MSNBC Pimps KO So They Can Mind F**K Dems With McCain Propaganda

No more cute titles, like “Wag the Election.” This time, I decided just to tell it like it is with the very first line. Has anyone been curious about why General Electric, bosom buddy of the Pentagon, corporate welfare queen bee, purveyor of nukes and world’s third largest company keeps Keith Olbermann around and has him hosting their election night coverage? Originally, he was brought on as scab labor, to replace Phil Donahue, who would not get behind the Iraq War effort in 2003. Later, when 1)Sy Hersch revealed that the Bush-Cheney administration was going to use their mandate from the stolen 2004 election to invade Iran (pissing off GE’s buddies in the Pentagon) and 2)Michael Powell revealed that the Bush administration had lied when it promised to appeal a lower court decision striking down an FCC ruling that gave media conglomerates unlimited powers to expand their holdings (this was why NBC joined the others in sitting on the Ohio 2004 exit polls) and 3)when the Republicans decided to declare war on cheap immigrant labor (the type that manufacturers like GE need) and 4)the price of gasoline kept rising (cutting into the profits of the manufacturing sector)---when all that happened, General Electric decided to use Keith Olbermann to punish the Bush administration.

However, as I describe in several of my previous journals, General Electric’s media empire has been actively stumping for John McCain. Their military buddies at the Pentagon love him. And John McCain is ready to rubber stamp all of General Electric’s requests for new nuclear plant start ups in the U.S.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/224
In this journal, I show how the propaganda artists at MSNBC anointed McCain the Republican nominee on the night of the Iowa caucuses even though Huckabee won and how later people like Tom Brokaw gave viewers pep talks in which he described the importance of them getting behind McCain in order to win. This from a news network that likes to laugh at Fox for its bias. I show the pattern of painting waffler McCain as a “maverick” and “straight shooter”.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/139
Here is what I wrote back in February about GE, NBC and McCain.

The new material for this journal comes from MSNBC’s own transcript of their special election night coverage of the Ohio, Texas, Vermont and New Hampshire primaries which we all watched but did we really listen ?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23482973/

I. MATTHEWS: Actually, I’m like the Br’er Rabbit, don’t throw me in that briar patch.

These guys make lots of Freudian slips like that.

There are many, many references to McCain as a maverick this evening, since this is the night that ties up the Republican nomination for him. Everyone except Maddow, KO and Robinson is engaging in a McCain love-fest tonight. Even Buchanan and Scarborough seem to have gotten over their antipathy towards him.

My favorite of the accolades which are heaped upon him comes from Brian Williams:



Get a room, will you?

When a network allows---hell, when it encourages it employees to go on the air and campaign for John McCain in this way every single day, not just during the election night specials, at some point it has to become obvious to even the most self deluded starry eyed Democrat that General Electric has the world’s biggest hard on for John McCain, the candidate who doesn’t mind if we have a Chernobyl a year for the next hundred years and he hopes you don’t mind either.

So, keeping in mind that Tom Brokaw lead the television march to war in Iraq and remembering from my last two “Wag the Election” journals that General Electric sends him out with the extra special propaganda, how are we supposed to read this :



Oh please, please please don’t throw me in that there Briar Patch.

Do these guys think we were born yesterday? Yeah, actually they do.

II. ANDREA MITCHELL: There’s been a generational split

General Electric’s CREEPy election night strategy has been pretty simple. Have a popular progressive host who makes no bones about being biased in favor of one of the Democratic candidates. Have someone or some group of people convince him that the other Democrat is the anti-Christ and that the longer the Democratic primary continues the worse the Democrats’ chances become in the fall. Never mind the polls that say that Democrats are enjoying the longer primary season or that record numbers of Democratic voters are registering which bodes well for turn out in the fall or that a majority of Democrats consider the two candidates interchangeable and will vote for either one but would prefer to have both on the same ticket (in either order). Have him aim a magnifying glass at every real or imagined fault of the anti-Christ candidate, while spinning every bit of news to favor the chosen candidate.

This will ensure that a legion of supporters of the chosen candidate tune in to General Electric’s news network to hear the propaganda which the rest of the cast has prepared for them.
Obama did not have to be the chosen one. It could have been Clinton. However, there are three good reasons for General Electric’s choice. One, his voters are younger, and younger people are more likely to be fooled by this replay of Pat Buchanan’s 1972 Mind Fuck the Democratic Primary strategy since they were not around to see it in action the first time.

Try to imagine that the situation was reversed, and GE with pulling the same stunt on a bunch of the geriatric Clinton supporters. As Nora O’Donnell confirms again this evening, Hillary is attracting the old fart Democratic vote. You know, people who actually marched in the streets in the 1960s. Women who burned their bras. People who sat at lunch counters to protest segregation. People who destroyed their draft cards. The kinds of people whom Joe McCarthy called “red”.

I can just imagine the expressions on the faces of Clinton supporters if they were watching MSNBC election night coverage and Pat Buchanan tried to tell them “That Barack Obama is so divisive. He is trying to make sure that his voters stay home this fall so that McCain wins and he can run in 2012.”

Joe Thundercloud would set down his hash pipe and turn to the kitchen where his old lady, Sunshine would be baking up a batch of Magic Brownies. “Hey, Sunshine. You’d never guess what that old bullshitter Pat Buchanan just said about Barack Obama.”

Sunshine pops her head through the beaded curtain that separates the kitchen from the living room. Her waist length grey hair is decorated with a wreath of daisies. She wears a long flowered dress. Her feet are bare. “Pat Buchanan? Isn’t he the one who slipped acid to Ed Muskie in 1972? Why are you listening to anything he says about a Democrat? Turn it to PBS. Maybe Bill Moyer is on.”

“Moyer. Good idea. He helped LBJ pass the Civil Rights Act…”

No offense to young folks, but once you get enough years under your belt, people just naturally tend to acquire a basic fund of knowledge. It is called experience . You know, that stuff that makes Clinton so icky . I am 48, and when people my age see Pat Buchanan and Company doing what they are doing on MSNBC, they have flashbacks to 1972 and 1973----those Watergate hearings were the best summer viewing ever.

III SCARBOROUGH: All right. Panic sets in. Fear and loathing.

Oops. There they go letting their Freudian slips show again.



Now, can anyone tell me who has been guilty of the very worst Clinton bashing in all the world? Chris Mathews, Keith Olbermann Jonathan Alter, Richard Wolffe aided by assorted other good old boys at General Electric. Clinton can not fart without KO playing a video of it three or four times. He is positively fixated on the woman. And Mathews’ misogyny has taken him to a whole new level of journalistic atrocity. This will be an ongoing theme this evening---Clinton bashing followed by Buchanan and Scarborough complaining about how Clinton is being unfairly bashed….. by her own party.

Who the hell made MSNBC the official mouthpiece of the Democratic Party?



Note that the buzzword of the night (after maverick for McCain) is kitchen sink . OK, that is a phrase. Everyone uses it. Axelrod uses it. Matthews uses it. But what exactly do they mean by the “kitchen sink”? You might be surprised.



OK, time out. Obama’s campaign screwed itself on NAFTA. They handed Clinton and McCain and anyone else who wanted to use it a great big fat juicy story. No fair calling that anyone’s dirty trick or kitchen sink. Those who wants to argue differently are deluded. Period.

