I know, one should not feed the trolls, but this was just too much:

"That Harper's article was a !@#$ing crock filled with nothing but innuendo and suspicion. ALL of those numbers are put forth for good reasons, in the open, and justified by academic economists. "

Did you actually READ the article? Phillips doesn't deal innuendo and suspicion. There isn't any in it. He deals in cold, hard fact. The fact that you can't deal with those facts says a lot more about you than about him.

Just one: the inflation number has been fucked with over and over to prevent COLAs from rising to the point where people like Shrub can't pay for idiotic wars of aggression for no good reason. That's not innuendo. That's just a fact.

Plus, by holding down the "inflation" number, you could justify all that cheap money that made CEOs billionaires, and left millions of home-owners and taxpayers holding the bag for disappearing real-estate wealth.

And you really expect any thinking person to have any faith at all in "academic economists?" All of them in servitude to those who rule? Don't you know? economists by definition serve the will of the rulers and the rich. Their job is to camouflage the screw-job the rich stick to the rest of us.

Christ. Your post had all the intellectual validity of a fart joke. Can't do any better than that?

The supreme irony of the government's screwing with our "accounts" numbers over the last 40 years, is that if we had been reporting *accurately* on all these numbers in that time, and had our government "for the people" been responding to those numbers in a fashion calculated to benefit the greatest number of people, our nation would be far more stable, and prosperous overall, than it is.

the housing bubble never would have happened, for one thing. You can make a long list of the ways the vast majority of the working and retired population would be better off if our government hadn't started--in essence--cooking the books.

The rich, and the rulers, have been cooking the books for decades, to screw the 90%, for the benefit of the 10%...as has been noted, we have system designed by an elite few, for their benefit. We get the crumbs.

Phillips' article is terrific. I assume his book is too. Required reading for anyone who wants to understand how we've been hoodwinked for the last half-century or so.

if you want to see a truly nauseating, insulting shithead on television every weeknight, just tune in MSNBC for Keith Olbermann.

-- Elephantman

**********

actually, I can do that by coming here and reading your posts, you dimwit.

Get laid much, Elephantman? Somehow, I doubt it.

One bright spot in what promises to be a truly appalling campaign season--assuming Obama ultimately prevails and becomes President--is that Joe Lieberman will finally be neutralized. No-one will give a shit about anything he thinks, says, or does, one day after the election.

I hope.

There are no words to describe how sick I am of this man, who clearly has no principles whatever. He just does what he's told, when it doesn't conflict with his carbuncle-like vanity.

...this was worth reading just for the Walters' quote at the head of it...I always thought Walters was self-obsessed egomaniac, and that quote from her book proves it beyond all doubt. Baba Wawa is a pathetic phony.

I wouldn't be able to bring myself to watch Recount. I'm still absolutely livid about that whole thing, eight years later. And I don't doubt I will be livid about it to my dying day. It was no less than a coup d'etat for the purpose of theft by violence. And American voters, with the Dem. party, let it happen. The Dems have a lot to answer for. The GOP is full of savage alphas who do what they do..they can't help it, we should expect nothing more from the GOP than what we got.

It was up to the Dems to protect us from these monsters, and they failed.

GOP values: lie. Cheat. steal. wash, rinse, repeat!

Beats hell out of Malkin's doggerel, at any rate.

Just an attaboy: that was an excellent post.

As one additional big-picture perspective: if you read british press reports covering politics, strategy, tactics, and military planning during WW I, you can read the most profoundly mendacious reportage in the history of the medium. Composed of the most brazen lies, and shameful in ways nearly impossible to characterize.

In short, nothing ever changes. People like James have always been with us. Media-toadies-to-government have always been with us.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't fight them with everything we have. But let's not make the error that somehow our time is unique. It's not. The fight is always the same.

Icahn likes money, pure and simple. I've been asking myself, ever since this news broke: why would he do this *now* when the deal appears dead?

I can think of only one reason: Icahn stood to make a truly enormous amount of money on Yahoo if it sold out to Microsoft. He'd been buying stock in the company anticipating some kind of deal.

Then Yang screwed the deal completely. I'd bet Icahn is doing this just to mess with Yang. Icahn has to be absolutely livid that Yang nixed the deal by being too greedy. Or just asked more from Microsoft than he knew they were willing to pay because he didn't really want to sell.

This is a blood-feud between two billionaires...no more, no less. In Medieval times they'd have had a joust or a sword-fight and one of them would have died. Pretty much the same thing.