I don’t know quite where to start. Actually, I do. As Hannibal Lector told Clarrise Starling, “First principles.” The first principle of politics is that the corporate media is a
big fat stinking liar .Please review this journal that I wrote a few weeks ago about how the Tribune Company, which was recently purchased by billionaire Republican Sam Zell is now subject to Bush administration blackmail and
therefore every article that you read in its newspapers’ pages or hear on its TV stations’ is just as likely to be RNC propaganda as anything on Fox News.Propaganda Bureau Expands: If Enough Sources Repeat the Big Lie, It Starts to Sound Truehttp://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/109 (from the P.S.)Why the FCC's Legal Maneuver Is So Insidious: It Makes Tribune Co. Subject to GOP Blackmail in a way that a simple waiver or extension would not. This is because if the Tribune Co. knew that it has two years to get its house in order, it might start lobbying the next likely administration---say that of a Democratic presidential nominee---for favors. However, this Extension Prime can be revoked at any time by the FCC. All Martin has to do is decide to mount an unexpected aggressive legal challenge to the Tribune's appeal. If the FCC shows up in court with the full weight of the federal government and all the testimony of thousands of angry citizens and both parties of Congress demanding that the Tribune Co. comply with the law, then even an "industry friendly" court will rule against the Tribune Co. Sam Zell knows this.
The crazy way in which The Tribune Co. got its extension ensures that it is "dependent upon the kindness of strangers" to quote Tennessee Williams. In other words,it is a media whore, and it must please the Bush administration, which wants a Republican president in office in 2009, a president who will continue the war for oil in Iraq and a Republican Attorney General who will not prosecute any Bush administration official for torture or obstruction of justice or graft or corruption.
This afternoon, I began to contemplate writing this journal after watching Chris Matthews deliver what I believed was propaganda designed to
divide and conquer Democratic voters. On
Hardball he harped on about discrepancies between exit polls in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary and the final vote total, insinuating that one or the other must have been performed incorrectly, implying that if no error could be found in the method of exit polling then maybe something else was wrong (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). His female guest tried to suggest other alternatives, but he drowned her out.
Matthews also took delight in calling the Democratic voters of New Hampshire racists for favoring Hillary slightly (by a few percentage points) over Obama. The sight of a corporate media lackey suggesting that e-voting/exit poll discrepancies were worth exploring was comical, especially in light of Ohio 2004. NBC played its part in the Media Atrocity
What Exit Polls? even as it celebrated the overturning of the stolen election in the Ukraine (Hypocricsy, thy name is the American Mainstream Media). Note that KO on
Countdown explored the same question that Tweety pondered in a more scientific, less inflammatory way and came up with much ado about nothing.
Anyway, after watching Matthews suspicious performance, I was considering penning this follow up to my journal from November,
Circular Firing Squad . In that journal, I warned that Karl Rove and the RNC might seek to pit the devoted followers of the different Democratic candidates against each other as a way to stop the seemingly unstoppable Democratic juggernaut, in a manner reminiscent of 1968, when infighting between candidates contributed to Nixon's win.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3736707 The Republicans are hoping to see the Democrats leave the convention with a nominee and a fractured party. The losers (they hope) will have either failed to endorse the winner or have grudgingly endorsed him/her. The losers’ supporters will be vocal in their disdain for the winner. This kind of scenario is most likely after a bitter primary battle in which a lot of name calling has gone on.
Then this evening, I read that Robert Koehler of Tribune Media Service, owned by Sam Zell’s Tribune Company was going to publish this
http://www.commonwonders.com/ First of all, before we get too enthusiastic about feminist solidarity or wax knowingly about New Hampshire Democrats’ traditional soft-heartedness toward the Clinton family, let’s ponder yet again the possibility of tainted results, which is such an unfun prospect most of the media can’t bear to remember that all the problems we’ve had with electronic voting machines — and Diebold machines in particular, which dominate New Hampshire polling places — remain unsolved.
