Open Thread with The Professional Left Podcast: Beck, Palin, and Obama's Real "Secret Plot"
Time for your weekly podcast from The Professional Left, Driftglass and Bluegal. You can listen to past editions at their new site The Professional Left, and Driftglass has a bonus podcast over at his place if you'd care to check it out. Have a happy Labor Day weekend everybody!
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Driftglass and Blue Gal (The Professional Left) are award-winning bloggers who have been writing at their own individual blogs since 2004. Both are also contributors to Crooks and Liars.After being told at several blogger meet-ups that "they should be on the radio together," the two of them, through the internet magic of Skype, Callburner, Audacity, and loquacity, started their podcast adventure in January of 2010.
Driftglass lives at "The Castle" in Chicago and blogs at http://driftglass.blogspot.com.
Blue Gal lives in "A Cornfield" in central Illinois and blogs at http://bgalrstate.blogspot.com.
Their podcast email address is proleftpodcast@gmail.com. The podcasters reserve the right to read your email messages on the air.
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I use the Huffington Post as my main source of every day news. I don't buy newspapers or have TV anymore and for all its faults I like the way HP aggregates basic news and also have come to know a lot of people that comment there. However, over the last 6 months I've noticed that the way they censor comments is just insane. Comments that are on topic and polite routinely get censored. Part of it is that they use an Artifical Intelligence system to pre-screen comments that is really more of an Artificial Stupidity system. Also, some authors (e.g. Depak Chopra, Lanza, Ms. Huffington) routinely censor comments that are perfectly in compliance with the sites policies because they point out inconvenient truths about the authors errors and bias.
I've posted about this before and people have asked me "why do you even care?" That's a legitimate question but the reason I care is that for a while HP was a pretty cool site and I've gotten to like it and to like the people who comment there. I feel like its at worth making an effort to protetst as one more Internet resource goes the way of becoming a soul-less corporate sell out. I think the thing that got me really incented was an exchange I had with their "senior moderator". When I encouraged him to post an open discussion of moderation issues on the site he said essentially "we don't have to, we don't care what the users think, the mandate is from the corporation that we moderate" So I created this blog to document some examples of censorship:
http://bannedfromhuffpo.blogspot.com/2010/04/...
And I've created a petitoin for people who want to let Huffpo know that we want them to change:
http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/peti...
Please take a look.
comment occasionally, but I hear a lot of negatives lately about commenting issues. It's making me have second thoughts. I'll look at your link when I get a chance. :)
I've never seen change without a fire
and the topic is something stupid, it is damn near impossible to dialogue with anyone.
You can post a comment and before you know it there are 120 new comments to load.
The only way I know if my comment even made it past the
censorsmoderators is if someone "replies" to a comment. Ha!!"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
54 comments,and no one talks about the brilliant podcast! i loved it(all of 'um)you guys are some of the best we've got.anyway,love the pods and will donate at this time,a true fan.
....the fools do not realize,a population that can ,..... not paticipate .............in the 'economy'...,can not keep it viable!..........."we are listening,.......and we're not blind.,......this is your life....this is your time."
The Huffington Post censored former Governor Jesse Ventura after he wrote an article for them. They are a compromised news source. Here is more on the story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpyAyIqeFOg
That's Jesse Ventura's experience with the site anyway. [Interview]
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
One of the people who is participating in the group pointed that one out: http://bannedfromhuffpo.blogspot.com/2010/05/...
Keep stirring up the shit!
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
??
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
the comment about Jesse Ventura that got banned from the Huffington Post and that i included in the blog above: http://bannedfromhuffpo.blogspot.com/2010/05/...
BTW, I also thought one of the sites you referenced in that post was an incredible anti-semitic piece of garbage. And I said so in a later post:
http://bannedfromhuffpo.blogspot.com/2010/05/...
But I left it on the blog because the whole thing is supposed to be about free speech.
is not the only ones that censor issues about 9/11. I've been deleted for comments I've made here.
