Showing posts with label Karl Rove. Show all posts

Saturday, October 30, 2010

I'VE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH JUAN WILLIAMS AND THE REST OF THE ISLAMAPHOBICS

Update 11/9/2010, 10:40 am:
After reading about President Obama's trip to Indonesia, I decided to assert "Most Muslims are Peace-Loving" upfront, in addition to my statement 6 paragraphs down.

Okay, Now, I'm ready to blast away at Juan Williams:

I'm sorry Juan, but your ass should have been fired for saying you felt nervous when a Muslim (in Muslim garb) boards the plane. Are you insane? You said it on national television dude. You had to know that you were stoking the flames of fear when you opened your stupid thoughtless mouth; and everyone would see your segment on the "The O'Reilly Factor" and would talk about it.

I later learned that you said something to the effect that you don't believe in racial or religious profiling. [Now people, I'm not buying it ... Juan, you had already opened up that can of fear worms, and a whoop ass by NPR was sure to follow.]

Maybe what you said wasn't a thoughtless remark. Maybe you had every intention to say it regardless of the consequences.*

What makes me suspicious (besides what I indicated in my first paragraph) ... How do you even know what is considered Muslim garb? [Seriously, even I can't tell the difference between Hindu garb or Muslim garb.] And ... If I recall, there have been no Muslims in "Muslim garb" that have attempted to do mass harm in America. Maybe I'm wrong ... somebody enlighten me. Even if it were true, do you know how many people you'd have to profile? Millions!!

Now you've got people saying they get nervous not only when a Muslim gets on an airplane, but when Muslims pray, or someone walks down the street in long robes, or a white tunic and pants, or a headscarf or turbin, or whatever. Aside from these fear mongers being irrational, I also say to them, ... how do you know when a Muslim boards the airplane? If you say they've got brown skin and a straight nose, I'll kick you in the butt. No one can definitively identify who is Muslim and who is not. Muslims come in all shapes, colors and sizes, and live in every country and on every continent and dress from traditional to modern. Hell Juan, you could be a Muslim. See Juan, this Muslim dress thing, ... that's why I'm suspicious about what you said and your actions/behavior before and after you got fired.

The vast majority of Muslims are peace loving. So when you say any person who dresses like a Muslim (for which I say "what the fu..k" are you talking about), and who gets on a plane, makes you nervous, you sound like a fool, an idiot, and entirely not credible.

Here's my problem Juan. Your words and the words (about Muslims or the Islamic religion) that flow from the Neo Nazis,** the warmongers, the FOX and FRIENDS bunch, the Bill O'Reilly followers, the Glenn Beck followers, the Rush Limbaugh followers, the Andrew Breitbart types, the Karl Rove followers, and the "Americans for Prosperity types", do a lot of harm. There's no point to fear mongering ... no point when you stoke the flames of fear about Muslims or illegal immigrants. You bring nothing to the table but fear. Get it?

And for those people who see no difference between someone (on NPR) saying "they wish Jesse Helms would get aids" and what Juan said, is being disingenuous. One only gets Jesse Helms, and Jesse Helms friends and family angry, the other gets innocent people killed.***

Here's another thing to consider Juan: Did you think about the harm you were doing (with your irrational utterance) to the airline industry and those who work there, and/or service that industry? [You've got over 50 airline companies.] No you didn't think Juan ... and that's the huge problem. Do you know how many businesses you may have affected? There are thousands of people who make a living servicing the airline industry. Each and every one of them should be writing NPR thanking them for firing you Juan, and then they should turn off FOX news.

Anyway Juan, I know you're enjoying your 2 million dollar salary being an Islamaphobic slave to FOX news.
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November 10, 2010 / Rachel Maddow Show / Oklahoma

Colin Powell (2008)

George Bush

Keith Olbermann (November 9, 2010)
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Dylan Ratigan (October 2010)

Airline

Bill O'Reilly
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News Corporation

Rupert Murdoch

The Muslim Cab Driver Attack (ABC's Bill Ritter) 8/26/2010 ***
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Islamaphobia Rapidly Spreads Through Europe by Pepe Escobar 10/22/2010 **

Islamic Garb in America: Fear and Joy for You, and Juan Williams Too by Terry Kelhawk October 28, 2010

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Private Prisons' Ties to Anti-Illegal Immigration Bills by Elise Foley 10/28/2010
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Juan Williams: Clever Double-Play or Conservative Cause Celebre by Charles D. Ellison October 26, 2010 *

NPR's Juan Williams Firing Prompts Conservative Backlash by Jack Mirkinson 10/21/2010 [on conservatives attempts to de-fund NPR]
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Conservatives Are Still Fighting the Crusades - We Must Overcome Their Destructive Islamaphobia (Nov. 7, 2010, Tom Englehardt and John Feffer)

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Islamic Dress (hell, I can't tell Hindu garb from Muslim garb)
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Indian Kurta Pyjama (worn by Hindus and a whole bunch of folks)
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OMG - MOSQUE HYSTERIA AND/OR JUST POLITICS AS USUAL?

