1/ So dear reader - do you wonder as I do how Fox News manages to get average Americans to......
1/ believe lies and
2/ act and vote against their own interests.
This article has a stab at explaining how Fox does it......and how clever and cynical they are......
How Fox News Outfoxes Americans
To understand how so many average Americans can be duped into embracing right-wing positions that go against their own interests, you must look at how Fox News (and right-wing media outlets) use faux populism and phony outrage as propaganda techniques, a topic explored by Danny Schechter in this guest essay.
By Danny Schechter
May 13, 2011
Grrrrrrrr. You can almost hear the growling in the background as the masters of attack politics go into action, virtually every hour on the hour, on the Fox News Channel.
The issues they focus on are carefully selected by top executives and then broken down into highly politicized message points. Their dominant emotion is annoyance as expressed in sarcasm and scowling; contempt is the underlying attitude.
In the Fox view, the other side is usually not just wrong but plain stupid, almost unbelievable in its softheaded naiveté and distance from reality.
A “what do you expect” question invariably tops off the argument which always ends with the Fox host a winner and the Democrat or social critic a loser on every level.
Standing on a podium driven by self-righteous certainty, the finger pointers view the people they talk about, and talk down to, as below the intelligence threshold of people even worth arguing with.
In this universe, hyping the extreme and outrageous seems to attract audiences as Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck have proven. That leads to higher ratings and, the real goal, higher revenues.
Clearly they feel it is their duty to play Paul Revere who warned Colonial America that “The British Are Coming.” They warn their faithful against political deviations that might lead them astray.
What is hard to recognize or often realize is that the topics chosen are calculated as part of a strategy of using emotionally tested wedge issues to politicize by polarizing.
2/ For more on how to fool the American public, Tom Tomorrow has a unique viewpoint....how do we know Obama was born on this planet?
3/ News roundup for last week from the Onion Newsdesk - top story - President Obama refrains from obliterating the world for another week......an amusing 2 minutes.....
4/ Very good Gail Collins column from the Times on education and the awful things we are going to do to our kids minds over the next few years......she's amusing, but still gets the point across how Republican states [including of course Florida] are going to gut the public school system.........
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Reading, ’Riting and Revenues
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: May 11, 2011
American education is going to be reformed until it rolls over and begs for mercy. Vouchers! Guns on campus! Just the other day, the Florida State Legislature took a giant step toward ending the scourge of droopy drawers in high school by upping the penalties for underwear-exposing pants.
Earl Wilson/The New York Times
Gail Collins
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Today, let’s take a look at the privatization craze and the conviction that there is nothing about molding young minds that can’t be improved by the profit motive.
Enrollment in for-profit colleges has ballooned to almost two million, propelled by more than $25 billion in federal student loans, many of which are apparently never going to be repaid. More than 700 public K-12 schools around the country are now managed by for-profit companies. Last week, in Ohio, the State House went for the whole hog and approved legislation that would allow for-profit businesses to open up their own taxpayer-financed charter schools.
“It takes the public out of public education,” complained Bill Sims of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
This exciting new plan, which seemed to have been inserted into the state budget bill by a magical invisible hand, would also reduce oversight. It got a rave review in The Columbus Dispatch from an op-ed contributor named Thomas Needles, who cheered legislators for trying to end the “drip-drop of wrongheaded regulation” of charter schools.
Needles is a consultant for White Hat Management, the largest company currently managing charter schools in Ohio — and with none too great a record, according to the National Education Policy Center, which said that only 2 percent of the schools White Hat runs have scored well on yearly progress tests. The owner of White Hat is a gynormous donor to the state Republican Party. Not that that would make any difference. Just saying.
So that’s the pathbreaking privatization news in Ohio. Now let’s take a look at Texas, which has been leading the way in putting for-profit companies in charge of certifying teachers.
“Very interesting and very disturbing,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford who studies teacher certification issues. Darling-Hammond says that when the federal government began demanding certified teachers in every classroom, Texas was among the states that responded by creating alternative certification programs, some of which have requirements slightly less rigorous than those for the trainers at neighborhood gyms. Most of the new teachers in Texas — particularly at schools in poor neighborhoods — come from alternative certification programs.
