Rapper and actor Bow Wow talks about politics and encourages the young to vote.

Air Date: Monday, September 29, 2008

Duration : 0:4:20

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From crashing teleprompters to lost elections, it has been a tough year for the Democratic party. This video brings together a few of the high (or low) points.

Duration : 0:5:1

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/02/04/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson_Pluto_Files

Neil deGrasse Tyson defends government support for U.S. science research under President George W. Bush, and says that, contrary to popular belief, “funding for science under Republican administrations has been historically higher than under Democrats.”

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Neil deGrasse Tyson, the bestselling author and director of the world-famous Hayden Planetarium, chronicles America’s irrational love affair with Pluto, man’s best celestial friend.

Neil deGrasse Tyson was born and raised in New York City where he was educated in the public schools clear through his graduation from the Bronx High School of Science. Tyson went on to earn his BA in Physics from Harvard and his PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia. Tyson’s professional research interests are broad, but include star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of our Milky Way. Tyson obtains his data from the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as from telescopes in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and in the Andes Mountains of Chile. In 2001, Tyson was appointed by President Bush to serve on a 12-member commission that studied the Future of the US Aerospace Industry. The final report was published in 2002 and contained recommendations (for Congress and for the major agencies of the government) that would promote a thriving future of transportation, space exploration, and national security. In 2004, Tyson was once again appointed by President Bush to serve on a 9-member commission on the Implementation of the United States Space Exploration Policy, dubbed the “Moon, Mars, and Beyond” commission. This group navigated a path by which the new space vision can become a successful part of the American agenda. And in 2006, the head of NASA appointed Tyson to serve on its prestigious Advisory Committee, which will help guide NASA through its perennial need to fit its ambitious vision into its restricted budget. In addition to dozens of professional publications, Dr. Tyson has written, and continues to write for the public.

Duration : 0:4:47

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A bi-weekly commentary by UPI writer, Martin Sieff.

Duration : 0:2:22

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/01/27/Vernon_Bogdanor_Presidency_of_Ronald_Reagan

Professor Vernon Bogdanor traces Ronald Reagan’s rise from movie star to influential US president. Bogdanor examines how Reagan’s governing style often led critics to underestimate his intelligence and capabilities.

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Ronald Reagan saw it as his task to restore American self-confidence following the policy failures of the 1970’s.

Charismatic, and a master of the media, he was the first president since the 1920’s to come to power with an explicitly conservative ideology. Did he succeed in implementing it, or was the ‘Reagan revolution’ nothing more than smoke and mirrors?

Professor Vernon Bogdanor discusses the politics and priorities of Reagan’s presidency, and explores their lasting impact on the American political landscape. – Gresham College

Vernon Bogdanor, CBE, FBA is a professor of government at Oxford University, England, and a fellow of Brasenose College. He is one of Britain’s foremost constitutional experts and has written extensively on political and constitutional issues.

Duration : 0:3:44

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At the recent 5-day Integral Institute seminar on Integral Business Leadership,
Ken Wilber was asked, by a senior Zen teacher, “What do you think of the Republican convention?”

Ken responded by giving an overview of what a truly integral politics might look like, and used that to compare and contrast with the Democratic and Republican conventions, both of which are less-than-integral. We think that this twenty-minute summary is brilliant, insightful, deadly serious, and wickedly funny, all at once. But by all accounts it is an extraordinary account of why all politics today are considerably less-than-integral, along with certain features that almost certainly would have to be included in the future in any truly integral politics.

In this synopsis, Ken focuses on three items that all political theories have attempted to address but none have managed to fully integrate. These are the tension between (1) the individual and the collective; (2) the source of the cause of human suffering: is the individual primarily to blame or is the society primarily to blame?; and (3) the different levels of development that the different political parties tend to represent: any truly integral politics would include and represent all of them, and yet how on earth do you do that?

Due to time considerations, Ken did not discuss two other equally important ingredients in any integral politics. One. In representational democracies, people have a right to be at whatever stage of development they are at, and generally speaking, within free speech, a right to express the values of whatever stage they are at. Traditional-fundamentalist (blue) has a right to be traditional, modernist (orange) has a right to be modernist, postmodernist (green) has a right to be postmodernist, and so on. This is generally modified in practice, to the extent that the center of gravity of a culture will tend to impose its values on others, especially if they are first-tier (or less-than-integral) values. Nonetheless, in democratic societies, there’s a general background understanding that people have a right to be, and a right to express, whatever stage they are or whatever belief system they possess.

