Lib'rul media remembers Hasan, forgets F.E.A.R.

Well you know me, always out to expose the dastardly lib'rul media.  

Seriously though, I can't understand why my liberal co-conspirators in the media pay so little attention to this crazy story about a shadowy, murderous, drug-dealing, anti-government militia group operating inside the U.S. Military?  

I mean, we still see stories about the Fort Hood shooter, including the saga of his beard... and I'm sure it has nothing to do with his being Muslim, no sirree.  

Conservative bloviators like Michelle Malkin and Mark Steyn have done their best to keep three-year-old Nidal Hasan story alive and stir up fear that he is just the tip of the Islamist iceberg in the military.  Yet the right-wing as well as MSM media (whatever that is) both ignore F.E.A.R.  

Could it be that my fellow liberals ensconced in their corporate media fronts for left-wing brainwashing operations are napping on the job, or.... (gasp!) could it be that there is no liberal media at all?  

Families of Slain Couple in FEAR Militia Case File Claim Against U.S. Army

By Don Terry

August 29, 2013 | Southern Poverty Law Center

URL: http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/08/29/families-of-slain-couple-in-fear-militia-case-file-claim-against-u-s-army-2/

The Case Parade

SPLC Intelligence Report | Fall 2013

URL: http://www.splcenter.org/get%20informed/intelligence%20report/browse%20all%20issues/2013/fall/Fear%20Rising/The%20Case%20Parade

Big media lies: Public-union membership, political contributions NOT mandatory

Must-read article!  This is an especially salient observation:

The irony here is that while unions can't compel workers to fork over a penny for political campaigns, corporations can donate unlimited amounts of their shareholders' equity to do so – they are, in fact, in the 'unique position' to elect pliant lawmakers. 'What the right-wing and the business community always try to portray is that you have these union bosses that are forcing helpless employees to give them money,' says Gold, 'when the reality is that these are their members who chose to be in a union and then elected their officers democratically, in sharp contrast to corporations, none of whose officers are elected democratically unless you count shareholders voting at an annual meeting as a real democratic system.'

And conservatives have long held that voluntary donations to political campaigns are a high form of free speech. The double standard is clear-- 'money equals speech' unless it's money freely donated by working people to advance their own economic interests.

Public Employee Unions Don't Get One Penny from Taxpayers and Can't Require Membership, But the Big Lie That They Do Is Everywhere

By Joshua Holland

March 5, 2011 | AlterNet

URL: http://www.alternet.org/economy/150130/public_employee_unions_don't_get_one_penny_from_taxpayers_and_can't_require_membership,_but_the_big_lie_that_they_do_is_everywhere/?page=entire

PC police strike Dr. Laura

Good riddance to that mean old hag Dr. Laura. You can now catch her on ham radio, where she promises to use the N-word at least 11 times a day.

Notice that it took no act of the government or the NAACP to get her off the air, just a few big sponsors bailing out.

So when you say you don't trust the mainstream media, you're really saying you don't trust the corporate media and their corporate sponsors to give you the unvarnished truth.

Being all about business and the bottom line, they don't like to make waves or be too controversial. Hence the mainstream media is inherently conservative.

Dr. Laura to End Show Amid N-Word Flap

August 18, 2010 | Associated Press

URL: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2010/08/17/dr-laura-announces-end-radio/

Poll: Americans don't know they got a tax cut

Well, dock the lib'rul media a day's pay for napping on the job.

Poll Reveals Most Americans Don't Know They Got a Tax Cut
By Robert Hendin
February 12, 2010 |CBS News

URL: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02/12/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6201911.shtml

BusWeek: U.S. workers are cheap, disposable

This is why in the U.S. the march towards "socialist" Big Gov't is inevitable, because starting in the late 1970s-early 1980s, the compact between Management and Labor was torn asunder and there was nothing to replace it. Some of you luckier older folks just don't get it. It's a different world out there today.

U.S. workers have nothing to rely on now: no pensions, no sick leave, little or no vacation, no severance pay, and no or inadequate health insurance. Meanwhile, the productivity of U.S. workers continues to rise, as fewer employed people are asked to do more for less pay and benefits in return. Corporate owners and managers reap continued benefits from that (even in recessionary 2009, corporate profits as a percent of national income were at the 40-year average), but still they warn us constantly that cheap labor overseas threatens to take away our jobs at any moment if we get too uppity.

