For a number of years, I have subscribed to TPP and for the first time in the April edition, I realize you are a bunch of “left-wing wackos.” In every article, your so-called journalists did nothing but debase the Clintons and the Clinton administration. There was not one positive article.
Sure Clinton made mistakes — he’s not perfect, but the Clinton administration was one of the most aggressive and productive administrations our country had experienced in decades: very low unemployment, no massive foreclosures, no illegal war that has murdered literally thousands of Americans and Iraqis, no corruption discovered after 8 years and 40 investigations by the GOP to discredit the Clintons, created a surplus. I could go on and on! Clinton brought credibility back to our country. Wherever he travelled throughout the world, the masses were there to greet him, and still do!
Now you are GUNG-HO for Barack Obama, who is an unknown entity except for his 20-year relationship with a radical extremist “mentor” who could frequent the White House. Is it plausible Obama was influenced by his “mentor” during those 20 years? Of course he was influenced by his “mentor”‘s views. And this you consider leadership quality?
If Obama thinks a speech at a Democratic convention and 3 years in the US Senate qualifies him to be the president of our country, he has a bigger ego than the state of Texas. Incidentally, the majority of Obama’s supporters were 2-3-4 years of age during the Clinton administration. What do they remember about the Clinton administration? Their parents benefitted during those good years! How quickly we forget!
As an 82-year-old Democrat who has always voted Democratic since the age of 21, I, my friends and my family will not vote for Obama. He is not qualified and appears to be unable to handle negativity. The GOP will make hamburger out of him!
Margaret Mirkovich
Vista, Calif.
Thank goodness for Arianna Huffington (“Clinton Does McCains’s Job,” 5/1/08 TPP). I am particularly grateful to her in that she is singing the same tune that I have sung for months, i.e., that in Hillary’s efforts to destroy Obama, she is writing the scripts for the McCain ads if Obama gets the nomination, and in the process doing incredible harm to the Democratic chances in November. Also just today former Dem chairman, super-delegate and long-time Clinton supporter Joe Andrews joined the chorus, writing “A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to continue a long, destructive Democratic campaign.” He urged voters to “reject the old negative politics” and to unify behind Obama. “A vote to continue this process is a vote that assists John McCain,” he wrote.
I think that Hillary’s suggestion that the super-delegates should make the decision because they are better informed than the voters was, to say the least, inadvisable.
Burt Newbry
Mesa, Ariz.
The more I read your magazine the more I have to question your claim to being progressive. Most of your articles continue to support the status quo and corporatocracy. Take Froma Harrop’s 5/1/08 article, where she writes about how Obama should not “tolerate the Reverend Wright’s highly offensive remarks.” Offensive? To whom? The establishment, in particular to the white establishment? Any progressive would consider these statements by the Rev. Wright to be right on. “Journalists” like Ms. Harrop said the same thing about Martin Luther King. Ask the Native Americans, or the Mexicans who were in the Southwest before the states were included, how about our history with the Blacks and slavery and civil rights, and don’t forget about the internment of the Japanese during WWII. And anyone who’s read John Perkin’s Confession of an Economic Hitman can tell you, Wright’s remarks about our foreign policy are right on the money. Which is what it’s all about, money. I suggest you change your name to “The Democratic Agenda” or even better “ The Conservative Democratic Agenda “
Michael Hernandez
Los Olivos, Calif.
I was appalled after reading in “Dispatches” in the 5/1/08 TPP about “The Real McCain,” in which Cliff Schecter reported about the vile and degrading language McCain spat at his wife back in 1992, in public. I wasn’t surprised. He is known for insulting senators on the floor with his foul language. He inspired me to write this:
McCain McCain, you have no brain
And you know what?
You give me a pain!
You have a foul mouth and a temper too
You don’t belong in the White House,
You belong in the zoo!
Can you imagine what McCain would say if called at 3 a.m.? Woe to us.
Eve Reed
Centennial Colo.
