heigh ho, the US corporate media:

[the_future_modernes]

CNN dives headfirst into televison payola

In the wake of the Richard Wolffe brouhaha, some may still insist that its rare for television networks to promote corporate spokespeople as disinterested, nonpartisan "political analysts." If you are one of those people, check this out - it gives you a good sense that this happens all the time:

Longtime CNN political analyst Bill Schneider has joined, Third Way, a think tank that bills itself as advancing "the next generation of moderate policy ideas." Schneider, who will continue his on-air political analysis at CNN, will be the organization's first Distinguished Senior Fellow & Resident Scholar.

You may recall that "Third Way" is one of the most notorious corporate front groups in Washington, most recently working to destroy health care reform:MORE

( corrupt journalist class? politicans get away with almost anything... )

How corporations manipulate US politics

[the_future_modernes]

Behind The Forged Letters: Jack Bonner's "White-Collar Sweatshop"

Last week, Jack Bonner blamed a "bad employee" for the fact that his lobbying firm had sent forged letters, purporting to be from local minority groups, urging a member of Congress to oppose climate change legislation. (It's since been revealed that Bonner's firm was working on behalf of the coal industry.)
But a closer look suggests a culture at Bonner and Associates that makes such deception all but inevitable. As one former employee put it, at Bonner, distortion "was the norm rather than the exception."
Internal Bonner documents obtained by TPMmuckraker, and interviews with former employees, shed light on the modus operandi of a firm that's known as the pioneer of astroturf lobbying -- that is, creating the illusion of grassroots support for corporate-backed positions, just as corporate-backed groups like Freedom Works are currently doing in their fight against health-care reform. Bonner's business model involves using both carrots and sticks in spurring low-paid and poorly-trained employees to convince local groups or individual voters to agree to offer nominal expressions of support for the campaigns of the firm's corporate clients, which have included Philip Morris, the health insurance industry, and the pharmaceutical industry, among others. Often the voters or local groups know little about the legislation at hand, which is typically obscure to all but the industries affected by it -- medical liability reform, say. But the resulting form letters, faxes, or phone calls are then represented to a list of targeted lawmakers -- generally drawn up by the client -- as genuine expressions of grassroots concern. Bonner then satisfies its client by reporting back to it on the number of communications it's generated.MORE

Blackwater...neo Christian Crusaders

[the_future_modernes]

Keith Olbermann: Blackwater - Black Illegal Deeds? 09/05/2009 Part 1

Keith Olbermann: Blackwater - Murder, Inc. 08/05/2009 Part 2

Full Article here

Meantime: Hillary Clinton demands accountability for war crimes...in Kenya

( Read more... )

Quite. The above, of course, is not the only thing that Secretary Clinton has been ignoring:

More detainee victories and what a majority of Congress tried to do

( Read more... )

Do as we say, not as we do.

healthcare reform in the US is a crock.

[the_future_modernes]

Rachel Maddow - outrageous corporate thuggery behind anti-health care 'activists'

( Read more... )