KEITH OLBERMANN ON PRESIDENT OBAMA'S RELIGION

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Thursday, September 10, 2009

SOMETHING IS SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH THE FAR RIGHT OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Karl Rove wrote the play book. Just smear people and tell lies over and over again and the “nuts” and “not so nuts” will believe you (probably because they want to believe you). The Republicans succeeded with their “lie” and “smear” campaign and we got 8 years of Bush and Cheney (Iraq and its accompanying loss of American and innocent Iraqi lives; warrantless wiretaps; torture; financial meltdown and massive job layoffs).

And now that play book is being used to defeat President Obama (in 2012) and his agenda, even though the American people clearly and dramatically voted for him; and then topped it off by electing a majority of Democrats in the House and Senate.

This is not to be taken lightly. These tactics can get people killed. I say that because a large number of people that now make up the Republican Party are very unstable.

This fringe group is filled with hate and they are dangerous and possibly bear investigation, but definitely bear watching. These kinds of people were responsible for assassinating John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. These kinds of people were responsible for murdering Emmett Till and Medgar Evers and brave souls who fought inequality, oppression, injustice and racism in the South.

Last night the president addressed a Joint Session of Congress and the American people. FOX News Channel decided not to air the speech. Can you believe it? A major news network did not show the president’s speech. Other major stations and networks carried the speech; yet, FOX didn’t and then lied about what the president said. Well, I guess if you didn’t hear the speech, you might believe the kooks at FOX news.

On Tuesday, the president addressed school children. The conservatives yelled that the president was trying to indoctrinate the children into socialism. Some parents and schools decided not to show the speech (and some parents kept their children home from school). The children who did watch, said they enjoyed the speech and admired the president. They couldn't understand what the whole "don't watch the president craziness" was about.

No other president has received this amount of disrespect so early in his presidency; and the president has done nothing to deserve such treatment.

Other countries are watching us and are appalled by these “kooks” behavior.

The people that these “kooks” rail against (the socialists) have the healthiest people, the cleanest air, the most educated (and its free), the most upward class mobility, the least crime, and they have quality, affordable, comprehensive universal health care.

I hope it will not take a national tragedy to stop this fringe group. Now is the time for good people to speak up and rebuke the lies, to take their neighbors to task if they hear lies from their neighbor’s lips. Now is the time to rally for health care reform, financial reform, and a GREEN economy and to focus on positive solutions and to be kind, just, ethical and moral.

The GOP’s Anti-Obama Propaganda”

ROBERT PARRY

KARL ROVE

TORTURING DEMOCRACY

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

REALITY CHECK MR. PRESIDENT!

Mr. President,

Your approval rating is down, not because you're doing a lousy job; but because you're dancing around and palling around with Republicans.

If we wanted a bunch of Republicans, we would have voted Republican. Don't you get it? They are the distractions Americans don't want.

[I don't mean to disparage all Republicans, just their policies and many of their ideological arguments. -smile]

I know you're working hard. You probably don't need any more criticism, but if your friends can't give you a reality check, then you're out here all by yourself.

It's time for serious "hardball"; roll those sleeves up some more and get your base together and rally those Governors who support you and lean on whoever you have to ... to get the job done.

Call out the troops, Mr. President! We're here!

More suggestions to the President:

1. Call Christiane Amanpour and have a chat about what's going on around the Globe (Did you miss Christiane's and Fareed's special this past weekend?)

2. Watch the Rachel Maddow Show every night. Ms. Oxford PH.D delivers for us every night.

3. Call in a Computer expert who happens to be a Democrat, and check for back door viruses on your computer systems.

4. Sweep the White House and all your Departments for bugs and sophisticated surveillance apparatus. Do it on a regular basis. Since you haven't reversed "warrantless" wiretapping, you do know AT&T, etc. are listening in on you, your Department heads, and your friends.

