Totally in your face manipulation by bought-and-paid-for U.S. corporate media

they don't even make any pretense of reporting news any more... it's all about telling you how to think because, god forbid, you should do any thinking on your own...

two headlines from today, july 8...

the new york times, our "paper of record"...

Why Bernie Sanders Momentum is Not Built to Last

the christian science monitor...

Bernie Sanders still going strong, but for how long?

you don't have to read either article... all you have to do is glance at the headlines and walk away with seeds of doubt implanted because that's the entire intent... 

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Two NYT op-eds that point to a precipitous decline in U.S. moral authority that nobody seems to want to accept

as usual, glenn is all over it...

Two Op-Eds in The New York Times this morning both warn of the precipitous decline of American credibility on matters of human rights and peace ushered in by the Obama presidency.

the first op-ed glenn cites is on cyber-warfare written by misha glenny...

A Weapon We Can’t Control

THE decision by the United States and Israel to develop and then deploy the Stuxnet computer worm against an Iranian nuclear facility late in George W. Bush’s presidency marked a significant and dangerous turning point in the gradual militarization of the Internet. Washington has begun to cross the Rubicon. If it continues, contemporary warfare will change fundamentally as we move into hazardous and uncharted territory.

This is one of the frightening dangers of an uncontrolled arms race in cyberspace; once released, virus developers generally lose control of their inventions, which will inevitably seek out and attack the networks of innocent parties. Moreover, all countries that possess an offensive cyber capability will be tempted to use it now that the first shot has been fired. . . .

the second is on extra-judicial assassination by former president jimmy carter...

A Cruel and Unusual Record

THE United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.

Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.

more glenn...

Many American pundits and foreign policy experts love to depict themselves as crusaders for human rights, but it almost always takes the form of condemning other governments, never their own. There’s no end to self-styled U.S. human rights moralizers who will oh-so-bravely (and inconsequentially) write one screed after the next about the oppressive acts of Syria, or Russia, or China, or Iran (the targets of their wrath are not just foreign governments, but usually ones serving the role as Current Enemy of the U.S. Government).

But when it comes to the human rights violations they can actually do something about — the ones committed (or enabled) by their own government: the government for which they vote and to which they pay taxes and over which they are supposed to act as adversarial watchdogs — they are largely silent.

the u.s. stand on human rights has been seriously compromised from the native american genocide that accompanied the founding and the growth of the country up through the more recent horrors unleashed by the school of the americas right up to the present day... i am of the opinion that our trampling of human rights hasn't necessarily gotten worse, merely more visible, and with visibility comes the opportunity to step out of our national denial and do something about it...

 

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Wall Street is capitalism in its purest form, and capitalism is predicated on bad behavior

more on the social darwinian b.s. that is heaped on our heads on a daily basis...

from the nyt...

A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are “clinical psychopaths,” exhibiting a lack of interest in and empathy for others and an “unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.” (The proportion at large is 1 percent.) Another study concluded that the rich are more likely to lie, cheat and break the law.

The only thing that puzzles me about these claims is that anyone would find them surprising. Wall Street is capitalism in its purest form, and capitalism is predicated on bad behavior. This should hardly be news.

[...]

Shafting your workers, hurting your customers, destroying the land. Leaving the public to pick up the tab. These aren’t anomalies; this is how the system works: you get away with what you can and try to weasel out when you get caught.

[...]

“Poor Americans are urged to hate themselves,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote in “Slaughterhouse-Five.” And so, “they mock themselves and glorify their betters.” Our most destructive lie, he added, “is that it is very easy for any American to make money.” The lie goes on. The poor are lazy, stupid and evil. The rich are brilliant, courageous and good. They shower their beneficence upon the rest of us.

as one who teaches ethical, values-driven leadership in a graduate business program, i'm all too well aware of the shortcomings of business education... while the bottom line focus should be maximizing the common good, instead it's all about maximizing profits... oh, well... after all these years, i'm accustomed to being a voice crying in the wilderness...

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Glenn: The Washington Post Op-Ed page is truly the belly of the beast of America’s rotted media discourse

glenn's been on a tear the past two days, exposing just how subservient our so-called "news" media is to our super-rich elites and their government puppets... i suggest reading the posts yourself...

