This is your Moment of Clarity #176: The movie "Won't Back Down" starring Maggie Gyllenhaal is hitting theaters across the country. Who REALLY made this film? You'd be surprised...

This episode of Moment of Clarity is based largely on this article from Salon.com.

Below the fold, an interview with The Yes Men's Andy Bichlbaum.

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During an interview on "Moyers & Company" recently, Bill talked with Mike Lofgren, a long-time Republican who describes the modern dysfunction of both the Republican and Democratic parties. In Lofgren’s view, Republicans have become overly obsessed with obstructing President Obama, and the Democrats suffer from political complacency. Lofgren’s new book is "The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted."

Here's a snippet from the transcript:

BILL MOYERS: The Republican Party now has the super rich and its corporate wing funding it and the religious right provides the ground troops. Why are so many everyday folks out there in the pews defending the prerogatives of the rich?

MIKE LOFGREN: That's something of a mystery. The Federal Reserve, in one of their recent reports, found that net household income fell about 40 percent since 2007. That's a tremendous drop. Yet, here we have as the nominee for one of the two major parties, we only have a binary choice in this country, is by all accounts the richest man ever to run for president and was a leverage buyout artist.

The party is really oriented towards the concerns of the rich. It's about cutting their taxes, reducing regulation on business, making things wide open for Wall Street. Now you're not going to get anybody to the polls and consciously pull the lever for the Republicans if they say, "Our agenda is to further entrench the rich and, oh by the way, your pension may take a hit."

So they use the culture wars quite cynically, as essentially rube bait to get people to the polls. And that explains why, for instance, the Koch brothers were early funders of Michele Bachmann, who is a darling of the religious right. They don't care particularly, I would assume, about her religious foibles. What they care about is the bottom line. And these religious right candidates, many of them believing in the health and wealth, name it and claim it prosperity gospel, believe that the rich are sanctified and the poor punished

BILL MOYERS: Many of those people on the right would tell you that the fall in the income of middleclass people and others has been because of Obama's economic policies.

MIKE LOFGREN: I think they're suffering from selective amnesia. They also don't understand that George Bush doubled the national debt, that the original meltdown on Wall Street occurred during George Bush's watch, and by the time Obama became president in 2009, we were already well into the recession. Now I don't defend him in every way. I don't say that everything he's done is right by any means. I have all kinds of issues with him on the health care legislation. For instance, his willingness to play ball with pharma made the bill cost a lot more than it need.

BILL MOYERS: The pharmaceutical industry?

MIKE LOFGREN: Yes. That said, he was legitimately elected. We were in a very, very serious situation in this country. If the economy had fallen any further, it would be comparable to the Great Depression. So what is Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate, what is his first priority for the country? Is it getting jobs for people? Is it restoring the solvency of the financial system? Is it foreign policy? Is it any of those things? No, it's making sure Obama is a one-term president.

BILL MOYERS: It seems that some of these people are willing to see the government go down in order to win.

MIKE LOFGREN: That would be the case. I grew up in a party that believed in the traditions of Eisenhower, and for that matter, even Reagan. He raised taxes several times when the deficit threatened to get out of control. He pleaded with Congress to send him a clean debt limit extension bill without any extraneous riders on it. He knew what the stakes were.

But now it's basically obstruct. They're no longer a parliamentary loyal opposition. They want to seize up the wheels of government. And to most people that means you don't have federal inspectors of airliners. You don't have federal inspection of food safety. Your national parks will be closed. Federal law enforcement will go home. That's what that means.

BILL MOYERS: Why did you leave the party? You'd been a Republican, what, all your life?

MIKE LOFGREN: I left the party because it was becoming an apocalyptic cult. Because you cannot govern a country of 310 million people that is the greatest economic power on earth and the greatest military power on earth as if it's a banana republic. You can't govern it with people who think that Obama was born overseas or who believe in all manner of nonsense about climate change. They don't even know, apparently, where babies come from, if we're to believe Todd Akin.

Really a great interview, the full transcript is available here.

The Republican National Convention is taking place in Tampa starting August 27th. The Coalition to March on the RNC encourages you to join us and stand in solidarity as we march at the RNC to fight back against the political elite and the 1% agenda.

