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Those of us who keep a toe in politics have noticed unquestionably the polarization occurring between conservatives and the rest of the world.. It is as if one side is living in a world structured by different facts than the world the rest of us live in…
Guess what?
They are, (or we are, depending on which terra firma one stands on…. )
In a national poll by this conservative leaning think tank, we see that 81% of us agree we cannot agree on basic facts with our political opponents. That is 4 out of every 5 of us….
What are facts? Definition, please.
The earth revolves around the sun and the moon revolves around the earth, are two examples of facts. You may have contrary opinions, but your having them will not change either the trajectory of the earth or moon.,,,
Those are facts.
Here is an example of two opinions masquerading as facts:
A) Terrorists are coming into our country with the massive influx of Syrian refugees.
B) America has the most stringent vetting of any refugee on the planet and only plans to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees across all of 2016.
One is the fact propagated by right wing fear mongers, the other is the official policy of the US government.
This causes great arguments in social media with threats and charges being tossed around by both sides, based strictly from feeding off different facts, and the result is that each is unwilling to listen to the other because their facts prove the other is just “spouting crazy…”
Sound familiar?
Now with myself a rational human, if A) were true, that is if we had accepted millions immigrants and were just rounding them up, putting bodies on boats and giving them papers in New York and saying, “here you go”… most of us would say this was ridiculous policy and very dangerous… I would put myself among them.
But as a rational human, if we are only letting in less than 10,000 a year, and we are vetting them extremely well, and some of these, like our ancestors will do great things for their new nation, then this would be the sane policy to take, and you know what? With all this in place, we could probably take more…
So you see: when on social media or in argumentative comment sections, to banter back and forth with:
A) You’re @#$@# crazy….
B) No, you’re #$%#$ crazy
ad nauseum
makes one totally miss the point that neither is crazy at all, but are in fact very similar; Both agree on the actions to be taken in both scenarios, but are just arguing because both were fed different facts, that’s all... Again most of us would be in agreement if we were all fed the same facts and only those facts…
Why has this gotten worse since the Internet, something which was supposed to put all the world’s knowledge at our fingertips?
Well, this might be a good place to remind you that the Internet is a two way street… You use the Internet to learn about the world; the world uses the Internet to learn about you.
Everything you do on the Internet leaves a record… Everything! If no one cares what you do that is probably “ok” and inconsequential to you right now… Does anyone really care if you look at porn? No, then go ahead… No one will look for that needle in a haystack…
BUT, if at some future point someone does want to find out about you, everything you did since you first logged on is at their fingertips. It could be a hiring agent, a boss, a competitive co-worker trying to get you fired, your spouse, your mistress, your gigolo, your estranged gay lover, your bank, your insurer, your best friend, your worst enemy, a political opponent, or even someone making a mistake and accidentally thinking you are someone else … right now it’s for sale to anyone coughing up $78 dollars.
So what if someone found out what you like to see and fed you stuff that would keep you engaged, instead of the opposite, making you so totally enraged at the lies you were fed, you disconnected and walked out the door to live your REAL life? Would they use it?
Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal and is now the owner.
They have two Facebook feeds, one blue and one red… Someone put them side by side.
These are both coming from the same media outlet which we thought was a body that deliberated on issues and then fed us what they thought. That was a lie. They feed us what they think we want… Which means, both sides are seeing different things.. Period…
Each side probably for the most part thinks they see the one true Wall Street Journal on their FB feed.. If you are someone over 40, you have always had the WSM dictate things to you across your life, especially if you invest. So when they show you something culled from Breitbart, you take it they have certified its validity. Little knowing the person you are “politely” arguing with is also getting notifications from the same WSM, just on a different feed, and all facts they get are opposite of yours…
So on one side we only get all facts that Hillary is guilty of killing 4 people in Benghazi. On the other side we get facts that as many times as she gets hauled to answer questions, there is no “gotchu” and it it pretty obvious that she had absolutely nothing to do with that event.
And flipped? …On one side we get all the references of previous attempted rapes perpetuated by this Republican candidate; on the other side we only get to view the inconsistencies showing that these are gold diggers who are just piling on for some extra cash.. After all, our most “trusted” source in both cases… is who told us so…
Both from the same trusted source… So which is it, is Benghazi really a crime unpunished, or is it a political football just waiting for the quarter to end? So which is it, are these really true stories of attempted assault, or are they gross misinterpretations of fooling around?
The overall answer is we need some way to hold media to truth… If you are media, you have to tell the truth. You certainly can’t talk out of both sides of your month to different sides telling each a version of truth that pits one against the other… Especially when they would probably all agree, if they were all given the same facts.
There are two ways to control it: internally or externally.
Cutting to the chase, I tend to lean internally for several reasons. One, it is far easier to manage, both at the news gathering level, and at the monitoring level.. One of the principle arguments for first allowing faux news was that as entertainment it shouldn’t be regulated. Another was that Big Brother could more easily control all information if narrowed down to a tiny few. Both of those have been proven true. It is harder to control all media since faux news and Clear Channel has emerged as huge players.
The Internet provides balance but quite often, those “trees of knowledge” fall in the forest making no sound. The Internet is so big.
Having a bureaucracy follow up on every broadcast to determine truth, is simply un-American and therefore unacceptable…
Therefore having individuals and corporations police themselves seems to be the best solution. And the best way to do that is to facilitate the filing of lawsuits anytime an untruth is uttered.. What this does, is prevent speculation from going across the airwaves. And sometimes such lawsuits can be misused, as in the Scopes-Monkey trial of a century ago. But that trial became the news for a month, illuminated pride and prejudice in a new light, and opened the doors of enlightenment as the suppressors of information got overruled…
For example: one screen shot showing a Republican Congress-person being arrested for illegal sex while having a “D” next to his name on a blue banner, could cost Faux News a pretty penny. As a result, they would tend to internally outlaw propaganda and police those themselves.
