Blast The Right

The Third World poor suffer a quadruple whammy, a four-pronged attack on their livelihoods and very lives themselves.One of these prongs we've already touched on in previous podcasts, the sweetheart contracts between corrupt Third World governments and foreign multinationals that allow Third World natural resource wealth to be plundered.The other three elements of the right-wing attack are unfair

Today we're going to have a change of pace from the previous several weeks of one-topic, in-depth discussions.Instead, you'll be presented with a smorgasbord of tasty dishes you can use to nourish the intellect of each one of your friendly local right-wingers. On the menu is Katrina, abuse of the IRS, and Bush failures in the war on terrorism.Various and sundry tidbits of truth for you to feed

Right-wingers are traditionally strong proponents of the states rights doctrine, which holds that the federal government should play a limited role and defer to the states whenever it can.Right-wingers, however, have no principles, and when it suits their needs, they will readily abandon such supposedly sacred ideological tenets as states rights. And that's just what they have been doing.Ever

As the incomes of the super wealthy have gone way up, and their taxes have gone way down, they've decided to become less generous in their charitable giving. Of course, that's the exact opposite of what right-wingers said would happen.Next we'll consider the possibility: Karl Rove, champion of social justice. Or so he seems to claim. Hint: Teddy Roosevelt will have something to say on this

There are two things longtime listeners know I'm truly passionate about.One of them is economic justice, particularly as it relates to the oppression and exploitation of the Third World poor. In past podcasts we've discussed how the US and other Western industrialized nations have, since colonial times, economically enslaved Third World and developing nations, and still to this very day do

Right-wingers in Congress are trying to repeal the estate tax. Fortunately, they failed last week. They fell 3 votes short of the 60 votes they needed to prevent a Democratic filibuster on the issue. Two Republicans, George Voinovich of Ohio and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, defied the GOP leadership and voted with the Democrats.Since the estate tax repeal was pushed by right-wingers, you've

I repeat quite often that right-wingers invariably cause increased human misery, suffering, pain and death. Today I'll present a perfect example of precisely the type of such havoc that ensues when right-wingers achieve power.We've recently witnessed the dual tragedies of the Sago mine explosion in January, which killed 12 West Virginia coal miners, and then the Harlan County mine explosion in

Donald Rumsfeld claimed in an interview with Bill O'Reilly that the President and Congress saw the same intelligence on Iraq. That is a lie, long known as such. O'Reilly let Rumsfeld get away with it. What's behind this dog-and-pony show?An update on how the Bush administration's incompetence, neglect and -- again -- lies have impaired the health of countless victims of 9/11 and its

In a recent poll, 60% of Americans said wealthy families don't pay enough in taxes. So what does the right-wing-controlled Congress run out and do almost at the very same time? Congress gave another huge, whopper of a tax cut to the wealthy, especially to the super wealthy.We'll first analyze the numbers to see who really benefits from this Bush tax cut; then we'll explain how to debunk the

Fulfilling a campaign promise, Bolivian President Evo Morales recently nationalized his country's natural gas industry. Right-wingers are beside themselves -- their profits in Bolivia won't be obscenely large anymore, but far worse, this could give ideas to other exploited nations. It's precisely this type of action by Third World leaders that is more terrifying to the right than any WMD. It

The incessant and ubiquitous right-wing propaganda line is that Americans want no tax increases. Wrong. They want tax increases on the wealthy. Congress, please take note!Religious fatwas calling for homosexuals to be killed have inspired a campaign of murder and other atrocities against gays in Iraq. Will the US act to stop this latest obscenity resulting from our invasion?A listener gives

The skyrocketing costs of the Iraq War don't bother right-wingers, in fact quite the contrary, because these expenditures further two of the right's main goals. What are those goals? Hint: greed, and cutting off assistance to the "least of these," are involved.Right-wingers spew out at progressives the same insults over and over again. How do I suggest responding? We'll go through a doozy of

If all you knew was what George W. Bush and the right-wing echo machine told you, you'd think that the U.S. economy was thriving in a way that benefits all Americans. Not so. It's quite the opposite. Facts and figures will be liberally employed to bust this right-wing propaganda.A listener gives us his take on what the immigration debate is really all about.

It's not well-known that Tom DeLay played a crucial role in stopping the Florida recount in 2000, or, that he single-handedly defied the U.S. Senate to force continued immiseration and poverty onto workers in an American overseas territory.Instead of begrudgingly allowing 12 million undocumented immigrants to remain here with the woe-is-us rationale that it's just too hard to round them all up,

FDR said he didn't want to see one millionaire created from World War II. The Bush family seems to have the opposite philosophy. Their beloved "Uncle Bucky" has made out like a bandit.You absolutely won't believe what are the top words that Americans use to describe W.A proposal to ensure that the 2006 Congressional elections are not stolen by GOP electronic voting machine fraud.Hannity

It would be hard even for a right-winger to deny the long U.S. history of violent interference in the internal affairs of Latin American nations. Given that history, and the rapacious appetite of multinational corporations for extreme profits in overseas investments, it's heartening to see leaders in Bolivia and Venezuela, as well as the likely future leader of Mexico, acting forcefully to

Right-wingers want to:1. prevent us from protecting the health of our children, 2. conceal from us the poisoning of our air and water, and3. allow some of us with cancer to needlessly die.Listen to the podcast for details.Also: We hear Bill O'Reilly prove why he's a strong contender for the title of #1 right-wing media thug.

As Congress repeatedly passes tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the richest among us, it might seem quixotic to speak of a tax on wealth. But political precedent -- you won't believe what you hear FDR say about the greedy right-wingers of his day -- and emerging public opinion trends indicate that enacting a wealth tax could well become feasible in the near future.

Right-wingers want to destroy the social safety net, and they don't want government statistics to reveal their progress in doing so. We'll discuss four ways the Bushians have tried to prevent government agencies from documenting the harmful results of right-wing policies.Speaking out against excessive military spending is a path few politicians now dare tread. It wasn't always thus. We'll hear

When Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "Beyond Vietnam" speech at the Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, he was not only laying out a case against the Vietnam War and the negative role the U.S. was playing in the world. No, Dr. King was speaking to us also, in words eerily prophetic about our present day crusade in Iraq and our efforts to thwart democracy in Haiti, Bolivia,