Democrats & Liberals: Archives

Wow. Great post. I wish there was something to add to make my comment more worthwhile.

Did you hear the conservative media this morning?

Fox, CNN, and others. The media does NOT want Kerry to succeed or the media outlets lose the promised deregulation Bush has been waving.

This is amazing, even CNN which by the right has been acused of being a leftist network, is defending Bush. This goes beyond just punditry these people DO NOT WANT Kerry to succeed to the office of president.

All three major networks and the cable news with exception to MSNBC is trying to take this man apart. The mythos of a democratic “lib-rul” media is just that,”mythos”.

We have had not only a change in presidents in 2000 but a media change too that chooses opining to be tantamount to journalism and unbiased reporting.

Perhaps it’s just foible and a complete misread of the American public and our media needs. But they are certainly too playing GATEKEEPER to our rights of free thought and that is not journalism, nor fascimile of it.

Even Lou Dobbs is news/opinion and not an unbiased source of information. The decision making is and should be in our livingrooms.

Why do they want to pump up Bush and derail Kerry? One thought is that They want to make sure that they get interviews and first run information out of Washington press briefings so in order to do so they have to not “dis” Bush.

I can even remember Soledad O’brian on CNN’s American Morning(which sounds like a breakfast cereal)telling a widow of someone who died in the twin towers on 9-11 that having a 9-11 commision would be “DANGEROUS” to America on the war on terror. Who the hell is Soledad O’brian to tell anyone what or what isn’t dangerous in terms of national security.

These are the Bush gatekeepers. Do you remember CNN’s coverage of the convention especially that of after Kerry’s speech? Wolf Blitzer, Jeff Greenfield, Cathy Crowley and that wierd bird-like looking blonde woman(the name escapes me), they couldn’t wait to sink their fangs into Kerry’s speech like it shouldn’t be our decision to make in November but presumably theirs.

We do have gatekeepers, even Chris Matthews who claims to be a democrat is not a democratic supporter.

What happened was that we went from unbiased media to conservative media all under the guise of there being a supposed “liberal” media which there was not.

The reason the negative aspects of war get shown so often is just “if it bleeds it leads” that’s not liberalism that’s ratings.

Kerry needs to reallize as we do that we do have conservative media gatekeepers.

Remember the CBS candidate debates when the female anchor kept asking John Kerry “Are you a liberal?—are you a liberal?—are you a liberal?”. Like this would be proof positive of a loss of votes.

Personally I do think that he handled the accusations of flip-flopping quite well. But we have to reallize that the media DOES have an agenda and it’s capitalist and corporate not left or right. They want Bush’s bag of deregulation goodies should he get reelection and they want into the press room at the Whitehouse and pentagon. Perhaps even funding for overseas journalism as I’ve heard alleged.

What does this have to do with Kerry? This is the funnel that he wil have to go through to get elected. A junket of opinionated gatekeepers.

I actually noticed a little of that in the convention coverage on CNN. The reporters were desperately trying to spin Kerry’s speech, that I had just seen and heard, to some pre-planned theme: Kerry is not an accomplished speaker, he didn’t “rise to the occasion”, these are not the droids you’re looking for.

Maybe Blitzer was too busy checking his daily talking points memo to actually listen to the speech. I was inspired.

I noticed things of that nature as well. The commentators always seemed to be looking for the negative even on PBS. When Clinton gave Hillary a hug after her introduction, one of the commentators said “no kiss”.

Errand boy, Chris Matthews was a Democrat who publicly announced he moved to the Republican party years ago.

The Media presumes, and rightly so in 10’s of millions of cases, that the American public that listens to Kerry’s speech, will not understand its underpinnings, meanings, and trappings, and thus, they explain. A byproduct of the dumbing of America through loss of emphasis on quality education.

The media sells opinion - and guess what? You can’t sell something without willing buyers. People want to know what to think, what to say, in order to appear informed. That is why our society has absolutely no respect for intelligence which is not certified by a name or face with popular recognition. You’d think if you wanted to know about an issue you would go the think tanks - NO - sorry, they may be smart, but, they have no face recognition, but Ron Reagan, or Howard Fineman, now, they surely know what is going on because we can recognize their face or name.

