Stevie Ray Vaughan - "Cold Shot"

Who Stole the American Dream?

The promise of a prosperous middle-class life with decent work, rising living standards, and the potential for a better future has long been the foundation of the American dream. But as America continues to struggle to recover from the Great Recession, it has become clear that the middle class is in jeopardy – and many of the policies of the last 40 years are to blame.



More here:

Carl Sagan in 1994

"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when we're a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition". – Carl Sagan (1934-1996), astronomer and popularizer of science, in 1994

How the GOP became the party of the rich

The staggering economic inequality that has led Americans across the country to take to the streets in protest is no accident. It has been fueled to a large extent by the GOP's all-out war on behalf of the rich. Since Republicans rededicated themselves to slashing taxes for the wealthy in 1997, the average annual income of the 400 richest Americans has more than tripled, to $345 million – while their share of the tax burden has plunged by 40 percent

Tim Dickinson | rollingstone.com
9 Nov 2011

The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy."

Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?"

The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!"

The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan.

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The Last Word - Sen. Webb rewrites Mitt Romney

Sarah Muller | msnbc.com
28 Sept 2012

We've heard from his own mouth that Mitt Romney thinks of "47 percent" of Americans as takers dependent on government.

Before introducing President Obama at a campaign rally in Virginia on Thursday, Virginia Senator Jim Webb, a former Marine who served in Vietnam, called out the Republican presidential candidate over those harsh comments and reminded him of what the so-called "47 percent" has done for the country, which includes members of the military:

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The War Prayer by Mark Twain

Bill Moyers: Elections for Sale

September 21, 2012

Bill Moyers and Trevor Potter discuss how American elections are bought and sold, who covers the cost, and how the rest of us pay the price.

Wendy Davis for Texas Senate

Lone Star Project Director Matt Angle:
"The Senate District 10 race has boiled down to an interesting choice – It’s Wendy Davis and a coalition of Democrats, independents and fair-minded Republicans in SD10 versus Mark Shelton propped up by Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, the Tea Party and other harsh Austin-based partisans."

Why Romney’s theory of the 'taker class' matters

Ezra Klein | washingtonpost.com
17 Sept 2012

Part of the reason so many Americans don’t pay federal income taxes is that Republicans have passed a series of very large tax cuts that wiped out the income-tax liability for many Americans. That’s why, when you look at graphs of the percent of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, you see huge jumps after Ronald Reagan’s 1986 tax reform and George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. So whenever you hear that half of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, remember: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush helped build that.

snip

So notice what happened here: Republicans have become outraged over the predictable effect of tax cuts they passed and are using that outrage as the justification for an agenda that further cuts taxes on the rich and pays for it by cutting social services for the non-rich.

Ezra Klein:

White House demands military prisons for Americans under NDAA

17 Sept 2012

The White House has asked the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals to place an emergency stay on a ruling made last week by a federal judge so that the president’s power to indefinitely detain Americans without charge is reaffirmed immediately.

On Sept. 12, US District Court Judge Katherine Forrest made permanent a temporary injunction she issued in May that bars the federal government from abiding by the indefinite detention provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA. Judge Forrest ruled that a clause that gives the government the power to arrest US citizens suspected of maintaining alliances with terrorists and hold them without due process violated the Constitution and that the White House would be stripped of that ability immediately.

Only hours after Judge Forrest issued last week’s ruling, the Obama administration threatened to appeal the decision, and on Monday morning they followed through.
snip
Bruce Afran, who serves as co-lead counsel along with Mayer, tells Hedges that the White House could be waging a war against the injunction to ensure that the Obama administration has ample time to turn the NDAA against any protesters participating in domestic demonstrations.

“A Department of Homeland Security bulletin was issued Friday claiming that the riots [in the Middle East] are likely to come to the US and saying that DHS is looking for the Islamic leaders of these likely riots,” Afran tells Hedges. “It is my view that this is why the government wants to reopen the NDAA — so it has a tool to round up would-be Islamic protesters before they can launch any protest, violent or otherwise. Right now there are no legal tools to arrest would-be protesters. The NDAA would give the government such power. Since the request to vacate the injunction only comes about on the day of the riots, and following the DHS bulletin, it seems to me that the two are connected. The government wants to reopen the NDAA injunction so that they can use it to block protests.”

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Texas asks thousands of voters to verify that they aren’t dead

David Barer | Cox Newspapers
14 Sept 2012

AUSTIN, Texas — Two months before the presidential election, thousands of registered Texas voters are receiving letters asking them to verify they are not dead.

