We (your humble writers & editors here at DemocraticNationUSA.blogspot.com) didn't make it to the MEDIA REFORM CONFERENCE in Memphis, Tennessee this past week, even though many of the writers and participants there have been our heroes, including for example HELEN THOMAS.
But we regret to say: the conference's focus on Media Reform BY REGULATION is entirely PATHETIC.
While we would LIKE to see "THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE" brought back to the American media, and while we would LIKE to see FULL PUBLIC FUNDING of elections, and while we would like to see the Major Media OBLIGATED to PROVIDE FREE, equal-time election advertisements to at least two major parties if not more parties in each election.... IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, at least not in the next one or two critical election cycles.
And even the above "REFORMS" wouldn't address the even more important factor: the ability of Rethuglicans to CREATE SCANDALS OUT OF THIN AIR, while the Democrats CAN'T even investigate REAL SCANDALS that happen right there in broad daylight, such as the THEFT of TWO presidential elections. (We KNOW that George W. Bush did not win the majority of voters' votes in Florida in 2000, and we don't think George W. Bush won the majority of voters' votes in Ohio in 2004... or other "Red State" majorities either, including Iowa, New Mexico, and others.)
The Republicans were able to keep the "VINCE FOSTER MURDER!" in the news-cycle undercurrent, if not front-pages, for YEARS... but the ANTHRAX MURDERS (much less the suspicious Paul Wellstone airplane crash) DISAPPEAR from news coverage immediately.
The Republicans were able to insuate "CLINTON TREASON, SOLD MISSILE TECHNOLOGY TO CHINA!" while keeping Republican culpability for the technology transfer of China rockets launching US satellites to a minimum... not to mention SUPPRESSING the story of Bush Sr/Cheney/Baker/Rumsfeld providing _WMD PRECURSOR TECHNOLOGIES_ to Saddam's regime all through the 1980s to a minimum.
Heck, Al Gore, John Kerry, and JOE LIEBERMAN made NO EFFORT to remind or inform Americans that DICK CHENEY, as CHAIRMAN and CEO of HALLIBURTON corporation, used Halliburton European subsidiaries to SELL SADDAM OILFIELD TECHNOLOGY (which development would have allowed Saddam to fund a WMD program if he had had one!) IN THE LATE 1990s - WHILE Cheney and other Republicans were bashing the Democratic White House for "moral values" failings!
ANY of the above issues, had they been kept on the FRONT PAGES or LEAD story of the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Fox 'news,' or any of the other networks, would have added another 5- or 10 points to the Democratic vote total in those elections!
Here (below), in a Buzzflash editorial, is YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE of the Bush-Cheney-Rethuglican Party being able to DOMINATE the news cycle and DETERMINE what news is covered, what news is front-page, and what America pays out her blood and treasure on - regardless of the truth, regardless of sane foreign policy, regardless of 100 years of progress that, until 2001, made America the role model for the entire world.
In just 6 short years, the Bush-Cheney administration has REVERSED the image of America as a beacon of international progress and (in Helen Thomas' words) we "have lost the halo as visionaries for a better mankind."
Dick Cheney and George Bush openly desire the AUTOCRATIC, THEOCRATIC model of DICTATORSHIP, ENFORCED CONFORMITY, ENFORCED RELIGIOUS COMPLIANCE, and complete lack of civil and human rights of the SAUDI DICTATORSHIP... and the America "major media" REFUSES to even MENTION that SAUDI ARABIA is now the great model for American governance!
The Bush-Cheney-Rethuglican sell-job is that, just because there are people out there in the world who hate us and may want to kill us (terrorists), we Americans MUST SURRENDER ALL OUR RIGHTS, our control of government, and our treasure (tax dollars) to the Republican Party control of the US government!
The Democrats have found NO ANSWER to contest this horrific model of press/media and government!
Indeed, JOE LIEBERMAN is REPRISING HIS ROLE as GUTTING Democratic efforts to EXPOSE Bush administration mendacity, Lieberman this week informed the press that he WOULD NOT INVESTIGATE contract FRAUD and FEMA INCOMPETENCE re the Katrina disaster and New Orleans' stunted recovery and rebuilding.
Lieberman, Nader, Bill Bradley, John Kerry..... EVERY TIME the Democrats GET AN OPPORTUNITY to EXPOSE the agenda, inconsistencies, and LIES of their Republican opponents, the Democrats seem to find a way to form a CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD and instead shoot each other and (more importantly) GIVE THE RETHUGLICANS A FREE PASS for trying to turn 200 years of American progress BACK TO the 7 century model of THEOCRATIC, MEDIEVAL rule, TYRANTS ruling over PEASANTS and dispensing summary 'justice' at the great lords' pleasure.
As we just mentioned, traitor JOE LIEBERMAN is ALREADY REPRISING HIS ROLE as sabotager of Democratic and progressive outrage and focus, and DICK CHENEY, GEORGE BUSH, KARL ROVE, and the Rethuglicans have ALREADY SWEPT the Democratic NARRATIVE out of the front pages and newshour leads....
