My Two Cents: This is a pretty damn awesome web series. I’m amazed that this doesn’t have a hell of a lot more hits than it does. It has been out for 6-7 months. End Two Cents.

Trailer:

Click here for the whole series.

If you vote “Other” tell us who in a comment.

When my book Economics on Trial (1991) was published, I prepared an advertisement with the headline: “Japan and Germany Win World War III,” followed by these words: “Their formula multiplies wealth so rapidly that they will achieve their goal of world domination by the year 2000.” In the ad, I referenced the sound economic model that had transformed war-torn Germany and Japan into economic powerhouses and strengthened their stock markets in one generation. The principles were high savings rates, low taxes on capital and investment, low inflation, balanced budgets, and free markets.

I sent a copy of my ad to Friedman, and he took no time debunking it. “This prediction is a bunch of nonsense,” he scribbled over the ad copy. “I will not live long enough to see it falsified, but you will. In the year 2000, the U.S. standard of living will be higher than the Japanese.” He was, of course, proven right.

Friedman’s anger flared again in the late 1990s, when we gathered in Vancouver for a Mont Pelerin Society meeting. Milton and Rose Friedman were in charge of the conference program. Its title was “Can Creeping Socialism Be Stopped?” In one of the breakout sessions I asked Friedman about his easy-money solution to Japan’s economic problems. I held up an article he published in The Wall Street Journal, “Rx for Japan,” in which he advocated a massive printing of yen to jumpstart the Japanese economy, while ignoring such free-market solutions as cutting taxes, deregulating, or opening up the Japanese economy. “Isn’t printing more money another example of creeping socialism?” I asked. He was not amused, and noted that, historically, increasing the money supply has stimulated economic recovery, and that fast monetary growth was necessary, given Japan’s fragile condition. I countered, “Ah, so there is a free lunch, after all, Dr. Friedman?” “A free disaster!” he interjected with high emotion. Afterward, Professor Jim Gwartney came up to me and said, “You attacked God today!” Indeed. Yet even free-market icons can make mistakes.

A year later, Milton and Rose were invited to speak at the New Orleans Gold Conference, an annual gathering of hard-money investors. After Milton spoke, he took questions from the audience. I tempted him with the question, “Who’s the better economist, Ludwig von Mises or John Maynard Keynes?” I knew Milton would answer straight; he didn’t care what gold bugs thought. “Keynes,” he proclaimed to a shocked audience. When asked who was the greatest economist ever, he didn’t say Adam Smith, but settled on Alfred Marshall, the British economist who invented supply and demand curves.

Rose dissented. I had never seen her disagree with her husband in public, but she stood up and said that Marshall was infamous for treating his wife poorly and refusing to support her professional career as an economist. In all my private meetings with the Friedmans, Rose was always graciously reserved and seldom if ever argued with her husband. I had heard a rumor that she differed with Milton on Austrian capital theory, and one time I asked her if this was true. She simply smiled and winked.

My most embarrassing moment with the Friedmans came later that evening when I invited them to dinner at the best restaurant in New Orleans, Commander’s Palace, along with two friends, Gary North and Van Simmons. After we ordered and exchanged greetings, Milton turned to me and asked in a serious tone, “Mark, why are gold bugs so passionate about gold?” It was a perfect opportunity to talk about the importance of “honest money,” a theme that Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and other Austrian economists have taught for years. I pulled out of my jacket pocket a large oversized $20 banknote, a “gold certificate” issued in the 1920s. Together we read the words spelled out on it: “This certifies that there has been deposited in the Treasury of the United States of America TWENTY DOLLARS IN GOLD COIN payable to the bearer on demand.” I then explained, “Milton, we’re passionate about gold because under the gold standard, there’s a contract between the government and its citizens. For every gold certificate issued, the government had to back it up with a $20 gold coin. Under a genuine gold standard, the Treasury can’t just print up money to pay their bills. It’s honest money.”

