To start with I guess we should explain what a veteran actually is. Of course you can be a veteran without ever being in the military. Veteran just gives you a sense of purpose in what ever your a veteran in whether it be police, fireman, military, etc. It just highlights your experience.
Anyone who has been in the military for any length of time is considered a military veteran and then the military awards status according to where you were stationed and what you did while you were there. WWII, Korea, Vietnam and now Iraq/Afghanistan, the men and women who participated in them were known also by the added distinction of their particular conflict.
I'll discuss the Vietnam war because that was the one I was involved in. It was a war like this country had never seen before, brought into your living rooms nightly on the news and it seems to be tearing the country apart even to this day, some 35 years later, as it did then. I'm speaking of course about our current political campaigns and how anyone who served in the Vietnam war is suspect in using anything about their veterans status for an advantage. In fact I can't think of any other period in time when someone would have the gaul to guestion a candidates service to his country. Now we have coined a phase which should stand for honorable service but instead Swiftboats will have forever been cursed with the stigma of hate and lies.
The Vietnam war has also brought out a new phenomenon. In all the other wars up to Vietnam there was no distinction as to what your service included. If you stormed the beaches at Normandy or supported the aircraft in England you were considered a WWII veteran. Now it seems there is a small movement who insist that if someone claims to be a Vietnam vet they'd better be able to show their DD214 to prove it and you'd best have served in combat, and in country. I'm not sure what drives their reasoning maybe it was the divisive nature of the war, it's hard to tell. I wrote to a few veterans organizations about it and they confirmed that, to their amazement, some were trying to make the distinction.
To give you some insight into what I'm talking about. I personal served 6 months on Guam in 1968 and 12 months in Thailand at Utapao and Takhli RTAFB in 1969-70 all of these bases were considered as in the Vietnam Theater of operation. There are now some who would take offense at calling anyone who served in those country's as support of Air Operations in Vietnam supporting the troops on the ground, a Vietnam Veteran. It's petty, childish, unsubstantiated and divisive but that's what that war seemed to do best, divide us.
It should be interesting from now on though. McCain is the last of the Vietnam era vets that will take a shot at the Presidency. With the new crowd coming up there's not a lot of military experience to be a factor so maybe we can forget about swiftboats and let them rest. Then the "In Country" crowd can just drink beer, fart, and pound their chest all they want. "Ain't Nothin But A thing!"
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Now that Johns out of the race
I will admit it was a shock to hear my favorite candidate was no longer in the race. I know that had John stayed in he would have made a difference but such is politics. I was thinking of shutting this blog down but I decided not to for now. I still consider myself an "Edwards Democrat" and I'm a Vietnam Veteran so I'm thinking of some ways to let this site grow for veterans who feel as I do. I'm not sure where I'll take it but you can believe it will be positive because thats the kind of person I am. I will make it helpful for veterans of all wars and who knows maybe something good will come from this. Keep checking back as I plan to up date on a weekly basis.
My first installment will be the Vietnam war and how it has affected politics. Swiftboating, how that war more so than any other war divided a country and continues to do so to this day. Not only dividing the people but the veterans themselves. How some have been able to leave it behind and carry on with their lives while others still live it to this day.
I'll probably be changing the name of the blog but for now I'll keep it as it is so people can still find it. Be sure and tell your friends and leave any suggestions you might have. Thanks and I'll see you next week.
My first installment will be the Vietnam war and how it has affected politics. Swiftboating, how that war more so than any other war divided a country and continues to do so to this day. Not only dividing the people but the veterans themselves. How some have been able to leave it behind and carry on with their lives while others still live it to this day.
I'll probably be changing the name of the blog but for now I'll keep it as it is so people can still find it. Be sure and tell your friends and leave any suggestions you might have. Thanks and I'll see you next week.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Whats it for?
Some one made the comment last night what do I hope to gain? I had to laugh because that person just didn't understand an Idealist.
An idealist is this...
1 a: an adherent of a philosophical theory of idealism b: an artist or author who advocates or practices idealism in art or writing2: one guided by ideals; especially : one that places ideals before practical considerations
Now see if you understand
An idealist doesn't care about the outcome. Yes John has 26 delegates we hope to add to that total oblivious of the fact that there's not enough delegates left for him to win. What an idealist cares about is that they stood by what they believed in.
An idealist leads a small rag tag army across a frozen river in hopes of beating a much larger force. An idealist doesn't care they'll get in trouble for throwing tea in the harbor because they know they are right. And an idealist will stand their ground till they are able to place their flower in the barrel of a weapon that would blow them to pieces.
I'm an idealist. I know that Johns withdrawn and suspended his campaign but it hasn't suspended what I believe in. I believe in the same things John Edwards believes in. I plan to go to the polls here when I can and vote for John Edwards. It may be the only vote he'll get here in Kentucky but when it shows up on the screen know that it was me and know that I stood firm in my beliefs and I can rest at night knowing I did what I had to do.
A feeling of satisfaction. Thats what I hoep to get out of this. Thank you.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
12% live in poverty
12% live in poverty
user icon Acebass in Action Feed of
2/07/2008 at 2:32 AM EST
The last I heard that was the figure. Those are Americans I'm talking about. A former industrialized country, filled with hope and promise. 12% of the population lives in poverty. Thats a disgrace. So what do we do about it?
Don't get me wrong I don't begrudge a wealthy man anything he's rightfully earned, as long as he's willing to give back for his good fortune. Men like Warren Buffet, George Soros, John Yarmuth and John Edwards to name a few. However we still have 12% of our population living in poverty while the Forbes list of the wealthiest keeps growing larger.
