The Press v. John Edwards

One year ago, when CBS polled Americans to see where likely Democratic presidential candidates stood in the public eye, John Edwards came in a solid second to Hillary Clinton.

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/CBSNews_polls/jana-candidates.pdf

Thanks to her status as a former First Lady she had recognition similar to former Democratic candidates Gore and Kerry. Edwards was the most recognized Democrat who had never been a nominee. Obama’s recognition rates and favorability rates among Democrats and Independents were significantly lower than Edwards. Edwards’ unfavorability rating was better than Hillary’s, giving him a edge as a “uniter.”

How did the nation go from knowing who Edwards was to not even knowing that he was running for president ? Where did this idea that he was “phony” start? Why, in the last couple of weeks, did we start to hear that Edwards was some kind of communist anarchist?

It all started with the BFL, Big Fat Liars aka the corporate media.

Here is the excellent analysis (with piece charts and block graphs) that forced the mainstream media to admit what we all had seen----they had deliberately inflated their coverage of two of the candidates, Hillary and Obama, while deliberately shutting out Edwards, who actually ranked high in the polls.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/5/12286/27650/142/431084

They did this for a solid year. One example of the way that this bias permeated every aspect of election reporting: one night on Countdown the guest was E.J. Dionne. Poll numbers from Iowa were shown. The Dems were in a a dead heat. KO asked Dionne to comment. He launched into a discussion of Hillary and Obama and never said a word about Edwards, who was neck and neck with the other two. KO did not even notice.

They did this even after Edwards came in second in Iowa, giving the lie to the Two Man Race Lie . Instead of suddenly noticing the Edwards campaign, as people across the country started to notice it, the MSM responded with another impromptu lie, which I call Who's On Second? because the pundits would talk about Obama's win and Hillary's third place finish while giving the impression that the old joke candidate Nobody for President must have taken second place. Or worse, television political reporters on all the news networks would announce that the Edwards campaign was finished, that he would resign soon. This at a time when his campaign was hoping to win new supporters and raise much needed cash. This had the effect of negating any boost his campaign might have received from the Iowa win. The lies that were told at this moment probably did more to destroy the Edwards campaign than any others.

In this interview on Countdown Keith Olbermann asks John Edwards why the press at MSNBC said that his second place finish meant that Edwards was in trouble and not Hillary. Edwards replied bluntly that the media had been trying to frame it as a two person race between Hillary and Obama. To Olbermann's credit, after that interview, he began to feature Edwards more often on his show. However, by then the damage was done.

http://takeaction.wordpress.com/2008/01/05/john-edwards-speaks-out-about-the-iowa-caucus-and-change/

When the report described in the DailyKos link above came out there was a backlash. The mainstream media had been caught attempting to "fix" the Democratic Primary. That was not good. They still had to "fix" the race between Hillary and Obama.In an effort to restore their tarnished honor, we finally saw the TV news networks and the major newspapers like the Washington Past and the New York Times devote some coverage to the Edwards campaign before the South Carolina primary. It was too little, too late. After a solid year of mainstream media attacks and blackouts, one week of coverage will not resurrect a presidential campaign.

I have been writing about the corporate media conspiracy against John Edwards for almost a year in hopes the we, voters and consumers of the news media could put a stop to it. Looks like the CEOs at GE/NBC, NewsCorp./Fox, AOL/Time-Warner, Viacom-CBS, Disney-ABC won and we lost.

Today, I am writing so that we will remember, and also so that the media lap dogs, the individual journalists---no, let’s call them what they are---the whores will not get away with doing their masters’ dirty work. I got the idea when I re read The Press v. Al Gore a couple of years ago and realized that with the exception of one sacrificial goat, Ceci Connelly of the Washington Post, the reporters who created the lie Gore is a Liar have all done very well for themselves.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5920188/the_press_vs_al_gore

Google and see where journalists like Walter Shapiro, Richard Berke , Chris Matthews, George Stephanopoulos, Bill Turque, Bob Woodward, Margaret Carlson have ended up. Hmmm. Some of them will feature in this journal. Guess they learned from Gore is a liar that there is good pay off and no accountability for telling lies about Democratic candidates.

I recognized that the media fix was in a year ago. On February 7, 2007 I wrote a DailyKos diary called From the Corporate Media that Brought You Gore is a Liar, Edwards is a Phony When I got six responses, I knew it was going to be an uphill battle convincing people of what was going on.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/8/1319/06023/495/299538

A year ago the MSM blackout had not started yet. A year ago, it seemed like Edwards was getting more attention than all the other Dems combined, only it was not nice attention. John Solomon of the Washington Post lead the way with a series of article about Edwards house, his money, his hair, his hairdresser !!!! . Right wing sites began a coordinated action that seemed to be aiming towards “Edwards is a phony” and sure enough that is the word that they managed to get to stick. Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malikan were among the right wingers who were singling him out for special attention. And the MSM was already showing selective hearing in that it would not cover Edwards policy statements but it would make mountains out of any wild rumor that might cause a rift within his camp or between his camp and traditional members of the Democratic base (Read my DailyKos entry. The details are all there.)

John Solomon’s reputation was already trashed before he took this assignment, and after he finished Edwards is a phony no one would ever believe anything he wrote again. Certainly, no one would ever talk to him again. I guess that is why he had to take a job at the right wing ghetto of the Washington Times . So, one of the media whores has paid—sort of, if you count getting kicked upstairs into an editorial job retribution. I would rather see him working at a Thrifty Nickel .

Here is la crème de la crème of Solomon’s important political “reporting”, the interview with the man who gave Edwards’ some haircuts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/04/AR2007070401258.html

This story was printed in July, 2007, long after I and other people had begun to complain about the obvious partisan nature of the stories that Solomon was writing and the Washington Post was running about Edwards. I feel that it is necessary to add the editors and owners of the Washington Post to the list of participants in the inquisition against Edwards, because they are the ones who hired the notorious John Solomon to write this tabloid silliness disguised as political news. This story, with its implied subtext of the stalker hairdresser with his unrequited gay crush (getting on planes day or night to race halfway across the country to make his man look good) was probably the purple-est prose I have seen in years. It also plays up Ann Coulter’s infamous comment from last spring. Lord only knows what Joseph Torrenueva thought of the article. Now that the Edwards campaign is over, he should hire Edwards to help him sue the WaPo for libel.

If you think I am over reading the article, take a look at how the guys on TV spun it:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/over-tipping-by-digby-i-was-reading.html



Here is a link about George Stephanopoulos giving the un newsworthy WaPo story more coverage.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh070607.shtml



Neither is another television news pundit yakking about haircuts. What an ass.