We are warned not to complain, or else, despite the fact that "pay for production and nonsupervisory workers—80% of the private workforce—is 9% lower than it was in 1973, adjusted for inflation," according to BW. Corporations and the MSM tell us that lazy, greedy unions are the problem, despite that only 8 percent of U.S. workers are in unions, and most of them are government employees.

This is not to mention the increasing frequency of wage theft by employers, which Dubya's Dept. of Labor failed to investigate. Wal-Mart, although probably the worst offender when it comes to non-payment, is just the tip of the iceberg.

Don't believe all that corporate-funded media propaganda about spoiled, lazy U.S. workers. The U.S. has the third most efficient labor market in the world, whose workers are the easiest to hire and fire, according to the World Economic Forum. (Meanwhile, the U.S. has been usurped by Switzerland as the #1 most competitive economy in the world for 2009-2010.)

So of course American workers are going to turn increasingly to Guvmint to help them meet their basic needs. This lemon has been squeezed dry.

The Disposable Worker

Pay is falling, benefits are vanishing, and no one's job is secure. How companies are making the era of the temp more than temporary

By Peter Coy, Michelle Conlin and Moira Herbst

January 7, 2010 | BusinessWeek

URL: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_03/b4163032935448.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5

Re: You say the right wing owns the media?

I never said the right wing owns the mainstream media. I said corporations own the media. (This is not up for debate). And corporations, being risk-averse and profit-driven and fearful of losing their corporate advertisers, embrace and defend the status quo, whatever that is, until they see that popular opinion is steadily growing against it, at which time they jump on the bandwagon and begin to tell people what they have already figured out for themselves. Thus, we can say that our corporate media is inherently cautious, behind the curve, and conservative. However, regional differences do come into play (see below).

This WND story is paranoid. I'll tell you why. Look at your friends at FOX. They use AP and Reuters wire reports all the time. Why? Because it saves them tons of money. They can employ fewer reporters and still cover all the news. Wire services also save them the need to have expensive overseas news bureaus. Pay attention to FOX's international news coverage. It is most often from wire reports. At least much more often than CNN's news.

This is a business decision by FOX/News Corp., not a news decision. When it comes to U.S. politics, where FOX knows its bread is buttered and its viewers/readers actually give a damn, they more often report their own stories. But even here, if the news topic is not "controversial" (read: exploitable for right-wing propaganda purposes) then FOX usually goes with the wire reports.

If George Soros is funding the AP (which seems odd/unbelievable to me), then you know what? Let him. You can't stop him. It's a free country with free enterprise and he can do what he wants with his $ billions. Apparently FOX owner Rupert Murdoch chooses to save his money for things other than reporting the news, which is not such a profitable venture. More power to him. It's much more profitable to print/broadcast opinions about the news, which is why commentary is interwoven into just about all news coverage on FOX tv, to the point where sometimes you don't know if they're reporting a story or commenting on it.

Speaking more broadly, I marvel at how conservatives point to the New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times as examples of the ubiquitous lib'rul media (which is a debatable claim, but I'll let it pass), but they never mention the conservative Cincinnati Enquirer, New York Post, Washington Times, or Dallas Morning News. Why? Because outside those local news markets, people don't read those conservative local papers. (The conservative Wall Street Journal and its sister publication Financial Times are probably the only real exceptions, with substantial national and global readership.) Whereas outside the NYC, DC, and LA news markets, people do read that local "liberal" news -- all over the world, in fact.

So... what you're really complaining about, when you think about it, is that news consumers in the global marketplace of ideas seems to prefer "liberal" news from America's more liberal coastal capitals over news produced by America's smaller Midwestern cities or fringe conservative coastal papers. Anyway, I don't know what grounds you have to complain. You live in a conservative locality, and your local paper caters to that political preference. You should be a happy consumer. Yet you're not. Why? Because you regard news not as information but primarily as propaganda (just admit it) with the power to persuade (read: bamboozle) people into accepting a certain world view. I mean, your mind is made up, nothing's going to change it, even if George Soros buys your local paper tomorrow. You're worried about what information other people are consuming, because you want your side to reach them and "win." If the other side's worldview seems to dominate, that upsets you, because your side's propaganda is losing its voice in the market.

In other words, if you think the U.S. media is biased, then you have nobody to blame but the free market, which you say you adore.

