The Empire Files: Abby Martin- America's Unofficial Religion: The War on an Idea

Source:The Empire Files-

Source:The New Democrat 

Again, it depends on are you talking about democratic socialism, which is a very mainstream political philosophy in most of the developed world and gaining strength in America, or are you talking about Marxism. Which is complete state-control of the economy and society as general. Where the central state tells people what they can and can't do. Where they can work, where they can live and so-forth. What the right-wing in America has been successful at really since the 1930s is point most Socialists as Marxists, even most Socialists tend to be democratic and even Democratic. Where the Democratic Party has had a long history going back to the 1930s, or longer of having at least an unofficial wing of Democratic Socialists in the party who prefer to be called Progressives.

Democratic socialism, is not anti-capitalist and anti-private enterprise. A Democratic Socialist State if anything will use capitalism and private enterprise to fund their welfare state. To see that everyone has social insurance that they can turn to when they need it, but also to provide the basic services that Democratic Socialists don't trust the private sector to provide. Education, health care, health insurance, retirement, childcare, to use as examples. While the private sector would be left with most of the rest of the economy, short of national security, foreign policy, law enforcement, the judiciary, etc. In a social democracy, you tend to have big centralized government's, if not a unitarian state, with most of the governmental power being left with the national capital. But where the people would be free to live their own lives with basic individual rights. Including not having to live in poverty.

When I think of socialism, I think of Europe, especially Scandinavia and Britain and to a certain extent Canada. These are all countries that are all energy independent by the way. At least Canada, Britain and Scandinavia, so they can afford to be very socialist with their government's and economies. And when I think of highly statist and authoritarian third-world countries, I think of Marxists and Marxism. North Korea and Syria, great examples of that. And then you have highly developing and growing countries that use to be completely Marxist states both politically and economically that now have hybrid systems. Where they have private enterprise economies, but Marxist political systems. China, obviously, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Cuba would be another one. But there now two socialist factions in the world. The democratic faction being the largest and most successful.
Source:The Empire Files

Video Detective: The Seduction Of Joe Tynan (1979) Starring Alan Alda & Meryl Streep

Source:The Video Detective- Meryl Streep & Alan Alda.

Source:The Daily Review

The Seduction of Joe Tynan is one of the best political movies I’ve ever seen and it reminds me a little bit of the Ted Kennedy-Jimmy Carter 1979-80 Democratic race for president, which I’ll get into later. Alan Alda plays Senator Joe Tynan from New York, who has solid Progressive Democratic credentials. Who is in love with his job and wants to move up and be a national player in the party if not President of the United States.

What separates him from Senator Ted Kennedy is that Senator Tynan, actually wants to be President. Ted Kennedy ran for president in the 1980, because he didn’t like where the country was going with the bad economy and everything else, didn’t think President Carter was progressive enough, but more importantly he felt some obligation to the progressive wing to run for president and put another Kennedy in the White House.

Joe Tynan, loves the president, loves campaigning, loves politics. I would say loves his kids back in New York as well, just not enough to make them a major priority as far as attending their major events. And I would say likes his wife a lot and perhaps loves her and is attracted to her, but doesn’t have much respect for her and sees her as bit of lightweight, at least as far as the people he deals with in Washington. And I believe this comes out pretty clearly in the movie as far as how Tynan talks about his wife whose played by the adorable and funny Barbara Harris.

What makes Tynan a strong potential presidential candidate is that the President a Democrat, has a U.S. Supreme Court nominee up. Who is a bit of a right-winger, at least on civil rights issues and supported forced segregation in the past, who comes from Arkansas. And that puts Senator Tynan in a tough position of having to consider taking on the leader of his party.

Joe Tynan, doesn’t want to take on the President and his Democratic Leadership in the Senate, but he’s not going to support right-wing Supreme Court nominee who supports forced segregation either. Especially since he’s looking at running for president himself. And is approached by civil rights and labor lawyers in the party who want him to vote against Supreme Court nominee. And is approached by Karen Traynor. (played by Meryl Streep)

Who is one of the Democratic activists trying to bring Tynan to their side and oppose Edward Anderson (played by Maurice Copeland) who is the Supreme Court nominee. She gets Tynan real evidence that he’s against civil rights with video of a speech that he gave in the 1960s and that’s how Senator Tynan comes out against Anderson. Which pisses off his close friend Senator Birney (played by Melvyn Douglas) who is a close friend of Anderson and a big supporter of him.

