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Laura Flanders is the host of "GRIT TV" the new, news and culture discussion program aired daily on Free Speech TV (Dish Network ch. 9415) and online at the popular blog site Firedoglake.com. Flanders also hosts RadioNation, on Air America Radio, the weekly radio program of the Nation Magazine. She is the author of Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics Back from the Politiicans (The Penguin Press, 2007) and the New York Times bestseller BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species (Verso, 2004), an expose of women in George W. Bush's Cabinet. Flanders was founding director of the Women's Desk at the media watch group, FAIR and for more than ten years she produced and hosted CounterSpin, Fair's radio program. For more information and to contribute video to GRIT TV go to www.grittv.org.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 28, 2016 Who Cares if Hillary is Warm? I Care About Her Wars
When it comes to Clinton, it's not the warmth, it's the wars I'm worried about. I don't think she's ever seen a bombing mission she didn't approve, going back to the 1990s, when the whole insidious "humanitarian" war idea took root with NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. It was the wars on Yugoslavia that prepared the political ground for intervention in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and every one of those has led to a bloodbath.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 7, 2016 Laissez Faire Capitalism -- That Is Anything But
"Laissez faire" capitalists love to argue that the market itself is magic. You don't need government or regulation to rein in bad companies -- consumers will do it. The principle involved is called "reputation." It's amazing how vigorously, then, some governments will get involved to defend bad companies from shame.
SHARE Thursday, November 12, 2015 Money Media Cover Change-Makers Most When They're Dead
When media cover community organizing at all, profit-driven media tend to focus only on the troublemakers -- the sit-ins, shutdowns and picket lines. But while activism is often used to extract concessions from government, organizers like Grace Lee Boggs don't just make trouble -- they make change.
SHARE Sunday, November 10, 2013 Bill de Blasio: A Mayor for the New Economy
The most significant aspect of de Blasio's win may be the route he took to power. Taking office with him this January will be a public advocate who generally shares his views and a dozen new progressive city council members -- all beneficiaries of a long-term strategy by local advocates of economic justice to reduce local legislators' dependence on establishment-party patronage and big corporate donors.
SHARE Saturday, March 10, 2012 The Strange Sticking Power of Rick Santorum
A big part of how Obama gained support in states like these was his pledge to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. (Although in office, he quickly jettisoned all that talk and signed more, similar pacts.) Rick Santorum, for all his sins, has the advantage of actually having voted against NAFTA.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 2, 2012 Drone Strikes? What's To Feel Bad About?
Between 282 and 535 civilians, including 60 minors, have been credibly reported as killed as a result of drone strikes since US President Barack Obama took office.
Most damning, the Bureau reported that at least 50 civilians have been killed in follow-up strikes after they rushed to help the wounded. More than 20 other civilians were killed in strikes on funerals.
SHARE Tuesday, June 21, 2011 The supreme court's free pass on sexism for Walmart
The world's biggest boss, supported by companies as diverse as Altria, Bank of America, Microsoft and General Electric and backed up by the godfather of big business (the US Chamber of Commerce) has persuaded the US supreme court that thousands of women workers can't possibly share enough of an interest to constitute a class?
SHARE Sunday, February 27, 2011 Crushing Workers in Wisconsin Has National Effects
Inside the dark Victorian mansion of the Bradley Foundation in benighted Milwaukee, there must be smiles all around. The same ideologically-driven outfit that paid for the task force that devised Thompson's welfare plan is now backing Walker's drive to criminalize collective bargaining.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, June 4, 2010 Poor Americans Are Drowning: Where Are the Lifeboats?
For all the talk of Wall Street reform, and new consumer protections, and talk of alternative energy policy, the fact remains that for most people, America is a sinking ship. And minority communities are the first to be thrown over the side.
SHARE Thursday, April 22, 2010 The F Word: Coal Company Shopping Spree
Massey Energy killed 29 miners, Standard & Poor upgraded their stock from "hold" to "buy," so Shrub got it right, the answer to anything bad is "go shopping."