To be honest I've never been convinced by most of the conspiracy theories (exceptions: the Anthrax thing and the stock trading seem very suspicious). Which is weird because I'm a very conspiracy friendly kind of guy. MLK, JFK, no doubt it wasn't the lone gunmen. RFK, harder to prove but still if you believe that JFK was a conspiracy it kind of follows that the same people would get his brother who was a meaner, tougher, SOB. Project Gladio, ... I'm definitely up for conspiracies.
But, I'm sorry I find most of the 9/11 stuff to be very weak. For example, they regularly use logic such as "this evidence shows massive incompetence, no one could be that incompetent" or "the government tried to cover X or Y up, there must be a conspiracy"
The Bush administration brought incompetence to new levels. And there are many reasons that governments will cover things up, for example to hide the fact that they were massively incompetent. I can believe that Cheney, et al would have no moral problem with creating a false flag operation, I've just never been convinced by the evidence that they really did.
One last thing, an essential element for any conspiracy is plausible deniability. That is what I don't agree with in many 9/11 conspiracies. There are DARPA death rays and planes that get diverted and replaced by drones and we have to believe that John O'Neil let tens or more people sneak into the WTC and plant huge explosive charges and it just doesn't fly. I could believe a conspiracy where the Bush admin let a few terrorists sneak into the country but most Truth Movement people go for such complex convoluted stuff it just doesn't pass my sniff test.
if you connect the dots. There are too many things that happenned that shouldn't have and I for ne don't believe that everyone in government jobs are all that incompetent. Many of them are as comprtent as we are but the right wing has convinced many that they are not. That may be another reason I don't visit Huffington Post.
What I'm saying is that many Truth Movement people don't practice the scientific method. They start out with a preconceived notion and look for facts to back it up rather than looking at the facts and evaluating ALL possible alternatives. Yes conspiracies are possible. Incompetence is also possible as is CYA. A good researcher needs to evaluate all the alternatives.
are all you need to know!
The truth will set you free but can you handle the truth?
Yes, but were the laws of physics ever really defied? To my recollection the laws of gravity and conservation of energy were 'almost' defied but possibly not quite.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
They are amazingly unconvincing. Its one of the other common problems with Truth Movement researchers. Someone who is a physics professor tries to be an expert on demolition and engineering. BTW, Chomsky does a good job of demoloshing those arguments.
do not lie.
The truth will set you free but can you handle the truth?
may not be 100% correct but some are undenialably in dispute.
I've never accepted the official story. As I said above I find major problems with the Anthrax incident and the stock trading thing has never been explained. And there are a lot of issues about how the terrorists got into the country. IMO a conspiracy where a few people at CIA "let it happen" by letting people into the country and by shutting down FBI investigations is quite plausible. That is the kind of conspiracy that could make sense.
But so many Truth Movement people go for the most outlandish scenarios: DARPA death rays and remote controlled planes. They end up obscuring the most important issue:
Either way whether through COMPLICITY or INCOMPETENCE the Bush administration was responsible for 9/11
when there's never been a full, open, complete investigation?
Ask "The Jersey Girls" for the compiled list of their questions that were never asked or answered by the 9/11 Commission.
It's quite lengthy....
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
And I don't think I implied I could in my previous post. I said either through complicity or incompetence. What bothers me is so many truth movement people assume that they can say with certainty and they ridicule even people on the left that don't agree with them. I've seen many truthers go after people such as Amy Goodman and Noam Chomsky. One book by a prominent truth movement spokesman (think it was called something like 9/11 and the media or something like that) even acussed Amy Goodman of being essentially a spy on the government payroll.
with Vincent Bugliosi as the lead prosecutor and he'll have subpoena power to get every piece of evidence he and the jurors want.
Sounds like a great plan to me.
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
to see what that cameraman who is presently living in Argentina and is fighting extradition to the US has on film.
If a drone kills a child in Kandahar, do the crying parents make a sound?
