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.

News, Comments, Etc.

With the S&P lowering the U.S.'s credit rating (I suspect it is trying to blackmail Congress into more "austerity" measures to bail out the parasites responsible for the economic meltdown), capitalism itself is under a severe crisis of which there may be no return.

I would say that in this country the blame rests squarely on Washington for creating this mess.
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Believe it or not, Rupert Murdoch doesn't actually call the shots at Fox "News"; instead it is Roger Ailes, who Murdoch is actually scared to death of:

Many within Murdoch's family have come to viscerally hate Ailes. Murdoch's third wife, Wendi, has worked to soften her husband's politics, and his son James has persuaded him to embrace the reality of global warming – even as Ailes has led the drumbeat of climate deniers at Fox News. PR man Matthew Freud, Murdoch's son-in-law, recently told reporters: "I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes's horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to."

"Rupert is surrounded by people who regularly, if not moment to moment, tell him how horrifying and dastardly Roger is," says Wolff, Murdoch's biographer. "Wendi cannot stand Roger. Rupert's children cannot stand Roger. So around Murdoch, Roger has no supporters, except for Roger himself."

The family could pull out the money financing the operation or sell the damned thing if it bothers them so much.

The original piece is here.
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In more and more cities, it is a crime to be poor:

In Los Angeles, housing expert Peter Dreier says that "people who've lost their jobs, or at least their second jobs, cope by doubling or tripling up in overcrowded apartments, or by paying 50 or 60 or even 70 percent of their incomes in rent." According to a community organizer in Alexandria, Virginia, the standard apartment in a complex occupied largely by day laborers has two bedrooms, each containing an entire family of up to five people, plus an additional person laying claim to the couch.

No one could call suicide a "coping strategy," but it is one way some people have responded to job loss and debt. There are no national statistics linking suicide to economic hard times, but the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline reported more than a four-fold increase in call volume between 2007 and 2009, and regions with particularly high unemployment, like Elkhart, Indiana, have seen troubling spikes in their suicide rates. Foreclosure is often the trigger for suicide -- or, worse, murder-suicides that destroy entire families.

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Our society is so full of sexism and ageism, a few women who are old enough to know better are actually undergoing the knife despite possible health risks.

Don't hand me any crap it's about "feeling better." This is about attracting men, period. By the time you are in your late 70s, the men have pretty much died off or are in bad shape anyway.

Etcetera and Outrages

It's the class warfare, stupid, when it comes to the phony debt ceiling debate:

Why is the demand for “deficit reduction” now being voiced so unanimously in every quarter of official American politics? What are the fundamental class issues that underlie this campaign?

The American ruling elite is engaged in the greatest robbery of working people in US history. In the bank bailout of 2008-2009, the financial aristocracy effectively transferred to the federal government its bad debts and losses from a decade of reckless speculation. Now the working class is being compelled to pay the price for Wall Street’s looting of the Treasury through the destruction of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs in education, the environment, transportation and housing.

Those responsible for the economic mess should be in jail, not being given handouts on the backs of everybody else.
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Elizabeth Warren ought to consider running for president herself. She would do better than the shitbag who is in the White House now.
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The Rupert Murdoch hearings can be viewed here, if one is interested.

Apparently he was the recipient of a shaving cream or cream pie earlier. I missed it.

Edit: It was a plate of foam. The video doesn't actually capture the attack, but it is evident Murdoch was hit with something, as foam can be seen on his clothes viewing from the back.
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News, Etc.

This article could be titled "The Decline and Fall of a Parasite", for that is an apt description of Rupert Murdoch.

News

How DARE these people want to better themselves instead of working in minimum wage jobs with no benefits or future, provided they even have those jobs.

Ford plans to add 1,800 jobs at the plant, but it’s unclear how many of those will be open to the public because many are reserved for veteran UAW Ford workers eligible to transfer from plants elsewhere.

These thousands of people may have wasted their time, in other words.
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The "99ers" are out of sight, out of mind to our elected officials.

It's all part of the plan to turn this country into a third world country.
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Can Rupert Murdoch's media empire survive? Should it?

Campaign Notes.

The one thing the media tries desperately to sweep under the rug is the fact the Democratic nomination for president will NOT be decided before the convention.

Even if the DNC this weekend decides against Hillary Clinton, she is still going to take the fight to the convention.

The media's desperation in wanting a totally unqualified, unfit individual to go up against a qualified, but still unfit yet hugely popular media darling is plainly obvious to all.
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So much for Hillary Clinton having a "lesbian lover." Aide Huma Abedin already has a beau, Congressman Anthony Weiner, and it appears to be serious between the two. He travels with her quite often on the Clinton campaign trail.

Too bad, so sad, media shitbags.
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Murdoch is wrong about Obama but right about Olbermann.
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Is Rudy

cooked?

This is all over the cable news:

Judith Regan, the book publisher who was fired by the News Corporation last year, asserts in a lawsuit filed today that a senior executive at the media conglomerate encouraged her to mislead federal investigators about her relationship with Bernard B. Kerik during his bid to become homeland security secretary in late 2004.

The lawsuit asserts that the News Corporation executive wanted to protect the presidential aspirations of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor, who had appointed him New York City police commissioner and had recommended him for the federal post.

Rupert Murdoch

was successful in his bid to destroy the Wall Street Journal.

As the World Turns.

A California doc is accused of hastening the death of a patient in order to harvest the patient's organs for transplant.
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A local deputy district attorney and reality show contest was found dead the other day.
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A few vegetarians have fallen off the turnip truck and are now eating the despised meat.
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Now it won't be just the WSJ editorial page that will be shit.
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