Newswire

Dixie Turning Blue

In These Times - 0 sec ago
Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner's tepid keynote address to the Democratic convention Tuesday night was little noted and will not be long remembered. But it was important in signaling new Democratic political hopes in the South. For decades, following Richard Nixon's successful "Southern strategy" to win over white Democrats by playing on backlash to the civil rights movement, many national Democrats had written off the South -- and often with good reason, if wretched long-term consequences. But Bob Moser, author of the new book "Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic Majority" and newly appointed editor of the muckraking Texas Observer, argues that Democrats in the rest of the country should put aside their stereotype of the South as uniquely racist and resistant to change. "Democrats saw the South as unwinnable, and Republicans viewed the South as a base," Moser told a symposium held by Progressive Democrats of America on the periphery of the Denver convention. But there are new cracks in that base, and the South itself is changing in ways that may bring breakthrough wins in the presidential race as well as in crucial Senate contests. Moser says Obama has a reasonable chance in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida,…
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Was Hillary’s speech a turning point?

In These Times - 0 sec ago
DENVER -- Just about everyone inside the Pepsi Center last night for Day Two of the Democratic National Convention had reason to smile. Hillary Clinton supporters saw their hero at her best: graceful and conciliatory, yet visionary and wise. Gone was the feisty (some would argue, condescending) tone that accompanied the senator from New York whenever she raised her voice against Barack Obama during their primary battle. Obama supporters breathed a sigh of relief when early in her speech, Hillary left no doubt that she was behind Barack in his bid for the White House. "I'm a proud mother, a proud senator from New York, a proud Democrat ... and a proud supporter of Barack Obama!" she said, to thunderous approval, after waiting through three minutes of applause before she could begin her speech. Democratic Party faithful clenched their fists in gleeful, testosterone-driven rage when Hillary attacked Republican presidential candidate John McCain with witty (for a politician) jabs: "No way, no how, no McCain" and "How fitting that Bush and McCain will be together in the Twin Cities next week, because these days it's hard to tell the two apart." Hillary on the offensive meant that the party could once…
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Obama Is Nominated by Acclamation

truthout - 3 hours 16 min ago

    Denver – Senator Barack Obama, the Hawaiian-born son of a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, officially became the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party on Wednesday, capping a meteoric rise from a little-known first-term senator to the first African-American to win a major-party nomination.

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US Forces to Transfer Control of Anbar to Iraqis

truthout - 4 hours 26 min ago

    Washington - US forces will hand over control of Anbar province to Iraqi troops in the coming days, military officials said Wednesday, touting improved security in the region.

    "We believe the province could turn over to Iraqi control in just a few days," Marine General James Conway said.

    "The change in the Al-Anbar province is real and perceptible," Conway said of the majority-Sunni region, which is Iraq's largest province.

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The Speech Progressives Have Been Waiting For?

truthout - 5 hours 18 min ago

    In Obama's much-anticipated address tomorrow, we can expect soaring rhetoric infused with a sense of history. Let's hope he also includes a full-throated endorsement of progressivism as an ideology.

    It's hard to think of a speech that was more eagerly anticipated and subjected to as much prior commentary as the one Barack Obama will deliver tomorrow night at Invesco Field in Denver.

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Democratic Convention Analysis

truthout - 5 hours 21 min ago

    PBS Airtime: Friday, August 29, 2008 at 9:00 p.m. EDT on PBS (check local listings here).

    What did the Democrats accomplish this week and can they deliver real change while still playing old fashioned Beltway politics? In the historic moment of the first African-American nominee for president, Bill Moyers sits down with Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel and University of Pennsylvania professor of political science Adolph Reed Jr.

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The Fight for Women's Voting Rights

truthout - 8 hours 10 min ago

    August 26 marks the 88th anniversary of the signing of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, an act that granted women citizens the right to vote in all elections.

    Carrie Chapman Catt, who led the movement to its final victory, was buried in yellow roses, the flower symbolizing the quest for woman suffrage. The crowds were tumultuous, cheering and celebrating.

    It was the culmination of a long, hard fight involving hundreds of thousands of dedicated women (and even some men), taking place over 72 years.

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The Chinavore's Dilemma

truthout - 8 hours 12 min ago

    September/October 2008 Issue

    Pathogenic snacks. Deadly dog chow. Toxic seafood. Why is the FDA looking the other way on Chinese food imports?

