Bill Moyers Journal: David Simon on inner-city crime and politics, storytelling and the future of journalism

Dandelion Salad

Bill Moyers Journal
4.17.09

David Simon

From crime beat reporter for the BALTIMORE SUN to award-winning screenwriter of HBO’s critically-acclaimed The Wire, David Simon talks with Bill Moyers about inner-city crime and politics, storytelling and the future of journalism today.

via Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS

Pt 2 Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS

STOPPING THE PRESSES
The newspaper morgue is no longer just back issues — it’s holds growing number of defunct papers around the nation. Get the stats on the changing media landscape. And, Bill Moyers and David Simon reflect on what happened to the news business.

THE STATE OF THE CITIES
How are America’s downtowns faring up in the downturn?

PRISON NATION
The U.S. has five percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s prisoners — how did we get here?

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The Wire

Ron Paul On Legalizing Marijuana: Drug War Is A Horrible Failure

Financial Crisis: Sustaining Unsustainability by Prof. Michael Hudson

Bill Moyers Journal: Glenn Greenwald & Amy Goodman + William K. Black on Fraud

The Economy Sucks and or Collapse 2

British Capitalism – the Worm Ouroboros, by William Bowles

By William Bowles
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Creative-i
22 January 2009

The other day I happened to hear an interview on the BBC with a US investor who had some pretty awful things to say about the UK economy, and why he wouldn’t invest a red cent in this country.

To paraphrase, ‘you don’t manufacture anything, your banks, from which you make most of your wealth, are bankrupt, and all your North Sea Oil has gone, so what do you have to offer an investor?’

The BBC interviewer, in a futile attempt to head him off at the pass, accused him of creating a panic to which he replied, ‘I don’t have any investments in the UK so I have nothing to gain’, in other words it’s not his problem that the UK economy is broke.

He didn’t mention the fact that around 70% of Britain’s GDP is consumer spending, but of course it only exists because of a financial sector shoveling out loans as fast as it could print the money. So in effect, a good chunk of consumer spending is actually part of the financial sector’s income, take that away and it collapses and that is exactly what has happened.

Between Hope and Reality – An Open Letter to Barack Obama By Ralph Nader

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By Ralph Nader
ICH
Nov 3, 2008

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Dear Senator Obama:

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words “hope and change,” “change and hope” have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not “hope and change” but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Only Nader Is Right on the Issues By Chris Hedges + Nader on Guantanamo Bay

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
Nov 3, 2008

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Tomorrow I will go to a polling station in Princeton, N.J., and vote for Ralph Nader. I know the tired arguments against a Nader vote. He can’t win. A vote for Nader is a vote for McCain. He threw the election to George W. Bush in 2000. He is an egomaniac.

Cindy Sheehan “debates” Nancy Pelosi at KQED + Hey, Hey, Nancy (music video)

Updated: added a music video

Cindy Sheehan for Congress

Cindy Sheehan
Dandelion Salad
featured writer
Cindy Sheehan for Congress

cindyforcongress

Having refused to be a guest on KQED´s public affairs program Forum because she was not allowed equal time, America´s leading peace activist Cindy Sheehan audaciously called in to the program this morning to get a chance to address House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Upon stating that Nancy Pelosi has ducked her responsibility of meeting with her San Francisco constituents since 2006, the impatient program host, Michael Krasny, interrupted Cindy to prod her to ask the question his call screeners had agreed to. In all, Cindy Sheehan was granted less than 40 seconds to speak, and was not allowed to respond to Nancy Pelosi´s answer. Cindy Sheehan is running against Nancy Pelosi for California´s District 8 Congressional Seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Written by Robert Livingston. Check out KQED radio show here http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008…

Brian Moore, Socialist Party USA Nominee on C-Span

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C-Span

Oct 31, 2008

Brian Moore, the presidential nominee of the Socialist Party USA, spoke about his presidential campaign and the Socialist Party platform. He also talked about socialism and recent charges the Democratic Senator Barack Obama’s economic and tax plans were “socialist.” He responded to telephone calls and electronic mail.

Video link

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Special Announcement: 2008 is Just the Beginning

The Racism of McCain…and Obama…and the Media By Jeremy R. Hammond

The Obama Nuts + $700 Billion Art + 3rd Party Climb

What’s wrong with redistributing the wealth? by Alan Maass

Is Barack Obama a Socialist. or simply a centrist with integrity? By Paul A. Donovan

Socialists say Barack Obama is not

Is Obama a socialist?

“Socialism” intrudes on the 2008 elections by Patrick Martin

Socialism

What is Socialism? (archive of posts)

Special Announcement: 2008 is Just the Beginning

Dandelion Salad

Note from Manila Ryce, The Largest Minority:

The announcement comes at 2:37 in the video. Democrats might be particularly interested since it’s something they’ve claimed they wanted Ralph to do rather than run in the previous elections.

votenader08

The Obama Nuts + $700 Billion Art + 3rd Party Climb

Dandelion Salad

on current

votenader08

A hopeful Obama supporter searches for Barack’s courage.

