Can someone tell that fuckstick lunatic, who just went on a yelling boilerplate tirade to Steve Liesman about "pro-growth policies as opposed to socialism!", that Red-Baiting terms have zero emotional significance to most of America that's moved ON from that sort of nonsense?

Can someone tell that ranting, rubber-room candidate that the President is actually a centrist Chi-Schooler when it comes to economics, and that Republicans are the ones who control the purse strings?

Can someone give him a nice fat valium or a bat in the jaw?

How'd that Tea Party work out for you, Ricky?

http://inplainsight.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/26/17825677-heres-what-happens-when-good-jobs-go-away-and-dont-come-back?lite





The 33-Year Plague Called Reaganomics: The Rule, The Gospel, The Way of Life.

What do we do to change it? I say "we", because short of having a million dollars, it's quite evident we're on our own.

What's happening now is that on CNBC, there's Hagel trying to drum up a reason to invade Syria . .. you got that whole mess with the War Criminal getting his own library and his flesh-rotted legacy literally being reanimated by pundit after pundit as if nothing bad ever happened during the Decade of Decline . . . . you got a background check bill that just got flipped off by a talking turtle and his merry band of geriatric cackling thugs five months after 20 first-graders get taken apart by a Bushmaster . . . you have a country that refuses to move into the 20th century on three basic human rights (education, health care and marriage) . . .

I'm trying to fish, to dig for some kind of hope that economics, the environment, culture, labor rights, human rights, senior citizen's livelihoods, our children's futures, our national resources and infrastructure . .. are going to improve for the better (and dear God, they all need to).

Then I look at just about every avenue of power and think that it's all far too gone to be repaired.

Nearly EVERYONE that has any kind of power in America, whether it's in the government or the private sector, subscribes to either counter-productive glad-handing of conservative business and economic policies at best or, at worst, embraces and wholeheartedly believes in wealthmongering, plutonomy, laissez-fail, complete corporate fealty and austerity as sound and sturdy life practice.

Who in corporate America values their labor enough to domestically employ them; forget the notion of paying them a living wage comparable to the costs of living and offering benefits that will allow the retirement-to-new-worker cycle to continue? Who in corporate America DOESN'T believe in the long-standing myth of "fiduciary duty to the shareholders being the ONLY thing corporations should care about"?? Who in corporate America isn't constantly playing the "persecuted victim" card? Who in corporate America isn't trying to game the system?

Look at your wealthy. I could devote three paragraphs to their destructive behavior in terms of the environment, the electoral process, wealth inequality, governmental productivity, labor rights, human rights, etc. . . . but I'm not going to.

Out of the three branches of government, HOW many Sherrod Brown/Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren Progressives are there? You could count them on your hands. Likely, ONE of them.

Look at your media channels. Are there ANY domestic channels that have truly OBJECTIVE voices and aren't trying to underhandedly push toxic narratives?

Police? Don't we both have the same oppressors? Yet who do they brutalize? Who do they assault? Whose protests do they break up? Don't even for ONE SECOND tell me that they don't collectively dislike and hold in contempt anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman. It's still, by and large, a very conservative institution. See them at any Tea Party events? See them at any Glen Beck gatherings? Why do they come in riot gear to our protests? Do we have caches of heavy weaponry?

Democrats? Except for the ones I mentioned and a few others, the lot of them are Third Way appeasers who worship at the altar of Milton Friedman, don't believe in basic human rights like Universal Health Care and cry "powerless" when it comes to getting even a simple gun background check Bill passed. They're doing absolutely nothing at all to disprove the "both parties are the same" people when it comes to economics and only care about social issues when they're being pushed to do so.

The Republicans are nothing but obstructionist, greedbag, fundamental-religion-poisoned, oblivious, know-nothing, do-nothing, inaffectual, warmongering, selfish, lying, immoral failures filled with sour hatred and blackened hearts. Looking for help from them is like looking for talent in 2013 pop music. They're not looking for the next bridge to repair, they're looking for the next nation to blow up and markets to vacuum. They don't want you to retire, they want you to be unemployed, starving and DEAD. Let's not pretend these pig resource hogs don't have a herd to cull.

Where do we turn when everyone's purchased?

Is it nature or nurture that institutions absolutely HAVE to be run by authoritarians who don't care about the fate of mankind and only live in the quarterly short-term?

How is there a future for America when these above-mentioned institutions will try everything in their power to obstruct and prevent that from happening?

Where's the PROMISE? WHERE'S THE HOPE??

When are we going to get a progressive or a hundred to change things?

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/20111022

If there were ever a definition of "uncomfortable", it's Thomas "Milton" Friedman trying to bob-and-weave his way out of an actual journalist's questioning of his flimsy, overassumptive theories that he learned from "random chai wallahs while waiting for his plane in the Dehli airport", or something along those lines. Among the things you learn from Tommy's squirm-a-thon:

* It's either live with what we have or North Korea/Totalitarianism, and there is no in-between, fairer economic happy medium anywhere in the world that has any kind of success.

* Don't shoot the messenger.

* He really . . . REALLLLLLLLLLY doesn't like his personal wealth being called out.

* We're not in Kansas anymore.

* He's never heard of the word "neo-liberal".

* Tommy's a tad blind to pachyderms inside rooms.

* We need balance and cooperation (and hey, while we're throwing out pipe dreams, I want a new car).

* Our economy is NOT zero-sum and Americans AREN'T losing their jobs when third world nations are lifted out of poverty.

* Anyone who questions him has an "agenda".

No, Thomas. What you just experienced is called "Objective JOURNALISM". You want softball-lobbing Trickle-down fawning, go on CNBC.

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0202-26.htm

Some snippets . . .



Have we learned absolutely NOTHING? Will we EVER? I don't have to ask will THEY ever learn, since, you know, "they got theirs" and learning from mistakes they don't even know or care that they're making isn't really part or parcel in their bubbles.

Must be nice to be able to relegate a planet to a scorched Earth, piecemeal, dumpster scrap, shipping-crate-home future. Greed is a hereditary plague that we're all going to pay dearly for.

2. Get it instilled that making a living with a living wage, a pension and stability is far more fruitful in the long run than "get-rich-quick" and a more probable and reasonable solution than relying on "STARTYEROWNBUSINESS/BEYEROWNBOSS!" as the cure-all for America's chronic joblessness.

3. ACE Marty Feldstein's HBS Laissez-Fail CRAP from our business schools. The reason corporations are ruthless and uncaring is because this little bastard's right-wing teachings have been poisoning student's minds since the 1980s and they go on to RUN these corporations . . . into the ground. We're creating a generation of short-term, profit-happy Hank Kravises, Michael Milkens, Lloyd Bankfiends and Jamie Dimons and it's KILLING us.

4. Guaranteed basic income combined with maximum wage. Nobody NEEDS more than a billion dollars when there are people with degrees fighting for former high-schooler jobs.

5. Universal Health Care.

6. End ridiculously expensive and painfully useless folly wars and have the military help rebuild our badly crumbling infrastructure. I can't think of a better plan for national security than that.

7. Shore up public transportation to European standards and get some goddamned high speed RAIL in this country.

8. Reinstate Glass-Stegall.

9. Reinstate The Fairness Doctrine.

10. Equal rights for all humans.

This is in no particular order, but it's a start.