Having been an analyst / troubleshooter for most of my life you might employ some of the methods I have learned.

When  the results seem impossible, reassess your assumptions. Something you assumed was true is not true.

Spend less time defending your opinions and more time forming them. Back to square one, so they say.

The problem is that most of your opinions/beliefs are based on faith. Someone you trust told you what to believe. Boomers ran into that problem when we were young. We discovered that our parents, teachers, pastors and government were lying to us about marijuana. We had already forgiven the tooth fairy stuff because it was going to be fun to fool our children. But now we had to wonder what else the were wrong about.

So perhaps it is time to start thinking for yourselves. That critical thinking stuff that is the object of your (left wing propaganda) education. Stop whining about professors having opinions and form your own.

Cheers,

The Certified Idiot, Jose.

Part of the perceived (although I admit the media is biased) problem is that things that Cons perceive as very important are ones that liberals do not.

When you sound bite Rev Wright. We check the content and come away concerned because Obama dis'ed the Rev. The Rev made many very valid points. Yes, he did exaggerate some for effect, but that is part of his job and we are accustomed to  that from hearing the rantings of the honorable opposition.

Liberals believe that association with people of differing views is a good thing. We also remember the stupid things we did when young. Ayers was seen as a hero of the revolution, whether you agree with his methods or not.

We don't care if Obama is a Muslim or an Arab or where he was born. The anti-Christ thing was very amusing, though.

Politico, who purportedly tries to be fair, was very concerned about the allegations of bias and checked their stories. It was true there was an imbalance between positive and negative stories between camps. But the problem was that one camp was doing positive things while the other was doing negative things.

The fact that you think right wing radio and Fox News are fair and balanced might be part of the perceived problem.

News used to be a cost center in "the public interest" and if you presented one side you had to have an argument for the other side. That was the "fairness doctrine" which you fear so much even though I have yet to find anyone in favor of reinstating that.

It used to be illegal to own more than one or two media outlets. Particularly in the same market. Local media used to be truly local and served in the "local" public interest or a periodic revue could take their license to use the public bandwidth. Yes, it does still belong to us.

It is a fine thing that you now see the problem with the MSM, which we more accurately refer to as the corporate media whose purpose is profit. It looks like the "free market" is about to thin the herd.

America has always had biased media, but both sides used to be represented and and did not try to convince the public that they were "fair and balanced".

Obama once said he was in favor of breaking up the media monopolies, then wisely shut up about it. Right on!

Jose

Mussolini defines fascism as "the merger of corporate and government power"

How does the current climate compare to past fascist regimes?

Or maybe what we have is a plutacracy.

Definition of Plutacracy

Jefferson was very concerned about this.

“Stock dealers and banking companies, by the aid of a paper system, are enriching themselves TO THE RUIN OF OUR COUNTRY and swaying the government by their possession of the printing presses, which their wealth commands, and by other means not always honorable to the character of our countrymen.” ? Thomas Jefferson, Ford 7:170 (1797)

Problem is...if we know this we might decide to resist this arrangement. We can be an awful pain. There are just so damned many of us.

So we must be deceived. One of the ways to accomplish this is the shell game. A pea and three walnut shells is all we need for this game. The object is to keep our eyes on the right hand waving the shells around while the left hand scoops up the pea.

In this case the right hand and shells are issues that they don't really care about. But if they can find some that split us somewhere near the middle and we can be very emotional about, then they have a good right hand issue. You know the ones they found.

Another good right hand distraction is fear. Be afraid. Be very afraid. But they will protect us if you just don't watch that left hand.

Now throw in some anger. Look at those guys! It is all their fault. Now they have us insulting each other with so much venom we don't care what they do with that left hand.

Another good trick is the expert witness. Nothing better than an economist because nobody really understands economy. Not even the experts. But they can talk smack with so many six bit words that we can't work a dictionary fast enough. Besides that they sprinkle in a bunch of euphemisms and if you do get all the words straight you find out many are ambiguous. 

Geenspan is a master. Now throw in a great salesman with "child that's grown old" charm like Reagan and we are putty. They tell us that if we give tax cuts to the rich we will have more money. What we look like, fools? Oh no, they will hire us. Give us jobs to make stuff that no one has the money to buy. Oh, well, of course. How silly of us to doubt you.

They don't care if you see yourself as liberal or conservative, whether or not you hate gays or love guns, nor what religion you are or whether you believe in God. If you are passionate about it and hate the other side, that will do. It is all green. Just don't watch the left hand.

I know you can't resist trying to figure out which shell that pea is under, just keep your hand on your wallet.

Jose

 

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Found a nice NY Times article finding this quote. By a conservative who still remembers what conservative means.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html

Mr Buffett did an office survey and found that he pays less tax as a percentage of income than anyone else in his office. And he does not employ fancy accounting or special cuts.

There has been a concerted attack on the middle class since Reagan was elected. Greenspan has overseen the war until recently.

Some conservative thought sees it as justified by the unrest of the sixties. See what happens when the rabble have too much time on their hands? Everyone could afford college even working minimum wage jobs. Of course the minimum wage was about 8$ in todays dollars. The corporate rate was 52% and some paid up to 91% on income over about $3,000,000.

Terrible times, right? The average annual GDP growth rates was 4.4%. Terrible? Not so much. In fact it was wonderful fun. We applied great pressure on government and society.

We found out that our dear Uncle Sam would lie to us and because our parents still trusted the government that they lied to us, too. We discovered that our teachers and our textbooks lied to us. Skepticism and critical thinking ran rampant. Who could we trust?

So thinking for ourselves we saw what was not right. Very disconcerting to our parents. And our teachers and our government and a conservative named William Buckley who figured that if we were busy scratching out a living we would be less troublesome. He was right. It took him a long time to convince enough people and get some of them in power. Then came Reagan.

First thing Reagan did as governor of California was do away with free higher education. Then as President he told us tax cuts for the rich would increase productivity (more jobs) and everyone would be better off. How was he going to pay for it? No prob. The increased productivity would more than make up for it with additional tax revenue. A year later we were up to our ears in debt. Oops, what do we do now?

Get Greenspan, he can fix it. And he did. He spun a story about a snake eating a chicken or something and pointed to us trouble makers and said we were the chicken and social security was going bankrupt all because of us. Well, he was a good salesman and so was Reagan. We bought it. Although the system was designed to break even every year with the current workers paying for the current retired, we, those vile boomers were going to pay not only for all the retirees throughout our working lives but for our own as well.

The increased Social security rates were brutal. The lowest paid workers paid the same rate as the middle class. But not the rich. And if you wanted to start a lemonade stand you had to pay double. This is regressive taxation at it's finest. Right there with sales tax on food.

The good news is all that fresh green disguised the failure of  supply side economics. Of course when they took the money they promised they would save it for our retirement, but letting politicians hold your money is unwise.

Next, the facts of minimum wages, unemployment, supply and demand, tax cuts for the rich, and the shell game to keep us from noticing that the hand in our back pocket does not belong to a sweet young thing.

Jose