Then, the Legislature invited for-profit businesses into the game. “Ever since then, the innovation and competition has been phenomenal,” claimed Vernon Reaser, the president of Texas Teachers, the largest of the state’s alt-cert companies.
Here is one indicator of how innovative things are getting. Texas is currently considering — although not with any great intensity — a bill that would require that people who go through these programs spend a couple of days practice teaching before they are turned loose in their own classrooms.
The sponsor is Representative Mike Villarreal of San Antonio. Villarreal first came to my attention as the legislator who proposed requiring that the course content in public school sex education classes be medically accurate. The man is a positive genius for coming up with bills to make the Texas education system do something we really had assumed it had been doing all along. None of which make it out of committee.
At a public hearing on Villarreal’s bill, Reaser vigorously denounced the idea of requiring would-be teachers to actually get classroom experience as part of their training: “Practice teachers in front of kids that aren’t practice learning!”
To get an alternative teaching certificate in Texas you need to take coursework and have 30 hours of “field-based” experience, 15 of which can be spent watching videos. Villarreal says some programs fill up the other 15 with things like chaperoning field trips.
It’s not clear how many people get hired as full-time teachers without ever having stood in front of a classroom for a single hour. The $4,195 Texas Teachers program (its ubiquitous billboards read: “Want to Teach? When Can You Start?”) is a little opaque. For instance, Reaser assured me in a phone conversation that his students were required to have a variety of in-person interactions with their instructors even though the Web site says you can opt for “fully online instruction.”
“On our Web site, we intentionally don’t say everything,” Reaser explained. “It’s basically to get you to call us and ask us.”
When we all started clamoring for more investment in education, I don’t think we envisioned it going into corporate profits. We have seen the future, and the good news is that the kids in Florida will be wearing belts.
5/ The headline of this article says it all....but the insurance companies still press for higher premiums.....absolute bastards.....
Health Insurers Making Record Profits as Many Postpone Care
By Reed Abelson, The New York Times
14 May 11
he nation's major health insurers are barreling into a third year of record profits, enriched in recent months by a lingering recessionary mind-set among Americans who are postponing or forgoing medical care.The UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest commercial insurers, told analysts that so far this year, insured hospital stays actually decreased in some instances. In reporting its earnings last week, Cigna, another insurer, talked about the "low level" of medical use.
Yet the companies continue to press for higher premiums, even though their reserve coffers are flush with profits and shareholders have been rewarded with new dividends. Many defend proposed double-digit increases in the rates they charge, citing a need for protection against any sudden uptick in demand once people have more money to spend on their health, as well as the rising price of care.
Even with a halting economic recovery, doctors and others say many people are still extremely budget-conscious, signaling the possibility of a fundamental change in Americans' appetite for health care.
"I am noticing my patients with insurance are more interested in costs," said Dr. Jim King, a family practice physician in rural Tennessee. "Gas prices are going up, food prices are going up. They are deciding to put some of their health care off." A patient might decide not to drive the 50 miles necessary to see a specialist because of the cost of gas, he said.
But Dr. King said patients were also being more thoughtful about their needs. Fewer are asking for an MRI as soon as they have a bad headache. "People are realizing that this is my money, even if I'm not writing a check," he said.
6/ I don't get HBO any more, but the only show I really miss is Bill Maher.....for his humor, and his willingness to take on the powerful....here he evicerates the Republicans in Congress.....wonderful......5 minutes....
7/ Fascinating story from the Guardian UK - corporations threaten the Government whenever taxes or regulations are mentioned, and the politicians always cave....but there is an alternative - threaten back......
I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for a politician with enough cojones to stand up to the corporate oligarchs, but the premise is sound.
Really good article........
More and more, we hear that nothing can be done to tax major corporations because of the threat of how they would respond. Likewise, we cannot stop their price-gouging or even the government subsidies and tax loopholes they enjoy.
For example, as the oil majors reap stunning profits from high oil and gas prices, we are told it is impossible to tax their windfall profits or stop the billions they get in government subsidies and tax loopholes. There appears to be no way for the government to secure lower energy prices or seriously impose and enforce environmental protection laws. Likewise, despite high and fast-rising drug and medicine prices, we are told that it is impossible to raise taxes on pharmaceutical companies or have the government secure lower pharmaceutical prices. And so on.
