I see so much reporting of the media that seems befuddled at how our media, and narrative, continually get fouled up. Everyone seems to think the bamboozlement is profit or ratings or goofball driven. Or that some Karmic Kismet just keeps getting in the way of the truth being told.
I am a long-time, very critical observer of Mass Media. I have no doubts that I am correct, but I see very little actual reporting on 1st Tier Alternative Media that ever echoes my diagnosis.


I think EJ Dionne and Rep. Kilroy are being naive.


I think almost everyone writing about "The Media" coverage is being naive.

This is not about ratings
This is not about profits
This is not about infantileism, about wanting to see fights and exciting stuff versus boring stuff

This is about control. The media hides much more than it digs up. Much more.
This is about defining perception, spinning reality, playing hide the salami with the truth.

Keeping us scared, confused, self-conscious, buying, reacting.
Corporate Media own our airwaves and the mass mind-control equipment, do you think they are not using it?
They aren't falling for old "Tricks" like Rep. Kilroy says.
They aren't covering noise and ignoring calm for the reason Mr Dionne says: Playing to the lowest common denominator and feeding our stupid love of a fight.

This is about control. This is about NOT LETTING a national movement of outrage  take root against our corporate-owned Legislators. This is about NOT LETTING a movement get started in favor of The People. This is about squashing a People's movement and replacing it with a fictitious one of Corporate parentage.


Yes, money is involved.
Do you know how much money is spent on Pharma and Health ads? Hospitals and HMO's?
And Corporate Media is basically IN BED with every other Corporate Sphere. They help broadcast the ads, messages, and wishes of ALL their customer/coporate/advertisers. But money is secondary.

If the do muckraking and expose' news coverage about how criminal these same Corporate Clients are, they will lose all their business. But frankly, they never really consider doing that so it is a moot issue.
They are all on the same team, against us.

Money is secondary. A by-product of owning the mass media. If you own all the microphones and transmitters and relays (because you talked the Government into GIVING you the airwaves for a promise to be nice - with the most powerful instrument on earth), the money will come. It will always come.

The Media is always going to do what All Corporations want, every time.
They are never going to come clean about what they are doing with OUR airwaves and our trust.
Hiding Corporate Malfeasance is Job One.
Since Corporate Malfeasance is pervasive and the root of most every problem that confronts us....that is a pretty big media disservice (crime) being perpetrated on a most massive scale.

The little man is their TARGET, their PREY. Not their customer. Not their friend.

I posted this almost 3 months ago.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/dmihm1/2009/04/hiding-behind-madoff.php

Since then most of the Wall St. Titans are still haggling over stock options and timeshares and private jet allowances in their CYA Severance Packages. They aren't being turned away from establishments or being turned out of their homes. Their firms are juggling TARP money and playing 'hide the salami' with their remaining funds.
But in that same 3 months Bernie Madoff has been on a fast track, financially turned inside-out, a trial and a verdict. It takes longer to get a trial over a parking ticket.

I haven't got much traction with my comment (below) on HuffPo or elsewhere. Nobody seems to have an opinion, let alone sharing mine. But the Wall Of Silence is nothing compared to the Corporate Media blackout and the Scapegoating of Madoff.

Comment:
Bernie Madoff was an isolated, insulated, Lone Wolf of the financial markets. Sure, he had to use a lot of the channels and bank systems and follow regulations just like most of the big actors. But he was alone. He in NO WAY represented GSaks or Merrul or Bofa or AiGee or even GW Buusch. I am sure FOX puts up a (D) next to his name whenever it appears on their airwaves.

He has been very useful as a public face and scapegoat. He alone swindled billions.
Large corporations and banks stole or wasted Trillions. Most of their principle actors are still very prominent and directing current policy.

Bernie Madoff is being used as a human shield by the Corporate Media to divert attention away from the Masters Of The Universe gang.

And he serves to persuade the viewers that our huge institutional and infrastructural problems are to be boiled down to One Man's Pathology instead of the truth - Massive fraud and corruption and institutional larceny and our whole system stacked so mercilessly against the citizen.
Madoff is just another version of the successful Media Mantra - A Few Bad Apples.

Of course I do not condone anything Madoff did. Turning him out of his home and seizing every asset seems the least they could do. But has even ONE IOTA of that indignity been the lot of the Wall St Titans?

I really have grown dispirited over the lack of solid connection drawn by Media between Corporations and Republicans.

Set aside for the moment all of the Democrats who cannot seem to operate in a fashion that puts people first....and let us just consider the different smokescreens thrown up by nearly ALL MEDIA as to who really pulls the strings of republicans. Contrary to popular memes, Repubs are not invigorated by their conservatism. Their social values. Their loyalty to a CAUSE. Their love of family. It isn't even a White Thing.

Republicans cannot keep faith with their God. Cannot keep faith with their spouses. Cannot keep faith with their constituents. But they NEVER ONCE in recorded history have failed to keep faith with MONEY or their Corporate Masters. Perhaps that is because they truly ARE Corporate Beings....creatures designed and animated by Big Wealth.

I would surely appreciate a News Source which properly labeled and tagged them as the servants of the Rich....the emissaries of Commerce....constantly and consistently.

And of course we need to be weeding out the Dems who are Corporate Critters, or those who are being romanced by Corporations to betray their People.

