Who cares? As long as he can convince 25% of the population that he's a man of faith and stands for "family values", whereas his opponents eat foetuses, Bush can swing it, and they can keep their noses in the trough.

I gather that your news programs aren't very good at covering this sort of thing? It would be nice if there was some proper debate of the real issues.

(sarcasm on) No, Fox News covers it very well...'don't ask questions, Bush is doing this for the good of all'. repeat. (sarcasm off) Land of the free? I think not. Well, if you're a well-to-do corporation, it is!

The federal government should follow in the footsteps of California's solar reimbursement bill. If you install solar panels on your house and patch into the grid, California will reimburse you 50% of the panel, hardware, and installation costs.

Screw the tax credit, I want a Prius subsidy!!!

I get most of my news from the BBC, PBS and the Daily Show. The fact that 2/3 of my news comes from British broadcasting and Comedy Central should be pretty telling.

Tony, that would have been Mr Blair; Mr Major was the previous one (1990-1997). Don't worry; we don't expect you Yanks to pay that close attention. And arguably, Tony Blair does act more like he belongs to John Major's party than his own

Issues like that do get debated here. Only last night, for example, there was a stunning 1 hour documentary, the first episode of three, at 9pm on BBC 2, called "The Power Of Nightmares", by Adam Curtis, describing the parallels between the rise of the Neoconservative movement and the Islamic fundamentalist movement from the 60s to the present day.

The had some great footage of Donald Rumsfeld in a press conference in the late 60s trying to persuade people that North Korea was amassing weapons and was a clear and present threat to the US (despite having no evidence). Exactly the same tune he was playing 35 years later.

Basically, the documentary explained how the Neocons aimed to stop the damage to society caused by liberalism and individualism by promoting the myths of religion, and the nation as a force for good vs evil, as a means of controlling the masses. The only catch is you need an enemy, thus they try to talk up the abilities of North Korea, the USSR, Al Qaeda etc.

The USSR bit was amusing - in the early 80s they (Perle, Wolfowitz et al) were pressuring the CIA to come up with evidence for Russia's new deadly secret weapons programs. The CIA said there was no evidence for such weapons. Which the Neocons interpreted as meaning the USSR had even more deadly, undetectable weapons that the US hadn't thought of and thus were more of a threat than previously thought.

Also, they were convinced that terrorist groups across the world (the IRA, ETA, middle-eastern terrorists etc) were all operated by the Russians. They asked the CIA for evidence of this, but the CIA said it wasn't true - most of the sources they found were in fact black propaganda invented by the CIA for dissemination in Europe. The Neocons refused to believe them, and briefed Reagan themselves.

And they're doing exactly the same thing now with Iraq and Al Qaeda... :roll:

I hope this documentary's going out on BBC America before the election.

We do get good news coverage here generally. There are 5 main ("network" in your terminology, I think) channels (BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, Channel 4, and Five). BBC 1 and ITV have their main evening news at 10pm, and aren't that heavy. But Channel 4 has an excellent 1 hour news programme at 7pm that often has a 15 minute indepth segment on some difficult issue, and it has a reputation for campaigning journalism. BBC 2 has a 1 hour news analysis program at 10.30pm which does a pretty good job of grilling politicians and examining issues. Its lead presenter, Jeremy Paxman, is renowned for the disdain and disbelief he's capable of projecting while questioning members of the government.

If anything like the scale of corruption listed in the first article was going on here, I'm reasonably confident it would get pretty good network coverage.

Oh, here's a link to an article about The Power Of Nightmares.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/...1327904,00.html

Sometimes, instead of solace, one can find history (and a certain amount of irony). I played this one for my teenage daughters the other day and asked when they thought it was written. They guessed it was contemporary (i.e. within the last couple years).

From the song cycle "MONSTER - SUICIDE - AMERICA" from the 1970 Steppenwolf release "Monster"


(Suicide)
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'

Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching

Okay, so I'm starting to show my age. :wink:

KMO. There is NO parallel between the Islamic fundamentalists and Dubya trying to govern based on what he thinks his god is telling him. None at all, not even a little bit. Because HIS god is right and everyone who doesn't agree is wrong and because Dubya knows what is right and everyone else will be better off when he shows them the error of their ways. :roll:

That type of journalism would be suicide for any corporation which owned a station that showed something like that in America... there are still people in the US that think Saddam was actively helping Al-Qaeda. That's how great a job our news organizations do in this country. It is really pathetic the extent to which Americans are ignorant, but luckily we're not all like that, and hopefully Bush losing this election will prove that.

I truly am embarrassed to live in a country where the mainstream media is so bad that people look to Comedy Central for journalism (not to diss the Daily Show, it does rock). But I do have hopes that there is a movement occuring in this country, and maybe someday people here will accept true journalism as mainstream... ah to dream.

In the meantime, I get my journalism from www.democracynow.org and BBC.

Well I mentioned BBCnews and DemocracyNow, but I also read CNN.com, various local newspapers and magazines, and I watch CNN and MSNBC cable news channels and occassionaly CSPAN. I also listen to Air America radio (yes, I know it is very liberally biased, but it has good information most of the time that the mainstream press ignores and it's really fun to listen to).

I think the trick to getting good information is to read a variety of news sources, and really analyze what you're hearing/reading and think about what motives the sources have for presenting their information in the manner that they present them. I realize the sources that I get my news from have an inherent liberal bias overall, which I'm sure is not a good thing, but I really can't stomach watching something like Fox News.

I am curious as well to hear where other people go to for news.....

I read CNN.com and the LA Times.com daily. I listen to NPR on the way home from work and we do watch NBC news in the evenings.

I have also found that the Christian Science Monitor has a different spin on things than more mainstream publications and do go to their site a few times a week.

I've found NPR to be a pretty good source--they have their off times, but on the whole, do a job head and shoulders above the rest. Actually, our local San Diego KPBS radio station does a pretty good news show, as well. Local and National TV News, I think, is on the whole pretty pathetic.

I enjoy reading The Economist--they tend, I think, to keep the editorializing on the editorial pages, and they cover the world--all of it-- very well, IMHO. That they acknowledge that there IS a rest of the world besides the U.S. & Europe is quite refreshing! I understand that there are whole countries just chock full of people who think that their own lives and well-being are just as important as Americans! Imagine! :wink:

(And their headline writers love clever puns, which endears them to me--but probably not to many others!)

What seems to be being missed with the outrage over the corporate tax cuts - us lowly peasants are now once again able to deduct sales taxes for goods purchased, effective this year.

Save those receipts, including the paperwork for your new Prius. Now, in addition to the $2,000 income adjustment, the sales tax on the car can be claimed as well - easily another grand or more depending on your local tax rate.

Hmm, I missed that part. Nice of them to do it after all the receipts for the first 9 months of the year are in the trash!

It is "or MORE" in VT. Thanks for the heads up.