The nearly 77,000 letters, called notices of examination, were sent out by election officials to comply with a 2011 law passed by the Legislature requiring the secretary of state’s office to cross-reference the voter rolls with the Social Security Administration’s enormous death master file to determine if a voter could be deceased.

-snip-
Voters have 30 days to complete and return the letters, but counties are encouraging people to call and report their eligibility by phone.

In Harris County, the voter registrar sent out more than 9,000 letters, but, after receiving complaints from voters, decided to take no further action, according to the Houston Chronicle. The Secretary of State’s Office has threatened to cut voter registration funding to the county if it does not comply, the newspaper reported.

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Moyers & Company: Thinking outside the box

The conventions are over -- Now it’s time for some thinking outside the box. This week on Moyers & Company, Bill talks with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who’s been an independent on Congress longer than anyone in American history; and Green Party candidates Jill Stein and Cherie Honkala about their role in -- and what they’ve learned about -- American politics.

Moyers & Company Show 135: Challenging Power, Changing Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Chuck Norris' dire warning for America

It's the next best thing to watching a fist-shaking codger tell an empty chair to get off his lawn.



Worth a click

RNC Convention vs. DNC Convention

7 Sept 2012 | The Colbert Report
Republicans and Democrats still despise and distrust each other after two weeks of saying the same things.

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RNC Convention vs. DNC Convention
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Democrats and the vanishing American middle class

David Seaton  |  7 Sept 2012  | my.firedoglake.com

The European middle class was created as a bulwark of social stability, basically to prevent the masses from taking the “winter palace” and stringing up the super rich. The American middle class as we know it really came into being when Henry Ford decided to pay his workers enough to buy the cars they made. It made Ford rich and led to turning America into a land of mass prosperity.

The American middle class is perhaps the United States’ greatest social achievement, an enormous mass of prosperous, educated and healthy citizens which has been the envy of all the world for nearly a hundred years, and the not so secret weapon that destroyed the Soviet Union and reoriented China.

Simplifying to the extreme you could say that the modern, American middle class was created by Henry Ford and literally saved from extinction, (the first time) by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The whole story is in that reductio ad absurdum.

What most Americans, except for the one-percent perhaps, don’t seem to understand is that the American middle class is in reality a totally artificial construction, which if not carefully nurtured will dry up and die like an un-watered house plant. The super-rich are quite comfortable with its disappearance, as they think that they no longer depend on its prosperity for their own prosperity or even for their own physical safety.

I would argue that if the middle class is devastated then all the problems it was created to solve, all the dangers that it was meant to allay would reappear, just like uncut grass grows on the lawn of a foreclosed house.

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Presidential election may hinge on Virginia candidate

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Bill Clinton DNC Speech COMPLETE: "We're in this together" vs. "You're on your own"

Published 5 Sept 2012 by ABCNews

Former U.S. president offers a strong endorsement of Barack Obama, Democratic economic policies.

Five Reasons why Romney/Ryan must be defeated in 2012 - and why conservatives should hope they are

Kurt Eichenwald |  kurteichenwald.com
2 Sept 2012

The GOP must be stopped in 2012. The future of America’s ideals of democracy – and of the Republican Party itself – could well be at stake.

Contrary to how it might seem, I am not a partisan bomb thrower. Throughout most of my adulthood, I have been just as likely to vote for a Republican as for a Democrat – in local, state and national contests. I have cast my ballot in presidential races for both Republicans and Democrats. But in the last four years, the GOP has transmogrified into something ugly and vicious and, more important, something wedded to the politics of fantasy and ignorance. It has rushed so far from its moorings that I cannot conceive of voting for members of this party until, hopefully, they pull themselves back from the precipice of self-destruction, paranoia and delusion.

Today, for Republicans, up is down and front is back. Lying has become so ingrained into the conservatives’ national dialogue that they are now dangerously demagogic or, worse, severely unhinged. Blind rage at the election of Barack Obama has wrecked a once great political party. Its leaders have made so many deals with the devil in their almost pathological obsession with unseating Obama that they have pushed the GOP into its own version of political hell – unable to speak truths to their now-rabid and conspiracy-addled base and unable to right the party back onto a path of responsibility.

Only through the disinfectant of defeat can the Republicans, and the two party system, be preserved. And so, the campaign of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan must be consigned to the ash heap of history. Defeat must not only be decisive, it must be crippling. Here are five reasons why:

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Chris Hedges: Hear the 99% roar

Chris Hedges on what he sees as the consequences of an uneven distribution of wealth: destruction, violence and revolt. He tells Piya Chattopadhyay what the Occupy movement should be about and how best to deal with these socioeconomic issues in the public discourse.

