Wallflowers at the Revolution
by Frank Rich
Amid the Egyptian crisis, television pundits aggrandized American inventions, Twitter and Facebook.
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GOP Congressmen Get their Government-Subsidized Health Care Today! Still None for You.
By karoli

Kucinich: GOP Healthcare Bill Repeal Brings Us Closer To Single Payer
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The Reagan Ruins

by Robert L. Borosage
Reagan, no doubt, was a transformational president. He was a transformational president who launched America on a misguided, 30-year experiment with market fundamentalism.

Why does the GOP hide its agenda?
by Joan Walsh
Ryan stays mum about his budget-busting "Roadmap" while Bachmann peddles debunked myths in rebutting Obama's SOTU
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If Only We Had More Sarge Shrivers

By Richard Reeves —
If Americans had really understood what was happening with the Peace Corps, we might be a much greater country today and the world might be a better place as well.
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Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds
By SEWELL CHAN
A Congressional inquiry said bankers and regulators could have seen the 2008 crisis coming and stopped it.
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Piven Responds To Beck: "It Only Takes One Person Who Is A Little Deranged"

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24 Hour Nazi Party People
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The implicit lie the GOP will endlessly repeat
by Jay Bookman
Government spending did not cause the recession. Government spending had nothing to do with the recession. Government spending is not responsible for killing the 8 million jobs that have vanished from this country. In fact, there is no economic mechanism, no plausible cause and effect relationship, by which that can be said to be true.
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Fudging the Facts on Health Care and Deficits
By Joe Conason —
Data sets and out-year projections may make everybody’s eyes glaze over, but without accurate information, the end result of legislation is disaster.

JFK’s Eloquence, 50 Years Later
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. —
It’s remembered as a day chilled by “a Siberian wind knifing down Pennsylvania Avenue” and illuminated by “the dazzling combination of bright sunshine and deep snow.”
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Was Olbermann's Abrupt Departure From MSNBC Part of a Corporate "Shakedown" Precipitated by the Comcast/NBC Merger?

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Petty Woman
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Palin Fails The Test
by John Dickerson
Sarah Palin's response to the Tucson shooting is defensive, illogical, distracting—and late.
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How We Enable Crimes of Insanity
By Joe Conason —
The law requires us to assess Jared Lee Loughner’s mental state and motivations, but we might do better to analyze our own craziness.

How Violent Talk Blocks Sane Gun Laws
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. —
The descriptions of President Obama as a “tyrant,” the intimations that he is “alien” and the suggestions that his presidency is illegitimate are essential to the core rationale for resisting any restrictions on firearms.

Words That Don’t Heal
By Ruth Marcus —
Blood libel is a term with a specific and terrible history. It refers to the scurrilous accusation that Jews kidnapped and murdered Christian children to use their blood to prepare Passover matzo.
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Sam Stein: Obama Re-Introduces the Human Element to the Giffords Tragedy
It is when there is a human element to his presidency that Barack Obama tends to stand the tallest. And on Wednesday evening, as he spoke to 20,000-plus at a memorial service at the University of Arizona, there was, if nothing else, an emotional honesty to what he had to say. To a nation looking for clarity, Obama didn't pretend to have all the answers. There is, he noted, a tendency to demand "order" from "chaos," to try and "make sense out of that which seems senseless." Life doesn't always comply.
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Weapon in rampage was banned under Clinton-era law
The now-expired assault weapons ban made it illegal to make the type of magazine used in the Giffords shooting
by Justin Elliott

Gail Collins: A Right to Bear Glocks?
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Comedian Frank Conniff tweeted: "Hey, Sarah Palin, hows that hatey, killy, reloady, crosshairsy thing working out for ya?"