Ruth Marcus reveals another journalistic value

The secrecy-loving mind of the U.S. journalist

The victims the NYT Editors forgot

would that other columnists would hold our rotten media's feet to the fire the way glenn does...

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What we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster

krugman...

The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.

So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong.

The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes.

goddamit, i really hate posting on the same friggin' topic time after time after time after time, but the ugly reality is still smacking us in the face so i guess i'm just going to have to keep on keepin' on...

regarding the last sentence of the above excerpt, i would posit that krugman is sadly deluded if he believes that our super-rich elites have made "catastrophic mistakes"... i feel about that the same way that i believe george w. bush and his cronies were "incompetent"... no way in hell... what's been happening is the result of deliberate efforts on the part of our handlers and their puppets to suck as much of the global collective wealth and power into their own pockets... and there's been no mistakes made, at least not as far as i can see... they're doing one HELL of a good job...

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The wealth of [society's] most powerful members is never redistributed or put to use for public good

you'd almost think we were talking about the u.s., now wouldn't you...?

Pakistan’s Elite Pay Few Taxes, Widening Gap

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Much of Pakistan’s capital city looks like a rich Los Angeles suburb. Shiny sport utility vehicles purr down gated driveways. Elegant multistory homes are tended by servants. Laundry is never hung out to dry.

But behind the opulence lurks a troubling fact. Very few of these households pay income tax. That is mostly because the politicians who make the rules are also the country’s richest citizens, and are skilled at finding ways to exempt themselves.

That would be a problem in any country. But in Pakistan, the lack of a workable tax system feeds something more menacing: a festering inequality in Pakistani society, where the wealth of its most powerful members is never redistributed or put to use for public good. That is creating conditions that have helped spread an insurgency that is tormenting the country and complicating American policy in the region.

It is also a sorry performance for a country that is among the largest recipients of American aid, payments of billions of dollars that prop up the country’s finances and are meant to help its leaders fight the insurgency.

Though the authorities have tried to expand the net in recent years, taxing profits from the stock market and real estate, entire swaths of the economy, like agriculture, a major moneymaker for the elite, remain untaxed.

“This is a system of the elite, by the elite and for the elite,” said Riyaz Hussain Naqvi, a retired government official who worked in tax collection for 38 years. “It is a skewed system in which the poor man subsidizes the rich man.”

[emphases added]

the disingenuousness of the nyt is stunning, particularly in a time when the super-rich elites in the united states, with the enthusiastic cooperation of the obama administration, are systematically destroying what's left of the social contract in a process that's continued unabated through the bush/clinton/bush/reagan years...

but, hey... the ability of the united states to point out the sins of others is unparalleled and it seems that everybody in the world accepts that as fact - except us, of course...

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With so many intelligent opinions available, why does the NYT offer space to an official, paid, Israel apologist?

what the hell do you expect to hear about the attack on the gaza peace flotilla from the israeli ambassador to the united states...? hmmmmm...? and why does this guy deserve space that could otherwise be taken up by someone who could provide an intelligent, contextual perspective on the situation...? why does the nyt seem to feel the need to provide an outlet for someone who is paid to dispense a carefully spun defense of the country he serves as an ambassador...?

the headline on the op-ed and the credentials of the author tell you all you need to know about the content of the piece... no need to read further...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
An Assault, Cloaked in Peace
By MICHAEL B. OREN
Published: June 2, 2010

[...]

Michael B. Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

in a day and age where literally everything is spun and propagandized to the hilt, we desperately need dispassionate, rational, contextualized discourse but apparently we're not going to get it any time soon...

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The NYT's Floyd Norris is stunned that people are still pessimistic about the "recovery"

i don't know what alternate universe floyd norris lives in... he seems to think that those of us who think the economy still sucks are misguided...

The American economy appears to be in a cyclical recovery that is gaining strength. Firms have begun to hire and consumer spending seems to be accelerating.

That is what usually happens after particularly sharp recessions, so it is surprising that many commentators, whether economists or politicians, seem to doubt that such a thing could possibly be happening.

Usually you can depend on the White House to view the economy with the most rose-tinted glasses available. But it was not until last week, after a strong employment report, that President Obama started to sound a little optimistic.