The problem could be that the 12% who live in poverty don't even know we're here talking about them. They don't know they have a chance to change things. Remember, the Republican party has convinced them they are responsible for their lot in life. Having to work 3 jobs to make ends meet had nothing to do with higher cost of living and a shrinking wage scale.
These people may be able to stop and watch some television while they are lying on a table at the plasma bank giving blood. Chances are if it's news it's Fox News or their affiliate CNN. They may have time to read a paper but for the most part they get their politics from a co-worker at lunch break.
These people are the ones we need to reach. If you see someone driving down the street in an old beat up (insert car here), with a vote Bush sticker on their car, you need to touch that person. You need to educate them in what we are doing. Take them to a library and show them how to operate a computer.
Seriously, there are people, in their 30s and 40s who have never registered to vote. They have no idea they can make a difference, and change their lives. Those are the people we need to reach. I would propose that One Corp work on a project of neighborhood outreach centers to not only assist these people in learning how the system can work for them, but be proactive in contacting people so they at least have the opportunity to participate and an opportunity to make that choice.
user icon Acebass in Action Feed of
2/07/2008 at 2:32 AM EST
The last I heard that was the figure. Those are Americans I'm talking about. A former industrialized country, filled with hope and promise. 12% of the population lives in poverty. Thats a disgrace. So what do we do about it?
Don't get me wrong I don't begrudge a wealthy man anything he's rightfully earned, as long as he's willing to give back for his good fortune. Men like Warren Buffet, George Soros, John Yarmuth and John Edwards to name a few. However we still have 12% of our population living in poverty while the Forbes list of the wealthiest keeps growing larger.
The problem could be that the 12% who live in poverty don't even know we're here talking about them. They don't know they have a chance to change things. Remember, the Republican party has convinced them they are responsible for their lot in life. Having to work 3 jobs to make ends meet had nothing to do with higher cost of living and a shrinking wage scale.
These people may be able to stop and watch some television while they are lying on a table at the plasma bank giving blood. Chances are if it's news it's Fox News or their affiliate CNN. They may have time to read a paper but for the most part they get their politics from a co-worker at lunch break.
These people are the ones we need to reach. If you see someone driving down the street in an old beat up (insert car here), with a vote Bush sticker on their car, you need to touch that person. You need to educate them in what we are doing. Take them to a library and show them how to operate a computer.
Seriously, there are people, in their 30s and 40s who have never registered to vote. They have no idea they can make a difference, and change their lives. Those are the people we need to reach. I would propose that One Corp work on a project of neighborhood outreach centers to not only assist these people in learning how the system can work for them, but be proactive in contacting people so they at least have the opportunity to participate and an opportunity to make that choice.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
This is Democracy!
I've been at the Edwards blog all day as you can imagine. There have been many inspiring things happen since John decided to suspend his campaign.
We've seen all the true liberal candidates either drop out or made ineffective by a big money machine that is grinding their way albeit not as easy, I'm sure, as they would have first imagined it would be, to a Nomination that the DLC has anointed.
John Edwards was the reason it wasn't so easy. He sparked something in a lot of people that is not going to die. Like an ember glowing in the forest I feel this blaze sweeping across this country. Whatever happens on Feb. 5th John Edwards, and his voters will be a force to be dealt with.
This was posted by one of his supporters. I'm passing it on verbatim as I wouldn't change a word.
"One thing is clear... whichever candidate does get the nomination, his or her chance of victory will rest largely on the ideas Mr. Edwards brought to the campaign."
And so I marvel at the rush to judgment and all the whispering: "Who are the Edwards people going to vote for now?" And I marvel as I watch the "Important People" circling to endorse - like vultures picking over the carcass of Edwards' campaign.
But as an Edwards supporter, alive and still with my own mind, I'd like to say: Although I urge everyone to unite behind the Democratic nominee in November, no matter who he or she may be, what's more important now - in this primary, February 5th - is to vote your conscience. And if you believe in John Edwards, vote for John Edwards! Vote for him as a way to ensure that the ideas he and Elizabeth brought to the Party will endure.
The other candidates have honored his platform by using his words and ideas. But united, they could turn their back on his progressive agenda unless we hold their feet to the fire. We need to shore up what he stands for. We need to show Hillary and Obama that we, the Edwards People, are still a force to be reckoned with.
For although John Edwards is no longer a candidate, he - and those of us who believe in his ideals - are still voters in this election. And now more than ever, if we want to uphold grassroots democracy, it's important to show the money, the media, the Democratic Party - and especially the candidates - where we stand and what we expect them to honor as we go forward:
the ideas, ideals, passion and platform John Edwards brought to a failing system and a failing party.
This is our only chance and the only way we can show it. So if you believe in John Edwards and what he stands for, vote for him on Tuesday."
http://blog.johnedwards.com/story/2008/2/2/1717/24934#6Thursday, January 31, 2008
MSM vs John Edwards
McCamy Taylor Wed Jan-30-08 07:48 PM
The Press v. John Edwards Updated at 9:50 PM
One year ago, when CBS polled Americans to see where likely Democratic presidential candidates stood in the public eye, John Edwards came in a solid second to Hillary Clinton.
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/CBSNews_polls/jana-candid...
Thanks to her status as a former First Lady she had recognition similar to former Democratic candidates Gore and Kerry. Edwards was the most recognized Democrat who had never been a nominee. Obama’s recognition rates and favorability rates among Democrats and Independents were significantly lower than Edwards. Edwards’ unfavorability rating was better than Hillary’s, giving him a edge as a “uniter.”
How did the nation go from knowing who Edwards was to not even knowing that he was running for president ? Where did this idea that he was “phony” start? Why, in the last couple of weeks, did we start to hear that Edwards was some kind of communist anarchist?
