Maddow: Iowa Ames “straw” poll is a racket (and meaningless, too) [VIDEO]

AlterNet

By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, AlterNet

In case you broke a mild sweat over Bachmann’s first-ring emergence from the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, let Rachel Maddow comfort you with the reminder that it has no actual bearing on the endgame–it’s just around so Iowa Republicans can fill up their coffers.

Last night, Maddow gave a helpful refresher course on the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, which resulted in Pawlenty’s withdrawal and drummed up the heat between Michele Bachmann and Ames-absent Rick Perry. “The sort of refreshing thing about the Ames Straw Poll is that the people making money off this racket, the Iowa Republican Party, fully admit that it is a racket that is just designed to make them money,” she said. Watch the video below, via Raw Story.

Editor’s Note: Too bad that Maddow, while doing a brilliant job at educating her public about the thuggery of Republicans says little or nothing about the perfidy of Democrats, and especially the Traitor in Chief, Obama, whom she openly or implicitly always manages to endorse. SEE VIDEO BELOW (8.15.11)

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Did Positive Thinking Wreck the Economy? – Barbara Ehrenreich

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Capitalism Is The Crisis (Full Movie)

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Chris Hedges’ Manifesto Against Corporate Power [VIDEO]


Hedges

CHRIS HEDGES has been sounding the tocsin for some time against the corporate-dominated status quo that is destroying the lives of human beings, beasts, and nature itself at a demonic rate. Obviously we have reached the point when the abyss is looking at us straight in the face, and the usual methods for obtaining some relief, particularly elections, have been shown to be for the most part a rigged game and a fraud. Never as strong and wonderful as its panegyrists would have it, American democracy is now in its dying bed, mortally wounded by the combined impact of a virulent, shameless corporatism and a pathetically confused and disorganized citizenry.

We don’t agree with some of Hedges’ positions  (i.e., his defense of religion, his unwarranted, out-of-all-proportion admiration for Cornel West, a fellow liberal in many regards who, until very recently, when he finally saw the light, still  defended Obama, etc., etc.) but we salute and support his call for non-electoral action at a juncture in history when it’s obvious that all precincts of theoretical democratic power in the United States (the White House, the governorships, Congress, the media, the Supreme Court) have been taken over and largely hollowed out by the cancerous forces shilling for the global plutocracy. <WATCH VIDEO BELOW>

Our only peeve with this impassioned declaration is Chris’ misuse of the word “radical”, which he absentmindedly applies to the imperial corporatists. The word “radical” is an honorable word, but in labeling the corporate malefactors and their minions as such, Hedges, like most liberals, muddies the context and further stains a word whose real meaning is simply to look at the root of a social problem. Perhaps he means “extremist”, a more apt word for his intent, but even this word is loaded with too many layers of propaganda by now, since as the famous quip has it, is it wrong to be an extremist in the pursuit of justice?  Your extremist may be my hero. Or, as Winston Churchill himself advised, “Your terrorist may be my freedom fighter.” It all depends on who’s doing the talking, and whose ox ends up being gored.

Why do we harp on this? Words have power, especially in an ambit horribly toxified by pervasive propaganda in support of a malignant and irredeemably cynical corporate system.

“Radicals” have been maligned (and neutralized) for generations in the US by the doctrinal watchdogs—media, politicians, etc.—because they represent social forces that, by daring to look at the actual causes of festering social problems—crime, unemployment, unending wars, wholesale political corruption, etc., invariably end up indicting the system itself, not just a mere politician or administration.  In so doing, they carry  the threat of recommending solutions inimical to the comfortable status quo that creates such insufferable conditions. —P. Greanville

 

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A growing chasm, with the top 0.001% now truly living like royalty as the rest become peons. (VIDEO)

The wealth Gap in America.
A report by Aljazeera

The outrageous concentration of wealth in a tiny sliver of the population (who also control the media, hence how people see reality), and their complete takeover of all major levers of government is now total. The tendencies and strong undercurrents were always there, as corporate power has always dominated in the US, but since the reign of that scoundrel Ronald Reagan the redistribution of wealth toward the top has become obscene. Meanwhile, the masses have lost practically all their political power and are no longer truly represented in Congress.  What is to be done? That is the question.—Eds

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