Americans Love Class War!

A poll shows majorities of swing voters, Democrats and even Romney supporters don't admire the rich.

June 5, 2012

Americans still hate the rich, according to yet another poll. And not just godless secular liberals! Pew’s major Trends in American Values poll shows class resentments bridging the partisan divide: “Majorities in all educational and income groups agree that ‘today it’s really true that the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer.’ In the current survey, 76% of the public agrees with this statement, about the same as the 74% that agreed in 1987.”

Even the moderate pundit crowd’s beloved independents agree: Our ruling classes are worthless parasites. A mere 22 percent of “swing voters” “admire the rich.” (How many Romney supporters “admire the rich,” you ask? Thirty-eight percent. No one likes rich people.)

As Elspeth Reeve puts it, succinctly and correctly, “swing voters are not libertarians.” They’re also not “socially liberal and fiscally conservative,” like the vast majority of our well-off media elites tend to consider themselves.  READ MORE

How Israel's Fear of Arab Democracy Leaves the Jewish State More Isolated

Egyptians demonstrate outside the Israeli embassy .

Photo Credit: Gigi Ibrahim/Flickr

Middle East expert Reem Abou-El-Fadl explains how Arab solidarity with the Palestinians is being reflected at the official level in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

June 5, 2012

As the struggle for democracy and dignity in the Arab world rages on in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, the Israeli establishment’s response has been to disparage the revolts and hunker down.

Israel’s right-wing leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, laid out this response in a speech to the Israeli Knesset last year. The Arab revolts have turned into an “Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic wave,” Netanyahu said. “Israel is facing a period of instability and uncertainty in the region.”  READ MORE

Ayn Rand Thinks He's a Parasite, But My Brother Kevin Contributes Greatly to Our Society

Ayn Rand cashed her disability checks

A government that helps the wealthy and powerful over the poor and disabled is a government with no decency.

June 5, 2012

At my father's funeral, the presiding minister, Ebb Munden, was a man who had been one of my dad's closest friends. Ebb talked about how the last time he had gone to see my dad before he lost consciousness, he had been very emotional, but that my dad had comforted him by gripping his hand and telling him it would be all right; that he was at peace and Ebb should be, too. 

The lesson was that even at our physically weakest, we could still help other people and make things better in the world.

I was thinking of that this past weekend when I went to see my brother Kevin back home in Lincoln, Nebraska. Kevin is one of those people whom followers of Ayn Rand's philosophy would call a leech on society. Rand believed that people with disabilities were leeches and parasites on society, and that the “parasites should perish.” Kevin’s birth father broke a chair over his head and gave him brain damage, so he is developmentally disabled and has difficulty speaking clearly.

He came to my family when we were both 11 years old, and has been not only my brother but one of my closest friends ever since. As an adult in recent years, his body has continued to betray him as he is hard of hearing, can't see well, and has muscular dystrophy. Recently, he had to go into the hospitial for major surgery and then developed pneumonia – his muscular dystrophy makes it especially tough to recover from all this.  READ MORE

Inside the Fearful Conservative Mind: The Right-Wing's Latest Race Terrors

Bill O'Reilly

In the conservative media's alternate reality, racism only exists when white people are the "victims." This couldn't be further from the truth.

June 5, 2012

The conservative media has invented a new terror in their imagined race war: hordes of black people coming after innocent white folks. 

A while back Bill O’Reilly, the most watched TV personality on Fox News, ran a series of stories on what he suggests is a “racially motivated” attack on two white journalists in Norfolk, Virginia that he claimed was covered up by the local press. As Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins details, the facts reveal a different reality: a rock was thrown at a car, the occupants had an argument with a group of men and a fight ensued. The reporters were not severely injured. Although an unfortunate incident in a city that is struggling with violent crime, it was neither particularly noteworthy or an anomaly. In fact, the newspaper for which the journalists worked thought the event was a non-story. This did not deter Bill O’Reilly. He could frame the story as part of a national race war by introducing one fact--the victims of the assault were white and the perpetrators were black.

The National Review’s Thomas Sowell legitimated this narrative of a race war against whites in a column which circulated widely throughout the Right-wing media and blogosphere. There he listed a series of such assaults in major cities such as Chicago, New York, Cleveland, and Los Angeles, which involved groups of young black people committing random assaults on pedestrians, robbing people of their cell phones and Ipods, and fighting on beaches and in malls.  READ MORE

Progressive Movement Rises Up But Can't Oust Walker From Wisconsin Governorship

Walker outspent Barrett eight-to-one, but Democrats may have regained control of the state Senate.
June 5, 2012

Progressives held their breaths and grimaced Tuesday evening as the trickle of Wisconsin recall election returns showed that anti-labor Republican Gov. Scott Walker – and four senior GOP state officials – were not going to be removed from office, despite overwhelming turnout in the state’s Democratic urban strongholds. 

With 99 percent of the state’s 3,424 precincts reporting, Walker led Barrett 53 to 46 percent, a lead of nearly 173,000 votes out of 2.5 million votes cast. Barrett told reporters that he called Walker, “and congratulated him on his victory tonight. We agreed that it is important for us to work together.”

A fifth race may offer some consolation to progressives. It appears that Democrat state senate candidate John Lehman beat the incumbent Republican Sen. Van Wanggaard by 779 votes out of more than 71,000 cast, according to late-breaking unofficial returns. Should Lehman's victory hold up when the final count is certified, the Democrats would become the majority party in the state Senate, breaking the GOP's lock on legislative power.   READ MORE

Sandusky allegedly wrote 'creepy' love letters to victim

BELLEFONTE, Pa. –  Jerry Sandusky allegedly wrote "creepy" love letters to one of his victims, and they will be read in testimony once the child sex abuse trial into the former Penn State assistant football coach begins Monday, ABC News reported, citing sources close to the case.
The love letters were allegedly written to "Victim 4," one of eight accusers set to testify against the 68-year-old.
Victim 4 is set to be the first witness to testify and is also expected to show gifts that Sandusky allegedly gave him, including a set of golf clubs.
The letters are allegedly handwritten by Sandusky and one of them entails a story written in the third person.
Victim 4, now 28, met the coach through Sandusky's charity, the Second Mile.

  READ MORE

Sandusky trial: nine jurors selected, three (and alternates) to go

Connections to Penn State weren't necessarily keeping prospective jurors from being chosen Tuesday to decide former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's fate on child sexual abuse charges.

Several of the nine jurors who have been seated have links to Penn State as students, alumni or supporters.

By Genaro C. Armas and Mark Scolforo, The Associated Press / June 5, 2012 

Connections to Penn State weren't necessarily keeping prospective jurors from being chosen Tuesday to decide former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's fate on child sexual abuse charges.

The jurors and four alternates could be selected as early as Wednesday, with opening statements not scheduled to begin until Monday. Sandusky is fighting dozens of criminal charges that he abused 10 boys over a 15-year period.
In the first questioning of 40 prospective jurors, about half said they or immediate family members worked at Penn State or were university retirees. One woman rented apartments to college students. Four knew Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant football coach. Two knew his wife.
Sandusky's lawyer won the right to have jurors chosen from the local community, and prosecutors had concerns that Centre County might prove to be nearly synonymous with Penn State. Sandusky had helped build the football team's reputation as a defensive powerhouse known as Linebacker U, his arrest toppled Joe Paterno from the head coaching position just months before his death from cancer and prosecutors say some of the attacks on children occurred inside university showers.
One of the first jurors to be seated wasn't just a season ticketholder since the 1970s: She said John McQueary — a possible trial witness and the father of a key witness — once worked with her husband.   READ MORE