1.) That’s all you could find? Where are the pictures of the protests? The numbers of protestors? I saw nothing on any of the MSM TV channels, and nothing in the the newspapers. If you google “September 2008 Wall Street protests,” or even “September 2008 protests,” that CNN/Money online article is the only one that comes up. There were thousands of people on the street, and that’s all we got. Compare that to the much smaller anti-Trump protests that got immediate, and very broad, coverage after the election. Why do you think that is?
2.) The media is controlled by both the government and corporate interests. The government is “corporate interests.” If you haven’t figured that out yet, you need to start doing your homework. These corporate interests are the primary vested interests in our poliltical-economic world.
So, owning a site that generates revenue is, in itself, evidence of what? Your precious WSJ and NYT are also revenue-driven. Yes, they are biased. Where in the world did you get the idea that they weren’t? Are you trying to say that Paul Krugman isn’t biased, or that the WSJ doesn’t present stories from a business/economic-right perspective?
For the record, the fact that a media outlet is biased doesn’t mean that they are not presenting facts. It only means that they tend to highlight certain perspectives, while downplaying or ignoring other perspectives. Nearly all media outlets are biased in some way these days.
3.) The Fed started raising rates **two years** after Greenspan acknowledged the “irrational exuberance.” This was after they decreased rates an even further .75 pts in 1998! They raised rates in 1999-2000 by .25 pts at a time, with the exception of one .5 pt increase — those are tiny increments, especially when view against the rate at which interest rates tend to be lowered.
And low rates were the cause of lax lending standards. As rates are lowered, investors move further out on the risk curve in order to boost gains. That’s the reason the Fed lowers interest rates when the economy is slow. It was widely understood that low rates caused the credit/housing bubble, so why do you think they are doing it again, and at an even more aggressive rate?
It’s obvious that you don’t understand how monetary policy and the Fed work.
4.) Russia (or whomever it was, because there is still no evidence that Russia did it) exposed the corruption, collusion, and fraud, they did not engage in it. Are you saying that we didn’t have a right to know about the fraud? Why is the government more focused on going after the whistle-blower instead of pursuing the actual fraud? As you’ve said: If you don’t see the issue here you are clearly deluded as to what Democracy is and what’s important.
5.) Trump’s victory was very obvious to those who knew what was going on. Again, the polls were very clear, as well. Only the ignorant masses who got their spoon-fed propaganda from the HRC-biased MSM didn’t know about it. It was obvious shortly after he entered the race.
6.) Yes, corporations had more say than the politicians. Only a tiny group of politicians, including Hillary, who falsely claimed during the election to be ignorant of the inner workings of the TPP, knew what was in it. And very few representatives had any say about what went into the document. No, corporations have no business writing our trade deals. Only the representatives of “We the People” should be involved, with input from corporate, environmental, and labor groups who are all given the same consideration.
You appear to be clueless about the TPP, too. One of the most dangerous components of this deal is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement provision which would have given corporations power over sovereign governments. Like hell that would be good for us…or anyone, other than corporations.
Fair trade that takes into account labor and environmental protections is generally good, but “free trade” is not. You are the one who’s uninformed about how our trade policies impact various populations and the environment.
7.) Yes, I understand exactly what occurred with that bill. This is the first item from your linked Snopes article:
“WHAT’S TRUE: On 23 December 2016, President Obama signed a Defense Department appropriations bill with a provision establishing an interagency office to identify and combat foreign propaganda.
WHAT’S FALSE: The provision is aimed at countering foreign sources of disinformation and does not apply to American independent or alternative media.”
and this…
“Note that according to its authors, the legislation was conceived not to clamp down on alternative news sources within the U.S., but rather to protect the “freedom of the marketplace of ideas on the international stage.” Note also that as written into the NDAA, the legislation’s provisions establish an inter-agency body “to track and evaluate counterfactual narratives abroad that threaten the national security interests of the United States and United States allies,” and to develop “procedures to expose and refute foreign misinformation and disinformation and proactively promote fact-based narratives and policies to audiences outside the United States.”‘
This is what’s in the overly-broad bill:
“(B) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this subsection may be construed to prohibit the team described in paragraph (1) from engaging in any form of communication or medium, either directly or indirectly, or coordinating with any other department or agency of the United States Government, a State government, or any other public or private organization or institution because a United States domestic audience is or may be thereby exposed to activities or communications of the team under this subsection, or based on a presumption of such exposure.”
Any information sources with an anti-U.S. bias that get traction here or abroad can be labeled as “foreign propaganda” or “disinformation,” and can be monitored and “countered” as a result of this bill. Do you seriously not see the dangers in this?
Again, who is the arbiter of what constitutes “foreign propaganda”? That’s what makes this dangerous.
8.) You didn’t address this, “gogogosandiego”:
[quote=CA renter]
…You claim that you’ve been reading this site for years, yet you created a new ID nine days after this thread was started, presumably because you wanted to object to my linking to a ZH article about the propaganda bill that was recently passed. For the record, Zero Hedge has been mentioned many times on this site over the years; some of these posts were even more “sensationalized” than what I posted, which was a factual piece about the legislation…where were you then?
As noted earlier, I linked to the ZH story because none of the mainstream media sources had mentioned it. I knew about the legislation from my own personal connections, and did not learn about it from ZH. But I like to include links to sources when I post something so that people can check it out for themselves. When others questioned the ZH story, I linked to other sources, including the site of the senator who co-authored this bill. I posted those other links prior to your obtaining this new user ID and going on your rant, so the legitimacy of the story was not in question (unless you are pri or zk…because some people still refuse to do any of their own research). So, did you oppose the exposure of this legislation, or the fact that ZH was used to corroborate the story (which was factual, BTW)? And why did you choose to speak out AFTER the other links were posted?
[/quote]
No, I don’t believe that you are some innocent random lurker of many years who’s just decided to sign up because of the ZH link. Your tone, writing style, accusations, and the timing of your ID and posts belie your claim.