Two, we are talking a Matt Drudge doctored tape Matt Drudge . He took Clinton’s 60 Minutes interview and edited it so that it would appear that her second response, the one that she gave after her first, unequivocal “No” (he isn’t a Muslim) would be seen as her first response. The second time the interviewer asked the question, he was asking her to prove her first emphatic “No.” Since she had no way to prove her answer, not being intimate with Obama, she said what she said. When the interviewer badgered her a third time as if he was trying to get her to change her answer she made it clear that she thought that the whole issue was part of a right wing conspiracy to attack Obama. Matt Drudge doctored the interview in order to do what the good old boys at General Electric are doing—creating division within the ranks of the Democratic Party. The Nixonian one here is Fineman.

And maybe David Axelrod is being a little bit Nixonian.



I am going to say something here that has been bugging me for a while. Axelrod is way too eager to engage in splitter politics in a year when the Democrats’ best chance for victory is solidarity. When Matthews asked him to comment on the Matt Drudge edited interview, Axelrod knew that the tape was not what it seemed. When he embraces oppo put together by Drudge, he implies to the world that Barack Obama embraces oppo put together by Matt Drudge. Sometimes, I wonder if Axelrod is really as supportive of Obama’s presidential campaign as he should be or if his first loyalties lie with someone else, someone whose primary goal is something other than Democratic victory this fall.

There is more in the “kitchen sink” that Clinton is accused of lobbing at Obama. Louis Farrakhan is supposed to be in there (My, what a big sink it is and what strong muscles she must have). Now, this is incredibly ironic, because we all remember that it was Tim Russert and Brian Williams who broadsided Obama in the Feb. 26 debate by mentioning Rev. Wright and his praise for Farrakhan and demanding that Obama reject the Nation of Islam leader.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23394129/

This put Obama in a bit of a tight spot. It was the politically expedient thing to do, but it was not the politically correct thing to do for an African-American leader. As he debated what to do, the MSNBC blogger was gloating that the headlines were going to read “Obama refuses to reject Farrakhan” which would have been big news. Clinton stepped in and made it much easier for Obama to do the pragmatic thing by saying that she has done the pragmatic thing before. In essence she said “Hey, it’s ok to just say it. This is politics. No one’s going to take this seriously.”
So, for the guys at MSNBC to blame Clinton for kitchen sinking him with Farrakhan just seems a bit surreal.

There are other things in that debate that should tip people off about General Electric’s true motives. For instance, the way they challenged Obama to accept public financing if McCain accepts public financing. Why introduce McCain in a Democratic debate, unless they are stumping for McCain?

If you read through that debate, you will realize that she was not the one that started the negative campaigning in Ohio. Obama was the first to go negative with ads that distorted her position on NAFTA and her health care plan. That was why Clinton blew up in public---leading the pundits at MSNBC to spend several days labeling her as a modern day “Sibyl” with “multiple-personality disorder”. You got that? When the Obama camp attacks and Clinton complains, she is psychotic. When the Clinton camp realizes that complaining will get her nowhere and she replies in kind, she is burned at the stake as a witch. And if it makes you mad at Obama, then you are falling into MSNBC’s trap.

IV. TODD: Austin, one of the ultimate latte cities in this country.

One of the things that Obama supporters don’t seem to notice is that their candidate does not really get praised on MSNBC---not in the same way that McCain does. Oh, Chris Matthew feels things crawl up his thigh. And he will say things like---



Yes, I see what you're saying, you sneaky bastard.

Once again, Matthews damns Obama with praise. I am going to translate what Matthews just said into living-on-the-edge-of-poverty-Democrat-ese.
“Obama will represent you if you already have a college degree and a hybrid car and a great job and health insurance and all you are worried about is whether or not your kid is going to get drafted and whether the lake beside your summer cottage is going to get cleaned up. But he sure as hell doesn’t give a damn whether your son who went into the Army because it was the only way he could get to college ever gets an appointment for his PTSD. And he doesn’t give a shit about your mortgage or your wife’s cancer that you have no insurance to cover. So stay at the back of the line, you bum, and wait for the good times to trickle down.”

Talk about personality switches. Now Joe and Pat are back to playing defenders of Clinton again:



What? What is Jonathan Alter doing with the broomstick? Oh God! These people are out of control.

V. OLBERMANN: How is the Democratic party going to hold itself together?

I mentioned that there are three reasons for General Electric to pick Obama over Clinton as the Democrat they “support” alongside the candidate of their dreams, John McCain. The second reason is a no brainer. Obama has a comfortable relationship with Exelon, another nuclear industry giant, so he is the lesser of the three Democratic evils for a company like General Electric.

However, I do not think that General Electric is playing to lose. And I am pretty damn sure that Pat Buchanan is not playing to lose. He is still addicted to the old southern strategy. That was why he told KO in 2006 that the best way for the Republicans to mobilize their own voters was to scare them with the image of Blacks chairing Congressional committees.

The southern strategy is nothing but a variation on an even older and nastier labor busting tactic used by bosses since the beginning of time. Pit one oppressed laboring class against another by offering one slightly better wages and working conditions but then take away its jobs and hand them to a group that receives inferior pay and treatment because of lower social standing. The British used the Irish for this purpose in England---which is why people like Pat Buchanan should be ashamed of themselves. Every immigrant group in the US has been exploited in this way. This is why Engels said that we would never have a real socialist workers revolution in America.

The name "southern strategy" should be changed, since this splitter tactic works everywhere, not just in the south and it can be played using any demographic, age, gender, ethnicity, as well as race. We are seeing its many variations this election.

Here is the general election math with a divided Democratic Party if Clinton is the nominee. Obama’s youthful, liberal, elite and African-American supporters might stay home rather than vote for Clinton but many of them will hold their noses and vote for her and almost none of them will cross over and vote for McCain. So, the race comes down to which candidate mobilizes their own party and which gets the biggest proportion of independents. And with the economy in the toilet and McCain with obvious brain damage and Bubba campaigning for Hillary, Clinton could pick up quite a few independents.

Here is the general election math with a divided Democratic Party if Obama is the nominee. Clinton’s Latino voters might cross over and vote for McCain since he is “soft” on immigration issues, being from Arizona, and Latinos have voted Republican before in the not too distant past. Clinton’s low income blue collar workers, especially all the ones who have veterans in their families might cross over and vote for “straight talking” McCain since this group has a fondness for heroes and fighters. Obama is unlikely to poach many of the Republicans after the RNC is finished painting him as “the most liberal Senator” in the US. More likely, Republicans who do not like McCain will stay home. Now, a few more Republicans might show up to vote against Clinton than will show up to vote against Obama, however with the economy in the toilet, McCain is going to be counting on all those unhappy Latino and blue collar voters to turn out---and break for him. As for independents, Obama may get some, but probably no more than Bill Clinton could draw for Hillary.

So, if faced between the choice of an opponent who hands you several Democratic constituencies on a silver platter and an opponent who simply fails to fully mobilize several Democratic constituencies, which would you choose?

That is the way that Pat Buchanan is thinking. That does not mean that his calculations are correct. Or that he really gives a rat's ass who the nominee is. Mostly, the guys at General Electric are trying to divide the Democrats so that one candidate's constituency will not vote for the other. They attack Clinton---and blame Obama and the liberal media. They twist every single thing that Clinton says as if it is a direct assault on Obama himself with an Ak-47 and play the distortions day and night non-stop to create the impression that she is the Terminator and Obama is Sara O'Connor.

Recall that as early as the New Hampshire primary Pat Buchanan was predicting civil war for the Democratic Party. How did he know? Because he is the scriptwriter.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/stories/buchananmemo.htm



And Keith Olbermann is the actor, reading the lines, unaware of the meaning behind the words.