Note that Chris Matthews and George Stephanopoulos are alumni from the Rolling Stone “Gore is a Liar” story, making them seasoned veteran media whores. Among Tweety’s many other Edward’s atrocities---after New Hampshire, when he wasn’t accusing the citizens of that state of being racists and E-vote hackers, he was accusing Edwards of being a spoiler who was costing Obama the race. This lie sounded so good to liberal commentator Lawrence O’Donnell that he destroyed his reputation by writing the unfortunate “John Edwards is a Loser” for the Huffington Post, proving that innocent liberals should never associate with former CREEP organizers like Pat Buchanan, who has been presiding over MSNBC the last few months like some kind of Ghost of Stolen Elections Past.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/john-edwards-is-a-loser_b_81045.html


Thumbs up to Media Matters for catching another print journalist Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle participating in the Edwards is a phony lie. Bonus points to Media Matters for spotting the fact that Carla also helped out big time with Gore is a liar making this reporter one of those seasoned veteran media whores I was talking about.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200706020001



Oh my. Everyone, when you read anything by Carla Marinucci, remember to be skeptical for this may well be another John Solomon who hasn’t been tossed into the garbage heap of the Washington Times yet.

The same Media Matters piece mentions Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson and Dennis Miller as more vectors by which the newspaper’s Edwards is a phony lies began to get distributed to the public. Vectors is a polite, medical term for blood sucking insects that carry disease, like leeches or mosquitoes or ticks.

Here is article about Fox News’ John Gibson describing Edwards as a “phony” in August.

http://www.newshounds.us/2007/08/08/big_story_takes_a_swipe_at_john_edwards_phony_frame.php

I could fill an encyclopedia with Edwards is a phony lies of the rich and famous. However, there is more. As I noted above, the press did not stop at slandering and libeling Sen. Edwards. When they were not bad mouthing him, they were denying him the free publicity which they lavished on the other two senators. Here is another link about the blacklist.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/11/washington_post_8.php




Obama was elevated to Sen. Clinton’s level almost immediately, creating the fiction of the Two Man Race . Democrats were offered the Pyrrhic choice----pick the first woman and snub Blacks or pick the first Black and alienate women. And, just in case the two candidates might do the sensible thing and decide to run together, the mainstream media decided to mix things up and interject race into the race. (See my recent journals about the MSM’s attempts to position the Democrats into a circular firing squad). Since this journal is devoted to Edwards, I will not cite references to that other campaign here.

With the New Year, things began to change. The public's concern turned towards the economy---Edwards’ special issue—and the MSM was now unable to deny him coverage completely as they have done before without getting caught. Therefore, in recent weeks, the corporate media began to unleash new lies against Edwards. One was specifically directed at Republicans and Independents, the Edwards is a red lie. This one was meant to keep his numbers down in polls which match Dems versus Republicans head to head. Ability to win in a general election had been one of Edwards’ strongest campaign points, so the MSM created this lie to undercut his strength. Check out this video link of CNN’s Glenn Beck calling Edwards a communist:

http://broadcatching.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/glenn-beck-calls-john-edwards-a-communist-and-claims-us-in-iraq-for-forty-years/

If the corporate media could paint Edwards as a “red”, far left of Hillary and Obama, an extremist who would strip Americans of their goods and reduce us all to Soviet era drudgery, then they could neutralize him as a general election contender.

A related lie is “Edwards is an anarchist”. This is where “Edwards is an angry white male” comes in. We have media whores like Wolf Blitzer to thank for this:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/02/john-edwards-angry-white-man/



And some of them are able to combine all the lies together, as in Edwards is an angry, lying, phony by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post writing this time for the National Review on-line

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDMxN2E1ZGYyOTYwZDNiMTg1ZWI0MDU4YWM3YTdjZTk=



My! Such eloquence! This Krauthammer is a master of the anti-Democrat slur. Hmmm. I wonder if he has had practice. A quick Google will tell us the answer. (I really didn't know what he did back in 2000, but I started typing this as I was doing the on-line search because I had a pretty good hunch from the oiliness of the propaganda above. I have a nose for these things.)

Oh lookie! Here is what Mr. Krauthammer was up to in 2000.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh120302.shtml



To paraphrase Krauthammer’s own words about Edwards: You must understand: This is not journalism for him. “This fight is deeply business to me. I’ve been engaged in it my whole (reporting) life.”

How did the Rolling Stone miss this guy? Be sure to note this name, Krauthammer (what a name!), so that you can take anything he writes about Democrats with a great big grain of salt. Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post veteran of the Gore is a liar and Edwards is an angry-phony Big Lies.

I could go on and on with this, but I am just too damned fed up with what passes for journalism in this country. The only solution is to bust apart the telecommunications monopolies that have turned television news stations and newspapers into propaganda organs for major corporations. MSNBC no longer needs to get ratings (except for the vanity of a few celebrities). Not for money, anyway. Its job is now to change the way that America votes in order to benefit the corporate coffers of parent company GE. The same goes for ABC and Disney, CBS and Viacom and all the others.

What we need is the US equivalent of the BBC, a fully funded independent set of public television channels that program news, entertainment for children and adults and educational program. Every industrialized country in the world except the U.S. has one. Everyone would pay a tax and no political party would have any control over it. We also need legislation to keep newspapers free of the influence of big money---like the $60million the US Chambers of Commerce have pledged to spend to defeat candidates who endorse “populists” issues this year.

In order to do this, we need to get rid of this industry pandering Republican FCC which allows unlimited telecom media mergers and expansions. We need to investigate and prosecute the current chairman for taking over Congress’s role in writing legislation that affects the media.

And most important of all, we need to protest and blacklist the individual media whores who do the dirty work for their corporate masters. I can not possibly keep track of or list all the individual players who have contributed to the lies Edwards is a phony , Two Man Race Edwards is a spoiler Edwards is a red . If you know of any specific “journalist” and can post a quote and link, please do so. I would love to see a hundred replies, each with the name of a different journalist caught in the act.

It is important to hold the press accountable for their actions. Reporters think that they can get away with it by claiming that they are just getting swept away in the general narrative or are incompetent or just making a joke or "dumb asses". This is bullshit. I am a story teller. I know that it takes work to tell a story and make it believable. Big Lies do not spring out of nothing fully formed. A lot of effort goes into creating propaganda.

It will do not good simply to accuse the press of attacking the John Edwards 2008 Campaign. They know what they did. They are gloating over their victory, counting their reward in advance while they flex their muscles, awaiting further orders from their corporate masters. As Goebbels wrote, those who create propaganda are not in search of a higher truth. They want results.



http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb54.htm

You can not shame them into stopping. So, the only way to fight this kind of opponent is to take away their ability to spread propaganda. That means revealing them to be liars in public, so that no one will talk to them to give them stories and no news consumer will believe them. Taking away the incentive of television news and newspapers to whore for big corporations also helps. And encouraging the public to become better consumers of the news by offering them alternative choices and by educating them to the signs of propaganda.

It took quitting the race for CNN to put a crew on the Edwards campaign trail.

How very corporate of them.

I hope Edwards considers doing something like this. If MSM media is not covering a candidate they are a dead duck.


:nuke:

corporate media. Of course they made it hard on him.

My husband has told me that for years,now the Edward's thing makes me a believer

Don't they usually carry it LIVE --?