Greed and Debt: The true story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital | Rolling Stone

By MATT TAIBBI | rollingstone.com
August 29, 2012

Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it's dusted itself off, it's had a shave and a shoeshine, and it's back out there running for president.

Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation's wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He's Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we'll all end up paying for the acquisition.

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Chris Rea - "Texas"

Mexico achieves Universal Health Coverage in less than a decade

banderasnews.com
August 17, 2012

Mexico City, Mexico - Despite periods of economic downturns and crisis, Mexico recently achieved a significant milestone – enrolling 52.6 million previously uninsured Mexicans in public medical insurance programs and thereby achieving universal health coverage in less than a decade.

This effort began in 2003 and occurred in a country of approximately 100 million people.

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Thomas Frank: Obama’s squandered hope

In a dramatic essay, Thomas Frank blames Obama's conciliatory nature for a first term that looked like Bush's third

By David Daley | salon.com
22 August 2012

This is the point in a presidential election when people begin talking about the lesser of two evils, when the weaknesses in one’s own candidate pale in comparison to the reality of the other side taking over. But in a remarkable essay in the new issue of Harper’s magazine, the political thinker Thomas Frank levels President Obama’s first term as a dramatic failure compared to the rhetoric that landed him in office, and the potential he had to truly transform the country.
Frank, whose books include “What’s the Matter With Kansas” and “Pity the Billionaire,” makes the case that Obama’s conciliatory nature has been a tragic flaw, one exploited by conservatives in Congress again and again. But he also argues that Obama has “enthusiastically adopted” the ideas of the right when it comes to deficit spending, Wall Street regulation, torture policies, healthcare and more. And his reward for reaching for compromise and grand bargains, “for bowing to their household gods,” has been to be depicted as a socialist and a radical leftist.
The end result? Frank writes that “What Barack Obama has saved is a bankrupt elite that by all means should have met its end back in 2009. He came to the White House amid circumstances similar to 1933, but proceeded to rule like Herbert Hoover.”

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Rmoney falls for granny hater Ryan

"So it makes sense, on the surface anyway, that Rmoney would fall for teabagger boner fuel like Ryan. The thing is, as Matt Taibbi (and anyone else actually paying attention to these dimbulbs) correctly sussed a couple years ago, while your average teabagger talks a great game about cutting spending and reducing government, blah blah blah, a great many of them were rather obvious recipients of tha... t eeevil gubmint aid themselves. They're hypocrites -- they just don't like gubmint money that isn't thrown at them, pure and simple. How many of those Rascal-riding geezers down at the (tax-funded) public park didja see burning their Medicare or Social Security cards in protest? Yep, me neither." - Heywood J @ Hammer of The Blogs

Who Owns the News Media

Who Owns the News Media is an interactive database of companies that own news properties in the United States. Use the site to compare the companies, explore each media sector or read profiles of individual companies. Learn more about the site. For highlights of a year that included the busiest time in newspaper sales since 2007 and the single largest local TV acquisition in four years, read the summary of major ownership changes in the last year. LINK

Stephen Colbert interviews MSNBC's Chris Hayes, author of the new book 'Twilight of the Elites'

The host of MSNBC’s “Up with Chris Hayes” explains America’s housing bubble, elitism and the difference between educational opportunities and outcomes.

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Johnny Winter - "Memory Pain" (1969)

Bill Moyers: Living under the gun

The Crusaders - Chain Reaction (LIVE 1987)

Rick Perry: Medicaid expansion is like 'adding 1000 people to the Titanic'

9 July 2012

Bill Moyers: 'Poor people haven't lost their voice — they can't afford a voice'

Bill Moyers Essay: The High Price of ‘Free' Speech from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

The Last Days of the President | The Atlantic | 1973

Johnson had decidedly mixed emotions about his successor. He was puzzled by Nixon's cold style ("Imagine not inviting one member of Congress to Tricia's wedding. If you don't respect them, they won't respect you") and aghast at some of Nixon's domestic policies. Shortly after leaving the White House, he remarked to a Texas businessman: "When I took over the presidency, Jack Kennedy had left me a stock market of 711. When I left the White House, it was over 900. Now look at it. That's what happens when the Republicans take over—not only Nixon, but any of them. They simply don't know how to manage the economy. They're so busy operating the trickle-down theory, giving the richest corporations the biggest break, that the whole thing goes to hell in a handbasket."

