Good night, and Piss Off ... cause Edward R. Murrow you ain't.

Azaran on 15/4/2011 at 23:12

Quote:

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media

- Noam Chomsky

CCCToad on 16/4/2011 at 03:56

Hmm....Lets see.

The Economy is recovering, new stories of Gadhafi's atrocities have appeared, and not raising the debt ceiling will cause a global collapse.

So much for that fancy theory you quoted.

Azaran on 16/4/2011 at 04:01

It was more applicable during the Bush era

CCCToad on 16/4/2011 at 04:05

Funny article, not 100% related, but it does touch on the reason why television news is all the same. They're all owned by several major corporations.

(http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/james-quinn/extend-and-pretend-is-wall-street-friend?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d9522e093452eab,0)

Quote:

We now have an economy in which five banks control over 50 percent of the entire banking industry, four or five corporations own most of the mainstream media, and the top one percent of families hold a greater share of the nation's wealth than any time since 1930

On particularly relevant snippet.

Quote:

The Federal Reserve paid shills and Wall Street front men are out in droves declaring that TARP was a success and the banking system is recovering strongly. Columnists like Robert Samuelson declare TARP was a great investment and will profit the taxpayer. Samuelson says that the Treasury has recouped $244 billion of the $245 billion it invested in banks and that, when it winds down its last investments, it likely will show a $20 billion profit from the banks. This type of propaganda is ludicrous, as Barry Ritholtz succinctly points out:

“No, we are not profitable on the bailouts. TARP has $123B to go before breakeven, and the GSEs are $133B in the hole. All told, the Taxpayers have a long way to go before we are breakeven. That's before we count lost income from savings, bonds, etc., the increased costs of food stuff and energy due to inflation (the Fed's has done this on purpose as part of their rescue plan), the higher fees the reduced competition of megabanks has created, and the future costs our Moral Hazard will have wrought in increased risks and disasters.” - Barry Ritholtz.

....

The big four of JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo should have undergone orderly bankruptcy liquidation in 2008. They took on a vast amount of leverage and a vast amount of risk. Their greedy bets went bad. In a true capitalist system, they would have failed. Instead, in our crony capitalist system, they were bailed out by taxpayers and continue to function as zombie banks pretending to be healthy. They reported profits of $34.4 billion in 2010. Every dime of these profits was generated through accounting entries that relieved their provisions for loan losses. These “brilliant” CEOs who virtually destroyed the worldwide financial system in 2008, looked into their crystal balls and decided their loan losses in the future would be dramatically lower. I'll take the other side of that bet. I dug into their SEC filings to get the information in the chart below. Just the fact that Citicorp and Bank of America have still not filed their 10K reports after 3 months tells a story.

That should work.

Tocky on 16/4/2011 at 05:15

Quote Posted by CCCToad

Really, though, I'd highly discourage listening to Beck on the AM Radio. You can find much more reasonable and intelligent talkshow hosts (including much smarter conservative ones) than Beck/Hannity/Limbaugh by using internet radio.

But we need to know tea party marching orders for the day as they are controling the republican party these days. It is getting more difficult to pick them out since Obamas speech sent them into batshit crazy mode though. The mention of the rich shouldering some of the bill for the deficit instead of cutting it all from social programs for the poor and aged has driven them to make some flabergasting statements. Limbaugh stated that the top 5% of wage earners are carrying the rest of us who contirbute nothing.

You might think 95% of his listeners would be lost right then but right after he got into an argument with a woman who thought he should be harder on the soft compromisers of the republican party. He claimed to be doing his best and truely I cannot imagine anyone more slavering maddog baldfaced lying. I just don't think it possible. The level of insanity has gone beyond any measurable gauge. The lies are so obvious only drooling morons would be fooled and yet people shovel the poison down as quickly as it is produced with giddy eagerness. It's quite amazing.

There needs to be a radio program that does nothing but refute the idiocy statement by statement 24-7. It might at least make thier lies more inventive. They do have a sly intelligence of a sort. They take statements that apply to them like "they are trying to hypnotize people into not asking questions" and try to make them stick to Obama instead. I admire the shear evil of it.

But you are correct in it being a vexation to the soul to listen to them. Too much and you lose all faith in the ability of the general public to think beyond a gradeschool level.

CCCToad on 16/4/2011 at 07:57

Quote Posted by Tocky

Erm....How can you possibly believe that? The first point is wrong because the Tea Party hardly controls their agenda. While the GOP elite happily gives lip service to the populist Tea Party talking points, they only actively support Tea Party measure when they know they will fail(ie, the health care repeal bill). Any other time they actively work to tank the Tea Party Agenda. What we're seeing is an ideologicall re-alignment of sorts: Democrats and elite Republicans on one side, with the populist movement represented by the Tea Party. It doesn't show in a measurable way yet, though, because establishment Republicans can more effectively fight the Tea Party agenda by undermining them within the party than by jumping ship. It would be more accurate to state that the "party" views the Tea Party like a rabid pitbull which is best kept leashed unless you need to sic it on somebody.

Second, the "taxes for the rich" arguments are largely bullshit. First, Limbaugh's rantings about "top 1 %" paying half the taxes is horseshit because they control that much of the economy. However, the Democratic vows to "tax the rich" is largely lip service.

Still, Republicans are a lot more honest on this issue because they actively profess that they don't want the Rich Taxed. Democrats don't either, they just use lack of a clear definition for "the rich" to deceive the general public. What you need to realize is that by "the rich", they are not talking about the super wealthy corporate elite who enjoy unprecedented profits and minimal taxes. Neither party is interested in (http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638) harming their buddies. Additionally, increasing taxes on the rich won't touch politically favored corporations that neatly manage to (http://www.businesspundit.com/25-corporations-that-pay-less-taxes-than-you-do/) sidestep the taxes everyone else pays. Cross check the two lists to see part of why I say "politically favored" companies.

In most cases, the end result is that taxing "the rich" doesn't mean taxing the wealthy suits that most people think of. It means taxing the bottom rung of the upperclass, while the evil "corporate suits" that we all love to hate not only are unaffected, but actually benefit by having a squeeze put on their politically un-favored competitors.