“The tough measures that we took — measures that were necessary even though sometimes they were unpopular — have broken this slide and are helping us to climb out of this recession,” he said in a speech at a factory making battery components in North Carolina.

Note, however, that he seemed to believe the country remained in recession. It is virtually certain that is not accurate, as least as will be determined by the arbiters of recession at the National Bureau of Economic Research. “The recession is over,” one of those arbiters, Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard, wrote this week.

But the White House is unwilling to make that claim.

Why is good news being received with such doubt? Why is “new normal” the currently popular economic phrase, signifying that growth will be subpar for an extended period, and that the old normal is no longer something to be expected?

floyd norris is a tool...

meanwhile, one in every 418 housing units (for a total of 2,082,945) in the u.s. received a foreclosure notice in the month of february 2010...



and over a QUADRILLION dollars worth of toxic derivatives remain off the books...

Today five US banks according to data in the just-released Federal Office of Comptroller of the Currency’s Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activity, hold 96% of all US bank derivatives positions in terms of nominal values, and an eye-popping 81% of the total net credit risk exposure in event of default.

The five are, in declining order of importance: JPMorgan Chase which holds a staggering $88 trillion in derivatives (€66 trillion!). Morgan Chase is followed by Bank of America with $38 trillion in derivatives, and Citibank with $32 trillion. Number four in the derivatives sweepstakes is Goldman Sachs with a ‘mere’ $30 trillion in derivatives. Number five, the merged Wells Fargo-Wachovia Bank, drops dramatically in size to $5 trillion. Number six, Britain’s HSBC Bank USA has $3.7 trillion.

if and when those derivatives are declared and posted at their market value, the economic house of cards could and should collapse entirely...

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Perfectly capturing the essence of Afghanistan

i haven't had the pleasure of traveling outside of kabul either by road or otherwise but i hope to have the experience one of these days soon and, yes, i would very much like to drive this road...


Kabul Gorge near Sarobi
Kabul-Jalalabad Highway


Kabul Gorge near Sarobi
Kabul-Jalalabad Highway

dexter filkins, the nyt correspondent who has spent years reporting from afghanistan, almost perfectly captures the essence of the country in this article...

Afghans Don’t Let a White-Knuckle Highway Slow Them

The 40-mile stretch, a breathtaking chasm of mountains and cliffs between Kabul and Jalalabad, claims so many lives so regularly that most people stopped counting long ago. Cars flip and flatten. Trucks soar to the valley floor. Buses play chicken; buses collide.

The mayhem unfolds on one of the most bewitching stretches of scenery on all the earth. The gorge, in some places no more than a few hundred yards wide, is framed by vertical rock cliffs that soar more than 2,000 feet above the Kabul River below. Most people die, and most cars crash, while zooming around one of the impossible turns that offer impossible views of the crevasses and buttes.

[...]

One day last week, 13 accidents unfolded on the road in a mere two hours, all of them catastrophic, nearly all of them fatal. The daylong drizzle made the day slightly more calamitous than most. At one scene, a bloodied family grieved for their kin trapped in a flattened car. At another, a minibus lay crushed beneath the hulk of a jackknifed truck. At still another, the bottom of a ravine was filled with a car’s twisted remains.

And yet even as those accidents spread themselves across the roadway, the cars sailed heedlessly past. Taxis and buses weaved and passed one another at bone-chilling speeds, with only millimeters separating them from bloody catastrophe.

i learned to drive in the mountains of colorado, both on and off road, and there's nothing i like more than a good driving challenge... i've driven in many countries and dealt with extremely dangerous and truly insane driving habits but, i must admit, afghans are perhaps the most insane of the lot...

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The lengths we go to avoid looking like a conspiracy theorist

i have a lot of respect for marcy "emptywheel" wheeler who blogs regularly and in great depth on national intelligence and security issues, torture accountability, the ever-waffling justice department, detainee policy and other such critically important issues over at firedoglake... she researches her material assiduously and rarely leaves a stone unturned... in fact, she often provides more material and in greater depth than i have the time or patience to absorb...

i'm also aware of the extraordinary lengths otherwise intelligent people who fall into the category of reasonable, progressive liberals will go to in order to avoid being labeled "conspiracy theorists," even when the "conspiracy theory" in question is smacking them upside the head...

yesterday, marcy put up a post under this title...

