Thoughts On the Tides Foundation

Recently Byron Williams has been arrested. He was targeting the ACLU and the Tides Foundation. The Left have focused on how Glenn Beck has recently focused upon this organization. See TPM and Media Matters.

I first heard about this organization from David Horowitz's DiscoverThe Networks. Here is their profile of Tides. I first heard about them around 2007. They said that the Tides Foundation was the second greatest foundation funder of the Left, behind the Ford Foundation. Similar to Glenn Beck today they asserted that the Tides Foundation is quite powerful.

Today I would be quite skeptical of these assertions. Discover The Networks very often likes to associate the modern day Left with Communism. That rhetorical tactic is vastly overdone there.

I Love This Story

A rather amusing and highly unlikely story. Absolutely brilliant.

Wise Words

"The true danger in politics is when people in power elevate ideological purity over their basic humanity, empathy, and common sense. This danger is as present on the Left as it is on the Right. From Stalin to Hitler, from Pol Pot to Pinochet, from the Crusades to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, by far the greatest evils perpetrated by persons in power are done out of rigid and passionate commitment to ideology. The brutal human consequences of that ideology are ignored or justified as subservient to the perceived greater good of whatever Utopian ideal happens to be in vogue." (Source.)

Paul Krugman on the Myths of Austerity

Myths of austerity.

Right Wing British Newspapers Falling Short

Here are some examples the right wing British media spreading badly formed stories that spread throughout the right wing circles. They may be seen here, here, here, here, here, here.

Out Of Control Media

Looking back on the Michael Jackson trial, I see a media out of control. The sheer amount of propaganda, bias, distortion and misinformation is almost beyond comprehension. Reading the court transcripts and comparing them to the newspaper cuttings, the trial that was relayed to us didn't even resemble the trial that was going on inside the courtroom. The transcripts show an endless parade of seedy prosecution witnesses perjuring themselves on an almost hourly basis and crumbling under cross examination. The newspaper cuttings and the TV news clips detail day after day of heinous accusations and lurid innuendo.

Here's the whole article by Charles Thomson. A fascinating article discussing how the news media completely botched their coverage of the Michael Jackson trial. The salacious accusations were spread all over the world, while the evidence that discredited the accusers was simply ignored.

The legal system may have declared him innocent but the public, on the whole, still thought otherwise. Allegations which were disproven in court went unchallenged in the press. Shaky testimony was presented as fact. The defense's case was all but ignored.

Warning: discusses the various allegations made against Michael Jackson.

Matt Taibbi on Goldman Sachs: The Great Bubble Machine

Here's Matt Taibbi's famous article for Rolling Stone, The Great American Bubble Machine which critiques Goldman Sachs' role within several previous financial bubbles, namely the Great Depression (1929), the Internet bubble (2000), the Housing bubble (2007), the oil bubble, and the Great Financial Crisis (2008).

Remember those horrible days not too long ago when oil became ridiculously expensive? And then it fell down. Well, according to Mr. Taibbi, that had nothing to do with supply and demand but was solely driven by financial speculation.