18 Comments

• 1. John Drinkwater  |  September 18th, 2010 at 1:03 am

  I’m surprised NBC lets Ames on the air – perhaps they don’t realize who they’re dealing with? Then again, Ratigan casually tosses off radical left-wing statements like our government has been hijacked by a few corporations. I guess it’s just too obvious now, so ‘they’ let it pass. And his ratings are probably so low that nobody really cares. If Ratigan ever becomes a genuine threat, I bet they pull him off the air. However, MSNBC has always been a bizarre operation that’s willing to take chances – remember Alan Keyes? – even when it runs the risk of falling out with those corporations who run the government. Wait, isn’t GE one of those corporations? No?

• 2. empire in decline  |  September 18th, 2010 at 5:37 am

  You’re right about the need for something big that needs to happen based on some sort of ideology.

  The whole reason people are pathetically pining for the days of 9/11 with Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project is because the people need a purpose in their meaningless lives, but since they don’t want the obligation of having to give a damn about big picture problems — along with the sacrifice and burden which may come with such an obligation — they end up letting terrorists give them a purpose and define their destiny.

  All this country has done since it entered the world stage is wait for an event (the sinking of the Maine, WWI, Pearl harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the invasion of Kuwait, 9/11) and then proceed to make up shit about how the United States deeply cares about the world and humanity.

  I guess my point is one day the U.S. better come up with a unifying purpose that doesn’t involve large-scale military confrontations.

• 3. John Manyjohns  |  September 18th, 2010 at 6:31 am

  Great to see Mark on the tube, but WTF is with Dylan Ratigan? He’s like a dyslexic child on meth – rambling on about ideas that he can barely fit into his head. His intentions are good, I suspect. Brevity would help him a lot.

  Related Quote of the Week: Ronald Reagan’s message was “an invitation to repudiate reality.” (Robert Parry, 9/17/10)

  Party on, Mark. Can’t wait for the new edition of Going Postal.

• 4. boson  |  September 18th, 2010 at 12:51 pm

  I know that youu guys like Ratigan a lot, but I have to tell you, I hate this guy, I think he’s someone incredibly ideological and myopic who cannot take his blinders off, just keeps repeating how the US should have “real” capitalism, railing about élite groups – no kidding! – saving each other’s ass etc.

  Mark rightly tries to make the point that free market ideology is an ideological piece of crap, but this guy won’t even listen.

  Guess what, Mr I-believe-in-Capitalism: this is what capitalism actually looks like in practice.
  You’ve got concentration of power (of capital) and then the big ones buy up government too, not just each other…you can call it corruption, but it’s inevitable in such an inegaliterian society, where power is so enormously concentrated.

• 5. Lavrentij "Anarchy99" Lemko  |  September 18th, 2010 at 4:35 pm

  @Empire_in_Decline: have you seen or read Chris Hedges?

  War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN4U24vtnDY

• 6. Lavrentij "Anarchy99" Lemko  |  September 18th, 2010 at 4:45 pm

  Not to defend him, but I think that Ratigan is talking about Schumpeter’s “creative destruction where organizations, like civilizations and organisms themselves, have a natural lifetime – and death. His capitalistic ideological blinders prevent him from seeing the step where the organization (in this case, monopolistic corporations armed with the profit motive to exploit wage slaves insofar as possible and cancerous growth rates) inevitably swallows up the state itself.

  I think that he is something, when he mentions innocent capitalism, of something like “do no evil” Google in the early days. But we have seen how that turned out, unfortunately. Eric Schmidt collecting schmutz on everybody.

• 7. Marcus McSpartacus  |  September 19th, 2010 at 3:20 am

  “Next: MAD MONEY!”

• 8. boson  |  September 19th, 2010 at 4:59 am

  yeah, sure, he’s pushing that Schumpeterian stuff, but unlike him, Schumpeter was no naive guy and saw what this process inevitably leads to. production for profit and competition leads to concentration, that in turn leads to domination of the state by the biggest capitals. this is the reality of capitalism, as opposed to its ideological representation in libertard daydreams. wake up.

• 9. King Mob  |  September 19th, 2010 at 11:00 pm

  I like Ames, but he sounds stupid when he says that the US has been following a “libertarian ideology”. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t believe it, though.

• 10. Anarchy 99 "Mr. Carbike"  |  September 20th, 2010 at 4:18 am

  Yep, that is what I said (or thought that I said). Ratigan is naive and his strain of libertardism is mushy enough that what he might get people to think that otherwise would not and reach their own conclusions regarding the presumption of the infinitely compounding growth of capital where the economy eclipses the ecology upon which it depends to its own peril (i.e., ultimately, to the extinction of homo_Sapiens_). But, nah, nevermind.

• 11. MonkeyMouth  |  September 20th, 2010 at 8:04 pm

  ……..but…..but.at least we are free, and thats what counts. now excuse me while i fire up my beemer and splatter gravel in your faces. I respect Ratigan simply because he at least brings this topic up. Is Ames famous enough for ratigan’s ratings? no. Perhaps he cares? I guess we won’t speculate whose idea it was to have Ames on the air in the first place. But great to see this on tv in the first place. Libertard politics has been in the works since before the great depression. now, the cream has risen to the top and capitalism has worked for those who legislated it. Go America!

• 12. ugggh  |  September 20th, 2010 at 9:54 pm

  This is too fucking depressing. 🙁

  I could barely watch a minute of it. That’s it- I need to move my ass to Canada.

• 13. John Drinkwater  |  September 21st, 2010 at 7:33 am

  There’s a lot of talk about Glenn Greenwald’s appearance on Ratigan’s show yesterday. They got together and sort of ambushed neocon Cliff May, who clearly caught off guard. The topic was Iran, and Ratigan again took a decidedly left-wing, anti-war stance and was very hostile to May. It was great. Greenwald was excellent and cool under pressure as usual.

• 14. mydick  |  September 21st, 2010 at 5:55 pm

  I ask this as a friend, Mark: were you on coke during this interview?

• 15. rolland carpenter  |  September 23rd, 2010 at 9:18 pm

  Thanks, Ames and Ratigan! Our beloved country is in deep trouble. These guys see it and don’t blame it all on Social Security leaches. SS used to be a “contributory” system, but the surplus was too tempting to deficitt spending governments–so it morphed into a mere “entitlement” marginally connected to the “payroll tax”. Bill Clinton has been revived from the undead–to tell us we “saved the banking system”. He’s baaaaack! Obama has proven far too timid to lead anything beyond “community organizing”, so is being mercifully sidelined during the election campaign.

• 16. учти  |  September 24th, 2010 at 2:23 pm

  Ames + Ratigan = twins sep @ birth

• 17. SweetLeftFoot  |  October 1st, 2010 at 4:00 am

  Ames blinks like Ben Swain in that interview.

  (Ben Swain is a character in The Thick of It – the Brit TV series In The Loop is based on. Fucktard Yanks)

• 18. Kevin Schiller  |  December 20th, 2010 at 10:00 pm

  I think the Dylan Ratigan show is the the best news source on the cable net work. at least Dylan has the cahounies to tell it like it is, there’s no beating around the bush with him. he’s strait up, and forth right, and tells it like it is. and that makes a lot of people really mad. I guess its like the old saying goes, if the truth hurts so be it. the really sad thing is that so many people are willing to look the other way, so it will always be business as usual, until the people get organized and take back this once great country.

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