All along, I felt that Friedman was simply playing along, since after all, he was the world’s foremost monetary historian. I went on, “So, what kind of contract exists today between the government and its citizens? Milton, do you have a $20 bill?” He reached into his pocket and handed over a $20 bill. “See, the contract has completely disappeared. Now it only says ‘Federal Reserve Note.’ And the Fed doesn’t even pay interest!” I paused and said, “Milton, this $20 bill isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.” And I tore it up! I ripped Milton Friedman’s $20 Federal Reserve Note into a half-dozen pieces.

Suddenly, the atmosphere changed. He turned to me and said angrily, “Mark, you had no right to destroy my property!” Rose chimed in, “Yes, Mark, you shouldn’t have done that. That was Milton’s private property.” Gary North and Van Simmons stared in horror and didn’t say a word. Milton’s voice rose, and other dinner guests looked over at us and could see emotions rising. At this point, I was worried. My relationship with the Friedmans seemed to be ending that very night. Finally, I said, “Well, I suppose you want your money back?”

They assented heartily. So I reached into my pocket and pulled out a $20 St. Gaudens Double Eagle gold coin, handed it to Milton, and said, “Okay, here’s your $20!”

He looked startled and stared at the coin. I thought he would be pleased, but I was wrong. Suddenly, he handed it back to me. “I don’t want it!”

I gulped, struggling for words. “But Milton, it’s a gift. Here, take it. It’s a $20 gold coin, worth a lot more than a $20 Federal Reserve Note.”

“No,” he repeated emphatically. “I don’t want it.”

After an agonizingly pregnant pause, I finally figured out a solution. Setting the coin aside, I reached into my pocket, pulled out a fresh new $20 paper note, and handed it to him. “There, okay, will this help?”

He calmed down and took the $20 bill. Gathering up some courage, I brought out the gold coin again. “Look,” I said, as I handed it over to him, “look at the date.” He examined the coin again. “Oh, 1912 — my birth year!” He laughed haltingly. Rose looked on and smiled.

I explained that the entire evening was a set-up, an opportunity for me to give him a St. Gaudens Double Eagle gold coin minted in the year he was born. The coin was in a PCGS certificated plastic container with the words, “To the Golden Milton Friedman.” I told Milton and Rose that my friend across the table, Van Simmons, was a coin dealer and had gone to great lengths to find a 1912 Double Eagle, which was rare. Van added that it had been shipped overnight from Switzerland and had arrived only an hour before dinner. I think that only then did the Friedmans recognize what was going on. The next morning they came up and thanked me for the coin and my gesture of appreciation.

Throughout the evening Gary North — a well-known economic historian and gold bug — said nothing. But in the morning, he came up to me at the conference and said something profound. “Mark, I’ve thought all night about what happened at dinner at Commander’s Palace. You and I have an ideology of gold. And Milton has an ideology of paper money. Mark, last night you attacked his ideology!”

Milton and I never discussed the coin incident again. (I keep his torn-up $20 bill in my wallet as a keepsake.) We met on many other occasions, but I shall never forget our last lunch together in San Francisco. There for the Money Show, I took the opportunity to call him. We met at his favorite Italian restaurant, the North Beach. For the past few years he had walked with a cane and traveled only on cruises or in private jets. At age 94, he had weak legs, a serious heart condition (after two open heart surgeries in the 1980s), and was losing his eyesight. Yet his mind was still sharp.

We discussed the latest Nobel laureates in economics. “We’re running out of good names,” he said. I showed him a Photoshopped picture I had created of him standing next to the 6 foot 10 inch John Kenneth Galbraith, the premier Keynesian and welfare statist of the 20th century. Galbraith towered over the diminutive Friedman. Beneath the picture* was a funny line from economist George Stigler: “All great economists are tall. There are two exceptions: John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman.” Milton was so pleased with the photo and caption that he sent it to all his friends.

