Predictably Irrational is what the markets are and well worth the listen. Dan Ariely is a behavioral economist, cool stuff. Maybe we can occupy a fair society someday. At least Eric Schneiderman is going after some banksters.

Micheal Hudson wrote about Europe's Deadly Transition From Social Democracy to Oligarchy. Yikes! Hell, in Michigan they just dissolve local government. Rachael and Ed cover the stories.

7 honorable persons

The debacle with the US Postal Service really pisses me off, but this new bullshit with indefinite detentions is way over the top. The Daily Show (with actor Ralph Fiennes) covered the story in its usual fine fashion. At least this vote wasn't a secret vote like the let's bankrupt the postal service bill. Thanks to this bit of government transparency we find that there were only seven congress members who voted for the constitution and against the bill.

Jubilee and a movement to Occupy Planet Earth

No, not the cherries. Debt forgiveness called Jubilee from the bible. We need lots of debt forgiveness now and you can read more about it, Debt Slavery - Why it Destroyed Rome, Why it Will Destroy Us Unless It's Stopped. I'd like to read Aristotle's thoughts on the subject too.

Occupy Planet Earth is an excellent article with great links so read it.

Democracy and Debt by Michael Hudson is another should read.

Arithmetic is so important so watch an old man explain 7 and exponentials.

An alternative to capitalism? Read it and make up your own mind

This time I have to lift one of Ah2's posts because it is so good,

"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouKJixL--ms

http://www.newshounds.us/2008/08/07/fox_news_still_trying_to_portray_obama_as_a_muslim.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bbgsYV9DXk&feature=fvst

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWaiULqkp4

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201111100020

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/23/gop-group-head-calls-obam_n_137282.html

Anyway. Pick your lie. He was born in Kenya. He's a socialist. All of it is lies. None of it true. None of it news.

The clip I can't find is of Limbaugh (I think) talking on his show about how Obama is a Muslim because his father was a Muslim and in the Islamic faith, relgion is passed through the father and what not. He literally goes on about it for almost 10 minutes.

Additionally, Fox News uses a rhetorical question technique in virtually all of their broadcasts. They do this for two reasons: 1) deniability. They can simply say, like you are here, "Well I never said that." 2) There is actually a psychological strength to questions. They have shown this in psychological studies of the effects of media. For some reason, when someone asks a question, people are less likely to challenge the premise of the question and direct their attention toward answering it, even if the premise of the question makes no sense. You did it in this thread, in fact. I spend half of my time in these forums challenging the premise of the question conservatives write on here. It is a skill you have picked up from the bullshit you watch.

So, this is a lesson to all the liberals who are still reading this post and found themselves actually trying to answer rigels question on his terms = whenever a conservative asks you a question, assume the premise on which the question is based is completely false. This may not always be true but it will get you out of the habit of debating conservatives on their terms - one of the things the Democratic Party has NOT figured out yet.

Let me go back up to that deniability thing, too, because I think it is really important to understand how this works. When Fox News (or anybody for that matter) asks a question to which they have already indicated the answer in the context in which the question was asked or in the form of the question itself, then it is NOT a question. These are rhetorical turns that are sometimes called command conversions and claim conversions.

The example of what Fox does in this case: "Obama's Father was Muslim. He was raised a Muslim. He went to a Muslim school. Is Obama a Muslim?" They are asking a question but it is clear from the context that the point of the question is to lead the listener to provide the answer the speaker is already indicated or looking for. This is not really a question, it is a test for compliance. People who work in law enforcement and psychology use this rhetorical device all the time. Fox "News" simply applies it to media.

Another way to do this is without context: "Are the policies of the democrats killing jobs, ruining the economy, and wrecking your life?" NOT A QUESTION. It is a rhetorical device. If they were really asking a question, this would be, "What are the effects of democratic policies on the economy? Hmm.... Let us investigate and support every claim we make with well established and supported facts." But they don't sat that. They say the first one and then throw a bunch of bullshit at you like it is real information.

This, again, is not news.

The only reason you don't want me to respond to this post rigel1 is because I see through your bullshit and because I raise the one question you really don't want to have to try to answer. Because it's the one that actually matters and it is the one that requires you to think about ETHICS and DEMOCRACY rather than a profit margin.

Maybe there is something to those stories of FEMA detention camps being built for US citizens. The Raw Story is that the Israeli model underlies the militarization of US police forces.
It make me wish that we could restore the constitution prior to The Patriot Act when we thought that privacy was a right and habeus corpus was a good thing.

On to economics. Poly says it so well that I'll just quote him,

Say's Law, simplified is this:

production cost (materials, energy, etc.) - wages - money supply = aggregate. The sum of an economy. The money supply without inflation or deflation will equal all costs of production. Everything that is produced can be bought. Profit extractions that are so high they aren't re-spent back into the economy upset the equation. Then everything that is produced can't be bought. Production slows or ceases.

