The Add You Didn't See on TV

Here's the advertisement you probably saw on ... uh, ... ummmm ..., -- I guess maybe you haven't seen it on tv at all, for some reason!

This is the Sickness

Compliments of Political Heretic at DU

Sanders Op-Ed: Earth Day

Newsroom: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont)sets the record straight with his usual clarity and force. The emails didn't discredit the science, there isn't any reason to doubt the science, the overwhelming evidence continues to illustrate that catastrophic climate change is beginning to occur and it is largely caused by the human burning of fossil fuels and cutting down of forests.

The only dissent on this consensus comes from fossil fuel purveyors and their paid publicists.

Richard S. Lindzen - SourceWatch

This climate change denier is so well respected in the scientific and anti-scientific communities, that he got placed above the fold on today's WSJ editorial page

Although the deniers insist that the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists who predict catastrophic global climate change because of human burning of fossil fuels and deforestation is due to the financial rewards for green heralds, as well as intimidation of those who are skeptical of the science, Lindzen makes no mention of the financial rewards of his own associations with the fossil fuel industry, that it is the most profitable industry in the history of the world, and that fossil fuel billionaires have been generously funding the research attempting to establish climate change denial.

The Journal lists Lindzen as a "professor of Meteorology" in the bio for his editorial, which is subtitled, "Climate Warming Alarmists Have Been Discredited, But You Wouldn't Know It From The Rhetoric This Earth Day." He wants to use the East Anglia email hacking as a bona fide instance of "discrediting".

Nowhere does Lindzen mention the outcome of a parliamentary investigation into the controversial emails.

This is Encouraging

I would comment on this but I'm banned from Media Matters. Joe Strupp posts at MediaMatters: Newspaper Guild President Tells FCC To Limit Consolidation

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Tea Party Protesters Rally Against "Gangster Government" - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

In the Story, Tea Party Protesters Rally Against "Gangster Government," Political Hotsheet of CBS News, an outlet I have not examined for years, allows for a fact-checked, objective report on the Tax Day events.

This story links to another article in which President Obama is explained as being "amused" by the tax protesters, and in which he is quoted as saying yesterday,

In all, we passed 25 different tax cuts last year. And one thing we haven't done is raise income taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year -- another promise that we kept,"

The taxes being protested at the rallies seem to be of equal or comparable substance with another complaint at the rallies: that Obama is a communist, and the Obama Administration wants to take over and socialize the entire US economic private sector. Indeed, Michelle Bachman, Republican of Minnesota--is on record as repeating--not only at rallies--but on national television--that the economy was one hundred percent private at the time just before the Obama Administration assumed power. Her claim is that now fifty-one percent of the economy is in the controlling grasp of government.

Hotsheet reporter Daniel Riedel, however, is able to state:

Bachmann offered no facts to back up her assertion that the government owns or controls 51 percent of the U.S. economy.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis data since 1929, the highest percentage of government spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product was during World War II when government spending was 47.9 percent (in 1944). The lowest level of government spending as a percent of GDP was 9 percent in 1929 at the outset of the Great Depression.

At no time during this period was the United States' GDP 100 percent private.

The 2009 level of federal government spending was 20.6 percent.

In another link to the "Gangster" article, author Brian Montopoli points out that the idea of the current banking regulation bill as a permanent "bailout bill," originated with GOP pollster Frank Luntz. A chorus of GOP legislators and noise machine news outlets are repeating the idea in unison to try to establish that the Obama Administration is somehow taking over the economy by doing the bidding of the Wall Street banks. In a related contention, they claim the passage of the Health Care Bill signifies the stunning takeover of a total of more than half of the US economy by the US government.



These stories are stunning to me, however, because they show an actual corporate news outlet providing facts, statistics, and background checking to GOP and right wing or Tea Party talking points.

It's very rare to see a corporate news outlet suggest that any of their claims are exaggerated, much less false. Does this signal a new intent of the GOP to try to marginalize the extremist, fact-challenged Tea Party led by Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman?

It might be a wise strategy for the GOP to implement, despite the energy of the Tea Party movement. With plenty of time before the fall elections for voters to do their homework, it's worth noting that the corporate news outlets can't get away with the propagandizing they are so well-paid for by their corporate sponsors to the same extent as in the past. The public can get information from the internet now, and even from some corporate news outlets that are programming news shows to target the young Progressive-viewer market.





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MSNBC's Rachel Maddow - Koch Ind. tries pre-emptive denial, busted for T...

My New Theme

Conservative means wanting to keep things from changing, maintaining the status quo. That's why the Republicans=Conservatives and Democrats = Liberals equations are false. Most Democrats and most Republicans are conservatives. We all just want somebody else to do our thinking for us, and tell us when to act out in mindless self-righteous indignation.

Why read BBC News ?

Pakistan 'army air strike kills dozens of civilians'

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At least 73 civilians were killed when an army jet bombed a remote village in Pakistan's tribal region of Khyber, a local official has told the BBC.

At least it wasn't us this time.

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Washington Post's Anti-Social Security Crusade Continues

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Washington Post's Anti-Social Security Crusade Continues

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How Americans Are Propagandized About Afghanistan | World | AlterNet

Glen Greenwald put together another incisive piece on the US media and NATO in Afghanistan.

But far more often, Americans are completely misled about events in Afghanistan by the combination of false official claims and mindless stenographic American "journalism."