FAA and NORAD Changed Records to Accord with Cheney Lies

the post was based on an nyt review of a recently-published book by john farmer called “the ground truth,” in which farmer, a senior counsel to the 9/11 commission and the dean of the law school at rutgers, on the basis of actual records, attests that the:

F.A.A. and Norad rec­ords [show] that a day after a Sept. 17 White House briefing, both agencies suddenly altered their chronologies to produce a coherent timeline and story that “fit together nicely with the account provided publicly by Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz and Vice President Cheney.”

here's marcy's conclusion...

We’ve know for a long time that the FAA records, in particular, were politicized. Given already documented proof that Cheney lied to hide the fact that he violated the chain of command on 9/11 it’s not surprising that that politicization served Dick Cheney’s false narrative of leadership.

But we can add this book to the long list of proof that Cheney’s a big liar trying to hide his own incompetence.

jumpin' jeebus key f'ing ryst on a trapeze, marcy...! somebody turns up irrefutable evidence of dick cheney falsifying records and you conclude he has to be covering-up INCOMPETENCE...? i ask you, m'dear, when exactly did the arch-fiend, dick cheney, EVER display any evidence of incompetence and when exactly did you become convinced that the man doesn't know exactly and precisely what he is doing at any given moment...?

every single one of us has by now heard and read multiple stories speculating, attempting to prove, and/or setting out pretty solid circumstantial - if not smoking-gun - evidence that there was a conspiracy on almost all counts to present 9/11 as something other than it was... you, marcy, of all people, ought to be able to take all of that critical context and come up with at least a reasoned alternative supposition that cheney might have been acting out a motive other than attempting to cover the incompetence of his own sorry ass... don't you think there's a possibility, however remote, he might be covering up for SOMETHING ELSE...? huh...?

i'm disappointed in you... seriously disappointed...

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Lede to Krugman in the NYT: "There’s a growing sense among progressives that they have been duped by President Obama"

duped by obama...? uh, no shit... bait and switch is more like it... torture, indefinite detention, bailouts, toadying to republicans, obsessive dedication to bipartisanship when the opposition party is doing nothing but crapping down your throat... so far, obama is definitely the biggest disappointment in my soon-to-be 61 years...

paul krugman...

According to news reports, the Obama administration — which seemed, over the weekend, to be backing away from the “public option” for health insurance — is shocked and surprised at the furious reaction from progressives.

Well, I’m shocked and surprised at their shock and surprise.

A backlash in the progressive base — which pushed President Obama over the top in the Democratic primary and played a major role in his general election victory — has been building for months. The fight over the public option involves real policy substance, but it’s also a proxy for broader questions about the president’s priorities and overall approach.

[...]

[O]n such fraught questions as torture and indefinite detention, the president has dismayed progressives with his reluctance to challenge or change Bush administration policy.

And then there’s the matter of the banks.

I don’t know if administration officials realize just how much damage they’ve done themselves with their kid-gloves treatment of the financial industry, just how badly the spectacle of government supported institutions paying giant bonuses is playing. But I’ve had many conversations with people who voted for Mr. Obama, yet dismiss the stimulus as a total waste of money. When I press them, it turns out that they’re really angry about the bailouts rather than the stimulus — but that’s a distinction lost on most voters.

So there’s a growing sense among progressives that they have, as my colleague Frank Rich suggests, been punked. And that’s why the mixed signals on the public option created such an uproar.

[...]

But there’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line. It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Senator Charles E. Grassley feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will “pull the plug on grandma,” and two days later the White House declares that it’s still committed to working with him.

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

it's official... i've just checked out of the hope hotel...

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The great fleecing of the American taxpayer by Goldman Sachs is now official

the lede to matt taibbi's rolling stone article on goldman sachs...

From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again.

and just to be fair, here's megan mcardle's 10 july takedown of taibbi's article from the atlantic...

It's not that everything he says is wrong, but the bits that are true aren't interesting, and the bits that are interesting aren't true.

however, let's step away from spin and opinion for just a moment and focus on the reality of the just-announced second quarter profit declared by goldman sachs...

from today's nyt article...

