Playahata

Has the spirit of the Arab Spring come to Wall Street, or are the protesters just anarchists looking for trouble?

It started in Lower Manhattan. A handful of protesters descended on Wall Street calling themselves representatives of ‘the 99 per cent’ – the majority of Americans who feel unfairly treated by an economic system in which wealth accrues to the already rich.

Despite an initial lack of coverage, the protests spread country-wide and the crowds grew. The coverage however was disappointing. Protesters accused media outlets of marginalizing the demonstrations and not representing public interest. They pointed to the deep connections between the corporate system the demonstrations aimed to change and the mainstream media. Our News Divide this week: the protesters on Wall Street and the challenge of having their story told.

In the Name of the Fodder: The Fox rapid-response team makes a plea to distinguish violence in the name of a religion from the practitioners and tenets of that religion as long as it’s Christianity.

Donald Trump may be leading the GOP field in the polls, but early numbers are completely and totally meaningless.

According to The New York Times, last year General Electric (GE) made over $14.2 billion in profit, but paid NO federal tax. None. In fact, thanks to the millions GE spent lobbying Congress, we American taxpayers actually owed GE $3.2 billion in tax credits.

Now GE is slashing health benefits and retirement benefits for new employees among non-union workers and is expected to push unions to accept similar cutbacks, while its CEO, Jeff Immelt, gets a 100% pay raise.
What’s worse? Immelt now sits as chair of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness (Jobs Council), representing corporate America to the President on matters like job creation and corporate taxation. That’s a slap in the face to every hardworking, tax-paying American—especially GE employees.

That’s why we’re teaming up with Russ Feingold and his new group Progressives United today to call for Immelt to go. Will you join the call?

For another laugh see the ridiculous idea of teacher greed.

John Oliver says Muslims are allowed to put a mosque near Ground Zero, just like Catholics can build a church next to a playground.

Faux-pression: Racism and the Cult of White Victimhood
by tim wise
Tue Jul 20, 2010
Here is Tim Wise’s response to the phony reverse racism claims made by the right, re: the New Black Panthers and the Shirley Sherrod/USDA story that broke yesterday.

To hear conservatives tell it, there’s a one-sided race war going on in America, and white folks are the targets. From President Obama’s secret plan to use health care reform as a way to procure backdoor “reparations” for slavery, to his equally secret plan to wreck the economy as a way to pay white people back for centuries of racial oppression, to his personal responsibility for a fight on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois, in which two black kids beat up a white kid, it’s open season on white America. And of course, in case you weren’t convinced, surely that tax on tanning bed customers that was part of the health care bill should suffice to make the case: after all, it’s a clear slap at white folks and the result of the President’s deep antipathy towards those of us lacking sufficient melanin. (more…)