For example the idea that a missile hit the pentagon rather than a hijacked plane. If it was a missile then that requires:
1) Something happened to the plane and all the people on it
2) Someone fired the missile from some location in the US
Now doing 1 and 2 would require a LOT of people. I agree with you many people in the government are not incompetent. But I also believe many people are patriotic and not drones who just blindly do what they are told. The idea that you could get a bunch of people to coordinate hijacking a plane, killing all the people on it (or otherwise desposing of them so they never surface... how?) and then firing a missile at the Pentagon with no one going public about the conspiracy, it just boggles the imagination. It would require around a hundred people. Probably more. A base to launch the missile from. Technicians. And what the heck happened to those people on the plane that disappeared?
release all the video tapes of the plane hitting the Pentagon that were confiscated moments after the event. Then we could all be really clear about the whole thing.
But, unfortunately, those tapes are under seal.
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
if you guys continue in this vein.
Abbybwood, there is a link to a comment you made which list sites that are fine with 9/11 discussions.
After massive problems allowing 9/11 discussions on C&L, John Amato decided no more. We ask that you and other visitors to this site honor that wish and not bring those discussions here. Please go to the sites you said allow 9/11 talk in that post if you feel the need.
This is John Amato's site, and he's made the rule, of which you are all well aware. Please respect the wishes of the guy who is your host.
and I won't make any other comments about 9/11 here.
I was only responding to what someone else had already said.
I figured since folks were already commenting about it that the moderator was allowing a conversation about it.
Sorry about that.....
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
The important thing to remember is to not rely on a single source. Huffington may not be everything, but it's better than the corporate media.
I like Russian television, because they're only too glad to hang our dirty laundry out.
http://rt.com/On_Air.html
http://www.youtube.com/russiatoday
http://www.youtube.com/user/rtamerica
http://www.youtube.com/thealyonashow
Of course, they have their agenda too.
Remember, deriving the truth requires "an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will prevail" - a marketplace where there is a "wide diversity of viewpoints from a multiplicity of sources." That means, don't rely on a single source to form an opinion. Huffington should not be used as "one stop" shopping for news. There should be no "one stop". That's essential for critical thinking. We view as morons, people who let Fox News do their thinking for them. The same should be for people who let Huffington do the thinking for them. But, in the case of Huffington, that would be a lot harder to do, since conservatives, as well as liberals write pieces there.
Huffington may be taking some stuff "off the table", but the full picture can be filled in from other sources. Again, key is "wide diversity of viewpoints from a multiplicity of sources."
I've written a handful of responses there. I don't think they were censored, as opposed to, simply not making it to the final submission. In other words, while the blog is moderated, I think there's also technical issues.
I put the response in notepad, and if it doesn't make it, then resubmit. It generally goes online then.
But, my responses there are like my responses here. No swearing, and no spam. I've made it a strict rule, don't say anything to someone online that I wouldn't say to someone face to face.
In fact, I'm a lot more polite online than I am with people who I know. But with some, their responses/posts are the opposite; they'll say stuff that they would never say to someone face to face.
I'm in favoring of censoring insults. Generally, I'm not in favor of preemptively taking concepts "off the table", whether it's single payer, or 911 conspiracy theories. When I hear the term "off the table", well, lets just say, that'll put me in a bad mood, and leave it at that.
Two "off the table" episodes come to mind, one being "single payer" during the health insurance reform legislation, and the other being how some "bin laden's" got flown out of the country right after 911 without media coverage. The latter issue would, of course, relate to lack of media coverage, especially taken in context with this Islamic recreational center/mosque intensive coverage. Seems we have a selective corporate media coverage issue.
In an upcoming election when many are running on fiscal conservatism, the Ron Paul/Barney Frank proposal is off the table, by all candidates, and of course, facilitated by the corporate media. We need to use the internet to put on the table, as many issues as we can, before the end of net neutrality relegates the internet to a TV like status, where we're the recipients of corporate supplied information.
But, there are exceptions to the rule that permit censorship, such as thread or subject hijacking. Gotta stay on topic.
