Didn't Michael Moore run a potted plant for Congress?

Wal-Mart may run for congress like Murray Hill, Inc. That's right a corporation is running for congress. Heck this is obvious next extension to giving a corporation personhood. Why not eliminate the "middle person"?

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

Radio requires less concentration than blogs, but you have conservative and liberal intellectuals who are willing to invest more time and attention in information seeking. Then you have a large number of audiences who have neither time nor energy to do much critical thinking, plus there are social reasons to passively hear or view "infotainment." Many people are mad, but don't know who to be mad at -- the talking heads can tell them who the culprits are. The name of the game is audience share, and you can always count on the old folks to vote -- even if it's against their own interests.
Frank T.

I was rereading Brand Obama's state-of-the-union speech and something finally sunk in which I'd overlooked before -- since it has been a frequent meme from the perpetrators over the past decades.

Brand Obama is asking us if we want to be number two to China? This from the individual who has surrounded himself (the vast majority of his administration's appointments) with cretins who have derived the majority of their fortunes from offshoring America.

Sorry, dude, but I'm woefully tired from being laid off from nth number of jobs and having any and all technology I've helped to create offshored along with my job.

And no, nobody in the unions or on welfare was responsible for the offshoring of my job (common neocon and neolib memes); it was all the rampant runaway psychopathic greed and power lust of the corporate elitests.

I'm sure there will be the requisite number of American consumers (not citizens, citizens are capable of thinking for themselves occasionally) who preach and prattle on about that crooked SCOTUS justice who shook his head at Brand Obama's remarks (ya know, one Wall Street lackey chiding the other Wall Street lackey, like it actually really matters and who gives an ice cube in hell about it anyway???), and ignores the real content of his speech -- which is why they sat by while this country was disassembled and sold off to enrich those debt-financed billionaires.

Sorry for my rant, but frustration has long set in.

I have heard so much crap on cable "news" that is just completely wrong and ramblings from the same pundits, same ones as 10, 15 years ago....that also are absurd and dead wrong...

it's hard to watch. We have the right wing propaganda machine, the left wing propaganda machine and the central say nothing propaganda machine, FOX, MSNBC and CNN.

CNBC is just completely absurd. I mean talk about disconnect from economic reality commentary, it's just noise with a ticker tape below most of the time.

There are a few shows, Ed Show, unabashedly partisan but at least has some stats that usually hold up, Dylan Ratigan, who's show I think is outstanding, really kind of "our thing" in terms of economic politics, Rachel Maddow...
somewhat...

but even on these shows one needs to double check the facts.

I don't get it. Ya know the great news about government stats is you can find them freely available in large part on the Internets. There is no reason to listen to some bonehead pundit although yes I think one needs to learn a little econ to read most of the press releases...

still, I mean I just personally love the fact all of this stuff is available online. Talk about access to self-education, that's it!

It's strange how people seem to only trust information from some "personal relationship", even if that's just some idiot who managed to get on TV. It's like they cannot deal with raw data or direct from the source...and instead only believe some mouthpiece from where they believe they have some sort of personal relationship with.

Obviously they do not have a personal relationship with their TVs, but for some psychological reason they perceive they do.

Anyone else notice this and also notice the mediums? Talk Radio is highly authoritative, mainly because you have one screaming idiot in a broadcast with minor feedback via phone calls that is heavily screened.

Blogs, depending on the type, can also be authoritative, or they can be more community, discussion, depending on how sites are structured.

"Lefties" go for blogs and then "righties" go for radio.

I think that is something psychological, such as one group wants to be told what to think and the other group wants to tell their fellows what to think and argue/debate about it.

I'm rambling on here but I often wonder if all of this has much less to do with actual policy and much more to do with the psychological make up of various personality types.

Now of course I refuse to abandon the idea one should be basing policy on theory, statistics, common sense, national interest, Americans interests (citizens interests) and so on....

but I really have to wonder about society at large psychologically, sociologically speaking.

If we had more math concepts drilled into people's heads from age 2-6, I bet a lot of this would change....to get those basic logic/scale of numbers concepts into the brain as a reasoning process element.

of a consumer response, not a citizen's response.

As one who has always striven to be a citizen, not the majority in America today, consumers, I try to understand what's going on.

Where in creation did you get the idea Soc.Sec. is going under?

Now, Medicare has been continuously underfunded, but Social Security has always been in surplus mode.

And that trifling unemployment, at the "official" 10%, should have negligible effect on Social Security taxation.

Assuming, of course, that figure is accurate.....

Smelly stats....that's why EP has mimetex and graphing capability and why I personally do this. You cannot believe headlines and even so called analysis from many these days, you need to go dig around in the details and get your head wrapped about EIs and what they mean.

All I hope for is that when I write all of these up, that it's in English enough for others to track on the discoveries.

I need something to automatically graph tabulated data too (looking).

But I agree with you, there are a host of very smelly things.

Rebel nailed one major factor and I found the EI I wrote up, wholesale trade, inventories, 11/09 and here you can see EconomPic's farm inventories graph detailed out.

I see smelly things but we must track down the numbers, working on it and let's keep it up.

I think I posted a huge "warning on the blip" earlier this month that Q4 GDP was going to be huge but when one drilled down it wasn't going to be that impressive after all.

Tis true. If this was real growth, U.S. domestic growth, well frankly we'd see much lower unemployment numbers and we have seen all through Q4 2009, increasing unemployment and yesterday I posted initial unemployment claims and even removing the noise in those....they are nowhere near where they should be to get some damn jobs.

as to why we got this bump plus the major reduction increase in imports is highly unusual. This too needs to be examined much more. What is the currency ratio (need graph) for Q4?

That's why I pound on the floating of the Yuan (Chinese currency). I read a detailed analysis and was just shocked to see just how this one thing gave China such an advantage in trade. I really was surprised but there ya have it...

but the idea is not to lower the U.S. currency value, but to get China to stop manipulating theirs.

Yes, I know people hate a weak dollar but it helps with exports.

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.