Today, saying Global Warming is not man-made, would open one to a lawsuit. Saying Hillary Clinton killed 4 people in Benghazi, would open one to a lawsuit. For those already committed to truth, it would have very little effect. If one was sure of ones source, they could go ahead and release the story… if one wasn’t sure of their source, they could sit on it waiting for collaboration from someone else……
Those of you with a few years under your belt may smile at that last line. That is how journalism used to be accomplished by family publishers before corporations bought out all our media outlets, and before computers….
Essentially eliminating all non-fact based propaganda is past overdue… Our population deserves the facts to make their informed decisions on how we should run this country.. Anyone withholding those from a segment of our people is deserving of punishment for doing so….
And finally, as we today see threats from Trump again leveled against those medias putting forth stories of his penchant for playing with little young pussies, we could limit the threat of lawsuits for intimidation by forcing the filer to pay all expense of the filing, and defender’s legal fees unless the publishing party in the end is found guilty of publishing falsehoods… Then they would pay all costs including attorney fees of the plaintiff.
If you lie it costs you. If you always tell the truth. you remain untouchable…
Then, maybe we all will become less polarized and less contentious…..
Imposing tighter and more forceful controls on the “fourth estate”, requires serious consideration. And such a proposal being in itself, “politically charged”, guarantees nothing will be done unless there is a single party in firm control of all three forms of government and that includes the courts…
There has to be a faster way, a better way.
That is what I am to propose.We have found (particularly in this election year) that to get things done quickly, “We, The People” have to get involved. It is what propelled Donald to the forefront of his party’s nomination over the stale platitudes of people who were competent. It is also what gave Bernie’s campaign far more power than any insider could have ever considered as late as last December a mere 9 months ago. So whether you like either of the two campaigns or not, it is “We, The People” who manifested them in our own two diverse images….
The problem with today’s press is not so much its partisanship. The reason calling out such partisanship from BOTH parties is justifiable, is because the press plays itself against BOTH sides. Indeed in social issues it does tend to side with liberals and lambastes both conservatives and Tea Party Republicans. Most of our media is liberal on issues supportive of prisoners, gays, minorities, and women’s rights. But when it comes to a government using its power to get things done, the media’s business-identity takes over and it becomes strongly Libertarian. Here keeping government in a box seems to be its prime directive. Those of you with sharp minds can already see where this is going: both socially and governmentally our press is almost pure Libertarian. On the social side it mimics Liberalness while on the business side, it’s conservative. Both which are planks of the Libertarian party.
Because of this dichotomy, both sides can and do look at the American media as its enemy…. while the same both sides ignore and dismiss the side which is a partial friend of it .Therefore for citizen’s groups to attack the media on its partisanship is probably a moot endeavor. For if there is no partisanship actually there, one will come up empty handed. No, for any change to occur, there first
a) has to be a problem, then
b) that problem has to become common knowledge, then
c) movements towards change have to campaign to attract followers, and then
d) the number of “pros” has to outweigh the number of “cons”, and
e) only then, does change occur. But is has to start with a real … problem.
We have a real problem. Our fourth estate refuses to report real facts and lets lies slip by without comment every time those facts or lies fly in the face of its Libertarian nature. Take the climate-change debate: since governments should not enforce Draconian rules upon private business so the press mitigated the compelling facts of global warming with opposing opinions funded by Big Oil. Flip that over to the other side: gay marriage. Government should not enforce Draconian rules upon private citizens; therefore it cast and painted those who were traditionalists into caricatures of silliness, to which most of “us” (long oppressed) took delight. Take religion: all those enforcing a “state’ religion, be they traditionalists of Muslim, Jewish, Old School Catholic, or Fundamentalist Christian get parodied and those actively involved in the “serving” nature of religion as in “creating good here on earth” get support… Take taxes: raising them though obviously the glaring solution to almost every problem and concern, also involves taking resources away from private citizens and putting them into the hands of a “government” … Hence, no commentary is ever given towards how raising taxes would swell the “people’s” economy, raise all wages, and allow us to all live much wealthier than we can today, despite all the evidence out there crying for it to be noticed and upheld… The trend has been consistent.
The point I’m making is that when progressives look at this monolith, and when conservatives look at this monolith, they both see the monolith fighting strictly against them. They don’t see it actually is fighting against all government in general….
One could talk about this “problem” of the media for hours. In just the few short minutes of typing I already have cooked up enough mental outlines and supporting examples to write a whole book. We don’t have time for that. Let’s accept step a) (There has to be a problem) is legit and move onward to where we need to go to make our stamp as We, The People, felt…
We need to quickly move over to step (b) (that problem has to become common knowledge), as well as setup the future stages of c) (movements towards change have to campaign to attract followers) and d) (the number of “pros” has to outweigh the number of “cons”…..)
We know how to do this because we did it to Rush Limbaugh… We attack their advertisers… Both due diligence and concerted effort are needed as was bravely and methodically accomplished against Rush Limbaugh.
The plan simply involves holding advertisers accountable for the News shows they sponsor. We write to advertisers supporting some of the most hateful one-sided shows and ask them if they were aware they were supporting bigotry, we ask them if they were aware they were supporting misogyny, we ask them if they were aware they were supporting a “state religion”, and we ask them if they were aware they were supporting climate change denial….