I sometimes understand how Naive commenters and young folks do not draw the fine distinction. But I cannot understand how reporters, journalists, and talking heads continue to bamboozle and obfuscate the one CORE, ROCK HARD principle of all Republicans and RightWing enterprise as CORPORATE CORPORATE CORPORATE.

Corporations are effectively using the Philosopher's Stone....the old alchemist's holy grail....to turn Lead into Gold. They are turning the Natural World into pocket money. Everything on this planet is fair game for them to strip, chew, grind, smelt into wealth for themselves. Humans used to be, and many of us are still, part of whatever Natural World is left....and therefore we are also Grist for their Mill. Behold HealthCare....the ultimate CAPTURING of an entire people and the metering out of their years based on profit. Discard them when profit is less sure.

We witnessed quite a backlash from the populace in 2006 and 2008....and quickly saw the clamps come down on that nonsense. Obama brougth quickly into line, reforms dashed, other initiatives squashed and ground into the mud. We are going nowhere the Corporations don't want us to go. At least it is time to stop calling their representatives Conservative, Family Values, Religious and other phoney names. Let us at least recognize WHO we are dealing with....InHuman Juggernauts with unlimited lifespan and powers - Corporations.

The History Channel had a new documentary - Ripped Off: Madoff and the Scamming of America

I did not watch the whole thing. I was farely disgusted as numbers were thrown around....as one commenter on the show wrote, "The stock market imploded in the blink of an eye, while we all watched as more than 800 trillion dollars of our collective savings vanish."

My point is that Madoff was at most, 50 billion of that. And he is not the described "Insider" much of the media would have us believe. He was an Ex-Insider. He really was not part of the Good Old Boys White Collar racket. He was a stand-alone operation that really did not partake of any of the normal Financial World. He was hiding funds, pyramid-ing funds, stashing funds, wasting funds, and lying to folks. Not even making the trades and investments he was purporting to make.

Well, who was responsible for the other 799.95 Trillion in evaporated wealth? The 800 Trillion number has me miffed, not sure if it is accurate, but what IS accurate is Bernie Madoff was an almost insignificant player in what shit went down. He affected an almost miniscule spectrum of the country...rich Jewish investors, and mainly Jewish Institutional investments. My condolences to those who lost with him.
The rest of us are left to deal with TRUE INSTITUTIONAL malfeasance and crimes. Built right into our systems....tax codes, savings, retirement plans, employment benefits....all being rigged to pour money into the Financial Sugar Daddies pockets and leave us empty handed. Legal, Massive, Institutionalized Grand Larceny.

The point is, Madoff is GLADLY being made the Poster Boy for this whole affair. My feeling is the vast majority of Americans don't know the names or companies of any of the REAL PRINCIPLE actors in this calamity. And our Corporate Media is happy to keep it that way.

AIG is now on the lips of some Americans. I bet most of them know nothing of AIG, what it's core business is, or even why THEIR name, above all others, has bubbled to the surface.
My feeling is that AIG was at the center of such a huge web that they escaped the LID the Corporate Media has placed on this story. They were so tied in, and at the crossroads of such HUGE malfeasance, and the biggest recipient of Bailout Money....that they just could NOT escape some name recognition in this whole Grand Theft America. However, the Corporate Titans have done an excellent job shielding themselves, along with their Financial Sympathizers like Paulsen, GoldmanSachs, Geithner, Summers, et al....from any real scrutiny that is commensurate with their crimes.

Bernie Madoff is being held out like a rag-doll Human Shield by the Corporate Media. Madoff was never a big player on the national scene. He does not have ties to GE, ABC, Disney, CBS, ViaCom, NBC, FOX......and he was not an advertiser. Letting him burn in effigy is an easy way to scapegoat a "bad apple" and let the rest off relatively Scot Free.

I live by the motto that our "Media" has increasingly become the Keeper of Secrets rather than an illuminating investigative force. They are busier burying the truth and spinning distractions...and almost never uncovering the important crimes and malefactors. Because basically, they are the prime malefactors, and what they are doing is criminal and inhuman and anti-Constitutional. They are guilty of the largest Betrayal of Americans that can be fathomed....yet they base their whole approach as being "The Most Trusted" news sources. They are now in full Cover Up Mode, running their own Ponzi Scheme of Truth.

Can we just say it?
The Republicans should just be called what they are....The Corporate Party.

Why are we calling them Republicans? Why are we floating around the horsehit mantras, which were always empty and contrived, about SMALL GOVT, personal responsibility, fiscal conservatism...BLAH BLAH BLAH

There are no such things. Every time we mention them, we give them life. We breath some cache into them.
They are dead. Empty husks, never was anything inside.

We can't call them Republicans anymore. Corporate Party will do, in lack of a more precise name. But I don't think you can get more precise than that.

Name me one (even minor) initiative from the Republican Party, in the last 15 years, that was aimed to help a big chunk of the avg. american population.