In Norman Davies’ history, No Simple Victory: WWII in Europe 1939-45 (2007), he offers this clarification on page 303:
“No conventional definition of a ‘police state’ exists. But the term refers to a category of political regime in which the police, the security services and the special forces are authorized to bypass the normal procedures of the law.”
Days ago we heard Michael Chertoff’s declaration that his fiefdom would unilaterally ignore some 30 US rules, laws and regulations in order to finish the partial US/Mexico border fence. How do we—or do others—define our nation now?
Jay Cooke
Lakeview, Ore.
As a life member of the NRA and a proponent of the Second Amendment, I found the article “Madness,” by Hal Crowther [5/15/08 TPP], insulting. Yes, society has a number of problems, however, blaming guns and gun owners for society’s lack of morals, lack of good sense and lack of self-control is wrong.
Fred Kern
Avery, Calif.
David Raisman’s angst about third-party presidential voters (“Nader Zealots,” Letters, 5/15/08 TPP) is a bit misplaced. In this country, contrary to his assertion, we do not have a winner-take-all system. We have an electoral college, and the electors in individual states usually are ruled by the majority in their own state. Although there is a movement to change that system, even states like mine which have already passed laws to make the national majority rule have written the laws so that they do not take effect until a sufficient number of other states concur. That has not happened yet, and as there are many states that lean very strongly Democratic or Republican, there are many opportunities for people to vote their true preferences without having any impact on their state’s electoral vote.
Whether a Democrat will actually make better judicial appointments seems increasingly open to question. It used to be true, and I hope it still is, but it also used to be true that a Democratic majority in the Senate would block bad nominees. Since Democratic senators cannot be relied upon as senators, I reserve judgment about the behavior of either Democratic senator who might be elected President.
Katharine W. Rylaarsdam
Baltimore, Md.
To criticize Sen. Obama for saying people are frustrated and bitter because of the present situation in this country—is hypocrisy.
Joblessness, homelessness, foreclosures, tax cuts for the rich and the everyday struggle of the poor is reason enough to be frustrate and bitter.
We had better face reality instead of pretending everything is fine if it isn’t. Sen. Obama said the truth. And there is nothing wrong about that.
Lisa Zencoe
Lake Worth, Fla.
I was surprised when, in the 5/15/08 issue, Art Cullen misstated Thomas Frank’s thesis on working class voters. Rather than challenging the “liberal elitist” meme of “worker’s voting against their economic interests,” Art Cullen embraced it.
In What’s the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank argues that Democrats fear, ignore and run away from the language of class, populism. Frank’s thesis is that you don’t fight a cultural populism head on. If Democrats want to win the cultural war, they must turn it into an economic battlefield. In other words, an economic populism trumps a cultural populism every time. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is a living example of this. He was able to win in a “red state” because he ran on a platform of economic populism.
In all honesty, I was hoping for a deeper analysis from Art Cullen than the “liberal elitist” line that the working class vote against their economic interests. Maybe, just maybe, the problem is not the working class, but the Democrats who keep ruling against their economic interests.
Henry Dubb
Madison, Wis.
Margie Burns points out in her article (“Daniel Pearl, Caught Between Two Wars, 5/15/08 TPP) that “[i]f the Pakistanis were desperate enough to abduct Pearl, then either he was on to something or at the very least they thought he was.” I’ll buy that, but on to what? As with so many aspects of 9/11, where are the investigations or at least the investigative reporters? Besides the issue with Pearl, the ISI and 9/11, why is it that; 70 times the normal number of ‘puts’ were placed on American Airlines and United, days before 9/11, and yet we are expected to believe that the bets were legitimate because the people placing them were not linked to Al Qaeda; We are told that the US military was caught off guard on 9/11 as no military jets intercepted planes known to be hijacked for over 90 minutes and yet no one gets fired for allowing that to happen; The FBI does not include the events of 9/11 in the reasons it wants Bin Laden because, as FBI’s Rex Tomb says, “the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11,” and yet we continue to be told Bin Laden did it; The 911 Commission and NIST Reports avoid dealing with dozens of serious anomalies in the collapse of the WTC buildings and yet no questions are raised by the Media or anyone official?
