Congressman Paul on the Swine Flu Scare

How I wish Ron Paul was the President--especially right now.

Candidates for Sale: Big Business Is Making Sure It Wins the Presidency | The Smirking Chimp

Candidates for Sale: Big Business Is Making Sure It Wins the Presidency | The Smirking Chimp

Matt Taibbi wrote this very interesting piece before the elections last fall, and he seems to have hit on the exact reasons why so many people were out protesting against government bailouts last week--the hypocrisy of both the Red Team and the Blue Team:

Obama has received more contributions from Goldman Sachs than from any other employer — more than $627,000 at this writing — not to mention $398,021 from JP Morgan Chase, $353,922 from Lehman Brothers and $291,388 from Morgan Stanley. Even among hedge-fund executives, who have an unequivocal interest in electing McCain, Obama is whipping the Republican, collecting $500,000 more than McCain. All of which begs the question: Why would corporate giants like these throw so much weight behind a man who promises to strip them of billions in tax breaks?

Notice his blog's name...not exactly a Bush fan. But oddly, he seems to be anti-Tea Party, too. Could he realize that the whole thing was co-opted from the Ron Paul play book and can sense the rottenness of it all? If he was in Minnesota in September, as I see he was, my guess would be yes.

A decent article about the Tea Parties

New Mexico Independent--Tea parties: one-time event or new movement?

Finally--an article about the "tea parties" on April 15 that is neither writing the protest off as a gathering of closet racists, right wing nuts, or Fox News viewers.

The Tea Parties were started on the campaign trail in 2007 by Ron Paul supporters. The Tea Parties are not in any way controlled by the Republicans or Fox News, disgusting, two-faced johnny-come-latelys that have completely co-opted what was a real grass-roots movement. I know. I was there. WHERE WERE THESE PEOPLE when Ron Paul was saying the exact same things in 2007? Such hypocrites.

Fox New's unabashed busy-body intrusion into the protests is not surprising; they haven't been a real news channel in a long time, so why not break down that fourth wall and jump right into the action, instead of providing "fair and balanced" coverage of the events?

Great. Now the Tea Party protests have the taint of Faux News to try and wash off. I would have politely declined offers of Fox News personalities as speakers at every event. No amount of media coverage is worth having Sean Hannity forever associated with real, honest, decent people who have had a serious complaint with government spending, ESPECIALLY during the Bush administration.

Just as irritating, and maybe even more vile, is MSNBC's clear "we-do-protest-too-much" anti-Tea Party reporting and editorializing, aligning the movement with right-wing extremists, racists, conspiracy theorists, the GOP, 9/11 truthers, and characterizing the protests as a News Corporation creation. Not so. Not so.

It's a sad day for me. I used to love MSNBC; they were the underdog, the upstart that questioned authority that actually had a good cross-section of left and right on at all times. Too bad they've degenerated into the White House Network. Yeah, they should just change their name to the White House Network, because that's all they are anymore--shills for the administration, the new Fox News for a new president and a new majority congress.