Portside

Ripped from the headlines! America is exceptional! So the president said at the U.N. two days ago and two weeks ago in his address to the nation on the Syrian crisis. Tho show how exceptional we are is a list of eight exceptional(ly dumb) American achievements of the twenty-first century -- all ripped from the headlines, all Ripley's Believe It or Not material, none made up, none conceivable for any other nation on the planet.

While some of us have been sleeping (metaphorically speaking) Republican senators have been slipping into the White House and over repasts possibly working with Administration staffers on a new version of “Simpson-Bowles."

"We have to change the way we're doing business in a significant way to get out of the crisis we find ourselves in," says Trumka. "But this crisis also offers us ample and tremendous opportunity."

Progressives supported Prop 30 to send more money to schools but now the funds are headed to prisons. How could this happen - and can it be stopped?

The red-green coalition government in Norway, whose political platform when it took power in 2005 was called the most progressive in Europe, experienced a bitter defeat in the country's parliamentary election on 9 September. A coalition of four centre-right and right-wing parties, including a right-wing populist party, gained a solid majority and are now negotiating the political platform for a new government.

In signing a bill that will raise California's minimum wage to $10 an hour by 2016, Gov. Jerry brown said it was his “moral responsibility” to give Californians a chance to earn a living wage.

The Union Makes Us Strong takes us back, and that's not at all a bad thing. There's a purity of sound here that is moving, along with a professionalism and delivers the goods. "The Union Makes Us Strong by Peter K. Siegel and Eli Smith is a wonderful collection of old favorites, enlivened by some fancy banjo, fiddle and mandolin work and by the sweet harmony of the two singers, " writes labor historian Paul Buhle.