Dylan Ratigan called into his own show yesterday to further explain what he meant by "extracted" in his epic rant the other day:

It's unusual for anyone on the airwaves to point out the elephant in the room, which is that corporations and moneyed interests are able to buy themselves a tax code, and it's this corrupt, bought-and-paid-for tax code, that the Tea Party is out there defending.

Ratigan is a valuable voice, because his reputatin is not one of being closely aligned with either party, and since neither party is untainted by corporate campagn cash, his Howard Beale moment should be widely viewed.

Labels: corporatism, truth

Today's honoree: Who else but Matt Taibbi, who needs no introduction.

Money quote (one of many):

So the debt deal has finally been reached. As expected, the agreement arrives in a form that right-thinking people everywhere can feel terrible about with great confidence.

The general consensus is that for the second time in three years, a gang of financial terrorists has successfully extorted the congress and the White House, threatening to blow up the planet if they didn't get what they wanted.

Back in 2008, the congress and George Bush rewarded Hank Paulson and Wall Street for pulling the Cleavon-Little-"the-next-man-makes-a-move-the-n---er-gets-it" routine by tossing trillions of bailout dollars at the same people who had wrecked the economy.

Now, Barack Obama has surrendered control of the budget to the Tea Party, whose operatives in congress used the same suicide-bomber tactic, threatening a catastrophic default unless the Democrats committed to a regime of steep spending cuts without any tax increases on the wealthy.

Labels: American Oligarchy, bloggers, truth, wussy-ass Democrats

Paul Krugman has been pretty shrill about the debacle that's taken place in Washington since a black Democrat became president and the right wing had a collective nervous breakdown. But today he fills in for David Brooks by taking a well aimed swipe at...well....David Brooks (and others of Bobo's ilk) in a column called "The Centrist Cop-Out" (NYT link):

The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.

As I said, it’s not complicated. Yet many people in the news media apparently can’t bring themselves to acknowledge this simple reality. News reports portray the parties as equally intransigent; pundits fantasize about some kind of “centrist” uprising, as if the problem was too much partisanship on both sides.

Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault.

[snip]

Many pundits view taking a position in the middle of the political spectrum as a virtue in itself. I don’t. Wisdom doesn’t necessarily reside in the middle of the road, and I want leaders who do the right thing, not the centrist thing.

But for those who insist that the center is always the place to be, I have an important piece of information: We already have a centrist president. Indeed, Bruce Bartlett, who served as a policy analyst in the Reagan administration, argues that Mr. Obama is in practice a moderate conservative.

[snip]

So what’s with the buzz about a centrist uprising? As I see it, it’s coming from people who recognize the dysfunctional nature of modern American politics, but refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the one-sided role of Republican extremists in making our system dysfunctional. And it’s not hard to guess at their motivation. After all, pointing out the obvious truth gets you labeled as a shrill partisan, not just from the right, but from the ranks of self-proclaimed centrists.

But making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.

Snap!

And there you have it -- Krugman at his best, taking off the gloves against his own absent colleague. So should we now watch for Paul Krugman to be fired from the New York Times and replaced by, say, Erick Erickson? You know, for balance and all.

Labels: false equivalencies, Paul Krugman, telling it like it is, truth, what liberal media

Labels: truth

Thom Hartmann explains how the ORIGINAL Tea Party was not at all about "small government", or about abortion, or about crushing liberalism, or about any of the pet causes of today's self-styled "Tea Party". It was actually in response to a government that was totally in the pocket of a giant corporation, the East India Company:

And you can rest assured that the original Tea Party wasn't funded by corporate interests the way today's is.

(There's another video, embedded over at Politics USA, but I can't get that one to play. So enjoy this one instead. Or in addition to the other. Then go tell your Tea Party friends the truth (not that the truth has ever mattered to these people if it flies in the face of their ideology...)

Labels: history, Teabaggers, truth

I'm serious. Start telling everyone who will listen the truth (from David Cay Johnston) about the Wisconsin state workers and their benefits:

When it comes to improving public understanding of tax policy, nothing has been more troubling than the deeply flawed coverage of the Wisconsin state employees' fight over collective bargaining.

Economic nonsense is being reported as fact in most of the news reports on the Wisconsin dispute, the product of a breakdown of skepticism among journalists multiplied by their lack of understanding of basic economic principles.

Gov. Scott Walker says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to "contribute more" to their pension and health insurance plans.