MOST people have turned off corporate-media ---

EXCELLENT......

buy a radio or tv station so he can get out the unbiased news, a payback to
the dirty MSM...he of all people know what communications can do.

His voice is needed and that would be perfect retribution .

Hasn't Gore bought a rdio or tv station?

bash the stupidos. (repuks)

Not just because Edwards will not get the opportunity to serve. But because the Media got away with keeping him from the public.

.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200801150011?f=s_search

Yes, that's a record clearly deserving promotion to Executive Editor.

:sarcasm:

That man should be writing fiction.

On second thought, he already is.

You have provided more truth in this story then I have ever seen.

Thank you for the effort this must have taken.

It's a very sad day for the country.

Obviously they were going to get Edwards next.

They did get the bad guys outta there, didn't they.

It'll be Hillary or Obama next, and then the last one left will be smeared in the General Election. :cry:

x(

Thank you for this reporting. An excellent piece.

K & R

Here is a journal a wrote not long ago "John Edwards' Body: An American Saint"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2631935

for this. I saw the same thing happening. I was worrying perhaps I had become too partisan or cynical. But you're right. It isn't just about Edwards, although that is a shame, it's about how the media have decided to be king makers. They decide the candidates they like and don't. It shows in the reporting bias or lack of reporting. I guess with Edwards' withdrawal they think they've gotten their way. I wouldn't be so sure. I think most of us have had enough. Perhaps a day or two of constant emails to the various networks and columnists would work. That tactic held the line, so far, delaying the FISA vote. I've been doing it for months but feel like a voice crying in the wilderness. We'll never get our democracy back if this goes on. We outed them about the voting machines. IMHO they've just switched tactics. Now they're using (so-called) journalists.

Please do whatever research is necessary to acquaint yourself with the real enemy of our Democracy. The Corporate Megalomaniacs (Corporatists) who OWN the MSM--and almost ALL of what we blithely ignorant 'capitalists' define as valuable--are the ones that will determine who is the next POTUS.

We homo sapiens put the majority of our energy into economic behavior. We The People have been trained from birth to perceive capitalism as the penultimate economic behavior--indeed the ONLY economic behavior to which we should aspire. It's the proverbial carrot that we keep chasing, because "anyone in the US can be wealthy if you work hard enough." Ha!

I assert that you are a true 'Capitalist' only if you have enough money to wield considerable influence in politics, thus garnering a major slice of the power pie and insuring that you will continue to amass obscene amounts of wealth (e.g., power). The rest of us poor saps are either cannon fodder or the modern day equivalent of slaves. Why do we continue to play this game?!?

My concern is that we've grown far too fat, addicted, complacent, fearful, and/or delusional to do anything about this mell of a hess.

Maybe when the entire house of cards collapses... Maybe then...

The Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzers and John Solomons and the George Wills of the world could make a difference if they wanted, the way that Keith Olbermann and Paul Krugman make a difference. The voice of reason can make itself heard, because this is still a consumer driven news media and the voice of reason will always attract consumers.

However, the propagandists whom I have described above have chosen to ally themselves with the David Rockefellers, because that is where the money is and that is where the easy access to work and fame is.

George Will is an especially sorry case. He is very talented, and yet he wastes his talents as a writer doing focused propaganda for the people like the Bush administration. For instance, when the FERC was pretending that Enron had not price gouged California, he did a series whose only purpose was to portray that state as consisting entirely of homosexuals and communists, so that the Republican base would say to itself "Screw them. They deserved to be price gouged by Enron." This is such a waste. And such a media atrocity, since Will uses his Pulitzer Prize to anoint each piece of propaganda as "true".

The individual whores--the George Stephanopouloses, the Chris Matthews, the Katie Courics, the Mark Mazzettis, the Judy Millers---need to be outed and identified so that the public recognizes that what they are about to read or hear is shit and so that the whores themselves understand that if they want to have careers in journalism they need to do it the old fashioned way, the KO and Dan Rather way, by producing quality stories.

And speaking of Dan Rather, if the current system is not stopped, KO will be the next casualty. The right wing attempted to take him down over Barry Bonds with a Divide and Conquer move. It didn't work, because even African-Americans did not feel a lot of race solidarity with Bonds and right wingers were more likely to support him in a libertarian attitude of "hell, let them use whatever drugs they want" than were left wingers. However, the plan was to let KO continue his one man crusade to see justice done against a major league cheater and then have people in the press use that to try to put a wedge between KO and Blacks (since the Grand Jury leaks that caused Bonds problems came from the politicized and clearly racist Gonzales Justice Department). If you go to FOX you will find craziness in which their whores use sports comments by KO to call him a racist. You will also find commentary on the internet by unknowns about Bonds that is clearly racist (there is one particularly vile piece at MSNBC that I will not link, just tell you that it is not by KO, the writer is someone who does not usually do sports commentary, I would not be surprised if Pat Buchanan did not arrange to have him write his screed about how "Barry Bonds is a Villain" in hopes that people would think that it reflects KO) that is planted to incite racial discord. Fortunately, KO took that kind of commentary out of Countdown long ago.

are "guilty" of many things.

However, I've been a closet economic anthropologist since my days at University. I assert that we are indeed our own worst enemy, because we blithely and greedily engage in economic behaviors without examining the import or the impact of such behaviors. Our economic behaviors have become more important and more influential to us than ALL of our other behaviors, comprising the framework within which we do all things political or spiritual. Please note that I mean WE as in our entire species.

Humans are now a systems-stressing economic resource, yet we seem incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. All other economic resources are being taxed beyond the system's capacity, yet we sustain a rhetoric that smacks of the blame and shame game (warring with one another, blaming others without examining our own roles, etc...), when we should be seeking ways to fix the problem.

I suspect that when the system crashes, a great many of us will lack the intellectual and spiritual resources to survive. I can only hope that such an event will motivate humanity to get our collective heads out of our collective asses.

Thank you for writing this!

Obama over Clinton. They did not even mention what the media had done to Edwards!!!!!

This is so very, very sad.....

Feh, they razored the debates down early and often. Their coverage was terrible.

Is there a solution to this mess?

Perhaps my supervillain solution where the airwaves are all pirated and we air nothing but Adam West Batman episodes. I mean honestly, minus the platform of television and name recognition, what does the big media machine actually have?

or ignore it. This should give the lie to the assertion that they program based upon what people want to hear. If Edwards kept winning the debates, then people wanted to hear his message. The press responded by denying them his message.

The message to politicians has been chilling. Do not talk populism to the people or we will crush you before you can ever get into office. Try to be a politician for the people and we will hound you after you get into office.

fraction of the facetime of Hillary and Obama. They tried to marginalize him there, too.