Comfortably beating analysts’ forecasts, Goldman Sachs earned second-quarter net profits of $3.44 billion, or $4.93 a share, the bank announced on Tuesday.

The results continue a robust turnaround for the firm since it rode out the final tumultuous months of last year with the aid of a federal rescue. They come just one month after it paid back its $10 billion in federal aid.

what's wrong with this picture...? we bail out the richest of the rich which then turns around and suddenly becomes immensely richer thanks to the largesse of us'ns, the american taxpayers...

full disclosure: personally, i don't care for matt taibbi... his one-man vendetta against "conspiracy theorists" has always seemed to me to be the near-hysterical rantings of someone who can't accept the remotest possibility that things aren't always what they seem... now that he's done a complete about-face and made hay out of his goldman sachs conspiracy theory, all i can say is that he's a hypocritical little shit... unfortunately, where goldman sachs is concerned, i think he's absolutely right, megan mcardle notwithstanding...

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Where the unemployment is

click on image or here to see the full version of the very cool nyt graphic that lets you mouse-over the entire country to see unemployment figures county-by-county...



(thanks to atrios...)

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Boot, Kagan, and Kagan - the neocon dogs of war attempt to justify more troops and more war in Afghanistan

why in god's name are these discredited, blood-thirsty hacks still getting prime op-ed space in the new york times...?

In addition to sending more soldiers, we must also increase our efforts to expand the Afghan security forces. It may be impossible to speed up the pace of building the Afghan National Army, but the current proposed end-strength of 134,000 troops is far too low. We should immediately commit to a goal of 250,000 troops for the army, and a substantial increase in the national police as well. Afghan troops also need lots of better equipment — everything from armored vehicles to night-vision goggles.

[...]

The key question for those who advocate pulling back is this: Where will we get the intelligence to direct the raids? If we have few troops on the ground, we will have to rely on intercepted communications. But seven years into the fight, the terrorists have learned a thing or two about keeping their communications secret. The only way to get the intelligence we need is from the residents, and they won’t provide it unless our troops stay in their villages to provide protection from Taliban retribution.

This struggle is not just about Afghanistan. It is also about tracking and effecting what is going on in Pakistan’s tribal areas. That is where the global Qaeda leadership is. It is the nexus of terrorist groups including the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is implicated in the Mumbai, India, attacks last November; the Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi, which now has control of the Swat region in Pakistan; and Baitullah Mehsud’s Pakistani Taliban, which are said to have plotted the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister.

From their positions across the border in Afghanistan, American forces can literally see these areas. They can also gather invaluable intelligence from, and spread our influence to, the tribes that straddle the frontier. But we get that vantage point only as long as we have something to offer the Afghans — security, improved quality of life, hope for a better government. If we abandon them, we will become blind to one of the most dangerous threats to our security, and also hand our most determined enemies an enormous propaganda victory — their biggest since 9/11.

Make no mistake: there is hard, costly fighting ahead in Afghanistan. But the fight is worth pursuing, and the odds of success are much better than they were in Iraq when we launched the forlorn hope known as the surge.

Max Boot is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Frederick Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Kimberly Kagan is the president of the Institute for the Study of War.

good lord, please spare me... (special note to the nyt: please keep this crew the hell away from the op-ed page...)

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Read this quote from today's NYT column by Tom Friedman very carefully

ready...? here goes...

The main reason we are losing in Afghanistan is not because there are too few American soldiers, but because there are not enough Afghans ready to fight and die for the kind of government we want.

absolutely stunning, isn't it...? the kind of government "WE" want...? WE...?? i had to stop and read that twice and then even a third time... the unmitigated gall of someone who could write something like that for one of the world's major newspapers simply bowls me over...

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The Obama smears and lies are coming thick and fast

the following was sent to me by a friend who, unfortunately, was passing it along believing it was true... this scurrilous slander is evidently in wide circulation on the internet and vividly demonstrates what we're in for as the presidential campaign heads into the final months...

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: June 29, 2008

Go to Columnist Page »

OBAMA'S TROUBLING INTERNET FUND RAISING

Certainly the most interesting and potentially devastating phone call I have received during this election cycle came this week from one of the Obama's campaign internet geeks. These are the staffers who devised Obama's internet fund raising campaign which raised in the neighborhood of $200 million so far. That is more then twice the total funds raised by any candidate in history – and this was all from the internet campaign.