Prez. Buusch his all-out-assaults on the environment in his last days, and the "burrowing" of dozens of political appointees into Career positions is purely for Corporations.
*The response to the financial crisis has been to lavish billions on favorite firms in a cloudy, hazy, unaccountable and untraceable way.
*The response to Katrina was to allow poor people to be washed away. Outwaited. Outmuscled, and out Zoned so that huge conglomerates could buy up the new coastal property and clean out low rent neighborhoods, and rebuild money-engine luxury resorts. They even made rules that hurt the local folks from getting jobs in the cleanup projects.
*The response to the Twin Towers disaster was to twist patriotism and national-def into reasons to declare unending war on shadows and boogeymen and basically enrich corporations to carry out the neverending battles.
*Bailout -  maybe some flimsy and ragtag oppostion to the bailout. None of their usual precision and lockstep dirty tricksterisms. There was an election coming in a few weeks and everyone was fleeing PrezBuusch and there was no cohesion. It was panicky everyone-for-themselves talk. So there is your one example. Some last minute flailing about the bailout....any other examples in the last 14 years of the Republicans lifting ONE FINGER for a large chunk of avg. americans?

Just ONE example? I asked this on a blog at TPM and the only response I got , from a fairly learned crowd, was Buuusch Sr. did something in his opening days for the disabled...or was it mentally impaired children? I am not sure how sizable a "chunk" of America that is, but at least it wasn't a total boon to corporations. Then again, I have no proof that it wasn't.

I mean it. The Republicans have not lifted a finger for the avg. american, as a party. Buuusch has one bright spot on his Prez Resume (Prez Rez)....AIDS assistance .... IN AFRICA! But not here.

I know that all Dems are susceptible to greed and get romanced pretty heavy by corporate interests. But as a party, they are reliably trying to pass laws that affect and help avg. americans. Out of all the Senated and House Dems, prob. 60% are very decent people who constantly act in accordance with the wellbeing of avg. americans. Of the remaining 40%, most of those are OK folks who at least vote properly, even if they are feathering their own nest. And I make quite a distinction between personal greed and ambition (Dems) and all-out cult membership tool of The Corporate Borg cabal (Repubs).
A lot of republicans don't even know WHAT they are voting for. They just know how the BORG told them to vote. They shrug their shoulders, and cast the ballot.


The reason this all hit me now, is that we have seen a lot of ink spilled over Republican Values, Republican Policies, are they dead? Rats fleeing the ship? Bring them back into the fold? Retool and come back fighting?
What the hell are we talking about? The Republicans have no ideals, unless they are Corporate. They have no goals, no policy positions, that are ONE JOT different from the Corporate wishlist.

I am not naive. I have railed against corporatism, and esp. the political arm (The ReFoolAgins) for almost 25 years.
But after all this time, can we stop calling them what they want to be called, and call them what they are? The Corporate Party.
We are only fooling ourselves, allowing them the masquerade, the disguise, the cover.
We are not in some idealogical battle with equal or opposite opponents. We are not dueling with our principles, ours against theirs. We seem to frame the Dems as fighting for a bulk of the people, against the Repubs who represent something less than 50% of the people. But the repubs DON'T. They represent the Corporations, not a large chunk of the populace. No, the repubs do NOT represent some huge, but still minority, segment of american people. Their policies represent Corporations only. Non-persons. Yes, there is a slim number of americans who own these corporations, and I guess the repubs do a bang-up job of representing them.

I think we will help ourselves enormously, if we call them what they are.
We do not help ourselves by pretending the republicans have VALUES and LOST THEIR WAY. They never HAD ANY!! They never WERE trying to help any chunk of americans except the ones who own the Big Companies.
We have got to stop giving them cover, lending them credence.

Please add anything you like below

but we need to get our response to the ACORN mess in place.

These are registrations. Not Votes.
It, at worst, caused a database problem and wasted election board officials time. It in NOW WAY represents fraudulent voters at the polls.

And how come, with the lead time of only a few weeks or days.....ACORN offices get raided, national news is made and sustained....whenever the Republicans want to make some news and some noise.
Dems have been pressing for 8 YEARS about electronic voting, illegal acts by Secs of State, unholy alliances between RNC heads and phone jammers and vote flipping, barricades at polling places, registration database purges (much more injurious than fake EXTRA registrations) etc...
and not a peep out of our corporate media.

The ReFoolagins get endless mileage out of their sham voting issue, while their real crimes go un-noticed. Real crimes like CHANGING votes, sleeping at home with bags of votes, having sherriffs remove ballots, destroy ballots, make it a crime to touch a ballot (after stealing an election.....ask Gov Siegelman and Alabama dems)

Some left-leaning organizations fooling with the registration numbers as a money-making scam

or right-leaning orgs actually stealing or flipping or disappearing real votes cast by real people?

It would be nice to whip up a nice bulleted talking point sheet on this and email it to B H O and dnc and other dem orgs (state by state) so we don't get caught flatfooted and going UM UM UM while the ReFoolagin CorpMedia runs amok with this.

Anyone here, who is good at crafting a concise memo, want to collaborate and get a strong position typed and sent?

I know, I know. I am the first person to launch into a long explanation of how Corporate Media will NOT cover many stories, esp. about the corporate takeover of America, but....

Let me get this straight.
johnny mcPOW is front and center on a banking scandal 20 years ago.
his son was the chief auditor of Silver State Bank of Nevada which was recently taken over by the feds. His actual job description was to verify the VALUE of the banks assets...and to make sure quality dollars bought quality dollars. He slunk away just days before it was taken over...certainly because they hoped to avoid press for his mcDad.