Snip
That said, I acknowledge taking wary heart in Obama’s remarkable road to national prominence and (hypothesizing fair elections) his reasonable shot at the Democratic presidential nomination. He is energizing African-Americans and many other disaffected voters, and just maybe, as he ascends to the highest levels of power, he really intends to represent them.
Robert Koehler has written about stolen elections before. I have no doubt about his sincerity.
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?p=59753&sid=9477b475f0db80654f5fb8dd229db65cHowever, his employer, the Tribune would not print his suspicions about the stolen 2004 election. They even printed rebuttals, so that Bush would know that
they were not guilty of such disrespectful treason. So
why the hell are the same papers about to print accusations that Hillary hacked the vote in New Hampshire ?
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5532“Here are the first few drafts of his column, set to run in tomorrow's editions of subscribing mainstream media papers”
If the mainstream media intends to print Mr. Koehler’s column, it isn’t because they want to cast doubt upon e-voting (or the result of the 2004 election). They could have done that anytime in the last three years, based upon better evidence than the New Hampshire Democratic primary.
What do America's corporations have to gain from publishing a story which is remarkable (at the moment) only for the promise that tomorrow it will appear in the mainstream media as a speculation piece about a topic that has (up until now) been taboo?
Divide and conquer. They are doing it to make Obama supporters hopping mad. And to make Hillary supporters out to be cheaters. And to start a war of finger pointing and name calling that will make Ron Paul’s followers chasing Hannity down a road throwing snow balls shouting “Fox News Sucks!” look like the height of decorum.
Even if this story never sees print in any MSM newspaper, it is all over the liberal bloggo-sphere tonight, simply based on the promise that tomorrow it will be in papers that say
Tribune at the end. (And if it does not, then a whole bunch of people can scream and shout about a corporate media conspiracy to protect the corporate candidate. Oh fun.)
Elsewhere, I have jokingly portrayed the
Two Man Race , the narrative which the MSM created in order to exclude all other Democratic candidates, as a sitcom. If the corporate media has its way, the sitcom is going to turn into a bloody slasher flick. And over what? Rumor? Speculation? If there was fraud, how do we know who did it and for what purpose and where? Do we even know that there was fraud? All the Koehler piece really says is that "e-voting is unsafe", "the MSM won't talk about it", "GO Obama!".
There is more.
Note that in the last couple of days, John Edwards has begun to get a measly drop of mainstream media attention again, the way he did a couple of months ago.
He gets it every single time he criticizes Hillary Clinton, as he did at the New Hampshire debate or as he did when he suggested (quite mildly) that a president needed strength. Divide and conquer. The only time the corporate media has ever given Edwards any attention in the last twelve months (barring the initial
Edwards is a phony campaign) have been during those occasions when he has been goaded into negative campaigning. As starved as he is for both cash and media attention, it is a wonder he has not resorted to more name calling.
However, the corporate media has devised a new way to divide and conquer Edwards from the other candidates. On
Hardball Edwards was officially dubbed the spoiler who would prevent Obama from winning. That’s right. He is only staying in the race to steal votes from Hillary haters that rightfully belong to Obama. All his talk of
One America and helping the poor is just a lie. He is wasting a year of his dying wife’s life in order to thwart Obama’s dream. Unless he is trying to thwart Hillary’s dream. It probably depends upon which state they are about to enter.
If the candidates are smart they will call
time out and do something constructive together like hold a press conference in which they place the blame for weird election results (and lack of voter confidence) squarely on the Bush administration and the Republican Congress for getting us into this mess we are in.
They should call for paper ballots before this fall's election. And while they are at the press conference, John Edwards will present a subpoena to the MSM on behalf of the citizens of the United States demanding the
2004 Ohio and Florida Exit Polls. . Since the MSM is now so concerned about the topic, they should be more than happy to let us examine the exit polls and compare them to the election totals.
Oops, forgot art for the youngsters.
This is why we don't want to be Chicago, 1968.
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