Paul Krugman: Prisons, Privatization, Patronage

Paul Krugman: "So let’s see: Privatized prisons save money by employing fewer guards and other workers, and by paying them badly. And then we get horror stories about how these prisons are run. What a surprise! So what’s really behind the drive to privatize prisons, and just about everything else? One answer is that privatization can serve as a stealth form of government borrowing, in which governments avoid recording upfront expenses (or even raise money by selling existing facilities) while raising their long-run costs in ways taxpayers can’t see." Read it here:

Bill Moyers with Matt Taibbi and Yves Smith on the Banks - The Psychopathy of Wall Street

LINK

Clinical diagnosis (PCLR) of personality of corporation

Opinions by Dr. Robert D. Hare, Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, Peter Drucker.

Paul Krugman's solution to getting fiscal stimulus | PBS News Hour

18 June 2012 Amid a tough economy, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has probably captured as much attention -- and notoriety -- as anyone else in his field. Part of his Making Sen$e of financial news series, Paul Solman speaks with Krugman whose new book "End This Depression Now" suggests some radical policy-making. -

Watch Krugman's Solution to Fiscal Stimulus? It Involves Aliens on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Obama elevates amid disrespect

President Obama announced a new policy on immigration today, saying the government would stop deporting some children of illegal immigrants. The President's speech was interrupted at one point by Neil Munroe, a blogger for Tucker Carlson's website, the Daily Caller. Watch it.

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations". - George Orwell

Marty Kaplan on Big Money’s effect on Big Media

27 April 2012 Bill Moyers talks with Kaplan about how taking news out of the journalism box and placing it in the entertainment box is hurting democracy and allowing special interest groups to manipulate the system.

Delbert McClinton - "Giving It Up For Your Love"

Ed Schultz and Bernie Sanders discuss the GOP war on the US Postal Service

4 April 2012

Michael D Higgins on the banks bail out

Michael D Higgins TD speaking on the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Scheme 2008

Bernie Sanders: "Break up the big banks"

James Lipton critiques Mitt Romney

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U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Wall Street greed

14 May 2012 | The Ed Show | MSNBC

ZZ Top Live at Crossroads Guitar Festival 2010

Waiting For The Bus and Jesus Just Left Chicago

Texas Tribune: State Senator Wendy Davis on the SD-10 Race, by Evan Smith

19 April 2012 State Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, talked about why she thinks she can get re-elected in a GOP district — and why the liberal label doesn't fit.

"Let America Be America Again," by Langston Hughes

First published in Esquire magazine, 1936, from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Knopf), ed. Arnold Rampersad, with David Roessel

Robert Reich on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart discussing his eBook 'Beyond Outrage'

19 April 2012

The Daily Show
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Bill Moyers essay: It pays to be rich

Published on Apr 13, 2012 by MoyersandCompany With help from the government, the tax code, and their own money, there's no limit to how rich the super-rich aim to be -- disconnecting themselves further and further from the American people as a result. Bill Moyers examines the gap.

Presidents Reagan and Obama support Buffett Rule

Reagan and Obama form an unlikely alliance to make sure bosses don't pay lower taxes than their secretaries. They are opposed by Mitt Romney and the GOP of 2012.

The Crusaders - "Put It Where You Want It"

Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2003. The Crusaders hail from Houston, Texas.

Keith Olbermann - News and "Objectivity"

Daylight Saving Time explained

Michael D. Higgins smacks hate radio jock Michael Graham... "a wanker whipping up fear"

I can't believe it got better! | The Daily Show

The Daily Show | 28 Feb 2012
America's economic recovery is good news, unless you work for a media organization whose job it is to make sure Barack Obama doesn't get re-elected.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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How do conservatives and liberals see the world?

BillMoyers.com | 3 Feb 2012

Bill and moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt talk about the psychological underpinnings of our contentious culture, why we can’t trust our own opinions, and the demonizing of our adversaries. Also, a Bill Moyers essay on why Newt Gingrich might be afraid of Saul Alinsky.

How do Conservatives and Liberals See the World? from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Lawrence O'Donnell: Franklin Graham's true agenda

Surprise! Rev. Franklin Graham's true agenda is to elect Republicans. It's not about serving with humility as a Christian. It's not about giving up everything to follow Jesus Christ. It's about getting on TV to promote his politics for the people who pay his salary: Republicans.

