Matt Taibbi has done some good reporting over the last decade and looks to be setting his sights on the media now.
No telling how much traction he will get with this YouTube effort and it is, according to him, a work in progress. I welcome it. News reporting is largely sham entertainment programming masquerading as some kind of civic function.

I wish Taibbi success and hope he goes after the phony red baiting RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA infotainment oracles that have been the wellspring of so much dumb conversation/debate.

All in effort to smother progressive politics in the corporate parties to be sure.

Morning Joe did a similar homage, completely ignoring everyone but TrumpBiden, until it was time to lambast Warren and Sanders.

And here's The Hill, just in case everyone thought it's only cable news doing this nonsense.

Poll: Biden leads Democratic field, Warren drops to third place

Biden 1st, Warren 3rd....oop, who's in second place.
Oh no, we can't possibly want Bernie almost as much as Biden!!



Yeah chunk, we get it. And yeah, it's very similar to what the news media and the DNC tried to do to Bernie the last time.
We have been all over that.
I still think part of this is the rift between Bernie and the DNC.
You and I have a deep seated disagreement as to how that can be or could have been handled, and I am not eager to rehash all of that, but we are back here again now, same place we were at last time.

As you've claimed in the past, he's being shut out as much as possible. The DNC is trying to protect their establishment and the media is frightened at the prospect of their large corporate advertisers wigging out.

They're all acting like nine year olds who think that a President decides everything.
Never mind that we're engaged in the fight of the century to prove that unitary executives, particularly deeply compromised and corrupt ones, are a danger to our national security.
Bernie Sanders would have to work with people on both sides of the aisle like any POTUS should, and many on the Dem side aren't fans of many items in his agenda.

I must retract what I said a couple of months ago about his age.
The guy must have a Terminator power source in his chest.
He doesn't seem the least bit affected by any age related health concerns.

I did notice something however...and you may have noticed it too.
He's not using the dreaded word so much anymore.
He's just pushing a steady platform that is similar to his eternal boilerplate.

Oh well, it's still almost a year out.
I can hope and wish for Biden to flame out or trip over his own baggage so badly that he's no longer able to be propped up even by extraordinary means.

Just know, I still like Bernie, and if he is the nominee, I will enthusiastically vote for him.

Is it possible that the Democratic Party will make the same fatal mistake twice in a row?
Don't answer that, I think I can already guess your response.

I didn’t get very far with your post, Jeff, because it’s reading like you missed the point.
Taibbi is launching a YouTube channel in order to be a media critic.
I’m welcoming it.

It’s not about Sanders and the Democratic Party in 2016.

It’s about media being little more than propaganda organs manipulating public opinion, elevating nonsense and creating false narratives.

Narratives that dominate here at the rant, by the way.

Kind of a ‘manufacturing consent/discontent’ expose.

Well, I guess I'm sorry that the only point worth discussing was Taibbi's YouTube channel.
I like Matt Taibbi and have ever since his days in Moscow, even more after he wrote "The Great American Bubble Machine" in RS.

But Taibbi seems to gloss over some crucial details sometimes.
No, that doesn't trigger me to launch some imaginary neo-con friendly rage-fest against him, I just think he's feeling like he's obligated to present both sides, but like I said, he misses a few things.

For instance:



Right around that time, we (Sergey Levin, Viktor Netchaev and myself) happened to be in Moscow, visiting Ostankino Studios. They were desperate for pro videocassette tape stock, but corrupt "gatekeepers" wanted a gratuity to "dispense" the tape stock, about as much as the cost of each cassette, so double the price.
I hate to say it, but that is a form of capitalism, even though it was being practiced by Soviets. I don't remember us teaching that lesson to them, unless they were getting their lessons from old American gangster movies.



Enter Jeffrey Sachs, a possibly well meaning but historically blind and deaf advocate of exactly what happened, raw anarcho-gangsterism, a kind of disaster capitalism that sprouts most quickly in the wake of a systemic collapse, which in economic terms, is the equal of a natural disaster like a tsunami or a massive earthquake.
The factory buildings are left standing along with the homes, but they're empty because there's no money to buy anything and no money for rent.

MONTHLY REVIEW: The Necessity of Gangster Capitalism

The shock of this disaster capitalism left a lot of fertile ground in both the former USSR and its nascent breakaway satellite, Ukraine, fertile ground which became the playground for Paul Manafort.

It also simultaneously left the door wide open for Donald Trump, who made his first inroads into Putin's vast stores of criminal wealth back around 1987 after a meeting with Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinina.

Trump fit all the necessary recruitment criteria.


By the late-1990's Trump was already being shut out of Western banks and was forced to seek loans elsewhere. Game, set, match...Russian oligarchs to the rescue, under the watchful eye of Putin.
They had their man, and liberals had nothing to do with it.

I'm not saying that Taibbi is suggesting otherwise.
I'm saying that he's perhaps accidentally committing errors of omission.

I'd really love to ask Taibbi if he even believes that Putin's goal is to castrate Western democracies.
And I'd love to know if he believes that liberals are the main culprits.

Aren’t you conflating?

The thrust is to show media manipulation and bias with ‘Behind The News’. The tricks of the trade.


Not that I have a problem discussing the Russian dirt under Trumps nails being made into a mountain.

I respect Taibbi’s time on campaign trails and in depth knowledge of how the news media works. I’m looking forward to more.

I’m not sure how price gouging video cassette tapes relates to either disaster capitalism or election meddling.

What is anarcho-gangsterism?

Yeah,I searched it already. I’m not finding anything about it.

Podesta worked for Manafort in the Ukraine by the way.

Read the whole thing - it's about anti-anti-Trumpism

I read the whole thing. I dunno if I buy into it. Democrats aren't smart enough to plan that far ahead. Besides, if the trial occurs during prime campaigning season(unlikely because Republicans need to campaign too) the candidates are going to be right where all the cameras are and all the reporters are and all the air time.

Maybe better than half filled high school gyms in Podunk and Bumfeck.

I posted it because it appears to describe where Chunks is coming from.