I wish all you laissez-faire Republicans would stop whining about the mythical lib'rul media. You've got your propaganda from FOX, talk radio, Drudge, Townhall.com, WND, etc., which filter out for you most of the information you don't want to know. And you've got a cowardly, corporate-owned mainstream media that jumps at the sight of its own shadow. Obviously, you're finding myriad ways to stay misinformed, and you're smugly satisfied with your level of un-knowledge. Rejoice.

Your only alternative is to throw your free-market principles out the window and endorse some kind of Fairness Doctrine. So which is it gonna be?

Whither the watchdogs?

By Joseph Farah

August 13, 2009 | WorldNetDaily

URL: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=106676

Instant TV classic: 'Goldman Sachs Are Scum'

Max Keiser wastes no time to make his point. He bursts out of his corner in Round 1 like Butterbean, all haymakers and head butts:

"Well, Goldman Sachs are scum. I mean that's the bottom line. They basically have co-opted the, uh, U.S. government, they have co-opted the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve functionality, they've co-opted the Obama Administration. Barack Obama, you know, dances to Goldman Sachs' tune. And [...] you just remember Hank Paulson held Congress hostage, took 'em in the back room and said, 'Give us $750 billion [or] we're gonna crash this market.' He's an arsonist. He's an outlaw. And yet he's given praise."

Now this is must-watch TV! Care for a big dollop of irony on your freedom fries? Then watch this politically correct, effete Arab-Frenchy business professor actually defending scummy U.S. bank Goldman Sachs against independent financial analyst Max Keiser, who says that GS should be thrown in jail for stealing, should be taking to the Hague for "financial terrorism." Keiser actually called Osama bin Laden a "pussycat" compared to "financial terrorists" Paulson and Geithner!

And when the Frenchy professor praises GS's recent $3.5 billion reported profits for providing value to shareholders, Keiser loses it: "But they were given $3.5 billion from the taxpayers of America!!! You call that a profit?! They didn't make 'em, they stole 'em! If I stole $1,000 from a bank, would you say I made $1,000 profit?!!"

You won't hear unfiltered truth like this on American TV for almost 14 uninterrupted minutes. That's an eternity in corporate television. Relish this. This is what media freedom looks like. Courtesy of France 24.

By the way, Keiser guarantees another world banking crisis in 6-9 months.

Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSwWy4E6I04

Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoQrYa_NKQQ

Study: Networks favor GOP candidates

Well, well, well, whaddya know?  Big ups to my Hoosiers!

Not that this study is going to change anybody's mind one bit, if they've already decided that the corporate-owned network media (for some inscrutable reason) favors Democrats.


'Liberal bias?'  IU professors find network TV election coverage favors Republicans
February 24, 2009

http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/9993.html

Roubini & Taleb bitch slap CNBC cheerleaders

It's pathetic how hard CNBC tries to spin Roubini and Taleb's statements, and how hard they look for "glimmerings of hope."

One of the bubbly newsbabes even posited that since people are finally desperate enough to listen to Roubini and Taleb, that the market must have finally hit bottom.  (Meaning, it's going to start going up).  Taleb would have nothing of it.  He said the system needs to be completely changed, change our culture, and live with less debt.  And most important, Taleb said banks need to change their incentive systems, which encourage bankers to take on hidden risk in pursuit of short-term bonuses:  "Wall Street can no longer operate like before."  And: "Those who one day may need to be bailed out need to be nationalized now."  The CNBC panel, which is used to kissing Wall Street's behind, was going nuts.

Roubini also favors government nationalizing the insolvent banks and then re-selling them.  He said, "Cash is king," and he's not invested in the market.  "We need more sustainable [economic] growth based on real investment in human and physical capital," not an economy based on unproductive housing or dot-com bubbles.


Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb Spreading Doom & Gloom on CNBC
February 9, 2009 | CNBC

URL: http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1027496846&play=1.

5 Myths about Obama and taxes

1) Obama will not raise taxes on 401-(k)'s.  And in fact, he's in favor of eliminating income tax on seniors who earn less than $50,000 per year:

 

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/aug/08/twisting-facts-taxes/

 

2) Heard the one about how Obama's plan to raise corporate income taxes will decrease the number of new hires?  Obama wants to give a $3,000 tax credit to any business for each new employee hired:

 

http://discussions.pbs.org/viewtopic.pbs?p=673870&sid=3869f174a956fdee85156ab74de0bf92

 

3) Moreover, Obama wants to raise tax on businesses making a profit of over $250 K, not revenue over $250 K.  Big difference!:

 

http://www.gopolitico.com/2008/10/business-tax-is-on-profit-not-revenue.html

 

