What the MSM Isn’t Reporting

Posted: November 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, Corporate Crime, Democratic Politics, Economy, financial institutions, Main Stream Media, poverty, The Media SUCKS, unemployment | Tags: , , | 15 Comments

If anyone had doubts that the mainstream media is deliberately fudging the details on the events surrounding the Occupy Wall St. Movement in general and the Occupy Oakland protests in particular, the following video is unlikely to dissuade you of that doubt.  Cenk Uygur was actually in Oakland on Wednesday during the general strike in Oakland—feet on the ground, eyeballs watching the events unfold.

Surprise!

The MSM had no cameras present. They had no cameras available during the Oakland police department’s original raid on protesters, The Night of Tear Gas and Batons.  That was also the night of the strange, weird coincidence when both the ABC and CBS helicopters needed refueling at precisely the same moment.

The world is being blanketed by stunning coincidence.

Fortunately, [but to the shock of many Americans] that night was recorded independently, the startling images preserved.

Cenk Uygur [The Young Turks] as some may recall had a brief 6-month stint on MSNBC, an hour-long show during which he was often critical of Barack Obama’s less than stellar record.  Uygur’s ratings were excellent but he was called in by management and asked to ‘tone it down.’  Translation?  Stop knocking POTUS and the Democratic Party’s slide to the corporate right.  Though offered more money to host a new show, Uygur politely turned MSNBC management down, and then went on the record and told his audience what had happened.  His slot was quickly filled by the Reverend Al Sharpton, who is happy as a clam to shill for the President and all things Democratic.  That would be the ‘My Party, Right or Wrong’ strategy.

For myself?  It’s the reason, I no longer watch MSNBC’s 6 pm broadcast.

The You Tube video is revealing—Uygur’s astonishment at how underreported the crowd size in Oakland truly was.  But I also found some startling photographs that belie the MSM’s attempt to undercut the groundswell of support this movement is capturing.  It’s growing despite the naysayers and critics.  It’s growing despite the MSM’s attempt to edit and minimize. It’s growing against all odds.

The Tea Party, of course, wants everyone to go home and get a job.  Which a lot of these people would probably happily do if there were jobs to get, the sort that pay a living wage—that small complication of making enough money to feed yourself and your family, pay the rent, keep the lights on.   We were told yesterday morning that unemployment ticked down a tenth of a percentile.  That would make the ‘official’ unemployment number 9 instead of 9.1%.  And there have been reports coming out suddenly to tell the country that stories of poverty and inequality are vastly exaggerated, even though the Census Bureau’s numbers show 1 in 15 Americans now categorized as the ‘poorest of the poor,’ the biggest jump recorded in 35 years.  Btw, that would be 50% or less than the official poverty level, which translates to $5,570  for an individual; $11, 157 for a family of four.

Seems to be an awful lot of sputtering, squirming and spinning going on.

Surely, it’s mere coincidence.

Tuesday Late Afternoon Blues

Posted: September 20, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Bailout Blues, Barack Obama, Congress, DADT, Democratic Politics, Domestic Policy, Economy, Elections, Equity Markets, Federal Budget, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, GLBT Rights, Main Stream Media, Politics as Usual, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 25 Comments

Minxy’s out surfing samsara this afternoon.  I’m trying to muster up some good vibes today for her as she faces all the “it’s a short life” kind’ve stuff that goes on with the early passing of a friend. As for me, I seem to be entering my blue period. Maybe it’s because I just get cannot this friggin’ gravity model specified correctly and maybe it’s just my parameters that are tangled up and BLUE.  Okay, you won’t know what BLUE means for a regression estimator (Best Linear Unbiased Estimator  e.g. BLUE) unless you’re as steeped in econometrics as I am but it’s a good play on words.  REALLY. Chuckle sympathetically because I need it today.  I wish I could like football like normal people.  Instead, I follow the bloodsport of politics and its inherent nastiness these days and I have way too many degrees in the dismal science.  The results are bound to get to you one way or another.

So this little piece is about the U.S. and blue to match my mood.   I’m going to start out with some blue estimators of a different sort.

There was a bit of poll that showed a glimmer of true hope instead of the manufactured sort out today.  Recent entrant into the Massachusetts Senate Race, Elizabeth Warren, is polling ahead of glamor boy Republican Scott Brown who replaced the late Ted Kennedy.

Elizabeth Warren has had an incredibly successful launch to her Senate campaign and actually leads Scott Brown now by a 46-44 margin, erasing what was a 15 point deficit the last time we polled the state in early June.