I assumed it was technical issues as well but now I'm sure it was not. They have some AI system (this has been confirmed to me by people at Huffpo and also to other users) that tries to sniff out bad comments. It does insane things. For example, once I was commenting on gun control and I was talking about how a dog was a good alternative to a gun. I ended the comment with:
"and no one ever picked up a dog and shot someone"
And the comment, a long thoughtful on topic polite comment, never made it through. At that point I was starting to understand the AI system (I actually used to develop AI systems) so I resubmitted the exact same comment but left off "and shot someone". From the context it was reasonably clear what I meant by "and no one ever picked up a dog" anyway. That made it through. I documented this example on the blog:
http://bannedfromhuffpo.blogspot.com/2010/04/...
... per minute. They're definitely using AI. It's obviously not perfect. In my case, it seems that the exact comment will make it through on a 2nd attempt.
But, if the wording has to be changed, then, it's an example of how the AI can't comprehend the context of the remark.
They're probably trying to prevent incendiary responses, such as "shooting someone". For you, it's an intruder, but elsewhere, it could be people attending a political rally.
But, they are definitely getting comments at a rate greater than what human processing can deal with.
My point is that they've gone way to far over to the extreme of censoring things. For a while i just stopped commenting because 10-25% of my comments would get censored and they were all perfectly reasonable. I've documented many examples on my blog: http://bannedfromhuffpo.blogspot.com/2010/04/...
A lot of them have to do with the AI system just making dumb choices and a lot of them have to do with anyone who dares to point out errors in people like Chopra, Lanza, etc. gets censored. What i want is for them just to have some open discussion about the moderation policy:
http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/peti...
Paul Conrad, political cartoonist and staunch liberal, passed away at age 86. He drew for the LA times.
Here is one of my favorites and drives the conservatives nuts.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/paulconrad...
The people of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage." J.K. Galbraith
One of the Times' greatest assets.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
Am I missing something or do we no longer have nested comments?! I haven't commented here in a while so I'm sure this has been for a while but I really miss that. Being able to see replies under the comment makes for a much better threaded discussion IMO.
Emily Latella moment. Now its back to what I'm used to. Never mind...
Right next to the New Comments gizmo.
I think you need to click "options" in lower right corner of screen and change "flat" to "threaded."
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
thanks to you and to the moderator
Cenk Uygur, sitting in for Dylan Ratigan, takes Alan Simpson to task for his most recent outrageous proposal to reduce the deficit (vets should stop collecting disability benefits) and lambasts Obama for backing Simpson.
Give Them Hell Cenk!
Why Liberals Are Pissed At Obama!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5QanJXSz30
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
problem. It is Obama and the Democrats that we need to worry about.
http://firedoglake.com/2010/07/01/breaking-pe...
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/05/10/o...
Is an enemy of the state. Funding war means you hold to the promise you make to those that serve. His statement is an affront to those who would serve in the future. Should they be looking at written benefits. This guy should be canned ASAP.
The wickedness of pride has lost the light to understand how little grace is earned an how much given.
Simpson is just an old nasty turd floating on the sea of privilege.
He was an old has-been waiting for his date with the grim reaper. He**, even the republicans didn't want this guy as their leader when they promoted Trent Lott over him.
So our Manchurian president - one of only eight black republicans in the entire country - goes out and breaths life back into this evil SOB.
I don't know what kind of jack-a** program the idiot Obama is on, but in 2012, this guy has got to go!
The only thing any real FDR democrat should be talking about, is TAXING THE RICH! TAXING CORPORATIONS, REIGNING IN CORPORATIONS, AND TAXING THE RICH!
I know, I know, Obama only has a majority several times the size of Bush's, so how can he get anything done?
Rush Limbaugh is what a smart person thinks a stupid bigot sounds like.
The truth will set you free but can you handle the truth?
Anyway, I liked Machete, but I thought they were exaggerating about the supremacist vigilantes until I just read that last C+L story. It's not going to score big at the box office, but I thought it was a pretty good infotainment take on the issue. So lesse. Brewer lied about border beheadings, and loves herself the prison-industrial complex. What Iraq withdrawal? Oh, Craigslist...One of Nixon's enemies out-lived him until today. A heckuva job, Democratic Party. The Pentagon was fine with its employees buying child porn. What savings? Blair's big in Dublin. A bright future, indeed. Abbas tells Ahmadinky to shut his pie hole. At least one prominent company is standing up to big oil. I don't keep up w/ today's comedians, but R.I.P. Robert Schimmel.