Critics, including Afghan officials, human rights workers and some field commanders of conventional American forces, say that Special Operations forces have been responsible for a large number of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan and operate by their own rules.

On Feb. 21 in Oruzgan Province, a small Special Operations forces unit heard that a group of Taliban were heading their way and called for air support. Attack helicopters killed 27 civilians in three trucks, mistaking them for the Taliban.

In February 2010, in Paktia Province in southeastern Afghanistan, US Special Forces

killed a local police chief and a district prosecutor when they came out, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, to investigate. Three women who came to their aid, according to interviews with family members and friends, were also killed; one was a pregnant mother of 10, the other a pregnant mother of 6.

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UK 'Climategate' Inquiry Largely Clears Scientists : NPR

nothing in the more than 1,000 stolen e-mails, or the controversy kicked up by their publication, challenged scientific consensus that "global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity."

What a relief that we don't have to worry about whether or not climate change is real and confirmed by broad scientific and political consensus.

Just don't tell American media and their politicians!

Write To Your Senate Banking Committee Rep

Chuck Schumer is a member of the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs

You can go to the above link, find the Committee members, and write to them about the Financial Reform Legislation now pending in the Committee. I did. Here's what I told Chuck Schumer:


Honorable Senator Schumer:

Please empower the new Financial Services Regulatory Agency so that it is independent and unchecked by an appointed commission. The regulatory body is being forced into existence by necessity to protect the public interest.

Any effort to compromise that public protection by housing the new body in the Federal Reserve or controlling it through an appointed oversight board will most likely neutralize whatever real long-term protections the new Agency could have afforded the public, and might even lead to greater damage and abuses.

We need restoration of Glass-Steagal, transparent regulation of all derivatives and derivative trading, and a taxpayer-friendly solution to "Too Big To Fail."

An oversight panel could easily be fashioned to weaken all these proven necessary roles for the new Agency.

Thank you for standing up for the people despite the pressure from financial institutions and their lobbyists.

We're counting on you!

Thank you.

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Whose Spectrum? Our Spectrum!

FreePress is jumping on the Court of Appeals ruling blocking the FCC from regulating internet providers. There's a form at Savetheinternet.com where you can write to the Commission and demand an open internet.

Dear Commissioners:

The magnetic spectrum and the electrons, protons and other subatomic particles comprising it, cannot be patented, owned, proprietized, privatized, or corporatized. They cannot be removed from the Commons. These waves and particles and the natural forces and properties that govern them, exist, have existed, and will exist in nature. The spectrum, like the airwaves, exists in nature without human input.

This is why we have public utilities for electricity and water. These natural resources cannot be co-opted from public ownership and usage or otherwise taken from the Commons. They are natural resources commonly owned and used by everybody.

Can the water in the world and the processes of evaporation and precipitation be owned or patented by a corporation, to the exclusion of everybody else?

Can sunlight and the process of photosynthesis be owned?

What about the sun itself?

If a law drafted by the FCC is deficient in describing the reality of public--not private--ownership of these phenomena, then change that law.

The FCC must reclassify broadband as a "telecommunications service" so that Federal regulators can keep the Internet open and free of corporate gatekeepers and pirates.

Without vital Net Neutrality protections and the ability to enforce them, the internet ceases to be a public platform for free speech, equal opportunity, economic growth and innovation. Instead, companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, which have a commercial incentive to limit the free-flowing Web, will decide whose voices are heard.

This miswritten regulation effectively hands ownership of the people's internet to a couple of non-human, corporate behemoths. The fingerprints of Kevin Martin are all over this ineffectual regulatory wording.

You have the power to protect the public interest and quickly rectify this deficiency in Federal regulations.

Keep the Internet in the hands of the people, who are its true owners and proprietary users.

For Example ...

No wonder the "opposition party" is frustrated; they're not really opposing anything.
If all you do is listen to corporate disinformation all day, you're not going to feel the government is working for you--especially in a democracy where the government is the people.

These delusions are denying these people of their participation in their own democracy! They're not in touch with reality, intentionally! No wonder they claim to be ignored!

From Booman:

Method To Republican Madness

Are we starting to see a pattern in Republican opposition to Obama, as to Clinton? The GOP has no plan for progress, so they create chaos and pressure the vulnerable voters to long for any change that will at least bring stability. It's a plan that was developed by the CIA in Iran, Chile, and Nicaragua. They tried to use it to bring down Saddam, too. But now it's being turned against our own country.

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Robert Parry is Still On To Something

But the media don't want you to know.

Consortium News is one media outlet the Republican Noise machine will never own. It's incredible how the American public lets the corporate media launder our news.

My take on the docility of Democratic politicians is that Parry is right about the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy and the US Association for International Development. The Democratic politicians know that these organizations operate outside the light of public scrutiny and that these groups have also been willing to utilize any subterfuge to defeat their opponents.

So, our brave Democratic Senators and Representatives go running to the apron strings of corporate chiefs with absurd trade and economic policies, union-busting, globalization, financial deregulation and defunding of public institutions--like public schools and universities. Clinton and Obama hope these gestures will "buy off" their corporate overlords, allay their hostility toward "liberals," and help restore the balance of Republican good will in their favor.

In the American Revolution, the wealthiest men like Hancock, Washington, John Adams, and the others, were willing to sacrifice everything they had--not for their own freedom from responsibility--but for the benefit of their country.

Today, the wealthy power brokers are willing to sacrifice not only their countrymen--but the country itself--for their own individual gain.

Coal app