5. Huddle with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and come up with an effective way to deal with these banks and banking executives.

6. Get a little paranoid ... not "Nixon paranoid" ... just a little. Let Rahm do his job to help watch your back. It's beginning to look like you have some real enemies on Capitol Hill, etc. May I ask what Karl Rove is doing in his spare time?

7. There seems to be a huge communication problem between you and the mainstream media. I'm not sure if media is looking to Republicans for answers or that Republicans are seeking out media; doesn't really matter ... media is putting the Republican message out in front to the detriment of the American people. You've got to get as many back links on the Internet with your message. Your tech guys know what to do to keep your message front and center ... to drown out that irritating Republican mosquito-like noise.

*Fellow supporters of the President, stop watching the television [except for the Rachel Maddow Show], quit reading the Wall Street Journal, and right wing conservative media (unless you just want to find out what they're up to)

http://mediamatters.org/reports/oped/

http://www.brucekelly.com/conservative-media.html

Click below for a list of Progressive media (yeah, the good stuff):

http://clevelandssecretclub.blogspot.com/search?q=the+educated+citizen

Guys, I'm exhausted ... I think I'm going to take a vacation for about 4 days and get some much needed rest. Catch you later!

Somebody keep the faith while I'm gone.

Please turn off/pause the music player to the right of this page before starting the videos below.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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Tuesday, December 9, 2008

GOP TURNS TO HOWARD DEAN FOR SALVATION

A Democrat is about democracy; but a Republican trying to be democratic is ridiculous.

I'm referring to a Huffington Post article titled "GOP turns to Howard Dean for Salvation".

"This past weekend, a candidate for RNC Chair, Michigan Republican Party Chair Saul Anuzi, said the Grand Old Party would do well to follow the example set by the former Vermont Governor.

"There is a perception that we are a regional party and that we are a party from the South because that's the region we're consistently winning today," Anuzis told Politico. "I do think we need to have our version of the 50-state program that [Democratic National Committee Chair Howard] Dean had."

This prescription came days after Karl Rove, the architect of the current Republican Party, made a similar plea of his own. Noting incredible margins that Barack Obama had among black and Latino voters, the former Bush strategist -- appearing at a debate on the Bush legacy in New York -- said the GOP had to "be a party governing all Americans... It can only do that by making the case to African American and Latinos."

For the GOP to be an inclusive party, it would have to be more democratic, which would mean it would have to adopt democratic ideology. We all know this is ludicrous; and, as long as the GOP is represented by people like Karl Rove, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly, the rest of us would do well to run in any direction but their direction.

You can read the entire article at Huffington Post

Video: Colin Powell's view of his Republican Party

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Please stop/pause music player to the right of this blog before playing video.

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GAP WIDENS BETWEEN THE HAVES AND HAVE NOTS

"72,000,000+ Americans (over half) earn $25,000 or less a year. Another 34,000,000+ earn between $25,000 and $45,000. The notion that everyone is feeling the pain of this recession equally is completely deceptive. Working and middle class Americans are feeling the brunt of this recession. You would think that after the worst crisis since the Great Depression things would be different today in Q1 of 2011. Yet nothing has changed and in fact, we have invigorated the too big to fail with our current government policies. This is a government built by Wall Street banks and for Wall Street banks. Don’t be surprised when the next crisis hits because nothing has changed."

From MyBudget360 :Source "Social Security" -

What "Free Trade" Has Cost The World | OurFuture.org, by Dave Johnson, March 14, 2011

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Excerpt: "Income VS Wealth

There are a few people who make hundreds of millions of income in a single year. Some people make more than $1 billion in a year But that is in a single year. If you make vast sums every year, after a while it starts to add up. (And then there is the story of inherited wealth, passed down and growing for generation after generation...)

Top 1% owns more than 90% of us combined. "In 2007, the latest year for which figures are available from the Federal Reserve Board, the richest 1% of U.S. households owned 33.8% of the nation’s private wealth. That’s more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent." (Also from the Working Group on Extreme Inequality)

400 people have as much wealth as half of our population. The combined net worth of the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans in 2007: $1.5 trillion. The combined net worth of the poorest 50% of American households: $1.6 trillion."