Make sure you offer the examples… quotes and times of what was directly said.(Twitter makes it easy).. Then politely inform them that for the life of you, you cannot conscientiously buy another of their products until you are sure they have changed …. and that one way for them to gain your future support, would be to take public action and combat those issues which by their association through their advertising, they seem to support.
We know this is effective…. The power of association is a very motivating human trait… “Ew, I don’t want people to think I’m with them….”
And we also know it does not take many such letters to make an impact… It is one of the reason true Conservatives appear almost equal in power though their numbers are a very minimal percentage of the population.(17%)… Because almost the full 100% of them write protests to businesses including those in the press themselves.. Therefore no matter how ridiculous is their claim, one needs to pay it respect to mitigate any financial impact to oneself.
The reason such small numbers can impact business is because businesses depend on revenue streams. As you know profits are only the tip of the pyramid after all other expenses have been paid down and off. So by taking a block of two off the top, they who live or die by their profit dollars, are impacted immediately… They cannot ignore your threat….
Now some may say that the press doesn’t matter. Because to most people, the press is just something out there… an irrelevant entity that no one seems to watch… When we hear that 2.4 million watch Fox’s “The Five” we should also calculate to ourselves that means there were also an estimated 322 million who did not watch. And that does indeed correlate to the reality of our lives.. At work, no one comments on politics unless that happens to be all they live for.Sports, entertainment, family, problems with coworkers, traffic, all seem to take precedence in our lives over the fate of our county, state, or even federal electees…
But Brexit pointed out a glaring problem to ignoring this. When Brits were asked from where they got most of their opinions prior to voting, a high majority responded with the BBC. And this makes psychological sense. When confused it is natural to turn to where your parents used to get their source of information.. which was the BBC.
Now throughout the argument of Brexit, the BBC as is today’s American media dealing with Trump, tried to play both sides evenhandedly; to do so they let tons of lies simply slide by without context which caused quite a few votes going Brexit’s way. Brexit proponents made promises and charges that were completely unfounded, but due to any silence of a rebuttal by BBC, they were allowed to hang out on the line as truth. Proof of of this being that the promise to transfer moneys being sent to the EU (350 million each week) over to the NHS, was pulled less than 24 hours had expired since the vote went Brexit’s way… That misinformation bubble on which many used to cast their vote, could and should have easily been popped before the vote…
The BBC let down Britain, and today, we see our American press doing the exact same: letting down America to keep up the semblance of a tight horse race… We see click-bait headlines pushing “something’s very wrong” in a squeaky clean Clinton Foundation even when inside the same article they mention there was no wrongdoing found; on the other hand we see them completely ignoring outright bribery looking at them in the face…as in Trump paying off the Florida AG to make a “We, The People’s” investigation go away….
The press has the ability to spin an election cycle. This is very true. This happened in 2000 and the USA is still digging out from that tragedy… All the facts back then said tax cuts and deregulation would cause immense economic trouble, but those effects were never publicly discussed by our press. Instead we were treated to media storms of:…”who would you rather have a beer with?” Duh, the obvious answer would be a Texas Rangers baseball team owner over the other choice, one who’d been a governmental bureaucrat all his life.. But that shouldn’t have been the question!.. But solely because it was, and many more voters back then looked at the press for guidance than dare do today, it spun the election criteria out of the field of economics over into La, La, Land. So instead of having our national debt completely paid off back in 2008 to which we were on track to do, we now have $16 trillion new dollars yet to pay. So now instead maintaining certain regulations to keep businesses from immorally gouging consumers without consequences, we had a crash rivaling the Great Depression. So now instead of nipping Global Warming in the bud by 2004, we have oceans crashing into our houses, wiping out recreational shoreline yearly and species living 30,000 years disappearing without trace.
Elections have consequences and if “We, The People” are to truly remain in charge, we need to apply our control over this press as well as we apply it over our government… And our tool for that is economic. And it must start with you….
One… Personally comment somewhere every time you hear misjudgment made by the press.
Two… when you do hear a particular misleading comment, note the next three advertisers.
Three… do a search, find those advertisers’ customer service, click send email, and type a few sentences. Like this..
“Did you know your company’s ad was the first thing I saw on Politico after its host seemed to support Trump’s misogynist agenda and did not comment against Donald Trump’s slur against women! How can you advertise on such a vile channel?
Or..
“What are you trying to do! Just saw your ad on ABC who just gave credence to Trumps’ immigration policy by not calling out the lies Trump spewed…especially that all Hispanics are rapists. I will no longer support a company who indulges in prejudice and hate.. Good bye
Or…
Did you know that CBS just let Donald Trump’s assertion go unchallenged that there was no global warming? … Did you know your advertisement came immediately after cutting away from that? I’m sorry but my dollars cannot go to a company who associates with networks who will not correct such lies and misinformation….
==========
It’s a start. The benefit is that we know it works… “Rush who?” you ask.
As we ponder our daily feeds, either rejoicing at an inevitable victory in November, or cringing as a Republican, knowing defeat is almost certain, it might be time to consider making some changes to society so that this type of thing (Donald Trump) doesn’t happen again.
Why exactly do we have Donald Trump as a real possibility of becoming president?
- Democrats don’t want him.
- The Republican leadership doesn’t want him.
- Hispanics don’t want him.
- Muslims don’t want him.
- Women don’t want him.
- Blacks don’t want him.
- Big Business doesn’t want him.
- Investors don’t want him.
- Catholics don’t want him.
