HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM CLEVELANDS SECRET CLUB

FROM CLEVELANDS SECRET CLUB

WHERE TRUTH REIGNS SUPREME

A MESSAGE TO "STRAIGHTEN UP AND FLY RIGHT"

My recommended article for today is "4 Scenarios for the Coming Collapse of the American Empire" by Alfred W. McCoy

Since the article I'm referring to is copyrighted, I can only refer you to the site where I read the article. (Click link above)

"Alfred W. McCoy is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author, most recently, of Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (2009). He is also the convener of the “Empires in Transition” project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings at Madison, Sydney, and Manila were published as Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State and the findings from their latest conference will appear next year as “Endless Empire: Europe’s Eclipse, America’s Ascent, and the Decline of U.S. Global Power.”" [From Alternet, December 5, 2010]

"Straighten up and fly right" originally referred to an airplane; but as you know, the meaning has become ... [fig] "improve one's behavior or attitude and perform better". I'm pretty sure that "straightening up and flying right" isn't enough to get us out of the hole we [U.S.] are in, .... but you all get my drift by that idiom and the reference to Professor McCoy's article.
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Here's two more articles you have to read:

Corporate America's Plan to Loot Our Pensions Is the Latest Battle in Decades-Long Assault on the Middle Class | | AlterNet by Arun Gupta, December 18, 2010

Dude, Where's My Mortgage? How an Obscure Outfit Called MERS Is Subverting Our Entire System of Property Rights | | AlterNet by Yasha Levine, December 16, 2010 [Make sure you pressure your U.S. representatives to not support or push through any legislation similar to House Vote #573- Thank you House Democrats for sticking with the people and voting "no" (love ya)]

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HOW DEEP AND HOW WIDE IS THE COVERUP AND CORRUPTION?

Citizens around the world must band together and demand transparency from their governments, as well as hold them accountable for crimes committed in all our names.

If what we hear about a grand jury being assembled to indict Julian Assange for conspiracy or "act of espionage" is true, then citizens of the world must unite and demand that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and anyone who has broken International Law (and specifically the Geneva Conventions) or lied/deceived their citizens in order to engage in and/or profit from war, should be brought before an International Criminal Tribunal and/or International Citizen's Tribunal. Furthermore, any DOJ (Dept. of Justice) or political official who fails to prosecute those guilty of breaking International Law (or specifically the Geneva Conventions) or fails to prosecute those who have lied/deceived its citizens in order to engage (or continue to engage) in, and/or profit from war, should also be brought before an International Criminal Tribunal and/or International Citizen's Tribunal.

This looking to prosecute/assassinate and lay blame on scapegoats for exposing heinous lies (by our governments) and crimes committed by our governments must stop now, and the real criminals (those who have tortured, committed gross atrocities against innocent civilians, and have caused the reckless killing of innocent civilians) brought before a court of law.

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View the Above Video at: http://www.freespeech.org/video/democracy-now-wednesday-december-15-2010
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View the Above Video at: http://www.freespeech.org/video/democracy-now-friday-december-17-2010
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Ellsberg, Other Anti-War Protesters to Chain Themselves to White House Fence (from Dan Froomkin - HuffPo reporting, December 15, 2010)
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"How the U.S. Can Now Extradite Assange" by Justin Elliott
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Richard Holbrooke

Pentagon Papers

Vietnam War

Iraq War

Afghanistan

Jeremy Scahill

Amy Goodman
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Amy Goodman of Democracy Now - on Democracy in the Middle East

February 19, 2011






Arianna Huffington: The Media Gets It Wrong on WikiLeaks: It's About Broken Trust, Not Broken Condoms
by Arianna Huffington, December 16, 2010
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For Red Cross, Aid Conditions In Afghanistan At Their Worst - NYTimes.com by Alissa J. Rubin, December 15, 2010
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Obama's Liberty Problem: Why Indefinite Detention by Executive Order Should Scare the Hell Out of People | | AlterNet by Bill Quigley, December 23, 2010



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CONSERVATIVES HAVE NO COMPASSION

My favorite article for the week:

"Compassionless Conservatism", By Terrance Heath

December 9, 2010 - 5:21pm ET

[please read the article with all videos at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010124909/compassionless-conservatism ]

Excerpt:

"It has been said before — recently, even — but it bears saying again and again, as any truth does. Conservatives have finally, and completely, abandoned compassion. Progressives spent much of the previous decade declaring the "compassionate conservatism" of the Bush era a cruel joke. Policy gestures in that vein were seldom backed with the money to make them work. And there there was Bush administration's cruel habit of praising successful programs only to have his administration recommend devastating cuts to the same programs — often as the president's praise was still ringing in the air.