He went through a lot with his chemo; I didn't think he'd make it past all that. He was a funny guy.
RIP.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
When the Spartans dragged the immense wooden horse into the city with the certainty that this was an acknowledgement of all they imagined they were, surely some must have wondered what was contained in this icon of technical and spiritual superiority.
These people were undoubtedly marginalized, labelled by a cynical populous as not worthy of consideration despite the obvious dangers of embracing this .
The arrogance of the city rulers and collective delusion of those totally invested in the illusion of their belief systems led to the consequences the fable ends with.
Sit back, prepare and watch history repeat itself.
A castle? A cornfield? Really??
I smell a sit-com here. Let me know if you want me to do the first draft.
So I thought it was kind of Ironic that my initial comment last night about censorship at the Huffington Post resulted in a bunch of comments that got deleted here. But I want to make a point about how that censorship is qualitatively different than what I'm complaining about at Huffpo. The censorship here was based on a clear, public, well defined policy. They don't want to go down the 9/11 Truth Movement rabbit hole at C&L. Now personally, even though I don't agree with most Truth Movement theories I don't agree with that policy. I think its better to let people talk and air the issues even if it results in huge threads.
But, and here is the big but I completely respect the right of C&L to make and enforce that decision. What is going on at the Huffington Post is nothing like that. When comments get censored they won't tell you why. The censorship is completely arbitrary. By changing a word here or there that in no way alters the meaning of the comment it can change whether it gets moderated or not. Comments that are perfectly polite and on topic are censored because they point out fundamental errors in the author's article. For example Depak Chopra's understanding of physics or Robert Lanza's representation of his research in psychology. That is the kind of arbitrary pointless censorship we are complaining about.
Finally, one last bit of shameless promotion:
For more info check out the BannedFromHuffpo blog
Please review and sign the anti-huffpo-censorship petition
GOOD work you guys...a nice vestige for some people that seem to be hiding from the neo-conservative-pee-party thought police. Thank you..
I just want to rant a little about one of the subject you guys talked about a bit. The Swag-Hag and the artificial influence she seems to be having over otherwise seemingly intelligent people... The media seems to be the biggest purveyor of her swill and can't seem to get enough!! WTF??
It would be real interesting if you guys (even if you had to go to Boston) could get Joe McGinniss to sit down and chat for like an hour about his Summer of Love next-door to the bots... without, of course, letting too much of the cat out of the bag for the sake of his next book... (by the way, good McGinniss interview session with Shannyn Moore from her teevee show: https://shannynmoore.wordpress.com/ )
Let's finish with Michael Gross's piece in Vanity Fair.. Given any 'normal' press cycle in this country which also seem to correspond to the length of an American's attention span (minutes at best), this should have been a barn burner. But, alas, the media was side-tracked with it's obsession with the WAY in-which the Swag-Hag responded versus the content and competence of her response. She let her anger out under the guise of Sean Hannity?? PLLEEAASSSEEEEEEzzzzzzz.. We have the mentally unstable driving the conversation with a paid pundit ?? WTF??
Mr. Gross wrote a good article and based it on FACTS versus a fax from Murdoch and Ailes and told a very interesting story about the monolith that seems now to be the Swag-Hag supreme.. Is this a new deity springing forth in some folks minds?? If somehow we can prove this, it would be a REAL good time to re-institute state mental recovery homes - and BIG ones... Mr. Gross told an interesting tale of the goings on in the bubble surrounding this thing. The FACTS that Mr. Gross included should not surprise anyone. As he also stated in the next day or two after the publishing of the article in Vanity Fair, "I left the worst parts out"... should tell anyone that's even curious about this media frenzy that the Swag-Hag is a dangerous target.. Not from her, from the MEDIA in general. There are exceptions but sparsely sprinkled thru our society.
TIME TO WAKE UP FROM THIS COLLECTIVE LUNACY !!!
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