No Republican has ever run alienating all of the above. Yet this one is! So the question has to be asked since it IS obvious that he got the most votes and often by rather large margins….. how did so many Americans get fooled into voting for someone so unqualified and so unbalanced they are unable to handle the office at hand?
The most likely answer is that they voted for something else they thought they were getting, but like Trump University students, they got shafted. We can be dismissive of them,. calling them stupid “whatevers”…. But the reality is that most of them aren’t stupid. They have decent brains and they know how to use them, just lapsed in this one solitary case… In the real world they run businesses, they run state governments, they perform difficult tasks for their employers; no, they are not stupid as measured by a psychologist. But somehow they all got duped….
I was curious as to how. How could so many Americans get this wrong? Trump received 13,406,108 votes by someone’s calculation… Many were members of my extended family.
I saw a glimpse today as to why…..when Sean Hannity just showed us why the upcoming blowout Trump loss, wouldn’t end the GOP’s civil war..
“On his radio show Wednesday, Hannity rather amazingly sought to pre-blame the Republican establishment for a Trump loss in 2016.
“If in 96 days Trump loses this election, I am pointing the finger directly at people like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and John McCain and John Kasich and Ted Cruz — if he won’t endorse – and Jeb Bush and everybody else that made promises they’re not keeping,” Hannity said.
He added: “I have watched these Republicans be more harsh towards Donald Trump than they’ve ever been in standing up to Barack Obama and his radical agenda … . They did nothing. Nothing.”
Right here, even after a disastrous convention, even after the def-con 5 week afterwards, Sean Hannity is blaming moderate or actual working members of the Republican Party for Trump’s ultimate upcoming blowout in November. How silly is this? Did those 7 Republicans he mentioned by name, pick on a Gold Star family? No, all seven were blindsided by the affair and had to quickly distance themselves from Trump’s controversy because most of their constituents do love and support the military. Did those 7 Republicans throw out a crying baby? No, all seven of them love babies, albeit better when they aren’t crying. Did those 7 ask 3 times why we couldn’t use nuclear weapons? No, all seven of those already know why…….
Yet Hannity is blasting these members of the Republican Party for not standing with Trump while he appears to be grasping for the detonator on his explosive suicide vest….
Who is this Hannity, … the freaking devil?
And that’s when….. I understood….
IF YOU ONLY SEE ONE SIDE OF EVERY ISSUE, THAT IS ALL YOU ARE GOING TO BELIEVE……
So instead of ignoring all the Republican memes today, I asked most of them, “do you ever watch the Fox Network?” And all of those posting memes still supporting Trump, said “yes”… I said, “how often?” and as you would expect, usually the answers paralleled “all the time.”
So here’s the problem with Free Speech. When you give only lies not balanced by truth, you will get people who’ll believe the lies. For how could they not? If you reach a lot of people, you have a lot of people who’ll believe the lie over truth…because to them, what they know, they deem IS the truth.
It correlates to this:
“Sean Hannity’s ratings boost, on the other hand, has been phenomenal. Hannity now comes in third in the demo, right behind Kelly, and fifth overall. His audience grew by over a third since last April, and it seems very clear where that dynamic originates. While Bill O’Reilly has been somewhat sympathetic to Donald Trump, Hannity has been outright enthusiastic about Trump.” POSTED AT 2:01 PM ON MAY 9, 2016 BY ED MORRISSEY
Hannity with 1.8 million viewers versus 1.3 million votes for Trump? Any correlation?
One thing about television viewing is that you can’t watch two screens at once. You can read two newspapers one after another, you can read multiple reports on line one after each other, you can switch stations on your car radio driving home from work. But if you want to see news told to you by a human face sometime between dinner and bed, you are going to watch one channel, the one you feel most comfortable. And a good network, is going to profile itself to your demographic so you will feel compelled to watch and thereby help it boost its ratings.
Thus, you will only get news you want to hear. Most likely what you hear will be a fabrication. It may even have no truth. They may leave out several vital points in its telling and put blame on other’s actions to provide a possible reason which explains the gap over what they purposefully hid. (Example: Hannity’s spout above). If you only watched that one channel or network in an alternate universe, you’d never know about the real world.
Trump’s ascendancy makes this a national crises. Instead of having two choices for president, we now realistically only have one. Up to this moment we thought we had enough safeguards in place to protect our liberties so we wrung our hands in exasperation, but never thought we’d ever look at doing something about it. But the idea of a Trump presidency makes many of us think our nation is about to end. After Trump’s nuclear exchange, some think the whole world is about to end.
Yet on my social media, I see there are still many people who “don’t see it”. Every counter argument or piece of additional evidence handed to them is ignored as coming from the “liberal” media. And no doubt this is very bad for a democracy. You need discussion. You need opposing views. But we have large numbers of people who willingly support a tyrant solely because he won’t moderate or soften his views under any criticism (or reality).
That veteran actually gave him his purple heart? (I’m betting at some future point in his life, he’s going come to his senses and want that back). In his own mind, or in his own fabrication based on what he’s been told about America, he obviously believed that his gesture was magnanimously going to change America’s opinion of his hero. “We veterans support you, Mr. Trump.” That is not something one does flippantly or lightly. I bet he has no idea that most of America right now is thinking him the biggest deluded fool on our planet.
We must ask how can that be? What brought us to this point? How can someone so attuned to what makes America great, be so deluded? I looked to find collaboration. I remembered the often quoted PEW study on the polarization of America’s views. We heard a lot about this in 2014 leading up to the mid term election.
Democrats and Republicans by this study were more ideologically divided than in the past.
Prior to Gingrich’s revolution, we could all get along for the most part. In 2014, everybody was the bad guy. What could have created that?
