The Unofficial But Kind of Official US Pawliticks Thread

[Roid_Rage]

To kick things off, how the fuck did we get 4 months into 2011 without having a budget planned out for this year. This seems horribly short sighted on Congress's part and seems like it could be easily avoided by, oh idk... planning ahead by 2-3 years? And that's at a minimum. I mean, obviously they wouldn't be able to account for everything 2-3+ years in advance, but they could at least have some groundwork laid down so something like this doesn't happen.

I mean it just seems so ridiculous that we got to this point and I don't understand how more people aren't pissed off about this. Granted, I don't know what will happen/has happened as a result of this, but that's fucking atrocious that they can't even settle a budget.

[Donachello]

Cross referencing this from the documentaries to watch thread.
YouTube - The American Dream By The Provocateur Network

Not to sound like a doomsayer or anything. But after reading some things and taking some classes (currently in one) that talk about the current state of media/US/the world. It's hard to feel very good about the future of our country or even the planet. Obviously, everything I am saying can be taken with a grain of salt but the fact remains that there's some seriously fucked up stuff going on.

The US media is seemingly controlled almost entirely by only a few massive corporations and elite people. People are so fucking lazy when it comes to trying to find the truth that they just eat what fox news or whatever the "democratic" equivalent decides to feed them. Unfortunately, if you read Noam Chomsky's "Propaganda Model" it becomes pretty clear how the so called "liberal" media is no more than a front put up by the extremely conservative backers and informants of every large news conglomerate. Why? Because the more prominent and powerful the sources the more "reliable" they are to quote. For example, there is a correspondent stationed at the White House who gets the inside scoop directly from there but if he ever prints something critical of what goes on there the White House can shut off access and BAM! he's out of a nice comfortable, high-paying job.
/rant

Secondly, why the fuck are we still fully entrenched in the middle east militarily? Wasn't Obama supposed to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and that region in general entirely by like halfway through his first term? Wait... didn't we just declare war on Libya? Then, like Dustin said all the financial stuff Obama promised seems to have been swept under the rug to further benefit the rich and powerful.

Speaking of the military. It currently has an estimated budget of something like over 630 billion dollars a year. The second highest? China with 1/6th the expenditures. We spend about as much on the military as pretty much the rest of the world in its entirety. Not to mention the failing projects of the F-35 and F-22 that continually gobble up billions of dollars a year with little or no progress.

Sigh....

[wufwugy]

The US media is seemingly controlled almost entirely by only a few massive corporations and elite people. People are so fucking lazy when it comes to trying to find the truth that they just eat what fox news or whatever the "democratic" equivalent decides to feed them. Unfortunately, if you read Noam Chomsky's "Propaganda Model" it becomes pretty clear how the so called "liberal" media is no more than a front put up by the extremely conservative backers and informants of every large news conglomerate. Why? Because the more prominent and powerful the sources the more "reliable" they are to quote. For example, there is a correspondent stationed at the White House who gets the inside scoop directly from there but if he ever prints something critical of what goes on there the White House can shut off access and BAM! he's out of a nice comfortable, high-paying job.
/rant

Excellent post, I'm almost a little surprised since many people don't get this.

Corporate media is a giant piece of shit. It's all based on access, profit, and even corporatocracy. MSNBC has pockets of good stuff, but they still have a ton of shit. They're about 80% tabloid, 20% focusing on things that matter. I watch Cenk Uygur daily because he's our generation's Edward Murrow, but Maddow is good as well, and two of their others are decent at times, but that's it

Get your media from the internet. Bloggers or small shows. There is a lot of great stuff out there, it's rapidly growing in great popularity, but it ain't corporate

Secondly, why the fuck are we still fully entrenched in the middle east militarily? Wasn't Obama supposed to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and that region in general entirely by like halfway through his first term? Wait... didn't we just declare war on Libya? Then, like Dustin said all the financial stuff Obama promised seems to have been swept under the rug to further benefit the rich and powerful.