What you have in Joe Tynan is a workaholic who has become a career politician whose always focused on politics and always looking for the next big move in his career and when he’s not doing that and takes any free time, he does it with people other than his wife and family. Starts an affair with Karen Traynor, becomes a national player and hero in the Democratic Party, decides to run for president without even talking to his wife and kids.

Who starts off the movie having basically everything he wants and has everything going for him as a young influential U.S. Senator who can move legislation. But sees an opening to furthering his political career and jumps on that and in the process almost loses everything that he has. I think this is a very good movie about an ambitious workaholic career politician who is never completely happy and satisfied. And is always looking for more, even if it means losing everything that he already has.

AlterNet: Adam Johnson: 'Richard Dawkins & Bill Maher- Still Baffled Why So Many Leftists Think They're Bigots'

Source:AlterNet- Richard Dawkins & Bill Maher: two men that the Far-Left hates.

Source:The Daily Review 

“Bill Maher and his good friend, Richard Dawkins, sat down on his show Real Time Friday night for the fifth time in almost eight seasons. Their discussion, per usual, was an agreeable, tedious mix of self-victimization and indignation about why so many on the left – specifically the Twitter left – think their obsession with “radical Islam” makes them bigots.” 

From AlterNet

You couldn’t count how many times you’ll see and rightfully so how many times the AlterNet and Salon in particular, will how some piece about the Christian-Right and how radical they are and show this bigotry, or that bigotry from them. They both everyday have some negative piece about the Christian-Right and this blog posts a lot negative pieces about the Christian-Right as well. That is not why Richard Dawkins (can I call him Dick) and Bill Maher are annoyed, or surprised by the New-Left in America. People that author/blogger Sam Harris calls regressive leftists. It’s when something radical and horrible is done by non-Christians in America especially right-wing Muslims who believe women should be treated like second-class citizens that the New-Left will either ignore, or defend that gets to Dawkins and Maher.

Atheism and liberalism and they’re not the same thing, is not about going after Christianity and only defending speech that critiques the Christian-Right and the broader right-wing in America. Liberalism is not about defending speech against Christians while trying to censor speech against Muslims. It’s about defending speech regardless of who it comes from and what the speaker says. Short of libeling people and inciting violence. Which is why the New-Left aren’t Liberals, but what I at least call New Marxists, because they don’t understand that. And have this real fascist element that says they’re going to defend their right to free speech to the hill, as they try to shut down speech and speakers they disagree with. The Real Liberals in this debate are the defenders of free speech regardless of who is speaking. Which are Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher, because they’re defending free speech.

I’ve made this point several times before, but you can’t be a Liberal if you don’t believe in free speech. And you’re not much of an Atheist if you only concentrate on one religion and in this case that religion being Christianity and the Southern Anglo-Saxon right-wing form of it. If you have a problem with Christian Conservatives who say that women’s place is in the home and that gays should be in a mental institution, or someplace, great! I’m with you, but how about Muslim countries that don’t allow women to even drive, or vote, show their faces in public even. Do you not have a problem with that and just view as part of their culture? Is so like Richard Dawkins said, the hell with their culture! Because that is not a culture that is worth defending. Not talking about ignoring the problems with the radical Christian-Right. Just saying that they aren’t the only source of radical religion in the world. 

Timothy Taylor: 'Rethinking Parameters of the US Welfare State'

Source:The New Democrat- in America it's called the safety net, because it isn't universal.

Source:The New Democrat 

"My guess is that a lot of US economists would agree with at least two of these statements. Irwin Garfinkel and Timothy Smeeding challenge all three in their essay, "Welfare State Myths and Measurement," which appears in Capitalism and Society (volume 10, issue 1). They write: "Very reasonable changes in measurement reveal that all three beliefs are untrue."

While one can certainly quarrel in various ways with the "reasonable changes" they propose, the mental exercise involved in doing so is a nice chance to take a big-picture look at the US "welfare state" in a variety of contexts. When Garfinkel and Smeeding refer to the "welfare state," they are not talking about the extent of income redistribution. Instead, they are talking more broadly about the extent to which the government takes on the provision of a range of social benefits including retirement income, health care, and education spending.

So what is the argument that the US welfare state is not "unusually small"? Their answer comes in three parts. First, the usual pattern in the world economy is that countries with higher per capita income devote a higher percentage of GDP to social welfare spending. Here's a graph with 162 countries. The high-income countries, like the US, are the solid dots. From this image, their similarities look a lot larger than their differences." 

From Timothy Taylor

I have no problems with the American welfare state being smaller than Europe's when it comes to a percentage of gross national product, or in pure dollars. Especially when our benefits at least to low-income Americans are actually higher. 

