Cenk on MSNBC: Proof That America is Liberal

[CherylK]

Run time: 05:08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChLrLn1wBdc   Posted on YouTube: January 06, 2011 By YouTube Member: TheYoungTurks Views on YouTube: 17768   Posted on DU: January 09, 2011 By DU Member: CherylK Views on DU: 716

 
Cenk Uygur (host of The Young Turks) on his weekly Daily Rant segment on the Dylan Ratigan show on MSNBC shares new poll results showing Americans are progressive on several key issues. Read Cenk's blog on this topic here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/new-poll-confirms-country_b_804005.html

[provis99]

1. Americans are NOT liberal; he is misinterpreting the results.

Americans want to have their cake and eat it too: they want government services, and they want tax cuts. They are not liberal, they are just confused morons.

[ProgressOnTheMove]

2. .......+1

[ljm2002]

4. Wrong.

The survey he cites has 4 choices of ways to cut the deficit. As it happens, those are the only 4 ways that can have a meaningful effect on the deficit. Tax the rich, cut defense spending, cut medicare, cut social security. So given those 4 choices, people overwhelmingly chose the first 2 options rather than the last 2 options. This is a very fair reading of priorities, and the people's priorities are not at all in line with those of the power players.

The rich, of course, do want to have their cake and eat it too. And they are getting exactly that. Their tax rates are at historic lows, and have been for 9 years or so, and yet there has been no spike in jobs created, as their theorists keep claiming must happen when you don't tax them. As for defense, it is absurd to think that we need to spend as much as the rest of the world combined in order to "stay safe". Also, the wars we have been running, were run off the books until Obama took office. So that, too, is a case of having one's cake and eating it too, on the part of the politicians who approved all of this nonsense.

So now the bill is coming due, and all of the sudden it is once again the poor and the middle class who must bear the burden. Never mind that Social Security funds were borrowed all those years, even though it is a trust fund specifically for one purpose. Never mind that there is another kind of trust being broken here, and they are trying to pull the rug out from under working people. As far as Medicare, well we all know that a universal single payer system would cost less overall and produce better results -- we know this because we have other examples in other countries where that is exactly the outcome.

Why you want to twist it into people wanting to have their cake and eat it too is beyond me. The rich and the powerful warmongers, that is *exactly* what they are *already* doing. It's about time we stopped tolerating it.

[ThomCat]

5. Yes, you are right. How the previous post misses the obvious

is mystifying.

These same results have shown up in national polls many times. When people are polled about how they personally want federal dollars spent, and what they would personally want to see for national spending on basic issues, repeatedly the results look essentially liberal. People want basic services, safety nets, and they want only the big guys to be heavily regulated, watched and controlled because it is the big guys most people know can't be blindly trusted with all that wealth and power.

But once the supposed will of the people gets filtered through corporate news media, through PR machines, through paid shills and spokespersons who we are never openly told are shills and spokespersons, through propaganda machines, though cooperating systems of obfuscation and misdirection, what we get is left is right, peace is war, safety net for the poor is personal responsibility, better schools is blame the teachers, and other Orwellian bullshit.

[felix_numinous]

3. Cenk is right

most people want pot legalized, to tax the rich, they are against corporate takeover and they want their social services. It is when the MSM demonizes the word liberal that people do not call themselves liberal. The English language has been destroyed by the media.