Republicans undiscover fire

"The economy didn't just crash under a Republican president, it crashed under Republican policies. It crashed with low taxes. It crashed with deregulated markets. It crashed with huge restrictions on union activity. It crashed with massive cuts in environmental regulations. It crashed with lowered trade barriers. It crashed with big fat Pentagon spending."

Mark Sumner | Daily Kos
12 Feb 2012

"The truth is that the Republicans have nothing to offer. Not even anything that looks like a governing philosophy. Conservatism has moved out of the ranks of political theories and simply become a cult; one that requires that certain phrases be mouthed, that certain hatreds be nourished, and that purity be maintained regardless of cost. That schism with reality is increasingly large and increasingly obvious. They try to paper over that gap by dismissing little things like science, reason, history. Real science fails to support their contentions, so they have to write it off.

"Reason doesn't work for them, so any question must be met with red-faced indignity — every question a gotcha question. Real history is full of warts, quirks, and unfortunate truths that don't fit their ritualized beliefs. So they have to try to rewrite history, giving us rewrite Reagan who never raised a tax or increased a debt, rewrite FDR who created the issues he actually solved, rewrite Lincoln who championed the Confederate cause, rewrite founding fathers who never owned slaves, never supported government regulation of the economy, never wavered in their ardent love for a form of religiosity that didn't yet exist. Tricorner hats are the new tinfoil."

The whole story:

Texas' starving school districts lawyer up for (another) epic battle for survival

We're Not Gonna Take It
Patrick Michels |1 Feb 2012
www.texasobserver.org

Last spring, parents and neighbors from school districts statewide converged on the Capitol in matching T-shirts to plead with the Legislature to fix the system once and for all.

The Legislature not only didn’t fix the system, it made it worse. Lawmakers trimmed $5.3 billion from public education—a record cut.

For the first time in 60 years, the state isn’t budgeting for growing enrollment. This year 80,000 new students have entered the system, but there’s no new money to pay for their schooling. The Legislature also eliminated funding for full-day pre-kindergarten and saddled districts with expensive new testing requirements. As the state’s public education budget winnows away, disparities between rich and poor districts grow deeper.

Beaten and cash-starved, schools have turned now to their last, best hope: the courts.

The whole story:

The Ed Show | Robert Reich | "Romney profited from tax breaks and subsidies"

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“How is Mitt Romney kicking all of your asses?”

WATCH: Video from Comedy Central, which was broadcast on Jan. 9, 2012

The Daily Show
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The Young Turks: Matt Taibbi on Obama administration’s fear of fraud prosecutions

29 Dec 2011 | Cenk talks with “Rolling Stone” contributing editor Matt Taibbi about his new piece on the Obama administration’s lack of prosecutions for white collar crime. “If they pushed all these prosecutions, investors worldwide would see how epidemic corruption is on Wall Street,” Taibbi says. “They’re afraid of what the international reaction would be.” Cenk says while he doesn’t think President Obama is personally corrupt, “It’s the system that corrupts all these politicians.”

Occupy protestors create their own social network

The Global Square is expected to launch in January 2012, providing a secure space for Occupy protestors to organize, share, and meet fellow protestors, according to its developers. It will also boast a Facebook-like news feed. Unlike Twitter and Facebook however, new Global Square members must be sanctioned by existing ones before being accepted.

Occupy Wall Street Farmers March

On December 4, 2011, farmers and activists from across the country joined the Occupy Wall Street Farmers March for "a celebration of community power to regain control over the most basic element to human well-being: food."

The Farmers March began at La Plaza Cultural Community Gardens where urban and rural farmers addressed an excited crowd about the growing problems in our industrial food system and the promise offered by solutions based in organic, sustainable and community based food and agricultural production. This was followed by a 3-mile march from the East Village to Zuccotti Park, the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Rick Perry's incoherent foreign policy ramble

Riley on marketing

Growth of large private water companies brings higher water rates, little recourse for consumers

Jeremy Schwartz and Eric Dexheimer
Austin American-Statesman
17 Dec 2011

Over the past decade, multistate water utilities have expanded aggressively in Texas, drawn by the state's booming population and welcoming regulatory environment. A September report prepared by utility analysts for Robert W. Baird & Co., a financial management company, identified Texas water regulators as the most generous in the country for private water companies. Today, three out-of-state corporations own about 500 Texas water systems that serve more than 250,000 residents.

For residents living outside cities served by private utility companies, the state environmental commission is charged with setting "just and reasonable" water rates based on a company's cost of doing business plus a guaranteed profit. In exchange, the companies enjoy a monopoly on their service area.