As we left, I asked him, “Do you think you’ll live to be 100?” He answered quickly, “I hope not!” But he was almost always upbeat about life, even to the end. He was not a religious man, but he expressed interest in religious topics near the end of his life. His favorite poem was Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” which ends, “ ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ — that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” He discovered both in a full and complete life. I consider it a privilege and honor that I knew him.

*Taken from Infowars. Written by Kurt Nimmo.

In response to the idiotic and pointless burning of the Koran by a Florida pastor and the deadly riots that followed in Afghanistan, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has proposed limiting the First Amendment.

“I wish we could find a way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war,” Graham told CBS’ Bob Schieffer on Sunday.

Graham mentioned government censorship of the First Amendment during the Second World War. FDR signed Executive Order 8985 in December of 1941 and established the Office of Censorship. The order gave a legion of bureaucrats “absolute discretion” over the exercise of the First Amendment and the free speech of all Americans.

In the years following FDR’s decree, the government attempted to squelch free speech a number of times for political reasons, most notably in regard to the Pentagon Papers. During Bush Senior’s invasion of Iraq in 1991, the Pentagon revisited wartime censorship and prevented journalists from independently reporting the news. Bush and Reagan tightly controlled the flow of information during the invasions of Panama and Grenada.

In 2004, then vice president Dick Cheney outlined what Americans should expect henceforth – a war against shadowy enemies that will last generations.

President Bush went so far as to tell NBC’s Matt Lauer it was possible the war could never be won, while Democrat John Kerry said terror would probably never be done away with, but that it might be reduced to a “nuisance.”

Graham reminded us that our rulers have in mind a forever war not unlike the one envisioned by Joe Haldeman in his Hugo-winning 1976 novel by the same name. It is said Haldeman wrote the science fiction novel in part as an antiwar response to Robert Heinlein’s fascistic Starship Troopers. Haldeman served in Vietnam.

It seems Graham and his neocon fellow travelers are in agreement with Heinlein’s premise in the novel that social responsibility requires being prepared to make individual sacrifice, especially when humanity is engaged in a never-ending “Bug War.” A character in the novel, Colonel Dubois, specifically criticizes the Declaration of Independence as naïve and unrealistic.

According to neocon globalist faction, our once proud heritage of liberty and its reflection in the Bill of Rights has “no contemporary relevance,” as Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnettnoted in 2007. “Sure it was fine that persons should be secure in their papers and effects back in the old days when there wasn’t a danger of terrorism and mass murder,” said the professor in regard to the Fourth Amendment. It is “archaic [and] we don’t need it anymore.” Strangely, Mr. Barnett is considered a libertarian.

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s cavalier attitude regrading the First Amendment and its imagined subservience to the dictates of an undeclared war against enemies largely manufactured by government is once in vogue now that a Democrat president has attacked yet another faction of officially designated Muslim enemies.

Installed puppet Hamid Karzai – a former advisor for the transnational Unocal – has demanded our representatives draft a resolution condemning the free speech of Florida pastor Terry Jones, who unwisely burned the Koran in order to make a political statement.

The First Amendment was drafted specifically to protect political speech. The cherished idea of true sovereigns free to speak their minds, however, soon withered under attack – beginning with the Alien and Sedition Acts passed in 1798 by the Federalists – and has continued on and off until this day.

“Ten to 20 people have been killed,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “We’ll take a look at this of course. As to whether we need hearings or not, I don’t know.”

It is wholly predictable that the government will spend its time and our money – or the money they borrow – to condemn an individual who has managed to offend the medieval religious sensibilities of people who kill Christians and burn churches. Seven UN workers in the Afghan town of Mazar-e Sharif died Friday during riots. Mr. Jones may have outraged millions of people, but he did not kill anybody.

Congress has yet to condemn Muslims in Afghanistan who have burned the U.S. flag and torched aneffigy of Obama. According to MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, who filled in for Chris Matthews the other day, burning the Koran is far worse than burning the U.S. flag.