9 Pictures That Expose This Country's Obscene Division of Wealth | Economy | AlterNet by Dave Johnson, February 13, 2011

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More GRITtv

Our Country Is Lost Believing in What It Sees on Screens, and We Are Going to Pay a Nasty Price for It

by Chris Hedges (article appeared on TruthDig "We do not shake ourselves awake quickly from our electronic hallucinations and defy the elites who are ruining the country and trashing the planet. -

October 8, 2010 -

Nemesis was the Greek goddess of retribution. She exacted divine punishment on arrogant mortals who believed they could defy the gods, turn themselves into objects of worship and build ruthless systems of power to control the world around them. The price of such hubris was almost always death.

Nemesis, related to the Greek word némein, means “to give what is due.” Our nemesis fast approaches. We will get what we are due. The staggering myopia of our corrupt political and economic elite, which plunder the nation’s wealth for financial speculation and endless war, the mass retreat of citizens into virtual hallucinations, the collapsing edifices around us, which include the ecosystem that sustains life, are ignored for a giddy self-worship. We stare into electronic screens just as Narcissus, besotted with his own reflection, stared into a pool of water until he wasted away and died.

We believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war. We believe that money, rather than manufactured products and goods, is real. We believe in the myth of inevitable human moral and material progress. We believe that no matter how much damage we do to the Earth or our society, science and technology will save us. And as temperatures on the planet steadily rise, as droughts devastate cropland, as the bleaching of coral reefs threatens to wipe out 25 percent of all marine species, as countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh succumb to severe flooding, as we poison our food, air and water, as we refuse to confront our addiction to fossil fuels and coal, as we dismantle our manufacturing base and plunge tens of millions of Americans into a permanent and desperate underclass, we flick on a screen and are entranced.

We confuse the electronic image, a reflection back to us of ourselves, with the divine. We gawk at “reality” television, which of course is contrived reality, reveling in being the viewer and the viewed. True reality is obliterated from our consciousness. It is the electronic image that informs and defines us. It is the image that gives us our identity. It is the image that tells us what is attainable in the vast cult of the self, what we should desire, what we should seek to become and who we are. It is the image that tricks us into thinking we have become powerful—as the popularity of video games built around the themes of violence and war illustrates—while we have become enslaved and impoverished by the corporate state. The electronic image leads us back to the worship of ourselves. It is idolatry. Reality is replaced with electronic mechanisms for preening self-presentation—the core of social networking sites such as Facebook—and the illusion of self-fulfillment and self-empowerment. And in a world unmoored from the real, from human limitations and human potential, we inevitably embrace superstition and magic. This is what the worship of images is about. We retreat into a dark and irrational fear born out of a cavernous ignorance of the real. We enter an age of technological barbarism.

To those entranced by images, the world is a vast stage on which they are called to enact their dreams. It is a world of constant action, stimulation and personal advancement. It is a world of thrills and momentary ecstasy. It is a world of ceaseless movement. It makes a fetish of competition. It is a world where commercial products and electronic images serve as a pseudo-therapy that caters to feelings of alienation, inadequacy and powerlessness. We may be locked in dead-end jobs, have no meaningful relationships and be confused about our identities, but we can blast our way to power holding a little control panel while looking for hours at a screen. We can ridicule the poor, the ignorant and the weak all day long on trash-talk shows and reality television shows. We are skillfully made to feel that we have a personal relationship, a false communion, with the famous—look at the outpouring of grief at the death of Princess Diana or Michael Jackson. We have never met those we adore. We know only their manufactured image. They appear to us on screens. They are not, at least to us, real people. And yet we worship and seek to emulate them.

In this state of cultural illusion any description of actual reality, because it does not consist of the happy talk that pollutes the airwaves from National Public Radio to Oprah, is dismissed as “negative” or “pessimistic.” The beleaguered Jeremiahs who momentarily stumble into our consciousness and in a desperate frenzy seek to warn us of our impending self-destruction are derided because they do not lay out easy formulas that permit us to drift back into fantasy. We tell ourselves they are overreacting. If reality is a bummer, and if there are no easy solutions, we don’t want to hear about it. The facts of economic and environmental collapse, now incontrovertible, cannot be discussed unless they are turned into joking banter or come accompanied with a neat, pleasing solution, the kind we are fed at the conclusion of the movies, electronic games, talk shows and sitcoms, the kind that dulls our minds into passive and empty receptacles. We have been conditioned by electronic hallucinations to expect happy talk. We demand it.