Such steps by "our" government are said to be impossible or inadvisable. The reason: corporations would then relocate production abroad or reduce their activities in the US or both. And that would deprive the US of taxes and lose more jobs. In plain English, major corporations are threatening us. We are to knuckle under and cut social programmes that benefit millions of people (such as college loan programmes, Medicaid, Medicare, social security, nutrition programmes, etc). We are not to demand higher taxes or reduced subsidies and tax loopholes for corporations. We are not to demand government action to lower their soaring prices. If we do, corporations will punish us.
Three groups deliver these business threats to us. First, corporate spokespersons, their paid public relations flunkies, hand down the word from on high (corporate board rooms). Second, politicians afraid to offend their corporate sponsors repeat publicly what corporate spokespersons have emailed to them. Finally, various commentators explain the threats to us. These include the journalists lost in that ideological fog that always translates what corporations want into "common sense". Commentators also include the professors who translate what corporations want into "economic science".
Of course, there are always two possible responses to any and all threats. One is to cave in, to be intimidated. That has often been the dominant "policy choice" of the US government. That's why so many corporate tax loopholes exist, why the government does so little to limit price increases, why government does not constrain corporate relocation decisions, etc.
8/ Think the corporate media is biased? So does Rachael Maddow, and in this 2 minute clip she looks at the guest roster for the "serious" Sunday morning news shows.....she sounds pissed as well......
9/ Stephen Colbert and his quest to form a SuperPAC......
Very funny 4 minute segment, and you will also learn how stupid the election rules are as well.....
Potter, again on the show, explained why: "They are nervous that Viacom is going to end up making an illegal corporate contribution to your PAC," he said. The issue is that "there might be a complaint or an investigation about whether they showed enough and they would have to turn over their internal bookkeeping and potentially reveal Viacom secrets," Potter said.
"How do the guys on Fox get away with it?" Colbert responded.
Potter explained that they get an exemption because they're a media organization: "The media exemption says that if you're a broadcast station, not owned by a candidate or a party" –- "I'm not!" Colbert interjected –- "and you're reporting the news in your normal way of going about business, then you're exempt. You're not making a corporate contribution when you talk about candidates and politics."
So Colbert on Friday is filing a request for an advisory opinion from the FEC, hoping it will grant him a media exemption.
10/ Yeay.....yeay....Florida's #1.....yeay....
What for? Florida is the stingiest state in the US for providing unemployment benefits to people out of work!
Oh....Yeay.........
Thanks to a pending law, next January Florida will become the stingiest state in America when it comes to unemployment insurance benefits.
A bill awaiting Republican Gov. Rick Scott's signature will cut unemployment taxes on businesses by reducing the maximum benefits for people laid off through no fault of their own to 23 weeks. That's three fewer weeks than the standard 26 weeks provided by nearly every state for the past 50 years. And as the unemployment rate falls, benefits will diminish on a sliding scale, with a floor of just 12 weeks when the rate is 5 percent or lower.
Rep. Doug Holder, the Sarasota Republican who sponsored the bill in the Florida House of Representatives, told HuffPost the measure wouldn't harm the unemployed because the average person who draws unemployment in Florida uses only 17.7 weeks of benefits before finding work.
Todays Irish golf joke
| A Golfer has been slicing off the tee on every hole. He asks his Irish caddy if he has noticed any obvious reasons for his poor tee shots, to which the caddy replies: "Aye, there's a piece of shyt on the end of your driver. " The Golfer picks up his driver and cleans the club face, at which point the caddy says: "No, the other end." |
Todays blonde joke
Last Thanksgiving, my mom decided to play a trick on my sister (who's blonde). To get her out of the house, she convinced her that we needed more half and half for the coffee.
While my sister was out, my mom took the turkey out of the oven, removed the stuffing, stuffed a Cornish hen, then put it inside the turkey, packing stuffing all around it. She then put the turkey back in the oven.
When everything was ready, my sister took the turkey out of the oven and began to remove the stuffing. When she felt something, she reached in and pulled out the Cornish hen.
Pretending to be shocked, by mother exclaimed, "Patti, you've cooked a pregnant turkey!"
My sister began to cry and was inconsolable. It took us half an hour to convince her that turkeys lay eggs!
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