Bill Moyers' guest on his latest Journal program was William Greider, who Bill descibed as a former "top editor of The Washington Post, a columnist for Rolling Stone, and is now National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation."

Greider says the reasons that we are having the crisis in banking and financial systems are the conservative free market ideology and stripping of regulatory laws. He says Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve share in the responsibility, as they "tipped hard (...) in favor of capital and against labor." Meanwhile, they discouraged economic growth, full employment, and rising wages. He says there is also "a level of fraud" that includes lies from and to banks, mortgage houses, their customers and bond buyers.

According to Greider, the current crisis has provided an opening "for a deep transformation in American politics." He says that people have to "get out of their sort of passive resignation" and take on a "much more serious role as citizens." They have to "be willing to punish the political powers," and force a change in "values of the system." Greider says he is optimistic because he thinks the "lovely story" that has been told about the "magic of the marketplace" is over.

Bill Moyers is right on the mark again!  His article in In These Times entitled  "Is the Fourth Estate a Fifth Column?  Corporate media colludes with democracy’s demise." is telling it as it is.  He starts with this story:

I heard this story a long time ago, growing up in Choctaw County in Oklahoma before my family moved to Texas. A tribal elder was telling his grandson about the battle the old man was waging within himself. He said, "It is between two wolves, my son. One is an evil wolf: anger, envy, sorrow, greed, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is the good wolf: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The boy took this in for a few minutes and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf won?"

The old Cherokee replied simply, "The one I feed."

Democracy is that way. The wolf that wins is the one we feed. And in our society, media provides the fodder.

For more look below:

I think I might be writing this diary more for myself than for anyone else, but it might also be the case that my musings take you somewhere.

Some of you may have noticed I have kids.  I have two, two boys, nine months apart age-wise.  The older was adopted from an Eastern European orphanage at age 14 months.  Three years later, the younger was adopted, also from an Eastern European orphanage at 46 months (almost 4).  

The younger one, having suffered the first four years of his life in an institution, has many challenges.  That's where the mothering part comes in.  The "better" part is explained below.  

With Barack Obama's right turn over the past few weeks, since Hillary Clinton dropped out and left him as the only game in town, it further reinforces what I have believed from the start.

I will vote for Obama, but did not support him.  That is no secret.  I believe he is aligned, just like Clinton (who many alleged I supported), to the corporate, Establishment Democratic Party, and it takes no real effort to see this.  I also believe that he takes much of his support for granted, particularly now that there is no alternative.  But that does not mean I will be a lemming.

In speaking my mind on the subject, in offering dissent to the established view at this site, I and others have been insulted personally on a regular basis, called trolls, GOPers, and the like.  Ironically, Obama praises dissent, but many of his ardent supporters at this site are incapable of tolerating it.  So it goes.

But this diary is about something else.  So please read on.

I'm not sure exactly how the Bill has been fleeced, but I know the education aspect still remains.

So a big thank you to everyone who has signed petitions along the way, I felt it was of utmost importance that our returning vets had a good chance towards a career when they come home, together people such as yourselves from many different blogs and sites got active and we were heard. Even when such high ranking people such as Senator John McCain staunchly opposing the measure and a Geroge W. Bush threatened veto against it, the American people have spoken.

With tremendous support and overwhelming passage in both Congress(256-166) and the Senate (75-22 McCain was a no show) and a reversal of the veto threat by the President, our returning vets now have a fighting chance.

Bill Moyers recent excellent commentary on the oil motive for the Iraq War led me to ask him to do a follow up story: why are Democrats silent about the role big oil played in lobbying for the Iraq War, their plans to profit from it, and most of all, how they have stuck us with the bill and given us NOTHING in return.

I am posting this diary to draw attention to another great show from Bill Moyers which aired this past Friday. As an introverted person who is much more of a reader than a writer, it does not have much added in terms of my own thinking. I am hoping others will find the topic as interesting as I did and share a few thoughts here. Also a brief web search resulted in many related columns and articles that are linked to as well.

Welcome back for more veep speculation! Last thread (two days ago) we considered the top Southern candidates. Averaging in those votes yielded a slightly different top 14 average vote-getters overall as the thread before that--namely, Fmr. Sen. Bob Graham (FL) dropped down a few spots, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg moved up into the top tier--so we'll consider this new top 14 in today's poll.