Warren’s gone from 38% name recognition to 62% over the last three months and she’s made a good first impression on pretty much everyone who’s developed an opinion about her during that period of time.  What was a 21/17 favorability rating in June is now 40/22- in other words she’s increased the voters with a positive opinion of her by 19% while her negatives have risen only 5%.

The surprising movement toward Warren has a lot to do with her but it also has a lot to do with Scott Brown.  We now find a slight plurality of voters in the state disapproving of him- 45%, compared to only 44% approving.  We have seen a steady decline in Brown’s numbers over the last 9 months.  In early December his approval was a +24 spread at 53/29.  By June it had declined to a +12 spread at a 48/36.  And now it’s continued that fall to its current place.

Meanwhile, the mixed up mess of Republican presidential candidates is shaking up to a two white man race.  Gallup reports that Perry has a better chance than Romney of sealing the nomination at this point, but Romney has a better chance than Perry to beat Obama.  No surprises there.

Rick Perry leads Mitt Romney by 31% to 24% in a new USA Today/Gallup poll of Republican presidential nomination preferences. The two are well ahead of the rest of the GOP field, with Ron Paul the only other candidate in double figures.

…

Perry seems to have momentum, but that could be slowed in the coming weeks if Republicans start to perceive that Romney is more electable in the general election. The new poll finds the slight majority of Republicans, 53%, prefer to see their party nominate the person who has the best chance of beating Obama, even if that person does not agree with them on almost all of the issues they care about. Forty-three percent would prefer a candidate who does agree with them on almost all of the issues, even if that person does not have the best chance of winning in November 2012.

Romney currently edges out President Barack Obama by 49% to 47% in national registered-voter preferences for the November election, while Perry trails Obama by 45% to 50%. However, neither Romney nor Obama is ahead by a statistically significant margin.

It’s no wonder Perry wants out of Texas.  This poll should direct Perry into the Even Cowgirls get the Blues line.  Texans do not like Governor Goodhair if you believe PPP’s numbers.

The poll, released Tuesday, showed Perry with a negative approval in Texas: while 45 percent of the state’s voters approve of Perry’s job performance, 48 percent of Texas voters say they don’t approve.

Obama should have The Blues over this poll from Marist.  Will this lead to calls for a primary challenger on calls on him to pull an LBJ?

President Barack Obama faces a litany of bad news.  The president’s job approval rating, his favorability, and his rating on the economy have hit all-time lows.  To compound matters, three in four Americans still believe the nation is in a recession and the proportion who thinks the country is moving in the wrong direction is at its highest point in more than a decade.

According to this McClatchy-Marist Poll, the president’s approval rating is at 39% among registered voters nationally, an all-time low for Mr. Obama.  For the first time a majority — 52% — disapproves of the job he is doing in office, and 9% are unsure.

You’ve always known that Wall Street is only True Blue to profits and not the country right?  Grok this headline at Politico via the WSJ.  It looks like a lot of hedge funds were betting the US to lose its AAA standing with S&P.  The SEC is launching insider trading probes.  Can we please get some perp walks now, please?

Securities and Exchange Commission officials have sent subpoenas to financial firms in a probe of whether there was insider trading — betting on a market crash — before the United States’ long-term credit rating was cut by S&P last month, reports The Wall Street Journal.

At issue are trades that were made by hedge funds and other firms shortly before the rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded U.S. debt from triple-A to double-A-plus on Aug. 5 and cited the dysfunctional political climate in Washington as one of the reasons.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 635 points, or 5.5 percent, on Aug. 8, the first day of trading after the downgrade. This was the sharpest one-day decline since the financial crisis in 2008, but it also made bets against the market very profitable.

Securities regulators are looking for firms that bet the stock market would drop — in particular, bearish trades that seem unusually large or were made by firms that typically do not make them.

An SEC spokesman declined to tell The Wall Street Journal which investment firms have received subpoenas.

My guess is it’s the usual vampire squid suspects and all the rest of the guys whose blue balls we pulled out of the bankruptcy fire with TARP and tax dollars. Bets any one?

So here’s the a nifty chart from Paul Krugman–with blue bars–that will make you scream until you’re blue in the face.  Look whose been winning the class war since 1979.  So the deal is not only is their share of income and assets way up, but their after tax income has gone way up too.

Changes in tax rates have strongly favored the very, very rich.

Now, they’re only a fairly small part of the huge growth in the after-tax inequality of income. But tax policy has very much leaned into that growing inequality, not against it — and anyone who says otherwise should not be trusted on this issue, or any other.

So, of course the moment we get a whiff of anything slightly Democratic coming from the President we experience blue dogs howling at the blue moon and the beltway press.