America is not a social democracy anyway and we don't expect government to take care of us by in-large. As a Liberal Democrat I prefer to the term and the system of the safety net and looking at social insurance exactly as that. Which is social insurance, which is assistance that people collect from, but only when in need. When they're unemployed, have kids before they are ready to take care of them, are undereducated and need to get additional skills, can't afford health insurance on their own, are disabled, don't have a large enough retirement, etc.

For America to have the strongest economy possible with the lowest Welfare roles and people in poverty as possible, then as many people as possible need to be encouraged to do well in America. Finish their education, further their education, do well at work and move up, start a business, do well in business and that is where public assistance and government in general can help. To encourage people to do well and empower people at the bottom to move up. 

Short-term cash assistance and other Welfare benefits are tools to empowering individuals to create their own freedom, but they're not the final solution. You also have to help people receiving Welfare get on their feet by helping them get a good job. That comes through things like childcare if they're single with kids, so they can go to school, or back to school and finish their education so they can get themselves a good job.

If you try to move to a Swedish welfare state in America and try to make the Federal Government the sole provider of economic benefits in the country and allow people to collect a middle class income from not working, you'll see a lot of Americans especially low-skilled workers quit their jobs so they can get more money not working than working. You'll see unemployment go up as a result and with that so will the debt and deficit with fewer workers trying to pay for the Welfare of more unemployed workers. 

What we should do instead is first make work pay and that means with a much higher Federal minimum wage, so minimum wage workers are making more than people on Welfare who aren't working. And the other way to make work pay is with more workers having good skills so they can get themselves good jobs and no longer need public assistance at all to support themselves.

Real Time With Bill Maher: Richard Dawkins- Regressive Leftists

Source:Real Time With Bill Maher talking Champion of Free Speech Richard Dawkins.

Source:The Daily Review

I believe Sam Harris’s term regressive leftists is perfect. I mean if you call yourself a Liberal, but you don’t believe in free speech, just speech that you agree with that some collective has decided is appropriate speech, in other words collective speech, you’re not progressive and not a Liberal. But you’re regressive and perhaps collectivist, or statist would be a more appropriate political label for you. Being a Liberal whose against free speech would be like being a Conservative whose against free enterprise. Well, if you’re against free enterprise, you would be a Marxist, which is a hell of a lot different from being a Conservative. Or being a Catholic who doesn’t believe in God. A quarterback who doesn’t believe in the passing game. Well then what the hell are you doing as a quarterback?

The New-Left in America, which is what we are really talking about here when it comes to regressive leftists, has this far out on Mars one month-long of nothing but marijuana type of trip that Muslims and other minorities aren’t subjected to criticism in America. Even though they live in America where we have a Constitution with the first amendment to it being our First Amendment (surprise, surprise) that guarantees our Freedom of Speech. That can’t be taken away from us, because some political correctness tight ass who apparently has nothing better to do with their time than to protect all minorities from criticism, disagrees with what’s being said. If you don’t believe in free speech whether it’s about Muslims, Christians, or anyone else, America might not be the country for you.

LA Progressive: W.J. Rorabaugh- 'Hippies Won The Culture War'

Source:LA Progressive- 1960s Hippies and American freedom fighters.

Source:The Daily Review

“As blue jeans, beards, body adornments, natural foods, legal marijuana, gay marriage, and single parenthood have gained acceptance in mainstream American society in recent years, it is now clear that the hippies won the culture wars that were launched nearly fifty years ago. It was in the mid-1960s that one of America’s oddest social movements, the hippies, suddenly appeared.”

From LA Progressive 

“The New Culture Forum’s brand new publication “The Long March Through The Institutions: How the Left Won the Culture War” may be downloaded free of charge from our website:The New Culture Forum." 

Source:New Culture Forum- talking about Liberals won the Cultural War.

From The New Culture Forum 

The one thing That I like about the 1960s culturally other than the music, the movies and Jim Morrison, were the Hippies.

And as much as todays so-called Progressives claim to love the Hippies and respect them, the Hippies represent the opposite of what today’s so-called Progressive represent.

Hippies, Liberals were true, because they were anti-establishment and pro-individualism. Today’s so-called Progressives, are anti-individualism and pro-big government to the point that they want government to check what people eat, drink and even what we can say to each other with their so-called political correctness movement.

Today’s so-called Progressives are not anti-establishment: to the contrary, they support the biggest establishment in the world: its called the U.S. Government and think it’s too small.