Shame on Sarah Palin
by Matthew Rothschild
She played recklessly with violent rhetoric, and she literally targeted Gabrielle Giffords.
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Matt Taibbi: The Crying Shame of John Boehner

Faux Faithful Abuse Constitution
by James Zogby
This tendency to make "idolatrous worship of the American nation", its rituals, artifacts, and places, is as old as the country itself.
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Health-care melodrama
by Eugene Robinson
The whole idea of repealing the law is theatrical -- and woefully ill-advised.
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Get Ready for a G.O.P. Rerun
by Bob Herbert
The Republican agenda: more riches for the rich, more misery for the rest.
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The New Voodoo
by Paul Krugman
This was a year of spectacular hypocrisy. From politicians (mainly Republicans), that meant you got your money for nothing and your tax cuts for free.

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GOP To Filibuster New Year, In Order to Avoid Responsibility of Governing

GOP To Filibuster New Year, In Order to Avoid Responsibility of Governing
By Don Davis
“WE’RE TAKING THE POSITION THAT IT TAKES AT LEAST 60 VOTES FOR THE EARTH TO FINISH ITS REVOLUTION AROUND THE SUN, AND TO PLACATE OUR TEA PARTY REVOLUTIONISTS, WE’LL BE PROPOSING A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO ADOPT THE MEDIEVAL POSITION THAT THE SUN CIRCLES THE EARTH.”

10 Ways Right-Wingers Will Try to Wreck Any Economic Recovery
By Isaiah J. Poole

Sept. 11 Heroes Disdained on the Right
By Joe Conason —
To understand the depths of shame and cynicism in the partisan stalling of health legislation for 9/11 first responders, it is only necessary to recall how eagerly Republican politicians once rushed to identify themselves with New York City’s finest and bravest.
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People, we're in deep trouble
Even compared to the manifest swindles and perversions of the past 20 years, we haven't seen anything like Fox News
by Gene Lyons

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Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat
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"Don't ask, don't tell": 1993-2010
by Steve Kornacki
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God Bless Bernie Sanders
by Jacob Heilbrunn
Author, "They Knew They Were Right: the Rise of the Neocons"
Sometimes it's worth taking a stand. Sanders didn't just do that. In pointing to the gross disparities in wealth in the United States, he did something else. He told the truth. The contrast with President Obama could hardly have been starker.
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A Vermont Senator Becomes a Twitter Sensation
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Is the Payroll Tax Holiday a GOP Trojan Horse?
Liberals love it, but maybe they shouldn't.
— Kevin Drum

Obama and Bush: A real difference
On safety, health, and environmental regulatory enforcement, this White House takes its responsibility seriously
by Andrew Leonard
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It's Time to Protect and Strengthen Social Security, Not Undermine It
by Gara LaMarche
Widespread claims that Social Security can't pay its bills, or that the trust fund will be depleted by the time today's children are ready to collect their benefits, are false. To the contrary, it's one of the most successful social programs of all time.

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Deductible Me
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WikiLeaks and the End of U.S. ‘Diplomacy’
By Amy Goodman —
The way the U.S. conducts diplomacy is now getting more exposure than ever—as is the apparent ease with which the U.S. government lives up (or down) to the adage used by pioneering journalist I.F. Stone: “Governments lie.”

Precedent and Prologue by Jeffrey Toobin

Bush v. Gore, ten years later.

Blaming Obama’s America First
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. —
We are about to enter a two-year period in which the Beltway Republicans will always blame Obama’s America first—you know, the America that happens to disagree with much of the conservative agenda, the America from which they want to “take back” the country, as if the rest of us represent an alien force.

Iran’s Best Friends on Capitol Hill
By Joe Conason —
By stalling or killing President Obama’s new START treaty, Republicans would provide moral support to Iran, North Korea and any other rogue regime seeking to arm itself with nukes.
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Why Exactly Is President Obama Acting Like George McFly?
by Bob Cesca
The president looks weaker than at any other time in his presidency. He's completely off the rails, following rules that no longer exist, and well beyond any notion of post-partisanship.

