j_b

Yes - the quality and selection of wine, beer, and spirits in California is a pale shadow of what we've got here in Washington. of course, the only difference between Washington and California is the wine and liquor laws

Not very likely if your pals, the Koch brothers who want to eliminate 90% of laws and regulations, have their way. how is subsidizing their fuel or letting them destroy the environment in the process going to save the public money? the environment that hasn't seen an increase in effective revenue for 30+ years? the ones that you try to incite to hatred against public workers for having benefits at all?

that's just it. Saying what he did on that show is doing, the same way that the rest of the xenophobic propaganda on that network amounts to doing, fear-mongering to frighten the nincompoops. It's not just 'thinking'. he is certainly entitled to his feelings but a media pundit stating them on a racist TV show is an entirely different proposition.

because riding an airplane is like walking in seedy (or supposedly seedy) neighborhoods at night?

He made a prejudiced statement about all those that wear arabic garb. It's wasn't a private discussion but a show on national TV held by one of the most consistently racist pundit and he is supposed to be a credible "news analyst" for NPR whose overwhelming majority of listeners are likely to be put off.

are they seriously talking about separate living quarters or is Nitrox making it all up as is customary for him?

NPR didn't want to be associated with someone making islamophobic statements on FOX, the most xenophobic cable channel in the USA. The same extremist channel that has been waging a coordinated race-baiting campaign against Obama and progressives. Can you seriously blame NPR for kicking out the moron when they warned him for months about his appearances on FOX? a little common sense, please, although I don't expect any common sense from the hypocrites who cheered when McClatchy dumped Helen Thomas.

More lies and ad-hominem attacks from the storm-troopers. When have I done anything to prevent anyone from stating an opinion?

You are trying to peddle a cartoonish vision of a "conspiracy", whereas a collusion of moneyed interests is much more mundane in appearance. Only the bad guys in a James Bond movie, could hide twice yearly meetings of economic elites held to generate large amount of cash for propaganda with the participation of Beck and Alito, Scalia, or completely hide the financing of their astroturf efforts. Interestingly, until the Citizens United decision of a few month ago, it was a lot harder for them to hide their tracks. Btw, knowledge of these meetings and the participation of the corporatists on the supreme court isn't new. There were reports starting a couple of years ago.

slaves don't pay rent. what a deal!

Right, externalizing the production and shipping costs of liquor oligopolies isn't "rent seeking", it's only being incompetent at basic arithmetic. Per usual, the corporatists and their libertarian toadies have no consideration for local economies, diversity and quality of offerings, and small business.

Here comes the parsing of semantics. The kochtopus isn't a cabal of the wealthy holding secret meetings to coordinate their actions and cash to buy elections and politicians in order to protect their profits, it's just a gathering of successful individuals privately engaging in advocacy.

"Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates all across the country. And they don't have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don't know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation. You don't know if it’s a big oil company, or a big bank. You don't know if it’s a insurance company that wants to see some of the provisions in health reform repealed because it’s good for their bottom line, even if it’s not good for the American people. A Supreme Court decision allowed this to happen. And we tried to fix it, just by saying disclose what’s going on, and making sure that foreign companies can’t influence our elections. Seemed pretty straightforward. The other side said no. They don't want you to know who the Americans for Prosperity are, because they're thinking about the next election. But we’ve got to think about future generations. We’ve got to make sure that we’re fighting for reform. We’ve got to make sure that we don't have a corporate takeover of our democracy." Remarks by the President at a DNC Finance Event in Austin, Texas

hmm, lots of strident denials but no argument or discussion of the overwhelming evidence ... Stop digging that hole, morons.

