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Your response supports actually supports my view about what's wrong with the political culture we find ourselves in. Unfortunately, we have become adherents to the 30 second sound-bite, superficial head-line laden campaigns that works so well for Madison Ave. Your comments about Howard Dean and Ron Paul are 2 cases in point. To what do you refer when you say "...broke records"? That's not the object here.
My problem with the political process today is exactly that -- that we rely on the empty shell of unspecific phrases and code words that sound like they mean something - but don't. To compare Howard Dean's and Ron Paul's both "breaking records" belies the fact that these men disagree on almost everything. Frankly, if I didn't know more about Ron Paul and how dangerous his views really are, I might have been swayed by some of his comments at the NH debate. The devil is ALWAYS in the details, and these are precisely what the pundits, mainstream media and TV/cable pundits deny us.
You don't support your argument that the "corporate media conspiracy stuff" is "silly". Consider that for the first time ever, oil has reached $100 a barrel, that we have been at war in Iraq, supposedly to secure our interests in oil, AND that the private companies running this war are not being held accountable for how they've spent billions of dollars, massive numbers of missing equipment paid for by the American taxpayer and lack of accomplishing any goal given them. Consider the fact that Dick Cheney as the elected Vice-President held an energy summit at the beginning of the first Bush term - and that he has absolutely REFUSED to identify who was at the meeting(s), which corporations (and their own special interests) that they represent. Cheney, Bush, etc.etc. have made, and continue to make, BILLIONS of dollars PERSONALLY from the oil energy market.
Articles in just the last few weeks are beginning to explain about how the privatized health insurance companies that have targeted Medicare recipients have outright lied to senior citizens to get them to leave the Medicare program they are in and join their privatized company. Only later do these "victims" realize they don't have the same health care they had before.
I'm not anti-corporation or capitalism - and John Edwards also stated that many corporations do what's right. They are the basis of our economic society. HOWEVER, the ultimate bottom line of a corporation is to garner as much wealth as possible and reduce the number of competitors to their interests as possible, with no regard for anything or anyone but their bottom line and shareholders. That includes John Q. Public. Read your history. Robber Barons,(railroad, banks, etc.) in the early industrialization period of the late 1800's and early 1900's, who are now known as philanthropists in order to tax shelter their money, once cared only for how much they made at the expense of the people who worked for them. This is what caused the many previous recessions and depressions of the 1800s and 1900's. It is only governmental anti-trust and changes in the economic regulations which have kept another GREAT DEPRESSION - and allowed a middle class to arise to more prosperity. These constraints have been the target of the Bush-Cheney folk - and they have wiped many of them out.
Which candidates on either the Democratic or Republican side has "proven the corporate conspiracy stuff wrong" and how did they do this?
The media itself is a corporate entity. And the pundits that we see - who represent the corporate view - and who are paid big bucks to buy into the corporate mentality - aren't you and me. Charlie Gibson got his XXX handed to him by snidely putting down all of the Democratic candidates position of tax reform by citing "two (mythical) college professors making $100,000 each..." He was laughed into embarrassment by the candidates and the audience. How many families make $200,000 or more? I'm a professional and I make a decent living-- but I don't fall into that category. Do you?
Let's require specific explanations of candidates' plans on specific issues. Those details can REALLY keep the devil's fires roaring.
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