Two. They do not, however, have a right to act on those beliefs. This is generally handled in representative democracies by a separation of public and private, and by a similar if more specific principle of the separation of church and state. This means that, for example, in the privacy of my blue-meme mind, I am free to believe that Jesus Christ is my personal savior and that nobody achieves salvation without a belief in Jesus. In public behavior, however, I am not allowed to burn at the stake somebody who disagrees with me. In terms of integral psychology, this means in the interior of an individual (i.e., the upper left), the person can believe whatever they like; but in their public behavior (i.e., the upper right), they must behave according to laws drawn from a worldcentric or higher level of development (lower left), or else they are charged with civil or criminal behavior and removed from society if necessary (lower right).

This separation of church and state, or more generally what Max Weber called the differentiation of the values spheres, is one of the great and enduring contributions of the Western enlightenment, a contribution almost entirely misunderstood by extreme postmodernists, who in fact are operating under its protection while bitterly condemning it.

(The most common version of this is the aggressive attempt to reduce “I” and “It” to “We,’ or the attempt to reduce art and science to a social construction, which can therefore be deconstructed. As it turns out, this reductionism presumes precisely what it denies, but then, deconstructive postmodernism has been little without its performative contradictions.)

A truly integral politics exists nowhere on the planet at this time, principally because not enough individuals have emerged at the integral levels of consciousness, and hence no governments anywhere have integral representatives as members (except rarely and by accident). Its principal challenge is to create some form of governance that allows each stage to be itself within the constraints of not harming others (i.e., to let red be red, and blue be blue, and orange be orange, and green be green, etc—precisely because, as we saw, this is a right in virtually all free societies), and yet to govern from the highest, widest, deepest, and most encompassing levels of development emerged to date (starting at yellow). Most representative democracies do this anyway, except their center of gravity is not yet fully integral, and they do it implicitly, not explicitly.

Duration : 0:17:45

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http://twitter.com/gopleader Follow Leader Boehner on Twitter for real time updates on House Republicans’ efforts to stop the Democrats’ proposed government takeover of health care.

Duration : 0:0:9

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Democrats of Michigan, on January 15th you have a unique and wonderful opportunity to screw over the Republican Party.

For more on why voting for Romney in your primary–however counterintuitive it may be to vote for that flip-flopping, say-anything-to-get-elected, neocon-of-convenience hack–isn’t such a crazy idea, check out:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/10/2713/87225

Lest there be any confusion, showing Romney’s old stances as a less-than-diehard conservative in Massachusetts is intended to emphasize his ubercynical ability to shape-shift into desirable forms, not to suggest he’s a somehow tolerable closet moderate who is simply pretending to be a detestable right wing nut. I don’t mean to suggest he should be given the benefit of any doubt in that direction–that’s by no means the reason Michigan Dems should cast their vote for him January 15th.

In the rough and real world of politics, Progressives can’t afford for voting to be an emotional act of personal expression. It has to be pragmatic, strategic, and effective. So, just this weird once…go Romney. Though it burns my fingers when I type it.

Duration : 0:1:31

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Video of NYS Senate Democrats sitting defiantly through the Pledge of Allegiance in protest after losing political control of the Chamber to Republicans.

Only one courageous Senator tried to stand to honor the flag, but he was immedaietly pulled down into his seat by fellow Democrats.

The video is from WCBS-2 TV on 6/23/09, taped during a “special session” of the Senate called by Democrat Gov. David Paterson in an effort to end a three-week walkout by Democrats that has brought government to a screeching halt.

Grim-faced Democrats refused to acknowledge even their presence in the Chamber, failing to answer when their names were called, or join in a silent prayer that traditionally begins each session.

The first Senator pictured seated is Antoine Thompson of Buffalo. The Senator attempting to stand is Martin Dilan of Brooklyn, abnd he looks clearly uncomfortable when he is pulled down by Kevin Parker of Brooklyn and Ruth Hassell-Thompson of Westchester.

Duration : 0:0:56

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First in a series of 12 Parodies of the Mac/PC ads.

http://www.britethorn.com

Starring Aaron Sjoholm and Shawn Girvan.
Directed by Jeff Hadick. Written and Produced by John T. Kramer.

Duration : 0:0:38

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