It just goes on and and on and on, aiming to lull reader into a state of quiescence through accumulation of detail and repetition of thesis, but no development of it. It's the same technique employed by advertisers and propagandists; a shining example of what it purports to decry.

and get through to the subliminal messages. You can see which of the cast members always show up with the same messages. You start counting how many times McCain is called a "maverick" in one night by how many different people.

But read them quickly. MSNBC won't leave them up forever.

What is it about the lack of critical thinking in this forum?

:rofl:

post your insightful response all within 60 seconds.

But - helps keep a good post kicked. So thank-you. i would have missed it otherwise.

(in 200 words or less)

You have to support what you say with facts and this post does it. It's one of the few on this forum that does.

Ner Ner And explode with self righteous upset.

even further apart. KO needs to get a clue really fast.

That is what I see all over GDP at DU right now. Splitter oppo that is making John McCain a very happy man.

Do you believe Hillary's comment was appropriate?

and his brain less so.

These guys get seduced by money and power and soon start believing their own publicity. Amateurs, both.

hillarious! Poor Hillary, being picked on for her repeated comments
about how she has to stay in the contest (just in case Obama gets assassinated).

She's just being thoughtful....

Her OWN statement not to mention the cumulative actions of her campaign thusfar have divided the Democratic Party.

Face it under the ever changing metrics of you Clinton supporters Hillary can say or do anything and you will still find a way to spin her as a victim.

She used ASSASSINATION today and several times before as justification to stay in this race. This, mind you is after she was openly courting WHITE support in heavily racist areas of Appalachia.

But yes Hillary is the victim here. If she implied that Obama could be killed it somehow Obama's fault for not being killed or getting out of the race before that happens right?

By your twisted logic it is always the fault of those who criticize the boldness in which her campaign continues it's tread into the land of Rovian 'Smear at all Costs' tactics.

And because of your INCREDIBLE DISCONNECT from said reality, you continuously post these long winded, bloviating useless threads in which your argument is paper thin at best and made by someone on a bad acid trip at worst.

Your candidate is finished. Get the hook and take her off the stage NOW.

SHE is what is dividing the party and Keith was dead on when he explained all of the unforgivable moments she's been forgiven for already.

Rp

We have a presumptive nominee. One person -Barack Obama- has won the primary process and a majority of pledged delegates as per the mutually agreed upon rules of our party. It is time for the party to UNITE behind that Nominee, and frankly, it is time for Senator Clinton to acknowledge reality and get out of the race.

If she "just wants to wait until June 4" (riiiiiiiiiight) that's one thing- but if she's going to continue to raise a phony 'count all the votes' stink about FL and MI when she agreed to the DNC scheduling rules just like everyone else, if she's going to continue to pull bullshit about how she's the "winner of the popular vote", if Superdelegates flocking to Obama bring rhetoric about how "unelected elites are trying to overturn the will of the people" (and you know perfectly well that's what will happen)

in short, (ahem)....if she's going to drive her flaming trainwreck all the way to the Convention...

then SHE.. not Keith Olbermann, not General Electric, not Chris Matthews, not MSNBC-

SHE is the one dividing our party.

this is not the one, did you read it all?

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

who spends a good part of his show prattling on about celebrities and Hollywood gossip?

I somewhat agree.

My true love for Olberman lies in his ESPN days.

His outrage and his "Morrow-like" commentaries are just too manufactured for me.

If it were not for all of the posts here on Clinton's faux-pas, including all of the "outrage," I'd post something politically serious.

I wasn't defending Olberman. I was ridiculing an otherwise batshit crazy post. My 80-year-old Atlantis-believing mother-in-law doesn't send me emails with shit like this. I like connect the dots, but only when fuckin' Archie and Jug-head show up when all is said and done.

it was part of the design of the show at the beginning to just be able to get him on the air ... Had to be a "magazine" type show to not be as threatening ...

it was part of the design of the show at the beginning to just be able to get him on the air ... Had to be a "magazine" type show to not be as threatening ...

so you might not get anywhere with the OP'er.

Is Carville a shill for the nuclear industry, secretly trying to sabotage his own party? Or is it possible that maybe there is some validity to his description of the Democratic Party?

You are reading for more into Matthews's words than people who take Hillary's comment today as a suggestion that Obama might be assassinated.

edit: spelling

Please tell me you copied and pasted it and some other looney tune actually wrote it all.

Somebody needs help though. Either you or the original author.

Olbermann is a member of the News Media Guild, and has credited the union with http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/08/03/forum-moderator-olbermann-union-card-may-have-saved-his-broadcast-career/">saving his career.

KO on unions in America:



Hard to take anything you have to say seriously when it's couched in made up garbage rhetoric such as this.

http://www.nader.org/interest/022803.html



Man, if only we could have had more of that in the run up to the Iraq War.

...an attempt to replace a liberal with a shill?

When has Olbermann ever endorsed Bush or the invasion of Iraq? I'd really be interested in knowing.

This leap of logic is as sound as Evel Knievel's jump over the fountain at Caesar's Palace, and just as ugly and brutal.

Don't worry, I'll call the Waaahmbulance.

It was amusing when he was on anti Bush-Cheney rants but his behavior these last months has been plain over the top.

Then I'll take the time to consider the veracity of your posts.

And thank you for your gracious response.
TV partiplundits who rant and rave and froth and foam have no credibility. End of story.

...then there's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righteous_indignation .

Two very different things.

with a satire warning. I think too many people
seem to think you believe what you write.

:thumbsup:

Chomsky would be proud.

And therein lies the problem.

:eyes:
:sarcasm:

And I resent the whole premise of your argument that Obama's supporters should just be taken for granted because they are less likely to vote for McCain.

Secondly, what the hell does all of this have to do with Olbermann?

This sounds like a pretty kooky conspiracy theory if you ask me.

to see the length of it and therefore caught the last sentence first:

"And Keith Olbermann is the actor, reading the lines, unaware of the meaning behind the words."

Thanks for saving me SOOOOO much time!

P.S. Keith is not 'the actor' - he is actually the writer of those lines and supremely aware of the meaning behind them.
His mastery of the English language is a pleasure to behold. You would do well to study his writing and 'economy of means.'

whereas some people create what seem like endless oceans of words,
possibly intended to impress with the volume,
or maybe some people even chew on that stuff,

but if KO gives a special message, each word counts.

ok, on my bed

:rofl:

:rofl:

I'm on break for college I'm not going to read a bunch of conspiracy theory ramblings from somebody who doesn't like KO just because he doesn't like Hillary.

And Olbermann writes his own special comments, so the entire premise is BS.

first understanding what you are making a comment about?

like I said, provide a summary up top for those of us who have actual things to do in our lives. It's ridiculous.

if you consider the purpose behind it, which is to propagandize. The truth doesn't need a lot of dressing up, but it takes a lot of spinning to try to turn propaganda straw into gold. Overwriting is also a great tactic for deflecting criticism, as every good propagandist knows. The calculation is that almost nobody will have the time or inclination to rebut all the points in an interminably long post, no matter how badly supported and argued they are, and if someone only attacks one or two things, you can always accuse them of nitpicking.

first Ive seen so much aluminum foil!

someone said earlier, who cares what the mindsets of Dur's are likening us to nobodys...I responded, are you so sure no body cares what we say or do..

After reading your op, and I did read it all, and I don't always, it makes sense, it is a fact that some have believed in the past that KO or people for KO have read DU, and knowing full well that the media is attracted to blog sites as well as du since they themselves around a year ago admitted as much, perhaps it was longer than that, I'm really not sure.

