j_b

The market decided so it can't be wrong.

Totally untrue. Although it has gotten worse, election financing reform was as necessary 10 years ago as it is today. "Public opinion trends" manufactured by the corporate media and paid for by corporations, ex: Glenn beck, Fox and the tea parties. here comes the crackpot theories about "human nature". "the existence of corrupt politicians only interested in power is an argument for not stopping the flow of private interest money into politics." the good old argument according to which since there always be cheats, there is no point in preventing them from cheating .. congress already has the power to regulate media: it's called the Sherman anti-trust act. how is Bachmann going to use taxing adverts to finance public media? what about applying the law of this land and breaking up monopolies? How come she hasn't used it?

This news story was totally blacked out by the corporate and public media: [video:youtube]V-A1PYgzMv0

[video:youtube]_RRDLzxFXjY

The concept that you could grind a whole animal weeks before you cook it and not imagine you'd have to do something nasty to it so that it doesn't kill you, has always distressed me.

Excuses! First, you don't have to eat it, and second, you can even read about it on the interwebs if you want to. Prevalence and incidence statistics for Food poisoning: Incidence (annual) of Food poisoning: about 76 million cases annually in USA (NIDDK) Incidence Rate: approx 1 in 3 or 27.94% or 76 million people in USA [about data] Prevalance of Food poisoning: Although most foodborne infections are undiagnosed and unreported, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that every year about 76 million people in the United States become ill from pathogens in food. Of these, up to 5,000 die. (Source: excerpt from Bacteria and Foodborne Illness: NIDDK) ... An estimated 76 million cases of foodborne disease occur each year in the United States. (Source: excerpt from Foodborne Infections General: DBMD) ... Estimated to cause 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,200 deaths in the United States each year. (Source: excerpt from Foodborne Infections: DBMD) http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/f/food_poisoning/stats.htm

Until then, you guys keep working on your master plan to shut Limbaugh up and make Fox News fair and balanced LOL. Why do you keep reducing the issue of corporate media consolidation and 'manufacturing consent' to Fox and Limbaugh? The NYT published blatant lies to push for attacking Iraq. The NYT hasn't found a war it didn't like in decades. The NYT supported neoliberal globalization and outsourcing, deregulation, NAFTA, etc .. May be the NYT was for gay marriage but I am not sure. Do you need me to tell you about the evolution of public TV as well? What's wrong with you?

The worse part of this exchange is that it validates the regressive talking point that federal tax cuts are the thing to do today. Tax cuts provide no return whatsoever on investment to the economy, and in the case of cuts for the wealthy, it's actually a loss because they mostly don't reinvest (not here anyway), especially in this climate. Don't get me wrong, it's always a good thing to show that Limbaugh is a big fat liar but I'd much rather hear Democrats say they also created jobs (instead of just saved jobs) by investing in infrastructure, the green economy, etc ... through an effective stimulus package rather than provided piddling tax savings across the board. Here is a table of returns on investment according to Moody Analytics: Stimulus versus tax cut

and all this time, I thought it was a multiplicator.

Consider yourself served

[video:youtube]rllK0UB7kGw

I might be wrong too, but I expect not to find too many people simply lashing back at the increase in their tax burden thanks to regressive taxation, in a small movement mostly composed of Bush dead-enders and scared old-folks (fear-mongering works).

It's a little late to address the tea-party "movement". Their job of creating the impression there is popular opposition to Obama's policies from the right is achieved. As Prole says, without any opposition from the left (and the help from corporate media), they were able to position themselves as the populist alternative to Obama's policies (however ridiculous that may seem). I am afraid that as obvious as that lesson may appear, it is lost on those who steer Move-on and the like. I don't agree however that the anti-gov/anti-tax drivel is anti-establishment or not addressing directly a pro-corporate agenda. Most of these people wouldn't have shown up at rallies pressuring Obama from the left, others would have but not them.

EFF was the main organization behind the proto-tea party protest in Seattle in feb 2009. Main sources of funding for EFF? Coors, Scaife, Walton, and on ...

