Ample ink is spilled over debating whether the US media is biased in favor of Republicans or Democrats. It is neither. The overwhelming, driving bias of the US media is subservience to power, whoever happens to be wielding it.
From The Oregonian…
By what stretch of Jimmy Buffet logic is it defensible to sail the Willamette River into downtown Portland, drop anchor, crack a cold one and call it good for — well, for as long as you wish? The view is great: bridges, skyscrapers, all those noontime pedestrians along the river walk. The amenities are superb: Groceries, restaurants, bars and movies are just a quick dinghy ride to shore. But the rent is best of all: Zip. Nada. Free.
Boaters will dispute this characterization as missing the hardship factor: The bone-cold rains of winter. The dangerous anchor slippages at 3 a.m. The menacing crime, perhaps the lurking piracy. And the fact that many skippers are anchored in the river because they’re otherwise homeless, unable to pay rent on land and unwilling to join the lost culture of the street.
It seems to me that the nut here is that people who pay a whole lot of money for something go crazy when someone else figures out how to get the same things for free.
If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism — the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity. In a chaotic world, your strategy must be chaotic enough (sufficiently failure-strewn) to up the odds of keeping pace with the times.
So why oppose Obama? Simply, it is the shape of the society Obama is crafting that I oppose, and I intend to hold him responsible, such as I can, for his actions in creating it. Many Democrats are disappointed in Obama. Some feel he’s a good president with a bad Congress. Some feel he’s a good man, trying to do the right thing, but not bold enough. Others think it’s just the system, that anyone would do what he did. I will get to each of these sentiments, and pragmatic questions around the election, but I think it’s important to be grounded in policy outcomes. Not, what did Obama try to do, in his heart of hearts? But what kind of America has he actually delivered? And the chart below answers the question. This chart reflects the progressive case against Obama.
Sidney Smith and I agree:
I live in a purple part of the country (Virginia) and move in academic circles, so of course I know many, many people who will be voting for Obama. It is impossible to know, but if I sodomized the Easter Bunny in front of their children the look on my Obama-voter friends’ faces could scarcely be much different than the look they get when I say I am voting for Jill Stein.
“But this is a swing state… you have to vote for Obama… what if Romney wins?!?”
The pain in their voices tugs at my sympathies; their fear is very real. I want to reassure them, but I was cured a few presidential elections ago. I won’t be drinking from that cup again.
If you don’t have a threshold, you’re not paying attention.
Via What’s Up:
WHAT: End Corporate Rule Workshop
WHERE: Cleveland Friends Meeting House, 10916 Magnolia Ave., University Circle
WHEN:6 p.m., Tuesday, 30 October
WHO: Cleveland Move to Amend
CONTACT: cleveland@movetoamend.org
An End Corporate Rule workshop will be offered by two representatives of national Move to Amend, the coalition advocating for a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declaring that: – Only human beings, not corporations, are persons with constitutional rights, and – Money is not equivalent to speech, and therefore regulating political contributions and spending does not equate to limiting political speech.
The workshop is for community members who want to learn more about the history, effects, and how to overturn corporate rule in their communities, states, and country. Free and open to the public. A light dinner will be offered.
The workshop is just one event of the Cleveland stop of the coast-to-coast “Stamp Out Corporate Rule” tour of Move to Amend.
The tour features a money stamping machine, the Amend-o-matic, which will be stamping money near the Peter B. Lewis Building on Bellflower Rd. at Ford Dr. at Case Western Reserve University from 2:30 – 4 pm. The machine/van stamps paper money with any one of the 3 messages: – A corporation is not a person. Money is not speech. – Not to be used for bribing politicians. – The system isn’t broken. It’s fixed.
Earlier in the day, the van will be at John Hay High School where the drivers (and national Move to Amend educators and organizers) will be hosting a workshop.
Join us. Corporations are not people! Money is not speech!
Via What’s Up:
WHAT: Save the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Telling Mansion Library
WHERE: 4645 Mayfield Road, South Euclid
WHEN: Saturday, 27 October at 1 p.m.
EMAIL: Save South Euclid-Lyndhurst Telling Mansion LibraryPlease bring your family and friends to a peaceful rally on behalf of the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Telling Mansion library.
We are going to show our support for our beautiful historic library and send a clear message to the Cuyahoga County Public Library Board not to abandon Telling Mansion.
Please bring a sign if you can, but it is not necessary.
Even a few minutes of your time will make a difference.
The “disposition matrix” has been developed and will be overseen by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). One of its purposes is “to augment” the “separate but overlapping kill lists” maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon: to serve, in other words, as the centralized clearinghouse for determining who will be executed without due process based upon how one fits into the executive branch’s “matrix”. As Miller describes it, it is “a single, continually evolving database” which includes “biographies, locations, known associates and affiliated organizations” as well as “strategies for taking targets down, including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols”. This analytical system that determines people’s “disposition” will undoubtedly be kept completely secret; Marcy Wheeler sardonically said that she was “looking forward to the government’s arguments explaining why it won’t release the disposition matrix to ACLU under FOIA”.
By coincidence or design, however, the first instance of Twitter applying its new censorship policy is one that seems likely to provoke outrage from only the most ardent free-speech advocates. On Wednesday night, Twitter general counsel Alex MacGillivray tweeted that the site had agreed to block the account of a neo-Nazi group called Besseres Hannover (“Better Hanover”) in response to a demand from the German government. He included links to both Twitter’s censorship policy and the official request from the German police, which notified the San Francisco-based company that Besseres Hannover “is disbanded, its assets are seized and all its accounts in social networks have to be closed immediately.” It asked that Twitter block its account and prevent it from opening alternate accounts.
This is a perfect example of a case where free speech must be applied. There was no coincidence here, Twitter selected this case precisely because it wanted to avoid outrage.
Well, I’m outraged.
Debbie Webb posted a comment on REALNEO telling of the troubles she had in helping someone get health care. It was a comment on something I wrote about the death of Citizen Activist Ed Hauser. She wrote:
I originally wrote this moments ago as a comment to Roldo’s post on the tragic death of Ed Hauser, who died way too young, and because he lacked the health insurance that would have bought him visits with a doctor, medications, procedures, and ultimately, saved his life.
After I posted the comment, I realized that I was very tired from the struggle today to achieve the magical appointment with the business people at our county hospital, and more than that, angry.
I am angry because I expect that the poorest people, who are often the sickest, to be treated with respect. That respect includes figuring out a way to help them get what they need to live, yes, live. I am disgusted that a triaging system in not in place in a county hospital, so that medical need is given the same weight as the monetary needs.
And here is the item I wrote about Ed, which bears repeating in light of the Presidential campaign and Romney’s casual statement that anyone can get the care needed at the emergency room. Sometimes it’s too late.
I’m listeing to Robert Reich’s Aftershock on a Playaway and I wish I had had him available as an economics professor in college. If more Americans, including most members of the Tea Party, understood how economies worked for all and not just the 1 Percent, then we might have retained the lessons of the Great Depression and Marriner Stoddard Eccles and thus avoided the Great Recession.
The more we can educate, the fewer suckers our 21st centruy Barnums will be able to exploit.
In sum, we simply cannot afford as a nation to allow “folks at the top” to “play by a different set of rules”. That would be a violent breach of everything America stands for.
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