But I do recall the media attempting to act as if people writing on the net were nut cases and should not be read obviously attempting to keep viewers tuned into their new sites.

Perhaps the outrage of Sen Clinton's remarks was seen from the first moment from someone viewing Du, perhaps the issue was used in order to further cause unrest in the dem party, after all, if a few over zealous, oh well, more than a few on a message board is making a stink about it, we should to, and then those Dem's who don't' read blogs or the like will likely feel the same rage....

Its plausible, its possible, its despicable but its more than reason enough to take your op seriously and not toss it into the hyper hole of conspiracy nut jobs....


It makes sense to me, something just did not sit right, and the media jumped on it vast numbers after the people did not before..interesting and frightening at the same time that we are so easily led to the slaughter by having our own weaknesses used against us....

The venom against clinton as well as anyone that attempts to defend her on Du of all places is suspect to say the least...never before witnessed anything like this..never.

The veteran political junkies and dedicated volunteers went to Obama where I live. Party insiders and big donors went for Clinton. As for the voters, most of her voters are old alright, but they're old and dumb. Low information voters go for Hillary, big time. You know it and I know it so your narrative of Sunshine and Joe Thundercloud, as amusing as it may be, rings hollow. Sunshine and Joe are phonebanking for Obama right now.

"As for the voters, most of her voters are old alright, but they're old and dumb."

Stop and think. You (presumably a Democrat) have just called hundreds of thousands of other Democrats "old and dumb." They've been neatly pigeon-holed, allowing you to dismiss their very individual human feelings and beliefs as inconsequential--because, after all, they're just "old and dumb."

Do Democrats benefit from this? Of course not. This is the sort of thing that sets the Party against itself. Young, old, educated, dumb, black, white, gay, straight, wealthy, poor, male, female: they're either unimportant or not to be trusted; either way, they're the enemy. And so you end up fighting against your very brothers and sisters.

Now, I ask you, where did you pick up those talking points? In all probability, you heard a (paid) political "pundit" make such observations, or perhaps read a post where someone repeated what they read on another post, itself based on what someone observed a "pundit" say. Tracing these divisive frames almost always brings us to some oh-so-clever media personality, who makes his or her living by coming up with attention-getting fodder for the increasingly attention-deficient viewing public. Conflict is very easy to sell. It seems hard-wired into our minds. Hence the long history of drama in the arts.

These narrative frameworks are seductive in their appeal, dangling before our minds like bait before a hungry fish. Unless you learn to see them for what they are and manage to remain attentive, you're almost certain to be hooked.

It is oh so easy to get hooked, and once hooked, none too easy to escape.

I stopped caring if I was insulting people or not.

As for your assumption about where I get my "talking points" from, they're not talking points, they're observations gleaned from many hours spent volunteering on the Obama campaign, in three different states. Guess who the many, many I people I talked to who think Obama is a Muslim who refuses to say the Pledge were voting for?

On edit: And I wouldn't hold that against Clinton were it not for the fact that she seems to play to this ignorance, whether it be acting like a good ol' girl in places like OH and PA, saying that Obama is not a Muslim "as far as I know", the gas tax b.s., and of course how she's getting the hard working white vote.

I don't think I mentioned Clinton. Let's recap, shall we?

You: They're old and dumb!
Me: Let's not fall into the trap of being divided against ourselves.
You: It's all Clinton's fault!

See the discontinuity?

As the young, educated, and non-white ones, it's understandable to bring up the characterizations of the other's.

And if "not falling into the trap of being divided against ourselves" means I have to accomodate and indulge racist ignoramuses, then no thank you. I'm not talking about rejecting those people, but they need to be educated as to why their way of thinking is wrong. Clinton and her supporters show no interest of doing that. They want to take these people's votes and boast about them. :puke:

long enough to see mine.

The first time I heard it was a few months ago from that union president who was introducing Hillary at an event.

Rove sing high praise for Hill. Problem solved.

Err, I don't get what all you said, I mean for one thing if there's any network that the neocons are declaring war on for being too liberal it's MSNBC and NBC (same company) so why would they be in McCain's pockets? Also you attack Keith O. for being in McCain's pocket, I'll admit I didn't read all of your post (don't have the time to) but the guy often shows what an extreme liberal he is, so why would he want conservative McCain to win and beat Obama, Hillary, Edwards, or whoever the democratic nominee would be?

I will say though that I agree with you that McCain gets too much special media treatment even now, I don't see media stories blasting McCain for seeking endorsements from radical neocon pastors who say some really crazy stuff (like one who I think says antiIsrael stuff that McCain complimented). Instead they dig up sermons from Obama pastor, all old sermons, none of them from some recent Sunday, and make him into a big over the top crazy guy, and ignore his PBS interview that shows him as a more reasonable guy, because that doesn't fit their crazy pastor story.

If he did, his eyes would bug out of his head and his face would turn a nasty shade of purple and he would probably go into status meltdownicus also know at the Special Comment that does not end.

He thinks that he is doing the same thing that Tom Brokaw did on Super Duper Tuesday. You know, when Brokaw came out and told all the Republican viewers that it was time for them to swallow their disgust for John "the faux maverick" McCain and select him to be their nominee so that they could stop fighting one another and start tearing apart the Democrats.

KO was so impressed by the way that all of the goose stepping seig heiling Republicans followed Brokaw's orders and signed onto the Straight Talk Express that he has been trying like a fiend to get Democrats to do the same thing ever since.

The problem is that no one seems to have told him that Democrats do not goose step. And they do not seig heil. And there has never been a fucking "final rule" in all the years I have been following Democratic Politics and that goes all the way back to the 1960s. Gary Hart was thinking about the Republicans when he said that a candidate does not criticize his opponent. And even the GOP breaks that rule ("Voodoo economics" anyone?). Tell Democrats what to do and the only thing you can be sure of is half of them will do the exact opposite just to prove that they can. To show that they are not Republicans. Democrats take their vote very seriously. For many of them, it is all they have. When KO and company laughed at the Democrats in Florida for holding a Democratic primary, they committed an unforgivable sin.

KO could have amounted to something. But he has blown his chances. The people whose trust he needed to gain if he was going to become the next Cronkite are never going to trust him after this election. No one likes a journalist who is so obviously trying to manipulate them. I don't know what they did to convince him to become the "left wing" version of Bill O'Reilly, but remember, Russia and China were just another kind of fascism though they claimed that they did it for the good of the people.

Big Brother is still a paternalistic asshole, even if he thinks he is trying to save you from yourself.

Simply provide him with a chorus and an echo chamber, then ease off on the "rules" just a wee tad. Voila! He now has a die-hard viewership every bit as fanatical as Rush's; and MSNBC couldn't be happier with the guaranteed revenues from that tidy demographic package. Meanwhile, he's helped to split the Democratic base. And by allowing him the freedom (giving him the rope) to openly advocate for his candidate with such vitriol, he's marginalized himself as seen by independents and others outside of Democratic ranks.

Divide and conquer.

You have to give them their due. Well played.

"KO is clueless. He does not know he is being pimped..." Right. He's a freaking babe in the woods. A real dufus.

and somewhere, hidden withing your 50,000 word post, there's a subliminal
message that even you don't know about.

All corporate media are like this. Everyone has to sift through a lot of chaff to get to a grain of usable truth. But at least, unlike your humungous screed, there is usually something there. First of all, Matthews, Buchanan, and Scarborough are not news reporters, and you should know that. Wolffe, Alter and Olbermann ARE news reporters, though KO's show is somewhat of an entertainment venture. You are naive if you think Keith Olbermann doesn't know about GE's political leanings. He does. He also knows that they REALLY like the ratings he's getting, and the positive buzz doesn't hurt, either. It translates into MONEY - a language everyone speaks. As a result of all this good fortune, KO can name his own ticket and write his own commentary. Just like Bill O'Reilly, only liberal instead of certifiable.