Banking foreclosure and corporate malfeasance (outright plundering of every wealth-pool on the american landscape) are tearing apart every seam in our nation. Nothing could be striking at the hearts and wallets of the american people like this.
Yet mcPOWs TAINT on this topic gets not a breath of coverage in the Corporate Media. And let's be clear....the only national media that matters is corporate networks/cable news outlets and Radio. All of the print world could disappear and it wouldn't hurt the rightwinger movement one bit. The real MEZMERIZER is TV and Rightwing Radio....both 99% dominated by corporate mindsets. Reaches EVERYONE all day and all night 24/7.

I guess this topic, mcPOW and banking failures was never going to make air anyways. I admonish folks all the time to stop holding their breaths for Fair Media.

The correlary news story to johnny mcPOW/son/bank scandals would be that Chelsea Clinton was pimping Monica on daddy as a side business. The only difference is Chelsea might have been helping the economy. Meanwhile the mcPOWs just keep on buying more houses and swindling investors.
You know, the buuusches were no slouches, as a family, at domestic and foreign bank swindling. Just google that once.

It comes as advice to B H O from John Neffinger on HuffPo


John Neffinger
Deja Vu: The Landstuhl Lie. Team Obama's reluctance to use the L-word with Palin recalled their earlier flailing over McCain's wholly made-up charge that Obama had canceled a trip to visit wounded troops at the end of his overseas trip because he learned there would be no cameras present. For the first several days, the the Obama campaign's response opened by calling the charge "inappropriate," instead of "completely not true" "a deliberate lie" etc. For the record, "inappropriate" is about the most counter-productive thing one could say in that situation. Here's what it conveys:

- The charge is factually true - because if it were not true, the Obama people would have said so, instead of complaining that it was "inappropriate."

- Obama is more concerned with what he feels is appropriate" or tasteful than he is with being straight with the  American people, honoring our troops or leading the country. After all, "inappropriate" is wearing white after Labor Day, not lying to the country.

- After the same Obama spokespeople finally started calling the charge "not true," and it became clear that the McCain people had lied, it also became clear that Team Obama had been too timid to stand up to McCain's bullying and call out his lie in the first place. Timidity is a very unappealing trait in a Commander in Chief, to say the least.

- Finally, it conveys a very clear message to the McCain campaign: "We have no idea how to handle it when you make up outlandish lies. Please, hit us again!"

Anybody have an email for the B H O camp, an address they think someone there is actually monitoring? Pass this along.

It comes as advice from John Neffinger on HuffPo


function threeup_js() { var callback = { success: function(o) { $("threeup_featured_content").innerHTML = o.responseText; Y.threeup.init()}, failure: function(o) { return; } }; var url = '/threeup.php?threeup=yes&VerticalName=Politics&entry_id=125210&v=2'; var currentTime = new Date(); var co = YAHOO.util.Connect.asyncRequest('GET', url + '&h=' + currentTime.getHours(), callback); } threeup_js(); document.write('Please wait, your request is processed...'); Please wait, your request is processed... John NeffingerDeja Vu: The Landstuhl Lie. Team Obama's reluctance to use the L-word with Palin recalled their earlier flailing over McCain's wholly made-up charge that Obama had canceled a trip to visit wounded troops at the end of his overseas trip because he learned there would be no cameras present. For the first several days, the the Obama campaign's response opened by calling the charge "inappropriate," instead of "completely not true" "a deliberate lie" etc. For the record, "inappropriate" is about the most counter-productive thing one could say in that situation. Here's what it conveys:

- The charge is factually true - because if it were not true, the Obama people would have said so, instead of complaining that it was "inappropriate."

- Obama is more concerned with what he feels is "appropriate" or tasteful than he is with being straight with the American people, honoring our troops or leading the country. After all, "inappropriate" is wearing white after Labor Day, not lying to the country.

- After the same Obama spokespeople finally started calling the charge "not true," and it became clear that the McCain people had lied, it also became clear that Team Obama had been too timid to stand up to McCain's bullying and call out his lie in the first place. Timidity is a very unappealing trait in a Commander in Chief, to say the least.

- Finally, it conveys a very clear message to the McCain campaign: "We have no idea how to handle it when you make up outlandish lies. Please, hit us again!"

Anybody have an email for the B H O camp, an address they think someone there is actually monitoring? Pass this along.

Please see below on a joint effort we could all be part of....a Wiki or Shared Word file where we have 2 or 4 columns of Media Injustice.***

We must start making our own talking points, and lists of evidence of the media slant, the undeniable corporate republican affiliation. The republicans are the party of corporations, big finance, big medicine, big insurance. These forces have combined to steal everything that wasn't nailed down, and basically bill the taxpayer for their legal fees when caught redhanded.
They have stomped human dignity, and the promises we earned from our country. We sweated and fought and died for those promises, not them.

The media is absolutely complicit, absolutely conspiring with the corporations and republicans. They have made an art-form of using the power of TV to reduce rational and critical thinking, to whip america up into a high-school cheerleading session, pep-fest, popularity contest. It goes hand in glove with their desire to promote a self-absorbed, deluded, confidence-lacking, consumerist society. The effects on politics are devastating, think of how ALL of our national politics today are funneled thru 4 major corporations, Corporate Radio, and tv ads which our own local stations use to make huge profits while dis-serving their constituents.