Yet critics say the agency is unprepared to handle the recent influx of corporations that have exploited a regulatory system more accustomed to handling rural mom-and-pop operations. Meanwhile, Texas laws provide fewer consumer protections to residents facing water rate increases than electricity and gas ratepayers.

"We are in the midst of a transformation in this state, and the state is ill-prepared to move into that transition," said Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, who co-chairs a legislative subcommittee to investigate the rates charged by investor-owned water utilities. "It feels like it's happening at warp speed."

The whole story:

Obama to sign indefinite detention bill into law

After spend months threatening a veto, the President decides instead to codify the first such bill since the 1950s.

Glen Greenwald | salon.com | 15 Dec 2011

The ACLU said last night that the bill contains “harmful provisions that some legislators have said could authorize the U.S. military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians, including American citizens, anywhere in the world” and added: “if President Obama signs this bill, it will damage his legacy.” Human Rights Watch said that Obama’s decision “does enormous damage to the rule of law both in the US and abroad” and that “President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.”

Both groups pointed out that this is the first time indefinite detention has been enshrined in law since the McCarthy era of the 1950s, when — as the ACLU put it — “President Truman had the courage to veto” the Internal Security Act of 1950 on the ground that it “would make a mockery of our Bill of Rights” and then watched Congress override the veto. That Act authorized the imprisonment of Communists and other “subversives” without the necessity of full trials or due process (many of the most egregious provisions of that bill were repealed by the 1971 Non-Detention Act, and are now being rejuvenated by these War on Terror policies of indefinite detention). President Obama, needless to say, is not Harry Truman. He’s not even the Candidate Obama of 2008 who repeatedly insisted that due process and security were not mutually exclusive and who condemned indefinite detention as ”black hole” injustice.

The whole story:

Robert Reich puts an offer on the table for President Obama

In less than three minutes, our favorite economist spells out what it's going to take to get our support.

STRONG response from a Teacher

11 Dec 2011 | Joshua Grizelle: Texas Governor Rick Perry is apparently unfamiliar with the bill he signed into Texas law in 2003 mandating a "minute of silence" each morning during which "students may pray".

Perry wants constitutional amendment for school prayer

11 Dec 2011 | As president, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) says he would fight for a constitutional amendment to allow prayer in schools.

Sir Douglas Quintet - "I Keep Wishing For You"

From "Border Wave" 1983



Read about it.

Ron Paul's eye-opening ad on U.S. wars

'Tyrants' replacing local democracy in Michigan

8 Dec 2011 | Rachel Maddow reports on the expanding role of the "emergency manager" in Michigan, supplanting elected local governments.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bankers are the dictators of the West

It seems to me that the reporting of the collapse of capitalism has reached a new low which even the Middle East cannot surpass for sheer unadulterated obedience to the very institutions and Harvard "experts" who have helped to bring about the whole criminal disaster.

Robert Fisk | The Independent
10 December 2011

Let's kick off with the "Arab Spring" – in itself a grotesque verbal distortion of the great Arab/Muslim awakening which is shaking the Middle East – and the trashy parallels with the social protests in Western capitals. We've been deluged with reports of how the poor or the disadvantaged in the West have "taken a leaf" out of the "Arab spring" book, how demonstrators in America, Canada, Britain, Spain and Greece have been "inspired" by the huge demonstrations that brought down the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and – up to a point – Libya. But this is nonsense.

The real comparison, needless to say, has been dodged by Western reporters, so keen to extol the anti-dictator rebellions of the Arabs, so anxious to ignore protests against "democratic" Western governments, so desperate to disparage these demonstrations, to suggest that they are merely picking up on the latest fad in the Arab world. The truth is somewhat different. What drove the Arabs in their tens of thousands and then their millions on to the streets of Middle East capitals was a demand for dignity and a refusal to accept that the local family-ruled dictators actually owned their countries.

And that is the true parallel in the West. The protest movements are indeed against Big Business – a perfectly justified cause – and against "governments". What they have really divined, however, albeit a bit late in the day, is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties – which then hand their democratic mandate and people's power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies, all three backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of "experts" from America's top universities and "think tanks", who maintain the fiction that this is a crisis of globalisation rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.