Speaking of the military. It currently has an estimated budget of something like over 630 billion dollars a year. The second highest? China with 1/6th the expenditures. We spend about as much on the military as pretty much the rest of the world in its entirety. Not to mention the failing projects of the F-35 and F-22 that continually gobble up billions of dollars a year with little or no progress.

This seems to be the Democratic Party way. Campaign as a progressive, govern as a Republican. Granted, the military is the most entrenched, politically powerful, and corrupt entity on the entire planet. Obama would be more successful taking down the banks than the military/industrial complex. Also, he doesn't want to because it's mainly for oil, and the best way for him to gut his presidency is to get on the bad side of oil. As well as, the enormous US military is a "pre-emptive Cold War". If we dropped our military funding to the levels of the second largest nation, we would experience a lot of oil volatility and would end up engaging in another Cold War, but this time with China instead of Russia

The financial stuff is tough to swallow because the banks are the biggest political donors. That considered, Obama has done well here IMO. He has to do what he can to make sure the banks remain one of his primary donors, but he also has stood some solid ground by creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau currently headed by Liz Warren. Also, a lot of the issues with banking aren't actual issues. The real issues were with Bush Administration corruption, not financial innovation with things like derivatives. The Bush Admin fired nearly everybody at the SEC so there were no cops on the beat. They also allowed the Fed to keep interest rates terribly low in order to bubble housing. Simply having a non-corrupt politician in POTUS during Bush's reign would have been enough to kill the whole mess

[Monty3038]

Get your media from the internet. Bloggers or small shows. There is a lot of great stuff out there, it's rapidly growing in great popularity, but it ain't corporate

Take with a grain of salt what you hear though on the Internet... remember... no one is vetting their sources either... so everyone can do whatever they want there... sometimes it is a bigger load of crap than the corporate news outlets.

[wufwugy]

Take with a grain of salt what you hear though on the Internet... remember... no one is vetting their sources either... so everyone can do whatever they want there... sometimes it is a bigger load of crap than the corporate news outlets.

Yeah you don't want to just listen to whatever you hear. I'm talking about internet/small business journo. TV and mega news don't have journalism anymore, it's shifted to the web. Yes there is crap out there, but if you want to find journalism like we used to have, you have to go the net.

Never trust a source that isn't allowed to say "fuck" or "maybe dropping bombs on poor brown people isn't what heroism is made of"

[Numbr2intheWorld]

Cross referencing this from the documentaries to watch thread.
YouTube - The American Dream By The Provocateur Network

Not to sound like a doomsayer or anything. But after reading some things and taking some classes (currently in one) that talk about the current state of media/US/the world. It's hard to feel very good about the future of our country or even the planet. Obviously, everything I am saying can be taken with a grain of salt but the fact remains that there's some seriously fucked up stuff going on.

The US media is seemingly controlled almost entirely by only a few massive corporations and elite people.

They're teaching you this crap in school? wtf

[wufwugy]

To kick things off, how the fuck did we get 4 months into 2011 without having a budget planned out for this year. This seems horribly short sighted on Congress's part and seems like it could be easily avoided by, oh idk... planning ahead by 2-3 years? And that's at a minimum. I mean, obviously they wouldn't be able to account for everything 2-3+ years in advance, but they could at least have some groundwork laid down so something like this doesn't happen.

I mean it just seems so ridiculous that we got to this point and I don't understand how more people aren't pissed off about this. Granted, I don't know what will happen/has happened as a result of this, but that's fucking atrocious that they can't even settle a budget.

It's not really the fault of Congress, but of the voters.

I'll try to make it brief

It all began with Nixon and the Southern Strategy. The GOP's entire political paradigm became about garnering and perpetuating racism of the South and white people. Over the decades, this has evolved into general bigotry, xenophobia, and religious fundamentalism, as well as it's the veil over which the corporations co-opted the party. For example, they get people to vote GOP based on fundamentalist views on guns or abortion, then they use the power they get to further push economic libertarianism and corruption.