The right wing retards are trolling for the lowest common denominator among us, i.e. those who won't bother to read the press. [video:youtube]EzmX0t9m_Vg

I'm not sure if populism can be "fake", only manipulated and misguided. There have been some interesting trends as the Beck segment below makes clear. Megaphone size aside (and that's admittedly a big aside), liberals' continued suckling at the teat of capitalist ideology and subsequent inability to take advantage of its ongoing terminal crisis (as far as the middle class is concerned) have virtually guaranteed the Right's capture of global narratives and political momentum. Keynesianism back in the day was a compromise amongst capitalist factions necessitated by the spectre of working class radicalism. Lacking the fear that real alternative posed, is it any surprise that Krugman, et.al. are virtual voices in the wilderness? Keynes' capitalism with a human face is an anachronism, time to let it go. Indeed, Krugman is in the wilderness because people are mostly apathetic, but they won't be so forever, which is the reason why demagogues like Beck try to remain credible by pointing the finger at the crooks.

It's just like you to deny that many of the wealthy and corporations are conspiring to finance a network of propaganda and fake-grass root activism to buy elections and take greater control of government in order to achieve unfettered capitalism.

What about that gas line explosion in California that killed half dozen people and burned several city blocks. The pipes are 80 years old and have long been identified as a liability. In fact, the utility got paid to rejuvenate the infrastructure but it spent the money on who knows what, perhaps outrageous CEO compensations.

I am afraid that until pitchfork time little will happen. Democrats have let the fake populists control the discourse and it is a discourse of austerity opposed to any public spending that isn't war related.

Not only do I know what a theory is but I also know that it takes on a different meaning in colloquial English. Science deniers have made an industry out of exploiting that difference.

and, she's on the loose!

I don't think it is your imagination. They are officially part of the Kochtopus CABAL now. Those who tend to think that conspiracies are never more than theories should take a good look.

of the collusion between libertarian billionaires, corporations, media, GOP, tea parties and other astro-turfs/front groups. Media Matters got the memo and the guest list of their last meeting during which they planned the 2010 midterm elections: MEMO: Health Insurance, Banking, Oil Industries Met With Koch, Chamber, Glenn Beck To Plot 2010 Election In 2006, Koch Industries owner Charles Koch revealed to the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore that he coordinates the funding of the conservative infrastructure of front groups, political campaigns, think tanks, media outlets and other anti-government efforts through a twice annual meeting of wealthy right-wing donors. He also confided to Moore, who is funded through several of Koch’s ventures, that his true goal is to strengthen the “culture of prosperity” by eliminating “90%” of all laws and government regulations. Although it is difficult to quantify the exact amount Koch alone has funneled to right-wing fronts, some studies have pointed toward $50 million he has given alone to anti-environmental groups. Recently, fronts funded by Charles and his brother David have received scrutiny because they have played a pivotal role in the organizing of the anti-Obama Tea Parties and the promotion of virulent far right lawmakers like Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). (David Koch praised DeMint and gave him a “Washington Award” shortly after the senator promised to “break” Obama by making health reform his “Waterloo.”) While the Koch brothers — each worth over $21.5 billion — have certainly underwritten much of the right, their hidden coordination with other big business money has gone largely unnoticed. ThinkProgress has obtained a memo outlining the details of the last Koch gathering held in June of this year. The memo, along with an attendee list of about 210 people, shows the titans of industry — from health insurance companies, oil executives, Wall Street investors, and real estate tycoons — working together with conservative journalists and Republican operatives to plan the 2010 election, as well as ongoing conservative efforts through 2012. According to the memo, David Chavern, the number two at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fox News hate-talker Glenn Beck also met with these representatives of the corporate elite. In an election season with the most undisclosed secret corporate giving since the Watergate-era, the memo sheds light on the symbiotic relationship between extremely profitable, multi-billion dollar corporations and much of the conservative infrastructure. The memo describes the prospective corporate donors as “investors,” and it makes clear that many of the Republican operatives managing shadowy, undisclosed fronts running attack ads against Democrats were involved in the Koch’s election-planning event: here for more

your gratuitous hyperbolic assertions will get you nowhere.