[quote=gogogosandiego]1. If you were protesting bailouts that’s great. If you thought you were part of or referred to what you were doing as a Tea party movement you were duped by political and corporate interests, plain and simple.
2. The media world is not controlled by the government. Yes a news piece is called a “story”. That isn’t the same thing as a story that is made up or has discretion from the author. A news story is reported, as in facts are reported. The NYT and WSJ are not biased in their reporting.
3. The Fed doesn’t “clamp down on speculation”. Your own link shows the Fed funds rate increasing in 1999 until the economy slowed in 2001 (that’s when the Fed is supposed to lower rates, not when there is “speculation”). Think tanks and other experts don’t consistently get things wrong; it’s just that they can’t force the government and others to act. Yours is a classic argument of “well if I was in charge I would have done this, this and this (magically of course) and everything would have been perfect”.
4. I’m not going to condone the actions of the DNC. Bernie was certainly an oddball candidate and one can make a very strong argument that his nomination was not in the best interest of the party. But don’t you dare question my support of Democracy after posting that you think the takeaway from a foreign country hacking government databases and then selectively releasing the information in a way to potentially affect our elections is “they exposed the fraud and collusion”. That shows how little you care about Democracy, your only allegiance lies with getting your guy elected. And no one is trying to start a war with Russia.
5. Trump was not obvious to anyone. I’m sure it was widely predicted by Bernie supporters once they realized Bernie wasn’t happening. The same way Trump supporters would have all predicted Hillary over whoever beat Trump.
6. “Unprecedented”? Versus what? Again, all trade deals are done as confidentially as possible for good reason. Government, corporate and other interests were all involved in TPP negotiations. Once done it’s released for everyone to see. This is how most “deals” are done. For you to expect anything differently with something covering hundreds of variables with numerous other countries as parties and took several years to get done is ridiculous. What exactly should the media have been reporting about the TPP? “Day 876 here at TPP negotiations, meeting number 52, everything is pretty locked up, back to you in studio Joe”?
As for me, I’ve been reading this site for years. Your statement that there aren’t many objective news sources and that ZH is somehow objective (and continue to believe so after having been shown they are not) was too much for me. I had to make an ID and jump in. I never said the MSM is the “sole source of unbiased information”. I am saying that sources like the NYT and WSJ are some of the best outlets and are specifically designed and run to give unbiased news. ZH and similar sites are not news.
Your attempts to discredit me and pass me off as a troll are pathetic and typical.[/quote]
1.) Regarding the Tea Party, many of us knew about FreedomWorks, but we agreed that there shouldn’t be any bailouts; and many of us were as opposed to bailing out speculators and flippers as we were to bailout out the banking industry. The people I knew weren’t duped, we just took advantage of the situation because we were in agreement with their original points. Once it became more about Obamacare and “big government,” those of us who were simply opposed to the bailouts got out. As I’ve pointed out earlier, there were protests in 2008 that got absolutely zero news coverage. Thousands of people in the street…and nothing from your vaunted MSM. We had to go where we could to get traction.
2.) The media is controlled by vested interests. Sometimes, those people are in the government, and sometimes they’re not. But the reporters are indeed told what they can and cannot say, especially if a report would threaten one of these powerful interests. It’s not at all uncommon for journalists to be threatened with the loss of their jobs, and even criminal charges, if they report on certain topics or in certain ways. It has nothing to do with whether or not they are telling the truth, but whether or not they are threatening a vested/powerful interest.
The NYT and WSJ, along with most other media outlets, are absolutely biased in what they report and how they report it.
3.) Yes, the Fed can indeed clamp down on speculation.
-They can simply talk about the speculation and unjustifiably high asset prices, with some warnings that they may have to take action to stop or slow it down, instilling some fear in the markets that are moving into bubble territory.
-They can increase capital requirements.
-They can raise rates.
Regarding the Fed Funds Rate during the dot.com bubble, you’ll see that rates were raised nearly two years after Greenspan acknowledged the “irrational exuberance” in the stock market in 1996. Even then, the rate increases were relatively tiny (.75 pts. in the fall of 1998 and 1 pt in 1999), and were only in place for a short while before being dropped much more rapidly in 2001 to feed another bubble.
And even after it seemed that the consensus opinion regarding the cause of the credit/housing bubble was that rates were held too low for too long, the Fed did it again, but at even lower rates and for a longer period of time than before.
4.) My desire to have a transparent and accountable government means that I don’t care who forces this on the government, as long as all of the actions are clear, and all of the players are held accountable. Whether Russia exposed the fraud, or if insiders at the DNC exposed it (which is what many of us believe), matters not at all. Russia did not selectively release the information, they released batches of emails, and people were able to search and sort through them as they desired.
Your assertion that Bernie was “odd” or “bad for the party” is quaint given how HRC consistently changed her positions to more closely align herself with what Bernie was saying. She changed her opinion on the TPP, universal healthcare, “free” college (with means testing for HRC), criminal justice reform, etc…all during the primary season.
Absolutely, HRC and others in the govt/corporate sector have been trying to start a war with Russia for some time. Perhaps you haven’t been paying attention, but while you were focused on the “news” being reported by the MSM, this has been going on (and the sabre-rattling regarding the emails has been pushed to the forefront of the propaganda cycle in order to get the public’s buy-in of aggressive actions against Russia):
And if you oppose Russian influence in our elections (or even in the elections of our neighboring countries), how do you feel about our involvement in the affairs of former Russian territories?
Yes, I will question your support for democracy since you appear to have no problem with the appointment of an “elected” candidate, rather that having a free and fair election to decide who should be running in the general election. That’s why we’re now stuck with Donald Trump. Thank you, “gogogosandiego.”
5.) Trump’s victory was obvious to anyone working on the ground, and it was obvious at the beginning of the primary election season when the all of the candidates were still in the race. The only other Republican candidates who got any traction were Cruz and Carson, and their support was still significantly less than Trump’s. The polls showing that Bernie consistently outperformed Clinton against nearly all of the Republican candidates were showing this well before she “won” the nomination (many of us also believe that she would not have won the Democratic Party’s nomination without all of the fraud and collusion that transpired).
6.) The secrecy surrounding the TPP was unprecedented compared to the negotiation of any of our other trade deals, with the possible exception of NAFTA. Why should corporations have more say in our trade deals than our political representatives do? The MSM should have been doing what the alternative news sources were doing — letting people know about the trade deal and how our own politicians weren’t allowed to participate in, or even know the details about, these negotiations until after the agreement was drawn up. Add the TPA (“fast track”) authority which would tie congress’s hands and prevent them from amending the agreement by forcing them only to vote up or down on it, and maybe you’ll understand why so many people were opposed to it.
7.) 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?
Contrary to your erroneous claim, I never said that ZH was objective; only that they’re willing to talk about stories that are being ignored or intentionally biased in the MSM. As a matter of fact, I pointed out that most news/information sources are biased.
Your claim that my “attempts to discredit me and pass me off as a troll are pathetic and typical,” would indicate that you know me already and have debated me in the past since you used the word “typical.” So, are you a disinformation troll, or are you Pri/zk’s alter ego?