I am tired of the corporate media establishment pick our candidates. Is there a solution to this?

that I do truly hate! Our 'news' media are some of them.

of analytical research. It exposes a government controlled by corporations and their propaganda outlets. When someone speaking up for the working class gets slandered by people pretending to be unbiased journalists the concepts of representative democracy and free and fair elections become moot.
Like Rome and other failed empires in History's dust bin, the United States of America is sliding down the slippery slope to irrelevance, aided and abetted by a media/propaganda machine that knows it's lying but continues to do so for the short term rewards associated with corruption.
The Internet, the media by which we in the reality based community communicate, may be the only thing that can save us from the heavy fascist hand that is choking the life out of our Constitution and the values we hold dear as free thinking Americans.
We can hammer our keyboards until the cows come home, but unless we organize and take real action, we will become part of a culture and society swirling down the drain. We can use the Internet to spread the message that we're no longer going to buy what they're selling. We can choose to not buy the goods being hawked on the corporate propaganda outlets. We can abuse the talking heads when ever we encounter them. We can choose to sit back and do nothing.
John Edwards said it's time for the media to stop picking our candidates, and the media marginalized him. The media that controls the message saw John Edwards as a threat to their easy money, no account, positions as parrots for their corporate masters. For now, they control the horizontal and the vertical, but things change, maybe not fast enough for most of us here, but some how, some way, the fascist element that has seized our nation will come crashing down. Enough of us have to stay clear of the falling debris to rebuild what these monsters have destroyed.

I'll gladly pick up your gauntlet. What say you? How many do you think we could gather for an online grassroots beginning? Does the internet offer forums wherein several can post online in real time at the same time?

I have posted myriad comments here, in C&L, and in YouTube that sound identical to yours. I know there are many more like us. Shall we make a go of it? I think it's time.

and keep spreading the word. My email list gets reminders three or four times a day. Some get pissed off, but I keep reminding people what's at stake.

I apologize. I obviously mistook your faux gauntlet for the real thing.

very informative for the average American. Anyone with access to video of the Edwards campaign, showing the real day to day workings, such as that which a poster described in another thread, could use that material as "real life" and mix it with the distortions being aired by the media. For instance, show Edwards talking to unemployed people , then show some media whore making some flippant remark about his hair. Go back to Edwards dealing with a family with health insurance and medical issues,then some media type with more "phony" issues.

Start with January last year and do it in chronological order. Show the evolution of the various smear campaigns, how he was ignored after the debates, show the different TV journalists at MSNBC and CNN and elsewhere pontificating that his campaign is finished after his second place in Iowa, what effect that had on his campaign,especially on his poll numbers and donations.

It would be important to show the names of the people who wrote the stories and the newspapers they wrote for. Also the faces of the TV reporters.

Given how appealing Edwards is in person, I think something like this would be very well received.

Are there any homemade videos like this up at YouTube? If a series of these were posted right now, they would do a lot to open people eyes about the problems with the MSM. Reporters would probably flip. The effect would be much more visceral than from articles. It would really affect the favoribility ratings of people like Tweety and George Stephanopolous and Katie Couric.

is what these thugs do. And coverage is one of the dirty tricks they use.
Money spent on TV ads - total waste - as free publicity for one candidate, ignoring another - totally offsets paid commercials.
Someone in the GOP wanted Rudy out - and allowed the press to do its job. I don't miss him (well, maybe a few laughs) but I still wonder - who was behind that "burst" of integrity?
And right now, they want us to pic one candidate - and you better do what they say:

NewsCorp wanted him out of the race. There was no way they were going to let the next FCC play favorites with FOX. So, they cut his news media coverage to nothing and began covering only the bad stories and made up stuff.

It is just as unethical when they do it to him as to Edwards, however, he brought it on himself by agreeing to let Fox News run him as their candidate. Lord only knows what would have become of the press in the U.S. under President Rudi. One big Rupert Murdoch monopoly.

:kick:

:mad:

...if we can't fight for Edwards - let's fight the MEDIA on behalf of Edwards and other candidates like him -- and for OURSELVES so that this doesn't happen again. We have four years to to expose the abusers of the public trust.

In some of my circles, dealing with abusive people in intimate relationships - ONE THING that we always say is DO NOT hide their abuse. EXPOSE them. Tell anyone who will listen about the abuse. SILENCE is an enabler of abuse, greed, prejudice.

LET'S NOT BE SILENT about this! Let's NOT enable this abuse with our silence!

This is a 'bandwagon' I can certainly jump on.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

:wtf:

Smarmy, self-satisfied wankers, as annoying as anyone on Faux:

http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/169/news.jsp

I've tuned in from time to time to see if they're an alternative (TimeWarner channel 171, in my area), but was quickly disabused of that notion.

Their coverage of the primaries was deplorable.

whatever else can be said of it, it beats nearly everything we produce here. (Excepting PBS, indie stuff...)

Also, the BBC even in the UK parroted the WH lies about Venezuela, after the failed coup. No source is angelic... every single one must be viewed with a critical eye.

At least I hope not! We're talking about apples and oranges.

There are *two* BBC channels.

"BBC World" is the news service channel, the same source that provides some programming on a lot of public radio stations. Some programming from BBC World is relayed during early morning hours, on BBC America.

However, "BBC America" also has it's own sad facsimile of a news service, which gets played during the evening.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_America

"...Unlike the BBC's commercial-free domestic networks, which are supported through the licence fee, BBC America is wholly advertising-supported and its programs are interrupted by commercials..."

I used to really enjoy character-driven mysteries like "Lovejoy", "Jonathan Creek", and "Morse", and "the Kumars" and "Fawlty Towers" were pretty funny, but except for the decent latest iteration of "Dr. Who", there's less to choose from.

I'm not sure what your issue is. Like I said... personalities or not... commercials or not... they (both the Beeb proper and yes, Even BBC America) still come out head and shoulders above the vast majority of our whore media.

I only brought up the BBC to point out that no matter who the source is, they should still be suspect. We have to view every single thing with a critical eye.

Blair made sure of that!! Their on the ground reports are fine, but their "Have Your Say" program (formerly Talking Points), for example, leans heavily on neo-cons in interview pertaining to Iraq, Iran. The news spouts the American line all the time. On top of that, there are moves to water down reporting, with more reliance on "sharing" reports and media across radio and tv...in other words, less original reporting.

I'm afraid the BBC is really being crippled....Radio Netherlands seems to be about the best around, by the way...

I have been listening on shortwave radio, and have noticed the changes. It is really distressing!

We are all getting played like cheap violins. I can just see the Corporatists (ah, those wily denizens of Richistan...) pontificating that We The People will never get off our lazy asses to do anything about this.

What say you, People? Are you going to keep bending over? Are you so blase about all this that you'll just be asking for a kiss before the next big ream job?/

that capitalism would eventually collapse, and that economic behavior would evolve into a more egalitarian, cooperative means of production. Capitalists, politicians, and others with a vested interest in maintaining an oppressive status quo promoted a pejorative meme that taints this great man's scholarship to this very day. We should take note of the enormous energy expended to denigrate this man's collected works.

