MyBO: Robert Gibbs on the President's Housing Plan
C4L: Member Blog Spotlight: Santelli Responds to Gibbs
One thing for everyone to know, hearing the two of them combined is funny, but it reminds me of people going after each other on the show, Yomamma. (Look, both of them are talking about drinking coffee while criticizing sarcastically each others' opinions about the housing plan.)
Another point, I am critical about the MSM's influence on issues and opinions, and I've made this really clear on many of my pre-election posts. Also, due to the biasing that the MSM has done, it is understandable that Obama's staff have been really edgy. However, in this case, the concerns from people like Santelli are from a point of view that happened to start off as off the mainstream, but it managed to become a signal that the MSM is paying attention to on its radar!
In my opinion, I am happy that Rep. Paul's supporters are getting some well-deserved MSM coverage, but also, that Pres. Obama is also doing what he can under the stressfull and intimidating conditions he has been going through.
HOWEVER, ONE THING MUST BE KEPT IN MIND, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT YOU SUPPORT OBAMA OR PAUL OR ANYONE ELSE, MAINSTREAM OR OTHERWISE: THE MSM, OR CORPORATE MEDIA LOVES IT WHEN A DEBATE OVER AN ISSUE DISSOLVES INTO A HISSY FIT BECAUSE IT MAKES GOOD RATINGS, AND THE SUPPORTERS OF EITHER SIDE BECOME SO POLARIZED INTO SUPPORTING THEIR PERSON OR ISSUE THAT THEY BECOME UNWILLING TO HEAR THE OTHER SIDE OUT, WHICH IS ALSO WHAT THE COPORATE LEADERS WANT IN ORDER TO KEEP THE *TRUTH* OF THE SITUATION SILENT!!!!!
I know that some MyBO members may disagree with me, while people who are C4L members that casually read MyBO might take my post as ridiculous, but granted that there are bills like HR 645 that are out there that no one is paying attention to, and there are several other events called out on blogs like MyBO and C4L, it would be nice that people remember to actually calmly and open-mindedly speak to each other.
Because it requires open and honest discussion and the issues at hand are worth looking into, I say that it is necessary that supporters from MyBO and supporters from C4L, as well as supporters from other sites have an open dialogue about this before we become too polarized!
Agree or disagree, but this is my opinion based on my observations on the video links.
Thank you for hearing me out.
Sincerely,
EMK
"The society's deprivation relies/ not on our differences/ but the separation within."
--Linkin Park, "Frgt/10"
Today's youth may not know who Tokyo Rose is, but everybody knows who Sean Hannity is, he's America's second biggest talk radio personality and also one of the richest media figures in the U.S., currently working under a $100 million dollar contract.But is Hannity a hardworking American success story, or has his contentious brand of talk actually deteriorated the quality of public discourse in the country?On the one hand, Hannity addresses the strong demand for right-wing programming, covering the news and events left unreported by the "liberal media". On the other hand, Bush-friendly hosts such as Hannity stand accused of acting as the media surrogates for an illicit White House propaganda operation, spinning news irresponsibly to condition American "hearts and minds" just as they did to the Iraqis.
I heard someone the other day claim that, "Republicans play politics so much better than do Democrats." I was floored. Do I want my leader to be good at playing politics? Manipulating whatever they can sink their teeth into in order to sway some votes or gain some rapore? This is something that people not only condone, but in the case of the man I heard this from, enjoy. And all the while I have to grapple with the fact that yes, Republicans are better at 'playing politics', reason #1 why I'm a Democrat.
To extend that sentiment, and add another, I not only find the institution of playing politics to be vile, and many times slanderous, but the fact that millions of viewers can hear someone (say Gov. Palin), tout blatent lies about the other side, only to be retracted the next day and dropped off the map, not even the slightest bit of remorse over the filthy smear they just laid down. Nobody is angry? Nobody is outraged? The next day she wakes up knowing she can let it roll off the shoulder because that's politics.
They smear, and they fear their points about Obama into the news; then the next day remark about Obama not reaching accross the partisan wall to help them. Strike a man down, and have the gaul to ask him why he isn't fighting? I'm proud to be a Democrat, because of the nature of politics I've seen this last year. Most of all I am proud of Barrack. He has shown me the face of politics that exude strength, wisdome, and most importantly a lack of the seemingly always present hypocracy.