We need to re-write all the rules as pertains to media, journalism, and public airwaves. We have seen how the corporations bought, stole, and weaseled our airwaves AWAY from us, the rightful owners. I think the airwaves were first developed and institutionalized in the 30's.
Of course, they immed. turned the weapon AT US and began brainwashing and intimidating, and culture-izing us. Your breath stinks, your hairs a mess, you should buy this, don't be this dork, don't be that guy. It took them many decades to wrest total control from us, but once they did that they had NO RESTRAINTS other than some swear-words and nudity. And a few PSAs. You can pretty well brainwash a people without using profanity and nudity. Ask the Germans.
It did NOT take them many decades to reign in control over the Internet...one of the boldest and freest and open communications tools ever. They have done everything possible to commoditize it, weaken it, water it down, buy it, legislate against the people, and render it harmless to their vested interests in TV/RADIO. Their ultimate goal is for it to be like cable TV or broadcast....mostly one way and mostly (if not totally) controlled and metered and if nothing else, a great way to track the population and snoop on them and surveil your every move.


So, we came up with a very cool tool (the internet) in a bold, brave way that was paradigm changer.....and within 10-15 years it has been neutered and is on the auction block. The Internet had the capability of making the Networks look very, very bad. And they can't have that. It was built with The Peoples money, just like the TV and Radio airwaves. It belongs to us, but just like old media.....we are losing it. It is already AIMED at us, and it will make TV look like a PlaySkool device if things continue.

So we need to change, completely, who controls the airwaves and the internet tubes. These corporations were given a public trust, which is undeniably broken.

***I want to start a 2-4 column list. Can anyone here provide a link to storage place....where we can access the ongoing list and add to it, edit it? Or does somebody have a better WIKI idea?
The 2 or 4 column list would show basically equal issues, and how the press handled them. With video clips and some LexisNexis we should be able to document a random, but significant group, without having to footnote and document everything.

Much of it will be pretty obvious....Like Rev. Wright. Untold weeks of devastating, 24/7 coverage plus rampant speculation, and it also has a lot of mileage. Gets pulled out whenever and wherever it is convenient, months and months later. McCain and his pastors and their teachings....Or Palin's - not a peep. Even when he is nationally being exposed sucking up to them....the door slams and no-one gets a peep from the media.

A 4 column list might have the comparitive issue with Obama + and -...............and McCain + or -
we would make mention of positive/neutral reporting and negative reporting. In the case of total silence from the Corporate Media we could have a blackout symbol. These blackouts wouldn't just be for McCain whenever the press decides to Slam The Door on an uncomfortable topic....but also when they fail to throw any light on a B H O accomplishment or refuse to comment on the side of the truth while they relentlessly focus on the negative or untrue or rumored items.

Smaller, more condensed items from 2000 and 2004 could be close to the top just to give a taste of what happened in those years. Kerry, decorated war hero....Bush deserter. Ran away. Kerry got portrayed as a weak-kneed appeaser.

We have seen a systematic, total evisceration and emasculation of dem candidates since at least Carter. The older I get the more I realize these tactics and schizms are not totally absent from older politics, but never was there a national blaring trumpet of visuals and audio, lots of it in realtime, and much of it replayed and replayed.....like we have today. In 1910....how could a rightwing echo chamber work? Even in 1930 Germany they needed total control of the presses, radio, and film, and every other political and governmental organization to pull it off....not just TV/Radio.
Even in 1940. By the time TV got to be in a majority of homes in the late 40s and 50s.....much of the pieces were in place for national brainwashing, on a day to day basis. The drumbeat, the cacophony, the pace has only increased. The stakes have increased. The amount of pure skullduggery and huge ripoffs has skyrocketed. And the amount of obfuscation, selective showing of information, and water-carrying for the corporations is unbelievable.
The pattern for turning honorable, capable, far-seeing, and People oriented candidates into a knee-knocking, pantswetting appeasers is set in stone. The only thing that resonates, or is propagated thru the media about the Dems. Warmongers against gays is their winning message.

Can we get together here a good comprehensive list of the sheer adulteration of truth that is being perpetrated on the People of the United States? Our next step, after proving the lies of the Candidates and their Media Conspirators....is to fight for true Communications reform. (Big Telcos) Remember, we also need to deal with the companies that compromise our security and privacy everday. We are paying them monthly to do this, and they were the most prominent lobbies at both conventions. This is where power is made and kept, using their unholy power over the eyeballs of america. Profits and ratings are BYPRODUCTS of controlling your eyes. Profits and ratings will come no matter what when you own ALL the media.

