Don't Confuse Them With Facts, Their Minds Are Made Up

Pardon my mouth for hanging open, but last night's news shows were undeniable evidence that propaganda has become accepted as news. On NBC, the report on the GoPervian walkout of the House of Representatives talked only about the delay in passing FISA legislation. That was the argument advanced by GoPervs to shout down the actual legislation on the floor. It was not the true story.

Not one word was spoken about the actual cause of that walkout - which the GoP is hoping to obscure along with its other blunders such as the war, the economy, the Rule of Law, and politicization of all the executive branch departments. Just to show how totally insincere the FISA stance is, earlier this week the GoPervs voted against extending it.

On the later Newshour, thankfully, I got to hear about the facts - the walkout was a protest of a very good maneuver that would require the Justice Department to charge Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton with contempt of Congress for ignoring subpoenas.

The blatant violations of law that have characterized the war criminal administration began very early, and went very deep. Without a complicit press, this wouldn't be possible. WaPo and the NYT did apologize for ignoring the facts in face of their claims of WMD's in Iraq. More apologies are due us.

The primary coverage is sickening to all serious students of our political scene, and everyone who realizes our future as a country depends on these elections.

.....while the primary system took power away from the party barons, it gave much of that clout to the news media -- now driven by national outlets that prefer sensationalism, scandal and sound bites to substance, nuance and balance. While retail politics survives in states such as New Hampshire, the real kingmakers today are the national media, which determine how most voters see the candidates. The seriousness of the candidates' debates, in both the primaries and the general election, has nose-dived since the famous 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates -- let alone the Lincoln-Douglas debates of exactly 150 years ago, when no journalists were on stage.

Why the decline? Blame the bloated role of celebrity reporters and overpaid, often highly biased pundits, which the primary reforms unwittingly helped feed. The power shift away from the parties and toward the media has encouraged candidates to engage in "gotcha" politics, often about relatively trivial matters. In a recent debate, for instance, Clinton and Obama traded fierce barbs about who had fewer principles -- all based on who said what and when about allowing illegal immigrants to have drivers' licenses. Standing in the Reagan Presidential Library at the Jan. 30 CNN debate, Mitt Romney and John McCain spent much of their time battling over how to parse a past Romney statement about Iraq. These kinds of fights may be fun for political junkies to watch, but they have little to do with real policy or government performance. They also fuel the need for vast pools of funds to pay for TV spots, including negative advertising.

The failure of media to keep us informed has become complicity with those corporate shills who have wormed their way to the top in our government. The public is denied of its representation in this country by the many sell-outs to corporate interest.

Today, the war criminals have an op-ed aimed at influencing public opinion, since their lies no longer sway the legislators that have too often mistaken those lies for reality. When lies were accepted by the Dems, the public interest went unrepresented.

We have to keep in mind that our news is diminishing, and the reports represented as fact are highly questionable. When 'news' is whatever the WH says it is, and cannot be depended on to represent truth, we must turn to these internets to find out what is real. Along with CSpan, where we can watch real events, we are not able to turn to major business operations such as the networks have become for reality.

**********************************************************

thanks, Dan for your good words about my comment on this at http://sideshow.me.uk/ , and for http://pruningshears.squarespace.com.