Down here in Texas, we have to reeducate our daughter after she comes home from school. The reason is they teach her to the test. Education is mostly rote memorization of what is on the test, rather than critical analysis and thinking of her own, or learning beyond the textbook, as I was educated back in the 50’s and 60’s during the education revolution when research on education showed intelligence and independent thinking were not fostered by rote memorization, but via exploration, discovery, and experiment.

So, we reeducate her to think for herself and outside the box. It is amazing the breadth of knowledge she has at her age, and how difficult it is for her to maintain A’s in her school of rote! They teach her one thing, we direct her to research and further learning, and she takes the test, gives a better answer and is marked wrong. She still gets A’s and B’s, but, she makes no bones about how frustrating it is choke back what she knows are more correct answers in history and civics. But she is managing it well.

Bringing down a superpower by bankrupting it — through military spending — is possibly the only effective foreign policy strategy Americans know. It’s Reagan’s legacy (though he did it to USSR and not USA).

That is right freemarket! And don’t you think our enemies may have learned the same lesson?

It’s Reagan’s legacy (though he did it to USSR and not USA).

This is where I admire Reagan’s courage. He rolled back all his (middle-class) tax cuts - and then some - to keep the country from drowning in debt. Bush Sr. did more of the same. I applaud them. It doesn’t look like Bush Jr. learned the lesson there.

Out of a five thousand word speech, about seventy words were about his record in congress. Twenty years of voting against the military and intelligence services isn’t something I would like to talk about during a time of war either. Bin Laden and all of the other terrorists are drooling at the possibility that Kerry might get elected. They know that he will get permission from the U.N., Germany and France before doing anything outside of our borders to defend this country. The terrorists know that things will be easier for them if Kerry is elected. They had practically a free pass during the Clinton years.
A vote for John Kerry is the same vote that Bin Laden would cast if he had the option available to him. Maybe he will send all of you a thank you note for trying to make his life easier and for casting his vote for him.

A vote for John Kerry is the same vote that Bin Laden would cast if he had the option available to him.

I never get tired of this one:

An al Qaeda spokesman, quoted on the Arabic news Web site www.elaph.com, said the organization hoped George Bush would win re-election, “because he acts with force rather than wisdom or shrewdness, and it is his religious fanaticism that will rouse our (Islamic) nation, as has been shown. Being targeted by an enemy is what will wake us from our slumber.”

And

The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades has decided to back incumbent George W. Bush instead of the Democratic contender John Kerry because it was not possible to find a leader, “more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom. Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization. Because of this we desire you (Bush) to be elected.”

The terrorists really love George W. Bush. Has anyone checked Bush’s Rangers and Pioneers list for a Sam B. Laden?

David says:
“The Media presumes, and rightly so in 10’s of millions of cases, that the American public that listens to Kerry’s speech, will not understand its underpinnings, meanings, and trappings, and thus, they explain. A byproduct of the dumbing of America through loss of emphasis on quality education.”

While I think the people could do a lot better at paying attention, and being informed, and our education system is definitely in the pits.

There are decades of compelling research on “agenda-setting” and “framing” effects in the media. As Bernard Cohen stated in 1963, the press “may not be succesful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly succesful in telling its readers what to think about.”

This election season makes it painfully clear that the media trivialize the issues even more than the candidates do.

The wealth of information on the impacts of media consolidation in recent years (Bagdikian’s “New Media Monopoly” or McChesney’s “Rich Media Poor Democracy” come to mind) and the downright creepy use of media to train children as passive consumers (Linn’s “Consuming Kids”) make for strong arguments against letting the media off the hook for selling to “willing buyers”. People want to be informed, but they are also involved with their own lives, and often have to make do with what’s available, and what’s available is much less than they need.