It all started with the BFL, Big Fat Liars aka the corporate media.
Here is the excellent analysis (with piece charts and block graphs) that forced the mainstream media to admit what we all had seen----they had deliberately inflated their coverage of two of the candidates, Hillary and Obama, while deliberately shutting out Edwards, who actually ranked high in the polls.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/5/12286/27650/142/...
They did this for a solid year. One example of the way that this bias permeated every aspect of election reporting: one night on Countdown the guest was E.J. Dionne. Poll numbers from Iowa were shown. The Dems were in a a dead heat. KO asked Dionne to comment. He launched into a discussion of Hillary and Obama and never said a word about Edwards, who was neck and neck with the other two. KO did not even notice.
They did this even after Edwards came in second in Iowa, giving the lie to the Two Man Race Lie . Instead of suddenly noticing the Edwards campaign, as people across the country started to notice it, the MSM responded with another impromptu lie, which I call Who's On Second? because the pundits would talk about Obama's win and Hillary's third place finish while giving the impression that the old joke candidate Nobody for President must have taken second place. Or worse, television political reporters on all the news networks would announce that the Edwards campaign was finished, that he would resign soon. This at a time when his campaign was hoping to win new supporters and raise much needed cash. This had the effect of negating any boost his campaign might have received from the Iowa win. The lies that were told at this moment probably did more to destroy the Edwards campaign than any others.
In this interview on Countdown Keith Olbermann asks John Edwards why the press at MSNBC said that his second place finish meant that Edwards was in trouble and not Hillary. Edwards replied bluntly that the media had been trying to frame it as a two person race between Hillary and Obama. To Olbermann's credit, after that interview, he began to feature Edwards more often on his show. However, by then the damage was done.
http://takeaction.wordpress.com/2008/01/05/john-edwards... /
When the report described in the DailyKos link above came out there was a backlash. The mainstream media had been caught attempting to "fix" the Democratic Primary. That was not good. They still had to "fix" the race between Hillary and Obama.In an effort to restore their tarnished honor, we finally saw the TV news networks and the major newspapers like the Washington Past and the New York Times devote some coverage to the Edwards campaign before the South Carolina primary. It was too little, too late. After a solid year of mainstream media attacks and blackouts, one week of coverage will not resurrect a presidential campaign.
I have been writing about the corporate media conspiracy against John Edwards for almost a year in hopes the we, voters and consumers of the news media could put a stop to it. Looks like the CEOs at GE/NBC, NewsCorp./Fox, AOL/Time-Warner, Viacom-CBS, Disney-ABC won and we lost.
Today, I am writing so that we will remember, and also so that the media lap dogs, the individual journalists---no, let’s call them what they are---the whores will not get away with doing their masters’ dirty work. I got the idea when I re read The Press v. Al Gore a couple of years ago and realized that with the exception of one sacrificial goat, Ceci Connelly of the Washington Post, the reporters who created the lie Gore is a Liar have all done very well for themselves.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5920188/the_pres...
Google and see where journalists like Walter Shapiro, Richard Berke , Chris Matthews, George Stephanopoulos, Bill Turque, Bob Woodward, Margaret Carlson have ended up. Hmmm. Some of them will feature in this journal. Guess they learned from Gore is a liar that there is good pay off and no accountability for telling lies about Democratic candidates.
I recognized that the media fix was in a year ago. On February 7, 2007 I wrote a DailyKos diary called From the Corporate Media that Brought You Gore is a Liar, Edwards is a Phony When I got six responses, I knew it was going to be an uphill battle convincing people of what was going on.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/8/1319/06023/495/2...
A year ago the MSM blackout had not started yet. A year ago, it seemed like Edwards was getting more attention than all the other Dems combined, only it was not nice attention. John Solomon of the Washington Post lead the way with a series of article about Edwards house, his money, his hair, his hairdresser !!!! . Right wing sites began a coordinated action that seemed to be aiming towards “Edwards is a phony” and sure enough that is the word that they managed to get to stick. Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malikan were among the right wingers who were singling him out for special attention. And the MSM was already showing selective hearing in that it would not cover Edwards policy statements but it would make mountains out of any wild rumor that might cause a rift within his camp or between his camp and traditional members of the Democratic base (Read my DailyKos entry. The details are all there.)
John Solomon’s reputation was already trashed before he took this assignment, and after he finished Edwards is a phony no one would ever believe anything he wrote again. Certainly, no one would ever talk to him again. I guess that is why he had to take a job at the right wing ghetto of the Washington Times . So, one of the media whores has paid—sort of, if you count getting kicked upstairs into an editorial job retribution. I would rather see him working at a Thrifty Nickel .
Here is la crème de la crème of Solomon’s important political “reporting”, the interview with the man who gave Edwards’ some haircuts.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
This story was printed in July, 2007, long after I and other people had begun to complain about the obvious partisan nature of the stories that Solomon was writing and the Washington Post was running about Edwards. I feel that it is necessary to add the editors and owners of the Washington Post to the list of participants in the inquisition against Edwards, because they are the ones who hired the notorious John Solomon to write this tabloid silliness disguised as political news. This story, with its implied subtext of the stalker hairdresser with his unrequited gay crush (getting on planes day or night to race halfway across the country to make his man look good) was probably the purple-est prose I have seen in years. It also plays up Ann Coulter’s infamous comment from last spring. Lord only knows what Joseph Torrenueva thought of the article. Now that the Edwards campaign is over, he should hire Edwards to help him sue the WaPo for libel.
If you think I am over reading the article, take a look at how the guys on TV spun it:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/over-tipping-by-...
