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How is news coverage working for you? Pop Quiz: How Many soldiers have we lost this Month?
Jon Stewart Blasts Glenn Beck For Promoting Slaughter Of Americans
July 2, 2009 8:18 pm
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Osama bin Laden Needs to Attack America Daily Show
Full EpisodesPolitical Humor Jason Jones in Iran
Colbert Urges Viewers To Take Food Away From GOP Lawmaker
July 2, 2009 4:39 pm
The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Tip/Wag - Cynthia Davis & Fox News Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum
Obama and Iran, Considered
June 27, 2009 7:29 am
James Zogby
.....The political leaders and commentators speaking the loudest and urging the most reckless behavior have absolutely no clue what is actually happening in Iran. As was the case in Afghanistan and Iraq, everyone with a microphone and TV camera in front of them has now become an Iran expert. But, their badgering of the President is based more on an ideologically based fantasy of "spontaneous revolution," than on reality. It was this identical infantile disorder that led this same crew to believe that the overthrow of Saddam's regime would "cleanse" Iraq and spontaneously bring about democracy, or that elections in Afghanistan would miraculously liberate women and usher in a liberal democracy in Kabul.
Because of their lack of understanding of what is taking place in Iran, they fail to recognize that egging on demonstrators might result in two undesirable outcomes. The demonstrators may feel emboldened, believing that the US will act on their behalf--which it is not able to do--leading to a tragic replay of the Basra uprising of 1991. Or the fact that the regime might use overt signs of US encouragement to stoke even deeper anti-American sentiment, legitimizing an even more ruthless effort to crush the demonstrators. .....
Jihad Walking: Jason Jones Compares American Knowledge Of Iran To Iranian Knowledge Of America
June 24, 2009 12:08 pm
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Jason Jones: Behind the Veil - Ayatollah You So Daily Show
Full EpisodesPolitical Humor Jason Jones in Iran
Rushpublic brainstorming session:
June 23, 2009 9:07 pm
Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away
June 23, 2009 7:51 pm
By Chris Hedges,
Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.
The fundamental problem in the Middle East is not a degenerate and corrupt Islam. The fundamental problem is a degenerate and corrupt Christendom. We have not brought freedom and democracy and enlightenment to the Muslim world. We have brought the opposite. We have used the iron fist of the American military to implant our oil companies in Iraq, occupy Afghanistan and ensure that the region is submissive and cowed......
......"The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country," Stephen Kinzer, the author of "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror," told me. "For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the United States began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship."
"Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians," Kinzer said. "Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in Iran is close to nil.
Especially ludicrous is the sight of people in Washington calling for intervention on behalf of democracy in Iran when just last year they were calling for the bombing of Iran. If they had had their way then, many of the brave protesters on the streets of Tehran today-the ones they hold up as heroes of democracy-would be dead now."........
Bill Maher Strikes Again
June 20, 2009 11:58 am
Iraqi Stephan Recap
June 14, 2009 6:07 pm
The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Recap - Week of 6/8/09 Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq
The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers
June 14, 2009 1:29 pm
Frank Rich, NYT
....What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies - indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country. Change can be frightening and traumatic, especially if it’s not change you can believe in....
Harry and Louise Parody
June 14, 2009 12:00 am
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Threat To Capitalism
June 11, 2009 10:06 pm
By Eric Lotke
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched yesterday “a sweeping
national advocacy campaign …
to defend and advance America’s free enterprise values in the
face of
rapid government growth and attacks by anti-business
activists.” The Chamber of Commerce doesn’t get
it. They aren’t defending capitalism and free
enterprise. They are all but destroying it. Free-market fundamentalists don’t understand that
capitalism is a
system. It has rules, boundaries and obligations. When those rules are
broken, the system falters. • It’s not football without lines to mark
touchdowns and out of bounds. This is more than just a sports metaphor. Capitalism
won’t work
unless a negotiated price and promise to pay $100 is followed by
payment of $100. And someone needs to enforce those rules. Otherwise
it's not capitalism. It’s robbery. These rules operate at every level. • My
AAA bond valued at $100 million actually needs to be worth
$100 million, and it needs AAA assurance of quality — not conflicts
of interest where companies issuing securities pay the
agencies for their ratings. • My
“mortgage-backed security” needs
to be backed by an actual buyer with an actual stake in real property
—
not bankers whose interest is in transaction fees from bundling,
re-bundling and sales. • My
tomato should be free of salmonella, my toys should
not have illegal levels of lead-based paint, and my
pet food should not be infused with toxic melamine. If nobody enforces those rules, the system
starts to break down. That’s what’s
happening now. A generation ago, free-market ideologues decided that markets
could
police themselves and regulate themselves. They said history had
finally invented something that was truly-self correcting. So they took
the police off the beat and slandered as socialism every effort to
enforce rules or enforce the reliability of promises.......