Centrist Democrats, a dwindling breed on Capitol Hill, were quickly faced with another rough choice once Obama went public with his plans: Reject their president or back what Republicans are already calling the largest tax increase in the nation’s history.

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, who is up for reelection in 2012, has supported raising taxes on millionaires but was still weighing whether he’d support higher taxes on those who make more than $200,000 a year, said spokesman Dan McLaughlin.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), a key moderate who’s up for reelection next year, didn’t mince words: “There’s too much discussion about raising taxes right now, not enough focus on cutting spending.”

But Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who likely will face GOP Rep. Denny Rehberg in next year’s reelection bid, hedged a bit, saying he backs provisions in Obama’s plan that call for closing tax loopholes that benefit millionaires and corporations

“This plan isn’t the one I would have written, nor is it the one that will end up passing Congress,” Tester said. “But I welcome all ideas to the table so Congress can work together to create jobs, cut debt and cut spending.”

Blue blooded villager David Brooks admits to being an Obama sap and refers to Beltway Bob as “appreciative”.  I prefer the term deep-throating, but hey, there’s a glint of recognition, right? It’s a two for one villager idiot piece! Look! I’ve managed to use some blue language.

Yes, I’m a sap. I believed Obama when he said he wanted to move beyond the stale ideological debates that have paralyzed this country. I always believe that Obama is on the verge of breaking out of the conventional categories and embracing one of the many bipartisan reform packages that are floating around.

But remember, I’m a sap. The White House has clearly decided that in a town of intransigent Republicans and mean ideologues, it has to be mean and intransigent too. The president was stung by the liberal charge that he was outmaneuvered during the debt-ceiling fight. So the White House has moved away from the Reasonable Man approach or the centrist Clinton approach.

It has gone back, as an appreciative Ezra Klein of The Washington Post conceded, to politics as usual. The president is sounding like the Al Gore for President campaign, but without the earth tones. Tax increases for the rich! Protect entitlements! People versus the powerful! I was hoping the president would give a cynical nation something unconventional, but, as you know, I’m a sap.

Being a sap, I still believe that the president’s soul would like to do something about the country’s structural problems. I keep thinking he’s a few weeks away from proposing serious tax reform and entitlement reform. But each time he gets close, he rips the football away. He whispered about seriously reforming Medicare but then opted for changes that are worthy but small. He talks about fundamental tax reform, but I keep forgetting that he has promised never to raise taxes on people in the bottom 98 percent of the income scale.

I nearly had to stop reading the damned thing since I was about to pass out from putting my palm to my forehead just a few too many times.  Yes, it’s turning black and blue. How are we supposed to get grown up discussions about policy when the two largest newspapers in the country insist posting self serving drivel on a near daily basis.

Okay, here’s my last offering which really does show the best of the Red, White and Blue.  Today is the formal removal of DADT.  0penly Gay and lesbian members of our military no longer have to live double lives or be subject to dismissal.

With Tuesday’s repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, gays and lesbians are now free to serve openly in the U.S. armed services.

The U.S. military has spent months preparing for the repeal, updating regulations and training to reflect the impending change, and the Pentagon has already begun accepting applications from openly gay men and women.

It’s events like this that give you a sense that in some way, it’s still

WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity

I’m going to get some iced tea and head back to my trade and foreign direct investment research. But, here’s two of my favorites: Dylan’s Tangled up and Blue done by the Indigo Girls for you on this afternoon in New Orleans under a blue sky.

and every one of them words rang true

and glowed like a burning coal

pourin off every page

Like it was written in my soul from me to you

Tangled up and Blue

I lived with them on Montague Street

In a basement down the stairs

There was music in the cafes at night

And revolution in the air …

A ray of hope against Hatred and Hype (updated after the fold)

Posted: January 9, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Human Rights, Main Stream Media, Middle East | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Stained glass by Sarah Zirkel, zirkelmosaics.com (Click thumbnail to go to the site)

I often blog about hoping against Hope, but after yesterday’s haunting display of violence, I want to briefly turn to (and then pivot from) the undercurrents that drove that display: Hatred and Hype.

Too much of both has been polluting the dialogue in America for far too long.

That pollution has Consequences. We saw that yesterday.

But on the flip side of Hatred and Hype is authentic hope. From my hoping against Hope essay:

Authentic hope is grounded by healthy skepticism and action, not by a glossy Shepard Fairey poster.

Positive reframing of thought is rethinking things in a way that is constructive rather than destructive. It must be met with a positive reframing of actions — a plan.

Public policy that gestated at the Heritage Foundation before being passed by Democrats is not a plan.