The whole story:

Rape in the US military: America's dirty little secret

A female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire

Lucy Broadbent | guardian.co.uk
9 Dec 2011

Rape within the US military has become so widespread that it is estimated that a female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. So great is the issue that a group of veterans are suing the Pentagon to force reform. The lawsuit, which includes three men and 25 women (the suit initially involved 17 plaintiffs but grew to 28) who claim to have been subjected to sexual assaults while serving in the armed forces, blames former defence secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates for a culture of punishment against the women and men who report sex crimes and a failure to prosecute the offenders.

Since the lawsuit became public in February, 400 more have come forward, contacting attorney Susan Burke who is leading the case. These are likely to be future lawsuits. Right now they are anxiously awaiting a court ruling to find out if the lawsuit will go to trial. The defence team for the department of defence has filed a motion to dismiss the case, citing a court ruling, dating back to 1950, which states that the government is not liable for injury sustained by active duty personnel. To date, military personnel have been unable to sue their employer.

Whether or not the case goes to trial, it is still set to blow the lid on what has come to be regarded as the American military's dirty little secret. Last year 3,158 sexual crimes were reported within the US military. Of those cases, only 529 reached a court room, and only 104 convictions were made, according to a 2010 report from SAPRO (sexual assault prevention and response office, a division of the department of defence). But these figures are only a fraction of the reality. Sexual assaults are notoriously under-reported. The same report estimated that there were a further 19,000 unreported cases of sexual assault last year. The department of veterans affairs, meanwhile, released an independent study estimating that one in three women had experience of military sexual trauma while on active service. That is double the rate for civilians, which is one in six, according to the US department of justice.

The whole story:

How the right wing destroyed the U.S. Postal Service

By SamSeder | 9 Sept 2011
The Majority Report

Steps taken during the Bush administration are the reason why the once successful U.S. Postal Service is currently in financial trouble. Sam takes a look at the Right Wing cause to privatize the mail and destroy a U.S. institution.





Truth Out article on this by Allison Kilkenny:

How TV Ruined Your Life: Aspiration

8 Feb 2011 | From Dallas to Grand Designs, television continually rubs desirable lifestyles in your face, making you feel inadequate in the process.

Jackson Browne on powers-that-be reaction to OWS - 'I think they're freaking out'

1 Dec 2011 | Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Ex-Dallas mayor Tom Leppert, failed banker-turned Senate candidate, funds ‘End the Occupation’ site

Stephen C. Webster | rawstory.com
17 Oct 2011

In what appears to be an effort to garner email addresses for his U.S. Senate campaign, a Texas Republican who formerly served on Washington Mutual’s board of directors has launched a website called “End Occupy,” which blames young Americans and their “false sense of entitlement” for the country’s current economic status.

“The Occupy Wall Street crowd represents the same flawed values that got our country into this economic mess,” Tom Leppert’s “EndOccupy.com” claims. “They possess a false sense of entitlement and think they should be receiving government handouts and run up the debt on an imaginary credit card by making hard-working Americans and future generations pay for the bill.” It goes on to ask for petition signatures, which will be sent to President Barack Obama.

But for Leppert, who’s running to replace Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), that allegation may just produce a round of laughter from the occupied streets of New York all the way to his home in Dallas, Texas, given his history. Leppert was one of the last chairmen of Washington Mutual’s audit committee, right before the company earned the title of largest bank failure in U.S. history, fleecing shareholders of $63 billion.

Before it went down, WaMu was cited as one of the worst offenders in offering the junk loans that inflated the housing bubble. When that bubble popped, WaMu was seized by government regulators, then sold to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion. Chase shortly thereafter received a $25 billion bailout financed by U.S. taxpayers, which it has since paid back.

Luckily for Leppert, he didn’t have to manage that morass, finding himself in a new job just before the crisis hit: Mayor of Dallas, an office he held from 2007-2011.

The rest of the story:

Matt Taibbi on judge's decision to reject the SEC’s latest settlement with Citigroup | Countdown

28 Nov 2011 | Keith and 'Countdown' contributor Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone discuss the remarkable decision by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff to reject a $285 million settlement between Citigroup and the Securities and Exchange Commission for misleading investors. Taibbi points out that banks take punitive settlements in stride, saying, “They recognize that every now and then they’re going to get dragged into court, they’re going to have to give a little bit of money to somebody, and then they get to walk away and keep doing it.”

Fox News criticizes Obama's Thanksgiving Day address | The Daily Show

28 Nov 2011 | Not only is Barack Obama not the first president to leave God out of his Thanksgiving address, he didn't even do that -- but that doesn't stop Fox from criticizing him.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Janeane Garofalo on the double standard of Republican rhetoric

Sanders: No Super Congress deal is the best deal

BLITZER: But as you know, the compromise in the works has always been there would be some tax increases, which is what you want, but at the same time there would be cuts in what's called entitlement spending, including Social Security and Medicare.