"Who first proposed holding tea party events? When did major conservative organizations get involved? And how much support have they gained along the way? The answer to the first question is "FreedomWorks." The answer to the second question is "right from the start." And the answer to the last question is "less than you'd expect, given the months of hype." The first tea-partyish events occurred in February in Seattle, WA, Denver, CO, and Mesa, AZ around the time President Obama signed the stimulus bill into law, but they didn't have an explicitly tea-based theme. If they had a theme of any kind it was "pork" and government waste. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin wrote a post about the Seattle protest called "From the Boston Tea Party to your neighborhood pork protest." And in Denver, protesters shouted, "No more pork!" By and large, though, the events lacked a unifying issue. That all changed on February 19, when CNBC commentator Rick Santelli erupted in anger on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, and proposed a "Chicago Tea Party" for traders to protest the government's plan to provide mortgage assistance to distressed homeowners. The idea took hold and on February 27, a handful of cities across the country hosted gatherings that involved genuine tea (or at least the use of the word "tea"). One of those tea parties occurred from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. on Friday February 27, in Tampa, FL, organized according to the website Tampa Bay Online, by "John Hendricks, a Tampa-based consultant." John Hendricks turns out to be John Hendrix, who by phone earlier today described the events as completely spontaneous. "These are independent groups, not coordinated," he says, "and most of the people, including myself, have never done anything like this." He even said that two distinct groups in Tampa emerged simultaneously--both called the "Tampa Tea Party," each unbeknown to the other. I asked him where the idea came from. "Tom Gaithens," Hendrix said. "He's with FreedomWorks." "Oh really?" "He sent an email out with his network of contacts to see who could help." The event, Hendrix said, drew somewhere in the ballpark of 200 protesters, and there were, by his count, 88 people on hand at peak. That's not very many people. Henke may be right, in a sense, about the distinction between astroturf events and genuine protests--but this appears to be, at best, somewhere in between the two. There was certainly not enough burning furor about the stimulus bill or the bank bailouts in Tampa to drive residents into the streets without the help of Dick Armey's 501 group. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/freedomworks-long-history-of-teabagging.php

healthy food has always been available if you were willing to do the work but it hasn't prevented most to eat shit. The issue is ease of access. A grunt isn't going to sort sources of news. First, he'd have to realize the pablum he is served is mostly propaganda. and ignore how they manufacture consent?

And you don't give them enough. There was some genuine anti-establishment sentiment within the movement at the beginning and there was a great deal being said about not being coopted and "we're grassroots, we don't have a Party" and screw Sarah Palin's $400 a plate dinners. From the start it was the brainchild of libertarian think tanks and media pundits (CATO, EFF, CNBC, Malkin, etc ..) who are allies of corporatists and against Obama's stimulus but who somehow cheered for 8 years of George W "big Government" Bush.

You give them too much credit for being sincere. It's a small group of extremists given a bullhorn by the corporate media.

Political apathy and lack of participation is usually due to the system being rigged, in our case by the increasingly consolidated corporate media, the 2 corporate party system, corporate financing of politicians, etc ..

IN the meantime you let regressives frame the discourse on the economy (jobs) and wars, when it is rarely as easy as today to campaign on these critical issues from a progressive perspective. Democrats are betraying their campaign promises and you are not pressuring them for it. voluntarily depopulate from 6 billions in 25 years to address peak oil? climate change? the massive extinction of species? Soil loss? hmm

Anybody else read that mind-boggling article about Mexican cartels in the New Yorker sometimes in May? It discusses how special forces started some of the bloodiest cartels, why the drug war amplified after the PRI was kicked out of power, and the increasing direct involvement of US police in Mexico. here is a link to an abstract for the article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/31/100531fa_fact_finnegan

are you as dumb as you sound or do you do it on purpose?

Anyone's surprised that jackboot picked a queer looking guy talking about masturbation? cough, cough He also really likes videos of black folks making asses of themselves. Who else has this kind of fixation with queers and blacks?

Go to the 3 minute mark for the entertaining/factual part: [video:youtube]6uP5TkQfu5A