"Originally, he was brought on as scab labor," - you could not be more wrong. Olbermann had previously had a successful show ("The Big Show") on MSNBC in the '90's, but he had walked out after becoming disgusted about being forced to cover the Lewinsky scandal ad infinitum. His deal to return to MSNBC entailed control over what stories he would cover.

Keith Olbermann HAS a clue. He doesn't need to GET a clue, but I think that you DO.

General Electric $168 billion
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2007/snapshots/561.html

http://www.jossip.com/whats-steering-msnbc-profit-or-ratings-20080513/

“There are two ways to maximize profitability. One is to go the CNBC route and hire Mark Hoffman and give him the latitude and the budget to invest in coverage and make the network really shine with news. This method will eventually lead to higher profits as the network brand is enriched. The other way is the path NBC chose for MSNBC; to slash the budget - to give up the idea of going toe to toe with resources against CNN and FNC and instead just try to be good enough so that viewers wouldn’t flee the network in droves. Nobody at NBC will publicly own up to this, but I have heard privately from several sources that this is the understood policy of NBC News regarding MSNBC. <…> The day MSNBC moved to 30 Rock was not the beginning of a new era as much as it was the completion of a process started nearly two years earlier with the departures of Neal Shapiro from NBC News and Rick Kaplan from MSNBC and the drive to get MSNBC under the direct physical, creative, and budgetary control of NBC News and maintain the new order of doing things the most cost-efficient way possible.”

Big corporations like General Electric own news networks like MSNBC and attempt to maintain a decent ratings because they need them to dispense propaganda that is good for the financial best interest of the parent corporation and its buddies. Therefore, General Electrics NBC/MSNBC do not do anti-immigration news because GE needs lot of low wage workers for its factories. They do prison shows and pedophile shows instead. GE started its anti Iraq war coverage because the Pentagon decided that it wanted out of Iraq---and refused to go into Iran---in early 2005. And the Pentagon is GE's biggest client.

GE makes $11billion a year from nuclear reactors. Recently, MSNBC highlighted a blatantly ridiculous poll showing Obama 20 points ahead of Clinton at a time when other polls showed them much closer together. The poll was featured in an issue of Newsweek (allied to MSNBC) that just happened to have articles praising nuclear energy as the alternative energy source that would save the world from global warming. There was even an interview with someone formerly from Greenpeace touting nukes. A poll like that would draw Obama supporters to Newsweek where some would read the article about the presidential candidates' stand on nukes, discover that Obama was ok with them and read more about the "nukes are green" pr that the industry is now attempting to spread.

That is what a company like GE expects to get from its media holdings.

Do not get complacent because, for a while, their interests coincided with that of the anti-war movement. GE wants to bring nuclear power plants back to the US. They want to US tax payer to cover the costs and they want us to store the waste and pay for any disasters that happen. They want us to stop funding research into alternative energy sources and concentrate on plants that will take years to build at a tremendous cost and which will, themselves require energy to create the enriched uranium.

I have watched CNN's election night coverage recently, and the difference is astonishing. At CNN they have people who actually know how to read statistics. No Nora O'Donell showing off dresses like one of those game show models. They know the counties. They know how to interpret demographics without over reading them. They call bullshit where they see it no matter who is uttering it--straight to the person's face. No setting guests up and then making snide comments behind their back when they are gone the way that Scarborough said that undeclared Rep. James Clyburn was there to do Obama's "bidding" on the night of the Nevada primary after Clyburn was gone. How can Obama supporters justify that kind of splitter crap?

I'm sorry, but no one should be criticized for not being willing to read all that. If you want to prattle on for that long every time you post, provide a ten point summary at the top.

I've got things to do. Sorry.

Like can you do that in a Classics Comics version? Like last semester the prof, he wanted us to read whole books man. Bummer.

this is a place where we debate political stuff. If he can't make his position known in a relatively concise manner, then his argument is not fairly entered into the debate. I'm not enamored enough of his writing to read that much text out of him. I have things to do. Like live.

you did decide to post your own snark. You could have read the article in the time it took you to read the replies that complained about people not reading it, and then post that she needed an editor, and then read my post, and then reply to my post, and probably take a shot at this one too.

Your argument is invalid because you used the time to read dozens of threads looking for something nasty to say without reading what it said. It is apparent that it is not the style or the length to which you object, but the messenger. Many of us are not of the opinion that a serious debate of the issues should be condensed into MSM length sound bites. Do you regularly deride writing that you do not read? When I taught school, we had a lot of people who wanted to ban books they hadn't read. Their usual argument was that they didn't have to read it to know they didn't like it. My reply is to your argument is the same. You are entitled to your opinion. I am entitled to mine. Many of us enjoy learning from this kind of article. if you prefer shorter ones, that is fine. Read them and comment on them. Avoid long passages with detail and evidence. There is room for everybody.

"you used the time to read dozens of threads looking for something nasty to say without reading what it said."

What? Are you insane? How can you assume you have any idea what I do? I actually click on McCamy's posts because they have provocative titles and I keep (foolishly) hoping that they will be posed in a readable manner. But thank you for your insanely condescending determination of why or what I do.

He's more than welcome to post what he wants, although there are rules here and I pity the moderator who has to read through his text dump to see if he's violated any of them. For my part, it's a suggestion, but also something important to me- in a debate one side can act as though something has been presented and not responded to. It is not fair to expect us to read McCamy's endless pieces. That is all I am saying. If the points are particularly salient, I recommend digesting them in a new thread to be entered into the debate. That's all I'm saying.

Ok, now I really am taking a break.

why didn't you say, "Greetings from a Condescending Jerk"?

Truth in advertising would be nice.

As for condescending, I did think it appropriate to descend to a less formal or dignified level given the "quality" of your remarks.

We are not supposed to call each other names here. Truth in advertising would mean that you should have noted in the tag for your post that you didn't read the article, that you were not going to address the issues of the article, and that you basically were just trolling for a way to swat at someone you think you might disagree with. I believe "jerk" would be an appropriate addition to the tag, given those disclaimers.

Dude, there are about a hundred Hillary Hate threads elsewhere. Many are very short. Check them out.

if you can't do the math as to what the point of my post was, well that's not a lack of truth in advertising, that's just you being slow. That's ridiculous.

And- and my lord, you are really being an ass here- I recommended an editor to indicate that some of us are not going to be inclined to read such a diffuse post.

I think "Get an editor- stat" is a fairly strong fucking clue that my critique is on the length or execution, not the content, genius.

Not even reading short replies now, are you. Get someone to read it for you.

It's no wonder you enjoy McCamy's intensely hard to follow logic.

How my reply did not address your post is not beyond me, but it surely eludes me.

and you don't begin to address any of the points of the article, which you now say your have read thoroughly. Which way is it? We don't expect you to read the pieces, but for my part, it's a suggestion, but also something very important to me - in a debate, if you should be aware of what the other side says before you respond. If you click on provocative titles the find the material too lengthy for your tastes, my suggestion would be to just move on. It is an open forum and people can act any way they want. But it would be more polite to address the issues of the post rather than just tell a very good writer that she needs an editor. So if you throw snark you should expect snark in return. McCamy is nicer than I am, so she just ignores click-by shots.

I DID NOT READ HIS POST.