In her 2003 column, "The Uncompassionate Conservative," Molly Ivins cited as an example of the above President George W. Bush's praise of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program [LIHEAP] — which helps low income families heat their homes in the winter — during a presidential debate in 2000, only to turn around and cut $300 million from the program in his first budget as president — even as people were freezing to death. Ivins attributes this to a kind of pathological cluelessness on the part of Bush and his "compassionate conservatism."

The Reverend Jim Wallis, leader of Call to Renewal, a network of churches that fight poverty, told the New York Times that shortly after his election, Bush had said to him, "I don't understand how poor people think," and had described himself as a "white Republican guy who doesn't get it, but I'd like to." What's annoying about Bush is when this obtuseness, the blinkeredness of his life, weighs so heavily on others, as it has increasingly as he has acquired more power.

...What is the disconnect? One can see it from the other side -- people's lives are being horribly affected by the Bush administration's policies, but they make no connection between what happens to them and the decisions made in Washington. I think I understand why so many people who are getting screwed do not know who is screwing them. What I don't get is the disconnect at the top. Is it that Bush doesn't want to see? No one brought it to his attention? He doesn't care?

Okay, we cut taxes for the rich and so we have to cut services for the poor. Presumably there is some right-wing justification along the lines that helping poor people just makes them more dependent or something. If there were a rationale Bush could express, it would be one thing, but to watch him not see, not make the connection, is another thing entirely. Welfare, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps -- horrors, they breed dependency. Whereas inheriting millions of dollars and having your whole life handed to you on a platter is good for the grit in your immortal soul? What we're dealing with here is a man in such serious denial it would be pathetic if it weren't damaging so many lives.

Though Bush — the recent attempt to rehabilitate his image by publishing a memoir (that he hardly bothered to write) notwithstanding — has faded from the political scene, much of what Ivins noted in 2003 can be observed in today's GOP and its Tea Party base, with one very important exception.

As E.J. Dionne recently observed, conservatives have now abandoned even the pretense of compassion.

Christopher Caldwell, a columnist for The Financial Times, was one of the first political writers to pick up on the significance of [Vanderbilt University historian Gary] Gerstle’s essay. Caldwell, an American conservative, used it to critique Bush’s multicultural and compassion agenda and to explain the tea party’s rise. Intriguingly, he suggests that “many of the tea party’s gripes about President Barack Obama can also be laid at the door of Mr. Bush.”

For example, the main effect of Bush’s faith-based initiative, in Caldwell’s view, was to funnel “a lot of federal money to urban welfare and substance abuse programs.” The No Child Left Behind Act, which “meant to improve educational outcomes for minorities, did so at the price of centralizing authority in Washington.” And of course, there was Bush’s 2007 immigration reform proposal, “the clearest sign that he was losing the ear of his party.”

For liberals, the publication of Bush’s memoirs has largely been an occasion for revisiting all the areas in which they rate his presidency a catastrophic failure: the rush to war in Iraq, torture, tax cuts for the rich, the response to Hurricane Katrina. It’s hard for liberals (believe me, I know) to fathom that there are any parts of the Bush legacy we might miss.

But imagine if the main result of the tea party is a “correction” of the Bush creed involving a move away from its most open and tolerant features and a rebellion against even the idea that compassion is a legitimate object of public policy. A conservatism that abandons the redeeming side of Bushism will not be an improvement on the old model.

The difference between the "compassionate conservatism" of the Bush era and the compassionless conservatism ascendant in the GOP today is that there can be no claim of cluelessness or obtuseness. There is daily evidence that the people's lives are being horribly affected by the GOP's policies and political tactics — such as blocking the extension of unemployment benefits amid record unemployment and long-term unemployment. The rhetoric around this stomach-turning obstruction is a mixture of fickleness around "fiscal responsibility" and outright derision and hatred from the very people bearing the brunt of the economic crisis: the long-term unemployed who, after 99 weeks, face the exhaustion of their unemployment benefits. Today's conservatives can't claim not to know how their policies impact Americans' lives. Rather than not knowing, today's "uncompassionate conservatism" stems from not caring how their policies and political tactics impact people.

Lost in the debate of the president's proposed "deal" with Republicans to "temporarily" extend the Bush tax cuts in exchange for a 13-month extension of the emergency extension of unemployment insurance benefits is one devastating reality. The proposed deal holds nothing for the 99ers, those Americans who have exhausted or are close to exhausting their unemployment benefits. In the proposed deal as it currently stands, the 99ers get nothing.

