Self-Reflection is for the weak

post from Firedoglake on 09 August 2012 04:30:35 AM. © Firedoglake

The other day one of the many FoxNews talking heads went after a fifteen-year old African-American gymnast (it?s always an African-American, of any age, with them) for being insufficiently patriotic because the corporate leotard she was given was just[...]

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After Coulter Attacks "Divorced, Single Women,"
Limbaugh Says: "Can You Imagine What Would Happen If I Would Say That"

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 09 August 2012 04:28:48 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

From the August 9 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

Previously:

Coulter: Sandra Fluke Introduced Obama To Help With "The Base Democratic Voter -- Stupid Single Women"

UPDATED: Limbaugh's Misogynistic Attack On Georgetown Law Student Continues With Increased Vitriol

Limbaugh: "Feminism Was Established" So "Unattractive Women" Could Have "Easier Access To The Mainstream"

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How Will Fox Respond To Renewed Efforts To
Improve Veterans' Access To Education

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 09 August 2012 03:00:44 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

With Mitt Romney scheduled to visit a for-profit college in North Carolina on August 12, will Fox News finally note the problem of for-profit colleges using deceptive practices to target veterans?

In April, President Obama signed an executive order aimed at helping protect veterans from the actions of some for-profit colleges. Fox News responded by calling the order "a political stunt" and derided it as a "political gimmick." It further attacked Obama by claiming that the order was an "insult to the troops."

By contrast, veterans groups, who have "long felt that student veterans need to have the tools to succeed when it comes to their education," greeted Obama's actions with praise. The American Legion said the order was an "important victory" for veterans who "have been wrongly and unconscionably victimized by some institutions who see America's finest as nothing more than a vulnerable market."

As Stars & Stripes reported, the order Obama signed "will limit college recruiters' access to military bases, develop a complaint system to track violations by schools, force colleges to provide graduation rates and student debt information, and crack down on institutions using the term 'GI Bill' in their veterans outreach efforts." The article added:

The measure mirrors a host of bills pending before Congress but bypasses the legislative process, which has been mired in partisan discord for months. Privately, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have backed many of the ideas but said passing any legislation dealing with the problem was unlikely before November.
But officials said that action was needed sooner, to address a growing list of complaints by student veterans regarding unfulfilled promises and unexpected debt from colleges. They cited anecdotes of college recruiters -- particularly from for-profit schools -- signing up brain-injured troops for classes, forcing unneeded student loans on veterans, and promising career opportunities through worthless degree programs.

Indeed, the findings of a two-year investigation by the Senate Democratic Committee, which examined 30 for-profit colleges in 2010, confirmed that veterans and service members have become "prime targets for these aggressive recruiting tactics," through the exploitation of what is known as the "90/10 rule."

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Late Night Karaoke

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 09 August 2012 03:00:00 AM. © Docudharma - Front Page

[...]

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Rush Limbaugh: "The Problem With The Willie
Horton Ad Is It Was True"

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 09 August 2012 02:38:05 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

From the August 9 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

Previously:

The Willie Hortonization of Barack Obama

NPR's Problematic "Willie Horton" Analogy

Media's False Comparison Births Obama's "Willie Horton"

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New Frontiers In Foreign Policy Criticism

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 09 August 2012 02:33:26 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, last seen warning everyone not to take at face value unproven reports on Mitt Romney's tax policies, takes at face value an unproven report from the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz saying that a new National Intelligence Estimate shows Iran "has made surprising, significant progress toward military nuclear capability."

Rubin allows that this is unverified and that there might not actually be a new NIE, but even if there isn't, she argues, Obama's Iran policy has nonetheless failed:

Whether there is a new NIE report or not, no responsible policymaker thinks the 2007 NIE is accurate. If not a new NIE, then the leaking of a purported new NIE will have the effect of increasing pressure on the Obama administration, which has yet to concede that sanctions haven't done what they were designed to do, namely force Iran to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.
Foreign policy experts can debate whether a sanctions strategy was flawed from its inception, incorrectly assessing the motivations of the Iranian regime, or they can debate whether the execution of sanctions policy (too slow, too porous) was to blame. But we are more than 3 1/2 years into the Obama administration, and Iran is much closer to its goal than at the start. By any reasonable measure, the Obama approach has been a failure, whatever the NIE report might say.

