STEVEN JONAS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Political commentators ranging from those of the Propaganda Channel (otherwise known as the Fox"News"Channel) to Chris Matthews are enamored of referring to the "Far Left" of the Democratic Party. It is also known among that ilk as the "Pelosi Wing" of the Party (although one wonders what the wealthy lady from San Francisco ever actually did other than shepherd the Health Insurance Industry Subsidy Act of 2010 through the House of Representatives, strongly support repeal of DADT, and bring to the floor much mainstream Democratic legislation that was never even taken up by the GOP-controlled Senate).

It is common, even among his critics other than the Tea Party folk, to separate President Obama from that "Far Left." Indeed the President has been receiving much applause over the last six weeks from the self-styled Republican morning TV talk show host Joe Scarborough for his "move to the Center" since the election. I guess that Joe didn't notice that for the most part, rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, Obama has pretty much been there since his election (http://blog.buzzflash.com/jonas/199).

MARK KARLIN, BUZZFLASH EDITOR FOR TRUTHOUT

Would you cut your own throat when you're high as a kite and feeling like a master of the universe?

Well Comcast isn't about to commit suicide after its takeover of NBC Universal, and that is why progressive programming will disappear from MSNBC.

It will not likely happen immediately - although Olbermann, the most successful of the liberal shows, was the first shoe to drop.

How will Maddow and the rest vanish?

Maybe through a format change for the entire station announced a year down the line or so - or earlier. Maybe through program "balance" requirements that will force Maddow and the others to resign. Maybe through a conversion of MSNBC to a Spanish station that would add to the growth of Telemundo, another part of the NBC Universal acquisition.

Why is Comcast, the largest cable provider in the nation - seeking also to become the largest television/Internet/telephone/mobile content provider - going to throw liberal shows overboard?

The answer is simple: all the MSNBC progressive hosts advocate policies such as net neutrality, limitations on expansion of big media, more diverse ownership of broadcasting, bandwidth charge limitations etc. These and other progressive policies run 100 percent contrary to the positions and media monopolizing goals of Comcast.

No corporation lets an internal unit run a renegade campaign that undermines the mega-expansionist and profit strategy of the larger company.

Comcast is ruthless and predatory as a rapidly growing media empire. It isn't going to let some leftists try and wound its profiteering.

STEVEN JONAS FOR BUZZFLASH

And so, the "small government" folks are now firmly entrenched in the House of Representatives.  As they were in the last Congress, through the filibuster rule they are never too far from the levers of power in the Senate either.  But boy, since the last election they have become more vocal than ever.  First and foremost they tell us that the "American people" demand "small government" and told us so in the last election.  Well, they hardly ever tell us precisely what it is they mean by "small government" other than "cutting taxes" (especially for the wealthy), "down-sizing" government functions (of the type they don't like), and de-regulation (of many corporate activities for which of course they don't supply specifics).   Indeed, not too specific all around.

STEVEN JONAS FOR BUZZFLASH

Otto von Bismarck was known as the "Iron Chancellor," first of Prussia, then after 1871 and the Prussian victory over the French in the Franco-Prussian War, of the unified German state.  Shortly after the bourgeois revolution of 1848 had swept through a number of European countries (and succeeded in a few of them like France), he said: "The social insecurity of the worker is the real cause of their being a peril to the state (Sigerist, H.E., On the Sociology of Medicine, New York: MD Publications, 1960, p. 127).  In 1881, Kaiser Wilhelm I, in a speech to the German Reichstag (parliament), written for him by Bismarck, said: ". . .  the healing of social evils cannot be sought in the repression of social-democratic excesses exclusively but must equally be sought in the positive promotion of the workers' welfare" (Sigerist, p. 129).  Building on this view of the social structure and how to best preserve its control by the then German ruling class, in 1883 Bismarck succeed in ushering through the Reichstag the world's first national health insurance plan, built on various existing bits and pieces and adding major new ones.

STEPHEN PIZZO FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

So, the GOP will pander to their Tea Party brethren next month by reading the US Constitution out loud and declaring that any bill proposed by a member of Congress contain a personal guarantee that the bill corresponds with the US Constitution.

I have two things to say about this.

First, good. Reading is something Tea Party folk should do a lot more of. I am sure few if any of them have actually read the US Constitution and, of those who have, I serious doubt they were able to decode the antique English.