We make up for the profit extractions with credit. Infusions into the money supply Credit reaches a ceiling where further credit can't be re-paid. Infusions into the money supply to make up for profit exractions slow or cease. Production then slows or ceases.

Say's Law doesn't address the structural requirement for continual expansion. It doesn't address that while all production can be bought, if Say's Law was adhered to, it sometimes isn't.

It doesn't address what happens when people feel they have everything they need and stop spending...as in Japan..Production then slows or ceases.

In a monastery, when we produce all we need, we stop work and stop production,. We enjoy the leisure time, and simply distribute the surplus until production is once again required.

You don't do it that way.. When production stops, and work stops because there is no need for additional goods to be produced, your distribution of required goods stops. The surplus isn't simply distributed until production is once again required.. What should be enjoyable leisure time becomes a personal economic horror known as unemployment..

Different economic system. Ours doesn't have your structural flaws.

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease""

Egality

The Democratic Reformation. We'd like a little more egality, thanks. Yeah, I hoping that an Arab Spring leads to an American Autumn to a European Winter to an eventual Star Trek future when the realization of the Cree and we don't bother with the money anymore. I just love those Utopian visions. You can click here to read more about the specifics in the productions.

We're not there yet so you might want to check some facts about our nations biggest banks or some facts about the wealthiest among us.

worming our way to truth

A new study finds federal employees are a better deal than private contractors. Gee, we had to have a study to figure that out? The parasites may be bad for governments bottom line, but they may do a body good so we might want to start microbe-managing our health in ways that may seem rather distasteful.

From 75 to 83 percent in one year is the change in percentages of people believing in global warming. I didn't think the numbers were that high.

Here is a really nice piece from Sam Harris titled, What's the Point of Transcendence. Looks like he might be my go to guy in the SNR department. He even wrote about spiritual truths as if they are real things.

Rep Rush Holt is my kinda congressman, he likes science. Saw him on Dylan Rattigan who claims to be mad as hell and has something on the burner. I like his framing.
Good plug for Jimmy Williams too. Lobbying reports may be helpful.

Make sure to review After Capitalism, it looks like a must.

The Populist Party

It's time for the Populist Party to resurrect. There's a fair amount of information to be found concerning a Peoples Party , but not as much for a Populist Party, at least on wiki. Here we can find some original wording here in The Omaha Platform where history matters, but that's too sophisticated for today's TV people. Where should I begin with this idea, this effort? Right here and I did post this at Hartmann's site. We'll see where that goes.

Hey check it out, the Simultaneous Policy is still alive.

Food Inc

Occupy Wall Street

Today might be Labor Day, but it's still The End of Work for lots of people. How much work do people really need to do? If you are a CEO you might be making more money than your entire corporation pays in taxes? That's just wrong, isn't it? Just how rich is too rich? Don't we all know that inequality is unhealthy?

Hurray, finally got to see Food Inc. It's not exactly The World According To Mansanto, but it does point us to The Future of Food. Perhaps they are what will kill us all.

There are Millions Against Montsanto...maybe this will be the October surprise. But before that happens, there will be people trying to take over Wall Street on September 17, Adbusters.

Put these guys on your list of professional bullshitters...LearnLiberty.org pisses me off. He's right about Hong Kong though.

same ol'

Here we are in dangerous times when hundreds are being arrested in front of the White House because the pipeline could mean Game Over according to our top climate scientist. We don't see anything about the protests in corporate media. Perhaps that's because fossil fuel industries are investing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising/propaganda. 350.org reports that we're up to 392ppm

Note: try not to miss The Last Heart Attack with Dr Sonja Gupta (or something like that) on MSNBC. It's about switching to a vegetarian diet.

The "news" reports that there were no jobs created and unemployment remains at 9.1%. Geez, I thought we required 200,000+ jobs/months to keep up with population growth caused by immigration. Something isn't adding up.

Here some stuff about food, like The Future Of Food and the evils of Monsanto and a nice NGO for good food which is Food Freedom and.. senate bill S510 that does harm to the people and the environs in favor to corporations and greed...or should I say harm to Eaarth.\

Yeah, just forget all that follows and listen to Sagan.....he's hiding in there. I wouldn't doubt this.

It looks like they got to Farheed Zakaria. He opened his show opining that spending was/is a problem. Considering that he has Krugman on GPS, I guess he has to run counter to the truth or he won't have a show.

This comes after a week of wild swings on Wall Street, thanks to the quick-traders who skim off the top with speedy computer trades

It would be nice if someone would protect peoples rights because the deceivers are still working their evil tricks. There are some good cartoons though.

Thom is the man. He's offering his intellectual property for free because he thinks that is the right thing to do. I agree. But while some of us understand that corporations are not people others like nit Mitt do not.
From the same site is a fantasy letter from the President to the people. It's worth the read.

Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky has introduced another good piece of legislation. This one would create jobs, a couple of million jobs. It could easily be funded by her other bill that would create new tax brackets for the super rich.

So much of our financial mess could have been avoided if we simply would have enforced laws that were already on the books, like Glass-Steagall. Then again, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act removed prudent protections. Does anyone remember Enron, Worldcom and all the others that stole pensions?

Note: might want to check out the archives of MAIN FM they were talking about interesting local things like the Canary Coalition getting a stay against their new radio license thanks to one of the colleges...talked about "white space"...deficits, etc

Domain

I was trying to purchase a proper domain name when I was directed to this page that informed me of another way that the US has been sold out.

I'm all confused now and don't ya know I got distracted and found this page of govt deals on stuff.

people for sale

People are people and should not be perceived as commodities. Our prison system is a shame and lots of people are trying to do something about the situation before more mostly innocent people are killed.

One of the questions is how do we reach those hard to reach people that may never see ALEC exposed? They might need exposure to Brooke Gladstone, but...every one should heed Krugman, he won the big prize ya know. We shouldn't forget about Robert either.

Economics Junkie has a strange graph that I'm trying to understand. Oh, libertarian, I see...

The American Society of Civil Engineers claim that we could save $3 trillion/ year by fixing our damn roads that keep breaking our vehicles.

Somewhere in here or perhaps here is a "man in the middle" con which offers some good evidence that GW stole the presidency a second time from Ohio with a backup system in Tennessee.

There's only one guy handling domestic terrorism in the whole dept. of homeland security. I wonder if he'll go after the perpetrator that threw a malatov cocktail in the abortion clinic, or was that Planned Parenthood? One guy!

Oh... there's a good reminder to link charity navigator. Lots of good stuff there.

Fourth turn

Who are the New Democrats and what do you think we should do with them? Throw the bums out!

May the Fourth Turning guide us from dystopia.

Debt as a percentage of the GDP, that's what's important. How do other countries compare? Let's look....what year was this? Wiki is looking fairly current. Do you trust the CIA? I do for the World Factbook. I like facts.

I like Main Street too with reports about the top 10 job killers.

The Progressive coup' -now or never

I've been reading this brilliant article while falling into a strange mix of melancholy and determination as my grand plan subtly defines. I didn't realize there was this, Al Gore.com and he's communicating to us again.

The elections of 2012 will make us or break us. The results will be the most significant and profound in all of history as it is the Great Tipping point, or as Mr. Gore has written, "Here is the core of it: we are destroying the climate balance that is essential to the survival of our civilization. This is not a distant or abstract threat; it is happening now. The United States is the only nation that can rally a global effort to save our future. And the president is the only person who can rally the United States."

The people must help their President. We must give him the tools he needs for success. The proper tool is an overwhelmingly liberal congress. Narrow democratic majorities are far from majority. Conservative democrats are little better than republicans.





He concludes, "The climate crisis, in reality, is a struggle for the soul of America. It is about whether or not we are still capable — given the ill health of our democracy and the current dominance of wealth over reason — of perceiving important and complex realities clearly enough to promote and protect the sustainable well-being of the many. What hangs in the balance is the future of civilization as we know it."

This is a battle for every soul. Whether by god or by one's own conscience, each will have to answer for their life, their choices. This is the great moment when humanity either repents or condemns.

There are reasonable activists don't ya know.

Have you heard or heard of Buddy Roemer who's running for president? I like him, but he'd get his ass kicked harder and get assassinated quicker than our current President.

Speaking about assassinations....it's the day after the crazy Norwegian killed so many and published his right-wing manifesto. God please, save us from your followers. Some people still don't understand why atheists don't like religion. Okay, maybe Frank Schaeffer understands. It is also worth noting that the crazy killer was a climate denier like all of these politicians that won't understand science.


Rumor has it that Harry Reid introduced a budget with $2 trillion in cuts that doesn't touch entitlements and doesn't increase any revenues. You can read about it here or here. The markets are behaving normally which mean they aren't really worried about default.

Speaking of markets, it looks like the free-trade fools will pass three more agreements that could ship more jobs from the US to other countries. It's good for Wall St and bad for Main St once again. Is that what our soldiers fought for? Twenty-eight percent of new vets are unemployed.

I'm now reminded of Team B , The Power of Nightmares and how presidents have run up the deficit.

FICA(41%), Income(40%), and Corporate(19%) taxes is how the federal government gets most of its revenue.

Ha, ha...it's not the heat, it's the stupidity...too funny, or at least it would be if it wasn't for all the death and destruction that may follow. Environment 360 doesn't offer any hope while

looks like to progressives put out the biggest and best deal. We don't get to hear about that but we can read about it in Rolling Stone or ....

how about some thoughts from Al Gore about reason and doubt