Posts tagged ‘Barack Obama’

Gerald Epstein: Rich Should Be Happy with Cliff Deal

by , posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2013 at 7:32 pm

from The Real News Network

President Obama did not have to make this deal. It’s a debacle being called a win.

Gerald Epstein is Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute, and Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

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Thom Hartmann: I thought we voted for Democrats

by , posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2012 at 5:30 pm

pf_pick_avatar_50 from The Big Picture, with Thom Hartmann (RT)

With just 13 days to go until America goes over the fiscal cliff – progressives across America are asking why President Obama chose to put Social Security cuts on the bargaining table. Why is the president letting Republicans hack away at Social Security – instead of presenting progressive solutions that can help us avoid the cliff?

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“We are Running Out of Time”: Obama Urged to Match Rhetoric to Action on Climate Deal

by , posted on Friday, December 7th, 2012 at 5:05 pm

from Democracy Now!

Most major issues remain unresolved at the U.N. climate summit in Doha as negotiators enter the final stretch of the two-week summit. While the Doha talks involve nations working toward a pact to limit greenhouse gases starting in 2020, many say the world cannot wait that long. The United States has come under intense criticism at the summit from environmentalists and smaller nations who say President Obama has failed to meet his stated commitments to tackle global warming. We’re joined by Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International; and Samantha Smith, head of the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Climate and Energy Initiative.

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Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick on the Untold History of the United States from the Atomic Age to Obama’s Drone War

by , posted on Friday, November 16th, 2012 at 5:29 pm

from Democracy Now!

Part One

Academy Award-winning Oliver Stone has teamed up with historian Peter Kuznick to produce a 10-part Showtime series called, “Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States.” Drawing on archival findings and recently declassified documents, the filmmakers critically examine U.S. history — from the atomic bombing of Japan, to the Cold War, to the fall of Communism, and continuing all the way through to the Obama administration. Contrary to what’s taught in schools across the country, the filmmakers found the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily unnecessary and morally indefensible.

Part Two

Stone and Kuznick also suggest the Soviet Union, not the United States, ultimately defeated the Germans in World War II. And, they assert the United States, not the Soviet Union, bore the lion’s share of responsibility for perpetuating the Cold War. The filmmakers also found U.S. presidents, especially in wartime, have frequently trampled on the Constitution and international law, and they note the United States has brought the world dangerously close to nuclear war by repeatedly brandishing nuclear threats. The first episode of the series aired Monday night on Showtime. For more about this series and the companion book, we are joined by Stone and Kuznick

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Food for Thought: Larry Grossberg on Cultural Studies

by , posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2012 at 9:00 am

“For me, cultural studies was always partly a response to the dominant practices of the academy, and the dominant practices of knowledge production. … It seemed to me that cultural studies was an attempt to find a different way to be an intellectual, a different way of bringing politics into the academy, and a different way of producing knowledge.” — Larry Grossberg

This video is a preview of a full length conversation with Larry Grossberg, an internationally renowned scholar of cultural studies as well as popular culture, conducted by University of Ottawa professor Boulou Ebanda de B’béri and his research assistant Michael Audette-Longo.

Part 1: Cultural studies as a specific project
Part 2: Discussion on articulation
Part 3: Discussion on past and present projects
Part 4: Discussion on modernity

The full-length conversation can be found after the jump.

(more…)

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Tavis Smiley & Cornel West on Election, Obama and Progressives

by , posted on Friday, November 9th, 2012 at 1:31 pm

from Democracy Now!

Part One

As the most expensive presidential election in U.S. history comes to an end, broadcaster Tavis Smiley and professor, activist Dr. Cornel West join us to discuss President Obama’s re-election and their hopes for a national political agenda in and outside of the White House during Obama’s second term. At a time when one in six Americans is poor, the price tag for combined spending by federal candidates — along with their parties and outside groups like super PACs — totaled more than $6 billion. Together, West and Smiley have written the new book, “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto.”

Both Tavis and Smiley single out prominent progressives whom they accuse of overlooking Obama’s actual record. “We believe if [Obama] is not pushed, he is going to be a transactional president and not a transformational president,” Smiley says. “We believe the time is now for action and no longer accommodation… To be the most progressive means you’ve taken some serious risk. And I just don’t see the example of that.” West says that some prominent supporters of Obama “want to turn their back to poor and working people. It’s a sad thing to see them as apologists for the Obama administration in that way.”

Part Two

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Michael Pollan on California’s Prop. 37 and Other Local Efforts to Challenge Agrigiants’ Influence

by , posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2012 at 6:30 pm

from Democracy Now!

As California voters prepare to vote on whether to label GMOs in food, we go to Berkeley to discuss Prop 37 and its implications for the broader food system with journalist and best-selling author Michael Pollan. Among the nation’s leading writers and thinkers on food and food policy, Pollan is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism. He’s written several books about food, including “The Botany of Desire,” “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual,” and the forthcoming, “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.”

From California’s Proposition 37 initiative to New York City’s soda ban, journalist and best-selling author Michael Pollan argues that local efforts hold the key to challenging the agricultural industry’s stranglehold over national food policy. With companies like Monsanto influencing Congress and state legislatures, Pollan warns the United States risks falling into a “two-class food system,” where only those who can afford to live outside the industrial food system can access healthy ways to eat. Among the nation’s leading writers and thinkers on food and food policy, Pollan is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism and author of several best-selling books, including “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.”

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We’re all going to die and no-one’s talking about it

by , posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2012 at 4:15 pm

from The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann (RT)

The Human Race may very well die out – and no one is talking about it. The fact that we’ve now gone through three Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates – and not once has global climate change been brought up – should be, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, an “Alarm bell in the night” for all of us. Especially because this last September was the hottest September ever recorded in the civilized history of the human race. Not only that – this last September produced the smallest amount of Arctic ice ever recorded in the civilized history of the human race.

Our planet is rapidly changing – scientists across the world are freaking out – farmers are getting hysterical and, in many countries, committing suicide in mass numbers – and yet our two Presidential candidates are fighting about who’s going to pump more carbon pollution into the atmosphere: That would have been the perfect time for Candy Crowley to chime in an say – “Hey, guys what about the climate change crisis that’s being worsened by all of this drilling?” But she didn’t – and then Romney bashed the President over not approving the Keystone XL pipeline…Actually the President DID approve the Keystone pipeline – at least a large portion of it – and he’ll likely approve the rest if he wins a second term.

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Are Big Banks Too Big to Regulate?

by , posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2012 at 4:00 pm

from The Real News Network

Michael Greenberger: If somebody understood the economic issues and explained them to the American people, you could easily be elected president by saying you’re going to put an end to the Wall Street hijinks

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Katrina vanden Heuvel: Facing the Alternative to Obama

by , posted on Monday, October 15th, 2012 at 9:18 pm

from The Nation

After four years, many voters haven’t quite seen the “change” they were hoping for from an Obama presidency. But a Republican takeover of the oval office would mean the reversal of every policy battle progressives have won—from the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to the Affordable Care Act. Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel lays out why voting to keep Obama in office doesn’t mean compromising voter values, but rather preserving the opportunity to keep fighting.

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