The Rachel Maddow Show

[Aja]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/

I love her and ED sorry if I missed something .....

[faceless]

I've not seen her before, but she comes across well for sure, cheers Aja

On their site there's a wee button at the bottom right of the video that says 'clip and share', if you click that you see the embed option. Click that, then paste (ctrl-v) in here and it works... that probably sounds more complicated than it is

[major.tom]

I do take issue with one thing Obama said about not needing walls between rich countries and poor countries... What exactly are trade agreements?

I got a chuckle out of Romney's spokesman's quote, something like, "we're not worried about overseas opinion; we're worried about American opinion." The next morning's headline should've been "Romney's Camp: 'We're worried...'"

Romney's "gaffes" go far further than dissing the London Olympics. Yesterday, he tried to praise Israel by saying it was their culture which earned them a per capita GDP of $21,000 to the Palestinians' $10,000. To ignore the fact that Israel controls all aspects of Palestinian life, then claim it is cultural inferiority which makes them poor is offensive. It also downplays the real disparity by a factor of 10. The actual numbers are $31,000 & $1500 respectively; the ratio's not 2:1, but 20:1.

I'm sure there were racists who held these views during South African Apartheid, but I don't recall a Presidential candidate ever expressing them so openly.

sources:

• BBC
  
• Globe and Mail
  
• The Guardian

[MegaChairmanMao]

Hate her.

"Despite her self-congratulatory, self-satisfied demeanor, Maddow is anything but a leftist; rather, she is an Obama apologist of the first order. In fact, she’s a toadyish liberal apologist for imperialism.

While challenging Obama’s failure to overturn the infamous "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" (DADT) ban on openly gay members of the military, Maddow fails to question the most important policy and political trajectories of the Obama administration, including the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, the continued policies of indefinite detention of erstwhile "enemy combatants," the extension of domestic surveillance, and the arrogation to itself of the right to assassinate without trial or even arrest American citizens deemed terrorists. Today, DADT is a matter of internecine banter amongst those in agreement about the major function of the U.S. military: the enrichment of the war industry itself, the purposeful destruction of capital, and the use of the American working class as tools for the material and political enrichment of the corporate class.

Like the rest of the American liberal-left, Maddow accepts the premise of the Bush and now the Obama administration’s argument that US forces in Afghanistan are actually attempting to rid the nation of its terrorist elements and to establish a workable democracy. During her visit to Afghanistan and in subsequent comments, Maddow never seriously challenged the official version of events or in any way expressed opposition to the war, now the longest in US history. Waged for the control of the Caspian Sea for the purpose of controlling oil, and for mineral and other resources, the war in Afghanistan is not materially different from the Iraq War. Both are wars of imperialism, and the political establishment means to use any manner of propaganda to ensure their continuance, as the recent cover story of Time Magazine epitomizes. Maddow’s coverage of the wars, or rather her lack thereof, serves as such state propaganda.

Maddow merely represents the neoliberal flavor of commentary in support the corporate oligarchy and its speculative and militarist adventurism. While she and her fans may believe that her openness about sexual orientation and gay rights qualifies her as a flaunted member of the professional left, these features are merely a costume to disguise her rather reactionary political positions. She’s not a radical at all. The daughter of a former US Air Force captain and raised in Castro Valley, California, Maddow has not, despite her apparently racy identity façade, overcome her family background. She has not so much as matured into an individuated person free from the class and military biases of her family."

http://www.legitgov.org/Decrepit-Character-Professional-Left

If she genuinely challenged the status quo then she'd have been thrown off MSNBC like Cenk Uygur was. She tows the establishment line like the rest of the US media personalities.

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate." - Noam Chomsky

People like her personify the pro-Western propaganda model.