After calling in to Diane G's Blog Talk Radio program last Friday evening, which dealt with 9/11 conspiracy hypotheses, I decided to revive my own show for a special continuing discussion on the subject since I wasn't able to fully discuss my own interpretation of that day's events. The show will last two hours and will air at eight o'clock Eastern Daylight Time this coming Friday.

I'll be debunking some of the wilder beliefs about what actually happened on September 11, 2001 and offering my own hypothesis about the government's refusal to take action in the months leading up to the attacks. (I want the truth to come out too, but I think the search for it has veered way off course and taken us places that can only lead to continued frustration.) I'll also be taking calls so people can discuss the Democrats' Republican health insurance bill and what the consequences are both for Americans and for the Democrats in November. And if time allows, the final portion of the show will deal with this week's latest mining disaster, how deregulation helped it happen, and what must be done to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again.

Here's the link to the show.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/progressive-independence

The call-in number is 1 (347) 884-9121

I hope to hear from Diane G. and all other interested listeners out there. Thanks for reading!

An open letter to so-called leftist bloggers:

It's interesting that we are seeing the usual excuse-making for how and why the health care battle went the way it did. Bloggers are calling for civility after having displayed nothing but outright hostility to their readers, calling for cooperation after having browbeaten even the most stalwart progressives into towing the Democrat Party line (I say 'Democrat' instead of 'Democratic' because there is no longer anything even remotely democratic about the Democrat Party). Now the denials that what passes for the left blogosphere has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Demcorats, Inc. are pouring forth.

And I notice that you still succumb to your baser urges to denigrate anyone who does not tow the Democrat party line. Your condescending dismissals of criticism only illustrate just how much you prove daily that what Talk Left and others have written is absolutely true.

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As Jane Hamsher reports:

Pelosi and other Democrats are bragging about how very conservative the newly-passed health insurance mandate really is. When the "best" that can be said about Obamacare is how conservative it is, Democratic Party hacks might want to rethink their support for it.

Quoting Glenn Greenwald:

"corporate control of the Government is one of the most serious problems, if not the single most serious problem, the nation faces…. To pretend that these interests were vanquished or ‘neutralized’ here … is not just deeply misleading but, worse, helps conceal what remains the greatest threat to the democratic process: a threat that is not only stronger than ever, but has been made stronger as a result of the last several months."

And PNHP lamented the bill's passage:

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Lately there has been a spate of diaries at such web sites as FireDogLake and "Open" Left wherein lay members — typically under attack from site moderators, who act as Democratic Party hacks and gatekeepers — have sought ways to bring back the Progressive Party, or join the Greens, or build up some other institution, that will allow progressives to act together as a cohesive political unit. (I posted an entry there myself, only to end up being attacked by site moderators, threatened with banishment, and ultimately banned when I refused to back down against their incessant bullying.)

FDL's iphelgix explains the reason for leaving the Democrats.

Fellow FDLer TalkingStick points out the wisdom of studying the teabaggers for ideas about how we progressives can rebuild our own movement.

Mason calls for progressives to join him in building a Progressive Party from the ground up, apparently not aware that it already exists in states such as Vermont and Washington, and as Green Party affiliates inMissouri and Wisconsin. He is joined in this effort by MadHemingway, who posted the 1912 platform the Progressive Party ran on.

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At what point do progressives stop being Democrats' whipped dogs and start acting like a movement capable of putting the Dems in their proper place as the party of the people? David Sirota wrote today about Obama's latest call to increase war spending beyond its already ludicrous proportions.

How many of the extreme right-wing and criminal policies of Bush-Cheney has Obama adopted? How many of those extreme right-wing policies has he exceeded? Last month, knowledge that Obama has gone a step further than Bush, authorizing the executive branch to murder American citizens on the flimsiest of rationales. This sh__ has GOT to end.

My political activities now are focusing on the building of a viable third party as a tool of a reinvigorated and independent progressive movement. No efforts to reform the Democratic Party from within can succeed so long as the upper-level of the party establishment is able to crush dissent from within, as is explained here.

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Ben Bernanke, who helped preside over the collapse of the American economy, was confirmed to a second term as Federal Reserve Chairman so he can continue to destroy the economy. The re-confirmation vote was seventy to thirty, with most senators moving to kill a filibuster seventy-seven to twenty-three.

On a second vote, to confirm, the 30 dissents came from 18 Republicans, 11 Democrats and one independent, Bernard Sanders of Vermont.

Each and every single Democrat who voted to confirm Bernanke and who is up for re-election this year must be voted out of office. Each and every Democrat who voted to confirm Bernanke and who is up for re-election in 2012 should face removal as well.

The tally on cloture is here.

Voting yes on cloture:

Akaka (D-HI)
Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennet (D-CO)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Bond (R-MO)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Burr (R-NC)
Burris (D-IL)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Chambliss (R-GA)

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Jon Walker over at Fire Dog Lake makes a very effective argument about why learning the wrong lesson from the defeat of Martha Coakley in yesterday's Massachusetts Senate race will lead to disaster.

Not only will Democrats lose badly if they adopt this strategy, but they will be laughed at. Republicans never had 59 Senate seats, and that did not stop them from passing the legislation they wanted. Trying to explain to the American people how, despite controlling everything, Democrats cannot do anything, because a mean minority of 41 Republican senators won’t let them, is a message that will go over like a lead balloon. If you try to use that excuse, people will think elected Democrats are liars, wimps, idiots, or an ineffectual combination of all three.

Right now the corporate-owned media is all atwitter with how the loss of the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in what should have been a shoe-in election stands as a repudiation of Obama's nonexistent leftist policies. Actually, his policies have been nothing but a continuation of Bush-Cheney (Glenn Greenwald has compiled some of the better entries describing how closely Obama mirrors Bush), but never let it be said that the right-wing media can be counted on to tell the truth.

The fact is that Coakley lost because of something comedian and political commentator Bill Maher pointed out last year that bears repeating:

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According to the Boston Globe, nearly half of Americans polled believe that U.S. dictator Barack Obama is not living up to his campaign promises.

Nearly half of the Americans surveyed said Obama is not delivering on his major campaign promises, and a narrow majority had some or no confidence that he will make the right decisions for the country’s future.

More than a third saw the president as falling short of their expectations, about double the proportion saying so at the 100-day mark of Obama’s presidency in April. At the time, 63 percent said the new president had accomplished a “great deal’’ or a “good amount.’’ The percentage saying so in the recent poll dropped to 47 percent.

Although the article does not mention the loss of left-wing support as reason for the drop-off, choosing instead to focus on right-wing discontent, the overall attitude indicated by surveys is that he is either incapable or unwilling to make good on public expectations of change away from the institutionalized horrors of the Bush-Cheney regime.

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