look what the cat dragged in.....

As usual, Matt Taibbi nails it....

Given the monstrous political influence of Murdoch and his companies – this idiotic game of chicken our government is now playing with America’s credit rating is one of countless policy disasters that I believe can be traced directly or indirectly to the insane propaganda that is a consistent by-product of Murdoch's nihilistic quest for profits – that would be a world-shaking development.

So let's review. Rupert Murdoch, CEO/LORD ALMIGHTY/Whatever....has reigned supreme on 3 continents for decades. News Corp has done this by debasing our societies to the lowest base form of humanity that we as humans can be. And as poorly as our education system has performed since the Reagan years, is it any wonder that the electorate don't care about anything but simple, bumper sticker politics? And I won't even go on a tangent about the Texas School Board text book guidelines for history books for all grade levels, full of magical thinking.....you can google it...

Moving back to Taibbi, he makes a point I have been saying for years.

Once the media business made the collective decision to always put money above editorial judgment, I think scandals like the News of the World affair became inevitable. Because once media companies abandoned the notion that their business was somehow different from other money-making businesses, that there were no longer places they wouldn’t go to generate product, it became inevitable that the corporate media game would become nothing more than an all-out, relentless quest for sensational, titillating material.

When the 3 major networks decided to make their News Division's 'profit' divisions, all bets were off. It had once been for the good of the country. To investigate and keep tabs on our government and our businesses. And how did that work out? It was a smashing success. Journalists were considered well for their tenacity in keeping politicians and corporations honest.

But then they had to have more money, because by this time, corporations owned the big 3. And corporations are greedy bastards.

Go read the whole Taibbi piece here....

true dat

"I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument." - Edward R. Murrow

sad, sad state of affairs....

My thoughts exactly......

He doesn't have to because we now live in a country where there is no penalty whatsoever for Conservatives who are grotesquely and serially wrong about matters of life and death. And so well-paid buffoons like Brooks have no incentive to learn the lessons of Iraq that other, less-privileged citizens have paid for with their lives. Instead, he and his ilk are left with their lives, fortunes and positions of power in American politics and media blissfully untouched, free to whitewash their failures over and over again, unmolested by the inconvenient realities of the pain and ruin they left in their wake.

read it here

.....to form a more perfect union.....

I think that the rhetoric has always been with us, but I hope that we will finally learn from the consequences, not just bury them like we did after Oklahoma City. Words do matter...they always have, they always will. Sticks and stones are for children. In the adult world, words have consequences. I don't think the half wit from Alaska had anything other than political power and fame in her mind when she started this mess, but she isn't immune from her part in this. I hold the corporate media more responsible. Jon Stewart has been telling us for months, as have many of my friends, our media is supposed to be there to inform us. But all they do is create drama and make money hand over fist....as usual, the Balloon-Juice writers say it best here....

It’s an exaggeration to say that the whole Tea Party movement is built on lies, but not by much. And the beltway media is complicit in those lies, because they were so goddam eager to have a narrative of populist anger about healthcare that they conveniently neglected to emphasize that most of that anger was based on utter bullshit. The only way that’s going to change is if the same DC media decides they can call out liars and the lies they tell during next week’s repeal debate directly in the front page stories they write, not in some goody-goody factchecking ghetto buried behind the fashion section.

I have nothing to add....

William Rivers Pitt says it all here.

You false patriots who bring assault rifles to political rallies, you hack politicians and media personalities who lied through your stinking teeth about "death panels" and "Obama is coming for your guns" and "He isn't a citizen" and "He's a secret Muslim" and "Sharia Law is coming to America," you who spread this bastard gospel and you who swallowed it whole, I am talking to you, because this was your doing just as surely as it was the doing of the deranged damned soul who pulled the trigger.  The poison you injected into our culture is deeply culpable for this carnage.

You who worship Jesus at the top of your lungs (in defiance of Christ's own teachings on the matter of worship, by the way) helped put several churchgoers into their graves and into the hospital. You who shriek about the sanctity of marriage helped cut down a man who was about to be married. You who crow with ceaseless abandon about military service and the nobility of our fighting forces helped to critically wound the wife of a Naval aviator who fought for you in a war. You who hold September 11 as your sword and shield helped put a little girl born on that day into the ground.

You helped. Yes, damn you, you helped.

The "mainstream" media is already working overtime playing up the "Disturbed loner" angle with all their might. There is no doubt, from the available evidence, of Mr. Loughner's transformation into a disturbed individual. But here's the funny part: all the crazy crap he spewed, about the gold standard (a favorite of Glenn Beck, the master of Fox "News" fearmongering...so he can sell his gold scam to suckers) and government mind control and everything else before going on his rampage, is straight out of the Right-Wing Insanity Handbook. His personal YouTube ramblings were a mishmash of right-wing anti-government nonsense...the kind that attracts sick minds like Loughner, the kind that only reinforces their paranoia, the kind that finally pushes them over the brink and into the frenzy of violence that took place on Saturday.  The kind that the likes of you have been happily spreading by the day.  

He did not act alone. You were right there with him. You helped.

I'm talking to you, "mainstream" media people, who created this atmosphere of desperate rage and total paranoia out of whole cloth because of your unstoppable adoration for spectacle, and ratings, and because the companies that own your sorry asses agree with the deranged cretins you helped make so famous and powerful. It was sickeningly amusing on Sunday to watch Wolf Blitzer bluster and bluff on CNN about how the media owns no responsibility for this disaster. It was like watching a ten-year-old try to explain how a lamp got broken while he was running through the living room, but no, it wasn't him. It was, in reality, a pathetic display...but that is what you generally get whenever Wolf is on your screen.

"Mainstream" news personalities like David Gergen and John King bent over backwards warning people not to blame Sarah Palin and her ilk for this calamity.  It was a sick man who did this, they said. Bollocks to that.  I hate to break this to the "mainstream" media know-betters, but words matter.  When people like Palin spray the airwaves with calls to violence and incantations of imminent doom, people like Loughner are listening, and prepared to act. The "mainstream" media lets it fly without any questions or rebuttal, because it's good for ratings, and here we are. Words matter. Play Russian Roulette long enough, and someone inevitably winds up dead.