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The recent tax compromise between President Obama and the Republicans may be packed with treats for the upper middle class and the wealthy, but its benefits for the unemployed are perhaps not quite what they appear.

The 13-month extension of unemployment benefits offers no additional help for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have already reached, or are fast approaching, the 99-week limit on unemployment benefits. By contrast, my colleague David Kocieniewski noted in his article on Wednesday that a quarter of the savings from this compromise will go to the wealthiest 1 percent.

“There is nothing for someone who is in that unfortunate position,” Chad Stone, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said of the so-called 99ers."

READ THE REST OF TERRANCE HEATH'S ARICLE (WITH ALL VIDEOS) AT: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010124909/compassionless-conservatism

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Also read: "Fix Payroll Tax Cut for Low-Income Income Workers" by Michael Linden, December 9, 2010

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Democrats Confident that 9/11 Health Bill Will Pass - ABC News by MATTHEW JAFFE, JESSICA HOPPER and KEVIN DOLAK

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WAR ON WIKILEAKS

WATCH TODAY'S DEMOCRACY NOW
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December 3, 2010 [Glenn Grenwald debates Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News] - Watch Below
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DEMOCRACY NOW
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JULIAN ASSANGE
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AMY GOODMAN
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350.org



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Above Video can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9ExSqnuwyk
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BILL MCKIBBEN
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Wikileaks cables: US looks to prosecute Julian Assange, by Ewen MacAskill and Sam Jones, December 6, 2010
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The 9 Weirdest Things About the WikiLeaks Story | | AlterNet by Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, December 6, 2010
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WikiLeaks Reveals That Military Contractors Have Not Lost Their Taste For Child Prostitutes by Jason Linkins, December 8, 2010
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"War on WikiLeaks and Assange: 6 Ways the Whistleblower Is Being Attacked and Suppressed | World | AlterNet by Tana Ganeva, December 8, 2010
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"Operation Payback": WikiLeaks Supporters Bring Down MasterCard Website in Cyber-Attack | AlterNet December 8, 2010
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ABOVE VIDEO CAN BE VIEWED AT: DEMOCRACY NOW
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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Above video can be viewed at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann#40667534
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Arianna Huffington: The Media Gets It Wrong on WikiLeaks: It's About Broken Trust, Not Broken Condoms
by Arianna Huffington, December 16, 2010
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(TO BE FURTHER EDITED)
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UNITED STATES CONTINUES DOWN THE WRONG PATH

Please watch today's Democracy Now below or at their website.
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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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The Obama Administration, corporate Democrats, and the Republican Party kick the can down the road, and our deficit and consequences of that deficit gets worse ... much worse!!!

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KEITH OLBERMANN'S TAX CUT SPECIAL COMMENT: "OBAMA GODDAMNED WRONG ON DEAL, BETRAYED HIS BASE"

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Also read: 4 Scenarios for the Coming Collapse of the American Empire | | AlterNet by Alfred W. McCoy
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THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, DECEMBER 7, 2010

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Keith Olbermann: December 14, 2010
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Dylan Ratigan, December 14, 2010 .... "Can the US Afford Tax Cuts?"
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A Tax-the-Rich Lesson Finally Goes Public | OurFuture.org
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The growing chasm between rich and poor in America – Latest data shows that 500,000 people were added to the food assistance program in one month. 6 million Americans added over the last year. Those that buy diamonds versus those that barely have enough to buy soup. (MyBudget360, December 13, 2010
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The red queen race of debt – US public debt set to pass US annual GDP. The 100 percent GDP to public debt threshold is quickly approaching. (MyBudget360, December 15, 2010)
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You'll Never Guess Whose Taxes Are Going To Go Up Because Of The Tax Cut 'Compromise' by Jason Linkins, December 7, 2010
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Ben Bernanke: Income Inequality Is 'Creating 2 Societies' Updated December 7, 2010
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The Fed Lied About Wall Street | OurFuture.org
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How the Oligarchs Took Over America | | AlterNet by Andy Kroll, December 6, 2010
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The 9 Weirdest Things About the WikiLeaks Story | | AlterNet by Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, December 6, 2010
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The Untold Cost of the Tax Deal | OurFuture.org by Robert Borosage, December 8, 2010
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Obama Caves on Tax Cuts for Wealthy, Capitulating to 'Bush-McCain Philosophy' | | AlterNet by Ari Berman, December 6, 2010
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Bill McKibben: Climate talks so weakened by US, Major Polluters that Walkout could be Good News for the Planet, December 7, 2010
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The Skinny on Cancun: What's Happening at the International Climate Meeting and What's at Stake? | | AlterNet by Tina Gerhardt, December 6, 2010
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Obama's Bizarre, Offensive Effort to Equate Tax Cuts and Abolition | AlterNet by Kai Wright, December 8, 2010
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We Haven't Learned From Ireland - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com by Simon Johnson, December 7, 2010
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Obama's "Tax Holiday": A Poison Pill For Social Security | OurFuture.org by Richard (RJ) Eskow, December 7, 2010
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Why We Need A High Estate Tax | OurFuture.org by Dave Johnson, December 8, 2010
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Obama's Payroll Tax Cut: Another Bailout for the Rich | OurFuture.org by Daniel Marans, December 13, 2010
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Corporate America's Plan to Loot Our Pensions Is the Latest Battle in Decades-Long Assault on the Middle Class | | AlterNet by Arun Gupta, December 18, 2010