Anyone with ideas on how to make a WIKI or Word Doc where we can tally up the hard, substantive slant of the corporate media, to constantly trumpet the good side of the Repub. candidate, and to constantly impugn, question, berate, and slime the Dem? With even our alternative media, such as it is, the lies and smears and obfuscations mount up so quickly, and slide off the media cycle so soon, we need to keep a real score, with obvious examples, which can cement a set of "facts" to bolster many pundits and surrogates, and the candidate himself. We do have some internet outlets which deal with the day to day details and grinds, and try to swat down the rumors and display the hypocrisy. But do they have an up-to-the-minute list from the last year or two, which can be whipped out and show at-a-glance all the media injustice? No, and don't hold your breath on CBS, ABC, FOX, NBC, or CNN showing you one.
We are fighting the machine. Trying to ski up an avalanche. Trying to route our message thru the Media to win against the Media Party is a ticket to disaster. We need to stop the bleeding, play the best hand with what we have, be able to make unspinnable arguments when given the slim chances, and do an end around on the media so we are not counting on them to carry our campaign communication. Really, we seem to be down to just Ads as the last phase of prez. campaigning. There are debates, sure; but I think we all remember watching Gore beat Bush 3 or 4 times, Kerry beat Bush 3 or 4 times....and we woke up each and every morning after to learn Bush had won them all.
So, if you have ideas on how to make news (legal and peaceful)  without the media being able to have their hands all over it, without the media controlling the frame, this would be a good time for that also. Unspinnable, must cover it events. B H O cannot just rely on ads and the good graces of the media.

Someone on the HuffPo left a comment about McPOW using his "I lost touch with the music scene while I was locked up for 5 years" and "for 5 years I didn't have a kitchen table, so it's ok if I forget where all my 10 houses are stashed" and " I was locked up for 5 years so it's ok that I sampled different single girls while my wife looked on until I found the right one to replace her with" and "I was locked up for 5 years, so I deserve to be president. No questions asked. Anybody asking questions is a terrrrst and a traitor. Now give me the presidency. 5 long years."

So next time, the Huffpo reader was saying, we should ask if the guys being locked up and tortured for 5 long years in Gitmo deserve to be president? Shouldn't they be returned home so they can run for their countries top office? They deserve it. And they should be allowed to lie, cheat, steal, divorce, go gold-digging, and have many houses.

Please name me ONE thing republicans have authored or done, in the last 8 years, that was aimed at helping an average american. I don't think that porkbarrel spending or throwing money at Katrina/emergencies should count. I mean legislative, I mean policy directives. Even the consumer economy energizer stimulus package was a high interest loan to ourselves, while huge corporations and fatcats get massive payouts of OUR money as tax breaks and subsidies. No interest.

I don't think you'll find one. So let's go back 30 years or so. Anything? Anyone? Bueller?

My opinion is the repubs, now openly in league with the corporate media (tell me again why GE, NBC, Viacom, Murdoch, etc. would ever be espousing leftist agendas - oh you mouthers of liberal-media bias) are not good at anything else, other than manipulation of media and it's soft-brained targets (Us!).

It is the only thing they do. Their ideas are empty and sugar-coated and only serve to give our wealth and liberty to Corporations, without the avg. american catching on.
Their behavior and ethics are abominable...yet they are the party of trust and sobre judgement. Yeah, Like the Maverick and the Milf. Their only campaign tactic, aside from smearing and spinning and smearing and spinning, is to never stop campaigning.

They use EVERYTHING for political purpose. Nothing more shameless and empty than the hand-wringing over the gulf states (all republican governors who invited ONLY Johnny McPOW) it was a terribly transparent and overtly political move. The war was a campaign tactic, bin-token was a campaign and political exploitation move. Everything that happens on earth is always twisted to prove that they were right, and the lefties are wrong. Palin's pregnancy problems are vicious leftwing attacks, and according to Doocy and many others, if the vicious rabid left would only leave these poor people alone, we could concentrate on the real problems that we all face blah blah blah

So I again challenge ANYONE ANYWHERE to provide ANYTHING that even remotely shows the republican party EVER concentrating on real problems we all face.
Have they ever made education better? Made roads safer? Air? Water? College cheaper? Equitable taxes? Balanced a budget? Maintain a surplus? Keep us OUT OF A WAR?

The only thing these guys can do is lie. Spin. Manipulate the soft-brains using the most potent instrument ever devised by man....all encompassing 24/7 media. And the only reason they ever win is because they OWN the media. Literally OWN it. How did fine americans, going back to Carter, get turned into raving panty-waists EVERY SINGLE TIME, even if in real life they outshone their opponent with class, education, charisma, valour, medals, etc? Nothing is more effective than 24/7 bombardment of the populace with messages that the Dem is a limpwristed, kneejerking, pantswetting appeaser. When a person is ridiculed and derided so unfairly, so insistently, so often, and so completely....they cannot overcome it. Superman could not overcome it. And it is the model going back at least to Carter. And it never ends. The only thing allowed to be said about Carter, on national airwaves for 30 years, has been "Worst President Ever". End of discussion, no other viewpoints allowed. No other viewpoints were sought. Dukakis = Fag. Gore = spineless effeminate weak-kneed bloviator. Kerry = inveterate flip flopper and war criminal. Obama = lily livered appeaser and closet muzzlim.

Meanwhile, slimy, corrupt, deserter chickenhawks get elected. Clinton was the only one to somehow come out the other side. Regardless of his (in comparison) awesome governance.....he left in disgrace severely wounded with a 24/7 ongoing hackjob in perpetual progress. And as usual, beating him in effigy nearly every day since. But But But Clinton did it too....Clinton's fault....not a single minute of Love on-air for Clinton since. No retrospectives, no glowing on the list of accomplishments, yet we have been the recipients of hourlong specials on the wonderfulness of LeChimp and he isn't even out of office yet.