• It’s not basketball without a referee to call the
fouls.
Frank Schaeffer "Crazy For God" (Podcast)
June 11, 2009 12:33 pm
Frank Schaeffer published a memoir about his life growing up the son of Francis Schaeffer in 2007 titled Crazy for God. Audio from a recent interview he did on NPR.
The Party Of Eternal War Unites Against Obama (And America)
June 11, 2009 11:43 am
Frank Schaeffer
It strikes me that President Obama's speech delivered at Cairo University provides a watershed divide. I'd like to point out that the reactions of right-wing, self-proclaimed "patriotic Americans" to Obama are almost word-for-word the same as the reactions from leading clerics of Iran. And the anti-Obama reaction of the more right-wing Zionist Israeli settlers and their Christian Zionist American supporters is just about word-for-word the same as the reaction of the leaders of Hamas.
Disclosure: I was a lifelong well-connected Republican who enthusiastically worked for Obama's election after I got sick of the right wing negativity that I helped create through my former leadership role in the religious right.....
....Listen to Fox News and change a few words and you're listening to the official anti-American and anti-Obama reaction from the most extreme Islamic leaders and other anti-Americans worldwide. Rush Limbaugh and bin Laden have the same take on our President and the same desire to destroy him.
What we see happening is the realignment of the world, and not just in United States. Simply put the world is now divided into two camps: The Party Of Eternal War and those who genuinely long for peace. Members of The Party Of Eternal War would rather lose the peace, the future and the earth but be proved "right." (Note: as the father of a Marine who was deployed to our current wars I feel these issues deeply and personally!)
Members of The Party Of Eternal War, whether they're called evangelical pro-life Christians, Muslims, secularists or Jews seem to recoil from people ready to lay aside differences and vitriolic rhetoric and try to meet others on some sort of common ground. They hate the idea common ground because their identity is bound up in feeling uncommonly morally superior.
The more militant of the Israeli settlers, the Iranian mullahs, Islamic terrorists, right-wing evangelical Republicans, Fox News commentators, gay bashing "Christians" and of course toxic individuals like Rush Limbaugh and former Vice President Dick Cheney are now part of The Party Of Eternal War.
The Party Of Eternal War is co-joined in strange ways in a campaign of ideas waged for the defeat and/or failure of President Obama and we hope-filled Americans that voted for him. The odd bedfellows in The Party Of Eternal War are joined at the hip by fear and lies and well-honed (and sometimes even beloved and proudly displayed) ignorance.
This is not a question of right versus left or Republican versus Democrat. This is a question of The Party Of Eternal War clinging to the vested interests of conflict. Individuals ranging from bin Laden to Rush Limbaugh, from Sean Hanity to the mote extreme of the Jewish Settlers and the leaders of Hamas and all the rest of this hate-filled, hate-driven angry mob are bent on taking the rest of us with them into an abyss..
Stephen Colbert takes on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell from Iraq!
