Excellent Interview with Rachel Moran

The subject is prostitution. Moran has written a powerful book about it, knowing about the issue firsthand:



Men who use prostitutes are sociopaths, total scum.

Television News Was Dead and Buried LONG Before

Phil Donahue, who was nothing but a talk show host anyway and not a journalist, was sacked by MSNBC over his opposition to the Iraq War.

Yes, Donahue was presenting opinion, but opinion was infecting regular news broadcasts long before Donahue got sacked, and that was much more worrisome than anything done to talking heads.

Television news impartiality died long ago, with the Reagan administration's gutting of the Fairness Doctrine. Not only did talk radio do away with any duty at all in using the public airwaves to present opposing points of view (the rise of Rush Limbaugh is a direct result of the end of the Fairness Doctrine), but network news gradually dispensed with any notion of impartiality. The ultimate outrage was Rupert Murdoch's entry into the American news market with his blatantly propagandistic "Fox News Channel." He brought to America the British form of reporting (although he was Australian himself) that always presented a certain point of view, the opposite of what traditional American news organizations which at least had as their goal fairness. The British media would editorialize everywhere in its coverage, whereas American news organizations left opinion on the opinion page in newspapers or commentary segments on television that were clearly marked as such (examples for television would be Eric Severeid's or Howard K. Smith's commentaries). Murdoch, however, went further than anybody when he put a political operative, Roger Ailes, in charge of his news network. This was nothing short of an attempt to buy and shape opinion by creating a propaganda organization.

This would NEVER have happened when the Fairness Doctrine was in place.

We have been suffering from the effects of propaganda ever since.

The CTU Strike Shows Just How Bankrupt Both Political Parties Truly Are

Chris Hedges:

With the Election of Barack Obama

it is very clear that both political parties have been hijacked by the neoliberals who are hellbent on destroying this country, but I wouldn't claim that the "left" has nowhere to go.

It is the VOTER who has nowhere to go, regardless of political party, or philosophy, unless he or she is in the tiny economic elite of this country.

Our biggest problems are apathy and a sense of helplessness. But we literally have NO time to screw around. Our major social safety net programs are just about to be destroyed so the crooks can have everything.

There is no major difference between a McCain administration, a Bush and an Obama administration. Obama, in fact, is in many ways worse. McCain, like Bush, exposes the naked face of corporate power. Obama, who professes to support core liberal values while carrying out policies that mock these values, mutes and disempowers liberals, progressives and leftists. Environmental and anti-war groups, who plead with Obama to address their issues, are little more than ineffectual supplicants.

This son of a bitch is much worse than a McCain or even a Bush, so you KNOW that's bad.

News and Commentary Briefs

A judge has dismissed charges against Nevada Lt. Governor Brian Krolicki.
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Tiger Woods' popularity continues to go south.
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Are liberals useless.

Well, if you call Obama a "liberal," then of course they would be useless, but Obama has never been one. I don't see much being accomplished by the so-called "progressives" or "leftists."
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If you have committed a crime decades ago and have long since paid your dues, it doesn't matter to the employer how good you might be now--more and more employers are telling ex-cons to take a hike.
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Misc

Now that Michael Jackson is dead and maybe buried, sleazeball Martin Bashir, whose "documentary" of MJ put the late singer in the worst light possible by insinuating he did something wrong with those kids but help his own dubious career, says this:

Certainly when I made the documentary, there was a small part of that which contained a controversy concerning his relationship with other young people. But the truth is that he was never convicted of any crime, I never saw any wrongdoing myself. And last his lifestyle may have been unorthodox, I don't believe it was criminal. And I think the world has now lost the greatest entertainer it's probably ever known."

So why didn't you say anything THEN?

The comments following the article are worth reading.

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I can't STAND this New Agey "positive" psychobabble garbage which says if you just will yourself to think "positive," good things will come your way.

It's the same crap as the "prosperity gospel" which has polluted Christianity. If you're poor or "unsuccessful," it's your own damned fault.
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Political Commentary

This Naderite thinks it is already too late to save the country.

I don't think it is, but it will be difficult. The biggest obstacle is the lack of political will by BOTH of our political parties to do what is needed, and that is to literally repeal all economic policies of the last 30 years which created the mess. We need to tax the wealthiest people to 1950s levels and penalize the hell out of companies that offshore jobs in order to undercut workers here. That's just for starters.

Americans' biggest enemies are those in Congress who continue to have their heads up their collective asses and pander to those rich and corporate entities who bankroll their elections.

Author Chris Hedges

is on BookTV right now talking about his book, American Fascists, which I am reading now.

There are better books I think out there on the "movement," but Hedges' point of view is that of a Christian. He does make the connection between the religious right and the fascists of yore.

After all, their "movement" isn't actually religious but political. Hedges seems to agree with me on that score. He also notes these people are not "evangelicals," nor are they "fundamentalists," the latter because fundamentalists generally are apolitical. These theocrats are actually dominionists, and that "movement," as I have noted, is little different from the fascism of the 20th century.

He did make mention of Blackwater USA, founded by yet another zillionaire bankrolling the radical religious right, Erik Prince, and the stuff they were doing down in New Orleans.

Just because the Democrats have taken hold of Congress doesn't mean the far right is back out in the fringe where it belongs--hardly.