From a campaign email I got a few days later:

But here's the problem: his program is watched by a lot of people and the day after his show, our unsolicited web contributions dropped by 60%, from an average of $7,000 - $10,000 a day to about $3,000 a day.

That is a serious hole in the budget of a shoestring operation. Well done, John. I'd tell you to go back where you came from, but I'm from there too, and if you can't make it in comedy in the UK, you are either greedy or untalented. Or both.

QE in the United States works by the Federal reserve exchanging deposits it holds for members banks, from Federal reserve bonds to Federal Government issued bonds, Remember the Federal reserve is a private bank and not government owned, yes the chairmen is appointed by the president but that is the extent of it, its board of directors is filled by the 6 largest New York banks.

QE is a stupid response to give to the student debt problem.

Further the debt is held by several different entities, as their is more then one type of student debt, Primarily you have subsidized debt, and unsubsidized federally insured debt, their is others but this is the bulk of it. The subsidized debt is held by mostly by the US government(over 90%), and any debt held by the government can simply be forgiven, no QE, the government just chooses not to collect, easy peasy, Then a bunch of the debt(good chunk of the unsubsidized) is held by sallie mae and other government operated corps, now these companies are publicly traded so you can't just forgive the debt, it will have to be bought off them, Their is no avenue todo this without congressional legislation, Granted if you forgive the 90% of subsidized debt that is reachable, you can probably shame congress into doing something on the rest.

This is just another good reason to do so...
That stuff can rot your brain...

and they is us. " - Pogo the possum (True 50 years ago, and more so today.)

"Look out kid, they keep it all hid." - R. Zimmerman (Ditto)

Stein-Baraka 2016

I could handle Maher's cocky attitude and smarmyness, even when I disagreed with him I would still enjoy the show because of the content.

That changed when he started making outright false statements to fit the narrative that all the damn media seems to be pushing.

I am still working on the wife to let me cancel our cable subscription entirely but she is pretty reticent because she likes to watch a lot of the cooking shows and whatnot.

I have noticed though that my tolerance for bullshitters is getting lower and lower by the week.

The biggest silver lining we have from this whole situation is it has clearly illustrated that the Democratic Party is anything but democratic and sure as shit isn't working towards the goals it pretends to.

Our entire political system has become akin to Professional Wrestling....

Colbert is perhaps the biggest disappointment. Having shown what he was capable of at the White House Press Correspondents Dinner, we all thought in those dark days of the Bush cabal that he was a liberal hero. He earned a lot of respect for that incredible performance. He's night and day in his new cush seat taking over for Letterman. What a farce. Soft as they come, when the Big Bucks start rolling in.

Whoever put that website together had the right idea. There's definitely an obvious opportunity right now to revive such a website or online feature. There are plenty of nominees available, especially with this wave of "librul" comic newscasters of the past ten years or so (i.e Stewart, Colbert, Maher, Oliver) who appeared to be challenging the PTB, but if you looked a little deeper realized they weren't up for the challenge of really speaking truth to power.

To your point, I highly recommend this article in the Baffler from a few years ago, "The Joke’s on You: Presenting . . . The Daily Show and The Colbert Report" by Steve Almond. None of these guys we've come to know and like for their liberal views are really what they seem. Most are content to wear the comfortable Neoliberal jacket, never criticizing the real seats of power. They could never approach the greatness and fearlessness of a George Carlin or Bill Hicks or Richard Pryor or Lenny Bruce. Those guys really lived it and risked their careers (and in Bruce's case his life) to tell searing, often controversial (to mainstream audiences) truths.

I've linked this elsewhere but it's so fitting again for folks who haven't seen it to be reminded that many of our so-called liberal comics are part of a capitalist media construct that actually has the inverse effect of replacing civic engagement with smug self-satisfaction that "we're so much better than the Republicans." The whole piece is brilliant and well worth reading. Here's a couple of excerpts:

But their sanctification is not evidence of a world gone mad so much as an audience gone to lard morally, ignorant of the comic impulse’s more radical virtues. Over the past decade, political humor has proliferated not as a daring form of social commentary, but a reliable profit source. Our high-tech jesters serve as smirking adjuncts to the dysfunctional institutions of modern media and politics, from which all their routines derive. Their net effect is almost entirely therapeutic: they congratulate viewers for their fine habits of thought and feeling while remaining careful never to question the corrupt precepts of the status quo too vigorously.