Television gasbags have been gleefully recycling this Edwards nonsense all day, based upon the latest Soloman story and treating it like it's news. Matthews said "sometimes small stories can reveal big things." He pretends he's cleverly pointing out that Edwards is a phony populist for getting expensive haircuts but what he's really doing is pushing GOP propaganda that Edwards is effeminate and soft. Like all Democrats.
Fox's Major Garrett just did a huge piece on this "controversy" ending with this:
"The stylist said 'I try to make the man handsome, strong, more mature and these are the things, as an expert, that's what we do.' For sheer irony, that Edwards seems to believe he needs all three, might be the sharpest cut of all."
Here is a link about George Stephanopoulos giving the un newsworthy WaPo story more coverage.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh070607.shtml
“But even more than that, it seems a little callous to be sort of pushing off on the hairdresser. When the hairdresser comes back and says, “Wait a second, I was a friend of yours, I worked hard for you," it can't help. More—more haircut headlines are not good news for John Edwards.”
Neither is another television news pundit yakking about haircuts. What an ass.
Note that Chris Matthews and George Stephanopoulos are alumni from the Rolling Stone “Gore is a Liar” story, making them seasoned veteran media whores. Among Tweety’s many other Edward’s atrocities---after New Hampshire, when he wasn’t accusing the citizens of that state of being racists and E-vote hackers, he was accusing Edwards of being a spoiler who was costing Obama the race. This lie sounded so good to liberal commentator Lawrence O’Donnell that he destroyed his reputation by writing the unfortunate “John Edwards is a Loser” for the Huffington Post, proving that innocent liberals should never associate with former CREEP organizers like Pat Buchanan, who has been presiding over MSNBC the last few months like some kind of Ghost of Stolen Elections Past.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/john-ed...
Thumbs up to Media Matters for catching another print journalist Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle participating in the Edwards is a phony lie. Bonus points to Media Matters for spotting the fact that Carla also helped out big time with Gore is a liar making this reporter one of those seasoned veteran media whores I was talking about.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200706020001
Perhaps Marinucci was too modest to mention it, but that report by the Chronicle about Edwards' "hefty fees from university speeches" was written by ... Carla Marinucci. So we have a reporter who writes an article about a candidate, then two days later writes that "the pileup of headlines ... threatens to obliterate" the candidate's message -- without mentioning that she was responsible for one of those headlines that she uses as an example.
Oh my. Everyone, when you read anything by Carla Marinucci, remember to be skeptical for this may well be another John Solomon who hasn’t been tossed into the garbage heap of the Washington Times yet.
The same Media Matters piece mentions Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson and Dennis Miller as more vectors by which the newspaper’s Edwards is a phony lies began to get distributed to the public. Vectors is a polite, medical term for blood sucking insects that carry disease, like leeches or mosquitoes or ticks.
Here is article about Fox News’ John Gibson describing Edwards as a “phony” in August.
http://www.newshounds.us/2007/08/08/big_story_takes_a_s...
I could fill an encyclopedia with Edwards is a phony lies of the rich and famous. However, there is more. As I noted above, the press did not stop at slandering and libeling Sen. Edwards. When they were not bad mouthing him, they were denying him the free publicity which they lavished on the other two senators. Here is another link about the blacklist.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/11/wa...
After all, the same WaPo reporters who chose to describe Edwards' speech as an effort to "elbow" his way into the Hillary-Obama rivalry also chose to devote the first eight paragraphs of their piece only to what Hillary and Obama said. They chose to wait until the ninth graf to tell us what Edwards said. This despite the fact that the reporters also acknowledge that polls show that in Iowa the race remains "a competitive three-way contest."
So if by WaPo's own admission this is a competitive contest between all three candidates, why go to such extreme editorial lengths to frame it as a two-person race that Edwards is trying to "elbow" his way into?
This might not have been worth bothering with if it didn't perfectly capture a lot about what's been wrong with so much of the reporting on Campaign 2008. What's bizarre is how blatant this has become -- in cases like this no one even bothers to conceal how unabashedly manufactured the chosen narrative of the moment is.
Obama was elevated to Sen. Clinton’s level almost immediately, creating the fiction of the Two Man Race . Democrats were offered the Pyrrhic choice----pick the first woman and snub Blacks or pick the first Black and alienate women. And, just in case the two candidates might do the sensible thing and decide to run together, the mainstream media decided to mix things up and interject race into the race. (See my recent journals about the MSM’s attempts to position the Democrats into a circular firing squad). Since this journal is devoted to Edwards, I will not cite references to that other campaign here.
With the New Year, things began to change. The public's concern turned towards the economy---Edwards’ special issue—and the MSM was now unable to deny him coverage completely as they have done before without getting caught. Therefore, in recent weeks, the corporate media began to unleash new lies against Edwards. One was specifically directed at Republicans and Independents, the Edwards is a red lie. This one was meant to keep his numbers down in polls which match Dems versus Republicans head to head. Ability to win in a general election had been one of Edwards’ strongest campaign points, so the MSM created this lie to undercut his strength. Check out this video link of CNN’s Glenn Beck calling Edwards a communist:
http://broadcatching.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/glenn-bec... /
If the corporate media could paint Edwards as a “red”, far left of Hillary and Obama, an extremist who would strip Americans of their goods and reduce us all to Soviet era drudgery, then they could neutralize him as a general election contender.
A related lie is “Edwards is an anarchist”. This is where “Edwards is an angry white male” comes in. We have media whores like Wolf Blitzer to thank for this:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/02/john-edwards-a... /
What do you say to their criticisms that you are just running over around the state screaming and hollering and making a lot of noise, but you’re not ready to really get things done to work to get things done?
And some of them are able to combine all the lies together, as in Edwards is an angry, lying, phony by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post writing this time for the National Review on-line
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDMxN2E1ZGYyOTYwZD...
