On April 21st, the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal announced a change in their opinion pages.

We've redesigned them to give you more, and more diverse, commentary on the debates of the day.

And to their credit, they have delivered with a weekly column from none other than What's the Matter with Kansas author, Thomas Frank.

Today the renowned populist commenced (though he did have a preview coulumn a month ago) his weekly foray into heart of capitalist media and the mouthpiece of corporate interests.

'Scuse me Satan, does it usually get this cold here in Hell?

Today's Wall St. Journal(subscription), incredibly, has Thomas "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Frank on the top right side of the op-ed pages today. (!)
I shall try to keep within the "fair use" parameters.

The media flurry kicked up by Mr. Obama's gaffe powerfully confirms an argument I actually did make [in "Kansas"]: That as they return again to the culture war, what the soldiers on all sides are doing is talking about class without actually addressing the economic basis of the subject.

You can watch Hillary being spoon-fed questions about this by her scribe in Time Magazine, Mark Halperin, here, as they share cackles that Jim Demers (of Concord, NH) is a lobbyist.

But here's the picture you want to see:  



(Data and graph are from OpenSecrets.org).

As Hillary's "inevitability" is shown to be a paper-thin facade and she tanks in the polls, she and her political operatives* -- a small camp of nasty, manipulative, gutter, attack-style henchmen -- have lashed into Senator Obama because a few of his honorary (volunteer) co-chairs at the state-level are lobbyists.  *yawn*

Bring. It. On.  Let's have this comparison.  

Let's compare how much Hillary Clinton is in the pocket of venal corporate interests, versus Barack Obama, shall we?  Read on...

For evidence that America’s political system is a criminal conspiracy, open your mind to piles of new analyses that prove beyond doubt that the official 9/11 story is a lie.  Years of a bipartisan cover-up of 9/11 lies make it much more than one horrendous past event.  It endures in infamy as a symptom of a corrupt and dishonest government.

Here comes another inconvenient truth.  Despite all the attention to Oprah for Obama and the pundit blabbering about the Democratic primary horse race the outcome has been predetermined.  What people do not want to know is that power elites control what the Democratic ticket will be.  When the primaries end the winner will be the reigning plutocracy.

Plutocracy is that form of government in which, instead of the people being represented by their elected officials, those with wealth "buy" the officials. Those officials then create laws and policies which produce obscene profits for the wealthy owners of corporations.  

so with the US in great turmoil the Plutocracy that is our Current leadership has decided:

On November 27, the United States will host Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, Palestinian Authority President Abbas, along with the Members of the Quartet, the Members of the Arab League Follow-on Committee, the G-8, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, and other key international actors for a conference at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

(Which by the way proves how close Martin O'Malley REALLY is to the Republican Leadership)

A peace summit? Really, read on.

By Jason Miller

Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/...

"The other kids were all into black power," Oprah told the Tribune in the mid-1980s. But "I wasn’t a dashiki kind of woman ... Excellence was the best deterrent to racism and that became my philosophy."

Excellence indeed. Few would deny that Oprah Winfrey has achieved an extraordinary degree of THAT, at least by our society’s warped standards. Witty, articulate, attractive, beloved by tens of millions, and fabulously wealthy, she is the "I pulled myself up by my bootstraps" queen of a vast media empire. Oprah is a living embodiment of the American Dream. What is perhaps most inspiring to her genuflecting disciples is that Oprah rose to her stratospheric position of wealth and influence from an impoverished start in a socioeconomic hierarchy still largely dominated by white males.

As anyone closely following economic news knows, the American economy lost 4,000 jobs in August, even as analysts had expected job gains of over 100,000--a fact that caused tremors in the markets, even as fed bank presidents played down the results as a temporary aberration from a strong economy.  

I agree with DK on pretty much everything and he actually got my first campaign contribution I've given.  He pretty much has the same message as Ralph Nader and I really was excited about him for awhile because I thought that if he could win the nomination, he'd have a pretty good chance of winning the presidency.  Further, he understands and is currently trying to solve the crisis that our democracy is facing with Washington corruption, corporate crime, and corporate media.

Despite his great qualities, I believe that there is no way that he is in the position to help the progressive cause by running for president.  He seems to be largely a one way communicator and i think that that becomes more obvious the more you watch him.  Also, I don't think he has a likable personality and thus the corporate media will tear him apart if he gets far enough (look at the Vanity Fair article with Al Gore).

By Patrice Greanville

Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/...

