Progressive link day

Unfortunately the full-throated blog juices still aren't flowing on a regular basis, despite the fact that so much is going on and so much is pissing me off.  So while I'm tending to my wife who's home recovering from a couple of hernia repairs (and I had a wisdom tooth pulled on Thursday, which was no sweat at all), I'm reading some good articles and blogs and thought I'd share.
You'd think pulling a wisdom tooth would be more difficult than finding an honest, rational thought from the radical right that has hijacked the modern Republican Party.  Think again.  Am I the only progressive who was at least a wee bit optimistic that after 8 years of monumental fuck-ups that a decent percentage of conservatives would have been interested (just interested) in rethinking their intransigent beliefs?  If we harbored any of that optimism, it went out the window the day of or at least by the day after Obama's election when he was blamed for everything he was served.
I guess if all you care about is your side winning and never having to take responsibility for your support or lack of dispute, the only other option is to act like it never happened until the other team takes the field.  Cowards is the only word that comes to mind.
So with that in mind, let me encourage my progressive friends (ye of open-mindedness, a belief that the best is always ahead, and that smart and thoughtful is always better than closed-mindedness and hate) to hold true to what we know is right and just, and do and say whatever is necessary  to take this country and world in the right direction, as is so very well said in this article by Mike Lux at the Huffington Post, where you can always find something thought provoking.
From the "while I don't always agree with him but he doesn't mince his words" department, I bring you a great rant by Bill Maher, including this excerpt:

For example: to solve our debt crisis, a bunch of Republican senators suggested a bipartisan debt commission, which is the adult thing to do. But when Obama agreed to it, immediately seven of them said no -- now they're against it. Because Obama has cooties. Democrats have cooties, so you can't vote with them, or work with them, and compromise is treason.

Finally (for now anyway) I'd like to point you to a long-time blogging friend who reminds us, and warns us, how far some on the radical right will go in attempting to affect the change they want.  RIP Harvey Milk.

I'm likely to update this later with more links.  Feel free to suggest any in your comments or to me in a PM at Facebook.

UPDATE:  Here's a dichotomy link from The Boston Globe, showing what good journalism is and why we still and always will need newspapers, and to show how nepotism and cronyism still controls our politics and bureaucracy.