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Justice Stevens vs. the death penalty
The recently retired John Paul Stevens offers rare criticism of former Supreme Court colleagues. Will his argument change the debate over capital punishment?
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The Thanksgiving Wars? No Thanks
By E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Happy Thanksgiving. That is not a political sentiment. Yet this year, everything seems partisan and even this most unifying of national holidays has become an occasion for ideological warfare.
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DeLay convicted in money laundering trial
A Texas jury finds former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay guilty of charges he illegally funneled corporate money to Texas candidates. He could be sentenced to life in prison.
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Repeal health care? Give up your own first!
act.credoaction.com
Tell Congressman Boehner and Senator McConnell if they want to repeal health care, they need to practice what they preach, and give up their own government-sponsored health care first.
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The Hijacked Commission
By PAUL KRUGMAN
A process meant to deal with the nation’s long-run fiscal problems has been hijacked on behalf of an ideological agenda.
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The Origin of America’s Intellectual Vacuum

By Chris Hedges —
The country suffers an impoverishment of ideas and analysis at a moment when we desperately need radical voices to make sense of the corporate destruction of the global economy and the ecosystem.

Sarah Palin's true reality: 'Free' Alaska is a welfare state that ...
by Michael Daly Sarah Palin's true reality: 'Free' Alaska is a welfare statethat enjoys generous federal subsidies.
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Rand Paul’s Lack of Class
by Matthew Rothschild
Rand Paul can pretend that classes don’t exist in America, and he can propose policies that will help the richest and punish everyone else, but all he proves by doing so is that he’s the one who’s got no class.read more

The Tea Party and the Midterms
By Joe Conason —
The fleeting thrill of ousting a particular elected official (or even dozens of them) ultimately will not bring much comfort to anyone inspired by more than mere partisan fury.
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Nothing to apologize for by E.J. Dionne Jr.
Pelosi wants another crack at electoral vindication.

Nancy Pelosi, undone by her own success by Eugene Robinson
The GOP was able to make Nancy Pelosi an issue because she was so effective as House speaker.

Race and the Tea Party’s Ire
by Eugene Robinson
The first African-American president takes office, and almost immediately we see the birth of an overwhelmingly white national movement that tries its best to delegitimize that president. Coincidence?
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Oscar Celador Publico, as summarized in THE WEEK, November 5, 2010 issue

The rise of the Tea Party in the U.S. is baffling to Europeans, said Oscar Celador. The American economy is suffering a severe crisis that, "because of the limited protection offered by the American welfare state," hits the working class hardest. Yet the phenomenon of this campaign season is a political movement, "driven by important personalities of the Republican Party," that advocates lower taxes, less government, "and the disappearance of essential services like health care, pensions, and public education." If these people take over the government, the U.S. could return to the dark ages that Europe has put behind it, in which only the wealthy have access to decent health care or university education, and elderly people beg in the streets. What's "truly peculiar" is that the deficit created by Obama is much lower than that created by Bush- and much of Obama's spending was simply to repair the collapse of the financial system caused by the "uncontrolled capitalism" of the Bush era. To understand U.S. politics, we can only look to Groucho Marx, who said, "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." Of course, he was joking. The Tea Parties are not.

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It’s the Stupidity, Stupid
By David Sirota —
What could cause the intensifying politics of free-market fundamentalism at the very historical moment that proves the failure of such an ideology? Two new academic studies suggest all roads lead to ignorance

Frank Rich: The Grand Old Plot Against the Tea Party Whatever Tuesday’s results, this much is certain: The Tea Party’s hopes for actually affecting change in Washington will start being dashed the morning after.

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear
Jon Stewart - Moment of Sincerity
www.comedycentral.com
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The Sore Winners: Will America's Super Minority Sink Us All?
by Tom Junod
Republicans, who once decried the rise of identity politics, now practice it so relentlessly, so ruthlessly, and above all so successfully that they've created a beleaguered minority where only a cosseted majority stood before. It is a kind of super minority, its material well-being encroached upon by the swelling ranks of the shiftless poor and its spiritual well-being encroached upon by shadowy "elites" whose figurehead is in the White House.
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Paul Krugman: Divided We Fail The last time Republicans controlled Congress while a Democrat lived in the White House was the period from the beginning of 1995 to the end of 2000. And people remember that era as a good time, a time of rapid job creation and responsible budgets. Can we hope for a similar experience now?
No, we can’t. This is going to be terrible.