Political intransigence for one. Gingrich’s revolution after 1994 was based on not compromising with anybody; it was either his way or the highway… (When it went negative after they shut the government down, he softened his approach). But back in 1994 uncompromising was something brand new and prior to him we’d never seen the likes of it before. Some blame both sides (Republicans usually) for intransigence, but when one blindsides you with a sucker punch, you don’t respond with, “oh, dude; looks like your hand accidentally impacted my face. Let’s have a beer and talk about it”… You punch them back with every intent on hurting them as hard as they hurt you. (It’s how wars get started.) Gingrich probably was the catalyst that started the migration to the poles instead of remaining happily congregated together in the center.
But that could not have happened in a vacuum. Had the same occurred in the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, or 80’s, Gingrich would have lasted just one term and no one would have supported him. Prior to that, being recalcitrant was simply unelectable. It had been tested by fringe candidates, all who were never elected. No, something was different in the nineties that insulated this group of iconoclasts and allowed them to continue with impunity.
The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine—which had required that stations provide free air time for responses to any controversial opinions that were broadcast—by the FCC in 1987 meant stations could broadcast editorial commentary without having to present opposing views. Daniel Henninger wrote, in a Wall Street Journal editorial, “Ronald Reagan tore down this wall (the Fairness Doctrine) in 1987 … and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination. —Wikipedia
When the Republican Party won control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections, the freshman Republican class awarded Limbaugh an honorary membership in their caucus.
On October 7th, 1996, Rupert Murdoch launched the Fox News Network to just 17 million subscribers. He publicly announced its formation on January 31st, 1996. In February he wooed Roger Ailes from NBC”s “America’s Talking” to run it. At its October 7th launch, only 10 million households were able to watch Fox News, none in the major media markets of New York City and Los Angeles. Many media reviewers concentrated in those two cities had to watch the first day’s programming at Fox News’ studios because it was not readily available. By the 2000 presidential election, Fox News, which was available in 56 million homes nationwide, saw a staggering 440% increase in viewers, the biggest gain among the three cable news television networks…. Wikipedia
Strange things began happening according to the Pew Study.
We became more antagonistic to the other party. In 1994 almost no one thought the other party was a danger to the nation’s well being. Of course they may be misguided, but a danger? Ha. Even in 2004 there were statistically none feeling such. But that has significantly changed in the past 10 years. Now the others’ unfavorables hover around 40% with 3/4ths of them in each party considering the other party to be an enemy to the nation’s well being. In light of this almost all of us would be willing to fight for our country to protect it from danger. So if we are being teased into thinking our country is sinking into mortal danger by “those other people”, then it very likely that among some of us, our emotional fight or flight propensities would be liable to surface easily.
Have you ever noticed how well people get along, until politics get mentioned?
That is because more and more we have little in common. Not in reality. In the real world we have quite a bit in common. Most of us belong to the 99%. Most of us have some type of spiritualism or religion. Most of us graduated through public school. Most of us watched the same shows growing up, heard the same musicians on our radios, and read many of the same books our schools insisted we should. We have a lot more commonality now due to media’s intrusion in our lives, than did our ancestors living in the last century. So why is there no middle ground?
And I think Sean Hannity showed us exactly why today. Which would be just another media grab for his persona, if it weren’t for the following news items going on at the same time. Question of Trump quitting? News of Trump letting Pence run both domestic and international policy while Trump concentrates on “Making America Great Again”? I love babies; get that baby outta’ here, what was she thinking? For the third time, can you tell me why we can’t use nuclear weapons? I’m just not there yet with endorsing possibly my future House Speaker for his Congressional seat up this November… Not to mention his continuing obsession with Khan’s DNC mentioning his name. And if you do follow conservative media posts, you saw as recent reality begins to dawn that they’re about to lose big, their posts have begun filling up with talk of armed civil war, as in the Bundys-on-steroids….
Sean Hannity showed us exactly why today…. There was no rationality in his statement. None. It was a complete fabrication, a complete misinterpretation, and totally and completely irrational. Yet it was said, to the Wall Street Journal even.
It was “Fire” in a crowded theater! Courts have ruled that saying “fire” is not an exercise in free speech and such can be deemed to be criminal and damages can be leveled against it perpetrators.
So, if we survive after this November, for the future how do we fix it? I sweat thinking what could happen. I really don’t think we ever want this to happen again, do we? I would rather we have more civil public discourse between ideas and values, instead of Jerry Springer fist fights, slurs, name calling, and massive societal “unfriending”‘s…. Am I alone here?
If we choose to fix this, we will need to come up with a line over which one cannot cross, one that separates free speech from yelling “fire” on our public airwaves. We will need to come up with some way that holds our news celebrity people accountable for what they say.
- Opening them to lawsuits, could be one option.
- Forcing equal time, could be another.
- A daily fact check of the night before, available to all, might work.
- A revocation of a necessary license if caught in a lie just once.
But these come with their own problems. Just imagining the opposition leveling these against us should give us pause in pursuing any of the above to curb future harm. If not very careful, we could be creating more harm towards the free exchange of ideas.
Other options could include posting a Madow or similar report following a Hannity or similar report and vice versa on the other side’s channels. Imagine after hearing Ted Cruz, you got to hear Bernie Sanders?