This strategy, as well as the cascading effects of big money pushing its way into politics has shifted the spectrum further to the right. The militant vehemence of the right-wing fundamentalism has made Congress more incompetent, not because it elects stupid people (these people are actually very smart), but because the voter base from whence the politicians are elected are insane and made crazy demands that fuck everything up

Gridlock has become par for the course. The Tea Party actually wants the government to shut down. They want Obama and the Democrats to lose at ALL costs. The progressives in the Democratic Party are not so fucking stupid. This creates a dynamic where Obama doesn't have as much bargaining power as Boehner since if Obama moves to the right, he doesn't get beat up by his base, but if Boehner doesn't try to eviscerate the Democrats he gets beat up by his base. However, the Chamber of Commerce said they want a budget deal, and since they completely dictate GOP economic policy, a deal would have no choice but to be made. It gets pushed to the last minute because that's crafty bargaining and it helps keep the Tea Party from sharpening their blades on the GOP establishment.



I don't wanna say much about Obama because he pisses me off. Not for the retarded reasons that nut cases have, but because he's more right-wing than any president of our lifetime. The GOP demands 32 billion in cuts, and he gives them 38. His strategy is fucking retarded. I can't wait until the Democrats are able to elect a warrior who doesn't put up with the shit from the chimps who vote on emotion. Not sure it will ever happen though because fund-raising comes from mega-corporations, and they ultimately dictate what the politicians do. It creates a sort of "good cop, bad cop" dynamic. We need to get corporations out of politics, but that won't happen.

I think the solution to the cancer that is American corporatocracy is to leave the country and join a nation that cares about its citizens. As long as the US has a stranglehold on the rest of the world and is the hub of corporatism, our politics will not change. A populist uprising will just get drowned by the uber wealthy using a fraction of their tax cuts to propagandize and co-opt the uprising

An extremely important fact: Russ Feingold was one of the most established Senators we had, and easily one of the best in all history. He was the ONLY Senator to vote against the Patriot Act its first time around, for example. He hailed from the original progressive state, Wisconsin, yet got his ass handed to him in 2010. How? Because the billionaire Koch brothers gave his opponent mountains of cash. If even the most honest, established, and populous of politicians can get beaten by corporate cash, what chance do we stand? There is a little hope in that after Koch-funded Wisconsin governor Walker tried to destroy the unions, the people are fighting back and talking about a recall. If, and it's an enormous "if", a recall happened then we would have probably the biggest progressive victory in decades, and it would be a huge wakeup call. It would show that even billionaires can't defeat the American people. On the flip side, it won't happen because voters have dreadful attention spans, and the unions are still losing in a "two steps back, one step forward" kind of way

Another important point is that swing-voters and new voters cast their ballots based on how good or bad their situation is and which candidate/party is/isn't currently in power. If the economy stayed in the ditch for ten election cycles, all you would see on a macro scale is every two-four years, incumbents getting voted out. Humans are chimps with longer gestation. We don't know WTF we're doing with politics, so we vote on completely retarded criteria that opens us up to the easiest of exploitation, and thus an "incompetent" Congress.

All I can say is, politics is important. Pay attention to who says what, why, their history, and who pays them, then vote/donate/volunteer accordingly. We are in the beginnings of a progressive movement, BTW. The internet and shifting demographics are very slowly marginalizing the old, white, uneducated fundamentalists who have a noose around the neck of the nation's policy


As far as sources go. Browse Huffington Post for basic news, read ThinkProgress for more in depth and important topics, and watch The Young Turks for the best and most unbiased analysis available. Something I like to do is find an active science/skeptic forum with a politics subforum. That is probably the best way to get news and opinion as you end up getting more honesty, originality, and actual facts than from journalism. For example: the main board I use has several nuclear and chemical specialists/enthusiasts who provide a much more informed perspective of the Fukushima reactor than any of the garbage on literally any media I've seen. Even my favorite Young Turks have gotten way too much wrong on Fukushima and nuclear in general. Cenk is awesome on US politics and policy though.

[d0zer]

I'll try to make it brief

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