We can’t just close our eyes, imagine a better world, open our eyes to watch as more wealth is transferred to Wall Street, and then expect that better world to somehow spontaneously manifest itself. At the same time, if we close our eyes and see nothing, nothing will ever progress. We need vision to have a plan, and that’s where hope comes in. It has driven humanity against the odds time and time again. Real hope is a call to action.

Real hope is this — “Egypt’s Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as ‘human shields’” (from ahram.org, with Yasmine El-Rashidi reporting):

Muslims turned up in droves for the Coptic Christmas mass Thursday night, offering their bodies, and lives, as “shields” to Egypt’s threatened Christian community

Read the rest of this entry »

Corporate Money, Corporate Press, Corporate Congress

Posted: December 29, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Corporate Crime, Democratic Politics, Main Stream Media, president teleprompter jesus, Team Obama, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd, Wikileaks, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , | 40 Comments

Some astute and somewhat outrageous comments by outgoing Congressman John Hall in The New York Observer should cause pause and some good discussions. That is, if any one pays attention to them.

Speaking about the Citizen’s United decision, which allowed unregulated flow of cash into campaign coffers, Hall said, “I learned when I was in social studies class in school that corporate ownership or corporate control of government is called Fascism. So that’s really the question— is that the destination if this court decision goes unchecked?”

That’s the astute part.  The outrageous part is “the flow of corporate dollars is why he and the Democrats lost control of Congress”.  Well, imho, there’s some yes and no in that.  Here’s a CNN corporate sponsored poll that may shine some light on that.

President Barack Obama enters the new year with a growing number of Americans pessimistic about his policies and a growing number rooting for him to fail, according to a new national poll.

Full poll results [pdf]

But a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday also indicates that while a majority of the public says Republican control of the House of Representatives is good for the country, only one in four say the GOP will do a better job running things than the Democrats did when they controlled the chamber.

Sixty-one percent of people questioned in the poll say they hope the president’s policies will succeed.

“That’s a fairly robust number but it’s down 10 points since last December,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Twelve months ago a majority of the public said that they thought Obama’s policies would succeed; now that number has dropped to 44 percent, with a plurality predicting that his policies will likely fail.”

There’s a large number of people out there that seem to see no real difference between the Republicans, INC. and Democrats Inc. in terms of outcomes. They hope the explicitly stated goals of Obama policy succeed.  They doubt the laws passed support those goals.  They believe they will fail.  I think people see the disconnect between the rhetoric and the product delivered now. I honestly don’t believe that voters put the Republicans in charge of the house because they love Republican policy, if these polls mean anything.  That poll and many others show voters support the outcomes of authentically Democratic policy.  I believe this election was more a play for gridlock simply because they don’t see what’s been passed as achieving the ends of what they want.  They believe it will fail.

How many people really want the kinds of things pushed by John Bohener who–as an example–just met with culture thug Randall Terry and other monsters of the Republican base after their mid-November victory lap? There’s only so far you can get by pushing a repeal to DADT on the basis of  gays and straights showering together.   This is especially true when the vast majority of people support repeal. Remember Terry Schiavo?  Played well with the base but horrified the country?  What would happen if we saw more reporting of this kind of thing on CNN?   I bet you never saw that before I pointed it out to you via Salon.

Let’s get back to Hall’s comments.

The extra money floating around, he said, compounded the Democrats’ weaknesses on the economy, unemployment and the mortgage crisis. And he said that for of the accomplishments of the lame duck Congress, their failure to pass the Disclose Act—which would have at least forced corporations to reveal who they were donating to—stood out a as a black mark on the session.

“We are talking about supposedly wholesome names like Revere America, American Crossroads, Americans for Apple Pie and Motherhood—if somebody hasn’t trademarked that one I probably should.  The fact is you can call it anything and the money could be coming from BP or Aramco or any corporation domestic or foreign,” Congressman Hall said.

Well, that’s a good point.  I’m still pushing for congress critterz to be forced to wear NASCR-like jackets listing their top corporate contributors as long as they’re in office.  That would include the ones hiding behind their advocacy ad creating subsidiaries okayed by SCOTUS, INC.  I’m still not certain that the extra money floating around was the reason for The Big Shellac.  I’m still guessing that every one was hoping to stop the Washington DC Pork Train and laws so long and complex that no one can really figure out what they really do.  These are the laws that people think will fail them.  If anything, we should see a slow down of that process. I think the American people want to slow the process down so they can figure out if it’s good or bad for them and if it will achieve what they support.