Or placing such equal time laws and responsibilities only on our most successful characters… Perhaps starting at over 1 million regular viewers, you do have to have some fair and balanced reporting on the same channel, even the same show… That would still allow for legal unlimited expression on cable among everyone else without moderation. Those independent shows no matter how extreme, never were a problem. There are so many of those, I never watched; nor does anyone else except their mother perhaps. Therefore whereas Bill O’Reilly must have someone pointing out his inconsistencies right after he utters them, so should Rachel; but Jamal the Reggie Bandmaster can say anything thing he wants at 3:30 am.
Or perhaps only allowing even numbers of opposing-view stations in a market at a time. You have Fox, you must have another to enter at the same time; just that you can’t have large areas under only one network.
Yet these two ideas also have their problems with enforcement and creation. Whatever reasonable solution we eventually find, it will need to stand up to court challenges against anyone’s misconception over what the First Amendment allows.
When television first landed, we had restrictions, particularly the Fairness Doctrine. Reasons being for one, we were a lot closer to WWII and saw a once great and noble nation (one fourth of us were German too) go down a path of someone’s senseless power addiction and their nation’s ultimate destruction. Also we knew well how the Soviet Union kept their population from rebelling against what no American would accept as status quo. We had seen under totalitarianism the power of a single voice in media and we only allowed television if it agreed to benefit all its citizens, not just titillate them. By today’s standards, heavy censorship was applied and enforced.
Can we go back to that? Doubtful as it seems right now, we may not have heard the last of Trump’s crazy utterances. Our future may dictate that option again be available to us, reluctant as we are right now to accept it. But to stave that off, this topic now becomes one more thing we need to consider during this election cycle…
When Hillary wins, what are we going to do with the Fox News Network to make sure such disinformation or manipulation never happens on such a scale to harm our nation again?
We hate each other… not because of who they are, but because of what we are told they want to do to our country. Even Cowboys and Eagles fans get along better than Democrats and Republicans once Fox News becomes the topic of conversation. We should not be in such straits. Our uppermost levels of animosity should always remain in sport’s fan-ship; not in whether our democratic nation can last as a democracy. On that topic we should all be working together towards a common goal. We need to kill that messenger who keeps dividing us, even when deep inside we really don’t want to be divided……
First they backed Jeb, then Marco, then Cruz, and now, it looks like Wall Street is pinning their hopes on Hillary.
Bernie is not an avuncular Socialist anymore. He is a threat to the capitalistic system of today, a system that has put 90% of America near poverty… The reason? He wants to return America to the capitalistic system we had 20,30,40 years ago… when to borrow a phrase from Donald Trump, “America was great.”
And most of America hopes he succeeds. The anger behind Donald Trump is also anger against the current capitalism which has emasculated the American worker. You add Donald’s followers to Bernie’s followers and you have a majority of America who wants some very big changes to quickly affect the daily lives of 90% of Americans… They need more income.
The capitalist system of today is bigger than America… Most of America’s profits are quickly moved off-shore doing Americans no good for all the work they’ve done for their bosses.
American workers are past their breaking point and only two candidates understand and address their issues. Donald and Bernie. There are opposite differences in addressing the same theme. One is diverting attention away from those big businesses by pointing to Mexicans, Muslims, and Megan (something with M’s?). The other is aiming to control big business by putting it back into the box from which it escaped during George W Bush’s presidency…. But depending on who you mistrust, both are doing exactly the same thing in the grand scheme of things: organizing against today’s form of capitalism.
So, with Wisconsin going to Bernie, there is now some fear that New York may do the same. And that has unleashed all the tricks to blank out both Bernie and Donald so regular Americans continue to be blocked from any say in how their government gets run… something that keeps Wall Street up at night.
Which is why, with the Wisconsin Win, we now have The Daily News of New York and the Washington Post follow-up, excoriate presidential candidate Sanders…
I read the Daily News transcript and you should too. You will understand that headlines quite often these days, do not an accurate description of the article, make.
I was very pleased with Bernie’s answers and was rather shocked that some have said otherwise….
The leader of the negative articles is none other then mega-giant Amazon.Com’s own newspaper, the Washington Post… Remember this paper is owned by Jeff Bezos, 5th richest Forbes designated person in the world, who is worth $52 billion.
There is one reason he would not want Bernie to win and that would be because Bernie would put him in the highest tax bracket. Which is 58% I believe. Though he will cry, cry, cry about paying high taxes, Americans will get far more benefit from his $52 billion portfolio if correctly taxed, then they would from letting him keep even more of his profits, as is being proposed by every other candidate…
So, imagine you had $52 billion in assets… Would you attack someone who would cost you money??? Or someone who would give you money??
Here are the Washington Post’s flurries off that great interview (read the transcript)-=- remind one of Fast and Furious?
9 things Bernie Sanders should’ve known about but didn’t in that Daily News interview
This New York Daily News interview was pretty close to a disaster for Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders picks a dangerous New York fight with Hillary Clinton
The case against Bernie Sanders, according to Barney Frank
Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president
About that Bernie Sanders ‘momentum’ …
Writers for The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, CNN, Slate and Talking Points Memo concluded as well that Sanders had botched the interview.
But the transcript shows a different story…..Sanders’s conversation with the Daily News was more nuanced than some of the criticism might suggest.
Here is one example…. Sanders was faulted for not having formed an opinion on a recent ruling in federal court. “It’s something I have not studied, honestly,” he said.
When asked how to break up JP Morgan, Sanders answered he’d leave it up to the banks.. That is exactly the right answer. The government doesn’t know the most efficient way to break up JP Morgan, JP Morgan does. If the point is to downsize the banks, the way to do it is to give them a size cap and let them figure out the best way to reconfigure themselves to get under it… It is no different than requiring seat belts in every car, but not specifying how they must be constructed…
The same applies to Sanders not knowing the specific statute for prosecuting banks for their actions in the housing bubble. Knowingly passing off fraudulent mortgages in a mortgage backed security is fraud. And the fact that Sanders didn’t know a specific statute, who cares? How many people know the specific statute for someone who puts a bullet in someone’s head? It’s murder. Specific statute? Are you serious?