Where is the public outcry for investigations by the FBI, reporters or anyone credible into any of these absolutely critical, yet unanswered, questions? I would posit that Burns left off what the real point of her essay was, or at least should have been; what kind of country have we become when we no longer question events that have led us (literally) to slaughter?
Robert Broadbent
Wilson Wyo.
My first impression of your most recent cover story (“Criminals of the World, Unite and Take Over,” 5/15/08 TPP), was that you had taken a cue from your excellent columnist, Greg Palast, author of Armed Madhouse, and would finally be exposing the largest and most evil crime family in the history of Planet Earth—the one headed by George Bush Sr. through the Carlyle Group and its many subsidiaries and affiliates, including Halliburton, KBR, and the Saudi Royal family.
Instead, we read about their chief competition—a bunch of drug thugs and overt gangster capitalists. Ms. Miller did manage to mention in passing the role of the Chicago School economists in Russia and their beloved unregulated marketplace, but failed to mention the most egregious crime: privatization.
History will show that the Reagan/Thatcher Devolution promoted tax cuts, de-regulation, military adventurism, the shredding of the social safety net and “starving the beast” (bankrupting and discrediting government) in order to facilitate the theft of our common wealth by a handful of greedy oligarchs. Worse yet, they can see the handwriting on the wall as well as the rest of us, but they are determined to grab as much as possible for themselves before the inevitable crash which always follows periods of unlimited accumulation and unregulated financial activity.
When George II was appointed to the Presidency by the Board of Directors (a.k.a. the Supreme Court) of USA, Inc, I groaned, “Oh no! We got Sunny! Michael is too busy fixing the election in Florida.” Lest the references to the Godfather movies is too obscure, consider this: Colin Powell’s nickname for Junior was “Sunny,” and the latter’s nickname for Attorney General Gonzales was “Fredo!” Inside jokes? I’m not laughing.
Shorey H. Chapman
San Francisco, Calif.
I wish to thank Margot Ford McMillen for “Taxes and Investments” in 4/15/08 TPP and for helping me to form my decision relative to Uncle Sam’s Economic Stimulus Package. Since my government will have to borrow the money, and my children and grandchildren will have to repay it, including interest, I’m going to let my government keep the $300 to which I am entitled. I so doing, my new granddaughter, rescued from a Chinese Orphanage, will not have to pay back (most likely to the country of her birth) the money that I might have spent today. After all, her share of the national debt amounted to somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000 the day my son brought her home to America.
Thomas Stumbaugh
Camino, Calif.
The Progressive Populist (5/15/08 Editorial) made a reference that the US carmakers had developed cars that would get 70 mpg, but shelved plans to produce them after Bush/Cheney took office. If true, are the carmakers waiting until gas hits $10 a gallon before they will get around to producing them? But then, why should they, when they have a bought and paid-for US Congress?
On the former Alabama Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman treatment by US District Court Judge Mark E. Fuller, the judge should be impeached along with everybody who had a hand in it. But it will not happen due to the large number of closet Republicans (Democrats) in Congress.
Dennis H. Kuykendall
Kuna, Idaho
The recent articles by Ruth Caplan and Nancy Price in the 4/1/08 and 5/1/08 TPP should be copied and sent to mayors in all cities affected by the proposed NAFTA Superhigways. I urge every TPP reader to copy and send them out ASAP. This topic has been on the pages of publications such as American Free Press for some time but was poo-poo’d as the rantings of Conspiracy Nuts, so no one paid attention. Texans were recently protesting this in Austin. If is is not real then what are they protesting?
Now that this issue is printed in both conserative and liberal media, it will be harder to dismiss. The goal seems to be not only the integration of commerce of US, Mexico and Canada, but the dissolution of all three nations into something quite different. I don’t know what to call it, but New World Order seems as good as any.
here is also come encouraging news at OpEdNews. The Congresses of Mexico and US and Canadian Parliament are getting involved to halt SPP. I guess they don’t like the name Amexada anymore than I do.
Paul Ames
Eureka, Utah
From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2008
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