I'm thinking of running some more "break-out" polls in the coming days, alternating with the top 14 candidates, averaging in each day's votes as we go.

Please discuss any v.p. candidates in the comments. The correct format would be to simply state their name, unless you have further comments, in which case, "I believe ___ ___ should be Obama's v.p. running mate because..." "Oh my God, where's Johnny Politician?!" would be a bit alarmist, don't you think? I'm sure they're fine. I'm happy to hear all ideas, and of course I'm no official gatekeeper, so play nice.

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I want to make sure people caught this:

Obama's criticism of McCain came in a speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He told the city leaders that he would be their partner and appoint the first White House Director of Urban Policy to help them cut through federal bureaucracies. The promise sparked a standing ovation.

This reminded me of an episode of Bill Moyer's Journal from not too long ago

 It is often impossible for me to read entire accounts of what our government has done in the name of Democracy in one sitting.  The torture documents were the most difficult.  But I return to the text, feeling that it is my obligation as a safe, comfortable citizen to at least know of the facts.  The nearly 3000 pages that the AP wrestled from the grip of our government through a Freedom of Information lawsuit in 2006 that told of the horrors at Guantanamo challenged my assumed obligation to know.  The Associated Press series earned an award at the University of Florida.( http://news.ufl.edu/...
University of Florida News - UF Freedom of Information Center honors AP writer ) When the Pentagon was forced to release the names of the detainees, I felt angst for them and their families....what if it were I?  Would anyone demand to know?

There has been much discussion both here and on the rest of the interwebs about the quality of journalism by one of the recently deceased and that subject has been flogged to death over the last few days, so rather than continuing to discuss whether the equine in question is in fact deceased, I thought it might be nice to take a look at what quality journalism looks like from one of the still living who's been keeping America informed for over four decades-Bill Moyers.

I've long admired Bill Moyers' style, from the PBS special and book The Secret Government to The Power of Myth. I even got to meet him once when he was promoting Healing and the Mind. I found him to be a thoughtful and intelligent gentleman. Watching him just gently bring down that ambushing producer from O'Reilly was pure gold.

I'm enjoying his new book, Moyers on Democracy for it's eloquence and relevance to our current state of affairs. There is a chapter contained within it called "The Fight for Public Broadcasting" It's one of the longer chapters in the book but within it, he addresses the non-issue that has become an issue in this Presidential campaign, and makes it a issue again - the infamous flag pin.

Sadly with Tim Russert gone, NBC has some big shoes to fill on "Meet the Press".  Obviously it won't be the same show without Tim but already there is speculation over who will be the new host for "Meet the Press".

Welcome back for more v.p. speculation! I had a doctor's appointment today, so I'm a bit late posting, but I decided to go ahead as it is still the 5 o'clock hour here on the left coast. As promised two threads ago, since the top 14 average vote-getting candidates list was unchanged from the previous thread I ran, today's will present the second tier of vote-getters and add one new name not yet tested here, Fmr. Sen. Tom Daschle (SD), who replaces Gov. Ted Strickland (OH), who definitively took himself out of contention yesterday.

I'm thinking of running some "break-out" polls after that, perhaps by age, sex, military experience, place on the political spectrum, etc., some of which I've done before, but we'll see about that after the next thread.

Please discuss any v.p. candidates in the comments. The correct format would be to simply state their name, unless you have further comments, in which case, "I believe ___ ___ should be Obama's v.p. running mate because..." "Oh my God, where's Johnny Politician?!" would be a bit alarmist, don't you think? I'm sure they're fine. I'm happy to hear all ideas, and of course I'm no official gatekeeper, so play nice.

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For those of you that may have missed it, Bill O'Reilly ambushed Bill Moyers by sending a producer to pester him about coming onto his show.  Moyers, in an attempt to show what real journalism is like, destroyed the producer, Barry Porter Porter Berry, and even offered to give him work as a true journalist.

Moyer's recorded the entire event, knowing that O'Reilly and Fox News were going to edit it and take it completely out of context to try to trash him.  Lo and behold, he was right.

By now, most of us have seen the video of Porter Berry's ambush interview gone wrong with Bill Moyers.  It was diaried here and how I first heard of it.  And it's just fun to watch over and over and over again.  Bill Moyers rocked, but I really wanted to find out who the guy was at the end who gave Porter Barry a taste of his own medicine.

At the National Conference for Media Reform 2008 in Minneapolis.

Take the jump.