As of now, we are a Coalition uniting groups from around the country to say NO to this political system that only works for the 1% and therefore are marching at the Republican National Convention to let our voices be heard. Together we stand to march for good jobs, healthcare, affordable education, equality and peace. On top of this, we stand against all parties of the 1% and have also endorsed the March on Wall St. South, who will protest the DNC in Charlotte, NC. For too long people have suffered while the rich got richer. We say money for human needs, not on wars overseas and corporate greed. Together, we are planning a 5000 strong march at the first day of the convention on Aug 27th. We have hundreds of national and local organizations such as Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, Get EQUAL, Dream defenders, United National Antiwar Coalition, Occupy Tampa, Occupy USF, Occupy Pensacola, Occupy Tallahassee and more (See here for full list) endorsing us and we would love for all Occupy Assemblies to come down to Tampa to join and/or endorse our coalition. Only through unity is there strength.

We will be encouraging people to sleep at Occupy Tampa's Voice of Freedom park or at these parks that allow camping for a nominal fee [Editor's note: Please be aware that a tropical storm system, potentially a hurricane, is expected to effect Tampa during the Convention. The RNC isn't telling people not to go to Florida, so neither are we. But you should check with organizers about alternatives in case of flooding.] We will be rallying at Perry Harvey Sr. Park, located at 1200 N. Orange Ave Tampa, FL, at 10 am and will be marching from the park through the streets of Tampa to "Protest RNC Square" at around noon. See here for the parade route.

Thanks and please e-mail us at marchonthernc@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.

Also visit:
http://www.marchonthernc.com
https://twitter.com/marchonthernc
http://marchonthernc.tumblr.com/

In solidarity, -Coalition to March on the RNC-

For more info about the RNC and the Occupy movement's plans, see also: Occupy Tampa's Official Statement Regarding the RNC

Via the sparrow project:

At 4pm on July 8th, 2012 a diverse coalition of activists and occupiers from across New York will descend upon a fundraiser for presidential candidate Mitt Romney at the Southhampton home of billionaire David Koch. Citing the ever-growing and pervasive influence of Koch Industries’ money on our electoral system, organizers from Occupy Wall Street, The Long Island Progressive Coalition, Greenpeace, Move to Amend [Brookhaven], ALIGN NY, Art Not War, Strong For All, MoveOn.org, United New York, Occupy Storefront and Occupy Huntington, Long Island, have announced that they will take action to non-violently disrupt the fundraiser at David Koch’s shorefront estate located at 880 Meadow Lane in Southhampton.

While Romney plans on attending 3 fundraisers that day in the Hamptons the demonstrators have made it clear that the Koch Estate will remain their only target. The coalition of activists initially assembled by the End Corporatism Affinity Group of Occupy Wall Street will be taking a non-partisan stance, uniting around a unified message that corporate money is exponentially diluting and subverting our democratic process (a phenomenon not limited to one single party.) To the demonstrators, David and Charles Koch embody everything that is wrong with money in politics.

“The Long Island Progressive Coalition is busy coordinating a network of Long Island groups who won’t stand by while their backyard is used for Koch and Romney to fund a regressive political agenda,” says Lisa Tyson, director to the Long Island Progressive Coalition.

In 2011 Charles and David Koch announced their intentions to raise and spend $200,000,000 on whomever would run against President Obama. Also, in 2011 while on a retreat for supporters of Koch Industries and their political arm, American’s for Prosperity, Charles Koch was secretly recorded while addressing the group. “This is the mother of all wars we’ve got over the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country …if you want to kick in a billion, believe me,” says Koch “we’ll have especial seminar just for you.”

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Please Note All times are Eastern Standard Time.

Latino Vote Matters: Immigration, Power, and an Interactive Look at the Map

Panel; Sat, 06/09/2012 - 10:30am, Ballroom A

The War on Voting

Panel; Sat, 06/09/2012 - 01:30pm, Ballroom A

Winning Without a Vote: Working with Federal Agencies to Advance a Progressive Agenda

Panel; Sat, 06/09/2012 - 03:00pm, Ballroom A

Safeguarding Democracy: Innovations in Technology and Human Rights

Panel; Sat, 06/09/2012 - 10:30am, Ballroom B

Intervention, Isolation and the Future of Progressive Security Policy

Panel; Sat, 06/09/2012 - 01:30pm, Ballroom B

The Worst Immigration Law in the United States

Panel; Sat, 06/09/2012 - 03:00pm, Ballroom B

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