Portside

Bill Moyers on North Carolina: Battleground State. Auld Lang Syne, with lyrics. The inner workings of the $50 billion divorce industry. How Gollum, star hobbit, was brought to life. Bobby 'Blue' Bland's Stormy Monday.

In a bleak year filled with bad news, people from Edward Snowden to Elizabeth Warren were brave enough to shake up the establishment. "Fighting the power," as people used to say, is no easy task. Victories are hard to come by and can quickly slide away because the power establishment of money, lobbying, lawyers, PR machines and out-and-out corruption are like Neil Young's rust: they never sleep.

Obamacare was conceived at the Heritage Foundation, and birthed in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney. Obama took Romneycare, a program designed to keep the private insurance industry intact, and improved some of its provisions. In deciding what course, the question for the new administration, which successfully ran a campaign with a large plank to make major changes to the health care delivery system, try to go around the existing insurance industry or through it?

Mayor Bloomberg pushed through re-zoning of nearly 40 percent of New York City. Bill de Blasio campaigned against urban gentrification. Can the new mayor reverse the trend? Can big-city electoral coalitions buck the trend of the real estate and financial speculators? Author Michael Hirsch reviews the new book about Chicago's mayor Rahm Emanuel - the mayor of the 1% in the second largest city of the country.

The ultra Right tastes blood in the snafu that threatens "Obamacare"; they are gleefully throwing everything into their last, best chance to overturn any expansion of health care. A "broader" coalition, both domestic and international, is feverishly doing its all to abort efforts at easing tensions with Iran.

Stephen Colbert: Nuclear Option in the Senate. Woody -- All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose. Siats - A New Mega Dinosaur. Every Nuclear Test. Music Love Army: We Are Not for Sale.

If today’s extremist rhetoric sounds familiar, that’s because it is eerily, poignantly similar to the vitriol aimed squarely at John F. Kennedy during his presidency. And just like today, Texans were leading what some of them saw as a moral crusade. To find the very roots of the tea party of 2013, just go back to downtown Dallas in 1963, back to the months and weeks leading to the Kennedy assassination.

Progressive organizing was indeed crucial to changing the filibuster, with Senators like Merkley and Udall working the inside game while the outside groups got the public riled up. Many Democratic senators—including Reid—didn’t want to do rules reform back in 2009 when the GOP began its unprecedented obstruction, and it took a lot of convincing.