Did you ever think you'd live to see the day when an out, black lesbian got her own late-night show... on a network owned by Rupert Murdoch?

Why not? This is the same network that gave us the Simpson, The Family Guy and Futurama. Rupert Murdoch owns the Sun with it's imfamous Page 3 Girl.

Murdoch doesn't really have a cultural or moral agenda. In spite of his hard right, reality challenged television news division and ownership of the right wing gutter press NY Post, Murdoch doesn't really have any politics to speak of. He just wants to make lots of money. If he really was a right wing curmudgeon, would he do whatever the Chinese government tells him to just to maintain his broadcasting privileges there?

. . . dribble about what Jesus said (he never wrote anything and may not have even existed anyway), is a discussion/examination of how radically the Bible, particularly the New Testament, has been fucked around with. It's really no mystery whey Jewish "scholars" don't like mere laymen examining the Dead Sea Scrolls or why the earliest copies of the Christian Bible are locked away in the vaults at the Vatican.

Josephus, the Hebrew (sic) historian and Tacitus, the Roman historian are two sources that come to mind. There are others.

-- SaltyPappy

Both these people wrote about Jesus' existence dozens of years after he allegedly lived and died. There was no contemporary, second party account of Jesus. Period.

. . . just how many times have your read The Da Vinci Code?

There's actually surprising well documented proof of Jesus, especially for considering how long ago it was.

No, there isn't any proof.

The Talmud mentions him, historians a generation removed mention him, we actually have more contemporary mentions of Jesus than we have examples of the Gospels.

No, there aren't, and the Talmud was written hundreds of years after Jesus allegedly lived and died.

For example, it wasn't uncommon for some Jews to attack the Jewish followers of Jesus by saying that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier and thus Jesus was a bastard. We have letters that have survived that mention this. Oddly, we have recently found a grave in Germany, with a Roman soldier of close to the same name, whose records indicate he served in Judea at the time of Jesus conception. . . . -- Xanthro

"Oddly, we have found . . ."? Are you an archeologist along with being fabulist?

. . . shit for brains?

Why would a kid, mercifully released from the media glare, submit to this kind of cringe-inducing scrutiny?― Sarah Hepola

Nationally, unemployment hasn't even reached the level seen during the Reagan administration recession, and unemployment during the Great Depression was over 25%. We may yet get to 12% nationally, but we've got a long way to go before we're in a depression.

. . . .5% to 1.5%, I have no idea where Shadow Statistics gets its data, Scorpio69er.

It's ridiculous to claim that the U.S. unemployment rate is approaching 20%. Just think about it: that would mean of ten people, including yourself, two would be out of work. Too small a sample? How about of 60 people you know, again including yourself, approximately 12 would be out of work? Is that the case in your world? Didn't think so. Maybe for someone in Detroit, but there are states yet where official unemployment hasn't even hit 8%.

. . . I went to the web site, but they don't detail their methodology or detail their bono fides. I other words, I think their data is crap - an overstatement at best. And repeating yourself doesn't address my question as to whether your cohort is experiencing 20% unemployment. Again, unless you're working in the auto industry or construction, I doubt that's the case.

Just as I don't put all my faith in the government's data and generally believe that the glass is half empty (as well as being dirty and having a crack in it), I suggest you need to temper your enthusiasm for an obscure web site not recognized by anyone else as being authoritative.

SEE: http://www.shadowstats.com/article/employment

-- Scorpio69er

Corporatists make lots of money selling off US productive infrastructure to third-world countries and taking a cut on the deal.

You seem to be saying that U.S. corporations (there is no such thing as a "corporatist") have moved the physical contents of factories overseas. Perhaps you mean they have provided capital investment to build factories abroad?

It's also perfectly legal for US corporations to import foreign workers to replace their US workers.

True, but most of the foreign labor in this country is here illegally and doing non-value added, unskilled labor. For every Indian computer tech here on an H1 visa there are literally hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens working in sweatshops, picking fruit and vegetables, cleaning hotel rooms, etc. They have an admitted but statistically unimportant drag on wages.

It's also perfectly legal for foreign corporations to lobby the US government to legislate in their favor and against US companies. The government could start by prohibiting several such practices, all destructive to the US economy, . . .-- walter_map

Yep. That's how you start trade wars since U.S. corporation are allowed to do the same thing abroad.

For a nice discussion of how crazy talk, ill-informed talk like this quickly spins out of control, I suggest to consult any of the too numerous books to count dealing with the Great Depression or any macro economics text book.

I don't disagree with you that far too many members of congress are fairly easily bought and sold by domestic and foreign economic interests, but that's as old as the republic and has nothing to do with our current woes.