Hosted by Julianna Forlano, The Ironic News Report is a satirical news parody that skewers politics and current events. This week's edition covers Herman Cain, The Vatican, and Occupy Wall Street and a few other yummy tidbits!

"Conflict of interest poster child Mayor Micheal Bloomberg..." Hilarious.

Good news, my fellow Americans: You don't have enjoy drum circles or want to free Mumia to support Occupy Wall Street! And there's a simple reason for this: Our political and economic elites have screwed all of us, not just out-of-work twenty-somethings.

How have they done this, you ask? Let us count the ways:

• First, our political and business leaders have cheered on the decimation of America's manufacturing industries through trade pacts that open up American workers to competition from countries where workers have no rights and are paid something like negative-five billion cents per year. This has not only led to the destruction of millions of middle-class jobs but has given America an absurd current-account deficit where we basically import cheap crap from China and don't make much of anything ourselves anymore. See this graph:
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LIBERTY SQUARE, NY--despite the early morning rain, morale is high. A reported 100,000 copies of The Occupied Wall Street Journal have just arrived. The young occupiers are busy handing out the four page broadsheet to curious passersby and the protest tourists, who linger on the outskirts of Zuccotti Park, snapping photos of signs and the occasional blue-haired hippie.

"The Revolution Begins at Home" reads a headline. "Learning from the World" reads another piece about Americans taking lessons from the spontaneous Arab Spring. In anticipation of an Oct 5th student walkouts and union marches, a caption reads, "New York Unites!"

The rained on, camping crowd of about 200 has swelled to a respectable 400--or so--with a march planned for 3 pm, which is said will attract more.

Some clothes are wet. Most clothes are wet. Everything is a little wet. Still. I'm told protesters could benefit from blankets, jackets, tarps. Anything to keep people warm and dry tonight, and into the coming...weeks?

The on-sight media people -- the only media to be found today, aside from freelancers -- are in need of large external storage devices. They're recording a lot of data.

The first aid people say they need non latex gloves, roller gauze, medical tape and general supplies.

Food is adequate, but storage containers would help organize the supplies and keep the damn pigeons off my bread.

And I need Vicodin. Send Vicodin. Now.

EDITOR'S NOTE: We sent New York occupiers some pizzas yesterday. And by "we" I mean you guys. We raised over $4000 yesterday (Friday) to feed the ground swell of solidarity demonstrations.

If you want to send these guys a slice all amounts are welcome and appreciated!

There have been buzzings about a potential Senate run by Elizabeth Warren for some time - but things kicked in high gear Tuesday afternoon when EMILY's List Director Stephanie Schriock tweeted she'd meet with Warren in Massachusetts the day previous. Roll Call also reported Warren was "wooing democrats at Boston house parties."

Today the superhero of the economically disenfranchised announced she is filing paperwork to open an exploratory committee for the U.S. Senate race against Scott Brown who replaced Ted Kennedy after his death.

Scott Brown has been no friend to regular Americans. When it comes to big banks on Wall Street, Brown refused to vote for a tax on banks and hedge funds with over $50 billion in assets. When everyday families can't make ends meet, surely Brown could support them over companies with over $50 BILLION in the bank?! But no. Americans took the hit once again because Brown refuses to put people first.

In a piece by Yves Smith on Naked Capitalism Elizabeth Warren becomes the target of a fantasy Presidential run, but the same benefits of her unwinable race against President Obama can also be true as a viable challenger to Scott Walker.

Warren has been branded as a scourge of banks. Even though it should be common sense that selling exploding toasters is bad business, the fact that she talks repeatedly and persuasively about the need for rules to have markets work well makes her a threat to much of Corporate America. Note that their heated opposition to the idea of fair play reveals the importance of treating customers badly, looting the official coffers, or both to their business models.

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In what some would probably view as a self-deprecatory look at the symbiosis between right wing memes, ads, and radio hosts, the Wall Street Journal pretends to take an oh-so serious look at how the lines between political commentary, paid ads, and the right wing have blurred so as to be indistinguishable.

First, the confession:

In radio, a lot of money is already flowing in the other direction. A handful of the top talk-radio hosts in the U.S.—including Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity—are being paid to use their voices and faces to promote politically motivated groups. Messrs. Beck and Hannity also have highly rated television programs on Fox News.