We too can attack Karl Marx on the strength of his detractors' red herring meme, or we can emulate his courageous endeavor to examine human economic behavior as it exists today and envision the changes that MUST occur if we are to progress as a species. Do we have to throw out the baby (capitalism) with the bath water (Corporate Megalomaniacs)? Is communism the inevitable alternative to capitalism, and would that be a bad thing? Can we continue to subsume our spiritual selves in servitude to the almighty dollar?

Change is often a big scary barrier to personal growth, isn't it?...

Still, Ninga, as another great philosopher said, "We MUST be the change we wish to see in the world."

So, this starts with me. My awareness of the core issues described herein above shapes and informs my activism every day. I refuse to buy into the divisiveness that the Corporate Megalomaniacs promote to keep us from examining these real issues. We The People are on the verge of a major change--perhaps cataclysmic--and we have the intellectual capacity and the spiritual framework within which to propel ourselves into an amazing future.

Despite all that has happened in the last seven years, I anticipate success. I remember how We The People responded after 9/11 and after Katrina and after the BIG Tsunami (etc...). We rolled up our shirt sleeves and got to work (well, sans the Corporatists, who seem to view such events as handy ways to thin the masses...) I believe that The Human Spirit evident in our times of crisis will prevail. I've only just realized that I always have.

get down to the basics of our current system. Milton Freidman and his Chicago Boys are the one's responsible for this mess (Rove, Rumsfeld - forgot who else studied with this evil personified) and we've fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

1. Privatize everything - Gov't is competition. The Iraq War is the first Privatized War ever.

2. Disenfranchise dissenting voices - call them traitors, communists, liberals to squelch their voices, besides hippies really don't understand economics now do they?

3. What (in my little pea brain understands) everyone is speaking of is Keynesian Economics - gov't controls the market, people prosper, middle class surges (this is oh so abbreviated). Voodoo economics wants to make the middle class paupers, spy on them to disenfranchise them and keep them scared.

4. Why do you think we are torturing people? To scare the ever lovin' shit out of the populace in Iraq and Afghanistan. The one thing the Chicago Boys didn't realize is that the Iraqi's and Afghani's aren't falling for it. They refuse to capitulate with the oppressors. Period. A lot of them have been to college too and understand history. They see it all for what is - a mass take over of their resources. What do we do - sell ours off to the highest bidder. The one thing that goes hand in hand with Friedmanism is dictatorships and torture. Which, if we do not get our collective asses together, will be in our future. Why else would FEMA build those camps all over the country? To disappear us. Your tax dollars at work.

One personal thing I am doing is I will not be watching the Super Bowl. I am not going to sit there and have advertisements and logo's etched into my brain. Corp's are funding the MSM to tear us down, why do I want to feed that dichotomy? (sp?) I am turning off the tv this weekend and not allowing them to feed me full of crap, all in the name of sportsmanship - and censorship of nipples and whatever else crap they can come up with. Do you really think the latest Budweiser commercial loves you?

If you THINK you know what The Shock Doctrine is about, you are probably wrong. I watch Naomi Klein's interviews thinking oh, okay, I know all that. Bull. It is an absolute horrible history of our economics and our expansion through the CIA and University of Chicago's School of Economic's take over of countries, financed by us the taxpayers.

If you read no other book, read this one.

Klein's book is next on my list (and, I do appreciate your synopsis).

Since you've shared a resource, please consider these:

The American Age by Walter LaFeber (an intriguing history of US Foreign Policy)

Beyond Power by Marilyn French (all I can say is OMG!!)

and, last but certainly NOT least

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.

There are many more of Us than the Corporate Megalomaniacs are willing to admit. We are the points of light in this time of darkness. Our contributions are immeasurably essential--a word here, a helping hand there, a shared concept at a crucial juncture. Sometimes, though, it's hard to see our forward momentum as We manifest the change we wish to see in this world. You and others like us give me hope. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about Ms. Klein with me.

See message #59. Let's fight for America and against this conspiracy!!

Are you willing to pick up the gauntlet? What say you?

"Edwards was too weak." "Edwards just rolled over."

Yep - - the corpmedia does this to all good Democrats, and the powerplayers let them.

Edwards is lucky, though....Terry McAuliffe won't be writing a book putting all blame on him and airing his lies all over the networks for months.

..without the active participation of the Corporate Establishment of the Democratic Party.

They are co-conspirators.

The Democratic Party is a BIG TENT, but there is NO ROOM for those
who advance the agenda of THE RICH (Corporate Owners) at the EXPENSE of LABOR and the POOR.

in power.

Imagine their fear of President who already uncovered the most government corruption in modern history, matched with a VP who could expose corporate corruption.

More Dems need to rent Our Brand is Crisis documentary. Wake up to who Carville and guys like Mark Penn REALLY work for.

Not that it makes me feel much better (it's actually enforced my fears as to what "my country" is REALLY all about!), but I feel a little bit smart for having smelled the rot that's prevailed on the airwaves for a couple of decades now.

As has been mentioned already, I'd like to see John assume SOME sort of role to beat back the MSM's steamroller. If he could find one anymore, I'd like to see John duck into a phone booth and re-emerge in his S-suit and cape.

Edwards was always considered top tier. Edwards was given much better coverage than the rest of the bottom tier candidates.



Dennis Kucinich was the voice for single payer health, the voice for ending the war in Iraq and the voice for changing our trade policy. Dennis Kucinich was truly shut out by the media.

unless we can figure out a way to stop them and educate the MASSES about the brainwashing and manipulation that is being perpetrated. How we do this, we need to figure out and quickly. K&R, bookmarked.

Now the Dem choice is between two candidates that they do not fear as much as they did him..
We have been played...right into their hands, as has John Edwards.
By its silent acceptance of this, the public has been complicit.

Partially read, and bookmarked for reference.

Don't you just get tired of the Big" CORPORATE MEDIA WHORES" force feeding you your candidates. the whores are allways polling this and polling that, and all the time sucking the American lemmings into their spin. I called these final four from the gittyup, just by watching what the whores have been saying. This whole election system needs a complete overhaul!

I knew that the media was the reason for Edwards not coming up in the polls , heck if he had been given as much media attention as Obama was given, he would have had the primary won already, Wolf Blitzer actually mentioned Obama name from 10 to 15 times in the first 10 minutes of one of his news cast.

Our most sacred treasure, our press has failed us...

This is very critical to our nation and democracy........I am an engineer and have lost my job....
Because of corporate greed John Edwards has talked passionately about, I have been out of work for four years in Detroit....This is very personal to me and also to millions of hard working people like me throughout America. There should be a neutral press established to mention what is happening and it should not be NPR as I have heard they too are already bought out by lobbyists from large corporations.

Personally, I feel John Edwards should be our candidate. He has for sure been cheated. We Americans have been cheated too. The new Americans now beginning to view the primaries do not know what has happened over the last 12-monthes. They don't know that they like myself have been raped. I have donated many dollars to my candidate. I have been raped not once, but twice. That is, first we lose our jobs and second, we lose our campaign donations to try to support a great honest man in John Edwards. I skipped over from the Republican Party 5-years ago because I saw that he was the answer to strengthening this weak economy. I'm getting carried away because I'm pissed. I don't write this much!!