Accepting Gov. Walker' s assertions as fact, and failing to check, created the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not.

Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin' s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.

How can that be? Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan. If this were not so a serious crime would be taking place, the gift of public funds rather than payment for services.

Thus, state workers are not being asked to simply "contribute more" to Wisconsin' s retirement system (or as the argument goes, "pay their fair share" of retirement costs as do employees in Wisconsin' s private sector who still have pensions and health insurance). They are being asked to accept a cut in their salaries so that the state of Wisconsin can use the money to fill the hole left by tax cuts and reduced audits of corporations in Wisconsin.

The labor agreements show that the pension plan money is part of the total negotiated compensation. The key phrase, in those agreements I read (emphasis added), is: "The Employer shall contribute on behalf of the employee." This shows that this is just divvying up the total compensation package, so much for cash wages, so much for paid vacations, so much for retirement, etc.

The collective bargaining agreements for prosecutors, cops and scientists are all on-line.

Read the whole thing here. The media will not tell your conservative, and even your not-paying-attention friends this truth. You have to.

Labels: Republican lies, truth, Wisconsin 2011

And yet, I wish he were still around to cut through the bullshit and come up with gems like this (from 2005):

He knew five years ago...and all too many Americans STILL haven't learned, and never will.

(via Yellow Dog)

Labels: corporatism, George Carlin, truth

Move over boys; there's a new girl in town, and shes speaking truth to idiocy in the citadel of the main $cream media! Congratulations to Rachel Maddow and especially to...um...US, the American people, for her superb performance today on Meet the Press. To have an intelligent, liberal voice speaking for us in that old white men's forum is huge, and looking around the channels this morning, it seemed that those uptight white guys who run the show were especially pale today, and Monica Crowley seemed to be more of a joke than usual as the token whatever she is...idiot! Even old Eleanor, trying to shout down Uncle Pat on McLaughlin, couldn't hold up in the blinding light of what is surely Maddow's rising star.

More important is that Maddow is the real deal. She is a true-crime-glossy politics geek, who is not afraid to speak the truth and can hold her own beautifully against anyone and anything that the smartest wonk could come up with. For those of us who have followed Maddow since the late great Unfiltered in the beginnings of Air America Radio, this comes as no surprise. How long could they resist with the way the numbers in this country are actually going? After Tucker made the incredibly brave and misguided mistake of casting her against himself, thus showing how stupid he is, I actually wrote a letter to NY Magazine about how great Maddow is and it was published! I cant remember what I said but it was about how horrible Tucker is but that it was a ballsy choice. God, what a choice it was, on so many levels; and I do think that Tucker was mainly inside of his own bloated head in not realizing that he could only look bad up against her.... Cue Willie Geist, frat brother turned "producer" turned asshole pundit.

The troubling thing is that in the face of the incredible lies being spun by the fringy right, its taken this long for MSNBC to allow Rachel the chance to go head to head with the roulette wheel of wingnuts being give free reign across the airwaves.
The troubling thing is that any insane theory can be floated and the closest we've gotten to a voice of reason, besides the one profitable show, also the one island of sane, Keith Olbermann, is Chris Matthews "playing hard ball." It may make for "good" TV to have the likes of Michelle Malkin slither back with her odd predictions and her pouty mouth, or Uncle Pat spouting racism and insanity, but at a point its like shooting fish in a barrel and there is no excuse to keep Olbermann out there on his own, like hes some angry old guy reciting Murrow lines. Also, they never let Olbermann go up against the likes of these morning show regulars.

The problem is that the media looks for the elements of the story and presents it in a way that doesn't look for truth, but rather draws a simple picture that will be palatable to a wide ranging audience and advertisers. As in the health care debacle, there is a conflict so deep in the media being run by large corporate interests with their first responsibility, by law, being to their shareholders and ultimately the bottom line. But also, there is the obvious slant of entire stations towards their CEO and "owner's" political bent.

That's why its pretty funny that as the numbers don't lie, and the tide is turning, the corporate interest must be served, and there is no way that they can get around the fact that has been pointed out to America by none other than Maddow's biggest champion, Keith Olbermann; we are in the presence of a real star. As much as this must stick in the craw of every firmly entrenched media slouch out there, there is a new level of excellence out there and it goes beyond gender and a million other reasons why America might not accept Maddow as a voice of authority. But the overriding element here seems to be trustworthiness, truth and reason, all of which Maddow wields beautifully in the face of some formidable characters.

