Right Wing Brainwashing

Give a listen to Episode 424: Kid Politics from This American Life, and especially to Act One: Trickle Down History.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/424/kid-politics

We invaded Granada because of the threat that island nation represented to the United States? Really?

The staff at the Reagan museum is telling children that a free and vocal press was to blame for the death of 19 servicemen. This isn't history or education, it's brainwashing and reframing, and I find it abhorrent.

But then, that's the modus operandi of the right.

If the press had done it's job from 2001 to 2003 and the years following the invasion of Iraq like it did then and in the Nixon years, I think things most certainly would have been different during W's 2 terms, starting with the greater probability that there wouldn't have been a second term.

The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going (Single Page) from ProPublica.com

Worth the read for anyone who wants to understand what happened to cause the economic crash from inside the complex world of collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and individual bankers, CDO managers, and hedge funds.

http://www.propublica.org/feature/all-the-magnetar-trade-how-one-hedge-fund-helped-keep-the-housing-bubble

If you prefer listening to the story, you can stream it or download the an MP3 file from http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/405/inside-job