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The American Empire Is Collapsing, And Americans Will Be The Last to Know | | AlterNet by Gilbert Mercier, December 15, 2010

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FREE SPEECH FOR LIARS ONLY, AND SMUT REIGNS ON SIRIUS RADIO

As promised, I said I would post (on Saturdays) excerpts from my favorite articles that week. .... Without further ado, read on:

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"Wikileaks Exposes America's Dirty Laundry, While Media Clowns Like Glenn Beck Are off in Fantasy Land" by Lawrence Davidson, November 30, 2010
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Excerpt:

"Editor’s Note: Running parallel over the last few months have been the endeavors of two disparate individuals, Fox News host Glenn Beck and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the former espousing a pleasant faux reality for Americans and the latter confronting them with unpleasant truths.
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Not surprisingly, Beck appears to have had the better of the exchange with Americans rallying to the polls to elect a right-wing Republican majority in the House of Representatives and Assange coming under a withering assault for supposedly endangering U.S. security, as Lawrence Davidson argues in this essay:

For those who pay attention to the battle of ideas that constantly goes on in the United States, two people presently have taken center stage for diametrically opposite reasons: Glenn Beck and Julian Assange.

The first is a man whose expertise is in the creation of alternate realities by playing fast and loose with the facts. This sort of enterprise has a long and sordid history to it, and while this fellow is on the rabid right, the tradition has its historical representatives across the political spectrum.

There is never any lack of an audience for such promoters of alternate realities. Usually the size of the audience can be correlated to an economic downturn, a defeat in war, or a popular consensus about government incompetency.

The second man is a champion of the free flow of information. He believes that the only way citizens will avoid being swept into alternate realities, and victimized by the resulting ill-conceived government actions, is to have full knowledge of what policies are being pursued and their real consequences.

Whether most people actually want to know these details is debatable, but this fellow is adamant that they should be available to anyone who cares to look. Now we come to the question of how these two men are perceived by the U.S. government and the "free" people of the United States. Glenn Beck is an undereducated radio and TV personality turned political pundit. He was born in 1964 and has only a high school education. By his own admission, Beck spent at least15 of his early adult years as an alcoholic and drug addict.

Beck became suicidal in the mid-1990s and fantasized about imitating the manner of death chosen by the singer Kurt Cobain. He was pulled back from the brink with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Fifteen years is a long time to baste a young adult’s brain in mind-altering substances, and I will leave it to the reader to decide if that history qualifies such a brain for political preaching. Yet, it is as a political wise man that millions of Americans now regard Glenn Beck. Sporting a style of aggressive jargon that makes him a sure candidate for Eric Hoffer’s "man of words with a grievance," Beck throws out accusations and suppositions which, with uncanny regularity, turn out to be wrong. However, that does not matter, for his listeners seem never to doubt him and so there is little motivation for Beck to doubt himself.

Increasingly popular, his growing number of listeners accepts him as a defender of the U.S. Constitution and traditional American values. And who are the threats that require this stalwart defender? Progressives and liberals, socialists and secularists all those who would destroy that mythical ideal of America that exists as an alternate reality in the minds of Beck and his followers.

Beck characterizes all such enemies as members of "Crime Inc." There is a strong naive simplicity in what Beck preaches. He espouses balanced budgets because "debt creates unhealthy relationships." Somehow Glenn Beck can hold mortgages and still remain on good terms with his wife and kids, but it seems to him sinful that the government sells more Treasury bills than he feels is necessary. The government should be reduced to a minimum.

