OPINIONS BASED ON FACTS (OBOF)
THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)
YEAR ONE
YEAR TWO
YEAR THREE
YEAR FOUR
YEAR FIVE
YEAR SIX
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OBOF TYMHM Vol. 16 –
No. 01
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Jan. 09, 2016
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AGENDA
1. FROM
FLOYD
MY
FELLOW AMERICANS
SAVING OUR DEMOCRACY:
THE ONE THING WE ALL CAN DO TO
ACCOMPLISH THIS.
ACCOMPLISH THIS.
2. FROM THE DNCC Dec. 31, 2015
3. Why Isn’t the Media Feeling the Bern
5. Justice Antonin
Scalia's racism is unacceptable.
Congress must censure him.
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FROM FLOYD
MY FELLOW AMERICANS
This
is the beginning, in my opinion based on facts with a great deal of reading
and individual research, that 2016 is going to be one of the most important
years in the history of our Democracy
The
question is why do I say this? As is
often said, that is a good question and I am going to try, in my humble way,
to, at least, shed some light on the basis for this opinion.
It
is simple, but complicated. Yes, that
is possible. The simple part can be
stated in one word, GREED. I don't
know of a single problem that we have in this country that hasn't been and is
caused by GREED.
So
much for the simple part. Now, the
complicated part is a whole different story.
Up to now I don't think I have told you anything you don't already
know and maybe you know everything that I am going to point out. The real point now is to bring all our
problems into sharp focus, as much as possible, and discuss thing that we,
not only can do about saving our Democracy, but MUST do.
SAVING OUR
DEMOCRACY:
THE ONE THING
WE ALL CAN DO TO ACCOMPLISH THIS.
GET INVOLVED.
There are many ways to do this, all the way from
just voting for the Presidential candidate of your choice, to help getting
the vote out, to supporting your candidate from the pocket book. That brings me to the point of talking about
the candidates.
Again, my thoughts about these candidates are
based on facts that I have accumulated over the past 28 years. I voted twice for Bill Clinton. I still feel he was the best we had at the
time. He is a real smooth talker. He and Hillary have done many good things
world wide. Hillary is running a
smooth campaign. But why not? She has unlimited financial support.
When these campaigns started about 6 or 8 months
ago, she was not talking about any of the things that matter to the working
class. She actually was talking tax
reduction for the upper class, the 1%ers we all hear about and Large
Corporations. It wasn't until Senator
Bernie Sanders entered the race and started talking about the needs of the
working class and the basic needs of our infrastructure and all the other
basic problems our country faces (See Section #4), that she started to talk
along the same lines. He has set the
agenda.
BUT
NOW, THE MOST IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN THE TWO. Hillary has unlimited financial backing. Bernie refuses to take a dime from the fat
cats. All of Bernie's support comes
from people like you and me. He has broken every
record in financing a campaign. He has
in excess of 2,000,000, that is right two million, supporters with an average
donation of $34.00. That in itself is
incredible. But couple that with the
fact that he is drawing the largest crowds of any candidate of either party.
I could write and write about this man, but for
now I will move on to other articles.
Except for one last bit about Bernie.
I have followed this man's activity ever since he entered
Congress. I can tell you that I have
always found him to do just what he says.
I can't say that he is totally honest.
I just don't know, but I would bet that he leads the pack in honesty.
One last word about the Republicans. They have nothing but clowns. The leader of the pack is the most
disgraceful man that simply does not warrant any space in my Blog. I will simply say that I don't understand
his followers. They are so upset with
the status of our country that they just want to yell out and this guy is
giving them a platform for yelling. He
is the furthest thing from a true American that you can imagine. God help us if he is nominated and more so,
if he is elected.
~~~
FROM THE DNCC
Dec. 31, 2015
This just BLINDSIDED us:
Paul Ryan just announced that he’s
giving TWO MILLION DOLLARS to House Republicans, all to elect a Congress
that’ll tear down President Obama’s legacy.
We won’t sugarcoat this: With this cash, they could blow us out of the water in fundraising. That’d make winning a Democratic Congress nearly impossible. We’re so sorry to send you this alarming email during the holidays, but is there any chance you can renew your 2016 Democratic Membership before tomorrow’s Deadline? We badly need your help. |
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Why Isn’t the Media Feeling the Bern
By Jim
Hightower -
January 1, 2016
| Op-Ed
Let’s go to the scoreboard to see who’s
winning the exciting presidential election media coverage game.
The Tyndall Report, a
non-partisan media monitoring firm that has been tracking the nightly news
broadcasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC, found that Trump is tromp, tromp, tromping
over the airtime of everyone else.
From
last January through November, these dominant flagship news shows devoted 234
minutes of prime-time coverage to the incessant chirping of the yellow-crested
birdbrain, with no other contender getting even a fourth of that.