(The above is only a partial enumeration of 30 years of Republican OUTRAGES and CRIMNALITY and treasury-busting scandals that have been all but forgotten by timid Dems and the corporate press. For example; the gigantic S&L debacle where AMERICAN TAXPAYERS were FORCED to PAY FOR the PRIVATE FAILURES of SAVINGS & LOANS, most of whose owners were Republican Party donors such as Charles Keatings Lincoln Savings & Loan and Neil Bush's SILVERADO Savings & Loan; we haven't even mentioned Iran-Contra or the "October Surprise" where Republicans WERE ABLE to get Iran to HOLD THE HOSTAGES PAST the 1980 election, which resulted in Reagan and BUSH being elected that November; nor have we mentioneed the recent crop of Republicans CONVICTED for BRIBERY and FRAUD including Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham; nor have we mentioned the Cheney-Bush White House "OUTING" an ENTIRE UNDERCOVER CIA OPERATION (the Valerie Plame "outing"); nor have we mentioned PRIVATIZED voting machines as an INVITATION to vote fraud; nor have we mentioned Republican SEX SCANDALS including MARK FOLLEY, Bush-intimate super-evangelist Ted Haggard, or MALE GAY PROSTITUTE "JEFF GANON" getting Secret Service CLEARANCE to join the White House Press corps, with NO press history, despite Gannon's UP AND RUNNING HOMOSEXUAL "butch" PROSTITUTE SEX SITE, up and running at the time the Secret Service gave him his pass to enter the White House!
IF THE DEMOCRATS do NOT BAND TOGETHER, STRIP joe lieberman of his Committe Chair, and DEMAND news coverage of Republican SCANDALS, we Americans DO NOT have a democratic government - we instead have a Saudi-style ancient Theocratic "off with their heads!" DICTATORSHIP.
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<< Paul's CenTrust Savings Bank of Miami failed in 1990 and cost taxpayers an estimated $2 billion >>
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/062003.shtml
(Note: this Boston Globe article notes that John Kerry was also a recipient of David Paul's campaign donations, showing how vulnerable Democrats are to being smeared even in Republican scandals.)
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Correspondent Helen Thomas lashes out at the 'lapdog media' from the conference [that, along with Democratic passivity, ENABLES Rethuglican HIJACKING of American democracy.)
By Trevor Aaronson
January 13, 2007
http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local/article/0,2845,MCA_25340_5278569,00.html
Tapping into one of the strongest undercurrents at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas criticized wha she described as a lapdog media for not erecting roadblocks on the road to war. "I think the American press corps has lost its way," Thomas said, adding: "There’s no reason the media played along with the administration’s shifting rationales, all untrue in the run-up to the catastrophic war in Iraq."
"Congress rolled over, as we did, no questions asked," Thomas said. "But the result of our default has been devastating. We [have] lost our halo as the visionaries for a better mankind."
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How Bush’s Death Warrant on American GIs Sucks the Air Out of the Democratic Do-Something Congress
BuzzFlash editorial
Mon, 01/15/2007
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorials/118
Why did Bush wait until the start of a new Democratic Congress to announce his death warrant on American GIs?
Part of it, no doubt, was that Cheney needed time to fire the vocally dissenting generals, whip the Joints Chiefs of Staff – who unanimously opposed the idea – into silence, and try to figure out a way to find additional cannon fodder to send to their doom, since the military and reserves have been so depleted by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Iraq war folly.
But part of the reason for the timing of the "official’ announcement of another doomed military action – basically a variation on a theme of years of disastrous "plans" — had to do with drowning out the accomplishments of the first 100 hours of a Democratic Congress.
Do you think Rove was going to let the Democrats get the message out that they could pass minimum wage, stem cell research, homeland security, student loan relief and competitive bidding for Medicare drug laws – among others – without diverting news coverage?
Not a chance.
Rove saw Bush’s "Groundhog Day" Iraq desperation speech as a chance for a two-fer: a tee-off for the expansion of the war and a way to step on the common sense accomplishments of the new Democratic Congress?
After years of a corrupt Republican Congress, the last thing Rove wanted working Americans to hear – especially the wavering "values" voters – was that the Democrats could do in a hundred hours what the Republicans blocked for more than a decade. Rove couldn’t risk the chance that the Dems could recapture the Kansas middle class voter – let’s say – by helping them out, instead of picking their pocket and shouting out "gay marriage is unAmerican and threatens your marriage," as the GOP has done for oh so many years.
So, the timing of Bush’s dry-drunk speech of Vietnam redux madness was not accidental.
How many Americans know how much good the Democratic Congress has already done for them, with more to come?
Not many, which is just as Karl planned.
And expect those Bush vetoes of the Dem bills to help working and middle class Americans to come late on Fridays, while the Busheviks are conducting some "daring raid" on "suspected" al-Qaida members in Somalia or somewhere.
Only to find out by Sunday that we bombed a wedding party "by mistake."