As to the country’s needy, that can be taken care of by private charity. If there is indeed such a thing as man-made global warming, that can be dealt with by the voluntary "greening" of personal homes.
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What we have here is the projection of small town ways to a country of approximately 350 million.

There have been times when Beck has confessed that he is not a political person but rather an "entertainer." Yet his denunciation of ubiquitous conspiracies, particularly of a leftist kind, and his regularly articulated rhetorical question -- "What’s the difference between a communist or socialist and a progressive....? One requires a gun and the other eats away slowly" -- is clearly not just show biz.

And, what are we to make of the entertainment value of his repeated proclamation that Americans are in a battle to defend the "eternal principles of God" which makes "God the answer" to all our problems?

No, whether Beck was originally playing at "paleo-conservatism" or not, he is now so adapted to his role that what you see is what is there. The actor has been transformed into the character he plays. It is doubtful whether Glenn Beck has ever put forth a well thought-out, fact-checked, position in his life. Yet such a failing has not prevented him from obtaining the backing of the powerful Fox Broadcasting Company.

Beck and Fox are a very good fit. Both are part of a radical right which has now made itself appear acceptably all-American by redefining anything to the left of their positions as neo-socialist. And, they have drawn to themselves the millions of folks who are naive and simple conservatives living in a faux reality that defines the welfare state as communism and President Obama as a Muslim agent seeking to impose Sharia law on places like Oklahoma.

For such folks Beck’s nonsense somehow confirms all their hopes and fears. In their millions they are moved, weekly, to agree with whatever it is that they think he is saying. The U.S. government has made no objection to the Fox-Beck propaganda show. Both are, of course, protected by the First Amendment. And, it is probably the case that at least some of the elements of elected government, for instance the Republican Party’s right-wing majority and the Blue Dog Democrats, are in agreement with all or part of Beck’s message.

The rest of the government, the liberal Democrats, for instance, seem frustrated and confused. They do not know how to respond to someone like Beck and so they hope that he will, in the end, prove a temporary phenomenon.

Who is Julian Assange?

Julian Assange, our second personality, is an Australian-born Internet expert. Born in 1971, he attended the University of Melbourne where he studied physics, mathematics and philosophy. However, he did not stay to complete a degree.

He made an early career as a computer programmer and is the author of both free and commercial pieces of software. A strong anarchistic strain runs through Assange’s early adult period. He was a member of a number of relatively benign hacker organizations and the ideal of information transparency seems to have been a strong driving force in his life from early on.

All of which eventually led him to found WikiLeaks in 2006. It is Assange’s contention that government secrecy almost always harms people and denies them the ability to make rational decisions. The press has the responsibility to fight against censorship but has been seduced into cooperating with the system it ought to be policing.

"How is it," Assange asks, "that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information...than the rest of the world press combined? It’s disgraceful." There are those who see Assange as an "Internet freedom fighter," and Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame has asserted that Assange "is serving [American] democracy and serving the rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country.""

read the rest at: http://www.alternet.org/media/149039/wikileaks_exposes_america's_dirty_laundry,_while_media_clowns_like_glenn_beck_are_off_in_fantasy_land_/?page=3

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FOR REFERENCE: WATCH AMY GOODMAN'S DECEMBER 3RD INTERVIEW:
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My second favorite article:
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"Sirius Radio: The Refuge for Frothing Racist, Homophobic Right Wingers Like Dr. Laura, by Tana Ganeva, December 4, 2010"
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Excerpt:
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"Dr. Laura left broadcast radio after screaming the n-word at a black woman. She'll soon join a host of homophobic, sexist, racist right-wingers on Sirius.
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"Last August, after an illustrious, decades -long career calling women whores, screaming about couples who "schack up," and attacking gays. Dr. Laura Schlessinger had to quit her radio show after hurling the n-word, 11 times, at an African-American caller. On larry King Live, Schlessinger announced that she would not let her First Amendment right to million-dollar paychecks and thousands of listeners be trampled by critics calling her out as a racist.
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But thanks to Sirius radio, the flailing satellite company where Howard Stern has plied his craft (grotesque sexism) for five years, Schlessinger's hiatus from the airwaves will last exactly three days; that's the gap of time between when her non-renewed contract with her broadcast station runs out and her new gig with Sirius - announced this week - begins. Obviously she couldn't be happier, gushing "I can't wait to preach, teach and nag about morals, values, ethics and principles ... My brain is buzzing with new ideas for my program's content, direction and expansion, including guest interviews with people who intrigue and inspire me. I couldn't be more giggly if you tickled me!"
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Putting that image aside for a second, how did Schlessinger's fortunes turn around so quickly? According to the shock jock, the day after she announced her retirement the head of Sirius called to say "Come on over here, the water's fine." She claims she met with a crew of Sirius execs two months later. "I sat there and I listened to these men appreciate what I had done my entire career, appreciate my guts in never giving up, appreciate the value I offer on the air, and wanting to support me. That was it. It took me two seconds. I said, 'I'm on board.'"
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They weren't kidding about the water. When her show premieres Jan. 3, Schlessinger will be joining a spate of racist, homophobic right-wingers who make Glenn Beck look good (including Glenn Beck, whose show Sirius runs in syndicate).
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As part of its political programming, the satellite broadcaster offers a liberal station and a conservative one: Sirius Left and the infuriatingly named Sirius Patriot. An outgrowth of the now defunct satellite station America Right, Sirius Patriot boasts the "true voices of conservatism."

