Rachel Maddow loses credibility

A bit of sensational reporting on the evil ways of president Obama and his quest to throw away the bill of rights as quickly as carbon-based energy generation over at CNBC with a segment of the Rachel Maddow show a couple of weeks ago. I watched this little video clip of that segment and couldn't help but get angry with our president. (This has to do with Obama's speech a few weeks ago regarding how to handle the political prisoners at GTMO.)

But wait just a minute. In an effort to sound off on that little clip, I searched for the transcript of the speech and found it here, provided by McClatchyDC.com. I figured I could skim through, find the incriminating words (already in text) and post them here. Not quite.

It turns out, the adored Rachel Maddow has lost real credibility with me. Slick editing? I don't know. The content and tone of the speech by our president are nothing like what Maddow would have us believe. In fact, through the entire speech, I only found a couple of paragraphs of scattered lingo within Obama's speech that could be built into such controversy. (Don't get me wrong--I see no way of reconciling detention of any sorts of suspects, indefinitely, without charges, trial, conviction, and sentencing--with the constitution and bill of rights.)

What's the big fuss, then? Evidently, Maddow's agenda is apparently more driven to malign the president than to report--or opine upon--the facts. That's not something I need.

I wonder how many people are getting their "news" from sources such as Maddow? Maybe this is the source behind so many of those emails going around from the right (without any fact-checking)?

As for me--no thanks, Ms. Maddow. I guess you can't believe everything you see on the internet TV.

You'd better watch what you say (if you know what's good for you).

I guess I've been expecting this for a while, but now it's happened.

An article, a couple of weeks ago, by Joan Whitely at the Las Vegas Journal-Review told of a business that made use of a bit of a loop-hole (at best) in tax law regarding payment of their contractors (employees?). Essentially, they violated the spirit of the law by paying their people (employees, contractors, whatever) in gold or silver coins, of the US mint. So what? It's real money, right? But the catch is that the noted dollar value has since multiplied several times in today's inflated, fiat-based dollar value. So the employers reported the face value of the coins regarding taxation, whereas those paid received current-day dollar values much higher than the face value would lead one to believe.

Oh, horror! (Never mind the practices of the Fed have opened up the staggering difference between minted face value and comparative "paper" dollar values found today.)

So, that's enough of a story right there. The feds are prosecuting for "tax evasion, tax fraud, and criminal conspiracy" (a bit harsh).

It turns out, the Las Vegas Journal-Review has an area where readers can comment on the article. This is where it gets spooky, as author Thomas Mitchell writes:

This past week the newspaper was served with a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. attorney's office demanding that we turn over all records pertaining to those postings, including "full name, date of birth, physical address, gender, ZIP code, password prompts, security questions, telephone numbers and other identifiers ... the IP address," et (kitchen sink) cetera.

Tantamount to killing a gnat with an A-bomb.

There was no indication what they were looking for or what crime, if any, was being investigated, just a blanket subpoena for voluminous and detailed records on every private citizen who dared to speak about a federal tax case.

Can you believe that? Off-hand comments and rantings in the comments section of a news article are being subpoenaed by a federal grand jury? Really? Welcome to our brave, new world, folks. Apparently what we're endowed by our Creator, is revocable by mere mortal.

Yep, I anticipated something like this happening here--someday.

In contrast, I never really expected a lecture on the nature of freedom from ex-leadership personnel from ex-USSR. And yet, we have a fine article to that effect today by none other than Mikhail Gorbachev--calling, essentially, for a second American revolution in the spirit of perestroika. Wow.

I guess I've got my surprise quota for the day.