What I learned from this insider was shocking but I guess we shouldn't be surprised that when it comes to fund raising there simply are no rules that can't be broken and no ethics that prevail.

Obama's internet campaign started out innocently enough with basic e-mail networking , lists saved from previous party campaigns and from supporters who visited any of the Obama campaign web sites.

Small contributions came in from these sources and the internet campaign staff were more than pleased by the results.

Then, about two months into the campaign the daily contribution intake multiplied. Where was it coming from? One of the web site security monitors began to notice the bulk of the contributions were clearly coming in from overseas internet service providers and at the rate and frequency of transmission it was clear these donations were "programmed" by a very sophisticated user.

While the security people were not able to track most of the sources due to firewalls and other blocking devices put on these contributions they were able to collate the number of contributions that were coming in seemingly from individuals but the funds were from only a few credit card accounts and bank electronic funds transfers. The internet service providers (ISP) they were able to trace were from Saudi Arabia , Iran , and other Middle Eastern countries. One of the banks used for fund transfers was also located in Saudi Arabia .

Another concentrated group of donations was traced to a Chinese ISP with a similar pattern of limited credit card charges.

It became clear that these donations were very likely coming from sources other than American voters. This was discussed at length within the campaign and the decision was made that none of these donations violated campaign financing laws.

It was also decided that it was not the responsibility of the campaign to audit these millions of contributions as to the actual source (specific credit card number or bank transfer account numbers) to insure that none of these internet contributors exceeded the legal maximum donation on a cumulative basis of many small donations. They also found the record keeping was not complete enough to do it anyway.

This is a shocking revelation.

We have been concerned about the legality of "bundling" contributions after the recent exposure of illegal bundlers but now it appears we may have an even greater problem.

I guess we should have been somewhat suspicious when the numbers started to come out. We were told (no proof offered) that the Obama internet contributions were from $10.00 to $25.00 or so.

If the $200,000,000 is right, and the average contribution was $15.00, that would mean over 13 million individuals made contributions?

That would also be 13 million contributions would need to be processed. How did all that happen?

I believe the Obama campaign's internet fund raising needs a serious, in depth investigation and audit.

It also appears the whole question of internet fund raising needs investigation by the legislature and perhaps new laws to insure it complies not only with the letter of these laws but the spirit as well.

this is in the same vein as other email tripe purported to be from the likes of george carlin and robin williams... however, using a respected nyt columnist (respected by SOME, but not by me) as the supposed "source" is particularly egregious...

here's the title and a link to the column ACTUALLY written by maureen dowd on june 29...

‘It’s Over, Lady!’

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STFU, Hillary, you miserable little playground bully... Your rhetoric has lost all its credibility with me...

i'm sure obama and his team, along with every other non-comatose, halfway intelligent person in the entire country, could have anticipated that hillary would adopt a relentlessly offensive posture with obama last night... having watched and listened to hrc over the past couple of months, there was no way in hell it would have played out any differently... but, rather than see it for what it is, our stalwart nyt news reporters present it like hillary is strong and obama is weak, rather than portraying hrc as the desperate, obnoxious, annoying, playground bully she really is...

Clinton Uses Sharp Attacks in Tense Debate

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY
Published: April 17, 2008

PHILADELPHIA - Senator Barack Obama found himself consistently on the defensive as he and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton met Wednesday night in a tense debate that left him parrying questions and criticism on issues including values, patriotism and his association with onetime radicals from the 1960s.

It was the first time the two candidates had shared a debate stage in seven weeks, and it came six days before a primary in Pennsylvania that could determine whether Mrs. Clinton can continue her quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. It could also prove to be the last debate between them.

Accordingly, Mrs. Clinton did not let an opportunity pass as she repeatedly challenged Mr. Obama on his record and views — assisted, as it turned out, by vigorous questioning by the two moderators from ABC News, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous.