One true voice of conservatism on the station is Mike Church, who calls himself "the Dude." Church once lamented the political correctness that prevents him from expressing himself on race, saying on his show that when it comes to race issues, "regardless of ... what you may want to say, you always have to temper it with what is still politically acceptable speech."

If Church's output represents a capitulation to propriety, his uncensored views towards minorities seem like they would involve sheets. The Dude's schtick is putting out vilely offensive (and unfunny) "parody" songs, mostly starring undocumented immigrants. One pits a Mexican namedManuel against Bubba,defender of White American work ethic, in a cleaning contest. The chorus actually goes, "The wetbacks are in Georgia and they're looking for green cards. If you win we'll deport his ass back to Mexico... But if you lose we'll all speak Espanol!" (In case you're wondering, Bubba comes out on top, while Manuel "bowed his head, knowing that he'd been beat, and he lay his welfare money on the ground at Bubba's feet....")

In a tribute to the Minute Men, set to CCR's "Lookin' Out My Back Door," we get, "Just got in from Illinois, cocked my shotgun Oh Boy, got to stop these illegal aliens!/ ... Pretty soon I'm singing ... Shoot, Shoot, Shoot wetbacks at the border!" In "We're Fucking Up America," Church and the gang fret that some (very generous) liberals will "fill our beds with lesbos and gays!"

Church is joined on Sirius Patriot by Andrew Wilcow, who Glenn Greenwald once singled out, among some serious competition, as a symbol of the Right's decline. Greenwald made the choice after Wilcow called Perez Hilton a "vile sodomite." "Perez Hilton, who I am now terming a vile sodomite ...yeah, Perez, you’re a vile sodomite – doesn’t that word have a ring to it – sodomite -- and vile – vile sodomite" chanted Wilcow while subbing for Mark Levin (on a different station).

Wilcow has also expressed his disapproval of gays and lesbians by implying that Chris Dodd's prostate cancer was the result of sex with Barney Frank. Yeah.

And what's a conservative lineup without a religious right elder who's fought for the disenfranchisement of women and gays since the '70s? That slot is filled by Gary Bauer, who hosts a show with Tom Rose, former publisher and CEO of theJerusalem Post. Also on the roster are Cam and Company from NRA News, Rusty Humphries and Mark Levin.

What does Sirius have to gain from playing to the right-wing's basest instincts with these frothing screamers who skate perilously close to the line of hate speech? Or of plucking up a shock jock who was hounded off the airwaves for yelling the n-word at a black woman? A lot -- and almost nothing to lose.

The station has been in deep financial shit for years. Like all satellite radio, Sirius had the misfortune of coming up with paid radio content right before most radio became free online, and people became fused to their iPods. Struggling under a $3.2 billion debt, the company barely avoided bankruptcy in early 2009. Later that year it gave investors another fright by losing 2 percent of its subscribers (it only had growth in subscribers before that), and in August of 2010 year its stock hit its lowest low, at $0.94."

read the rest at: http://www.alternet.org/media/149071/sirius_radio:_the_refuge_for_frothing_racist,_homophobic_right-wingers_like_dr._laura/?page=entire

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Another favorite:
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"HERE COME HOMELAND SECURITY INTERNET POLICE, AND THEY'RE ALREADY SHUTTING DOWN WEB SITES THEY DON'T LIKE," BY JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD, December 3, 2010

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FROM: BUY LIFE/THE OFFICIAL ALICIA KEYS SITE

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