All said, I don't think there is time for him to get back in the race unless it is through another party, lets call it the "TRUE DEMOCRATIC PARTY", or something of that nature.

If endorsed as Attorney General through Obama or Clinton, JE could get this taken care of, but I am not sure they would want to nominate him as they themselves are corporate Democrats.

Now, who's to say that whoever wins the Democratic nomination will get the same treatment, I don't know. Hillary or Obama are already entrenched with corporate lobbyists. Enough said....I think this has been a well planned conspiracy for maybe the past 5-10 years. Enough said, but for all of you who need to know, let's get together America. We have a big fight ahead of us.......also, please educate yourselves about what is happening!!

what it is like to get laid off in the months to come. You are correct, the corporate media will try to nail the Democratic nominee--Hillary or Obama or even Hillary/Obama (in either) order to a cross and anoint the GOP nominee, because the MSM is addicted to Republican FCC unlimited media mergers and acquisitions . Romney will give them more of this than McCain, but they are probably smart enough to know that McCain is more electable than Romney.

However, with the economy going south and the war in Iraq continuing and the Democrats refusing to remain in the circular firing squad that people like Pat Buchanan and Karl Rove are attempting to put them (the Dems hate Bush and his war and the Recession and the GOP way more than they will ever hate each other) and with the Republican Party unraveling it will be a truly Herculean labor to make a Republican presidential candidate win this fall.

If the Dems nominate Hillary, expect the MSM to dredge up lots of dirt on Bill. They will "discover" the parts of Sibel Edmonds story that relate to the Clinton years. The Bush DOJ may even get involved with an investigation--of the Clinton years. There will be nonstop "Hillary is a Bitch" coverage. Tweety will have a field day. Every person that ever had a grudge against Hillary will be a welcome guest on TV. Every women that ever fantasized about sleeping with Bill will be a guest on TV to describe the "rape".

If the Dems nominated Obama, get ready for "Obama is a scary Black Muslim". Kenya will turn into an official genocide. Right wing shills will tell us that genocide is in the blood of Africans. We will be informed in no uncertain terms that Obama is a Muslim. Someone will find his Koran and show it on TV. There will be photos to show links with Black supremacists. Stories about his dad and stepdad being allied with terra-ists. And the Bush DOJ will step up its "War on Black Folks" indicting and prosecuting Black people all over the country.

If Hillary and Obama run together, they will probably try to claim that they are having an affair. That will freak out the South.

That, plus the usual voter suppression and election fraud activity should give McCain a fighting chance he does not deserve (plus his new "secret plan to end the war in Iraq"). Romney, if he is the nominee, is doomed. A Mormon president will be too much for America to handle.

Oh, almost forgot. The New CREEP wing of the GOP will try to stir up hostility within the Democratic Party, so that if Hillary wins, the Blacks sit out the election or if Obama wins the women sit out the election. They will do this by following the old Buchanan 1972 strategy of having fake statements or comments by candidates, "bad" endorsements and a combination of other dirty tricks. These will probably fail, however. Back in the 60s, the Viet Nam War was widely perceived as a Democratic War, and therefore people distrusted the Democratic Party. The Iraq War is mostly a Republican War (though Buchanan/Rove and Co. have tried mightily to portray it as a Democratic war and some people at DU fall for their lies). As long as the Republicans are seen as the cause of the war, then it will be pretty easy to rally voters to turn out to vote Democratic so we should not see a lot of people stay home like they did in 68 because there was no Gene or Bobby.

Expect to see the MSM do a lot more "Pelosi knew about Waterboarding" and "Hillary is the real reason we are in the Iraq War" bs in an attempt to make rank and file voters despise the Democratic Party the way that they did in 1968 and 1972.

Suggestion: Read Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 for more of what we do not want to happen. I am reading it now, and it is full of stuff about the same people who are involved in politics today.

the opposition leader, who is aiming to install Sharia Law. There is even some odd stuff about Obama having sent DICK MORRIS to run Odinga's campaaign. Articles from the NY Times and the AllAfrica news site (a US news aggregator based in DC) have been scrubbed...links up at Larry Johnson's No Quarter site no long work. Johnson has some commentary on this mess, so it's already getting wider play. I've seen mentions that Odinga is Obama's cousin...there is all sorts of stuff waiting to be used in the general if he is nominated. I searched quite a bit today and couldn't confirm the Obama-Morris link...but it is well known that Morris detests the Clintons and is preparing a hit documentary on them. So, there may be something to it, I just don't know at this point. What IS fact is that he was over in Kenya in November 07 on a tourist visa to work for Odinga...it raised quite a fuss there...he left Kenya, planning to return, but his paperwork for a proper work visa got in the way, from what I can tell...so any work he did there was illegal. I'm still searching. Just be warned, that true or untrue, this sort of stuff is sitting there. It doesn't help that some of Odinga's followers are members of gangs linked to the Taliban. The incumbent/winner? is no prize, of course, but opposition leader Odinga is no better. Odinga's followers are responsible for burning that church with about 50 people in it. The whole mess is already being labeled ethnic cleansing. (There are 3 clans involved, Luo is the one that is with Odinga--Obama's family is Luo. PS--There are pictures of Odinga and Obama together; I saw one. So, just batten down the hatches.

OLBERMANN: All right. Why now, why did Edwards drop out today and why in particular before Super Tuesday?

ALTER: What happened to him is, you know, he ran a dismal third in Nevada, 5 percent. And then he goes in to South Carolina, the state of his birth, and they have a debate a week ago. And he wins the debate. The other two are beating each other up. He wins. The next day, no notice, no attention. He said to some people on his staff, he felt like he had to set himself on fire to get attention. And so, at that point, he realized he really didn‘t have a path to the nomination or even a path to holding a lot of delegates to be a kingmaker. And he and Elizabeth started talking about backing out.

of compiling and organizing everything. Your summaries and commentary are also excellent. K&R

OLBERMANN: All right. Why now, why did Edwards drop out today and why in particular before Super Tuesday?

ALTER: What happened to him is, you know, he ran a dismal third in Nevada, 5 percent. And then he goes in to South Carolina, the state of his birth, and they have a debate a week ago. And he wins the debate. The other two are beating each other up. He wins. The next day, no notice, no attention. He said to some people on his staff, he felt like he had to set himself on fire to get attention. And so, at that point, he realized he really didn‘t have a path to the nomination or even a path to holding a lot of delegates to be a kingmaker. And he and Elizabeth started talking about backing out.


Gee, do you think Jonathan bothered to give Edwards ANY coverage after the SC debate. I would venture to guess absolutely NOT...