Today he plays the avenging angel, engaged in an “epic struggle” against the great economic malefactors that “have literally,” he assures us, “taken over the government.” He is angry, embodying the familiar zeal of the convert, ready to immolate anyone who benightedly holds to any revelation other than the zealot’s very latest.
Nothing new about a convert. Nothing new about a zealous convert. What is different about Edwards is his endlessly repeated claim that the raging populist of today is what he has always been. That this has been the “cause of my life,” the very core of his being, ingrained in him on his father’s knee or at the mill or wherever, depending on the anecdote he’s telling.
You must understand: This is not politics for him. “This fight is deeply personal to me. I’ve been engaged in it my whole life.”
Except for his years as senator, the only public office he’s ever held. The audacity of the all-my-life trope is staggering. By his own endlessly self-confessed record, his current pose is a coat of paint newly acquired. His claim that it is an expression of his inner soul is a farce.
My! Such eloquence! This Krauthammer is a master of the anti-Democrat slur. Hmmm. I wonder if he has had practice. A quick Google will tell us the answer. (I really didn't know what he did back in 2000, but I started typing this as I was doing the on-line search because I had a pretty good hunch from the oiliness of the propaganda above. I have a nose for these things.)
Oh lookie! Here is what Mr. Krauthammer was up to in 2000.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh120302.shtml
But someone else offended more grievously on last weekend’s Fox News Sunday. That was Charles Krauthammer, serving up a remarkable statement about Gore’s critique of the press. Gore had said that Fox, Rush and the Washington Times “are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party” (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/29/02). And Gore had said this: “Most of the media been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks—that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole.”
Snip
Krauthammer decided to crawl in the slime. Try to believe that he said it:
LIASSON: But I think that’s a real kind of cry of frustration from Al Gore, and other Democratic leaders have said the same thing.
KRAUTHAMMER: Crying for help, you know. (LAUGHTER) I’m a psychiatrist. I don’t usually practice on camera. But this is the edge of looniness, this idea that there’s a vast conspiracy, it sits in a building, it emanates, it has these tentacles, is really at the edge. He could use a little help.
What a slimy man Krauthammer turns out to be! Krauthammer—a former and now misbehaving shrink—thinks Gore’s remarks on the press are “loony.” What a slimy—and deeply dishonorable—man this Great Pundit turns out to be.
To paraphrase Krauthammer’s own words about Edwards: You must understand: This is not journalism for him. “This fight is deeply business to me. I’ve been engaged in it my whole (reporting) life.”
How did the Rolling Stone miss this guy? Be sure to note this name, Krauthammer (what a name!), so that you can take anything he writes about Democrats with a great big grain of salt. Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post veteran of the Gore is a liar and Edwards is an angry-phony Big Lies.
I could go on and on with this, but I am just too damned fed up with what passes for journalism in this country. The only solution is to bust apart the telecommunications monopolies that have turned television news stations and newspapers into propaganda organs for major corporations. MSNBC no longer needs to get ratings (except for the vanity of a few celebrities). Not for money, anyway. Its job is now to change the way that America votes in order to benefit the corporate coffers of parent company GE. The same goes for ABC and Disney, CBS and Viacom and all the others.
What we need is the US equivalent of the BBC, a fully funded independent set of public television channels that program news, entertainment for children and adults and educational program. Every industrialized country in the world except the U.S. has one. Everyone would pay a tax and no political party would have any control over it. We also need legislation to keep newspapers free of the influence of big money---like the $60million the US Chambers of Commerce have pledged to spend to defeat candidates who endorse “populists” issues this year.
In order to do this, we need to get rid of this industry pandering Republican FCC which allows unlimited telecom media mergers and expansions. We need to investigate and prosecute the current chairman for taking over Congress’s role in writing legislation that affects the media.
And most important of all, we need to protest and blacklist the individual media whores who do the dirty work for their corporate masters. I can not possibly keep track of or list all the individual players who have contributed to the lies Edwards is a phony , Two Man Race Edwards is a spoiler Edwards is a red . If you know of any specific “journalist” and can post a quote and link, please do so. I would love to see a hundred replies, each with the name of a different journalist caught in the act.
It is important to hold the press accountable for their actions. Reporters think that they can get away with it by claiming that they are just getting swept away in the general narrative or are incompetent or just making a joke or "dumb asses". This is bullshit. I am a story teller. I know that it takes work to tell a story and make it believable. Big Lies do not spring out of nothing fully formed. A lot of effort goes into creating propaganda.
It will do not good simply to accuse the press of attacking the John Edwards 2008 Campaign. They know what they did. They are gloating over their victory, counting their reward in advance while they flex their muscles, awaiting further orders from their corporate masters. As Goebbels wrote, those who create propaganda are not in search of a higher truth. They want results.
Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall . That is a matter of practice, not of theory.We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses.
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb54.htm
You can not shame them into stopping. So, the only way to fight this kind of opponent is to take away their ability to spread propaganda. That means revealing them to be liars in public, so that no one will talk to them to give them stories and no news consumer will believe them. Taking away the incentive of television news and newspapers to whore for big corporations also helps. And encouraging the public to become better consumers of the news by offering them alternative choices and by educating them to the signs of propaganda.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor
The Press v. John Edwards Updated at 9:50 PM
One year ago, when CBS polled Americans to see where likely Democratic presidential candidates stood in the public eye, John Edwards came in a solid second to Hillary Clinton.
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/CBSNews_polls/jana-candid...