4) Want to calculate how much your tax cut would be under Obama?  Just answer 3 questions in this Tax Cut Calculator provided by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center:

 

http://alchemytoday.com/obamataxcut/

 

5) But what about Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher, that hard-working guy whom Obama allegedly wants to tax to death?  Actually, Joe already owes nearly $1,200 in unpaid taxes and $1,261 in unpaid medical bills, but nevertheless, under Obama's plan, he'd be eligible for a tax cut, not an increase:

 

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Vote2008/story?id=6047360&page=1

 

Finally, let's dispel the biggest myth of them all: the myth of the Lib'rul Media.  Tell me, how can a rational person argue that the profit-driven mainstream media is in the bag for Obama, when their parent corporations (GE, Time Warner, Disney, News Corp, and Viacom) stand to gain $1.44 Billion in tax cuts if McCain is elected?:

 

http://sugarfreak.typepad.com/mobtownshank/2008/10/the-myth-of-lib.html

David Brooks on Obama: 'OCS' vs. 'MBS'

David Brooks' latest op-ed on Barack Obama is a disgusting example of how the mainstream media covers the campaigns, which has been described in loathsome detail by journalist Matt Taibbi. First the media build up Obama to god-like proportions, and then they reserve the right to knock him down again.

Brooks consistent use of the general "they" to refer to Obama's alleged legions of over-frenzied, hope-addicted supporters is a journalistic cover for: "I did no research, I talked to nobody, and got no quotes for my story." By coining the name of a phenomenon ("Obama Comedown Syndrome") without offering any evidence to support it, he is substituting bald assertion for facts. What Brooks may in fact be describing is the media's ennui: I wouldn't be surprised if they really were tired of talking about Obama as if he were JFK, Jesus Christ, and Muhammed Ali all wrapped up in one. God knows I am. But I don't blame Obama for it.

To be fair, Obama never claimed to be a miracle-worker; nor did he ask to be made into some super-human answer to everybody's political prayers. The mainstream media made him into that. And perhaps they'll decide to yank that distinction away from him in a matter of weeks or months. Who knows? That's their right as America's cynical king-makers.

In any case, it's a superficial distinction, and it's unfair to Obama himself and to the other candidates. Every candidate should be judged by the same standard. Building up Obama only to knock him down again is a cynical ploy by the media to drum up public interest & TV ratings, and to demonstrate their power over our elections.

So, in reply to Brooks and his pals, allow me coin a term: MBS ("Media Bullshit Syndrome"). I'm seeing it all over the country.

How the Corporate Media operates

This study's findings belie the myth of the Lib'rul Media.

A small skew overall in favor of Democrats can be explained by the MSM's favorable coverage of Obama, a liberal, vs. its very negative coverage of McCain, a conservative. But keep in mind McCain is tremendously unpopular even among "real" conservatives, so he's an easy punching bag for the MSM.

Rather, this study reinforces the belief that we have a Corporate Media that is interested in whittling down the field of presidential primary candidates as quickly as possible to a few household names like Hillary and Rudy, in order to start the "horse race" reporting, which, the MSM has believes, secures higher ratings than actually reporting on the issues and "no-name" candidates like Kucinich and Huckabee.

The question is: Is the Corporate Media right?

People say they care about issues and the candidates' character and backgrounds, but do we really? Or do we really want to see precisely what the Media gives us: the political bloodsport of "celebrity" candidates, million-dollar fund raising, vapid, focus group-crafted sound bytes, day-by-day poll ratings, and big-name endorsements from Oprah and Arnold?



THE INVISIBLE PRIMARY—INVISIBLE NO LONGER:

A First Look at Coverage of the 2008 Presidential Campaign
October 29, 2007 | Journalism.org

4th Estate Sale

What!? Government ought to subsidize the media in order to keep it free and fearless?

Sounds crazy, and counter-intuitive. But as Ezra shows, today's corporate-controlled, profit-driven U.S. media are not giving us what we want: the whole truth. Whereas countries like Britain and Sweden do ensure a free, fair, competitive, and informative media thanks to targeted government subsidies.

It all boils down to this: Is it more important for the media to be private, or for the media to serve its vital democratic function as the "4th estate?"


The Truth -- So Long As It's Profitable
Journalist trends prove that profit-seeking and truth-telling don't really mix. Is publicly supported media the answer?

