By Larry Jones

President-elect Barack Obama on December 17 announced that he had chosen fundamentalist pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation prayer at his inauguration. This is just one more of his many other moves toward the right of late. Immediate outrage broke out, most notably from the LGBT community.

By Jill McLaughlin

(this article originally appeared as a letter in the Chicago Free Press)

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Update: Report from the NYC demonstrations after the break.

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Over the last eight years the Bush Regime codified a comprehensive reactionary political program: openly whipping up anti-gay sentiment; mandating the teaching of creationism in science class; restricting abortion and birth control based on biblical literalism that women are nothing more than incubators and should have no control over their bodies; calling for an end to the constitutional separation of church and state; launching and prosecuting endless unjust wars; carrying out torture as policy; violating sacrosanct civil liberties and civil rights; surveilling us all.

Millions were thrilled to see the Republicans voted out of office.

But who is to stop the Bush Program when Obama promotes finding common ground with Christian Fascists, war criminals and torturers?  While Obama said he did not support Prop 8, he stated publicly many times that marriage should be between heterosexuals only. Instead of straddling the fence, he should have called for people to vote against Prop 8. Obama in fact has pledged to extend Bush's faith-based initiatives that have granted over $2.2 billion to religious organizations.
 
We Will Not Accept The Bush Program - No Matter Who Is President!

By Kathryn Joyce

This weekend, John McCain said that Sarah Palin is successful as a vice presidential candidate, politically speaking, first and foremost because she appeals to antifeminist voters, and that she represents the antithesis to the feminist movement. While at first that rhetoric might seem as dated as his accusing Obama of supporting socialism, in fact it looks like McCain is a lot more tuned in to the right wing base than it appears.

"YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance"."

The savage lynching murder of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, 10 years ago was one of those events that seared itself into the minds and souls of millions of people. James Byrd was tied to the back of a pickup truck by 3 armed white men and dragged through the woods of East Texas until his decapitated body was cut loose and discarded. Only an enraged public outcry brought this horrific crime to light and forced the state to try the 3 racists for murder.

By Dennis Loo

Naomi Wolf is one of the brave voices. She warns in this video that a coup has taken place and that we have a small window of time within which to reverse things.

I agree with Ms. Wolf in most particulars but do see things in some respects quite differently. I will get to those differences at the end - I encourage you to read the links within this post as they elaborate much further on what's going on and why - but first, a short list of what I would describe as critical points along this sliding path to a police state.

As Wolf has pointed out in her book, The End of America, the initial stages of a "shift" contain fascist elements side-by-side with liberal democratic elements. This stage of co-existence can go on for some time, but sooner or later the fascist elements eat up the democratic ones. For those who aren't paying proper attention, in other words, day-to-day life can appear quite normal while the horrors build and build in the background.

By Darlene/Deennaa  -  former resident of my birth home Alaska

I am an indigenous native of Alaska - Indian.  There has been no mainstream news & even little more in Alaska about what Sarah Palin thinks and does against our Natives of Alaska.  I'm sure I'll be waiting til hell freezes over to see it in the public arena anywhere.

She opposes tribal sovereignty - which also covers, under the Federal Indian Child Welfare Act(ICWA) the right to keep our own children.  Where is anyone telling this in national news?  She opposes our inherent (and by Federal Law) our rights to our traditional way of feeding ourselves by hunting & fishing - this being called the "Subsistence issue".