    For a while last year, it seemed the reports of tainted food, drugs, and toys flowing in from China would never cease. First came the pet food scare, in which a toxic additive killed thousands of animals.

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To Fight Femicide in Guatemala, New Law, but Same Culture

truthout - 8 hours 14 min ago

    For more than fifteen years women in Latin America have been the target of indiscriminate extreme violent crimes, especially in Central American countries like Mexico and Guatemala, where the figures of murdered women have shockingly escalated in the last years.

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Union Rejects Latest Boeing Offer

truthout - 8 hours 16 min ago

    The Boeing Co.

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Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid's Limits

truthout - 8 hours 19 min ago

    When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.

    That is a symptom of a broad national problem.

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Striking on the Shoulders of Giants

In These Times - 9 hours 57 min ago
CANANEA, Mexico -- Jesus Verdugo was born in this hot, dry mining town nestled in the mountains of Sonora, about 25 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border. A miner like his father, he grew up on the tract of land where the open-pit mine and town converge. Cananea is home to Mexico's largest copper mine. And Verdugo, 43, is the burly, charismatic, de facto leader of the local union -- Section 65 of the Miners and Metallurgical Workers Union of Mexico (SNTMMSR). These days, his organizing entails driving his rickety, yellow pickup along winding rutted roads to check on striking copper miners who, in packs of 10 to 30, guard the various mine entrances, seven days a week. Yards away, members of a private security force (dressed in olive military garb and armed with billy clubs) lounge behind barricades of sandbags and a hurricane fence. On July 30, 2007, Verdugo and 1,300 other workers went on strike, demanding safe working conditions, healthcare and recognition of the 70-year-old union's elected leadership. Cananea's legacy At the turn of the 20th century, Col. William Green, a U.S. citizen who owned the mine, paid his Mexican employees far less than his American workers. In…
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Bush's Deal With Iraq: A Time Bomb Set to Explode

truthout - 10 hours 1 min ago

    Back in January, the Bush administration proposed a Status of Forces Agreement to govern relations between American troops and the Iraqis after the UN mandate expires in December 2008. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton accused the White House of trying to tie the hands of a future American president and many Democrats in Congress voiced the same concern.

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The Democratic National Convention Unfiltered

truthout - 10 hours 3 min ago

    Denver - The best way to watch a political convention is on C-Span. That way Americans can make their own judgments unfiltered, without being told what to think by the nattering nabobs of TV commentary. The latest "narrative" making its way around the Democratic convention here is that the Obama campaign hasn't learned the lesson of John Kerry's 2004 convention, in which the nominee failed to directly attack President Bush.

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US Soldiers Executed Iraqis, Statements Say

truthout - 10 hours 5 min ago

    In March or April 2007, three noncommissioned United States Army officers, including a first sergeant, a platoon sergeant and a senior medic, killed four Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots to the head as the men stood handcuffed and blindfolded beside a Baghdad canal, two of the soldiers said in sworn statements.

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The Wild Weapons of DARPA

truthout - 10 hours 7 min ago

    When, in October 1957, the USSR launched the first man-made earth satellite, the basketball-sized Sputnik, it caught the United States off guard and sent the government into fits. Not only had the Soviets exploded an atomic bomb years before the Americans predicted they would, but now they were leading the "space race." In response, the Defense Department approved funding for a new U.S.

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The War in the Caucasus; a Test for Europe

truthout - 10 hours 12 min ago

     Former French government minister Paul Quilès is today the French Socialist Party's official responsible for defense issues.

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"Were You in It Just for Me?"

truthout - 14 hours 52 min ago
Remarks as prepared for delivery.

    I am honored to be here tonight. A proud mother. A proud Democrat. A proud American. And a proud supporter of Barack Obama.

    My friends, it is time to take back the country we love.

    Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team, and none of us can sit on the sidelines.

    This is a fight for the future. And it's a fight we must win.

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Threat to Kill Obama is Downplayed

truthout - 14 hours 55 min ago
Federal authorities say the pair's rants while on a methamphetamine binge do not meet the legal standard for filing charges, despite their possession of rifles and sniper scopes.

    Denver - Federal authorities today downplayed threats made by a pair of men arrested here over the weekend with rifles, sniper scopes and an alleged desire to kill Barack Obama.

    Shawn Robert Adolf, 33, and Tharin Robert Gartrell, 28, were being held on parole violations while an associate, Nathan Johnson, was in jail on methamphe

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