"In this year's presidential campaign, the major media want you to focus on the candidates' gaffes, their tactics toward one another's gaffes, the flows of political gossip and four second sound bytes.

Over and over again this is the humdrum pattern. Is Obama an elitist because of what he said about small towns in Pennsylvania? Why do Hillary and Bill exaggerate? Will Bill's mouth drag Hillary down? Will Barack's pastor drag him down? What about the gender factor? The race factor? Will they figure?"

What did you say?

I forgot.

"Who has more experience on Day One? What is McCain's wizardry over the reporters on the campaign trail? Can McCain project any human warmth? Which state must Hillary win and by what margin to continue in the race?

On the Sunday talk shows, it is the same couple dozen members of the opinion oligopoly. There is Bill Kristol bringing home the neocon bacon with dreary frequency. There is the James Carville/Mary Matalin spouse show featuring their squabbling over ideology.

Meanwhile the daily struggle of the American people, absorbing the results of the power abuses by the rich, powerful and corporate, continues outside this inbred force field of insipid coverage and commentary."

With so many hours to fill they have to discuss ad nauseum every insignificant word out of the candidate's mouths. They manage to avoid any substance though and obviously give a pass to those that the corporate ownership favors. The corporate honchos are beginning to fear Obama, thus every word is analysed and presented as indication of his "elitism."

Danni,

The recent coverage about Obama's comment has seemed to me to be an indication that the MSM wants to maintain the status quo by having a Clinton versus McCain race for the WH.

Obama=elite=Orwell

Null,

But the public doesn't seem to be biting. Yes, here in political hyperspace we go on about all the mispeaks, and former associates, and old and crustiness, but the national numbers hold fairly steady.

I think it is mostly media masturbation. Nobody, except political junkies, is paying much mind.

That's the way it seems to me too Gal.

It kills me too about this "elitist" crap. George Bush was born with a silver (gold plated) spoon in his nose in Connecticut, he went to ivy league schools, was given a much sought after spot in the TExas Air National Guard by his Daddy, his father was head of CIA and President, he is buddies with Saudi billionaires.....but he wasn't called elitist.

Obama tells the truth about how frustrated working class folks are and the punditocracy relentlessly calls him elitist. Most of the folks who are now being told this don't even have "elitist" in their normal vocabulary. Oh, I'm sure most know the word but would never have connected it to a black guy from a single parent household who paid his own way through school. But they may now because the punditocracy has told them to.

Where's Corky?

"In this year's presidential campaign,........"

It's always been like that. So what else is new? The American Media is falling down on the job, no news to me. The love the horse-racing celebrity aspect of the campaign and leave out the more "boring" relevant stuff like issues. And of course they ignore independents and third parties.

Is it me or is the link screwed up? I just CounterPunch.com's home page with the article:

Politicians Without Roots
The Candidates from Nowhere

By BILL KAUFFMAN

"Who has more experience on Day One? What is McCain's wizardry over the reporters on the campaign trail? Can McCain project any human warmth? Which state must Hillary win and by what margin to continue in the race?

On the Sunday talk shows, it is the same couple dozen members of the opinion oligopoly. There is Bill Kristol bringing home the neocon bacon with dreary frequency. There is the James Carville/Mary Matalin spouse show featuring their squabbling over ideology.

Meanwhile the daily struggle of the American people, absorbing the results of the power abuses by the rich, powerful and corporate, continues outside this inbred force field of insipid coverage and commentary.

The people hear nothing regarding what McCain, Obama and Clinton will do about runaway drug, gasoline, and heating oil prices, not to mention what these Senators have already not done in these areas of public outcry.

Disintegration is everywhere. Public works are crumbling-schools, clinics, public transit, libraries, drinking water and sewage-treatment plants. Tax dollars are being used to destroy more of Iraq and to subsidize or bail out companies recklessly run by obscenely overpaid CEOs. Public deficits are soaring."

(cont)
"Corporate criminals laugh all the way to the bank and back. Eighty percent of the workers have been falling behind while the growth of the economy, until last October, made the rich richer and the hyper-rich go off the charts.