Her level of comfort with her subject gives her an ease with the camera and her surroundings, as if she was born to do this. Her humor cuts the thick air of threats being heaped upon the American people right now and allows us to think what we've been thinking, which is that things are very, very wrong out there. The words of those who would call anyone who dissents unamerican, dissolve in her bemused smile and the shake of her head, as if she is dealing with children.

Surely she had on her serious face this morning, under the spectre of being pitted against the wingnut from the land of wingnuttia, Dick Armey. David Gregory, notable only in his ability to cut the conversation off, and almost protecting Armey from himself and Maddow, was as annoying as his tweets about his hair and suits tend to be, and frail enough at hard reporting to do Tim Russert proud in the chair of the softball show of all times; the platform for McCain and his friends to run wild, and the show that will put it in writing that they wont ask you about the hookers and blow if you'll just come on! Are there any reporters out there who want to report the truth? If the fantastic claims of the wingnuts make good TV, is it still a sin to give the people what they want, even if it kills some unsuspecting fools who thought it was OK to go to a town meeting with their representatives, or ask for health care...? Isn't there a way to let these folks air their insanity in full and then allow a Rachel Maddow to hammer them until they have to answer, or start with that old chestnut, "youre badggering me, and I cant answer any questions when Im being badgered!"

The media is as complicit in the past 8 years as Cheney and the blind American public are. And now we are somehow supposed to be patient and not appear to be pushing things through too quickly, as Obama seemingly drags his feet on some very important issues; some life or death issues for alot of people. Healthcare is the issue here, as we all know, and the claims are so stupendous as to be the stuff of Soylent Green and The Island, among others.
Sure, its easier to read the talking points and to jump on board than it is to read the bill and do the research and listen to both sides. The dumbing down of the educational system has worked, but its not just that, it's that we are lazy when it comes to running our lives; we want it all on credit and we are willing to give away the country so as to hang on to more precious cash per year, even if we pay more on the other side to the doctors and insurance companies; just so long as we don't have to look at the balance sheet; just so long as we don't have to feel like the poor folks downtown are taking part of our paycheck. And all of this has been supported by a corporate media that has to answer to the advertisers and the shareholders. What's wrong with this picture?

Is the addition of Rachel Maddow to the Sunday lineup a good sign, or is it desperation by a corporation that has been forced by the numbers into doing something that it really doesn't want to do? Time will tell, and I predict that Rachel will have that seat if she wants it, or any other position at that claptrap "news station."
We owe a debt of gratitude to Olbermann for his key role in using his numbers to give a hand up to another sane voice in the wilderness. The fact that he has those numbers have been looked at as some anomoly, or we would have seen this type of programming explode...change is slow, but its coming....

You will, no doubt, see the videos of her fantastic smack down of Dick Armey (posted below, and here is the transcript.) The question that I have is why is this guy in the government, and why, even if he was elected by some stupid-heads, does he deserve a forum to spin his tales? Maddow has shown great restraint and has given these matters all serious consideration, and manages to address the concerns of the denizens of wingnuttia seriously rather than spitting her coffee all over them in hilarity, while Armey hems and haws, and blocks and weaves, changing the subject every time Maddow strikes near a nerve, with Gregory cutting off the real hammering questions necessary in these matters. So Armey walks away never having to admit the truth or answer a question in a straightforward manner, and MSNBC has its great TV, and around we go; and who is hurt by this? Why, of course, its the American people who sorely need some sort of true north in this debate. They want to be told about it because they don't want to have to read 1500 pages, (of 4 or 5 lines to a page, but still understandable, I guess,) but there is no one to trust anymore in this game.

My suggestion is to try to pick out what sounds totally off the wall and use your minds, as Olbermann said, to think about this. If you're still unsure then read about it, at least, from some reputable sources; multiple sources. And if you're still unsure then read the freakin' bill!

