Tag Archives: Big Media/Big Tech
CIA offers ridiculous damage control after negative movie portrayal
Time to sit down with the studio execs and remind them that you guys are on the same side.
The CIA must still be smarting from its portrayal as torture-happy thugs in the critically acclaimed/declaimed “Zero Dark Thirty.” Not only did acting CIA director Michael Morell take the time to claim that *shock* a Hollywood film took “significant artistic license,” but the agency’s website has published a supposedly myth-busting piece that aims to portray the CIA as a bunch of good guys (and girls) who always play by the rules. I suppose being a secretive agency that’s frequently linked with torture, assassinations, indefinite detention and round-the-clock surveillance isn’t as much fun as it used to be.
It’s a very sparse selection of myths, attached to even sparser “debunkings.” Sadly, the CIA’s debunkings can be easily debunked simply by taking a few quick peeks into the past, along with even briefer peeks into its present actions.
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ESPN ‘Cornball brother’ Controversy
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Demand a plan?
Fuck You:
Jamie Foxx, Jason Bateman, Paul Rudd, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Beyonce Knowles, Amy Poehler, Jeremy Renner, Amanda Pete, Jon Hamm, Carla Gugino, Jessica Alba, Reese Witherspoon, Rashida Jones, Will Ferrell, Sarah Silverman, Aziz Ansari, John Legend, Olivia Munn, Kathryn Hahn, Julianne Moore, Busy Phillips, Jennifer Garner, John Slattery, Nick Offermann, Chris Rock, Cameron Diaz, Courtney Cox, Christina Applegate, Zooey Deschanel, Steve Carrell, Adam Scott, Ellen Degeneres, Mark Ruffalo, Kate Hudson, Peter Dinklage, Jennifer Aniston, Elizabeth Banks, Max Greenfeld,Gwyneth Paltrow, Conan Obrien, Aubrey Plaza, Debra Messing, Megan Mullaly, Jennifer Westfeldt, Selena Gomez, Michelle Williams, Chris Paul, Victor Cruz
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Platinum Coin Idiocy
Characteristically, Nobel Laureate Krugman takes the idiotic “Platinum coin option” proposition seriously and uses it to bash the Republicans mere compliance (as opposed to enthusiasm) for spending the economy into oblivion.
The left treats Republicans as Bolsheviks treated Mensheviks. The Republicans are (for now) the radical saboteurs solely responsible for the failure of the otherwise glorious plans of our commissars.
Socialism requires endless enemies on which to blame the failures of central planning. Think of Orwell’s image of the future: a jackboot stomping on a face, forever.
The platinum coin discussion has moved with startling speed, from an idea nobody took seriously (and which, as I’ve mentioned, senior officials were unaware of just last month), to assertions that it’s ridiculous and illegal, to grudging acknowledgment that it’s almost surely legal coupled with strained attempts to dismiss it as an option nonetheless.
Ezra Klein has now opened up a new front, which I would consider a sort of progressive version of the shock doctrine: we shouldn’t invoke the coin option, he says, precisely because it would work too well, and therefore let us sidestep the real issues. . . .
This isn’t a stupid argument. We really do need to come to grips with Republican extremism. The question is whether refusing to use this escape hatch is the place and time to do that.
My own view is that I was willing to go over the brink on the fiscal cliff, but not here, for three reasons. (Read more)
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Here’s Robert Murphy’s take:
Jack Balkin — a professor of constitutional law at Yale — outlined strategies that the White House could use to evade the pesky borrowing ceiling imposed by a fickle Congress:
Are there other ways for the president to raise money besides borrowing?
Sovereign governments such as the United States can print new money. However, there’s a statutory limit to the amount of paper currency that can be in circulation at any one time.
Ironically, there’s no similar limit on the amount of coinage. A little-known statute gives the secretary of the Treasury the authority to issue platinum coins in any denomination. So some commentators have suggested that the Treasury create two $1 trillion coins, deposit them in its account in the Federal Reserve and write checks on the proceeds.
The government can also raise money through sales: For example, it could sell the Federal Reserve an option to purchase government property for $2 trillion. The Fed would then credit the proceeds to the government’s checking account. Once Congress lifts the debt ceiling, the president could buy back the option for a dollar, or the option could simply expire in 90 days. And there are probably other ways that the Fed could achieve a similar result, by analogy to its actions during the 2008 financial crisis, when it made huge loans and purchases to bail out the financial sector.