But this digresses from my original reason for posting - which was to applaud Al Maline’s recurrent questioning of risks and benefits of our current military/political response to terrorism. I am new to this site, but found it because I was looking for opinions about the rather obvious strategy that terrorists could take of creating threats rather than actual terrorism as an effective way to damage a country that feels compelled to respond with overwhelming force (at an overwhelming cost on many levels). I was intrigued to notice two recent articles in the NYT about the terror threats and the costs associated with the threats. As Al points out getting the US security machine in an uproar is a much easier way of creating trouble than actually attacking us. We’ve been told many times that we’re at “war” against terrorism, and our concern for Iraqi citizen deaths is assauged by reminding us of the inevitability of civilian casualties in a war time, but what of us? If we are at war, what are our acceptable losses? Now don’t get me wrong I’m not advocating wilfully letting terrorists blow things up in the US, and I recognize that terrorism at home has lots of repercussions that make it a more salient threat than influenza, or traffic accidents (though far less likely), but is it unreasonable to discuss a threshold of response beyond which the costs (financial, security, emotional you name it) are unbearable and unneccesary? As American Pundit’s quotes about Al Qaeda highlight, an absolute response policy puts us, in a strange way, at the mercy of the terrorists.

We need a conversation about how far, how long and how much we are willing to commit to this effort. That’s in no way a conversation about caving into terrorism, or looking weak, its a conversation about a real strategy for winning this “war” against terrorism.

As Al points out getting the US security machine in an uproar is a much easier way of creating trouble than actually attacking us.

I recently blogged about that on my site,

It’s interesting to note that our allies have taken a scornful view of the way the administration disseminates terrorism intelligence. Britain, who dealt with IRA terrorism for decades, believes Bush’s method does nothing but create panic and public distrust of intelligence. They point out that, “The problem (with the American approach) is that it creates public anxiety. If the goal of terrorists is to spread fear and unease then to some extent they [our own government! - AP] have done that job for them without anybody carrying out an attack.”

Britain’s response to the same intelligence seems much more effective, “not to make color-coded warnings, not to publish every possible threat, but work closely with institutions that may be affected to help them tighten security and address threats in the least disruptive way possible.”

You say you are a Cub Scout Leader and you can dare vote Democrat. I have to say I would not want you in our leadership at our den meetings.
If you think that what you say is true and Kerry will truly do all that he has promised then you really don’t understand flip floppers.
Ter Republ

Amazing, Ter Repub!!!

That is what we all see!!! People talking about real problems and issuses as frankly and openly as possible with what free speech we have left, and all most Bush, and Repugnican supporters can do is attack without any facts, without any documented proof of anything. They just grab a FOX news catch phrase and start lashing. Hey, Ter, I wonder if you even looked at who was on the 9/11 commission and saw what their 2nd jobs and affiliations were. I know if I were to apply for a government possition, My history would be an issue! Everyone in here have valid concerns, and all YOU are able to is blindly Talk about “Flip Flop” and Cub scout meetings? What does that have to do with Katherine Harris losing the law suit for scrubbing African-American non-criminals from the voter lists? What does “Flip- Flop” have to do with Enron’s Rise an fall of Taliban protection of LNG lines and Bush’s never mentioned connection with Saudi Royals? What does Den meetings have to do with CFR, and OIL Elite controling what is going to be “NEWS” instead of just plan ‘ol showing the NEWS? It is obvious to the American majority know that all the polls, stock markets, and major news media are rigged!!!! Bush stole the election and he walked free for 4 years unscathed and noone questions? You know everyone questions daily!!! To many “COINCIDENSES” to be ignored and “Ter RepuG” just starts the Parrot Slander that everyone in here where addressing. Either you are going to get a phat raise or cool promotion for supporting Bush, or You are one of the obvious sheep that liberals want to help save!!!! It is no secret that America is being destroyed by design from with-in and that the Patriot Act(Enable Act) and the Patriot Act II(Hell on Earth) are nothing the major media wants to address. FOX, CNN, CBS and others are like “la la la…Patriot act…back to you BOB”..”Enron..la la la…Cat in tree”. When we are all standing together in the ovens, a brother or sister will look over at you and pray for your soul also.