Third Party Presidential Candidates Debate 10.30.08

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C-SPAN

62 min – Nov 1, 2008

Ralph Nader & The Two Party Dictatorship + Nader takes questions on C-Span

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C-SPAN
November 01, 2008

Barack Obama’s Commercial

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BarackObamadotcom

American Stories, American Solutions: 30 Minute Special

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “American Stories, American Solutions:…“, posted with vodpod

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What’s wrong with redistributing the wealth? by Alan Maass

Neil Cavuto on why McCain is a loser

Obama the Stalker by Joel S. Hirschhorn

Is Barack Obama a Socialist. or simply a centrist with integrity? By Paul A. Donovan

The Post-Election Struggle to Come by Glen Ford

Don’t tell my mother I work at the White House. She thinks I play the piano in a whore house. by William Blum

Countdown: Campaign Comment for “Joe the Plumber” + Matthews Responds to the Obamamercial

Presidential elections: planning for the worse By Roland Michel Tremblay

McCain-John

Palin-Sarah

Obama-Barack

Biden-Joe

The Trail of Broken Promises By Matt Gonzalez

By Matt Gonzalez
Ralph Nader for President in 2008
Oct 29. 2008

Watching the Democrats in the final weeks of the presidential election has been a lesson in revisionist history. While they lament the terrible crimes perpetrated against the American people by George Bush and vow to keep fighting for our rights, they conveniently gloss over the fact that they have no standing to make such claims. Indeed, the Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, have actually voted with President Bush’s agenda, making them complicit in his acts, not valiant opponents defending our liberties.

PELOSI’S PROMISE TO END THE WAR

Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said that if she became the speaker of the House of Representatives she would end the war in Iraq. Remember that? The Boston Globe noted, “Pelosi vows no ‘blank check’ on Iraq funds.” (1/8/07). In her own words: “If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it. And this is new to him, because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions.” Rick Klein of the Globe noted “Pelosi’s comments mark the first suggestion by a Democratic congressional leader that Congress could use its authority over the nation’s finances to hasten an end to the war. Her remarks point toward an aggressive stance on Iraq from Congressional Democrats in their opening days of control of the House and Senate.”

Yet after she became the speaker of the House in Jan 2007, war appropriations actually went up by $50 billion, with no strings attached and no date for the withdrawal of troops. This year, 2008, they’ve gone up by another $25 billion for a two-year total of $350 billion, with no end in sight. So what happened to the promise of “no blank check?”

Twelve Reasons to Reject Obama and Support Nader/McKinney

Dandelion Salad

By James Petras
October 29, 2008 “Information Clearinghouse”

The presidential elections in the US, once again, provide an acid test of the integrity and consequential conduct of US intellectuals. If it is the duty and responsibility of the public intellectual to speak truth to power, the recent statements of most of our well-known and prestigious public pundits have failed miserably.

Instead of highlighting, exposing and denouncing the reactionary foreign and domestic policies of Democratic Party candidate Senator Barack Obama, they have chosen to support him, ‘critically, offering as excuses that even ‘limited differences’ can result in positive outcomes,and that ‘Obama is the lesser evil’ and ‘creates an opportunity for a possibility of change.’

What makes these arguments untenable is the fact that Obama’s public pronouncements, his top policy advisers, and the likely policymakers in his government have openly defined a most bellicose foreign policy and a profoundly reactionary domestic economic policy totally in line with Paulson-Bush-Wall Street. On the major issues of war, peace, the economic crisis and the savaging of the US wage and salaried class, Obama promises to extend and deepen the policies which the majority of Americans reject and repudiate.

Twelve Reasons to Reject Obama

1.Obama publicly and repeatedly promises to escalate the US military intervention in Afghanistan, increasing the number of US troops, expanding their operations and engaging in systematic cross-border attacks. In other words, Obama is a greater warmonger than Bush.

“The Party’s Over?” by Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan for Congress

by Cindy Sheehan
Dandelion Salad
featured writer
Cindy Sheehan for Congress

Oct 29, 2008

The title for this piece was a very unfortunate statement that Nancy Pelosi made after she handed the banksters on Wall Street 700 billion dollars of our money. This was a whopper of a crime that bailed out fabulously wealthy people who took risks that made them rich on the way up and now again on their ways down. I don’t know about you all, but I could have a heckuva party with 700 billion dollars!

One of the corporations that has now received around 100 billion dollars in federal bailout funds is AIG. This firm has continued to party all over the country: treating its associates to fabulous retreats at taxpayer’s expense. Not only is AIG still partying hardy, but according to the Pelosi’s recent financial statement, they own between 250-500 thousand dollars in AIG stock. Can we all say, conflict of interest?