Hippies back in the mid 1960s (let’s say) at least were true Liberals, because they were individualists. They got the memo, or bothered to look at the calendar and figured out that it was no longer 1959 and that the 1950s was finally over. They were born either post-World War II, or during that war and did not remember any of it and decided that they did not have to live their lives of their parents and grandparents.

Hippies knew the 1940s and 1950s was not so swell after all. That mom did not have to stay home and raise the kids, while dad came home every night Between 6-7 and said: “Honey, I’m home! What’s for dinner? I’m starved. Gee, what a day. ” (Or something like that from Leave it to Beaver) Thank God that was before my time. Hippies / Liberals, we’re tired of black and white TV, or sitting around in the living room listening to the radio and were looking for a different lifestyle.

There’s a discussion among historians about when the Counter Culture actually began. Some people say 1965 with the start of the anti-war movement. I point to the 1963 March on Washington as not just one of the most important times and best times in American history, but where you literally had a million people from all over the country from all sorts of races, ethnicities, cultures, lifestyles, who were anti-establishment and were all looking for a better and different America.

If there was one point in history that I wish I was old enough to have been there and experienced it would be the 1963 March on Washington. The dawning of a new America where you had all sorts of different Americans all together at the same place having a good time together and enjoying each other with all sorts of great entertainment groups all together.

These Americans were looking for their own place in America and the freedom to be individuals. And not feel they need to work at their father’s factory, or his company, or get married and stay home and raise kids.

If you were a women back then while your husband went to work and earned a living for his wife and kids. Gays came out of the closet in the thousands in the 1960s. And according to the Christian-Right, America has-been going to hell ever since. As they’ve forgotten one of their own commandments: “Love your neighbor as yourself own.” In other words: treat others as you would treat yourself. Show respect to the other people as you want to be respected. These values are mainstream today, but fifty years ago America was going through, well a Cultural Revolution.

Romantic couples having pre-marital sex, living together before they were married. Perhaps better known as domestic partnerships, unmarried couples raising their kids together, homosexuality, marijuana, women working and managing business’s, men who cooked and spent a lot of time with their kids, marijuana, I mean all of these things are mainstream today. (More examples of why the Christian-Right believes America is going to hell)

But these cultural changes were started back in 1963 and then a mid-1960s by the people who were literally trying to change America if not the world. Not the New-Left from the late 1960s that literally wanted a different form of government for the United States and a completely different economic system and force democratic socialism if not communism on the country. The Hippies, wanted to create a new culture in America and new way of life.

The reason why the Hippies and Liberals won the Culture War has nothing to do with new arguments, or these different ways of debating issues. It has to do with the children and grandchildren of the Hippies are now grown up and experienced their parents and grandparents attitudes when it comes to things like tolerance and multiculturalism and integration and have decided that there’s nothing wrong with people living differently as long as they aren’t hurting innocent people with what they’re doing.

They know and are friends of people from other races, ethnicities, cultures, religions and even sexualities and know that they’re good people too. So why put them down, or look down upon them simply for being different from how they Are and how they were born. It took 1-2 generations of people for Liberals to win the Culture War, but we did and America is not going back to the 1950s.

Alison Martino: James Dean Mysteries & Scandals

Source:Alison Martino- Rebel Without a Cause.

Source:The Daily Review

I guess I sort of see James Dean as the male version of Jayne Mansfield. (No, I'm not trying to be insulting) As a very talented entertainer, but someone who lacked personal discipline and self-confidence. I believe another good comparison to Jim Dean would be Jim Morrison. Again, talented entertainer who got as most out of their young lives as they could until they died. The Lizard King, was an alcoholic and probably addicted to illegal drugs as well and Dean was more of an adrenaline junky I guess who was always moving fast and couldn't slow down. A Rebel Without a Cause, a famous movie. but it could be the biography of Jimmy Dean. He was way ahead of time culturally and when it came to style. Was probably born ten years too early as far as the lifestyle that he lived.

I'm not an expert on James Dean, but the information I've seen on him is that he's a pop culture superstar. People love him, because he was cool. I mean lets face it, he died at 24 and had just three film credits under his belt. Not exactly a deep resume to go on and to judge his life by. People like Dean because he was cool, he was real, he was honest, he played himself in his movies, he seemed like he wasn't acting, but being a real person instead. In many ways reminds me of the great actress Kim Novak who had the ability to literally become the person that she was playing. She also had some luck there, because a lot of the roles she had were very similar to who she was in real-life. Jim Dean is a lot like that, but of course without as deep of a resume. So there's a lot to like about Dean and easy to see why so many people still love him.