One of three workers lives on Wal-Mart wage levels. Nearly fifty million Americans are without health insurance. Eighteen thousand of these Americans die each year because they cannot afford health care, according to the Institute of Medicine. The recession deepens.

The corporate giants are abandoning millions of American workers as they move whole industries to dictatorial regimes abroad where political elites dictate wages, ban independent trade unions, and given sufficient grease, reduce other costs for these companies. Only American CEOs are not outsourced in this mad dash for greed and profits.

All our democratic institutions-courts, agencies, legislatures-are bypassed by "pull-down" autocratic trade treaties like the secretive World Trade Organization and NAFTA.

Wall Street operators seethe with reckless risks and then expect Washington to bail them out. Sure, why not? Washington is run by Wall Street executives on temporary job assignment in high government positions. The big corporations are big government.

Consumers are facing rapidly rising food prices, more home foreclosures, and rising rents. They have lost control over their money, as shown by the daily gouging by credit card companies, cell phone operators and the thousands of imposed fees, penalties, and charges, so well described in the new book Gotcha Capitalism by MSNBC reporter Bob Sullivan. Poverty increases.

Each year, about 58,000 Americans die from air pollution (EPA figures), and 100,000 patients lose their lives from medical negligence in hospitals and many more from hospital-induced infections. Have you heard any of the major campaigns pay any attention to these grim casualty levels?"

nullifidian, don't foget the price of beer.

nullifidian, don't foget the price of beer.

Posted by wisgod at 2008-04-16 02:03 PM


Green Fees, Fishing Liscenses, Campground Fees, Lift Tickets, Major Sporting Events... When is a candidate going to discuss the things I like??? BWHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

Fuck Ralph Nader.

Wow, disregard the point entirely, huh, mama?

"In this year's presidential campaign, the major media want you to focus on the candidates' gaffes, their tactics toward one another's gaffes, the flows of political gossip and four second sound bytes."

This is a fact. They would rather have a metaconversation about the campaign, focusing on management rather than positions. That way, you can say pretty much anything and you can't really be called a liar because coverage becomes all opinion based.

Either we can belittle those who depend on what is spoon fed them through major media, or we can call out the failures of the fourth estate. Which tack has better chances of elevating us all?

"The corporate honchos are beginning to fear Obama"
--DANNI

HAHA that's rich!

"Anxious workers feel shut outthey are disrespected, denied claims, arbitrarily laid off and just plain helpless on the shifting sands and seas of corporate globalization.

Fully 81 percent believe the country is going in the wrong directions. Almost as many believe corporations have too much control over their lives. And 61 percent polled say the major parties are failing.

Now turn on the television and radio coverage of the presidential campaign. How much of the above is reflected in the incessant distractions about tactics, gaffes and the fervid money-raising race?

Can the press and pundits ever be serious if the people do not grab hold of politics and make them become serious about their pleas, their plight and their revulsions? If voters want a concise mission statement, read the preamble to the Constitution, which starts "We the People" not "We the Corporations."

There is a responsibility attached to those words.

Ralph Nader is the author of The Seventeen Traditions"

3-1/2 years of blow, until the public is so saturated they become oblivious to everything except personality.

Policy debate is a thing of the past, because policy is set by an elite class which invades other countries whose resources they want to steal, force us to compete with slave labor, and pollute and degrade other countries environments in ways which are forbidden at home. They do it all for a fast buck, regardless the cost to others.

I may actually vote Nader this year.

As another poster put it, there's no "None of the Above" option.

And he pisses Danni off...

Miss the point? The headline says it. He's just pissed because nobody gives a flying fuck what he says. Tough to swallow for megalomaniacal Ralph.

By the way, did anyone catch Michelle Obama on Colbert last night? I think she came off sounding like an uneducated idiot. Maybe people are comparing her to Obama which is why they think he is an elegant speaker. Had 4 spoons growing up did you?....what a jackass.

If this is her normal way of speaking, I am even more suspicious of her 'promotion' and 3x pay increase than I was before.

And you hate black people because?......

I'll vote for Nader before the others simply for his (brain dead?:>) corporation rhetorics...

I love Corporate America. NYSE Since 1792.
I am a try American and support globalization.
I remember in 1995 when ABC revealed Walmart was selling products made in China the stock went up 5 points and I cheered