Of course, Muslims have all the right in the world to burn the U.S. flag and burn Obama in effigy – so long as they own the flag and the materials they used to patch together Obama’s likeness.

Terry Jones, according to no shortage of Congress critters, does not have this right, even though his country has a Constitution its Congress has sworn to uphold and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

My Two Cents: LOLz, womens are straight up crayzay! End Two Cents.

*Taken from Yahoo News.

Screaming “this is evil” as she attacked it with her fists, a woman visiting the National Gallery in Washington set upon a painting by famed French impressionist Paul Gauguin last week.

“She was really pounding it with her fists,” a bystander told the Washington Post. “It was like this weird surreal scene that one doesn’t expect at the National Gallery.”

A male gallery patron eventually restrained the yet-to-be-named woman before she was able to do damage to the work, which was covered by a protective piece of plastic.

The 1899 work (shown above) is titled “Two Tahitian Women.” According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the French-born artist, who spent time in Tahiti in the early 1890s, was quite taken by “the beauty and serene virtues of the native women.” The impressionist also abandoned his wife and family in France to live among the Tahitians–a move that he claimed was central to reviving his career, but that has earned him no small amount of infamy, especially among feminist critics.

The Met notes that Gaugin took an exoticized view of the typical Tahitian woman as “very subtle, very knowing in her naivete” but “still capable of walking around naked without shame.” Gauguin–who died of syphilis in 1903 at the age of 54–had also claimed to have fraternized sexually with many Tahitian women, even though some of them were barely out of adolescence.

The motives of this particular attacker are unclear, but the art world has at times taken a strikingly indulgent view of such episodes. Take, for example, the renowned case of Tony Shafrazi, who made his name as an art-world vandal in the 1970s, and who now runs a prestigious Manhattan art gallery.

In 1974, Shafrazi spray-painted “KILL LIES ALL” over Picasso’s “Guernica” while it hung in the Museum of Modern Art. He now displays the works of artists such as Francis Bacon, Keith Haring, and David LaChapelle in the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York. He explained to People magazine in 1984 that no matter his achievements as a gallerist he’d be remembered mainly for defacing the work of one of the art world’s geniuses.

Shafrazi also observed that his own brush with infamy was a reminder of Picasso’s own dour view of art-world celebrity. “Toward the end of his life, Picasso said he wouldn’t wish his fame on anyone,” Shafrazi told the magazine. “It is almost like a curse.”

Still, Shafrazi doesn’t seem to be making much of an effort to live down the Guernica episode. At the opening of a 2008 exhibit, two strippers dressed as cops presented Shafrazi with a huge Guernica-themed cake as onlookers laughed and applauded.

My Two Cents: I could’ve sworn this guy ran for president with an anti-war message. I thought he promised to bring the troops home ASAP. I also thought he trashed Bush for being a warmonger. Damn, maybe I imagined it. End Two Cents.

*Taken from CNSnews.

At least 858 U.S. soldiers have died in the Afghanistan war since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009. That equals 60.13 percent of the 1,427 American soldier fatalities so far in the ongoing 10-year war in that country.

For March 2011, there were 26 U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan, including 4 non-combat related fatalities. That brought the total combat and non-combat deaths for 2011 (January, February, and March) to 70. Those fatalities include 57 combat-related deaths and 13 non-combat deaths.

For the 858 U.S. deaths since Obama’s inauguration, 791 have been combat-related. This means that for the 1,241 combat-related deaths that occurred since the Afghanistan war began in October 2001, about 64 percent happened in the two years since Obama took office.

Last year was the deadliest for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, with 497 combat and non-combat fatalities. Improvised explosive devices (IEDs), or homemade bombs, continue to be the number one killer of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

The Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, which border Pakistan and have been the central focus of U.S. military operations in recent years, continue to be the deadliest regions for American soldiers.

CNSNews.com’s database of U.S. military fatalities in Afghanistan is derived from Department of Defense (DOD) news releases and various media accounts.

The database includes American troops who died in and around Afghanistan while supporting military efforts against terrorism under Operation Enduring Freedom. That operation was launched on Oct. 7, 2001 to topple the Taliban regime and pursue al Qaeda after it used Afghanistan as a base for the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States.

More than 40 troop-contributing countries are involved in the campaign under NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, commanded by U.S. Army General David Petraeus.

In addition to those who died in Afghanistan, CNSNews.com’s database includes some Americans who died in Pakistan and others who died in the Arabian Sea while supporting operations in Afghanistan.

Gen. Petraeus testified before members of Congress last month that U.S. troops are on track to begin withdrawing in July 2011, although he did no specify the scope of the withdrawal.

The Obama administration has said it is committed to having Afghan forces in the lead of their own security by 2014 and has added that it will maintain a long-term relationship with Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai last month announced the areas that are ready to be transitioned to his country’s forces.

Nevertheless, Gen. Petraeus and a top-Pentagon official have indicatedthat they would be open to maintaining jointly-operated military bases in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

My Two Cents: Government hates competition. End Two Cents.

*Taken from Yahoo Finance.

Federal prosecutors on Monday tried to take a hoard of silver “Liberty Dollars” worth about $7 million that authorities say was invented by an Indiana man to compete with U.S. currency.

Bernard von NotHaus, 67, was convicted last month in federal court in Statesville on conspiracy and counterfeiting charges for making and selling the currency, which he promoted as inflation-proof competition for the U.S. dollar.

His Charlotte-based lawyer, Aaron Michel, is appealing that verdict. He wrote in a motion filed Thursday that von NotHaus did nothing wrong because he didn’t try to pass the Liberty Dollars off as U.S. dollars.

“The prosecutors successfully painted Mr. von NotHaus in a false light and now the U.S. Attorney responsible for the prosecution is painting the case in a false light, saying that it establishes that private voluntary barter currency is illegal,” Michel wrote.

The trial was scheduled to resume Monday in Statesville. The case involves more than five tons of Liberty Dollars and precious metals seized from a warehouse, which the government wants to take by forfeiture, according to federal prosecutors and Michel.

Von NotHaus began issuing Liberty Dollars in 1998, as head of the Evansville, Ind.-based National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code. In 2007, the group’s headquarters were raided along with the Sunshine Mint in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, where the coins were made. The case is being tried in Statesville because one of the organization’s top officers is based in Asheville, and because an undercover investigator made contact with the group in North Carolina.

Federal prosecutors successfully argued that von NotHaus was, in fact, trying to pass off the silver coins as U.S. currency. Coming in denominations of 5, 10, 20, and 50, the Liberty Dollars also featured a dollar sign, the word “dollar” and the motto “Trust in God,” similar to the “In God We Trust” that appears on U.S. coins.

“Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism,” U.S. Attorney Anne Tompkins said in a statement after von NotHaus was convicted.

Von NotHaus has argued it’s not illegal to create currency to privately trade goods and services. He also has said his organization took pains to say the Liberty Dollars shouldn’t be called “coins” and shouldn’t be presented as government-minted cash. Among other benefits, Michel’s motion argues, the Liberty Dollars were a means to help keep currency in local communities by creating networks of merchants and consumers who used the money.

Numerous cities and regions around the country have experimented with local currency, but laws restrict them from resembling U.S. bills or from being passed off as money printed by the federal government.

The concerns raised by von NotHaus and his group are finding resonance among some state lawmakers, too. About a dozen states have legislation that would allow them to produce their own currency backed by gold or silver in the event of hyperinflation striking the U.S. dollar. North and South Carolina are among those states.

That’s partly why von NotHaus’ group has been followed for years by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that tracks political extremism. Long before the government began its investigation into von NotHaus, the group was raising concerns about the popularity of Liberty Dollars among fringe groups on the far right.

“He’s playing on a core idea of the radical right, that evil bankers in the Federal Reserve are ripping you off by controlling the money supply,” said Mark Potok, spokesman for the group. “He very much exists in the world of the anti-government patriot movement, whatever he may say. That’s who his customers are.”

Von NotHaus is currently free on bond. If the conviction against him is upheld, he faces up to 25 years in prison and a fine of $750,000. A sentencing date has not been set yet.

*Taken from CBS News.

Attorney General Eric Holder today will announce that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in a military commission, CBS News has learned. A source says the commission will be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Trying Mohammed in a civilian court and closing the Guantanamo prison were once some of the Obama administration’s top priorities, but political realities have hamstrung both goals.

In November 2009, Holder announced that Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 plotters would be tried in New York City, but he scrapped that plan in the wake of public consternation. Republicans and some others in Washington said the decision compromised national security, while a CBS News poll at the time showed that most Americans thought such suspects should be tried in a closed military court.

Holder said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” last July that he preferred trying the alleged terrorists in civilian court because the United States has an “extremely capable” court system that has proven effective in these kind of cases.

“I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there. We have proven an ability to hold in our federal prison system people convicted of, charged with terrorist offenses very effectively, very safely,” he said.

Congress in the past year has tried to undermine the administration’s goal of closing Guantanamo by restricting funding for such policy changes. Meanwhile, the case of Ahmed Ghailani, the first Guantanamo detainee to be tried in civilian court, last year cracked open the debate over how to bring to justice detainees in the “war on terror.” Ghailani was convicted of one conspiracy charge but acquitted of more than 280 other charges related to his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.

*Taken from the American Dream.

Every once in a while, establishment control of the mainstream media cracks for a moment.  In an effort to achieve higher ratings, mainstream news programs will invite guests on that promise to be “interesting”, but then they will say something that is not part of the script and the entire system will go into a state of chaos for a moment. One example of this happened recently when two CNN “infobabes” interviewed former CIA officer Michael Scheuer about the situation on the ground in Libya. They asked Scheuer some questions regarding the role of the CIA in Libya, but the interview rapidly moved in some directions that the “infobabes” were not anticipating.  Instead of sticking to the “Republican” or the “Democrat” script, Scheuer ripped both parties and he detailed many of the reasons why we should have never gone into Libya at all.

The “infobabes” grew increasingly uncomfortable as Scheuer described how large numbers of the resistance fighters in Libya have fought against U.S. troops in the Balkans, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.  They did not seem pleased at all when Scheuer declared that the civil war in Libya is “none of our business” and that to the rest of the world this conflict looks like “Americans killing Muslims for oil” all over again.

The funniest part of the interview was when Scheuer accused one of the “infobabes” of “carrying the water for Mr. Obama”.  After that statement, the female anchor that Scheuer was addressing was visibly flustered and quickly went to a commercial.

Video of this CNN interview with Michael Scheuer is posted below.  This is a video that should be shared with everyone you know….

Wasn’t that hilarious?

When a big time establishment news network such as CNN goes “off script” it can be a beautiful thing to watch.

Of course Scheuer was exactly right.  We never should have gotten involved in the civil war in Libya.  It was none of our business.  When the rebels picked up arms and started shooting at government forces, they should not have been surprised when Gadhafi’s forces started shooting back.

Over the past few decades, there have been some very real genocides happening all over Africa, but the U.S. never seemed to care about any of those.

But now the mainstream media has been trying really hard to spin the civil war in Libya into a “great humanitarian crisis”.

Well, that might fool some of the American people, but as Scheuer aptly pointed out, the rest of the world sees this as just another U.S. war in the Middle East for oil (and banking).

But instead of getting a balanced view of the war in Libya, most of the time the corporate media has focused on an endless parade of establishment Republicans and establishment Democrats that fully endorse the war.  Of course the Republicans all try to score some political points by questioning how Obama is going about doing things, but in the end most Republicans and most Democrats are fully on board with what is going on in Libya.

Nearly everyone in the mainstream media seems to be fully on board with this war as well.

Why?

Well, because virtually all of the major media outlets are owned by the establishment, and the establishment wants this war.

Have you ever noticed that the news seems to have the same “flavor” no matter what channel you turn to?

There is a very good reason for that.

In an article that I previously authoried entitled “Who Owns The Media?“, I explained that six incredibly dominant corporations control most of the news that we see today….

Back in 1983, approximately 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the United States.  Today, ownership of the news media has been concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations.  These corporate behemoths control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day.  They own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites. Sadly, most Americans don’t even stop to think about who is feeding them the endless hours of news and entertainment that they constantly ingest.  Most Americans don’t really seem to care about who owns the media.  But they should.  The truth is that each of us isdeeply influenced by the messages that are constantly being pounded into our heads by the mainstream media.  The average American watches 153 hours of television a month.  In fact, most Americans begin to feel physically uncomfortable if they go too long without watching or listening to something.  Sadly, most Americans have become absolutely addicted to news and entertainment and the ownership of all that news and entertainment that we crave is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands each year.

The six corporations that collectively control U.S. media today are Time Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., CBS Corporation and NBC Universal.  Together, the “big six” absolutely dominate news and entertainment in the United States.

Yes, there are always some minor differences in news broadcasts, and in recent years we have seen outlets such as Fox News attempt to become “the establishment Republican news” and outlets such as MSNBC attempt to become “the establishment Democrat news”, but at the end of the day the kind of news that we get from all of them is pretty much the same.

But sometimes there are moments when establishment control of the news crumbles for just a moment.

Another example of this happened recently when Donald Trump made an appearance on The View.  Not that Donald Trump is a huge “rebel”, but apparently he has not gotten the message that you are not supposed to question Barack Obama’s birth certificate on television.

The following is video footage of Trump’s absolutely chaotic recent appearance on The View….

In the United States today, if you want to get into college or if you want to apply for a good job usually you have to give a great deal of information about your background and produce a whole host of documentation about your past.  For many jobs, applicants actually must be willing to submit to a very thorough formal background check.

Whatever you may think about Obama, you have to admit that what he has been able to accomplish is rather extraordinary.  He applied for the most important job in the world, and yet he kept vast sections of his background a complete and total secret.  He did not produce his birth certificate, he did not produce his Columbia University transcript (or much information at all regarding his educational background), there are quite a few years of his life that really can’t be accounted for at all and there are very serious questions about his Social Security number.

Yet in spite of all that he convinced the American people to make him the president of the United States.

That has got to make Barack Obama one of the greatest con men in U.S. history.

Hopefully in the future a law will be passed or the American people will demand that all politicians disclose at least the most basic information about their backgrounds.

For Obama to be able to get this far while keeping vast portions of his background a complete and total secret is absolutely mind blowing.

In any event, it has been refreshing to see some “cracks” appear in the control of the mainstream news lately.

Whether it is the war in Libya or whether it is Barack Obama’s background, the truth is that we should all be free to ask the important questions.

Our founding fathers believed very strongly in freedom of speech for a reason.  Free speech shines light in dark places and it holds people accountable.  Free speech protects our freedoms and it keeps tyranny at bay.

Free speech is very precious and it is easily lost.  Once free speech is gone it is incredibly difficult to get back.  Let us cling to free speech and cherish it deeply, because it is absolutely central to who we are as a nation.

*Taken from the Washington Post.

Ai Weiwei, one of China’s most prominent artists and an outspoken critic of the communist regime, was taken from Beijing’s airport by security agents Sunday as he was about to board a flight to Hong Kong. Police later raided his studio.

