It Goes against our nature; but the left has to start asserting its own values.

The progressive attempt to appeal to self-interest has been a catastrophe. Empathy, not expediency, must drive our campaigns

So here we are, forming an orderly queue at the slaughterhouse gate. The punishment of the poor for the errors of the rich, the abandonment of universalism, the dismantling of the shelter the state provides: apart from a few small protests, none of this has yet brought us out fighting.

The acceptance of policies that counteract our interests is the pervasive mystery of the 21st century. In the US blue-collar workers angrily demand that they be left without healthcare, and insist that millionaires pay less tax. In the UK we appear ready to abandon the social progress for which our ancestors risked their lives with barely a mutter of protest. What has happened to us?

The answer, I think, is provided by the most interesting report I have read this year. Common Cause, written by Tom Crompton of the environment group WWF, examines a series of fascinating recent advances in the field of psychology. It offers, I believe, a remedy to the blight that now afflicts every good cause from welfare to climate change.

The Media and the Far Right: Showcasing the Crude, the Violent and the Aberrant

Last Sunday in the October 10, 2010 New York Times, two very lengthy features appeared on the rancid Ann Coulter and the blogger Pamela Geller—a grotesque anti-Semite against Arabs who flaunts her sweeping bigotry as a badge of pride. Geller even called herself a ‘racist-Islamophobic-anti-Muslim-bigot’. One veteran reporter called the sprawling two page feature, with all of twenty color photos “an advertisement.”

Anyone with such open and flaunted hatred against Jews would either be ignored or slammed paragraph by paragraph with denunciations consigning the sick character into media oblivion.

The latest Coulter feature, one of many in the mainstream media over the years, chronicles her efforts to reinvent her shouts since she is being outflanked “on the right by the Tea Party.”

The Koch Empire and Americans for Prosperity: More Tentacles Surface at Rightwing Front Group

Lily Tomlin said it best: “No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.” Despite two solid years of progressive media tracking the billionaire Koch brothers’ funding of right wing front groups, new details have emerged which show a more sophisticated and ominous network than previously understood.

One of the key organizations funded by a Koch-controlled foundation is Americans for Prosperity (AFP).  While it has been widely documented and publicized that the group is orchestrating the Tea Party, AFP is also a veritable smorgasbord of other “grassroots” personalities.  The AFP or the AFP Foundation have  spawned the following identities: 

DefendingtheDream.org (August 27-28 D.C. summit for right wing strategizing and rally);

SayNoCapandTrade.org (kill tax on production of greenhouse gases);

NoInternetTakeover.com (attacks on the Federal Communications Commission);

SickofSpending.com (“…how to recruit, educate, organize, and mobilize fed up Americans to stop the radical left-wing agenda…”);

RegulationReality.com (“…educate citizens about the EPA’s attempt to implement radical global warming regulations…”);

NovemberIsComing.com (phone bank; go door to door to beat back those liberals);

TaxCutsForAll.com (don’t raise taxes on the rich);

SpendingCrisis.org (shrink the Federal government);

CaliforniaSoS.com (cut spending in California);

United4NoOn4.com (kill Amendment 4 in Florida that would give voters more say in local legislative decisions; an ironic position for people who say they want to promote more liberty).

The New Yorker: Billionaire Brothers Charles & David Koch Have Quietly Given More Than $100 Million to Right-Wing Causes

An article in the latest issue of The New Yorkermagazine by Jane Mayer profiles billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, two of the richest men in America who have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes. Mayer writes, "The [Koch] brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus." [includes rush transcript]

Ode to conservatives