Take
Bernie Sanders, who’s stunning the political establishment with a fiery
populist campaign that’s drawing record crowds. Indeed, Sanders’ upstart campaign is
commanding a comparable share of
support within the Democratic Party’s voting base to what Trump is
enjoying from the Republican electorate.
And — get
this — polls also show Bernie trouncing The Donald if
they face each other in November’s presidential showdown. So, surely he’s getting a proportional level
of media coverage by the networks on our public airwaves, right?
Ha,
just kidding! The big
networks’ devotion of 234 minutes to all-things-Trump was “balanced” by
less than 10 minutes for Sanders. Most
egregious was ABC, the Disney-owned network. ABC’s World
News Tonight awarded 81 minutes of national showtime to Trump last
year — and for Bernie: 20 seconds.
How
self-serving of the media moguls. The
one candidate who is effectively rallying large numbers of voters to oppose the
rise of corporate oligarchy — including in the media — has the plug pulled
on him.
Of
course, this only amplifies the truth of what Sanders is saying about the
villainy of corporate profiteers, and it fuels a greater determination by his
millions of grassroots supporters to end the reign of greed in America
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of
the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim
Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the
Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small
businesses, and just-plain-folks.
~~~
In an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo, Bernie Sanders made some
salient points with regard to the unprecedented amount of coverage that the
media has given to Donald Trump since he announced his campaign for the GOP
nomination for president.
Cuomo
set up the issue by asking Sanders about the media role in the campaign and
Donald Trump's success saying "His
popularity is inarguable. How he is
becoming popular is the source of a lot of argument and criticism. [...] Why
is it working so well for him?" That's an odd question for Cuomo to ask
Sanders, but it resulted in this exchange (video below) with Sanders placing
the onus where it belongs:
Sanders: Well Chris, You're gonna have to ask the
media precisely why. Trump is a smart
guy. He's a media guy. He had a TV show. I'll give you one example. A recent study showed on ABC evening news,
Trump over a period of time got 81 minutes of time. Bernie Sanders got 20 seconds. Now you tell me why. And I think it has to do with the fact that
Trump is very smart. He knows that media
is not so interested in the serious issues facing this country. They love
bombastic remarks. They love silly
remarks [...] I think this is more of an indictment of the media actually than
it is of Trump.
Cuomo: I don't see it. Do we
cover him more? Yes. Why? He's number
one in the polls. He's highly relevant. He
drives the discussion.
Sanders: But Chris, explain to me how he becomes
number one. He boasts of the fact...He
says, 'I don't even have to pay for commercials. The media is going to put me on all of the
time.'
Cuomo
continues to insist that the media plays no role in Trump's dominance of the
media. Clearly, that's an unsupportable
position. The press was covering every
Trump event from beginning to end from the day he entered the race. They would interrupt programming to broadcast
his stump speeches live. And they
weren't doing it because of his popularity. They were doing it because of his proclivity
for disgorging shocking and offensive rhetoric that would drive, not the
discussion, but ratings. If it were
solely because he was leading in the polls, then why weren't they doing the
same thing for Hillary Clinton, who has also been leading in the polls? Or for Sanders who has been breaking
fundraising records set by President Obama in 2008?
Sanders
was correct in stating that Trump boasts about the media putting him on all the
time. Last August Trump even made it a key point in his speech to a crowd in
Alabama
“Every time I go on television it’s gotta be live. It’s live. I said ‘Oh, can I have a rest please?’ [...] How
come it always has to be live? Why don’t
they just cover me like anybody else where they go the next day and they show
little clips? Every time I speak it has
to be live. It’s ridiculous, but it’s
OK. Right? We have to suffer with it.”
If
Trump recognizes that it's ridiculous, why doesn't the media? And even after he taunts them about how
tightly they are wound around his fat finger, they persist in following him
around like lovesick puppies, even though there is nothing in his speeches that
makes them the least bit newsworthy. Trump
sees it but Cuomo doesn't? He would have
to be pasting quarters to his eyes and wrapping his head with duct tape.
This
exchange is emblematic of the problem that the media has assessing its own
shortcomings. Sanders spells out the
blatant bias, provides a specific example of it, and CNN's anchor remains
oblivious and defensive. It's also
notable that the example was for ABC News rather than Fox News where Trump's partisan omnipresence is expected.
Cuomo
never responds directly to the example Sanders gave about the 81:1 coverage
ratio that was documented by the respected television analyst, the Tyndall Report. Then the discussion just drifted off into
other subjects, insuring that the disparity will very likely continue for the
remainder of the campaign. And the media
will continue to be blind to their failures.
~~~
Justice Antonin Scalia's racism is unacceptable. Congress must censure him.
Paid for by CREDO
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