BUT, The Big Shellac came at the high cost of forwarding Republican laws and agendas that please the Republican Bircher Base.  Plus, there’s more possible SCOTUS fights and appointments that only please the Bircher and Religionist Base.  Hence, the nice get together with Randall Terry whom Salon described as:

Randall Terry is a psychopath, an antiabortion zealot who endorses domestic terror and compares coldblooded murderers to heroic abolitionists. He’s also a ridiculous character whose true calling is self-promotion, by any means necessary.

He long ago went from prominent figure in the raging abortion debate to desperate self-parody. He renounced his gay son, left his wife for a campaign volunteer, and sought a reality television show. If it weren’t for YouTube, no one would’ve even noticed his inflammatory statements about the murder of Dr. George Tiller. In short, Randall Terry’s not only an extremist nutcase, he’s also old news.

But now that the Republicans are back, this faded celebrity is mounting a comeback. Terry’s most recent e-mail blast featured a photo of the radical Catholic cleric sitting down with incoming Speaker John Boehner himself. “With Boehner’s chief of staff, after the election,” the caption read. (Terry also presented the incoming speaker with a fetus doll resting on some sort of “decree.”)

A Speaker of the House Boehner does not return to Congress to any degree of sanity. I won’t even go in to the incredible problems some one must have to cry that much and drink that hard.  A Republican congress  just increases the show factor, imho.  It also brings us back to the idea that we not only need to get corporate money out of politics,we need it out of the press. The CNN indicates that the President is likable enough, he’s just not focused on the right things.  That’s where the money comes in.  If congressional leaders and the White House continue to go back and forth between corporate and state interests and the only folks with real access are either groups that can deliver zealous voters and big bucks, we’re in trouble.  We’re especially in trouble of the press continues on in its route of  “sins of omission” that appear  to play into the hands of their advertisers and the interests of government. The Village does not want to run off their advertisers and the few readers/viewers left standing.

This is the importance of Wikileaks and independent media organizations like Democracy Now. They produce things of Public Interest that  are not censored, swayed, or bullied by corporate and state interests.  As we’ve seen in one after another of the dribbles of diplomatic cables coming from European press, there appears to be a lot of  melding of corporate and state interests.  This is not good for any one but corporate and authoritarian state interests.   European press is filtering the leaked diplomatic cables right now. The majority of them remain out of the public domain.  The European papers are less corporate than their U.S. counterparts which is better.  We may still not actually see all of the material.   Press, government and corporate interests are way too cozy in this country.  If you go back to what Congressman Hall said, it’s the classic definition of fascism.

update: I wanted to add the link above on the  “classic definition of fascism” because I just read some posts from right wing sources linked to this article at Mememorandum that are obviously trying to rewrite history.  I’ve linked to the writings of Mussolini.  This is part of the definition of fascism as put forward by Mussolini.  Socialism and Marxism are NOT fascism in Mussolini’s definition.  The right frequently tries to shove them into the same package.  It was a post war trick used to focus hate of Nazis/Facism over to our former allies, the Soviets.  Mussolini wrote this in 1932 as part of his definition.

…Fascism [is] the complete opposite of…Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production…. Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied – the natural progeny of the economic conception of history. And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society.

I think if you go read it much of it sounds like the Republican manifesto.

“Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy …”

Mussolini spit out the world socialism, liberalism, and democracy in the same way the Bircher wing of the Republican party spits those words out.

KO for KO?

Posted: November 5, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Elections, Main Stream Media, The DNC, The Media SUCKS | Tags: , , | 67 Comments

Two breaking news stories worth front paging are sweeping blog headlines.

First, Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely without pay at MSNBC for donationg to three Democratic candidates during the last election. This is from Politico.

Olbermann made campaign contributions to two Arizona members of Congress and failed Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway ahead of Tuesday’s election.

Olbermann, who acknowledged the contributions in a statement to POLITICO, made the maximum legal donations of $2,400 apiece to Conway and to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. He donated to the Arizona pair on Oct. 28 — the same day that Grijalva appeared as a guest on Olbermann’s “Countdown” show.

NBC has a rule against employees contributing to political campaigns, and a wide range of news organizations prohibit political contributions — considering it a breach of journalistic independence to contribute to the candidates they cover.

Other links:

CBS

Mediaite

The second breaking news story of interest is that Nancy Pelosi will run for Minority Leader.  This is from Ryan Griffin at Huffpo. Pelosi  Tweeted the announcement.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will make a bid to be Democratic minority leader, she announced Friday via Twitter. “Driven by the urgency of creating jobs & protecting , #wsr, Social Security & Medicare, I am running for Dem Leader,” she tweeted.

Other Links:

CNN

Politico

In related news, Rep. Van Hollen is leaving his chairmanship at the DCCC.

← Older Entries