So Obama's Iran policy is a failure, regardless of what the intelligence says, or if the intelligence even exists.

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Rich Have Offshored Their Wealth -- Scumney, Too

post from They gave us a republic... - Front Page on 09 August 2012 02:14:42 AM. © They gave us a republic... - Front Page

We live in a time in which ordinary people are being told to expect far, far less. Social Security isn't even a given, nor is Medicare. And yet, now we hear this:

Super Rich Holding $21 Trillion Overseas to Avoid Taxation

Here's the link. That number is "conservative" -- the actual one could run as high as $32 trillion.

This not only comes at a time like this for America -- EU countries are in a bind, too.

I have a "conservative" friend who once made a reference about "money we don't have." Bullshit. Fucking BULLSHIT. It's there, and we KNOW who has it. They are hiding it in places like the Cayman Islands.

Is Slick Willard one of them? We can only guess. Why won't he release his tax records?

The era of "responsible capitalism" is over

It would appear that the only thing that forced that situation was the international challenge of socialism. Granted, socialism didn't hold up well, for reasons that don't have to be enumerated. But when faced with something like an international challenge, "capitalists" had to behave more responsibly.

Karl Marx was certainly wrong about a lot of things. But one thing he predicted was that, despite myriad attempts to "reform" capitalism, it would always revert back to its original, brutal form. It's looking like Karl was right about that one.

So, what to do now?

Revolutions don't generally turn out well, when you look at history. I can't say that I would recommend them. But if there isn't some kind of serious turnaround in Western societies within the next decade -- well, something else dramatic will have to happen. If it doesn't, we will be walking around as plutocrat trolls for the next couple of centuries. The plutocracy has the technology to commit this atrocity, unless we the people prevent it.

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Today In Dishonest Fox Charts: Government Aid
Edition

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 09 August 2012 02:12:38 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

Fox News is again highlighting a misleading chart to distort the debate over welfare reform and to amplify Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's inaccurate message that President Obama is "dismantling" welfare reform. In fact, Obama simply gave states the flexibility they asked for in overseeing the welfare program.

Hemmer stated: "If you take a look at the chart, the number has been rising steadily since 2009."

But the chart's scale is deceptively skewed. The chart's y-axis is 94,000,000, not 0 -- as graphs are conventionally delineated. Here's what a more realistic chart would look like when drawn to scale:

Since Fox's chart provides no actual numbers, the increase can only be roughly approximated, but an increase of 96 million to 108 million is an increase of less than 12 percent.

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Media Fails To Put Record Heat Report In Climate
Context

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 09 August 2012 01:59:20 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

This week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that July was the hottest month on record for the contiguous U.S. and that so far this year is the warmest on record. Scientists say that this record heat is partially driven by manmade climate change, yet Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, CBS Evening News, and USA TODAY did not mention climate change at all in their reports on NOAA's announcement.

These heat extremes are occurring in the context of rising global temperatures, which the

But not everyone in the media failed to mention these facts. The Associated Press' Seth Borenstein spoke to climate scientists, who noted that July's record heat alone would not be evidence of climate change, but that the broader pattern of record breaking heat shows global warming at work:

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Media Fail To Put Record Heat Report In Climate
Context

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 09 August 2012 01:59:20 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

This week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that July was the hottest month on record for the contiguous U.S. and that so far this year is the warmest on record. Scientists say that this record heat is partially driven by manmade climate change, yet Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, CBS Evening News, and USA TODAY did not mention climate change at all in their reports on NOAA's announcement.

These heat extremes are occurring in the context of rising global temperatures, which the

But not everyone in the media failed to mention these facts. The Associated Press' Seth Borenstein spoke to climate scientists, who noted that July's record heat alone would not be evidence of climate change, but that the broader pattern of record breaking heat shows global warming at work: