Eh... Sanders lost. It's probably impossible to prove that he would have won even if there wasn't election fraud--which is quite possible.

@Januari: ad hominem again, huh? How astute.

@newtboy: The talking head in this video isn't as funny as he thinks he is, but at least some of his facts check out.

What there is for actual election fraud is (AFAIK) on a correlation level, that doesn't quite prove things. The wikileaks email release however does prove a slanted bias within the DNC.

Article: Clinton Does Best Where Voting Machines Flunk Hacking Tests

Article: DNC Leak Shows Mechanics of a Slanted Campaign

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwK0jeJ8wxg

In just over four minutes, Mark Blyth provides a more insightful interpretation of Brexit than talking heads manage in a week's worth of circle-jerks.

Interesting concept: the Unnecessariat

"Here’s the thing: from where I live, the world has drifted away. We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. The new bright sparks, cheerfully referred to as “Young Gods” believe themselves to be the honest winners in a new invent-or-die economy, and are busily planning to escape into space or acquire superpowers, and instead of worrying about this, the talking heads on TV tell you its all a good thing- don’t worry, the recession’s over and everything’s better now, and technology is TOTES AMAZEBALLS!"

I dont like cenk for two reasons.

His treatment via completely misrepresentation of Sam Harris is so bad its intellectual dishonesty comparible to and sometimes worse than a fox news talking head.

Secondly, what kind of jerk names his network after co-perpatrators of the armenian genocide? At best a genocide denier.... yuck, no thanks.

That's it, I think I've finally figured it out.

Every night, each host is put into a cold-storage unit until the next show. When they're unboxed for the next taping, their minds are wiped and reverted to an early stage of childhood, so they may emerge into a world of light, color and fantasy, and gawk genuinely at the most mundane, absurd, and overproduced shit-shows humanity has yet to create.

The talking heads on most of these reality shows are the personified equivalent of the laugh-track. Just there to convince you to feel whatever emotion the creators want you to have.

Anyway, opera!

Asher Edelman, the original Gordon Gecko, was on CNBC. One of the talking heads asked him who of the Presidential Candidates would be best for the economy. His answer: Bernie Sanders. Facial expressions are pure gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdI1QHIX1Fo

Well, cheers for sticking with it anyway, I really appreciate it.

It's a one hour talk on the deficit in particular, and most of what she says is based on MMT principles that would add another 5 hours to her talk if she were to explain them. With neoclassical economics, you can sort of jump right in, given how they are taught at schools and regurgitated by talking heads and politicians, day in and day out. MMT runs contrary to many pieces of "common sense" and since you can't really give 10 hour talks everytime, this is what you end up with – bits and pieces that require previous knowledge.

I'd offer talks by other MMT proponents such as William Mitchell (UNSW), Randy Wray (UMKC) or Michael Hudson (UMKC), but they are even less comprehensible. Sorry. Eric Tymoigne provided a wonderful primer on banking over at NEP, but it's long and dry.

Since I'm significantly worse at explaining the basics of MMT, I'm not even going to try to "weave a narrative" and instead I'll just work my way through it, point by point.

@notarobot

"Let's address inequality by taking on debt to increase spending to help transfer money to large private corporations."

You don't have to take on debt. The US as the sole legal issuer of the Dollar can always "print more". That's what the short Greenspan clip was all about. Of course, you don't actually print Federal Reserve Notes to pay for federal expenses. It's the digital age, after all.

If the federal government were to acquire, say, ten more KC-46 from Boeing, some minion at the Treasury would give some minion at the Fed a call and say "We need $2 billion, could you arrange the transfer?" The Fed minion then proceeds to debit $2B from the Treasury's account at the Fed (Treasury General Account, TGA) and credits $2B to Boeing's account at Bank X. Plain accounting.

If TGA runs negative, there are two options. The Treasury could sell bonds, take on new debt. Or it could monetise debt by selling those bonds straight to the Fed – think Overt Monetary Financing.

The second option is the interesting one: a swap of public debt for account credits. Any interest on this debt would be transfered straight back in the TGA. It's all left pocket, right pocket, really. Both the Fed and the Treasury are part of the consolidated government.

However, running a deficit amounts to a new injection of reserves. This puts a downward pressure on the overnight interest rate (Fed Funds Rate in the US, FFR) unless it is offset by an increase in outstanding debt by the Treasury (or a draw-down of the TT&Ls, but that's minor in this case). So the sale of t-bonds is not a neccessity, it's how the Treasury supports the Fed's monetary policy by raising the FFR. If the target FFR is 0%, there's no need for the Treasury to drain reserves by selling bonds.

Additionally, you might want to sell t-bonds to provide the private sector with the ability to earn interest on a safe asset (pension funds, etc). Treasury bonds are as solid as it gets, unlike municipal bonds of Detroit or stocks of Deutsche Bank.

To quote Randy Wray: "And, indeed, treasury securities really are nothing more than a saving account at the Fed that pay more interest than do reserve deposits (bank “checking accounts”) at the Fed."

Point is: for a government that uses its own sovereign, free-floating currency, it is a political decision to take on debt to finance its deficit, not an economic neccessity.

"Weimar Republic"

I'm rather glad that you went with Weimar Germany and not Zimbabwe, because I know a lot more about the former than the latter. The very, very short version: the economy of 1920's Germany was in ruins and its vastly reduced supply capacity couldn't match the increase in nominal spending. In an economy at maximum capacity, spending increases are a bad idea, especially if meant to pay reparations.

Let's try a longer version. Your point, I assume, is that an increase in the money supply leads to (hyper-)inflation. That's Quantity Theory of Monetary 101, MV=PY. Amount of money in circulation times velocity of circulation equals average prices times real output. However, QTM works on two assumptions that are quite... questionable.

First, it assumes full employment (max output, Y is constant). Or in other terms, an economy running at full capacity. Does anyone know any economy today that is running at full capacity? I don't. In fact, I was born in '83 and in my lifetime, we haven't had full employment in any major country. Some people refer to 3% unemployment as "full employment", even though 3% unemployment in the '60s would have been referred to as "mass unemployment".

Second, it assumes a constant velocity of circulation (V is constant). That's how many times a Dollar has been "used" over a year. However, velocity was proven to be rather volatile by countless studies.

If both Y and V are constant, any increase in the money supply M would mean an increase in prices P. The only way for an economy at full capacity to compensate for increased spending would be a rationing of said spending through higher prices. Inflation goes up when demand outpaces supply, right?

But like I said, neither Y nor V are constant, so the application of this theory in this form is misleading to say the least. There's a lot of slack in every economy in the world, especially the US economy. Any increase in purchases will be met by corporations with excess capacity. They will, generally speaking, increase their market share rather than hike prices. Monopolies might not, but that's a different issue altogether.

Again, the short version: additional spending leads to increased inflation only if it cannot be met with unused capacity. Only in an economy at or near full capacity will it lead to significant inflation. And even then, excess private demand can easily be curbed: taxation.

As for the Angry Birds analogy: yeah, I'm not a fan either. But all the other talks on this topic are even worse, unfortunatly. There's only a handful of MMT economists doing these kinds of public talks and I haven't yet spotted a Neil deGrasse Tyson among them, if you know what I mean.

This is how he is every night, no? Are you confusing 'Colbert Report' with the 'Late Show'? 'cause on the Colbert Report everything he said was through the filter of the right-wing talking head character he was playing. Now that he's hosting the Late Show the character is dropped it's just him, which is nice because some people don't get the satire and he has some important things to say;)

I'm guessing you do know that, but there you go.

I've been shouted down in meetings for the depth of field thing so many times. So many people don't understand how inappropriate it is for an interactive experience. Film is about controlling the viewers experience, games are about allowing the player to experience on their own. Not only is depth of field a completely unnatural artifact, its presence in games is a misunderstanding and misuse of the medium. Drives me nuts.
Also, most of the things the talking head says during the demo are devoid of any meaning. There's truthfully not a great deal impressive about the demo itself; these guys are wowing people with great artwork and flawless technical execution, (which is still nice), but the hardware/software used isn't as important as they're going on about.

So, you can't argue against my points, so you change your argument?
You said we are sliding into socialism...I showed you that's wrong and now you say 'sliding to more government' is the same thing. They are not.

You are listening to talking heads. The republicans may promise to 'undo what was done' but in reality they don't do that (they don't really even try, they just try to look like they are, how many 'votes' to 'repeal' the ACA?) but instead increase their control at every turn.

1) Wow! A point we agree on!
2) Um...so you want to say the minimal wall street regulations were 'screwing corporations' and removing them is 'unscrewing them'? Well, lets just leave it at 'I totally disagree' that going back to reasonable rules (rules the republicans removed before, causing the insanity in the market for 25 years) is 'screwing business', it's forcing business to not screw everyone else by fraud.
3) If the government IS in charge of the program (and it is, because states failed miserably to do it themselves) there should be reasonable 'rules' on how to do it. Those 'rules' in this case should be determined by nutritionists, not politicians. Catchup is not a vegetable. It's really just one more swipe at the Obamas for no logical reason in my eyes.
4) It's hilarious that when it's for something you like, you are all pro-federal power to override the states/local laws, but when it's not (like a federal lunch program) they shouldn't be involved.
Socialism and corporatism are the reverse of each other. I should not have to be the one to teach you that.
We disagree as to which party is running faster towards 'oligarchy'. We disagree because you think Faux actually shows NEWS, but they ONLY have propaganda on Faux, not news, not reporting, only editorializing. Those who watch Faux are consistently less informed than those who watch NOTHING. Repeatedly proven fact.

Both parties have failed, so you think we should go for the crazed, farther right splinter party...you know the Naz....oh...sorry...I got confused....teabagger party. They might not all be lynching nuts, but most certainly are. I've seen and talked to them, and walked through rallies. It's not a myth.
Because they were not registered republicans does not make them either democrat or independent, most of them just think the republicans don't go far enough to the right...kind of like a certain German party from the 30's I can mention.

EDIT: I guess since it's OK for the republicans to off hand legislate against the known wishes and vote of the people because they 'control the laws in DC', you would have no problem with Obama using executive powers to bypass congress and to line veto the budget to remove all the superfluous BS the republicans added to it? The president has that power and can executive order and line item veto all day long...but you would be having a fit if he did, no?

if you say so man.
but i think you are confusing politics with policy.

i dont find your comment necessarily wrong but rather inaccurate.reflecting the current rhetoric of certain talking heads without any real analysis.

so let us break down your comment:
1."the democrats have turned socialist"
this is a popular meme for the past decade.its a canard but it does hold a nugget of truth.the meme is a creation to distract you from the reality and instead points to things like welfare queens,social security and obamacare as being "socialist".

there is a growing socialism,but its corporate socialism,corporate welfare and state run capitalism.the republicans are even worse in this regard but both parties serve their corporate masters.

2."republicans have become democrats".
if you are referring to wars of aggression and a growing surveillance state and militarized police force.then i agree,this is antithetical to the republican ideology.though their rhetoric attempts to distract,they have consistently voted for bigger government in regards to:military,police and data-gathering on american citizens.

bravo bob! inadvertent truth sayer that you are!

That's not how science works.
You're just wrong. Models have not 'failed' just because Glen Beck said so.
The 'debate' in the scientific community ended over a decade ago.
You need to listen to someone else besides Faux news talking heads then. Scientists are out there, and right here trying to tell you the science, but if you don't like their data or conclusions you just claim they're liars and cut and paste a ton of right wing lies, confusion, and BS in rebuttal.
Find me a single SCIENTIFIC organization that still questions climate change as fact, and I'll show you an organization that's not really scientific but political masquerading as scientific.

We already have had a case of it. American and British television are like chalk and cheese - we don't have televised spelling bees (and they would seem crazy to us), we don't have angry talking heads telling us what to think like bill oreilly.. we're actually pretty good when it comes to this sort of thing. Might be because we're a relatively old nation, we've absorbed a bunch of different invasions into our populace, wars, fires, famines and plagues.. there's something called the spirit of the blitz; brits don't like to panic, we're not good at outrage and yelling. Keep calm and carry on!

You are empirically incorrect. You are proposing an impossible scenario, that somehow 1.5bn world wide are perfectly aligned, have some say over the actions of all the other people simultaneously and ergo bear some responsibility for any actions committed under the broad umbrella of "Islam"...

http://enews.fergananews.com/articles/2698

To speak of “Islam” as a homogenous phenomenon is analogous to speaking of “Christianity” as a single whole that includes Catholics and Orthodox, Protestants and Copts, and countless other sects, including such marginal ones as the Mormons, the Scientologists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Of course, we never do so, because we intuitively recognize that the label loses all meaning when forced on to such a diverse group. We seldom have such qualms, however, when it comes to Islam, even though the label “Islam” covers just as wide a spectrum of geographic, cultural, and sectarian diversity as the label “Christianity.” If anything, it is even more internally diverse than Christianity, which crystallized around an institutionalized Church from the very beginning. In Islam, such an institution never developed. There is no religious hierarchy and no single individual qualified to pass final judgment on questions of belief or practice. Within thirty years of the death of the Prophet, the Muslim community had split on matters of doctrine. Since then, there have been multiple and simultaneous sources of authority among Muslims. Authority is located not in church councils and such, but in individuals who derive their legitimacy from their learning, piety, lineage, and reputation among peers. This gives Islam a slightly anarchic quality: authoritative opinions (fatwa) of one expert or one group can be countered with equally authoritative opinions, derived from the same sources, of another group, or one set of practices devotional practices held dear by one group can be denounced as impermissible by another. In more extreme cases, such conflict of opinion can turn into a “war of fatwas,” fought out, in the modern age, in the press or in cyberspace. (If Islam were held in a more positive light in the West today, this diversity would be described as a “free market of ideas”!) To speak of Islam as a homogeneous entity ignores this fundamental dynamic of its tradition.

This pluralism extends to the most basic level of belief. The major sectarian divide in Islam, between Sunnis and Shi‘is, goes back to the very origins of Islam. The two doctrines evolved in parallel, and therefore it is incorrect to see in them an orthodox/heterodox divide. All Muslims share a number of key reference points (the oneness of God, loyalty to the Prophet and his progeny, the need to prepare for the Hereafter, to take a few examples), but they have been played upon in different ways by different sects and movements. Nor do the two sects exhaust the diversity, for they both have many branches and various theological and legal schools within them, while many modern ideological groups straddle the divide between the two sects.

Or
http://wasalaam.wordpress.com/2007/02/06/the-myth-of-homogeny-in-islam/

I could provide link after link, discuss Sunni vs Shia, or any one of the innumerable other sects (70+ iirc), discuss Islams war with itself throughout history etc, all demonstrating that you are wrong.

You are portraying (demonising actually) Islam in the same way the two morons in the video are, by making all Muslims responsible for any action committed by a Muslim. You talk about enlightenment, but your post reeks of bigotry, hardly the hallmark of an enlightened person, right?

Incidentally, the "popular" view of Islam is of a homogenous group of people, us vs them, a group to be afraid of, or to attack. The average person on the street (ie. plumb ignorant, much like yourself) would not be aware of just how complex it is, far more so than Christianity. It's exactly why the talking heads who got schooled kept trying to make out that Islam was homogenous, and were proved wrong...

But give it your best shot trying to shoot down the considered opinions of Phd's, scholars, philosophers etc if you want to continue to make a fool of yourself.

Thanks for the link... seen it before, but good nevertheless.
In the media lock down we have right now it takes someone like R.B. to make the mental leaps and join the dots.
If there is better sociopolitical commentary out there about current events I am all ears (links please).

If Brand was more 'together' he'd be towing the corporate news line and sucking that teat or joining the rest of the celebrity morons in drowning us in bullshit.
btw. this guy was just (days ago) character assassinated on Fox news, so he's making waves and also under fire.
Massive props for what he's doing and for keeping it 'real' ie. fuck bland talking heads and regurgitated government/corporate propaganda.