If I could make one plea.....gentle reader.....disabuse yourself of the notion that the Media or Corporate Press or the Titans of todays world who hold the reins on our national addiction/brainwashing machine....TV....

Disabuse yourself of the notion that TV and CorpMedia are in any way rational actors. They are not neutral. They never have been. Their news dept. used to be fairly neutral. But that ended over 30 years ago.
They are the machine that runs our country. They impart our knowledge and news to us. They make the corporate takeover of america possible. They cover for themselves. They do not scrutinize themselves. They do not make plain how they benefit from a material, consumeristic world. They will not show you ANYTHING that might jeapardize their control of the Gizmo. They do not want to talk about how lesser corporations are their clients and YOU are their targets. They do not get paid when you buy something. They get paid to talk you into it.

Please stop thinking we will ever get a fair shake, or that the problems with media are just some unfair shenanigans and that some White Knight is going to ride in and put things right. Who needs Big Brother with loudspeakers in the stairwells? We all sit in front of the glowing machine and take our orders quite niceley with this Gizmo, thank you.

The one thing the media cannot do, is make something real where it does not exist.....and that brings us back to Republican accomplishments. For the People. They cannot make them appear, where they do not exist. At least we can with some surety, make a list of the things the republicans have done for us all. In retrospect, the spinning is over, the sugar coating has worn off....what have they done for us?

A small sidenote....since the snide rightwinger will say that in the last 30 years, liberals have ruined all the good things the rightwing wanted to do....well:
With the last 8 years, the republicans have got everything they wanted, everything they told us would be achieved if only we had more rightwing supreme court judges. If only we had more evangelicals running things. If only we gave away more to companies and stopped paying shiftless welfare moms...blah blah blah.
Well they got all those things. Almost 8 unfettered years of complete control, complete Congressional acquiescence. Did it make any of our lives ONE JOT better? Are we any safer? More moral? Has God blessed us? Gas cheaper? Medical costs coming down? Terrrrrsts trembling in abject fear? Other than cronyism, has anything flourished? Even rightwingers lives are not better.
How do the republicans ever even get 10,000 votes in this country? Well, the answer is the TV and Rightwing Radio. Corporate Media.

I was coming to this conclusion also, reading the comments on TPM about HRC NOT running for VP.

The Conclusion on the thread was that the Clintons showed very poor political acumen throughout the whole race. Yes there were surges in votes for her but I chalk it up to mostly Name Recognition, the Victim Card, Rush LimpBow, Race, and a Woman-At-All-Costs mindset by the largest block of voters out there....women. Heck, it doesn't take Rush to convince a wily Republican white racist male that if he votes fer the hated woman, at least a darky ain't going to be tellin' him a-what to do. On the Dem side I think we saw that in the more race sensitive states, a white dem who treats women as second class citizens would still vote for a dem woman before he would vote for a dem afro-american. Let that sink in. Men who are nominally dems (unionized coal workers, auto workers, teamsters etc) but you know they are not flaming liberals. They don't really want women driving their trucks, women fighting in battle, women taking their jobs....but they would pull the lever for the white woman rather than a black man. I can't exactly explain it, but I think it says race trumps gender in a Bias/Prejudice Cage Match.

Yes, HRC played the race card plenty. She hardly needed to. A huge chunk of Texas and Ohio and PA and WVA and KY etc....heck a lot of americans are just not programmed to be able to pull the lever for a black man. It is a huge credit to the populace in general that BHO won.
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Tonedeaf, HamHanded, Rude, Condescending, Entitled, Out Of Touch....are the Clintons Liberals? I think they were once. Like most in their shoes (successful progs) they are prone to being seduced by the money and power. I don't think it is idealism that grew into desperation nor miscalculations guided by Legacy Panic....I believe it is idealism subsumed by money and power and ego.
She is no longer a dem, a progressive, or a liberal.
And she no longer is even just a plain, fine person.
She is in bed with all the corporations, corp. media, and insurance companies, weapons-defense types, etc. And still a Liberal?
I never understood how at least half of the Dem party seemed to think she was still on our team.
And Bill is basically swinging Ch eney-like deals
all over the globe...the global "drain-america" economy he helped forge.

So, I think we have two big questions. Maybe they will be rendered moot if the Clintons just fade away and she loses her CarpetBag Senate seat which she only used as a launching pad for the Prez.....since the only thing she accomplished there was to thwart dems and slide over to the bu-ush/LIEberman staging camp.
1: are the Clintons Liberals
2: were they really ever Master Politicians?

#1 I don't think even needs much analysis or ruminating. What is stunning is how little is is mentioned, in fact the opposite...she is touted for being the Quintessential Dem, Liberal beyond compare, and Tireless Fighter for the poor and disposessed.

#2, I was not as politically aware in 1992....but it seems to me Perot had a huge hand in Wiley Willy's dash to the finish line. And nobody wanted any more Reagan/Bu-usch.
Sure, Bill is smart, HRC is smart, they made a forceful pair. But once in office, were they brilliant? Their choices, their strategies? They were just hanging on by their nails, thanks in no small part to a Republican bench which was constantly sawing on the Achilles Heel of our leader.

