Tag Archives: Big Media/Big Tech

New York Times Spins Ahmadinejad Speech as Claim About Nuke Capability

The article, entitled “Iran Boasts of Capacity to Make Bomb Fuel,” intersperses a handful of allegations about the Iranian nuclear program with a healthy dose of unrelated claims about protests elsewhere in Tehran today. It centers itself around the translated quote “please pay attention and understand that the people of Iran are brave enough that if it wants to build a bomb it will clearly announce it and build it and not be afraid of you.”

However, it downplayed the rest of that sentence, which was “but we have no intention of making a bomb.” It also glossed over the bulk of the speech’s nuclear content, which was that they told the US and Russia they were ready to buy fuel for the Tehran research reactor. (Read more from campaigniran.org)

Time covers Vermont Secessionist Campaign

The President on Wednesday may have reassured Americans that the state of the Union is “strong,” but, just the week before, a group of Vermont secessionists declared their intention to seek political power in a quest to get their state to quit the Union altogether. On Jan. 15, in the state capital of Montpelier, nine candidates for statewide office gathered in a tiny room at the Capitol Plaza Hotel, to announce they wanted a divorce from the United States of America. “For the first time in over 150 years, secession and political independence from the U.S. will be front and center in a statewide New England political campaign,” said Thomas Naylor, 73, one of the leaders of the campaign.

A former Duke University economics professor, Naylor heads up the Second Vermont Republic, which he describes as “left-libertarian, anti-big government, anti-empire, antiwar, with small is beautiful as our guiding philosophy.” The group not only advocates the peaceful secession of Vermont but has minted its own silver “token” — valued at $25 — and, as part of a publishing venture with another secessionist group, runs a monthly newspaper called Vermont Commons, with a circulation of 10,000. According to a 2007 poll, they have support from at least 13% of state voters. The campaign slogan, Naylor told me, is “Imagine Free Vermont.” (Read more from time.com)

How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran

This poor performance has caused an unprecedented collapse in the polls and the loss of three major by-elections, culminating two weeks ago in an astonishing senatorial defeat in Massachusetts. Obama’s attempts to “reset” his presidency will likely fail if he focuses on economics, where he is just one of many players.

He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.

Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity.

Read the response by true conservative, Pat Buchanan

Women Become Majority Workers

This has been on my mind ever since I heard Aaron Russo suggest the elites were behind Women’s Suffrage because they wanted to change America from a country in which half the people worked and paid taxes to a country where everyone worked and paid taxes. As it typical they hi-jacked a legitimate movement for their own purposes.

I was interested to see this report from thedailybell.com. They quote some news then offer analysis along the same lines as Aaron Russo:

At a time when the world is short of causes for celebration, here is a candidate: within the next few months women will cross the 50% threshold and become the majority of the American workforce. Women already make up the majority of university graduates in the OECD countries and the majority of professional workers in several rich countries, including the United States. Women run many of the world’s great companies, from PepsiCo in America to Areva in France. Women’s economic empowerment is arguably the biggest social change of our times. Just a generation ago, women were largely confined to repetitive, menial jobs. They were routinely subjected to casual sexism and were expected to abandon their careers when they married and had children. Today they are running some of the organisations that once treated them as second-class citizens. Millions of women have been given more control over their own lives. And millions of brains have been put to more productive use. Societies that try to resist this trend-most notably the Arab countries, but also Japan and some southern European countries-will pay a heavy price in the form of wasted talent and frustrated citizens. – Economist

Dominant Social Theme: Hurray for women …

Free-Market Analysis: The liberation of women is in our opinion another dominant social theme, one of the longest running of the power elite’s promotions. The real push for women to become part of the work force happened in the 20th century. Not surprisingly, this was the century that saw the imposition of full-fledged central banking around the world. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was still culturally a problem for women to work, but the power elite promotion was launched to make women “modern” and it is still ongoing.

If you want to implement global governance, you need to break down the family unit as much as possible. Nothing can stand in the way of the state. From the power elite’s standpoint, getting women into the workplace in the name of “equality” solved a lot of problems at once. It left children parentless during much of the day, so that the state itself could take over childcare. And without the firm guidance of the full family, many children, especially girls, became much more promiscuous at an early age which also contributed to a fracturing of private culture.

. . . . But the real reason, in our opinion, that woman’s liberation is a power-elite promotion, and a very long-running one, has to do with central banking. The erosion of fiat money earning meant inevitably that to keep up there would have to be more than one wage earner in the household. Woman’s liberation was promoted, in our opinion, as a way of making it culturally acceptable for women to work – so as to conceal the degradation of the currency.

Toyota vs. Government Motors

The media has been hyperventilating over safety concerns in Toyota vehicles, presumably for our sake. Now that the government owns and runs GM, I cannot take this news without suspicion.

Austrian Economist Patrick Barron said it best:

The U.S. government owns General Motors and now it gets to sit in judgement of GM’s most successful rival, punishing it and waging a public relations campaign to malign Toyota’s products. Sounds like another great way–in addition to the “Cash for Clunkers” program–for the government to provide a backdoor subsidy to its captive company and its union supporters.

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Toyota’s Troubles Deepen
Toyota Motor Corp.’s quality crisis deepened Tuesday, as U.S. regulators accused the company of dragging its feet on fixing defective gas pedals and threatened civil penalties and further reviews of Toyota products.

The move means that Toyota’s efforts to address its biggest-ever safety and public-relations mess are far from over. Last week, the administration indicated it had no issues with how Toyota had responded to the sudden-acceleration reports, which led the company to recall about six million vehicles and have been linked to at least five fatalities.

“While Toyota is taking responsible action now, it unfortunately took an enormous effort to get to this point,” Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said Tuesday in a statement. “We’re not finished with Toyota and are continuing to review possible defects and monitor the implementation of the recalls.”

Mr. LaHood said Transportation Department officials flew to Japan in December to meet with Toyota executives and remind the company “about its legal obligations.”

Toyota woes mount as gov’t examines Prius brakes
Toyota faced mounting pressure Thursday as the government opened a probe of brake problems with the Prius, a crown jewel of its lineup. The beleaguered automaker said it was “too soon” to decide whether to add the hybrid to the millions of cars it has recalled.

. . . . The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would assess the scope of the problem and the safety risk to about 37,000 cars that could be affected.

Behind The Real Size of the Bailout

This was a pretty widely reported story from motherjones.com:

The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is often put at $700 billion—the size of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But TARP is just the best known program in an array of more than 30 overseen by Treasury Department and Federal Reserve that have paid out or put aside money to bail out financial firms and inject money into the markets. To get a sense of the size of the real $14 trillion bailout, see our chart here. Below, a guide to the pieces of the puzzle: (Read more from motherjones.com)