This happens EVERY election. The media is NOT in the bidness to actually help improve our democracy. Their purpose is to help elect the people who will protect THEIR INTERESTS. Not "We The People" because we don't matter. So much for PUBLIC AIRWAVES belonging to us.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention your excellent research. Thank you for compiling this information for us, it should come in handy.

their asses. So, we get the people who right at the end started to give Edwards some publicity---when it was too late. That includes the WaPo, NYT, all the major TV news networks. We get people like Alter admitting that the press might be slighting Edwards for attention. Because if he admits it, then he can't be part of the press corp that went along with it, right? .

I wouldn't be surprised if we don't have a great big cynical mea culpa. As in "Oh, we were so bad. But the other guys were much worse than me. I was just going along with the general narrative." That is the way they justified participating in Gore is a liar

Go along with the general narrative equals participate in a conspiracy to lie. It just sounds nicer.

they have been doing it since the 80's. I called CNN back in the 80's about why they weren't covering other parties that had candidates running for President.

I was told that they didn't have enough staff to cover them. Which to me implied they were not going to cover them for obvious reasons. They controlled who's voices would be heard and whose voices they would silence.

I thought at the time, well hell why not hire some interns who would have jumped at the opportunity to get experience covering a candidate on the campaign trail. Hiring interns could have been an interesting approach to getting young people involved in politics.

That's when I became aware of how dangerous the media can be. I mean this was CNN, back when they had just a slight liberal bias. Until the rethugliCONS started calling them that over and over again. CNN started having a CONservative agenda.

I remember back in the 00 (S)election how some freeper with a bullhorn repeating continuously "CNN, Communist News Network", he
kept up his mantra for a long time before CNN decided to cut and run, or they finally realized what he was saying. I might have it on tape somewhere.


They are the Masters of Trans•Spin•dentalist™.

It almost made me throw up. Oh, Andrea Mitchell was talking in hushed tones, a couple other pundits were "sad" and somber....A lot of FAKE regret. It was really disgusting...

Looks like a lot of good evidence

I listened to NPR the Wednesday morning after the Iowa primaries and NOT ONE mention of Edwards, even though he came in second. NOT ONE WORD!!! It was all "Obama/Hillary".

US CorpMedia did a hatchet job on Edwards...

:thumbsup:

We have absolutely the crappiest press and reporters and columnists in both print and television. It reminds me of that old ad:

"I'm not a journalist, but I play one on TV."

They write the scripts, they write the scripts. (Manilow music in background)

reputation by a combination of ignoring and ridicule?

First they came for Kucinich, and everyone shrugged.

Then they came for Edwards, and more people sat up and took notice.

Who's going to be the next candidate who is alternately ridiculed and ignored?

Cable is getting hammered right now by the Bush FCC, which (in contrast to its laissez-faire attitude towards the industry in general) is trying to seize control of cable so that it can hand over cable to the telcoms like AT&T as a reward for its part in warrantless spying. Also, the Bush administration wants to censor cable content to curry favor with the right wing Christians and to keep any alternative news source from breaking the lockdown which it has on the news media. Propaganda does not work if there is even one unfettered news source. Just ask Karl Rove about how his "all terra all the time" campaign did in 2006 with the rogue NBC there to debunk all the phony terra warnings.

So, anyway, HBO or Showtime or Bravo or IFC might get on board a documentary about how naughty the news media and its whores were towards John Edwards, if it would get them fair treatment from the FCC.

Just a thought.

John Edwards thread at Salon and look at what I put in the thread header in December 2006.



This proves that we can not battle them one on one as they create each lie. I saw what they were up to and posted about it at Salon and DailyKos and here, but I am just one blogger and the corporate media has a gazillion paid whores.

To effect change consumers need to organize and use their economic clout. This may involve boycotts. When Tweety spouts bullshit, stop buying GE products--light bulbs etc. It may involve switching to news alternatives like the Guardian America. Cancel subscriptions to the WaPo and NYT.

Something has got to give.

A point that has not yet been mentioned here is the fact that the debates -- for the most part -- have been confined to cable. As a non-cable-subscriber I have missed all but two. This means that the "lower classes" who cannot afford the luxury of cable TV have been deprived of a chance to see and hear the candidates. At some point they will be winnowed down to only two and then perhaps the debates will be on network television, but that is entirely too late. I believe the networks have an obligation to put out for the public these earlier debates. If more people had been able to see and hear John in these debates it would have been harder for the media to erase him. It is a tragic loss. Also, the most recent match-up poll that was released last week (prior to Edwards' dropping out) pitted combinations of FOUR Republicans against TWO Democrats!!! Edwards was nowhere to be seen, although he was the only candidate who has been shown to be able to defeat McCain. Predictably, the match-ups between McCain and Obama or Clinton, showed McCain winning. This erasing of Edwards and his dropping out are a great loss and a tragedy for this country.

the working class by keeping the debates on cable.

Re: keeping him out of the head to heads with GOPers, I will bet that the networks have those numbers and they suppressed them. Edwards final strength was his appeal across a broad base of Americans. The final lie Edwards is a communist anarchist was designed to erode his appeal to the average middle class American, but it would take time to work. So, the press suppressed anything that might help Edwards. They were probably planning to release the first Edwards vs. McCain poll that showed Edwards losing to McCain and then they would announce gleefully "Edwards is such a polarizing candidate!"

The corporate media is a Big Fat Liar. Never forget it. Even MSNBC. In the end, it only objects to the War in Iraq and Iran, because GE's lifeblood the Pentagon tells it to, and because the high price of oil is bad for manufacturing. Also GE needs immigrant labor and does not depend on a Republican FCC so it is not as staunchly GOP as the others. That is why they have KO. However, if McCain is the GOP nominee, the Pentagon will tell NBC "Support McCain" and NBC will say "Yes Sir!"

All the other media giants are 100% GOP, except maybe ABC-Disney which has issues with A La Carte Cable.

The MSM will make a big effort to paint this as a bipartisan war, especially if Hillary is the nominee. This is because in 1968 and 1972 the Democratic base would not get behind the nominee, because they perceived the Viet Nam War as a Democratic War, even though Nixon escalated it. Karl Rove and Pat Buchanan are trying to make the war seem like Democrats fault so that voters this fall will say "To hell with both parties. They are both to blame for the war."

The best way for Democrats to foil this plan is for Congressional Democrats to make at least an effort to impeach Cheney. He is guilty as sin over Halliburton's no bid contracts. Start with that and then from there paint his lies about war as a way for him to make money. It will make it very clear that this was a GOP war. Sure, Congressional GOPers will block it, but it will fire up the Democratic base to support their party.

Everyday on this board (up until S.C., then it dropped off)I would see several post stating "Edwards is a Phony". A few of those even misspelled John Edwards.

It's not about race, it's about black and white history. So please step aside, and let the two rock stars of politics take you outside the issues affecting "YOUR OWN LIFE'S" by bringing you into the issue's of the candidates life's and the making of history.

:applause: :yourock:

and the sad part is that the blogs do not make a difference in this process....!

McCain

How much press was he getting prior to the DMR endorsement or even New Hampshire?