The result was arguably one of Mr. Obama’s weakest debate performances. He at times appeared annoyed as he sought to answer questions about his former pastor, his reluctance to wear an American flag pin on his lapel and his association in Chicago with former members of the Weather Underground, a radical group that carried out bombings in the 1960s that were intended to incite the overthrow of the government.

it's become patently clear... our corporate, political, governmental, and media elites are scared shitless of obama, and they will do anything and everything to bring him down... besides exposing hillary for the she-weasel she really is, we should be doing everything in our power to discredit those who claim to be giving us objective information, "information" that is nothing but pure establishment propaganda disguised as news... they can all go straight to hell... i ain't buyin' a goddam word of it any more...

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Who profits most from a comatose, ignorant, lied-to citizenry?

bob herbert in today's nyt...

The U.S., once the greatest can-do country on the planet, now can’t seem to do anything right. The great middle class has maxed out its credit cards and drained dangerous amounts of equity from family homes. No one can seem to figure out how to generate the growth in good-paying jobs that is the only legitimate way of putting strapped families back on their feet.

[...]

Other nations can provide health care for everyone. The United States cannot. In an era in which a college degree is becoming a prerequisite for a middle-class quality of life, we are having big trouble getting our kids through high school. And despite being the wealthiest of all nations, nearly 10 percent of Americans are resorting to food stamps to maintain an adequate diet, and 4 in every 10 American children are growing up in families that are poor or near-poor.

The U.S. seems almost paralyzed, mesmerized by Iraq and unable to generate the energy or the will to handle the myriad problems festering at home. The war will eventually cost a staggering $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. When he was asked on “Democracy Now!” about who is profiting from the war, he said the two big gainers were the oil companies and the defense contractors.

This is the pathetic state of affairs in the U.S. as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Whatever happened to the dynamic country that flexed its muscles after World War II and gave us the G.I. Bill, the Marshall Plan, the United Nations (in a quest for peace, not war), the interstate highway system, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the finest higher education system the world has known, and a standard of living that was the envy of all?

the "dynamic country" we used to live in has been seized by the mind-numbing forces of those who profit most from a comatose, ignorant, lied-to citizenry... u.s. citizens didn't suddenly decide to stop caring... we've been carefully schooled to believe we're powerless to stop the greed and power lust of of our business/government puppeteers... we've been drugged, literally and figuratively, for so many years, we've forgotten what it feels like to be truly alive and in charge of our own destiny -- just the way the super-rich elites like it...

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"Bank run" - the NYT headline that tells it like it is

i haven't seen another headline referencing the bear stearns collapse that comes right out and says it... the others are more like this...

wapo...

Fed Comes To Rescue As Wall St. Giant Slips

la times...

Bear Stearns gets emergency loan from Fed

ah, but the nyt... now, HERE'S a headline with stones...

Run on Big Wall St. Bank Spurs Rescue Backed by U.S.

Just three days ago, the head of Bear Stearns, the beleaguered investment bank, sought to assure Wall Street that his firm was safe.

But those assurances were blown away in what amounted to a bank run at Bear Stearns, prompting JPMorgan Chase and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to step in on Friday with a financial rescue package intended to keep the firm afloat.

The move underscores the extreme stresses that the credit crisis has imposed on the financial system and raises the once-unthinkable prospect that major Wall Street firms might fail.

The developments may only postpone the eventual sale of all or part of Bear Stearns, which has had crippling losses on mortgage-linked investments. To keep the 85-year-old firm solvent, JPMorgan, backed by the New York Fed, extended a secured line of credit that gives Bear Stearns at least 28 days to shore up its finances or, more likely, to find a buyer.

News of the bailout ignited fears that other big banks remain vulnerable to the continuing credit crisis, and stocks tumbled in another rocky day for the markets. Financial shares led the way, with shares of Bear Stearns plunging 47 percent. Hours after the rescue was announced, another Wall Street firm, Lehman Brothers, said it had secured a three-year credit line from banks. Its stock fell 15 percent.

i posted on thursday about carlyle capital and the rumors swirling around bear stearns... i'm absolutely convinced we haven't seen nothin' yet...

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Hayden, McConnell and Mukasey are "highly respected and nonpolitical officials"

IF it is true, according to bill kristol, writing in today's nyt, that...

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of national intelligence, the retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell, and the attorney general, the former federal judge Michael Mukasey, are highly respected and nonpolitical officials with little in the way of partisanship or ideology in their backgrounds.

THEN why, pray tell, are they behaving that way now...?

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