We confuse this happy talk with hope. But hope is not about a belief in progress. Hope is about protecting simple human decency and demanding justice. Hope is the belief, not necessarily grounded in the tangible, that those whose greed, stupidity and complacency have allowed us to be driven over a cliff shall one day be brought down. Hope is about existing in a perpetual state of rebellion, a constant antagonism to all centers of power. The great moral voices, George Orwell and Albert Camus being perhaps two of the finest examples, describe in moving detail the human suffering we ignore or excuse. They understand that the greatest instrument for moral good is the imagination. The ability to perceive the pain and suffering of another, to feel, as King Lear says, what wretches feel, is a more powerful social corrective than the shelves of turgid religious and philosophical treatises on human will. Those who change the world for the better, who offer us hope, have the capacity to make us step outside of ourselves and feel empathy.

A print-based culture, as writer Neil Postman pointed out, demands rationality. The sequential, propositional character of the written word fosters what Walter Ong calls the “analytic management of knowledge.” But our brave new world of images dispenses with these attributes because the images do not require them to be understood. Communication in the image-based culture is not about knowledge. It is about the corporate manipulation of emotions, something logic, order, nuance and context protect us against. Thinking, in short, is forbidden. Entertainment and spectacle have become the aim of all human endeavors, including politics, which is how Stephen Colbert, playing his television character, can be permitted to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. Campaigns are built around the manufactured personal narratives of candidates, who function as political celebrities, rather than policies or ideas. News reports have become soap operas and mini-dramas revolving around the latest celebrity scandal.

Colleges and universities, which view students as customers and suck obscene tuition payments and loans out of them with the tantalizing promise of high-paying corporate jobs, have transformed themselves into resorts and theme parks. In this new system of education almost no one fails. Students become “brothers” or “sisters” in the atavistic, tribal embrace of eating clubs, fraternities or sororities. School spirit and school branding is paramount. Campus security keeps these isolated enclaves of privilege secure. And 90,000-seat football stadiums, along with their millionaire coaches, dominate the campus. It is moral leprosy.

The role of knowledge and art, as the ancient Greeks understood, is to create ekstasis, which means standing outside one’s self to give our individual life and struggle meaning and perspective. The role of art and scholarship is to transform us as individuals, not entertain us as a group. It is to nurture this capacity for understanding and empathy. Art and scholarship allow us to see the underlying structures and assumptions used to manipulate and control us. And this is why art, like intellectual endeavor, is feared by the corporate elite as subversive. This is why corporations have used their money to deform universities into vocational schools that spit out blinkered and illiterate systems managers. This is why the humanities are withering away.

The vast stage of entertainment that envelops our culture is intended to impart the opposite of ekstasis. Mass entertainment plays to the basest and crudest instincts of the crowd. It conditions us to have the same aspirations and desires. It forces us to speak in the same dead clichés and slogans. It homogenizes human experience. It wallows in a cloying nostalgia and sentimentalism that foster historical amnesia. It turns the Other into a cartoon or a stereotype. It prohibits empathy because it prohibits understanding. It denies human singularity and uniqueness. It assures us that we all have within us the ability, talent or luck to become famous and rich. It forms us into a lowing and compliant herd. We have been conditioned to believe—defying all the great moral and philosophical writers from Socrates to Orwell—that the aim of life is not to understand but to be entertained. If we do not shake ourselves awake from our electronic hallucinations and defy the elites who are ruining the country and trashing the planet we will experience the awful and deadly retribution of the gods."

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

SB

9/2012 VIDEO TAKES 30 SECONDS TO LOAD AFTER CLICKING ON THE PLAY ARROW - ALSO SEEN ON VIDEO SITE

BILL CLINTON AT DNC 2012

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Bill Moyers and Thomas Frank - Dark Money in Politics -wait 20 seconds after clicking play arrow

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TED NUGENT EXPOSED! DID EVERYTHING HE COULD NOT TO SERVE IN THE MILITARY

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GOP WAR ON WOMEN

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BOYCOTT

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GLENN GREENWALD LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR SOME

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PART TWO

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JOE SCARBOROUGH - RE: TAVIS SMILEY'S POVERTY TOUR SERIES -OCTOBER 10, 2011

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THE CAPITOL - WASHINGTON, DC

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BAILED OUT AND SOLD OUT

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US ECONOMY BOUGHT - CAMPAIGNS

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OHIO'S NUCLEAR PROBLEM

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HANDING THE ENVIRONMENTAL HEN HOUSE TO THE FOXES

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OUR BLOG LIST

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IS NPR CURSED?

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U.S. MEDIA FAILING TO REPORT REAL NEWS

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RELAX YOUR WORRIES AWAY

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