Their campaign this time around was a historical farce.

When you think of the massive Load of money spewed out (wasted in Clinton's case) on this primary....good money just to prove what boors the C's have become, apparently......what a waste.

Here's the deal....BHO gives HRC 17Mil, $1 for every vote she got and she turns over her complete database for him to use in the General. That way our money isn't wasted on bailing out the Clinon Lunacy. I have my doubts that she will "chip in" to help in the General as much as she could and may hold her lists hostage. Get them now, get them upfront.

I really liked the reasoning here.
The separation between BHO and HRC on Telcom/Net Neutrality is very persuasive. HRC seems totally a creature of Telco contributions and will give them free rides.

Barack Obama For President by: Chris Bowers Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 12:25
I just made my first contribution to Barack Obama, and I did it though the Blue Majority page on Act Blue. Now, I am asking you to do the same, since Barack Obama is the latest candidate to be added to the Blue Majority page.

Ever since the Blue Majority page was launched nearly one year ago, we at Blue Majority knew that we would add the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to the page. In my opinion, Barack Obama has now emerged as the presumptive nominee. With a pledged delegate lead of 162, a popular vote lead of more than 800,000, barring a spectacular collapse and / or a highly unlikely thwarting of the popular vote, Barack Obama will become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. When he reaches 2,024 delegates, which at this point requires only 42.7% of the remaining delegates to be decided, he will control both the credentials committee and the majority of the non-disputed delegates at the floor of the convention. At that point, the only way that Barack Obama loses the nomination is if he decides that Hillary Clinton should be the nominee instead. In other words, Barack Obama has become the presumptive Democratic nominee, and it is time to start supporting him.

Importantly, my rationale for endorsing Barack Obama goes beyond his status as the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination. As a progressive, there are two key ideological markers that I believe make Barack Obama a better choice than Hillary Clinton: the Iraq war and the DLC. First, Barack Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq from the start, and rejected the neoconservative principle of pre-emptive warfare as one of his main reasons for opposing the war. Being able to identify the invasion of Iraq as a colossal mistake makes Barack Obama far more qualified to lead our country than candidates who both were, and still are, unable to recognize why the war was such a bad idea. Comparing Obama's and Clinton's statements on the death of 4,000 American soldiers in Iraq, it seems clear that Hillary Clinton still believes in the neoconservative vision for Iraq, while Barack Obama does not. The second ideological marker is the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization formed to push the Democratic Party and the national political debate to the right on a variety of issues. While Hillary Clinton is a member of the DLC's leadership, Barack Obama has repeated refuses to be associated with the group.

There are numerous other reasons, too. Here are the four that mean the most to me:

• First, many people have said that there are few policy differences between Obama and Clinton, but the truth is that their telecom policies could hardly be further apart from each other. Obama proposes exactly the sort of transformative, open telecommunications policy that we need to transform the media landscape in America, while Hillary Clinton's telecom proposals are nothing more than heinous corporate welfare. Without a transformed telecommunications landscape, we are going to have an extremely difficult time building a progressive America or passing any of our other legislation.
• Second, in terms of electability, in order to win the general election a candidate must first become the nominee. Simply put, I don't see many ways for Hillary Clinton to pull that off. Further, in order to win the general election, Democrats will need time to define McCain, and time to heal the party once the nomination contest is over. However, Hillary Clinton's only path to the nomination is through the convention in late August, and also through a intra-partisan civil war. In other words, Clinton's path to the nomination renders her unelectable in the general. There simply won't be enough time to heal the party and define John McCain.
• Third, how a candidate campaigns is a strong reflection on how that candidate governs. For example, we could tell from the 2000 election that George Bush would govern through a series of power grabs, Orwellian language, and with a total disregard for popular opinion. Barack Obama, by contrast, is campaigning through unprecedented national grassroots organizing, speeches that are becoming the stuff of legend, and the manifestation of a new political coalition that moves us away from the political alignment of 1968-2004. Too often, I have heard from the Clinton campaign and its surrogates about states and demographic groups that don't matter. Such statements are a stark reminder of a recent version of the Democratic Party that takes its base for granted, and only campaigns in a select few swing districts. We need a Democratic Party that organizes and governs based on Barack Obama and Howard Dean's campaign styles, rather than one that is based on Hillary Clinton's and Terry McAuliffe's.
• Fourth, coattails and movement building matter. In both of Blue Majority's victories so far in 2008, Donna Edwards in MD-04 and Bill Foster in IL-14, the energy and activism brought to bear by Barack Obama were key. The activism in support of Barack Obama has the potential to greatly enhance the political reach of the progressive movement, and also to provide Democrats with sweeping downticket victories. I once called this progressive movement symbiosis, and I still believe it is the most promising path to a truly progressive governing majority that I have seen in my lifetime.

It is for all of these reasons that I am happy and proud to endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States. I gave my first donation to his campaign today, and I urge you to do the same. Thrown in some money for the downticket campaigns, too, since we need more and better Democrats around the country and since the first quarter filing deadline is on Monday. Let's change America, and move closer toward fulfilling the promise of our new political movements: a progressive governing majority in America. Contribute to Barack Obama today.

Chris Bowers :: Barack Obama For President