So yeah they are better at playing politics. The only thing that concerns me, is this isn't a game of monopoly, I'm not looking for a player (though the monopoly metaphor would be ripe for an economy comparison), I'm looking for a man. A man who trusts that if he lets the American people decide whats best for them by providing them with the truth, and lets them know that we truly have the power to change whatever ails us, he becomes the true pilar of strength. I will let a man stand on my shoulders to get the pot of gold first if I know that he will share it with me. It is in this way that I trust Mr. Obama...... and reason #2 I'm a Democrat.
VOICE YOURSELF,
AJ HACKER, 20 (D)-WA
EDITORIAL NOTE: This Post Originally Appeared At The Huffington Post / Off The Bus On September 14, 2008.
Visit http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-foval/wisconsin-hotly-contested_b_126332.htmlto view the original post.
Wisconsin has become one of the most watched battleground states in the country, and forces on both the Democratic and Republican sides have activated their field operations and get-out-the-vote, or GOTV, efforts to woo registered Independent and undecided likely voters. Democrats have been hoping to turn this traditionally red state into a purple or possibly even blue one this year. But just before polls opened last Tuesday for Wisconsin's general assembly primary, numerous, unconfirmed allegations began to surface of a behind-the-scenes effort by the McCain-Palin campaign to manipulate the vote totals in Wisconsin and other key states this November.
On the Monday night before the primary, thousands of Wisconsin registered Independents and voters who have re-registered in the last year received absentee ballot applications enclosed in McCain / Palin direct mail pieces. The pre-printed, re-mailable absentee ballot applications appeared to be customized to the recipient's mailing address, with the addressee's local election office already on the form. Such mailers have been a tool for political campaigns, labor unions, GOTV interest organizations, and state and county election offices for a number of years. Other states reportedly saw similar mailings hit mailboxes, possibly totaling in the millions.
On the surface, the mailings appear to be a legal GOTV effort to re-register targeted recipients for the November 4 general election. But reports in the blogosphere, progressive media, and by other individual sources allege that the forms could instead be part of a larger effort to purposefully manipulate voter registrations in Wisconsin and possibly nationwide. The mailers, if true, may be a type of voter fraud because if someone receives an absentee ballot but does not send it in, he or she cannot go to the polls and vote on election day. The allegations imply that the McCain campaign is sending absentee ballots to people in the hopes that they will not send them in and when they try to vote in person will be turned away.
On Thursday's and Friday's nationally-broadcast Thom Hartmann Show, which airs on Air America Radio Network and streamed online, guest host Lee Rayburn of AAR affiliate The Mic 92.1 FM in Sun Prairie, Wisc., broke the story about the mailings and fielded numerous calls from listeners echoing their concerns about them.
In Wisconsin, the core center of government, the state capitol of Madison, is notoriously liberal. And Milwaukee, the economic center along Lake Michigan, tends to lean left. However, over the last three decades the rest of the state, proud of its independence, its agricultural and green technology industries, and religious conservatism, has proven to be moderate-to-conservative, primarily voting so-called red most of the time. In the last 12 years Wisconsin also has had its share of alleged voting irregularities, although investigations into the allegations have not yet been aggressively pursued by the state assembly or attorney general's offices.
This year, however, may be different. As the economic policies of George Bush have played out, and 3000-plus Wisconsin National Guard reservists were called up last weekend to deploy to Iraq this fall, the state's residents seem to have shifted their opinions of the Republican Party, and the presidential and vice presidential contests. As a result, Wisconsinites are scrutinizing every angle of electing their public officials at a level that has not been seen before. Members of the military who are deployed abroad, by far the largest group of absentee voters, are being courted particularly heavily by the political parties, as dissension in the ranks has swung both political contributions and absentee registrations towards the Democrats and away from Republicans in many states.
Direct mail campaigns containing absentee ballot applications from political parties and campaigns targeted at registered Independents are not new. Wisconsin is an Independent stronghold due to the popularity of Independent U.S. Senator Herb Kohl. Mail campaigns also affect the local and statewide races by activating those potential swing votes. Democrats have been active too, coordinating GOTV efforts for contested Wisconsin General Assembly seats with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). SEIU distributed direct mail pieces to thousands of households on behalf of their endorsed candidates to likely voters in Wisconsin and other states. In Wisconsin both direct mail campaigns hit mailboxes on or before Monday night, September 8, just in time for Tuesday's primary activities. The SEIU mailers did not contain absentee ballot applications, nor did they include endorsements of the national parties or the Obama-Biden campaigns.
McCain's political pitch is targeted squarely at pro-life conservatives. The headline, "A faith that sustains me...," leads to a main story starting with his POW experience in Vietnam, his adoption (with wife Cindy) of a little girl from Mother Theresa's orphanage, and delivers the pro-life position to the reader right between the eyes.
