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 Originally Posted by Donachello
The US media is seemingly controlled almost entirely by only a few massive corporations and elite people. People are so fucking lazy when it comes to trying to find the truth that they just eat what fox news or whatever the "democratic" equivalent decides to feed them. Unfortunately, if you read Noam Chomsky's "Propaganda Model" it becomes pretty clear how the so called "liberal" media is no more than a front put up by the extremely conservative backers and informants of every large news conglomerate. Why? Because the more prominent and powerful the sources the more "reliable" they are to quote. For example, there is a correspondent stationed at the White House who gets the inside scoop directly from there but if he ever prints something critical of what goes on there the White House can shut off access and BAM! he's out of a nice comfortable, high-paying job.
/rant
Excellent post, I'm almost a little surprised since many people don't get this.
Corporate media is a giant piece of shit. It's all based on access, profit, and even corporatocracy. MSNBC has pockets of good stuff, but they still have a ton of shit. They're about 80% tabloid, 20% focusing on things that matter. I watch Cenk Uygur daily because he's our generation's Edward Murrow, but Maddow is good as well, and two of their others are decent at times, but that's it
Get your media from the internet. Bloggers or small shows. There is a lot of great stuff out there, it's rapidly growing in great popularity, but it ain't corporate
Secondly, why the fuck are we still fully entrenched in the middle east militarily? Wasn't Obama supposed to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and that region in general entirely by like halfway through his first term? Wait... didn't we just declare war on Libya? Then, like Dustin said all the financial stuff Obama promised seems to have been swept under the rug to further benefit the rich and powerful.
Speaking of the military. It currently has an estimated budget of something like over 630 billion dollars a year. The second highest? China with 1/6th the expenditures. We spend about as much on the military as pretty much the rest of the world in its entirety. Not to mention the failing projects of the F-35 and F-22 that continually gobble up billions of dollars a year with little or no progress.
This seems to be the Democratic Party way. Campaign as a progressive, govern as a Republican. Granted, the military is the most entrenched, politically powerful, and corrupt entity on the entire planet. Obama would be more successful taking down the banks than the military/industrial complex. Also, he doesn't want to because it's mainly for oil, and the best way for him to gut his presidency is to get on the bad side of oil. As well as, the enormous US military is a "pre-emptive Cold War". If we dropped our military funding to the levels of the second largest nation, we would experience a lot of oil volatility and would end up engaging in another Cold War, but this time with China instead of Russia
The financial stuff is tough to swallow because the banks are the biggest political donors. That considered, Obama has done well here IMO. He has to do what he can to make sure the banks remain one of his primary donors, but he also has stood some solid ground by creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau currently headed by Liz Warren. Also, a lot of the issues with banking aren't actual issues. The real issues were with Bush Administration corruption, not financial innovation with things like derivatives. The Bush Admin fired nearly everybody at the SEC so there were no cops on the beat. They also allowed the Fed to keep interest rates terribly low in order to bubble housing. Simply having a non-corrupt politician in POTUS during Bush's reign would have been enough to kill the whole mess
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