Think Progress Shows its Neoliberal/Carl Rovian Pro-War Roots

Quick note…

Found a lovely piece of propaganda on the “progressive” ThinkProgress website.  In it, they extol the virtues of quickly passing a ”cap-and-trade” derivatives market scam in order to cripple the “dictatorship” of Iran and other “unfriendly” nations like Venezuela all for the benefit of our “national security”. Of course, as is evident from the cap-and-trade scam in Europe, the only ones it will cripple will be us. More cost passed on to the consumers at a time when the president and his regime are in the process of getting ready to announce a Value Added Tax as well. That and it will cripple what little industry we have left in America while handing carbon credits to the biggest polluters for free. 

 Iran isn’t a dictatorship.  Iran isn’t attempting to develop nuclear weapons.

You know, I read this article over there and I wasn’t surprised at all.  I knew they were nothing more than neoliberal Clintonistas years ago. But the fact that they have become so blatant with their ridiculously right-wing propaganda is a little disturbing.

A strong cap on carbon would significantly cut the flow of petrodollars to Iran’s hostile regime, a ThinkProgress analysis shows. The economic and political strength of Iran’s dictatorship is a threat to the national security of the United States and the world, and its nuclear ambitions threaten to destabilize the Middle East.

…Other unfriendly regimes propped up by carbon-fuel money, such as Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, will also feel the pinch, improving our national security… ThinkProgress

This purely Carl Rovian piece of sophomoric, ham-handed propaganda is on the front page of ThinkProgress. I am so glad I left that shitass website when I did. I can’t believe there is anyone dumb enough to not see though them at this point.

The Economy is Great… Just Buy a Gun

by Scott Creighton

Just a day or so after a report came out that basically said that the suffering and the anger of the people of this country is meaningless in the face of “the market”, a county in Ohio announced that it is laying off over 50% of its cops due to the economy and so they openly suggest their residents “buy a gun” to protect themselves.

In a shorter version of the article for Bloomberg News, Dorning writes, “Americans believe, by an almost 2-to-1 margin, that the economy has gotten worse rather than better during the past year, according to the March Bloomberg National Poll. The market begs to differ, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports in its April 19 edition. While President Barack Obama’s overall job-approval rating has fallen to a low of 44 percent, down 5 points from late March according to a CBS News Poll, the judgment of financial markets has turned positive.”  Business Week

The neoliberal reforms have taken hold and the country is reeling from the imposed recession. People are angry yet the MSM keeps trying to tell them they have no reason to be. The Tea Party movement is constantly demeaned from the left and the right and the polls just don’t make any difference anymore because the Dow is over 11,000.

“The reigning economic approach in Democratic circles for most of the past two decades has been Rubinomics, a term coined to describe a set of priorities fashioned in the 1990s by then- President Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Robert E. Rubin, the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York,” Dorning writes, in comparing Obamanomics to Rubinomics. Raw Story

This is the nature of neoliberalism, this is the result. Everything for “the markets” no matter what the cost for the people. They have done it time and time again to other nations and as it is taking place here in America, trust the corporate media to sing its praises as we start to fight for the scraps. No externality is too great for us to pay for their wealth that is the bottom line. Even conservative stalwarts like county sheriff’s deputies end up hitting the unemployment line in the end. A rude awakening for the pro-free market supporters. In the end, we will all pay, because you and I aren’t in “the big club” and the sooner you realize that, the better off we all will be.

When the sheriff’s department in Ashtabula County, Ohio, was cut from 112 to 49 deputies, just one vehicle was left to patrol the 720-square-mile county.

Asked what residents should do for protection, Common Pleas Judge Alfred Mackey replied, ” Arm themselves,” and added, “We’re going to have to look after each other.”  USA Today

Left with one patrol car per shift and only enough staff in the county jail to keep 30 prisoners at a time, Ashtabula Co. is about to get a first hand lesson in neoliberal externalities. Crime will rise as will vigilantism.

All across the rest of the country we are also seeing a rise in traffic tickets, especially the ones from the closed circuit cameras. Its a selective tax being imposed on the people of various cities. Fees will increase as well as the cities and the counties struggle to keep from going too far into the red.

Most of this didn’t have to happen. As Wall Street was pocketing billions from their CDOs and their derivatives scams based on the liar loans they also created, they had representatives running around from city to city and county to county bribing officials to invest their constituents money, their futures, in these designer frauds. So when the bubble burst, and it was destined to burst, the cities and counties got no bailouts while the banks and financial institutions that did it too us did. Trillions were spent saving the banks from their own WMDs while we were left to rot.

The neoliberal meltdown of America is well under way while the banker and politico class sits back, collects their checks, lives large, and does nothing for us. Nothing except to keep telling us it isn’t happening.

In 2009, the worst economic year for working people since the Great Depression, the top 25 hedge fund managers walked off with an average of $1 billion each. With the money those 25 people “earned,” we could have hired 658,000 entry level teachers. (They make about $38,000 a year, including benefits.) Those educators could have brought along over 13 million young people, assuming a class size of 20. That’s some value. AlterNet

Teachers, police, autoworkers, carpenters, small business owners, chefs, we are all expendable just so long as the institutions that are poisoning our economy know that once it starts to look like they will taste their own medicine, the neoliberal government will bail them out with our tax dollars. That’s how it works.

Iraq anti-US cleric Sadr urges unity vs Americans

(Iraqis uniting under the common purpose… to get rid of U.S.)

by Reuters

Anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, likely to be a key player in forming a new Iraqi government following elections last month, urged Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims on Friday to unite to oust American troops.

In an address read to tens of thousands of supporters at a rally to mark the seventh anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Sadr said that without Iraqi unity “the occupation and its advocates will stay in Iraq without fear”.

“You, the Sunnis of Iraq, joined hands with the Shi’ites to liberate our country. Do not let the (U.S.) occupation or any unjust law made by it deter you from doing that,” he said in the address read by aide Hazem al-Araji.

The United States has almost 100,000 troops in Iraq but they are largely on bases away from cities. Washington has said it will withdraw all troops by the end of 2011.

“We don’t want them (Americans) to stay in our country, let them leave,” said Hussein Muhammad, 30, who journeyed to the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, from the southern city of Basra for the rally.

Sadr, a Shi’ite who is studying in Iran and is part of the Shi’ite Iraqi National Alliance (INA), is a major factor as politicians try to form a government after inconclusive elections last month.

As part of political negotiations, INA has held merger talks with the State of Law coalition of Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

State of Law finished just two seats behind former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s cross-sectarian Iraqiya list in the 325-seat parliament. Sadrists won around 40 seats, the best showing of any party in the INA. (Reporting by Khaled Farhan in Najaf and Waleed Ibrahim in Baghdad, writing by Ian Simpson; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)