Fox News Kills Ron Paul

Not literally, of course… but as you can see from nipped and tucked Scientoligist Greta Van Susteren’s year-end look back at the race to become the Republican presidential nominee, there is not ONE single mention of Ron Paul in the entire 7½ minutes of video. Why, it’s as if Fox News made it appear that the garrulous old libertarian coot some predict may actually win next week’s semi-important Iowa caucuses wasn’t even running in the campaign at all!

While it’s a well-established fact to most liberals that Fox News is anything but “fair and balanced” as it cynically claims to be, unfortunately there are still many witless viewers out there who actually consider the network a purveyor of “news” rather than what it really is – a slick propaganda delivery vehicle for the GOP establishment – i.e., vested interests of corporate fascists and the wealthy elite.

Perhaps witnessing the hostile reaction of Fox News to the potentially disruptive candidacy of Ron Paul will disabuse them of the notion that it actually believes in the libertarian ethos, the anti-liberal rhetoric of which it so fiercely spouts whenever it usefully serves advance their purpose; which, in fact, isn’t to destroy government at all, but instead to hold it even more firmly captive and continue utilizing its various powers as a practical means of effectively siphoning off absurd amounts of wealth from the many to an increasingly select few.

Factoid: Just six members of Walmart’s Walton clan are worth as much as the bottom 30 percent of all Americans (90 million people).

Political Discourse in America

OCW protesters confront what they imagine to be a wealthy and insensitive “conservative” woman outside a swanky Washington hotel.

I know “liberals” aren’t supposed to pay any attention to these sorts of awkward encounters documented on film, nor are they expected to acknowledge any of the cringe-inducing and reprehensibly contemptible opinions of some the more infuriated OCW supporters given the intent of the filmmakers is usually to discredit and maliciously undermine the movement and many of its quite legitimate grievances…

By the same token, however, it would be wilfully dishonest to ignore them or pretend they’re just freak aberrations.

These angry, discontented protesters claim to be the 99% – and in terms of income they most certainly are – but in many other respects, they don’t represent vast majority of hard-working people that are trying to keep their heads above water and struggling to make ends meet.

Personally, I don’t ever remember a time when life wasn’t “all fucked up” as the highly incensed 24-year old guy screams with outrage in this video. So what exactly is his point?

Inequalistan

Chris Hayes dismantles the Republicans’ favourite new talking point that “the top 10 percent of ‘wage earners’ pay 70 percent of the income taxes.”

You have to hand it to the perverse genius of right-wingers sometimes, as in this case of using evidence of inequality to vehemently defend inequality or employing artfully deceitful expressions like “broadening the tax base” when they really mean sticking it to the working poor and middle-class.

Between Rhetoric & Reality

In a preview of the jobs speech he will deliver on Thursday to Congress, President Obama told a Labour Day rally in Detroit that there are numerous roads and bridges that need rebuilding in the U.S., and many construction workers available to “get dirty” and build them.

Obama stressed the city’s proud industrial heritage “where men clocked into factories” and one “that built the greatest middle class the world has ever known,” while recognizing that in recent years it had “been to heck and back.”

That’s why we chose Detroit as one of the cities that we’re helping revitalize in our “Strong Cities, Strong Communities” initiative. We’re teaming up with everybody – mayors, local officials, you name it – boosting economic development, rebuilding your communities the best way, which is a way that involves you.

All well and good, but hardly congruent with reality…

If ever you want to see a vivid demonstration of the wealth inequality and racial divide in America, Detroit is the place to visit. Not 10 miles from the apocalyptic hellscapes of the inner city can be found the leafy all-white suburbs of historic Grosse Point…