I WILL NOT READ A POST THAT IS THAT LONG OR REQUIRES THAT MANY LINK EXPLORATIONS UNLESS THE FIRST PARAGRAPH IS VERY, VERY COMPELLING AND WELL WRITTEN.

I HAVE TRIED TO READ MCCAMY'S POSTS IN THE PAST, BUT HAVE GIVEN UP BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL OVER THE PLACE.

I DID NOT GET BEYOND THE FIRST PARAGRAPH.

I DID NOT READ HIS FULL POST. DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND? IS THERE SOME WAY I CAN SPELL THIS OUT MORE CLEARLY FOR YOU?

PLEASE INFORM IF THERE IS A NEED FOR ME TO USE PICTURES.

HOLY CRAP.


:freak:

We get it. You don't read long things. You have trouble reading complicated material.

Let me try short sentences. It is not nice to fuss over words you do not read. (Sorry for the two syllable word. I can only condescend so far.)

My point is that you have every right to fuss about how long someone's article is. It is childish and pointless and rude. But you have every right to do it, but you should realize that it says much more about you than the author. You are the one who said that this was a site to debate political ideas, then you snarked on style, avoiding politics or debate. I seriously doubt that in this exchange I am the party that is reading comprehension challenged.

Your grasp of simple logic is really weak.

If you can't see that if McCamy really has something of value to add to the conversation that she might broaden her readership by increasing her concision, well, that's logic evading you. Again.

You suggested there was some lack of clarity as to whether or not I had read all of McCamy's post. I never made any suggestion which should have led you to think I had swerved from my initial position that I was not going to read something so diffuse and all over the place. This, however, was too hard for you to follow. This makes you comprehensionally challenged.

I'm done. I have a bus to catch. Please bother someone else with your nonsense.

Golly that was a long reply though. Very good.

This is the shortest, simplest and most concise online source I have found about Barthes.

http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/barthes06.htm "The Death of the Author"



My nature----the fact that I was taught as a toddler to question the authority of what I saw on television by both parents and to question the authority of my parents by my parents and to question the authority of authority figures in government---means that I am as incapable of starting a work that pretends to be nonfiction with a "thesis" statement from the "authority" as I am of declaring that God created the earth in six days and on the seventh he rested. I say pretends to be nonfiction, because all writing is fiction. Some of it is written in the genre of "nonfiction." Since there are no rules in fiction, there are no rules in nonfiction. The poems of Wallace Stevens or the novels of Virginia Wolfe have had as great an influence on the social sciences as more recent philosophical writings by the structuralists and post-structuralists----they just said it more concisely, with much more beautiful style and language. And the modernists were just expanding upon the Romantics, like William Blake and William Turner. Who were responding to economic forces, which in turn were reacting to revolution that rocked 17th century England though we are not supposed to talk about it and Milton is supposed to be an old blind fart that made his daughters transcribe Paradise Lost period. And that revolution was a reaction to economic forces. So you see, there is no origin and no ultimate "Author", just links on links.

I am reading Studs Turkel's Hard Times at the moment, and I can not imagine a more "modern" book according to the criteria Barthe provides above. It is a collection of first person accounts of the Great Depression. The author's contribution is short introductions, the editing, the selection of the accounts and the way they are grouped. However, even that little becomes a great deal of "authorship" at times, as the reader (me) tires of hearing from those who kept their money (and prejudices against the poor) during the Depression and wishes to go back to hearing the struggles of the middle class who suffered and survived.

who are we to know what combinations can be created or what new ideas expressed? You posit a civilization that was terminal quite near to its birth.

I find it leads to a most unpleasant style of writing- I believe writing is most valuable as a means to communicate, and the idea of a style that leads to such abusive lack of trailposts for the reader is anathema to me.

This theory you seem to love appears to boil down to the simple concepts that nothing is original and that "writing" is simply the act of an interaction with, or practically a stirring, of a preexisting pot of text and ideas.

These are interesting ideas that you discuss and appear to support (but surely not conceive!), however, in the words of Eddie Griffin, here on "planet motherfucking earth" don't we have an election to win???

I also think that when trying to advance such aggressive and controversial thoughts as the ones you seem to often express, a slightly less philosophical approach to writing and a little more straightforward communication might be in order. But this is just my opinion.

So I'll just assume you're a Hillary Rodham Borgia apologist. Something you could've said in a couple of sentences.
John
Maybe Keith is just an actor reading lines, unaware of the meaning -- but Lady MacBeth knew exactly what she was saying. Now let her head off to the trashbin of history, where she and Silky Bill belong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention-Deficit_Disorder">Suggested Reading

He won't.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19969.htm

The NYT still has not given a good reason why the waited a year (until after Katrina when everyone was mad at the Bush administration) to finally reveal that Bush-Cheney were illegally spying on the American people. They knew about it in 2004. The same way that Ed Bradley at CBS had a story ready to run in 2004 about the missing WMDs but Viacom killed it.

I suspect that Rove got the NYT to squash the story the same way he got Viacom to kill the Viacom story and the way he got them to stab Rather in the back. In 2004 Kerry was for enforcing federal media ownership rules. The Bush administration was telling media owners that it planned to go to court to get existing media ownership rules struck down. That would explain why all the news owners sat on their Ohio exit polls, too.

In January 2005, days after Bush was safely sworn in, Michael Powell of the FCC announced that there were no plans to mount a federal court challenge of the media ownership rules. The Bush administration had lied. Recall that the press turned sour towards Bush in early 2005. DSM's were discussed. So was Jeff Gannon. So were Korans in the toilet. When Katrina happened it was all Bush's fault. In 2003 it would have been the fault of the people of NOLA.

Until we bust up the news media monopolies, they will exist to increase the profits of their parents corporations, not to practice decent quality journalism or keep Americans informed.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html

NBC/MSNBC and all its holdings are most strongly controlled by the third filter in the model, General Electric the world's third largest company. The first filter---federal government regulation through the FCC is almost inconsequential due to the enormous profits which General Electric makes in its primary business and due to the fact that it can use its news operations as a propaganda outlet for its preferred customer, the Pentagon which returns the favor not in cash payments but in military contracts which are not directly tied to services rendered. So, in a way, its second filter, its biggest advertiser, is the US Military. In 2003 it sold the war in Iraq. In 2005 when the US military turned sour on that war and decided that it did not want to go to war in Iran, it sold withdrawal from the conflict in the middle east. Now that so many in the military are on board the notion that nuclear energy is the way to keep the US out of oil wars, it can sell nuclear energy and keep the Pentagon happy. And it can sell the war hero McCain and keep the Pentagon happy. Plus, it sells veterans issues and assorted other military topics. The FCC has much less power over NBC than it does over say CNN or CBS since NBC is not after increased market share or huge expansion. It just wants to keep a certain share of a target audience so that it can influence public opinion.

Go and slaver over some of the real nutcases like O'Really - except he supports Hillary of course

since: A. It's no more than a repetition of numerous other posts you've made in the last month or so, draped in yet another false cloak; and B. It could have been boiled down to the same thing as all those other posts, i.e. "The Republican Party is trying to divide us. The only way to prevent that is to make Hillary VP."

But I am looking forward to similar posts in support of Obama once the convention is over...unless of course you and Hillary get your wish.

MT's efforts to inform and educate are not appreciated in this particular forum. The followers of Mr. Obama will soon get exactly what they richly deserve....and when the dust has settled a few of them might begin to suspect how they have been so easily led.

Short enough for you? Good. That is all.

