The primary reason behind the rightward shift in our politics has been the rightward shift of our media as exemplified by the growth of Rupert Murdoch's media empire. The concept of a liberal media has always been a myth, but now the biggest lie is that the "mainstream media" is somehow neutral. False neutrality has replaced objectivity. A monopolistic media market relentlessly attacks or obscures Democratic and progressive viewpoints in order to pander to their right wing corporate advertisers.

Liberal talk radio is now largely dead because corporate advertisers have increasingly acted in concert to boycott it. Now, the only political talk radio available is from right wing blowhards. Bill Moyers once said "There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle." Sadly, we have already lost this struggle. The press is not free. It is for sale. And the only folks who can afford it are the Shelden Adelsons and Koch Brothers of the world.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/killed-liberal-radio-star-article-1.1557670

In Los Angeles, the last remaining all-liberal talk station, KTLK, will do an about-face and start airing only conservative talkers on Jan. 1. Ditto for KNEW in San Francisco. Last November, progressive stations in Portland, Ore., and Seattle switched to all-sports formats.

The biggest pressures squeezing liberal talk radio are commercial ones. Deregulation of the airwaves allowed conglomerates like Clear Channel to borrow billions from Wall Street and begin buying up stations by the hundreds. Saddled with debt, Clear Channel has ruthlessly standardized its 840 stations and squeezed each for maximum profit. That meant eliminating progressive talk from its stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland.

Angry progressives claim such moves could also have a political motivation: Clear Channel is owned in part by Bain Capital, the private equity firm once run by Mitt Romney . That’s possible, but it wouldn’t explain the problems besetting stations like WWRL, which is owned by Access 1, a family-owned media company.

A more likely culprit is the hard economics of persuading businesses to advertise on local radio. “National advertisers have pulled away from progressive stations, and not just in New York,” says Mark Riley, a New York radio veteran who just ended a great stint as WWRL’s morning man. “Stations aren’t worth what the people who bought them thought they were worth,” he says.

In right wing world, President Obama's speech to the UN regarding climate change was just a distraction from the horrors of Bengazi and Obamacare. Of course, the main stream media gives Republicans a free pass on climate change issues because only Democrats are expected to be responsible.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2014/0925/It-s-Climate-Week.-Where-are-Republicans

WASHINGTON — Leaders from across the globe, executives of multinational corporations, and a wide array of private citizens descended upon New York this week to support clean energy and climate change action at Tuesday’s UN Climate Summit and adjoining Climate Week events.

But amid the hubbub in Manhattan, one group has kept notably quiet.

For much of President Obama’s tenure, Republicans have criticized his administration’s green goals as job-killing, ineffective, and bureaucratically messy. Some Republican lawmakers reject the existence of human-induced climate change; but more frequently, Republicans say Obama’s climate policies are a distraction from pressing concerns like job creation, the economy, and national security.

“While America faces immediate challenges and threats, President Obama remains fixated on pushing an extreme climate agenda,” Sen. John Barrasso (R) of Wyoming told the Monitor in an e-mailed statement Wednesday.

In a Fox News world, some folks probably do think that Gohmert's comments are totally accurate, which is why Republicans do stand a chance to take control of the Senate. A large segment of the voting public lives in a world where Obamacare represents national security disaster, Bengazi is far worse than 9/11 and the pretext that lead to the Iraq war, and climate change is a hoax.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/09/26/3572693/tea-party-congressman-eric-holders-resignation-is-a-ploy-to-distract-americans-from-the-horrors-of-obamacare/

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) speculated on Thursday that Attorney General Eric Holder was resigning from office to distract attention from Obamacare and “the world falling apart.”

“Because of the timing, I can’t help but wonder if this is the president’s attempt to change the subject from the horrors that Obamacare has caused people’s health care and the dismal economy and the world falling apart because of this president’s foreign policies or the lack there of,” the Texas Congressman said during an interview with Radio America.

Gohmert, who famously sparred with Holder during Congressional investigations into the Fast & Furious operation and has repeatedly called for his impeachment, went on to accuse the outgoing Attorney General of partnering with “radical Islam,” which, he claimed, “has an open door at the White House.”

The allegations are nothing new from Gohmert. Following the bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013, Gohmert directly accused Holder of siding with terrorists. “Think about it, when your attorney general spent more of his legal career helping terrorists than defending the country, then you know we all have certain biases and lean certain ways,” he said.

I thought Republicans were for small government, and now we are supposed to track people like Fed Ex packages. Next, they will be advocating bar code tattoos.

http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2014/09/25/3571376/barbara-comstock-fedex-immigrants/

During a debate for the 10th Congressional District with a Democratic challenger Wednesday, Virginia Republican congressional candidate Barbara Comstock said that the government can secure the border by tracking immigrants in a similar fashion to how the shipping company FedEx tracks packages.

“I think immigration should be done by legislation, not executive action. I think first and foremost, we need to stop playing politics with this and secure the borders,” Comstock said at the debate against Democratic challenger John Foust. “Fedex can track packages coming in here all the time; we can track people who are coming into the country. And we can do that right.”

“We secure the borders; we enforce the laws; and then we pass things like H-1B visas which I support, ” Comstock added. “We need to do a step by step process … So often when you have these huge monolith bills, you have unexpected consequences.”

Responding to a questioner who asked about the immigration reform proposals she supports and whether she advocated amending current laws including supporting executive action on immigration relief, Comstock said that she believed any immigration action should come from Congress and not from the Obama administration.

I do think it is amazing that the cable media has been so quiet about a billionaire threatening to withhold donations because of the Pope's comments about income inequality. It just goes to show how corrupt our mainstream media has become.

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-ken-langone-20140103-story.html#page=1

Is it a law of evolution that the fatter the wallet, the thinner the skin? The wallet of Ken Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot, is so fat he he must sit on it funny, yet there he was the other day, crabbing to CNBC about Pope Francis' missive to the effect that the rich are indifferent to the poor.

Langone was careful to attribute his complaints to an unnamed fellow plutocrat, who being a rich person ostensibly took the Pope's remarks as an insult. Langone claimed his friend was so upset by the Pope's remarks that he was reconsidering a donation for the renovation of New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral.


If Langone sounds a little like the guy with an embarrassing condition opening his medical consultation with the words, "Doc, I've got this friend...," so be it. Langone told CNBC he advised Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York that the pope should cool it with the finger-pointing at the rich. ("You get more with honey than with vinegar," he said.) Dolan promised to explain to the reluctant donor that he was "misunderstanding" the pope's words and suggested he would explicate the pope's words in a more emollient way. "And then," Dolan said hopefully, "he's going to say, 'OK, if that's the case, count me in for St. Patrick's Cathedral.'"

Remember, this is all about a $180-million project to renovate the big cathedral on Fifth Avenue, which suggests that the priorities of the New York diocese may not leave so much room for "misunderstanding" the pope's message.