I think it’s about time that the establishment media here in San Francisco quit giving Ms. Pelosi a free pass on her unethical and non-progressive values and actions and start asking her some relevant questions. I think the new paradigm can begin this week when Nancy is on The Forum with Michael Krasny on KQED. We brainstormed a few questions that Michael could ask Pelosi…well more than a few!

• Why do you say that you are against the occupation of Iraq when you have given George Bush billions of dollars of “blank checks” to wage it?
• Why did you vote to give Bush the authorization to attack Afghanistan, when Afghanistan never attacked the US? Why did you vote for the freedom and Orwellian named stealing USA PATRIOT Act?
• What did you know about the administration’s inhumane and grisly policy of torture and when did you know it? Why did you allow it to continue?
* Why do you support the No Child Left Behind Act that is effectively destroying our education system and allows for the active recruitment of our young people by military recruiters?
• Why did you give telecoms and BushCo immunity from warrantless wiretapping? Why did you destroy our 4th amendment by the FISA Modernization Act?
• Why did you give the banksters on Wall Street 700 billion dollars when people are starving and sleeping on our streets?
• What is your plan to pump liquidity into the people’s economy to allow prosperity to gurgle up and no longer trickle up?
• Why did you take impeachment off the table when the Bush Administration have clearly committed high crimes and misdemeanors and why did you say on The View that you didn’t know of any crimes Bush had committed after Congressman Dennis Kucinich charged him with 35 impeachable offenses? What are and what will the implications be for allowing BushCo to slink off unpunished?
• Why did you cave into the Republicans and allow the ban on offshore drilling to expire?
• Why do employees in your companies not belong to labor unions? Why do you support free trade agreements that oppress workers and destroy the environment?
• Why are you claiming in campaign literature that you obtained federal funds to clean up the Hunter’s Point Naval station to help the community of Bay View, when the funds were to be used to decontaminate the area where you hope the new stadium for the 49ers will be placed?
* Why did your Congress not work to protect our elections from fraud and tampering of voting machines that can be easily compromised?
• Why haven’t you held a town hall meeting in the district since 2006 but you have the time to sell books and fund raise all over the country?
• Why won’t you debate your Congressional opponents? What are you afraid of?

I would love to tell Nancy Pelosi that her party is over, but I highly doubt that the establishment media here in San Francisco will suddenly grow some journalistic integrity and actually hold her feet to the fire where they belong.

I would also love to tell her this to her face, but like her best buddy, George Bush, she won’t face me and answer questions about issues that truly affect us all.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. — Henry David Thoreau

see

Peace Activist Cindy Sheehan Seeks to Unseat Nancy Pelosi for Betraying the Constitution by Jennifer Fenton

Kucinich: It’s not a government of the banks, for the banks, by the banks

The Economy Sucks and or Collapse

Peace Activist Cindy Sheehan Seeks to Unseat Nancy Pelosi for Betraying the Constitution by Jennifer Fenton

Dandelion Salad

Note: although Jennifer is a featured writer here on Dandelion Salad she wrote this piece for another website as an exclusive, so you’ll have to read the rest of the article there.  Thanks, Lo

by Jennifer Fenton
The WIP Contributors

Home

October 28, 2008

Imagine what would happen if the nations of the world spent as much on development as on building machines of war. Imagine a world where every human being would live in freedom and dignity. Imagine a world in which we would shed the same tears when a child dies in Darfur or Vancouver. Imagine a world where we would settle our differences through diplomacy and dialogue and not through bombs or bullets. Imagine if the only nuclear weapons remaining were the relics in our museums. Imagine the legacy we could leave to our children. Imagine that such a world is within our grasp. – Mohamed ElBaradei (2005), Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency

Garnering national attention, peace activist Cindy Sheehan is now running for office against incumbent Democrat Nancy Pelosi in California’s 8th Congressional district. Cindy promised the House Speaker that if impeachment proceedings against George W. Bush did not start when Pelosi took control of the House last year, she would run against her in the next election.

[…]

“She betrayed her Democratic base”

Cindy says she made the decision to run for office because “Not only has [Nancy Pelosi] betrayed her Democratic base, but she has betrayed the Constitution and she has betrayed the country.” Many critics of House Speaker Pelosi have said that when she took impeachment off the table, she took democracy off the table. “She has taken away our right to privacy, she has betrayed the Fourth Amendment by giving George Bush and the telecom company’s immunity, she continues to fund both wars…she went in saying ‘no blank checks’ and every single time she has given [Bush] a blank check. Instead of taking her power as Speaker and her power in the House of Representatives and cutting off funding, she has continued to fund the war. She has violated her constitutional oath to protect and defend the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.”

[…]

The WIP Contributors

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Donate to Cindy for Congress

The vicious attacks are starting again by Cindy Sheehan

“Small People” – Bailing Out Wall Street by Selling out Main Street By Cindy Sheehan

Sheehan-Cindy

Jennifer – Myspace