The people in this forum have tumbled to the fact that what you call informing and educating by the OP is nothing more than an elaborate propaganda campaign, not in support of the Democratic party and whoever its presidential choice may be, but designed to ram Hillary Clinton onto the presidential ticket even if she doesn't earn enough delegates to be the nominee.

And would you be so kind as to provide a list of all the things that Barack Obama's supporters "richly deserve" for judging Hillary Clinton based on her own words and actions (not what some media hack has written about her), and for championing the person they think best serves their interest as ardently as Clinton's supporters do her? And to explain why the people cheering for Clinton don't deserve the same things? While you're at it, go ahead and explain to us why only Obama's supporters can be led and deluded, while all of Clinton's followers are 100% rational, free of bias and immune to media manipulation about who they support.

Why do you keep trying?

You make a statement and they say prove it. So you explain it in detail with all the background and events that lead to the obvious conclusion - the say "Whoa dude, too many words". You give them links to stories and examples and they don't read them.

It is depressing, but if DU is any indication, Karl Rove has stuck his hand up the puppet butt of the Democratic party and won. No matter how the primaries go, no matter how the election goes, the neocons win. We sit around spitting at each other. The welded-shut minds tell you that you are portraying Hillary as victim. What you have proven is that we are the victims. As GE and the media feed us crap, we eat it and blame each other for how it tastes.

DU has become Democrats Undone.

I will have to fact check what you say, but there's a plausibility to your argument.

need alternative energy sources. The people who want to sell us the Chernobyls of the 21st Century are all about how nuclear energy is so environmentally friendly that it will power our homes and supply electricity for our new cars without messing up the environment.

So, Al Gore is like the god of the "nukes are green" movement.

For the last few years people like this

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html

have been doing propaganda for GE and Exelon. Obama is the nukes are green candidate, however McCain really loves him some nuclear energy. I guess because his brain already glows in the dark from the radiation therapy they almost certainly gave him after he was treated for invasive melanoma of the temple.

Here are some more links

http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2005Q1/nuke2.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0307/p01s04-sten.html

and just plain BS, all with one thing in mind....support of your queen. I will give you one thing, though I disagree with it's content it is well written.

And I for one appreciate her tireless collection of examples of her analyses, her conscientious linking of further explanations, and her style, which is precise and expressive at the same time. I hope she is saving several copies in safe places so that they can be made into a book.

I have had four years of college and a reasonable amount of post-graduate work, and if I had been offered a course like this in college or grad school, my adult life would have been much less deluded than it was until the last two and a half years. There is no way to evade the reading of important scholarship, or to summarize a thorough survey. There are no Cliff's notes for the information and propaganda inundation we are living through. This flood of words really cannot be navigated without good charts. To say that a contribution is "too long" is, I fear, code for an unwillingness to expose yourself to thoughts that might change your mind. But minds exist to be changed and informed. They are full of moving parts, and when they get stuck for a long time in a few simple thoughts, they start to rust.

Taylor is offering grease for the cogs of your mind, the wonderful thinking machine. I've spend a lifetime, of sixty-five years so far, reading, and I think she's the real thing--a genuinely original, very talented scholar. I am grateful for these insights, even though I gave up watching television for news in 1989. Taylor explains for me why this primary campaign has become such a horror and so strange--it's because a small number of people want it that way.

Something is really wrong in this country when both the "right" and the "left" can easily blame "the media" whenever they see something wrong. The easiness to scapegoat something so complex is a sign that there must be something deeper going on other than a simple Big Brother model, or a one to one relationship between ownership and output.

Now, I love Noam more than anyone. I worked for his publisher back in 1998. I think the simple fact is that he has been so marginalized personally and intellectually in this country, really simplistic interpretations of his work is doing his legacy and his insight more harm than good. He has no control of those interpretations.

Of course corporate ownership is significant, but if you were right, you would not just be focusing on MSNBC. You should be able to do the same analysis for any other major news outlet, including Reuters and AP and Bloomberg and Pearson. The problem for you would be that you cannot easily tie those corporate owners to a direct Industrial MNC, which would take out a lot of the bluster in your argument -- namely the spectre of a massive corporate overlord.

Also, if you really think that you couldn't do this same analysis of CNN in 2000 or 2004? Where was Buchanan before MSNBC?

I personally don't see any value in MSNBC or having a strong progressive voice on TV anymore. It's a bad medium by design. It privileges novelty viewpoints, which in the past ten years, and I think Jacoby talks about this recently in her work, drives down the level of discourse into extreme polarities.

The Real News is always financial news, everything else is epiphenomenon on a grand scale...

From the point of view of the Democrats (which is my point of view) because of General Electric's economic interests. Back in 2005 when I watched MSNBC assemble an emergency panel of Pat Buchanan and some others to respond to Sy Hersch's article about how Bush-Cheney wanted to invade Iran with a great big Hell no! We won't go! it became clear that for economic reasons MSNBC was going to be on the side of the Democrats for a while.

I am not seeking to vilify MSNBC or make a saint of any other news organization. Back in 2006, when CNN was the All Terra Warning All the Time network, they were having to placate the Bush administration in order to get the FCC to finally sign off on an acquisition which would have been rubber stamped by the normally laissez-faire Bush FCC but which instead had taken 18 months to get passed. That was obviously blackmail.

And in 2004 when Viacom media lynched Dan Rather, they did it because the FCC had them by the short hairs over the fact that they were out of compliance with federal media ownership rules and if the FCC decided to enforce the law, Viacom would have had to sell off TV holdings.

FOX has also had to pander for FCC favors. That is why it put all its money into St. Rudi of 9/11.

McCain is going to face opposition from Disney, because of the way he tried to strong arm A La Carte Cable through Congress. The Mouse does much better as part of the package, and it has gone through machinations you would not believe to keep A La Carte from happening. So, ABC will be anti McCain. CNN is all about cable, and McCain has a history of being in bed (ha ha) with some other cable players. If I were CNN, I would attempt to back the strongest Democratic nominee (without handicapping any of them) and in the GE I would support the Democrat and work against McCain---in moderation, since CNN strives to maintain an image. As for Fox, it will probably back McCain by default.

If your interested, we can get into this. I appreciate you taking the time to reply, and believe me, I think media ownership and information control are incredibly crucial issues.

My core concern is that I think you are imagining levels of collusion that really could not have any foreseeable limits...

Your positing a system of Corporate ownership that dictates media coverage -- which of course is supposed to be significant because it causes or directly influences political outcomes.

If this system exists, and the required number of people remain silent and smart enough to hide, it is highly likely that other networks are manipulating political
outcomes directly.

The sum of all of that activity is that politics is irrelevant. Anger is therefore irrelevant, as well as candidate preference on a network.

Where does that leave normal people? Disillusioned and mistrustful of anything complicated -- keystones necessary for conservative ideology and neocon agendas.

That is the purpose of all this outrage. FOUR Melanomas since 2000, but nooooooooo, we CAN'T discuss that, oh noooooooooooo!

See the AP article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080523/ap_on_el_pr/clinton



While MSNBC can argue that the Obama camp drew attention to it first by issuing its public condemnation, for all we know it was McCain sympathetic reporters who set up the whole thing by contacting the Obama camp for a reaction---hoping to see a fist fight.

Then, once they got a comment, MSNBC was ready to spring into action. I seldom watch MSNBC anymore, but I will bet that played up the "assassination" remark all day yesterday. And they fed it to KO so that he could do a show around it.

Poor Keith. He is being played like a 2 dollar you know what.