Quoted McCain lines from one of the mailers include these:
"My faith in God sustained me, protected me and gave me the strength to endure."
"That's why I have consistently fought to defend the right to life and the rights of the unborn."
"That's why Cindy and I have worked to promote adoption here and around the world as an alternative to abortion, including adopting our own daughter from Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh."
"And that's why I will appoint judges that respect the values and protect the rights established in our Constitution, faithfully applying the law without legislating from the bench."
Local party officials and labor union organizers are mixed on the effect the national efforts will have on the races at the local level, and on the results in November. Wisconsin's 2nd Congressional District Democratic Party Chairman Peter Rickman, an experienced political operative and labor organizer for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), indicated in a Thursday phone interview that the national campaigns are prioritizing their efforts in Wisconsin towards GOTV efforts, but that more statewide and local media buys would be necessary to sway the voters in his district. Rickman insisted that the local candidates and parties were more focused on winning the Wisconsin General Assembly for Democrats, because local politics, he said, is where "real governing happens," and was pessimistic on whether the Obama campaign had done enough to support the entire ticket in an effort to spur the kind of change Obama spoke about in his Democratic National Convention acceptance speech.
"They're focused on their guy and getting him elected, and that's great, but the Obama Campaign could do a lot more to help out in local and statewide races, supporting the whole ticket," Rickman said. "If they really want to make change happen, it's going to have to be at the grassroots level, and although they have raised a lot of individual contributions and support from the grassroots, I haven't seen much of that money coming back in the way of paid media." Rickman did say, however, that the Obama-Biden Campaign and other national organizations are mobilizing large numbers of volunteers and paid staffers in his state and others to bolster GOTV efforts, which would go a long way to insure that likely voters are delivered on November 4.
Wisconsin Republican Party officials at the state and county levels in several areas were contacted for this report, but numerous requests for comment about the allegations surrounding the McCain-Palin mailings went unanswered. Democratic officials, including Rickman and Dane County Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Bigelow, did not mention the absentee ballot allegations in their respective interviews, but have been contacted for follow-up on this story. Efforts to contact state election officials about the allegations are still ongoing, but at press time, requests for comment have yet to be answered.
Let's get this skeleton out of the closet, one I'm sure the Republicans have suspected was there for some time:
I, being a life long Liberal and Democrat, have come to recognize and embrace, without shame, my Marxist roots. Furthermore, I suspect I share these roots with all other Liberals and Democrats. I mean as I understand it: out of 10 points made in the Communist Manifesto, 6 of them have been fulfilled in America*. And this certainly didn't come about through the Republican platform.
Now for most of the "cosmopolitan elite", I doubt this will have much shock value. But for those who are still hearing psycho shrieks (REEK! REEK! REEK!), relax. No one here is out to strip the rich of all their assets and distribute BMW's in the ghettos. We all know Communism is a dead ideology. It simply cannot work in an age of mass population and production. Even Russia and China know that -as can be seen in their desperate struggle to retain power while utilizing Capitalism. And as Western Marxism has learned (via its application in the east), the only way that Marxist cynicism can possibly be applied successfully is through Democracy. (Unfortunately, I'm not sure Free Market Fundamentalism has been able to apply this lesson to their own form of grand narrative. But, I digress.) In fact, I haven't even had a chance to read Das Kapital (but hope to) and have primarily come to it through second hand influences such as Critical Theory and books about Marx. You can't read philosophy without dealing with him. Suffice it to say that, for me, it comes down to a choice between using Capitalism to our benefit, or allowing Capitalism to use us to its.
I bring this up for 2 primary reasons:
For one, I'm hoping that one day democrats can engage in an honest and rational discussion about words associated with it, words such as "Socialism" or "Marxism" so that we can begin the process of neutralizing them. I mean: come on guys! The Cold War has been over for some time. Yet, the Republicans continue to effectively use Cold War hysteria to manipulate people.
On the night Palin did her speech, I remember one of the speakers (I believe it was Romney#) speak about how Sen. Obama came back from Europe with some very dangerous ideas. He then went on to connect large government bureaucracies with a loss of liberty. We all know the spiel about small government and the horrors of every other western industrialized with viable socialist parties. To listen to them, you would swear there were iron curtains all over Europe and a mass migration of Canadians into America. It would be funny if they held their convention in Amsterdam and tried to do that.
I would think Sen. Clinton would know all about this:
"Universal Health care? You can't do that! that's SOCIALISM!"
REEK! REEK! REEK!