Thugs on the Right By Joe Conason —
Sometimes tea party ideologues are described as libertarians, but the behavior of their leading candidates betrays an authoritarian streak just beneath all the sonorous rhetoric.

The Tea Party Test Case By David Sirota —
The only way to objectively define the tea party is to find a test case. And thanks to Wisconsin’s Senate race, we have exactly that.

The Scandal of 2010 By E.J. Dionne, Jr. —
If you travel any place where there is a contested race for the House or Senate, you are bombarded with attack ads, almost all against Democrats, paid for by groups that do not have to reveal where their money comes from.
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Fear of [Muslims] Flying
by J. Barrett Wolf

There isn't any doctrine to this simple equation... In the last decade there was one major terrorist attack on American soil, and it being used to advance the profiling, the racism and the hatred we see in New York, in Murfreesboro, TN and all across America.

One attack. By radical terrorists... But there are 1.6 BILLION Muslims in the world and the estimate of the number of terrorists by everyone but the uninformed hacks runs between five and ten thousand... Do that math... At the high end it's one terrorist in every ONE MILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND Muslims. So how many in America.... four?

There's a higher ratio of gang-bangers in Newark, fer Christ's sake... Point being that this is a goddamn excuse for the rhetoric, and worse, actual violence: The cabbie shot in NY, arson in Murfreesboro, vandalism all across America... and all because the number of ACTUAL, REAL SERIOUS Islamic terrorists IN the USA might be as high as FIVE... A number, by the way, that could be reasonably assumed to be the number of Christians who are willing to bomb abortion clinics and/or murder doctors... but nobody is profiling churchgoers or vandalizing the church in the town Dr. Tiller was from - How come every Christian in HIS town wasn't questioned?

My friend Harry says Americans are not all bigots and racists. I agree, But many American ARE scared. Unfortunately, as any good psychologist can affirm, fear leads people to their lowest common denominator of behavior. Frightened people act with a mob mentality, behaving in ways none of them would individually. Frightened people are absolutely bigots and racists - Hell, there are situations in which good people would let their neighbors die to save their family - How easy it it to hate the image of some unspecified danger called a 'terrorist'.

Do you remember the Twilight Zone Episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"? Nowadays, they show it in schools to teach kids about the dangers of prejudice and hysteria. That's what's playing on the right...all day... all night.

It serves the interests of the Becks and the Palins to use charged rhetoric to keep their base afraid. It's all about 'The Other'...A president who is ...Other.... a religion that is...Other... They are not leading a national discussion to solve the problems, THEIR agenda is ultra-nationalist ultra-partisan rallying - Which does exactly nothing for the national discussion, nor does it in any way improve the chances for reasoned discussion between factions. They are reinforcing the image of monsters attacking us in our homes... a lie that short-circuits the discussion - which is EXACTLY what they intend.

We live in a dangerous time and it has little or nothing to do with anybody but ourselves. If we cannot get back to a world where parties compromise, we are going to be in a world of trouble.
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Maureen Dowd: Making Ignorance Chic

Gail Collins: The Fury Failure
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Juan Williams' real crime: Hack punditry
Forget his remark about Muslims: His political commentary is somewhere between mediocre and awful
by Steve Kornacki

Juan Williams still doesn't get it, is rich anyway
by Alex Pareene
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More Tea Party Hilarity
by Matt Taibbi
You see, when a nice white lawyer with a GI Joe beard uses state aid to help him through tough times and get over the hump – so that he can go from having three little future Medicare-collecting Republican children to eight little future Medicare-collecting Republican children – that’s a good solid use of government aid, because what we’re doing is helping someone "transition" from dependency to economic independence.
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"No new taxes" for GOP -- except a national sales tax
by Joe Conason
Republicans swear they won't raise taxes -- but Rand Paul and Paul Ryan want to tax everything you buy.
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Looney, and That’s No Debate
By Eugene Robinson —
Sorry, but I just can’t do it anymore. When has there been an election with so many looney tunes running under the banner of one of our major parties?
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Fiore Cartoon: Meg Whitman's Personal Stimulus
She's already bringing jobs to California, one political consultant at a time.