Thanks to her status as a former First Lady she had recognition similar to former Democratic candidates Gore and Kerry. Edwards was the most recognized Democrat who had never been a nominee. Obama’s recognition rates and favorability rates among Democrats and Independents were significantly lower than Edwards. Edwards’ unfavorability rating was better than Hillary’s, giving him a edge as a “uniter.”
How did the nation go from knowing who Edwards was to not even knowing that he was running for president ? Where did this idea that he was “phony” start? Why, in the last couple of weeks, did we start to hear that Edwards was some kind of communist anarchist?
It all started with the BFL, Big Fat Liars aka the corporate media.
Here is the excellent analysis (with piece charts and block graphs) that forced the mainstream media to admit what we all had seen----they had deliberately inflated their coverage of two of the candidates, Hillary and Obama, while deliberately shutting out Edwards, who actually ranked high in the polls.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/5/12286/27650/142/...
They did this for a solid year. One example of the way that this bias permeated every aspect of election reporting: one night on Countdown the guest was E.J. Dionne. Poll numbers from Iowa were shown. The Dems were in a a dead heat. KO asked Dionne to comment. He launched into a discussion of Hillary and Obama and never said a word about Edwards, who was neck and neck with the other two. KO did not even notice.
They did this even after Edwards came in second in Iowa, giving the lie to the Two Man Race Lie . Instead of suddenly noticing the Edwards campaign, as people across the country started to notice it, the MSM responded with another impromptu lie, which I call Who's On Second? because the pundits would talk about Obama's win and Hillary's third place finish while giving the impression that the old joke candidate Nobody for President must have taken second place. Or worse, television political reporters on all the news networks would announce that the Edwards campaign was finished, that he would resign soon. This at a time when his campaign was hoping to win new supporters and raise much needed cash. This had the effect of negating any boost his campaign might have received from the Iowa win. The lies that were told at this moment probably did more to destroy the Edwards campaign than any others.
In this interview on Countdown Keith Olbermann asks John Edwards why the press at MSNBC said that his second place finish meant that Edwards was in trouble and not Hillary. Edwards replied bluntly that the media had been trying to frame it as a two person race between Hillary and Obama. To Olbermann's credit, after that interview, he began to feature Edwards more often on his show. However, by then the damage was done.
http://takeaction.wordpress.com/2008/01/05/john-edwards... /
When the report described in the DailyKos link above came out there was a backlash. The mainstream media had been caught attempting to "fix" the Democratic Primary. That was not good. They still had to "fix" the race between Hillary and Obama.In an effort to restore their tarnished honor, we finally saw the TV news networks and the major newspapers like the Washington Past and the New York Times devote some coverage to the Edwards campaign before the South Carolina primary. It was too little, too late. After a solid year of mainstream media attacks and blackouts, one week of coverage will not resurrect a presidential campaign.
I have been writing about the corporate media conspiracy against John Edwards for almost a year in hopes the we, voters and consumers of the news media could put a stop to it. Looks like the CEOs at GE/NBC, NewsCorp./Fox, AOL/Time-Warner, Viacom-CBS, Disney-ABC won and we lost.
Today, I am writing so that we will remember, and also so that the media lap dogs, the individual journalists---no, let’s call them what they are---the whores will not get away with doing their masters’ dirty work. I got the idea when I re read The Press v. Al Gore a couple of years ago and realized that with the exception of one sacrificial goat, Ceci Connelly of the Washington Post, the reporters who created the lie Gore is a Liar have all done very well for themselves.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5920188/the_pres...
Google and see where journalists like Walter Shapiro, Richard Berke , Chris Matthews, George Stephanopoulos, Bill Turque, Bob Woodward, Margaret Carlson have ended up. Hmmm. Some of them will feature in this journal. Guess they learned from Gore is a liar that there is good pay off and no accountability for telling lies about Democratic candidates.
I recognized that the media fix was in a year ago. On February 7, 2007 I wrote a DailyKos diary called From the Corporate Media that Brought You Gore is a Liar, Edwards is a Phony When I got six responses, I knew it was going to be an uphill battle convincing people of what was going on.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/8/1319/06023/495/2...
A year ago the MSM blackout had not started yet. A year ago, it seemed like Edwards was getting more attention than all the other Dems combined, only it was not nice attention. John Solomon of the Washington Post lead the way with a series of article about Edwards house, his money, his hair, his hairdresser !!!! . Right wing sites began a coordinated action that seemed to be aiming towards “Edwards is a phony” and sure enough that is the word that they managed to get to stick. Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malikan were among the right wingers who were singling him out for special attention. And the MSM was already showing selective hearing in that it would not cover Edwards policy statements but it would make mountains out of any wild rumor that might cause a rift within his camp or between his camp and traditional members of the Democratic base (Read my DailyKos entry. The details are all there.)
John Solomon’s reputation was already trashed before he took this assignment, and after he finished Edwards is a phony no one would ever believe anything he wrote again. Certainly, no one would ever talk to him again. I guess that is why he had to take a job at the right wing ghetto of the Washington Times . So, one of the media whores has paid—sort of, if you count getting kicked upstairs into an editorial job retribution. I would rather see him working at a Thrifty Nickel .
Here is la crème de la crème of Solomon’s important political “reporting”, the interview with the man who gave Edwards’ some haircuts.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
This story was printed in July, 2007, long after I and other people had begun to complain about the obvious partisan nature of the stories that Solomon was writing and the Washington Post was running about Edwards. I feel that it is necessary to add the editors and owners of the Washington Post to the list of participants in the inquisition against Edwards, because they are the ones who hired the notorious John Solomon to write this tabloid silliness disguised as political news. This story, with its implied subtext of the stalker hairdresser with his unrequited gay crush (getting on planes day or night to race halfway across the country to make his man look good) was probably the purple-est prose I have seen in years. It also plays up Ann Coulter’s infamous comment from last spring. Lord only knows what Joseph Torrenueva thought of the article. Now that the Edwards campaign is over, he should hire Edwards to help him sue the WaPo for libel.