We've got to take these words and their over-amplified and over-imposed meanings out of the hands of Republicans, and bring them into the common discourse in their truer or more complex understanding. Then we can talk about social programs, rationally, without being assailed by the cheap tactics of these particular buzzwords.
Secondly, I truly believe that the Republican platform (as it is), like Cold War hysteria, should be obsolete -at least in the form it is now. Thom Hartman, on Air America, says that since the takeover of the Republican platform by Big Business, a 120 years ago, it has repeatedly failed. And given the last 18 years, it makes sense. Out of 12 of them, the economy has stumbled along, if not faltered, due, I believe, to an over exaggerated faith in market forces and supply-side economics. Even Reagan only managed his miracle by running up a deficit at a time when the manufacturing base was still largely in our country. All of it done under the banner of producer/consumer Capitalism.
And this is why we need this: to drill right to the heart of the Republican platform. Capitalism works. How could I study to pad my resume with a+ certification and not get that? But, without a healthy dose of Marxist cynicism, and application of that cynicism, it's like a snake that will eat its own tail.
No one likes to be conned, but few people really understand the variety of ways people are conned. Learning the techniques helps you protect yourself. So, I want to collect them here. I want to end up with Karl Rove's list, so I can chuckle at his followers.
So here are some basics. Please let me know what you think.
switch, bait and switch, hammer and tongs, and contacting your inner reptile are a good place to start...
I’ve posted my take on the extraordinarily dishonest GOP convention on my personal blog, which includes lots of links to sources debunking as many lies as I had the energy to counter (admittedly, the supply is almost inexhaustible).Please drop in & see if any of it is of use in your efforts to register, convince and/or motivate potential voters.
On another note, Obama and Biden were on fire today.
This is very interesting !
The text below is from the CBS article: Meet Sarah "Barracuda" PalinHer opponent at the top of the Democratic ticket Barack Obama (better known in high school as “Barry O’Bomber” for his strong jump shot) is fond of taking breaks from the campaign trail to play pickup games on the basketball court.Forget the debates—how about a one-one-one contest between The Barracuda and O’Bomber? Is CBS equating McCains VP pick with Presidential Candidate Obama?Her opponent ??? ... how about a one-on-one contestHm? Is CBS bias ?
Did CBS receive and act upon, talking points from the McCain campaign on how to sell this VP selection ?
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/index.html
This was sent to me as part of an event happening today...the film is 2 hours and I have seen the first hour and will watch the rest later in the day...this is a well-done, thought-provoking film that anyone who thinks critically should have a look at...
I believe this was sent to many groups by Tara Dass, but I might have the name wrong...I could not get back to the original invitation, which I thought was strange...
I have nothing to do with this film, btw...just a viewer and interested in knowing what others think...
MadamaAmbi, ArtistsWriters4ZeitgeistObama/Interview4Obama
For me, it's most certainly 'No'.
There is a little saying, "Until lions have their own historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter." And that is the basic nature of history: it is subjected to individual interpretation, manipulation and wishful thinking, especially where the evidence was not as carefully preserved, well documented and accessible as it is now. So history is obviously a poor teacher, otherwise it would be more representative of our humanity, not just those with the power and voice, and we would have learnt much more from it.
History cannot be our teacher because we would not be repeating the errors of yesterday, repeating almost the same results without learning any new lessons. Iraq and Vietnam are cases in point. Despite the awful loss of life in Vietnam, the frustration with winning that war and it's sheer viciousness, the capitulation at the end and the general dissatisfaction about US involvement, President Bush is happily revisiting the sins of his father to do even worse in Iraq. Throwing caution to the wind, he has squandered American reputation and trillions of dollars on something he could never hope to win, proving beyond doubt that history had nothing to teach him.
I find it infuriating that Republicans continue to accuse Obama of desiring or being willing to "negotiate with terrorists," as if this strategy is the formula for the United States' downfall. It's as if the concept of "negotiation" has become something the US can only do when another country decides to succumb to our will. Reminds me of your stereotypical playground bully.
I mean, are we in the third grade?? Negotiation and compromise are the ways in which conflict gets resolved among nations and people. Opening the lines of communication in a non-threatening way is paramount to conflict resolution in all countries and cultures. There can be no authentic resolution if one party feels their side has not been at least heard, if not understood and reconciled. Ultimately, the leaders of nations are people with emotions, just like you and I, and they will react in much the same way as a child that feels like you are ignoring him/her. Obviously, the ole "they fucked us now we fuck them" mentality has gotten us really far [thick sarcasm here].