Here in long version, is a clip from today...check it out because it really is some good TV, and stay for the truthful information that Maddow is trying to tease out of the pompous asses surrounding her. I hope to see alot more of this sort of thing...the truth, I hear, is in style right now....





c/p RIP Coco

Labels: health care, Rachel Maddow, truth, wingnuttia

I've reached the acceptance stage that MSNBC is not going to bring the late and lamented Break Room Live to the 10 PM slot. But I would be consoled if they give this guy a show. Because unlike Tweety, Lawrence O'Donnell has been on fire, not hesitating to call a lie a lie, instead of a "false rumor":

Labels: health care, Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC, Republican lies, truth, wingnuttia

David Waldman on CNN's Blogger Bunch, showing how it's done:


Note how the Limbaugh-lookalike in the bowtie attempts to filibuster Waldman, using lots of buzzwords like "American soldiers" (who are completely irrelevant to this discussion). Note also the disgusting spectacle of Erica Williams from the Center for American Progress spouting the party line about "looking forward". It may very well be that Americans don't care. But the soul of this country is at stake here, and Waldman is spot-on: that this discussion of torture is not about whether torture is acceptable to protect the country, it's about whether torture is acceptable when used solely for political purposes, which is clearly the case here. Perhaps if the pollsters whose work shows that Americans don't care asked the question "Do you favor the use of torture against detainees to glean false information for political purposes?", we might see different responses.

(h/t)

Labels: Democrats with balls, torture, truth

What if the most reasonable voice out there on the financial crisis was a discredited, fallen, former prosecutor and governor, who now, having been through the depths of what happens when you turn over too many rocks in this game, can actually speak about it without looking over his shoulder? We know his horrible secret already, and that's the beauty of having him as a voice now. Watch this entire thing because you need to know this. I would venture to say that if we had leaders who were as smart as this guy and who were exorcising their demons with high class call girls rather than say...um...torturing people, maybe we'd be in better shape. I'm sorry for all of us women who were promised fidelity forever and the perfect cotton candy skies (as Sammy Seder used to say about the World of Your Imagination,) but maybe these high power guys should be assigned a hooker of their own, just to keep it all in the lines...y'know? I'm just sayin'...I'm not dismissing his expertise because he did it with a fancy hooker...OK? At least she was fancy and seemingly didn't have diseases; I guess we all draw our own lines.

You didn't hear it from me, but this guy is coming back:




and for those of you who wanted to hear him speak on the horrible scandal, for which he was not charged with any criminal wrongdoing...far be it for me to deprive you of this part:



If we are supposed to focus on the shiny hookers and blow aspect of this guy,then maybe we need to step back from what the media want us to think about and think that he knows so much about this that might actually help us, and what is it that they don't want us to know?

Thanks to Rachel Maddow for booking him...and Fareed Zakaria for booking him for us.

c/p RIP Coco

Labels: economic death watch, spitzer, truth

I've got to admit that during this campaign I haven't been as taken with Obama as some people have. I find myself too disappointed in the process as its been to believe in promises anymore. Maybe its age but these days I hang back with my heart until I see it all in motion. I'm not a true believer in a system being played as if any pure theory of government works without some overlap. The truth of political campaigns is that they are full of empty promises and ideas until its clear that the bodies are all in place and the votes are there to support a promised agenda. Even then, these plans, in the best case scenario, go into working mode with, hopefully, enough representation from the other side to balance, but not enough to stop progress. Somewhere along the line the spinners have convinced the American people that there isn't tremendous room for shaping the ideas that are set forth in these lofty speeches.


c/p RIPCoco

Labels: Barack Obama, Cindy McCain, John McCain, trust, truth

...This is the America of the lucky, folks...the luck of the Russian-Irish/Catholic-jew, where a girl from Brooklyn wakes up in a cottage in the woods to find that her young hens have decided to start laying...
How did I get here? Pure luck...hard work...kindness in the face of anger and dysfunction....but, probably really just sheer tenacity and luck...
It's that pie-in-the-sky America that is hard for me to understand; like the lottery and the forces of nature that decided not to flood my basement or throw a tree on my house...or what made me live through it all, and how did I get through all of these years.


And its the middle management America of getting by, but looking towards the sky for the other shoe falling, while others who I have, by some sort of divine intervention crossed paths and become close with, can barely buy food or go to the doctor as opposed to heat and electricity...and what that could possibly mean in the scheme of the richest country in the world, that made me look to John Edwards as a light in the proceedings that have been grinding forth for these long months...
And now? I'm waiting, like I always do, for the other shoe, whistling to earth like the road-runner's anvil, and in that Edwards will endorse Hillary, thus making my last drop of faith just a salty circle on the sand, proving that none of this is real or true, and all we can do is the busywork of trying to move, snail like, towards some outcome that will be a blip on future historical time lines of the rise and falls of empires just like this one...
If this is the pyramid stone that we are spending our entire lives dragging across the desert in order to complete some monument to the empire, then so be it...Who ever told any of us that we were any more special than anyone else? ...our brothers and sisters who are hungry around the world, or those who live in war torn countries looking heavenward for a bomb, much less a shoe?
Its all just luck...and we could be them, as easily as they could be us...and that "myfriends" is the very foundation of our society's more socialist tendency's, which are....surprise!...the very things that make us who we are!!