There’s a widespread assumption in leftwing circles that increasing concentration of media ownership is, ipso facto, the main if not sole culprit for the appalling performance of mainstream journalism in our time. Surely there’s a lot to decry, but is media consolidation and deregulation the cause for this calamity? And if the American media have indeed fallen from grace, as it is claimed, where in time do we locate this mythical "golden period" when the media establishment did measure up to its social mandate?

It is time to strip away some of the mythology and outright sycophancy vis-a-vis military service in the U.S. imperial war machine. Yes, some heroic actions are undertaken and sacrifices made by U.S. forces despite the often ugly intentions of those who sent them into battle, but the U.S. military is also full of psychopaths, sociopaths, glory boys, morons, racists, proto-fascists, and other forms/types of pathological personalities who often thrive in a military environment. What kind real veteran, with an IQ over 60, could stand or cheer, for one minute, the likes of Chickenhawks Bush and Cheney in faux military gear or talking tough to the VFW? Bush in military gear is like a pedophile priest in elegant flowing robes.

They are not "serving" what is euphemistically called "American Democracy" because: a) America was never founded as a "Democracy"; it was founded, by white propertied elites as a plutocratic pseudo-republic and remains so; b) America is rightly regarded as an oppressor and outright suppressor of Democracy not as a liberator and promoter of it all over the world;

Why do "THEY" hate us? Often for some good reasons.

by Paul Donovan

Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/...

"The only thing most American know about socialism is they don’t like it. They have been led to believe that socialism is something to be either ridiculed as impractical, or feared as an instrument of the devil."

–Leo Huberman

If FDR were president today, he'd fill government with his kind of people--law-abiding, populist progressives--just as Bush fills it with lawless, cartelist plutocrats.

For a century America has had two competing economics, with corresponding conflicting visions as to whom and how much to tax and on what to spend the budget.

On one side, the tyranny of "pure capitalism" and "free market" plutocracy: supply side and "win-win": government as a tool to transfer wealth from the working class to the rich. On the other, Keynesian economics and protective regulation--progressive policies that build the working class for the future: government as a tool (1) to take back from the cartelists some of the excessive profits they wring from workers and consumers and (2) to spend that money to promote the general welfare.

Click below to read what FDR had to say about it in his greatest speech of 1936--possibly his greatest speech of his entire career--and to get a link to a scanned copy of his actual original draft with notes--

PLUTOCRATIC-REPUBLICANS:

The GOP is the agent of the industrial cartels and supply-side ultra rich.

The cartelists conceal their plutocratic agenda with rhetoric about "social issues" and taxes (having successfully perpetuated the myth that it's unfair to raise taxes on the rich without raising them on the middle class, or to lower taxes on the middle class without lowering them on the rich).

*

CARTELIST "DEMOCRATS":

The "centrist" (DLC-style) "Democrats" are the Plutocratic-Republicans of the Left. They collude with the GOP in using half-a-dozen "social issues" as a wedge to split the social & political power of the middle class.

By Gary Corseri

Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/...

"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think."

–Martin Luther King

"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all other liberties."

–John Milton

"Ecraser l’infame!"

–Voltaire

On a recent airing of "This Week", George Stephanopoulus told both Mike Gravel and Ron Paul that they have no chance of winning, while insinuating that they're both "kooks" who are running as a lark.
RawStory   -   ABC host tells Paul, Gravel they have no chance to win   -   July 9, 2007
DailyKos   -   the media decides...   -    by RockWood   -   July 9, 2007

A blogger at "The N.Y. Times Blog" ...

... wonders about "those who aren’t drawing many headlines or showing strength in the polls?"   "Those" apparently only include Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Mike Gravel.
...
But, "those" are the only candidates who have a dissenting opinion or challenge corporate interests such as the Military-Industrial Complex, Oil and Healthcare Industries.
DailyKos   -   The Price of Applause   -   by parmenides for change   -   July 5, 2007

by Phil Rockstroh

Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/...

Why did the Democratic Congress betray the voting public? Betrayal is often a consequence of wishful thinking. It’s the world’s way of delivering the life lesson that it’s time to shed the vanity of one’s innocence and grow-the-hell-up. Apropos, here’s lesson number one for political innocents: Power serves the perpetuation of power. In an era of runaway corporate capitalism, the political elite exist to serve the corporate elite. It’s that simple.

BY PATRICE GREANVILLE (Originally written in 2003)

While the object of fascism is always the same, to disarm, intimidate, repress, and roll back the sectors of society pushing for further equality and democratization, its various forms take up the coloring dictated by specific cultures and epochs. That’s why military fascism in Chile is different than Argentina’s, or Spain’s, and why German fascism was far more brutal and systematic than the Italian variety. When and if it comes, American fascism will have its own defining characteristics, most likely a presidential façade.