three things:
Movie Recommendation–
A Town Called Panic. You’d hate it! But it would be great for your daughter–my daughter Sadie (8) loves this animated film from Belgium. It introduced her to foreign film and subtitles, it’s not Disney, and let’s face it, everyone needs a film like that so they can get the laundry or the dishes done, or check up on emails, or rearrange your sock drawer. Good clean fun but a few blue words here and there. Set your daughter on the path to becoming a FRENCH ™!
Libertarian guest interview recommendation–
Karl Denninger from market-ticker.org. Karl is culturally conservative and an austerian, but one thing you two can probably agree on is the scandalous lack of regulation of the financial industry and prosecutions of financial felons. Would be interesting to have him on.
Chick Fil-A counterargument:
If local politicians can’t using zoning provisions, local regulation, or legislative action to prevent an organization from providing chicken sandwiches, why should they be able to do the same to an organization providing family planning and abortion services?
1:30 pm
Cliff Schecter @cliffschecter
8:14 pm
Open Letter from Chomsky, Shiva, Santos, Pilger, and 40 more…
We the signers of this open letter from Noam Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Boaventura de sousa Santos, John Pilger, and 40 other members of the interim decision body of the new International Organization for a Participatory Society, hope that you will circulate, email, and/or republish our letter, and, even more, that you will engage in and publish commentary regarding the organization’s purpose, implications, prospects, etc.
An Open Letter to All Who Seek A New and Better World
We are members of what is called the the Interim Consultative Committee of the International Organization for a Participatory Society – or IOPS for short.
IOPS is actually an interim entity, pending a future founding convention. IOPS was convened just a few months ago and already has over 2,100 members from 85 countries and a ten language site, despite that it is barely known publicly. IOPS is currently building local chapters, which will unite to form national branches that in turn will compose an international organization.
We send this open letter to invite you to please visit the IOPS Site to examine its initial features – including especially and most importantly its Mission and Visionary and Programmatic Commitments.
The IOPS commitments emerged from a long process of discussion and debate. We believe they correspond closely to the most prevalent, advanced, and widely accessible political beliefs on which to build an organization for winning a better world.
We also hope and even believe that if you read and consider the IOPS commitments, you will likely find that they are congenial to your interests and desires and that they provide reason for great hope that IOPS can become a very important organization in the coming years.
If we had to summarize the IOPS commitments, we would note that they emphasize:
that IOPS focuses on cultural, kinship, political, economic, international, and ecological aims without a priori prioritizing any of these over the rest;
that IOPS advocates and elaborates key aspects of vision for a sustainable and peaceful world without sexism, heterosexism, racism, classism, and authoritarianism and with equity, justice, solidarity, diversity, and, in particular, self-management for all people
and that IOPS structurally and programmatically emphasizes planting the seeds of the future in the present, winning immediate gains on behalf of suffering constituencies in ways contributing to winning its long term aims as well, developing a caring and nurturing organization and movement, and welcoming and even fostering constructive dissent and diversity within that organization and movement and based on its commitments.
We think hundreds of thousands of people, in fact, millions of people, will, on reading the commitments, overwhelmingly agree with them. We hope that if you look at the commitments and feel that way, you will join and advocate that others join as well. If you instead have problems with the IOPS commitments, we hope you will make your concerns known so a productive discussion can ensue.
On the other hand, we also understand that agreeing with the IOPS commitments will not alone cause those same hundreds of thousands and even millions of people to join IOPS. There are numerous reasons why a person might support the IOPS commitments and even hope that IOPS grows and becomes strong and effective at the grassroots, in every neighborhood, workplace, and social movement, and yet, at the moment, not join. Our best effort to summarize obstacles people may feel to joining even while they like the IOPS commitments, and to address those obstacles also appears on the IOPS site, in a Why Join IOPS Question and Answer format. Essentially we argue: If not now, when? If not us, who?
Asked to provide a succinct summary paragraph for the IOPS site about his involvement, Noam Chomsky wrote: “Hardly a day goes by when we do not hear appeals – often laments – from people deeply concerned about the travails of human existence and the fate of the world, desperately eager to do something about what they rightly perceive to be intolerable and ominous, feeling helpless because each individual effort, however dedicated, seems to merely chip away at a mountain, placing band-aids on a cancer, never reaching to the sources of needless suffering and the threats of much worse. It’s an understandable reaction that all too often leads to despair and resignation. We all know the only answer, driven home by experience and history, and by simple reflection on the realities of the world: join together to construct and clarify long-term visions and goals, along with direct engagement and activism shaped by these guidelines and contributing to a deepening of our understanding of what we hope to achieve… IOPS strikes the right chords, and if the opportunities it opens are pursued with sufficient energy and participation, diligence, modesty, and desire, it could carry us a long way towards unifying the many initiatives here and around the world and combining them into a powerful and effective force.”
http://www.iopsociety.org/