Although he did not know, he did argue that the federal law enforcement should devote more manpower to investigating the largest financial firms to determine whether any particular laws were violated, something Clinton has also promised to do, putting both of them at odds with Obama, who chose instead to seek large payments to settle, instead of aggressively prosecuting what could be very involved, risky and unsuccessful at the Supreme Court.
With the exception of the subway token thing, gracefully ending with an image of Bernie jumping a turnstile and gracefully eluding the subway police, it often appeared that the Daily News simply had inexperienced reporters asking vaguely open questions to which Bernie was hearing different parts….
Bottom line is that reading the entire transcript, makes Bernie not someone out of touch with the big picture of running America; which means that those saying he was, ARE out of touch with how America needs to be run….
Look. Mom says: Be home for Thanksgiving… She doesn’t say: get out of work early, pack the night before, take the number 5 bus to the station at 7:45; get on the 8:11 train to Philly and get of at Suburban station and take at 9:22, the 102 bus north….
Bernie got it right… Bezos obviously has a $52.2 billion agenda…. If you are smart (Allan Loudell gets fooled every time), don’t believe any media this campaign, but use them to read the transcripts…. for you are smarter than they are.
Brilliant strategy for any voter: go the source; ignore headlines and commentary.
Actual conversation:;;;;
So hey, did you hear that HB 167 passed? How do you feel?
HB 167? What da f*** is that?
House Bill 167, it bans the box… Isn’t that great?
Well, then, what are the going to do with all the homeless then?
I guess there is a storm coming.
Last December I’d stumbled across this interactive map put up by the PEW foundation, which had accumulated each state’s research of how many people were unemployed long termed back then, and how many were slipping off the roles this upcoming year… What I want to show, is the economic consequences of not continuing unemployment benefits, and to show it on a state by state basis. The economic cost is nothing to ignore….As you may remember, Walmart is reeling from the food stamps (SNAP) cutbacks last November. Their figures for this quarter come out early April. But having some of their biggest clients drop out of society’s economics, jolted them last quarter..
The numbers for my state were estimated lower than reality.. PEW underestimated in December what Delaware actually reported in January by about 10%… Therefore these numbers should be considered baseline conservative estimates only, and very believable.. If they shock you, the reality is probably much worse….
As you know, all those already on long termed unemployment stopped receiving benefits on December 28th of last year. Subsequently each week, every state has some members on its state’s unemployment roles who expire, and normally would get dumped into the federal program and continue being able to contribute to our economy while they look for work…That number gets bigger each week…
The idea occurred to me (and I did a piece on my own state), that we could figure the economic damage relatively easily by finding the number of unemployed, calculating their economic worth by extending the average check amount, and applying a multiplier to account for the increase economic activity that unemployment creates. These multipliers are all over the map. The Dept of Labor predicts a 2.0 multiplier. and Moody’s predicts a 1.55 multiplier… Every dollar given through unemployment, creates $2.00 (1.55) in overall economic benefit as it continues to filter up the economic ladder to the top….
So I took it upon myself to show how many people were initially cut, how many more increased the totals weekly, how much economic loss this costs each state, and where the states will be at the end of this week, the beginning of March… The next step, since I won’t have the time, would be for someone to compare these estimates of people getting booted off an income, with each individual’ states data on weekly new hires. simply to prove whether or not unemployment was due to laziness and not the lack of good full-time paying jobs… It would be easy to determine,. If one would find that 10,000 are getting the boot, and if the state is showing no new hires, that we are creating a large class of people who will soon be creating large problems, stemming from simply the necessity of survival…. Call it our Third World Quotient. (I used this source for each states unemployment benefit)
===
Alabama 12.100 lost benefits on Dec. 28th. 925 added each week. Total off roles as of March 1st =20,425 @ $265 Alabama benefit = now hitting with impact of $5.4 million per week. March 1st -Dec.28th Cumulative Lost Income Damage.= $43.9 million. Times 1.55 Multiplier effect, $68,045,000 dollars…
Alaska 23,300 lost benefits on Dec. 28th. 448 added each week. Total off roles as of March 1st =27,332 @ $442 Alaska benefit = now hitting with impact of $24.1 million per week. March 1st -Dec.28th cumulative Lost Income Damage = $111.9 million Times 1.55 Multiplier effect, $ 173,439,916 dollars
Arizona 17,100 lost benefits on Dec. 28th. 1288 added each week. Total off roles as of March 1st = 28,962 @ $240 Arizona benefit = now hitting with impact of $6.9 million per week. March 1st -Dec.28th cumulative Lost Income Damage = $55 million Times 1.55 Multiplier effect. $ 85,173,120 dollars
Arkansas 9,300 lost benefits on Dec 28th. 775 added each week. Total off roles as of March 1st = 16,275 @ $ 451 Arkansas benefit = now hitting with an impact of $ 7.3 million per week.. March 1st -Dec.28th cumulative Lost Income Damage = $57.6 million times 1.55 Multiplier effect $89,39,018 dollars.
California 214,800 lost benefits on Dec 28th. 16,078 added each week. Total off roles as of March 1st = 359,502 @ $ 450 California benefit = now hitting with an impact of $161 million per week.. March 1st -Dec.28th cumulative Lost Income Damage = $1.29 billion times 1.55 Multiplier effect $ 2,002,878,225 dollars.