By Ezra Klein

October 4, 2007 | Prospect.org


"I have always been firmly persuaded," wrote Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "that our newspapers cannot be edited in the interests of the general public, from the counting room." Increasingly, the slow decline of American media is proving him right. As the Internet deprives newspapers of the monopolistic business models of yesteryear and the cable channels construct a realm of perfect competition in which mild consumer preferences -- say, for the channel with a bright American flag in the corner rather than the one without -- can be expressed with a click of a remote, the newsroom's traditional buffers against triviality and hollow sensationalism are showing themselves to be deeply inadequate.

Additionally, increased competition and less cross-subsidization from classified ads means that every week's news stories come with a couple articles on how there will be fewer news stories; how this or that paper needed to close this or that bureau because this or that corporate overlord just didn't see the point.

And ah, yes, the corporate overlords. Or even just the accountants. They matter, too. The mandate of the media is not merely to inform. It is to generate revenue for stockholders, or turn enough of a profit to pay its employees. As the authors of Taking Stock: Journalism and the Publicly Traded Company sadly conclude, "News has become secondary, even incidental, to markets and revenues and margins and advertisers and consumer preferences. At its worst, the publicly traded newspaper company, its energy entirely drawn to the financial market's unrealistic and greedy expectations, can become indifferent to news and, thus, ultimately to the fundamental purposes served by news and the press." Or, as George Saunders pithily puts in his essay "The Braindead Megaphone," asking the media to "tell us the truth" is not the same as asking the media to "tell us as much truth as you can, while still making money."

But what if we could go back to "tell us the truth"? What if we could create a funding source that recognized the news' role as a "public good," worthy of some protection from the vicissitudes of quarterly earning reports? What if, in other words, we subsidized it? "Journalism is a rare business in that its product -- news -- has a public-service function, but unlike other public-service activities, like public education or scientific research, it is not protected from market forces by government support," writes Bree Nordenson in the September issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. "So when the financial viability of the news business is threatened, so too is the press's role as the fourth estate."

And the market forces are threatening. As Nordenson explains, there's an explosion of activity in the commentary and entertainment sectors of the media, but a decided decline in the resources and viability of the unglamorous, economically intensive news-gathering functions. "[W]ith the business model for news in transition," he writes, "mainstream media owners are cutting staff and reducing content, particularly hard-news coverage, in order to maintain the high profit margins newspapers have historically enjoyed."

But government involvement in journalism -- even to protect it -- is supposedly a radical notion. Just as we fear that corporate ownership of the press will lead to an insufficiently critical approach to corporate power, so too does public subsidy look likely to breed a cozy, even pleading, relationship to those holding power. Yet government has helped the press for years, and the reduced postal rates, copyright protections, favorable tax treatment, and other sundry subsidies don't appear particularly causal in the press's treatment of government action. And that's not even getting into the huge subsidies the government offers in the form of radio and television wave licenses, which grant public bandwidth to private companies. The government is so quiet about this giveaway that they don't so much as demand a few preempted sitcoms to allow full coverage of the quadrennial political conventions.

Nordenson also tells of some stronger subsidy schemes in Europe. Sweden, for instance, has a system dedicated to encouraging reportorial competition. They allocate money to all but the dominant paper in a given market, so as to ensure that no town is stuck being dependent on a single newspaper or news source. The system is fully automatic, and works off a transparent and perfectly predictable formula. And the result? According to Daniel Hallin, chairman of the department of communication at the University of California, San Diego, the implementation of this system was concurrent with "a shift toward a more adversarial press. It is actually very strong evidence that press subsidies don't lead journalists to be timid."

Elsewhere, the United Kingdom spends about $7 billon on public broadcasting, while the United States spends about $480 million. So the British are spending about 15 times as much as we are, despite being only one-fifth our size. The result is that in a country renowned for a vicious, tabloid-style press, the BBC stands protected in the center, producing constant, credible, adversarial journalism that need not compete on grounds of sensationalism.

There are many models America could adopt. An independent commission that allocates money raised by an automatic tax that exists outside -- and thus away from the influence of -- the congressional appropriations process. Or Dean Baker's idea for an "Artistic Freedom Voucher" that would be controlled by taxpayers. Or even a simple, renewed commitment to publicly financed media. This requires overcoming our allergy to government support of goods with a public function. But what an odd nation we are if our discomfort with government support outweighs our fear of a media whose first imperative is to profit, rather than to inform. Such peculiar values would make for a helluva newspaper story, if there's anyone left to write it.