Wall Street Hopes to Use Republicans to Re-Purchase Congress
by Robert Creamer
The same people whose recklessness caused so many everyday working class families to lose their jobs are now stoking the anger caused by their own actions and directing it toward Democrats who have brought them to account.
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Paul Krugman: Hey, Small Spender
By PAUL KRUGMAN
If government spending hasn’t created jobs, it’s not because it doesn’t work; it’s because it wasn’t tried.
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The Tea Party: It’s Worse Than You Think
By The Rev. Madison Shockley —
A debate has raged over the last 18 months as to whether the tea party movement is racist. I propose to put this debate to rest. The tea party is racist. Its followers have deployed a brilliant strategy to deflect charges of racism by using a form of the legislative provision known as severability.
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Matt Taibbi on the Tea Party
This is an article from the October 15, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone. It's taken three trips to Kentucky, but I'm finally getting my Tea Party epiphany...

Lou Dobbs Hired Illegal Immigrants: The Nation Lou Dobbs has become notorious for his hard-line stance on undocumented immigrants--and the people who hire them. Yet, as an explosive investigation released Thursday in The Nation uncovered, Dobbs has been relying on undocumented workers for years to maintain the upkeep of his homes.

In Descending Order of Plausibility, Five Explanations for Rick Sanchez’s “Jon Stewart Is a Bigot” Comment
By Juli Weiner

Look Who’s Killing Jobs Now By Ruth Marcus —
Republicans like to denounce President Obama and congressional Democrats for what they describe as “job-killing” policies. But in those red-hot rhetorical terms, congressional Republicans are guilty of mass murder when it comes to job creation.

Lies of the Tea Party By Joe Conason —
The disaffection and demoralization of Democrats have created a dangerous political vacuum that is being filled with misleading data, urban legends and outright lies.

Obama and the Progressive Paradox By E.J. Dionne, Jr. —
A couple of hours before President Obama offered a boffo revival of his 2008 campaign persona during a boisterous rally at the University of Wisconsin, Sen. Bernie Sanders was analyzing why the president was in a political pickle in the first place.
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Frank Rich: The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell
ALL it took was some 30,000 Republican primary voters in a tiny state to turn Christine O’Donnell into the brightest all-American media meteor since Balloon Boy.
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WHITE AMERICA HAS LOST ITS MIND
The white brain goes haywire in spectacular fashion. by STEVEN THRASHER

Four More Reasons Why Democrats Will Retain Control of House and Senate
by Robert Creamer
If Democrats drive hard to the finish, making this election a choice for voters, and turning out every Democratic vote, then the pundit's script will never make it into the actual annals of American history.
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Republican Economics as Social Darwinism
by Robert Reich
Today's issues aren't just economic. We're back to tough love. Republicans want to force people to live with the consequences of whatever happens to them. In the late 19th century that was called Social Darwinism.

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Postcards From the Pledge
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Tempest in a Very Small Teapot By E.J. Dionne, Jr. —
Is the tea party one of the most successful scams in American political history?
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This Just In: Islamophobia By Bill Boyarsky — The evil side of America is on display in the form of a media-fueled Islamophobia that recalls some of the worst bigotry in the nation’s past.

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Fox Calls for Repeal of 20th Century — 13 Achievements Conservatives Would Roll Back « SpeakEasy blogs.alternet.org
Since President Obama’s election, Fox personalities have expressed opposition to or called for the repeal of virtually every progressive achievement of the 20th century, including Social Security, Medicare, the Americans with Disabilities Act, portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and th...
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