Instead, I strongly suspect, they read and "understood" the constitution in the same way they claim to have read and understood the Bible; they began reading it knowing what they knew and what they wanted it to say, so that must be what it says.

But on a more serious note, there is something quite real going on with all this. The far-right has decided to do to the text of the US Constitution what al Qaeda has done to the text of the Koran - twist it to fit their political/social agenda then use it as a bludgeon to get their way.

STEVEN JONAS FOR BUZZFLASH

We have examined what really happened at the famous Munich meeting between the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler that concluded on September 30, 1938.  We then reviewed the parallels between what Chamberlain was really after at Munich, which had nothing to do with "appeasement," and what Obama was really doing with the "tax deal," which has mainly to do with carrying out Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) right-wing policies while appearing to be a conciliator.  Since the signing of the tax give-away, Obama has achieved a series of apparent legislative successes.  They have been trumpeted by the Administration, the DLC, and the new DLC lookalike, the "No Labels" something or other, as demonstrating the "triumph" of "bipartisanship."

STEVEN JONAS FOR BUZZFLASH

In the first part of this series, I reviewed "what really happened" at  the famous meeting in Munich, Germany between the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.  As revealed in the 1995 book by Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel, In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion (New York: Monthly Review Press), based on British government documents released under the British Official Secrets Act and related materials, the real story was rather different from the "appeasement" tale that has been the standard treatment in the Western press since that time.

DENISE KELLY FOR BUZZFLASH

December 14th marks the beginning of the 111th Annual Christmas Bird Count, a highlight for the nearly 48 million bird-watchers in the U.S.  This is their chance to participate in the world's biggest citizen science project to count, watch, and celebrate our North American birds in their natural habitats.  This is clearly, birders' heaven. 

The Christmas Bird Count dates back to 1900, when concerned conservationists, including renowned ornithologist Frank Chapman, recognized that over hunting was fueling declines in bird populations. Chapman proposed that the "side hunt," a holiday tradition that rewarded hunters for killing the largest number of birds, be replaced with a Christmas Bird Count to help save them.

But today, what if U.S. bird-watchers encountered groups of men climbing trees with nets in their hands, hunting down and snaring large flocks of North American blue jays or cardinals.  What if they witnessed baby Red-Tailed Hawks being robbed from their nests and stuffed into knapsacks?  Worst of all, what if they learned that these beautiful creatures were being shipped to foreign countries to be peddled in storefronts and marketed as ‘caged birds’ from America.  Surely, they would be outraged.  It would be birders' hell.

Yet this scene plays out every day for the birds of South America, Africa, and Indonesia, as countless thousands are hunted down and ripped from their families

MARK KARLIN, BUZZFLASH EDITOR FOR TRUTHOUT

The spirit of Emile Zola's "J'Accuse" was reborn on December 10 inside of a determined Bernie Sanders, who held viewers across the nation spellbound with an eight-and-a-half-hour temporary "filibuster" of the Senate.

This was an indictment unlike any we have heard, an exercise in threading together the patches of truth about our economic system and how Washington, DC enabled the biggest institutionalized financial scam and defrauding of a population in history.

BuzzFlash has known Bernie for years, and he has been a loyal reader. He's always been on target about the issues that matter, including relatively obscure ones for politicians, such as media consolidation and net neutrality.

And, although most Americans don't know it because he caucuses with the Democrats, he officially and proudly considers himself a socialist, and is classified as an independent in terms of party affiliation.

For years as a congressman and then as a senator from Vermont, he would blast away at the mistruths and the false, DC-insider, GOP/Democratic portrayal of our economic system, which has consolidated an extraordinarily large percentage of the nation's wealth in the hands of a few over the past three decades. Meanwhile, he has noted that salaries for the working and middle classes have stagnated, even as

MARK KARLIN, BUZZFLASH EDITOR FOR TRUTHOUT

Remember the old cliche about the optimist seeing a glass that is half full, while the pessimist views it as half empty?

That's basically the analogy for whether or not you buy President Obama's lacerating attack on progressives yesterday. Obama argues that he is a guy that gets the best deal, and so he ends up with only half a glass.

Liberal critics contend that Obama starts his negotiations with a glass half full and ends up with a glass a quarter-filled or nearly empty.

On December 7, the president, in a rare show of passion, lashed out at both what he called "sanctimonious"