I know who I am. Who are you?

I'll just enjoy my eggs for now...enjoy my chickens...and try to figure what comes next.
Of whats left in this race, besides the coming heartbreak of thinking one thing and the dawning realization of another, I like the danger of Obama. Tell me that you are not sure of his experience and if he can get anything done, and I am interested....because the safety of the same old beer with a buddy at the bar is what got us into this place, and the only times that America has really shone in its founding ideals is when some brave people took a flying chance and let the chips fall where they would. Sometimes thats a life or death decision, and sometimes its folly, but it always has historical significance, and more importantly, those moments have had a real effect on we Americans , and how we view the evolution of our society. In fact, those people and those moments have been the shining moments of discovery, invention, and the words and actions that make us who we tell ourselves we are...or who we strive to be...a more perfect union, and kinder, more humane, beings.
When I was a young girl, I stood on a crowded curved street in Chinatown, holding my mom's hand, and watched as RFK Sr. drove through on the back of an old Cadillac convertible, waving. His brother had been shot, and he could've easily been shot there in the middle of the dense crowd, moving slowly past that old orthodox church with the tiny fair in the back complete with live goldfish to win and an erector-set sorta ferris wheel, knowing the danger and still grabbing hold of the moment to say the words that would be part of history....that would change my world as yellowing newspaper clips on the wall over Mom's old radio in the dark dining room in Brooklyn, where she sat for hours listening to talk radio in her grandmother's rocking chair.

So bring on the instability and unsureness of Obama over the same old Clintonian bureaucracy any day...bring it on quickly...because I've lost my faith in almost every part of this thing that I have been hanging on to and trying to believe in. And all thats anymore left is to tell myself that this piece of history is way to tiny for us to see the effect...way too tiny to matter in our lifetimes...and the real faith here has to be that what we do today will be realized by our children and their children...right?...and, that takes a kind of faith that I may spend the rest of my life trying to muster and I blindly move forward trying to divine whats right in this circumstance...as if we could ever imagine that what would be put forth would NOT be impeachment, criminal investigation, jail...a big change....Is there even a question? I don't know how to do anything else but watch and wait and chronicle this as best I can....

easy over or scrambled?

c/p RIPCoco

Labels: Barack Obama, trust, truth

You became one today when you testified before Congress and the American people that "the American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes. And they don't need to be told elaborate lies":



Here's another hero: A mother who understands all too well what war is and that painting this war as something glorious, something out of a John Wayne movie, is an atrocity:



Now for people who AREN'T heroes: The Christofascist ghouls who are increasingly taking over the military -- people like Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, whose disgusting remarks were repeated today by Mary Tillman:

"His parents continue to ask for it to be looked at," Kauzlarich said. "And that is really their prerogative. And if they have the right backing, the right powerful people in our government to continue to let it happen, then that is the case.

"But there [have] been numerous unfortunate cases of fratricide, and the parents have basically said, 'OK, it was an unfortunate accident.' And they let it go. So this is — I don't know, these people have a hard time letting it go. It may be because of their religious beliefs."

In a transcript of his interview with Brig. Gen. Gary Jones during a November 2004 investigation, Kauzlarich said he'd learned Kevin Tillman, Pat's brother and fellow Army Ranger who was a part of the battle the night Pat Tillman died, objected to the presence of a chaplain and the saying of prayers during a repatriation ceremony in Germany before his brother's body was returned to the United States.

Kauzlarich, now a battalion commanding officer at Fort Riley in Kansas, further suggested the Tillman family's unhappiness with the findings of past investigations might be because of the absence of a Christian faith in their lives.

In an interview with ESPN.com, Kauzlarich said: "When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don't believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more — that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don't know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough."

Asked by ESPN.com whether the Tillmans' religious beliefs are a factor in the ongoing investigation, Kauzlarich said, "I think so. There is not a whole lot of trust in the system or faith in the system [by the Tillmans]. So that is my personal opinion, knowing what I know."

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, Iraq, truth