June 11, 2009 11:27 am
Ed Schultz rips Jon Voight’s psycho attack on Pres. Obama
June 9, 2009 9:54 pm
Obama Orders Stephen's Haircut - Gen. Ray Odierno
June 9, 2009 7:25 pm
The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Obama Orders Stephen's Haircut - Ray Odierno Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq
Jon Stewart Destroys Cheney
June 6, 2009 4:52 pm
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c Dick (Uncut) Daily Show
Full EpisodesPolitical Humor Economic Crisis
Jon Stewart Calls Fox News Personalities "Extremists" For Their Coverage Of Obama's Cairo Speech
June 5, 2009 5:34 pm
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c Looking for Comity in the Muslim World Daily Show
Full EpisodesPolitical Humor Economic Crisis
Waiting for the Meltdown
May 26, 2009 10:32 pm
Kevin Drum
....The wingnut wing of the Republican Party seems hugely energized by Sotomayor's nomination and ready to go ballistic over it. This might be good for them in the short term (it's a nice fundraising opportunity, brings internal factions together, etc.), but Obama, as usual, is looking a few moves ahead and understands that a shrieking meltdown from the usual suspects will mostly help the liberal cause: the American public already thinks the conservative rump running the Republican Party is crazy, after all, and this will help cast that feeling in stone. Most normal people think empathy is a good thing, not a code word for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
And Obama? He gets to be the calm at the center of the storm, providing his usual striking contrast to the seething stew of preachers, radio screamers, and Gingrich acolytes who will be making themselves ever more tiresome to Mr. and Mrs. Heartland with their ranting jeremiads. I don't blame conservatives for opposing Sotomayor even though they know that she'd only be replaced by someone equally liberal if they did somehow manage to derail her (liberals did the same with Roberts and Alito, after all), but if they're smart they'll realize that the usual shriekfest is playing right into Obama's hands.
But they're not smart, are they?
Barron's Interviews Prechter
May 26, 2009 6:48 pm
Will [government] policy decisions being enacted now ameliorate or exacerbate the current decline?
"Governments' policy decisions hamper and ruin economies all the time, but their meddling does not affect waves of social mood. On the contrary, waves of social mood generally spur governments to act. The 1929-1932 collapse caused the government to get restrictive and separate commercial and investment banks in 1933; this was after the bust it was designed to prevent was over. The 1990s boom caused government to get frisky and repeal the act in 1999; this was just as the boom it was designed to foster was ending."
As if Ronald Raygun was any help to anyone but the top 1%
May 21, 2009 9:53 pm
Michael Bersin, Show Me Progress
Uh, no. This has been another
edition of simple answers to simple questions. From the
Congressional Budget Office:
Data
on the Distribution of Federal Taxes and Household Income April 2009 It's
good to be the king.
A barely rising tide rockets yachts into the stratosphere. That dark
blue bottom line? That's most of us - if you're that light blue top
line you don't read our stuff here.
...This is a kissing cousin to the question everyone is
raising
these days about financial innovation. It goes like this: the
basic
benefit of all the financial innovation we've seen over the past few
decades has been to make credit more easily available, and that clearly
had something to do with the credit boom and subsequent bust.
This in
turn begs the obvious question: was it really a good idea to make
credit so easily available? If the answer is no - if the only
result
was to mask stagnant wages and produce a fake consumption boom - then
maybe all that innovation wasn't such a hot idea in the first place.
This is rapidly becoming conventional wisdom, and Matt's
point
deserves more attention as part of it. For good or ill, the
modern
economy is driven by middle-class consumption. If middle
class wages
are rising, everything is fine. They'll consume more, debt
will stay
tolerable, and rich people will benefit from the growing economy.
But
if middle class wages are stagnant, then vast pools of money are
increasingly directed toward the rich, who have a limited ability to
spend it. So they end up loaning it back to the middle class,
collecting economic rents along the way, and the middle class laps it
up, figuring that their wage stagnation is just temporary and they'll
eventually pay all the money back... Too bad that years of underfunding and budget cuts have
devastated public education and the peasants can't read graphs... 
Financial
Innovation
- By Kevin Drum | Tue May 19, 2009 9:26 AM PST
The Internet as envisioned in 1969
May 19, 2009 8:20 pm
Will Ferrell SNL Season Finale: George Bush, Dick Cheney (Darrell Hammond) Reunite
May 17, 2009 3:54 pm
Why We Support the Employee Free Choice Act
May 14, 2009 10:30 pm
Socialist Tea Party Fail
May 11, 2009 8:17 pm
Bob Cesca
On several occasions, I've tried to underline the irony of how the anti-socialist tea parties have mostly taken place at publicly funded (socialized) locations. But this image speaks volumes:
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