Center-right, my tuchus - eric Alterman

[JohnWxy]

The promotion by the Right of another Big Lie continues unabated_JW

all emphases below are my own.__JW

http://mediamatters.org/altercation/index

Even before Obama won, the MSM was doing the conservatives' work for them, arguing that he had better not try to do anything he promised to do because America was a "center-right nation."

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And now, the truth -- I know that's redundant -- from Why We're Liberals:

As the political scientist Drew Westen aptly observes, the word liberal for most Americans implies "elite, tax and spend, out of touch," and "Massachusetts."52 And yet the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in Washington, D.C., in conducting an extensive set of opinion polls over the past few decades, has demonstrated a decided trend toward increasingly "liberal" positions, by almost any definition.

To offer just a few examples of this liberal-in-all-but-name attitude regarding economic and welfare policy, according to the 2006 survey, released in March 2007,

roughly 70 percent of respondents believe that the government has a responsibility "to take care of people who can't take care of themselves" -- up from 61 percent in 2002.

The number saying that the government should guarantee "every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep" has increased by a similar margin over the past five years (from 63 percent to 69 percent).

Two-thirds of the public (66 percent) -- including a majority of those who say they would prefer a smaller government (57 percent) -- favor government funded health insurance for all citizens.

Most people also believe that the nation's corporations are too powerful and fail to strike a fair balance between profits and the public interest. In addition, nearly two-thirds (65 percent) say corporate profits are too high, about the same number who say that "labor unions are necessary to protect the working person" (68 percent).

When it comes to the environment, a large majority (83 percent) supports stricter laws and regulations to protect the environment, while 69 percent agree that "we should put more emphasis on fuel conservation than on developing new oil supplies," and fully 60 percent of people questioned say they would "be willing to pay higher prices in order to protect the environment."

Regarding so-called social issues, only 28 percent of respondents agree that school boards should have the right to fire teachers who are known to be homosexual, while 66 percent disagree.

A 56 percent majority opposes making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, while 35 percent favor this position.53

..... These findings reinforce previous polls like that in 2004 by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University, which asked voters whether "the federal government should fund sex education programs that have 'abstaining from sexual activity' as their only purpose" or if "the money should be used to fund more comprehensive sex education programs that include information on how to obtain and use condoms and other contraceptives." The condom/contraceptive option won the day by a margin of 67 to 30 percent. Unsurprisingly, a similar number (65 percent) said they worried that refusing to provide teens with good information about contraception might lead to unsafe sex, while only 28 percent were more concerned that such information might encourage teens to have sex.54

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It's clear the nation is "Liberal" and that "Liberal" is only "too Left" for the Fascist Right (i.e. the Republican Party, as now constituted.). A very important part of the Republican strategy is the twisting of the debate to MIS-represent where most Americans stand. In this effort the Corporate M$M play an essential role. They are performing a marvelous job of
spreading dis-information for the Republicans. They are helping to defend our Corporate Feudalism where the corporations are the Lords of the land and those who aren't well connected are the Serfs. Welcome to serfdom everyone. As a result of the Deregulation induced Credit Catastrophe, millions more will be even deeper in serfdom with fewer lower paying jobs, fewer owning their own homes and fewer able to get a decent education, and with less money to contribute to campaigns of future Barach Obama's.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. You'll get the same argument here all the time.

Always hilarious.