If you think I am over reading the article, take a look at how the guys on TV spun it:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/over-tipping-by-...
Television gasbags have been gleefully recycling this Edwards nonsense all day, based upon the latest Soloman story and treating it like it's news. Matthews said "sometimes small stories can reveal big things." He pretends he's cleverly pointing out that Edwards is a phony populist for getting expensive haircuts but what he's really doing is pushing GOP propaganda that Edwards is effeminate and soft. Like all Democrats.
Fox's Major Garrett just did a huge piece on this "controversy" ending with this:
"The stylist said 'I try to make the man handsome, strong, more mature and these are the things, as an expert, that's what we do.' For sheer irony, that Edwards seems to believe he needs all three, might be the sharpest cut of all."
Here is a link about George Stephanopoulos giving the un newsworthy WaPo story more coverage.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh070607.shtml
“But even more than that, it seems a little callous to be sort of pushing off on the hairdresser. When the hairdresser comes back and says, “Wait a second, I was a friend of yours, I worked hard for you," it can't help. More—more haircut headlines are not good news for John Edwards.”
Neither is another television news pundit yakking about haircuts. What an ass.
Note that Chris Matthews and George Stephanopoulos are alumni from the Rolling Stone “Gore is a Liar” story, making them seasoned veteran media whores. Among Tweety’s many other Edward’s atrocities---after New Hampshire, when he wasn’t accusing the citizens of that state of being racists and E-vote hackers, he was accusing Edwards of being a spoiler who was costing Obama the race. This lie sounded so good to liberal commentator Lawrence O’Donnell that he destroyed his reputation by writing the unfortunate “John Edwards is a Loser” for the Huffington Post, proving that innocent liberals should never associate with former CREEP organizers like Pat Buchanan, who has been presiding over MSNBC the last few months like some kind of Ghost of Stolen Elections Past.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/john-ed...
Thumbs up to Media Matters for catching another print journalist Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle participating in the Edwards is a phony lie. Bonus points to Media Matters for spotting the fact that Carla also helped out big time with Gore is a liar making this reporter one of those seasoned veteran media whores I was talking about.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200706020001
Perhaps Marinucci was too modest to mention it, but that report by the Chronicle about Edwards' "hefty fees from university speeches" was written by ... Carla Marinucci. So we have a reporter who writes an article about a candidate, then two days later writes that "the pileup of headlines ... threatens to obliterate" the candidate's message -- without mentioning that she was responsible for one of those headlines that she uses as an example.
Oh my. Everyone, when you read anything by Carla Marinucci, remember to be skeptical for this may well be another John Solomon who hasn’t been tossed into the garbage heap of the Washington Times yet.
The same Media Matters piece mentions Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson and Dennis Miller as more vectors by which the newspaper’s Edwards is a phony lies began to get distributed to the public. Vectors is a polite, medical term for blood sucking insects that carry disease, like leeches or mosquitoes or ticks.
Here is article about Fox News’ John Gibson describing Edwards as a “phony” in August.
http://www.newshounds.us/2007/08/08/big_story_takes_a_s...
I could fill an encyclopedia with Edwards is a phony lies of the rich and famous. However, there is more. As I noted above, the press did not stop at slandering and libeling Sen. Edwards. When they were not bad mouthing him, they were denying him the free publicity which they lavished on the other two senators. Here is another link about the blacklist.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/11/wa...
After all, the same WaPo reporters who chose to describe Edwards' speech as an effort to "elbow" his way into the Hillary-Obama rivalry also chose to devote the first eight paragraphs of their piece only to what Hillary and Obama said. They chose to wait until the ninth graf to tell us what Edwards said. This despite the fact that the reporters also acknowledge that polls show that in Iowa the race remains "a competitive three-way contest."
So if by WaPo's own admission this is a competitive contest between all three candidates, why go to such extreme editorial lengths to frame it as a two-person race that Edwards is trying to "elbow" his way into?
This might not have been worth bothering with if it didn't perfectly capture a lot about what's been wrong with so much of the reporting on Campaign 2008. What's bizarre is how blatant this has become -- in cases like this no one even bothers to conceal how unabashedly manufactured the chosen narrative of the moment is.
Obama was elevated to Sen. Clinton’s level almost immediately, creating the fiction of the Two Man Race . Democrats were offered the Pyrrhic choice----pick the first woman and snub Blacks or pick the first Black and alienate women. And, just in case the two candidates might do the sensible thing and decide to run together, the mainstream media decided to mix things up and interject race into the race. (See my recent journals about the MSM’s attempts to position the Democrats into a circular firing squad). Since this journal is devoted to Edwards, I will not cite references to that other campaign here.
With the New Year, things began to change. The public's concern turned towards the economy---Edwards’ special issue—and the MSM was now unable to deny him coverage completely as they have done before without getting caught. Therefore, in recent weeks, the corporate media began to unleash new lies against Edwards. One was specifically directed at Republicans and Independents, the Edwards is a red lie. This one was meant to keep his numbers down in polls which match Dems versus Republicans head to head. Ability to win in a general election had been one of Edwards’ strongest campaign points, so the MSM created this lie to undercut his strength. Check out this video link of CNN’s Glenn Beck calling Edwards a communist:
http://broadcatching.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/glenn-bec... /
If the corporate media could paint Edwards as a “red”, far left of Hillary and Obama, an extremist who would strip Americans of their goods and reduce us all to Soviet era drudgery, then they could neutralize him as a general election contender.
