Charlie Sheen; VERY IMPORTANT

Now there's a meltdown made in heaven. . . .or someplace.

can"t wait for that...

He does seem to have lost the plot.

That couldn't be farther from the truth. If you want to understand why the media feeds us a steady diet of lies, half truths, and silly distractions, read the classic book on the subject, "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. There are quite a few reasons for the lack of real reporting in corporate news sources, not the least of which is the self serving agendas of the corporations that own the major media outlets.

In fact Noam Chomsky's popularity is an instructive phenomenon in itself, busting the myth of the idiocy of the common folks. Mainstream media outlets hate him (seeing as how he's their harshest, most incisive critic, as well as a harsh critic of the agendas set by the corporations that own them), yet his books are best sellers, and his speaking schedule is booked 2 years in advance, for sold out rooms. People are hungry for real substantive analysis of the real issues ignored or misrepresented in the "mainstream".

The nationwide popularity of non-commercial, challenging shows like Amy Goodman's daily, syndicated, "Democracy Now"- is further evidence of the powerful hunger of ordinary people for real information about the world around them.

Pop culture is shoved so far down our throats so relentlessly that it's no wonder you might have the impression we're a bunch of idiots, but that's because it serves someone else's agenda to distract us from things that matter.

And then there's the fact that politics is so bathed in dollars, and has so excluded average people that a lot of people are so cynical about the prospects for meaningful participation in our democracy, that they give in to the distractions out of hopelessness.

Many people are overworked, overstressed, and find events so depressing that they've stopped paying attention, and are seeking numbness-not because they're dumb, and just can't get enough of the exploits of spoiled jerks like Charlie Sheen.

Charlie Sheen, you use to be my idol. What is happening with you?

You seem to have more faith in the status quo than I do. I believe the mainstream media is not employed to inform, but to sidetrack the masses, using the bread and circuses strategy. I see important news not being reported, but being obfuscated by the mainstream media.

Charlie Sheen is the new poster boy for sobriety.

...there's other videos on the sidebar....if you click through to Utube

It is hideous indeed. I'm sure we won't know the true death toll for years, as radiation related deaths can take time to happen. I bet it will be in the 10s of thousands; I believe I saw an official estimate that it would end up to be at least 10,000.

Typically in disasters where we have to rely on the corporations and officials whose duty it was to protect public safety, and who certainly at one point sold the public on the idea that an accident of catastrophic proportions could never happen due to the wonderful safeguards built into the plants, can be relied on to down play the severity of their failure by at least a factor of 10.

Now would be a good time to recall that nuclear proponents in the US were bitterly arguing that the technology was artificially expensive due to an overabundance of safety regulations companies had to abide by, when actually, nuke plants wouldn't exist without public subsidies. given against the will of the majority of the public that have always held the technology to be too dangerous.

I might sound a bit harsh blaming the disaster on corporate and government officials, when it was after all an unpredictable, and unprecedented quake.

The reason I do is that predictably unpredictable natural disasters are one of the well know arguments against nuclear power, and now we are seeing the horrible human costs that nuclear proponents have always assured us would never happen, as they downplayed warnings that such accidents could happen, and are an unacceptable risk. The proponents won the battle, and now Japanese are paying with their lives.

My neck of the woods is just as vulnerable, and we're overdue for a major quake. Where does one hide when the world's been turned into a giant testing laboratory for dangerous technologies?