The “jumbo coin” and “exploding option” strategies work because modern central banks don’t have to print bills or float debt to create new money; they just add money to their customers’ checking accounts.
These suggestions should horrify anyone who understands the importance of sound money. Not only are the proposals themselves preposterous, but the mere fact that they are being discussed is a symptom of the cultural decadence wrought by the government and the Fed’s responses to the 2008 financial crisis.
Money for Nothing
When critics of the Fed assert that Bernanke creates money “out of thin air,” they mean the following: The Federal Reserve has the power to buy whatever assets it wants at whatever price it wants. In principle, Treasury Secretary Geithner could sell a paperclip to the Fed for $2 trillion. The Fed would simply write a check made out to the Treasury, drawn on the Fed itself.
When the Treasury deposited this check with its own bank — which just so happens to be the Fed — then its own “checking account” balance would go up by $2 trillion. This money wouldn’t come from anywhere in the sense that some other account would need to be debited $2 trillion. On the contrary, the system’s total reserves (and what is called the “monetary base”) would have swelled by $2 trillion. The Treasury would be free to start paying bills by writing checks on the $2 trillion in its account.
The only kink in the plan would be the state of the Fed’s balance sheet. Initially it could value the paperclip at $2 trillion — what the Fed paid for it — and list the paperclip among its other assets such as Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities.
“These suggestions should horrify anyone who understands the importance of sound money.”
Of course, people in the financial markets would cry foul. They would know that if the Fed’s books were “marked to market,” the paperclip would be worthless and the Fed would suddenly be insolvent according to regular accounting rules. (Its liabilities, in part consisting of bank reserves — which are dollar-denominated claims on the Fed — would have risen by $2 trillion, while its assets didn’t budge.) But this would merely be an embarrassment rather than a legal obstacle because the Fed has put into place Orwellian rule changes that allow it to shield its shareholder equity from capital losses.
The difference between my absurd paperclip scheme and the two proposals discussed by Balkin is one of degree and not of kind. As of this writing, platinum is trading for a little less than $1,800 per ounce. Thus, $2 trillion in platinum would weigh about 35,000 tons (Read more)
CNN’s ridiculous anti-gun bias
Don’t watch the MSM to learn the truth. Tune in from time to time to see what the lies are.
William Schapp: 1/3rd of CIA budget is media manipulation
Tom Woods Talks Agorism, Economics, and U.S. History on FOX News Station
When U.S. drones kill civilians, Yemen’s government tries to conceal it
The Yemeni government initially said that those killed were al-Qaeda militants and that its Soviet-era jets had carried out the Sept. 2 attack. But tribal leaders and Yemeni officials would later say that it was an American assault and that all the victims were civilians who lived in a village near Radda, in central Yemen. U.S. officials last week acknowledged for the first time that it was an American strike.
“Their bodies were burning,” recalled Sultan Ahmed Mohammed, 27, who was riding on the hood of the truck and flew headfirst into a sandy expanse. “How could this happen? None of us were al-Qaeda.”
More than three months later, the incident offers a window into the Yemeni government’s efforts to conceal Washington’s mistakes and the unintended consequences of civilian deaths in American air assaults. In this case, the deaths have bolstered the popularity of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist network’s Yemen affiliate, which has tried to stage attacks on U.S. soil several times.
Furious tribesmen tried to take the bodies to the gates of the presidential residence, forcing the government into the rare position of withdrawing its assertion that militants had been killed. (Read more)
Film Argo designed to prep public for Iran War
Argo provides the uninitiated Westerner with a crash course in the nature of the Iranian people as if out of some kind of hawkish fairy tale. Not just the regime, the people. In Argo, somewhere amid the exciting escape of six sympathetic American victims, we are treated to hordes of hysterical, screaming, untrustworthy, irrational, bearded and lethal antagonists. Some of them are pivotal characters that advance the plot. Others are just bystanders in seething crowds. It doesn’t seem to matter. The point is, these are the villains. Or more specifically, the Iranians. All of them. There is not one positive Iranian subject in the entire story.