Our lazy embrace of Stewart and Colbert is a testament to our own impoverished comic standards. We have come to accept coy mockery as genuine subversion and snarky mimesis as originality. It would be more accurate to describe our golden age of political comedy as the peak output of a lucrative corporate plantation whose chief export is a cheap and powerful opiate for progressive angst and rage.

Back in October of 2004, Stewart made a now-famous appearance on the CNN debate show Crossfire, hosted by the liberal pundit Paul Begala and his conservative counterpart Tucker Carlson. Stewart framed his visit as an act of honor. He had been mocking the contrived combat of Crossfire on his program and wanted to face his targets. The segment quickly devolved into a lecture. “Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America,” he told Carlson. “See, the thing is, we need your help. Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations. And we’re left out there to mow our lawns.” The exchange went viral. Stewart was hailed as a hero: here, at last, was a man brave enough to condemn the tyranny of a middling cable shoutfest.

But who, exactly, did Stewart mean by “we”? He’s not just some poor schnook who works the assembly line at a factory then goes home to mow his lawn. He’s a media celebrity who works for Viacom, one of the largest entertainment corporations in the world. Stewart can score easy points by playing the humble populist. But he’s as comfortable on the corporate plantation as any of the buffoons he delights in humiliating.

The queasy irony here is that Stewart and Colbert are parasites of the dysfunction they mock. Without blowhards such as Carlson and shameless politicians, Stewart would be out of a job that pays him a reported $14 million per annum. Without the bigoted bluster of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, The Colbert Report would not exist. They aren’t just invested in the status quo, but dependent on it.

Consider, in this context, Stewart’s coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. His initial segment highlighted the hypocrisy of those who portrayed the protestors in Zuccotti Park as lawless and menacing while praising Tea Party rallies as quintessentially patriotic. But Stewart was careful to include a caveat: “I mean, look, if this thing turns into throwing trash cans into Starbucks windows, nobody’s gonna be down with that,” he said, alluding to vandalism by activists during a 1999 World Trade Organization summit. Stewart then leaned toward the camera and said, in his best guilty-liberal stage whisper, “We all love Starbucks.” The audience laughed approvingly. Protests for economic justice are worthy of our praise, just so long as they don’t take aim at our luxuries. The show later sent two correspondents down to Zuccotti Park. One highlighted the various “weirdos” on display. The other played up the alleged class divisions within those occupying the park. Both segments trivialized the movement by playing to right-wing stereotypes of protestors as self-indulgent neo-hippies.

Rachel Maddow
Who I first heard on Air America radio. She had a segment on the Iraq war and would light into the Bush/Cheney administration and talk about the illegality of the Iraq war.
Then after she got her own show and Obama was elected, she quit talking about the illegality of the war.
Remember that Obama said that he was going to end as soon as he could.
No one knew that he was trying to keep the troops in Iraq after the SOFA. The only reason that the troops left Iraq because the Iraqi government wanted to be able to prosecute our troops and Obama said no.
Now look at how many troops are back in Iraq over the government's objections.
Has Rachel said anything about this, or the Libyan and Syrian wars?
I don't know because I refused to watch her when all she talked about was the republicans.
And now I read here how much she's shilling for Hillary or when I'm visiting my aunt and they have her on.
Last week my uncle was talking about Hillary and said that he "loves that woman"
I was there today and he said that Obama is the best thing this country has had fun decades.
It's not use trying to talk to either of them about his foreign policies or how he let the bank CEOs off.
Just like the people on DK who will not look at Hillary objectively, they won't either.
Then there's the other side of the family who love trump.
Yesterday one cousin said that she's going to unfriend another one after she posted something about Hillary.
If the actions of the Bush administration were wrong, then why is it okay for Obama to do the exact same things without any criticism?
Libya started out with a no fly zone and look at Libya now.
Obama has said that he regrets what he did to Libya, but Hillary has no regrets about the number of innocent people who have been killed.
Killing people is a funny way of protecting them, don't you think?