Ai is the most high-profile activist to have been detained in a government crackdown in which dozens of bloggers, human rights lawyers and writers have been swept up.

The arrests seem related to the government’s concern that activists in China want to launch a “jasmine revolution” similar to the popular uprisings roiling autocratic governments in the Middle East and North Africa.

Some of those detained have been accused of “inciting subversion of state power,” a catch-all term used to jail anyone critical of Communist Party rule. Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, faced the same charge and received an 11-year prison sentence.

Since mid-February, when anonymous calls for “jasmine rallies” in China began circulating on the Internet, 26 people have been arrested, 30 have disappeared and are presumed held by security forces, and 200 have been placed under “soft detention,” meaning their movements are restricted, according to a count by the group Chinese Human Rights Defenders on Thursday.

But the arrest of Ai and the others appeared to mark what human rights groups and others called a new and more sinister phase in China’s ongoing, and typically cyclical, repression of dissidents. In the past, such sweeps of activists have preceded major events on the calendar — the 2008 Olympics, major Communist Party meetings or the Nobel Prize ceremony in Oslo last December — and have receded once the event ended.

The arrests of bloggers and writers, in particular, on subversion charges suggests a rollback of the limited open space recently allowed for free opinion on the Internet and particularly on popular Twitter-like microblogging sites.

“This is not a crackdown in the classic cycle of tightening and loosening,” said Nicholas Bequelin, Hong-Kong based China researcher for Human Rights Watch. “This is an effort by the government to redraw the lines of permissible expression in China, to restrict the most outspoken advocates of global values.”

Activists such as Ai — an active Twitter user — have been continually pushing the boundaries of what is allowed, while increased connectivity is giving ordinary Chinese people more access to uncensored information and viewpoints.

Chinese Human Rights Defenders, in its Thursday statement, said, “In the context of the democratic uprisings taking place in the Middle East and North Africa, the Chinese government, fearful of its own people, is counting on getting away with staging one of the most repressive campaigns in more than a decade because of the international community’s preoccupation with events elsewhere.”

The outspoken Ai, 53, was the artistic director for the “Bird’s Nest” Olympic Stadium, but he later turned critical of the Games. He has been arrested before: In 2009, in the western city of Chengdu, Ai was beaten so badly that he required surgery to have blood drained from his brain. Late last year, he was stopped at Beijing’s airport from flying to South Korea because authorities feared he might go to Oslo to attend the Nobel ceremony for Liu. Liu is in prison, and his wife, Liu Xia, is under house arrest.

Ai was prevented from having a solo exhibition of his work at a Beijing gallery this year, and in January authorities demolished his newly built Shanghai studio. In March, Ai announced that he was opening a studio in Berlin to escape the restraints on artistic freedom in China.

Police detained Ai on Sunday morning, and his assistants and attorneys said they were concerned that they have not had any communication with him since. After his arrest, police blocked off the streets to his studio and raided it, carting away laptops and the hard drive from the main computer, Ai’s workers said.

They said eight staff members and Ai’s wife, Lu Qing, were taken to the local police station for questioning. Even as night fell, Lu and two staffers were still being held, they said.

Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer, said he hoped Ai’s international fame would provide him some protection while in police custody.

Liu also said the arrest appears to be “related to the intense international situation, such as what happened in Egypt, Libya and other Middle Eastern countries.” But he said it was too early to say whether Ai’s Twitter posts and interview statements about jasmine rallies in China played a part.

On Feb. 24, amid an online campaign for Middle East-style jasmine rallies in major Chinese cities, Ai posted on his Twitter account: “I didn’t care about jasmine at first, but people who are scared by jasmine sent out information about how harmful jasmine is often, which makes me realize that jasmine is what scares them the most. What a jasmine!”

Twitter is blocked in China, except for those with a virtual-private-network line or an Internet connection from outside the country. Ai has 72,000 followers.