When CIA operative Tony Mendez (the hero, played by Affleck) and the American escapees are trying to make their way through a bazaar in the crowded streets of Tehran, the omnibus nature of the hate-spitting Iranians is reminiscent of costumed characters from a professional wrestling league. In a subtler, earlier scene in which Mendez lands at the Tehran airport, the film makes it clear that every Iranian in sight – from an old man to a young woman – is to be treated with suspicion.
This is to say nothing of the more incendiary moments, such as that of a barking flock of Iranians stomping on an American flag. Scenes like that are clearly meant to arouse the emotions of a Western audience. And in a fiction-meets-reality kind of kismet, here’s a Hollywood movie that finds convenient kinship – and symbiotic validation – in today’s news cycle, as American politicians hammer away at the message that Iran and its people represent the greatest threat to global peace. (Read more)
The Inequality Drum
They’ve destroyed Western Civilization and these professional propagandists are still chirping about income inequality.
he long-term projections produced by official agencies, like the Congressional Budget Office, generally make two big assumptions. One is that economic growth over the next few decades will resemble growth over the past few decades. In particular, productivity — the key driver of growth — is projected to rise at a rate not too different from its average growth since the 1970s. On the other side, however, these projections generally assume that income inequality, which soared over the past three decades, will increase only modestly looking forward.
It’s not hard to understand why agencies make these assumptions. Given how little we know about long-run growth, simply assuming that the future will resemble the past is a natural guess. On the other hand, if income inequality continues to soar, we’re looking at a dystopian, class-warfare future — not the kind of thing government agencies want to contemplate. (Read more)
Outrage & Backlash after NY Newspaper publishes addresses of gun owners
A New York newspaper is under criticism for publishing the names and addresses of local gun owners on Monday.
In a piece titled, “The gun owner next door: What you don’t know about the weapons in your neighborhood,” the Journal News requested the names and addresses of local residents who are licensed to own handguns through Freedom of Information Law requests. The paper requested information from Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. The paper was only given the names and addresses of those who have a license to own a handgun. The paper was denied its requests for the number and type of guns owned by those who have licenses. (Read more)
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Blogger Retaliates Against Paper That Published Gun Owner Addresses by Creating Interactive Map of Its Employees In retaliation against the New York newspaper — the Journal News — that published the addresses of those pistol permit holders in two of the state’s counties, a blogger has created a map pinpointing the addresses of the newspaper’s employees.
(Related: NY Paper Broke No Laws With Gun Owner Map — But Is It Ever Ethical to Publish Personal Info to Push an Agenda?)
Mimicking the title of the Journal News’ original article, Robert Cox with “Talk of the Sound” headlined his post: Map: Where are the Journal News employees in your neighborhood? (Read more)
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Since the release of the lists with maps (See below), the reporter’s home, pictured here, along with his personal information has made a big wave on the social networks. Normally, SUA would not publish such information, but it has gone viral, and for fairness purposes is published here:
Another Mass Shooting Prevented by a Gun Owner
On Sunday December 17, 2012, 2 days after the CT shooting, a man went to a restaurant in San Antonio to kill his X-girlfriend. After he shot her, most of the people in the restaurant fled next door to a theater. The gunman followed them and entered the theater so he could shoot more people. He started shooting and people in the theater started running and screaming. It’s like the Aurora, CO theater story plus a restaurant!
Now aren’t you wondering why this isn’t a lead story in the national media along with the school shooting?
There was an off duty county deputy at the theater. SHE pulled out her gun and shot the man 4 times before he had a chance to kill anyone. (Read more)
Maddow Propaganda: “The fastest deficit reduction in generations”
We learned about a month ago that the U.S. budget deficit for the most recent fiscal year fell to $1.089 trillion, $200 billion smaller than it was last year, and nearly $300 billion smaller than when President Obama took office. (Read more)
Anarcho-Capitalism going mainstream?
Nice to see Friedman catching up to the intellectual work of Hoppe:
Further proof that Anarcho-Capitalism is becoming main-stream is this poorly written, rambling criticism from the Southern Poverty Law Center: www.salon.com/2012/12/18/how_to_spot_an_anarcho_capitalist/
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I imagine some power brokers thinking to themselves — okay, we can’t stop this thing, so let’s try to own it.
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Wow! Just found Rothbard’s critique of David Friedman’s Anarcho-Capitalism.