And McCain gets to release his PE with his history of invasive melanoma of the temple for which I am betting that he had radiation and that is the cause of his neurological defects---since radiation over the left temple would cause memory and speech problems of the type he demonstrates now---but damned if we will ever get the truth out of him.

like fiddles at a hoe-down on a hot Saturday night, and now Democrats think Peggy Noonan's a WISE woman(I actually saw a post that said that!), Andrew Sullivan's smart, and GOD HELP US! - George Will knows what he's talking about, and the subject WASN'T baseball.
Those melanomas were the most dangerous kind, the deadly kind, and he's had FOUR of them! Yet, according to the press he's perfectly fine. They also say that an eight year term ages a President twenty years - that means John McCain would have the memory of a ninety-two year old man by the end of two terms, and an eighty two year old man after one term. Frightening!
Thank you for your reply! :hi:

:nuke: :hide: :nuke:

k&r

If you ever have the hankering, I would appreciate your views on reconciling non-duality with participation in a political forum.

(Aside: At this rate, I'll get to 1000 posts in no time, so I can be deemed "important" in the DU community.)

But the sky is the limit when you are talking about the political opposition since political discourse is supposed to have a rah rah effect.

In other words, it is not cool to call a Democratic Senator names or say that he has cooties.

But it is cool to call a Republican Senator names and say that he has cooties, if you are on a Democratic message board. Context counts. Same goes for their propaganda and their surrogates.

If you are on a neutral message board, then the condemn actions not people applies to everyone.
One of the reasons I think we have GOP moles is because of the willingness of so many people to condemn Democratic people and not just their actions at DU lately. This habit has been picked up by innocent newcomers who have joined in order to participate in the primary process.

The non-dualists will be the ones who decline to call even Dick Cheney a murderous mother raping bastard.

nt

has a former Greenpeace member who now specializes in claiming that nuclear energy will save the world from global warming being interviewed by Tucker. Things to note

Sierra Club called a "lunatic fringe" that opposes civilization.

Barack Obama praised for being "open" on nuclear power.

Nukes are green logo in the corner.

No one ever says the word "Chernobyl" and when Tucker asks if anyone ever died in a nuclear plant disaster who asks if an American ever died.

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&vid=799091fd-4d41-40e7-a6fc-b9341b049b48

therefore, even if with intent you were not arrogant, your post is indeed very arrogant.


"This will ensure that a legion of supporters of the chosen candidate tune in to General Electric’s news network to hear the propaganda which the rest of the cast has prepared for them.
Obama did not have to be the chosen one. It could have been Clinton. However, there are three good reasons for General Electric’s choice. One, his voters are younger, and younger people are more likely to be fooled by this replay of Pat Buchanan’s 1972 Mind Fuck the Democratic Primary strategy since they were not around to see it in action the first time."

It could not have been Clinton. KO's opinions, and our opinions, are based on the ACTIONS and WORDS of Hillary and Obama. Obama has not done the same actions that Hillary has that deserve criticism, and Hillary has not done what Obama has done, which deserves praise.



"No offense to young folks, but once you get enough years under your belt, people just naturally tend to acquire a basic fund of knowledge. It is called experience . You know, that stuff that makes Clinton so icky . I am 48, and when people my age see Pat Buchanan and Company doing what they are doing on MSNBC, they have flashbacks to 1972 and 1973----those Watergate hearings were the best summer viewing ever."


Playing the age-card is often a sure sign of arrogance. You are simply dismissing my opinion as an intelligent and rational person, because I am 22 years old. I can say flat out, you are wrong. I am right(along with the thousands of Democrats who have turned away from Hillary for her distasteful campaign). We have not been played by the media. I have not even have cable, and therefore have not been watching news media, until about 2 weeks ago. This week was the first time I saw a complete show of KO.

Over half of Obama's supporters here at DU are 40+ years old. Furthermore, Clinton's experience is not that impressive(corporate lawyer, board of wal-mart made up much of the earlier years), and the "35 years" of experience she has been touting is bordering on a complete lie. We do not vote based on age.



And Rachel Maddow also shares many of the opinions of KO over this primary, and has hosted his show at one point. Is she also a propagandist and complete tool for McCain and the corporate media?

there's a pattern.

McCamy is victim to the very sinister plots that he/she
attributes to Olbermann and anyone else who dares to
say the name of "she who must not be called by name."

If you cite references, you also cross check your own "facts".

and I can remember thinking that more years would never change my outlook.

Of course, I was still an immortal back then.

Somewhere you got the notion that anyone who criticizes Keith Olbermann and MSNBC must be part of the Clinton campaign. I am a Democrat who likes both Obama and Clinton when they act like Democrats, which they do most of the time (but not always). I know that politicians have to fight like wolverines to get ahead so I am pretty tolerant of aggressive behavior but hypocrisy pisses me off.

I was 9 years old during the first election I paid attention to in 1968 and I saw adult friends in college act like morons because McCarthy did not get the nomination. They acted like little kids in kindergarten. If they could not have Gene they would not vote, even though Humphrey did great things for African-Americans and civil rights. Having spent several years in Alabama sensitized me to civil rights, I guess, and I could see that the war was not the only issue in the land. As a result I thought those college kids looked pretty stupid staying home, especially after my mom told me about Dick Nixon's history as a red baiter that the press never covered when he claimed he had a secret plan to end the war.

So, maybe that is why I do not trust people who make political decision based upon single issues or who seem to be guided 90% by their emotions. When you are a kid and you see young adults who act younger than you are, you worry.

Same thing happened in 1972 except that time it was the grown ups who acted like the little kids. All those working class people who voted for Nixon. A divided Democratic Party is the Republican's best friend. I spent the summer of 1973 watching the Watergate hearings and I learned the lesson well---corporate America divides the working class in this country in order to keep power.

My 16 year old son acts and sounds more mature than many of the people posting on DU right now. He can watch the news on TV and spot the bullshit. Same for the advertising, even that which is supposed to be aimed at him.

...you're saying (basically), "The press loves McCain."

Duh.

When you extrapolate General Electric and MSNBC to "the whole press" you can make errors like this. Had you read all of my responses to other people's comments you would have see the reply in which I discuss the economic motivators which will cause CNN and ABC to favor the Democratic nominee and shun McCain.

We all know what they say about "assume".

As I posted above GE/MSNBC wants McCain for the nukes. Disney/ABC does not want McCain because he favors A La Carte Cable which is bad for Disney's empire. So MSNBC does the Clinton-RFK story as a Democrat splitter story with the Obama camp outraged as if this is some major attack from Clinton and Obama himself wants his supporters to be up in arms (and KO's Special Comment comes straight from him, we are to assume)

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/05/23/1058940.aspx



This story which MSNBC hyped yesterday also protected McCain from attention to his history of invasive melanoma of the head (bad prognosis) and what treatment he received for it.

Now, if you know the economics behind the TV news, ABC's coverage of the same story should come as no surprise. They do not want to divide and conquer Democrats. They want a strong, happy party, where all the Dems will vote for the nominee.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=4924656

Obama Empathizes With Clinton Over Kennedy Comment



Which story makes both Democrats look better? Which story makes the Democratic Party stronger?

And look what else ABC has

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=4922061&page=1

"McCain's PreHoliday Dump" about his medical records"

and

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Politics/story?id=4919842&page=1

"McCain's Ambien Use A Security Threat?"

They are a sad thing to look at.
Nice, thoughtful, and correct post.
Thanks.

The antithesis of the sound-byte culture to which we have become accustomed. A difficult, but worthy read, Thank you.

What irony!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

That should be obvious to everyone after the Iraq War.

http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/discussion/showthrea...