A related lie is “Edwards is an anarchist”. This is where “Edwards is an angry white male” comes in. We have media whores like Wolf Blitzer to thank for this:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/02/john-edwards-a... /
What do you say to their criticisms that you are just running over around the state screaming and hollering and making a lot of noise, but you’re not ready to really get things done to work to get things done?
And some of them are able to combine all the lies together, as in Edwards is an angry, lying, phony by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post writing this time for the National Review on-line
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDMxN2E1ZGYyOTYwZD...
Today he plays the avenging angel, engaged in an “epic struggle” against the great economic malefactors that “have literally,” he assures us, “taken over the government.” He is angry, embodying the familiar zeal of the convert, ready to immolate anyone who benightedly holds to any revelation other than the zealot’s very latest.
Nothing new about a convert. Nothing new about a zealous convert. What is different about Edwards is his endlessly repeated claim that the raging populist of today is what he has always been. That this has been the “cause of my life,” the very core of his being, ingrained in him on his father’s knee or at the mill or wherever, depending on the anecdote he’s telling.
You must understand: This is not politics for him. “This fight is deeply personal to me. I’ve been engaged in it my whole life.”
Except for his years as senator, the only public office he’s ever held. The audacity of the all-my-life trope is staggering. By his own endlessly self-confessed record, his current pose is a coat of paint newly acquired. His claim that it is an expression of his inner soul is a farce.
My! Such eloquence! This Krauthammer is a master of the anti-Democrat slur. Hmmm. I wonder if he has had practice. A quick Google will tell us the answer. (I really didn't know what he did back in 2000, but I started typing this as I was doing the on-line search because I had a pretty good hunch from the oiliness of the propaganda above. I have a nose for these things.)
Oh lookie! Here is what Mr. Krauthammer was up to in 2000.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh120302.shtml
But someone else offended more grievously on last weekend’s Fox News Sunday. That was Charles Krauthammer, serving up a remarkable statement about Gore’s critique of the press. Gore had said that Fox, Rush and the Washington Times “are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party” (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/29/02). And Gore had said this: “Most of the media been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks—that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole.”
Snip
Krauthammer decided to crawl in the slime. Try to believe that he said it:
LIASSON: But I think that’s a real kind of cry of frustration from Al Gore, and other Democratic leaders have said the same thing.
KRAUTHAMMER: Crying for help, you know. (LAUGHTER) I’m a psychiatrist. I don’t usually practice on camera. But this is the edge of looniness, this idea that there’s a vast conspiracy, it sits in a building, it emanates, it has these tentacles, is really at the edge. He could use a little help.
What a slimy man Krauthammer turns out to be! Krauthammer—a former and now misbehaving shrink—thinks Gore’s remarks on the press are “loony.” What a slimy—and deeply dishonorable—man this Great Pundit turns out to be.
To paraphrase Krauthammer’s own words about Edwards: You must understand: This is not journalism for him. “This fight is deeply business to me. I’ve been engaged in it my whole (reporting) life.”
How did the Rolling Stone miss this guy? Be sure to note this name, Krauthammer (what a name!), so that you can take anything he writes about Democrats with a great big grain of salt. Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post veteran of the Gore is a liar and Edwards is an angry-phony Big Lies.
I could go on and on with this, but I am just too damned fed up with what passes for journalism in this country. The only solution is to bust apart the telecommunications monopolies that have turned television news stations and newspapers into propaganda organs for major corporations. MSNBC no longer needs to get ratings (except for the vanity of a few celebrities). Not for money, anyway. Its job is now to change the way that America votes in order to benefit the corporate coffers of parent company GE. The same goes for ABC and Disney, CBS and Viacom and all the others.
What we need is the US equivalent of the BBC, a fully funded independent set of public television channels that program news, entertainment for children and adults and educational program. Every industrialized country in the world except the U.S. has one. Everyone would pay a tax and no political party would have any control over it. We also need legislation to keep newspapers free of the influence of big money---like the $60million the US Chambers of Commerce have pledged to spend to defeat candidates who endorse “populists” issues this year.
In order to do this, we need to get rid of this industry pandering Republican FCC which allows unlimited telecom media mergers and expansions. We need to investigate and prosecute the current chairman for taking over Congress’s role in writing legislation that affects the media.
And most important of all, we need to protest and blacklist the individual media whores who do the dirty work for their corporate masters. I can not possibly keep track of or list all the individual players who have contributed to the lies Edwards is a phony , Two Man Race Edwards is a spoiler Edwards is a red . If you know of any specific “journalist” and can post a quote and link, please do so. I would love to see a hundred replies, each with the name of a different journalist caught in the act.
It is important to hold the press accountable for their actions. Reporters think that they can get away with it by claiming that they are just getting swept away in the general narrative or are incompetent or just making a joke or "dumb asses". This is bullshit. I am a story teller. I know that it takes work to tell a story and make it believable. Big Lies do not spring out of nothing fully formed. A lot of effort goes into creating propaganda.
It will do not good simply to accuse the press of attacking the John Edwards 2008 Campaign. They know what they did. They are gloating over their victory, counting their reward in advance while they flex their muscles, awaiting further orders from their corporate masters. As Goebbels wrote, those who create propaganda are not in search of a higher truth. They want results.
Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall . That is a matter of practice, not of theory.We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses.
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb54.htm
You can not shame them into stopping. So, the only way to fight this kind of opponent is to take away their ability to spread propaganda. That means revealing them to be liars in public, so that no one will talk to them to give them stories and no news consumer will believe them. Taking away the incentive of television news and newspapers to whore for big corporations also helps. And encouraging the public to become better consumers of the news by offering them alternative choices and by educating them to the signs of propaganda.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor
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