SANDERS: Well, I think that position is way out of line with what the American people want. I just saw a poll today. Seventy percent of Republicans, of Republicans say do not cut Social Security. Numbers are higher for Democrats and independents. In this economic moment when so many people are hurting, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are enormously important. They are life and death issues.

BLITZER: Are you open to reforms in Social Security, for example, raising the retirement age?

SANDERS: No. I'm open to reforms by lifting the cap taxable income so that millionaires contribute more into Social Security so that it will be solvent for 75 years. Let's be clear. Social security has not contributed to one nickel to the deficit.

Retired police Captain Ray Lewis: "Corporate America is using our police departments as hired thugs"

19 Nov 2011 MSNBC

Robert Reich: super committee is super trouble

Robert Reich explains how the Super Committee could reduce the deficit by raising taxes on the 1% and create jobs, rather than making cuts that will hurt working families.

Bill Moyers on Plutonomy

Bill Moyers signs off his last broadcast with an editorial discussion on why plutocracy and democracy don't mix.

How to succeed through supercommittee’s ‘failure’

By E.J. Dionne Jr. | The Washington Post

16 Nov 2011 | Here is a surefire way to cut $7.1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade. Do nothing.

That’s right. If Congress simply fails to act between now and Jan. 1, 2013, the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush expire, $1.2 trillion in additional budget cuts go through under the terms of last summer’s debt-ceiling deal, and a variety of other tax cuts also go away.

Knowing this, are you still sure that a “failure” by the congressional supercommittee to reach a deal would be such a disaster?

Read it here.

Barney Frank: Gingrich is 'fundamentally intellectually dishonest' for hypocrisy on Freddie Mac

The frightening thought

"No politician, regardless of what party he's in, wants the people to suddenly be in charge. For the power to shift from those who are the elected officials to the people who elected them, which is actually the way it's supposed to be, that's a frightening thought." - Michael Moore, 15 Nov 2011

Alleged child rapist Jerry Sandusky speaks | The Ed Show | 15 Nov 2011

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dan Siegel: Totally futile to try shutting down ‘Occupy’ protests | The Rachel Maddow Show

14 Nov 2011 | Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s legal adviser and longtime friend, Dan Siegel, explained to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Monday night why he decided to resign his post.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Get ready for a passionless presidential race

Robert Reich | 14 Nov 2011

At this point neither the Republican right nor the mainstream media wants to admit the yawn-inducing truth that Mitt will be the GOP’s candidate. The right doesn’t want to admit it because it will be seen as a repudiation of the Tea Party. The media doesn’t want to because they’d prefer to sell newspapers and attract eyeballs.

The media are keeping the story of Rick Perry’s cringe-inducing implosion going for the same reason they’re keeping the story of Herman Cain’s equally painful decline going — because the public is forever fascinated by the gruesome sight of dying candidacies. With Bachmann, Perry, and Cain gone or disintegrating, the right wing-nuts of the GOP have only one hope left: Newt Gingrich. His star will rise briefly before he, too, is pilloried for the bizarre things he’s uttered in the past and for his equally bizarre private life. His fall will be equally sudden (although I don’t think Gingrich is capable of embarrassment).

And so we’ll be left with two presidential candidates who don’t inspire — at the very time in American history when Americans crave inspiration.

The full story:

Van Jones on Occupy Wall Street | Countdown with Keith Olbermann

9 Nov 2011 | Van Jones, co-founder and president of Rebuild the Dream, discusses the connection the Occupy movement is making with more Americans around specific issues. Referring to the continued resistance by Republicans to the desire by a growing percentage of the public that government intervene in the country’s wealth disparity, Jones says to them, “Please just keep saying you want America’s government to be AWOL in the biggest crisis to hit us since the Great Depression.”

Berkeley police beating Cal students before retreating

Mike Tyson impersonates Herman Cain in spoof campaign commercial

"The Tea Party loves crazy more than they hate black."

Rural farmers unite to feed Wall Street protestors

How rural farmers, an unemployed chef and a protestor named Heather are getting 1,000 dinners served at Occupy Wall Street every night.



FULL STORY:

New documentary highlights Koch Brothers' influence on American politics

New documentary by Al Jazeera's Bob Abeshouse on the Kochtopus.