Colorado 17,900 lost benefits on Dec 28th. 1400 added each week. Total off roles as of March 1st = 30,500 @ $ 466 Colorado benefit = now hitting with an impact of $14.2 million per week.. March 1st -Dec.28th cumulative Lost Income Damage = $37.7 million times 1.55 Multiplier effect $ 58,434,070 dollars.
Connecticut 26,000 lost benefits on Dec 28th. 1636 added each week. Total off roles as of March 1st = 35816 @ $ 665 Connecticut benefit = now hitting with an impact of $23.8 million per week.. March 1st -Dec.28th cumulative Lost Income Damage = $221.8 million times 1.55 Multiplier effect $ 343,878,815 dollars.
Read the rest of this entry »
What a crazy day. Headlines are just writing themselves…. Crossfire in Wilmington wounds two ladies just sitting on their porch…..
Is Williams qualified as mayor to take the reins and go forward? He certainly ran as such. But since, we have gotten only talk…
“I’ll get it. I’ll get it… It just takes time ( ghost of Mayor Baker?)… You see, it’s the neighborhood, the bad family life..(ghost of Mayor Baker?). We’re going to crack down. We’re going to stop this senseless killing.”
Then another one goes down….
“I’ll get it. I’ll get it… It just takes time ( ghost of Mayor Baker?)… You see, it’s the neighborhood, the bad family life..(ghost of Mayor Baker?). We’re going to crack down. We’re going to stop this senseless killing.
Then another one goes down….
“I’ll get it. I’ll get it… It just takes time ( ghost of Mayor Baker?)… You see, it’s the neighborhood, the bad family life..(ghost of Mayor Baker?). We’re going to crack down. We’re going to stop this senseless killing.
Then another one goes down….
“I’ll get it. I’ll get it… It just takes time ( ghost of Mayor Baker?)… You see, it’s the neighborhood, the bad family life..(ghost of Mayor Baker?). We’re going to crack down. We’re going to stop this senseless killing…
How long has this been going on?
The answer of what needs to happen is pretty obvious. As cautioned elsewhere, Mayor Williams needs to stop saying “stop and frisk.” Just the sound of that causes trouble…
Instead, round up everyone you see loitering or jaywalking and take them in for processing… The ordnances are already on the books and everyone is frisked before going into a police car… Nothing illegal at all.
Start saying “we’ll clear the streets of loiterers and jaywalkers.”… then do it. The difference will be evident in just one day.
Top secret footage smuggled out of a recent DOE meeting showing what corporate education has planned and is planning for this year’s tests.
(Teachers, if you have similar experiences, send your stories under untraceable names to any of these addresses… Just drop the story in the comment tray at the bottom of any article and share your story….. This is not time to be vindictive or name names; we’re just trying to channel the information past those on top who are damming the natural flow….)
In alphabetic order:
http://kilroysdelaware.wordpress.com/
http://mindofmrmatthews.wordpress.com/
http://transparentchristina.wordpress.com/
Send us your stories and we’ll mainstream them…. Looking forward to some good writing! …
In the bi-partisan Senate(sic) negotiations broke down today on figuring out how to accomplish background checks for hand held weapons…. By an overwhelming majority, Americans support the notion that every gun be registered to a single owner, and if a crime occurs, that owner can be charged with a conspiracy to that crime, provided he had not reported that weapon stolen….
A reader has brought up the major fear all gun owners have on getting their guns registered. They hide behind the Constitutionality that registering guns with the Government, is the first step to confiscation. This is not their real reason.
Their guns are illegal. Not to them, But at some point in the past, they bought a gun in a shady private deal that did not require a background check, and the possibility lurks that their weapon they’ve had for years, probably in all fairness, was actually the stolen property of another gun owner….and with a registry, that fact will be found out.!!!
As soon as a registry goes into effect, computers will begin matching the numbers….
And, it is not these law abiding gun owner’s fault. They performed their transactions legally, and the seller of the weapon probably in good faith, performed the transaction legally…. But with the ability to trace weapons, a gun registered in 2013 can be found to have been stolen in 1989…..
Obviously this is a real fear. I think all of us would feel the same. I know I would. Likewise, for us to move forward in taking effective action to prevent future tragedies like Newtown, we need to solve this issue.
The reality is that these once-stolen guns, are now in new homes, and those new owners are law abiding citizens… Without a registering of firearms, this criminality, possession of stolen merchandise, would never have been determined…
So by declaring no one will be prosecuted for having stolen merchandise, would go a long way to make sure fixing one injustice, does not create another…
We need amnesty against any legal action taken to retrieve ownership of a long lost gun. In most cases a statue of limitations would be long in effect, but we need a blanket Federal amnesty protection given priority over state an local laws on criminal prosecution….
We need this amnesty because we need universal background checks.
That accountability is key to holding criminals responsible.. As we go forward into the future, we will need that clear accountability to control which guns confiscated from criminal belong to law abiding citizens who can then get return of their stolen possession, and which guns confiscated can lead us to more criminals who are using the current holes in our system to funnel guns to 7-11 and convenience store robbers….
We need oversight and accountability to accomplish this….
And putting law abiding citizens at risk for crimes of the past of which they were unaware, gets in our way of doing what an overwhelming number of Americans want…. closing the ability of criminals to get possession of guns…..
I think tacking amnesty for gun owners covering any issues a gun registry may illuminate, needs to be in any gun legislation bill put forward…. It is no different from granting immunity, which across this nation prosecutors do every single day……..
So let’s get it done.
kavips 