Then the MSM shut him out, because they were not about to have a Rudi FCC give NewsCorp all the favors. That left the MSM scrambling for a viable candidate. McCain is most palatable to the Pentagon, which controls GE/NBC, and of course, McCain is good on immigration, which GE needs to man its factories. So, we have seen GE/NBC get behind McCain. However, McCain is not the best Republican for unlimited corporate media mergers. This does not bother GE/NBC which is not a media giant. It is a manufacturing giant. However, some of the others like AOL-Time Warner and Viacom-CBS and Disney-ABC(especially the last with it history of wrestling McCain over A La Carte cable) were initially thinking that Romney might be more pro-business. It is just that they had their doubts that America would elect a Mormon (it won't). That was what Rudi was supposed to be for. 100% pro business and could win the general election. McCain is the 100% perfect for GE/NBC candidate but he is only just better than the Dems for the rest of the corporate media. They were not about to get all excited over him until he proved that he had what it took, since they might have had to get behind Romney instead.

The loss of Rudi threw them all for a loop. They are used to being able to select their nominee. They did not expect Rudi to stab them in the back that way. But what did they expect from a mobster like him?

I see nothing about the way that the press has dealt with the GOP nomination that conflicts with my reasoning. When I watch the same pundits that call Hillary a bitch and Gore a liar and Edwards a phony say of Romney "reporters do not like to accuse a politician of telling lies" (I think this was Howard Fineman of Newsweek but don't quote me on that) and none of the rest of them even notices how ludicrous this is even though they have all read The Press v. Al Gore it tells you that the two tier system of reporting is still live and well.

Oh,and you notice how the press ganged up on Huckabee the unelectable? They knew that they had to purge that menace from GOP primary. Yet, when Obama staged a come from behind victory in Iowa, it was cause for celebration.

pushed . . .

He's a short, fat pink guy who wants war --- and more of the Bush agenda!!!

Here is an open letter to Ralph Nader:

Dear Mr. Nader

John Edwards, the candidate whom you astutely noticed had all the right ideas just got shot down by the corporate media. Rather than running another left wing splitter campaign that gives us four more years of war in Iraq and the corporate media four more years of Republican FCC favors that will allow them consolidate their empires even more (stifling free speech and the free press in this country once and for all) here are two ideas you should consider.
One, turn your experience as a consumer advocate to the task of becoming a consumer advocate of the press. With your reputation and contacts, you could build up the equivalent of Media Matters into a power house that would scare the MSM silly.
Two, start your own independent press with TV and internet, in combination with others who are interested in the same issues. Again, with your name behind it, you could raise lots of interest. Get Edwards involved.
A truly consumer oriented and driven press is what this country needs. A lot more than another politician.
Think about it.

McCamy

Supposedly the Swiftboaters have worked on a new movie re Hillary ---

Special work you've done here.

Check and mate.

:toast:

The "media" that you cite as out to get Edwards are opinionists, Krauthammer, Matthews, Bill O’Reilly,Glenn Beck Tucker Carlson, Dennis Miller,and John Gibson are pundits, talk show hosts, radio show hosts, etc.. They have a point of view that their audience is aware of.

Ron Paul has gotten and is getting close to absolute zero positive coverage, but he is still running, unlike Edwards who promised to "take it all the way to the convention, because it's personal to me!". Ron Paul got more delegates than Guilianni,is setting fundraising records, and may even win Maine on Super Tuesday!

Edwards lost because the people rejected him.



(edited to add glenn beck)

Ron Paul. If he is able to count the proceeds of his yard signs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers, buttons as campaign contributions the way that other candidates are, then I do not doubt that Ron Paul 2008 is a major economy in itself. In Texas, the only yard signs you see are "Ron Paul 2008" signs and they have been up since last fall. That is because so many Texas Republicans are so fed up with Bush-Cheney.

There are a lot of Republicans in this country. They want something they can be proud of. They can be proud of Ron Paul.

Republicans have a lot more $$$ to spend than poverty stricken Dems. Paul picked a better base.

Oh, and btw, it takes a certain kind of dogged stubbornness to post "Edwards is a phony" in a crowd like this. You remind me of the lone heckler at the 2004 Jazz Funeral for Democracy in NOLA. America is good to rugged individualists. Most places in the world try to get them to conform. Here we just think that they provide color. Like Ron Paul.

Ron Paul's message. Some may hate W, but it is not a anti-W movement. Bush isn't running.

Anyway, Edwards supporters can cling to the notion that there was a conspiracy out to get him, but they overlook other examples. Huckabee had no name recognition, almost no money, very little press coverage, did well in the debates and the won Iowa!

Bottom line, Edwards did not connect with the voters. He won South Carolina in 2004 by what 14 or 17 pts? This time around it was a blowout.
Nevada? 4%? C'mon, most people could see right through his rhetoric.

So, people started choosing between Hillary and Obama.

People who vote for Ron Paul know he isn't going to win. His is a protest vote. I call them the Loki/Beserker crowd after the way they mobbed the guy from Fox.

You are comparing apples and oranges in an attempt to protect the corporate media---makes me wonder if you are really a Ron Paul supporter. You do not seem to get with the spirit of his message.

since 2005. This was his second attempt and his name recognition nationwide was over 80%.

Obama smoked him, his plan was in shambles after that. He was polling way behind the top 2 in the next states.

How can I protect the corporate media? I support Hillary, but these conspiracy theories really bug me. Rudy Giulliani was leading all the nationwide polls, he lost 1 state that he competed in. Realizing his strategy backfired he dropped out.

Think about this, if John couldn't stand up to these people who "pushed him out", how the hell would he be able to stand up to the corporations?

I forgot to address your other claim. Your claim sounds good, but sounding good is not the measurement of what is true.

The Dems this year are overwhelmingly out raising the pugs in donations.

He is setting fundraising records. Stop the excuses.

It is like buying Nike or Calvin Klein. They do it to express themselves. To be hip. Not because they expect him to be president. They are pranksters. They put their signs up in their front yards to show the world "I may have a big house and a car but I am not status quo."


The people who were working for Edwards were backing a presidential contender who was actually going to change things, not change the way that people looked to their neighbors and friends.

Apples and oranges.

Ron Paul thousands of dollars, spam message boards, flood online polls, call talk radio, send up hot air balloons to splash his name over cities, get in to debate forums to cheer for him, write letters to the editor, act like idiots. And they do all this so they can put up a yard sign.

Your still in denial about Edwards, if his message resonated he could have overcome any media preference. Hillary was dismissed and Obama was the inevitable nominee before New Hampshire. What happened? Oh Yeah, Hillary won. Who would have predicted Huckabee's reults? Unlike Edwards, he actually won a state and right now is close to Romney in delegates. Huckabee has no money, no organization, he did not start campaigning in 2005, has a funny name,and looks like Gomer Pyle but has still done better than Edwards.

Please have the last word. Live in your safe and cushy illusions, illusions created to protect your view of the world.