Mr. Beck, whose radio program averages 10 million weekly listeners, has given paid endorsements on the show since May for FreedomWorks, a Washington, D.C.-based libertarian advocacy group that worked closely with tea party groups to support dozens of conservative candidates in last Tuesday's election. As part of what are called "live-read" advertisements, Mr. Beck has urged listeners to join FreedomWorks—a group he also had expressed support for prior to the commercial advertising arrangement.

Oh, noes! Glenn Beck was PAID for those FreedomWorks promos? You mean -- you mean -- he doesn't really BELIEVE all the crap he spews? How can it be?

Not to worry, WSJ readers, because in the interests of "fair and balanced" journalism, the WSJ rushes to let you know that progressive groups like MoveOn and unions have considered paying for embedded ads, and still won't rule it out, while others have done so 'in the past'.

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Fox News Admits It's In Bed With Karl Rove

via Newshounds: Did you know that Fox News is a "private channel"? That's what Fox's London bureau chief, Scott Norvell said in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal Europe on May 20, 2005. He also wrote this: "Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly."

More from Slate: Fox News Admits Bias!

All right all you right wingers, mobilize. Its time to set the record straight. I'll help you this time. Let's get that Scott Norvell on the line and get a retraction. We can say that he was taken out of context. That always works. Email me with a strategy. Blogswarm maybe?

JOURNAL-ISM

via Kevin Drum

I see that the Wall Street Journal is busily cementing its reputation as the most dishonest editorial page in the country. Today they crow yet again about the vast tax burden of the upper classes:... read on

So in 1979 the super-rich earned 3% of the money and paid 5% of the taxes. In 1999 the super-rich earned 10% of the money and paid 11% of the taxes. The Journal clearly has a different definition of "grew more progressive" than the rest of us.

In fact, these numbers might start you wondering. If the income share of the super-rich tripled but their tax share only doubled, doesn't that mean that their tax rates must have gone down? Indeed it does.

So shed no tears for the super rich in America. Their incomes have tripled in the past couple of decades and at the same time their tax rates have decreased by 9 percentage points. That's a pretty sweet deal in anybody's book.

How low can you go!

Companies Sue Union Retirees
To Cut Promised Health Benefits

I wrote a short piece last week in which I tried to remind Congress that we need to have hearings on the financial meltdown for obvious reasons:

Just a reminder.

I know we've asked for a Truth Commission on torture over and over again, but what about the financial catastrophe the world just experienced? When will hearings be held to uncover the facts that led us and the world to financial ruin? I know we have many basic facts of what happened, but when will an actual hearing take place? If nothing is officially uncovered then how can we stop another one from taking place?

Bill Scher of CFAF heard a little birdy and it sounds quite promising on that front now:

Word is circulating in Washington that members for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will be named this week.

The commission is supposed to resemble the 1930s Pecora commission that dug into the culprits behind the Great Depression and laid the groundwork for major bank reform. But that will only be true if the commission is run by aggressive seekers of truth, independent of the financial industry, willing to use their subpoena power, knowledgeable enough to have warned us of impeding crisis in the first place despite market cheerleading from the political and media establishments.

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Speculation from Reuters last week on who might be named was not terribly encouraging, though most of the names floated clearly were coming from conservative circles, as Republican leaders will pick four of the 10 members.

Cut...OK, here's where we come in. Updated: No members of Congress can be on the commission, but

I think an Alan Grayson or Henry Waxman type would be good choices for the commission. . We do need a panel of brilliant minds that has real progressive representation, but what we also need are people that have an appreciation for the "dramatic." That is, they should know how to ask questions with their allotted time in such a way that it will be highly informative and entertaining at the same time. These are the moments that can really educate Americans, but the commission needs members that understand how to use their valuable time---not to pontificate---but to educate and uncover. And it needs to be riveting while getting to the truth of this mess.

Please ask Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid to make sure they put together a great panel. Nancy was almost scheduled to do a live chat on C&L last week, but because of my family issues, we are rescheduling. However, I think if we let her know how strongly we feel about the new Pecora Commission and ensuring that progressives are solidly represented, she'll come through.

Here's her contact info.

Harry Reid is another story. Here's Reid's office info, so please let him know too.

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How well did that work out the first time?

Paul Krugman:

Here's what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago - and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

Mr Deregulator would destroy what's left of our health care system. For those who have it at this point and can barely afford it, that is.