On February 08 2008 04:59 gwho wrote: people need to question whether the media reports the leading candidates? or makes them. Way in the beginning of the race in 2007, we have heard rumors that "oh it's most likely going to be hilary or obama" PFFT! On what fucking basis? who is the one that analyzed that? anyways, since then hilary and obama have gotten the most airtime on main news outlets. but the un even coverage isn't just in the democratic side. the media plays the same game with republicans, putting one person's face in front of all the voters that aren't heavily into politics.
What is the impression people get? a vast number of people don't even do their research on candidates, and vote with what the unbiased tv spoon fed them (joking haha) Even I fell into this trap. Back before i had my political values and principles straightened out, I too went along with the "oh so and so & so and so are the leading candidates" and ten subconsciously it was like someone told me "choose one of them" BOOM. There it is. Anyone else go through the same sort of thinking process i went through, consciously or not? Of course we can all think and choose to do and choose to elect whoever we want, but there is a thing called psych-Ops. psychological operations. If you control the input into a human, then statistically you will get a very high percentage of a known output.
Here's some evidence. As of februrary and late january, there are 2 dem candidates, and 4 reps. However, for weeks when i would watch ABC NBC or FOX report the results, they would always show only 5. who was left out? hilary and obama were shown on one frame with percentages totalling 100% or 97% at the minimum. On the republican side, they would always show Romney, McCain, and Huckabee, but their summed percentages would never ammoung to a modest 97%!!! WAHTS WRONG HERE!? hello? there IS another republican candidate. It's one thing when there are like 20 candidates, like in the beginning of the race, when it may be cumbersome to display everyone with less than 5%, (although i strongly believe they should), but it's another when there are only 6 left. They take the time to display 5, but as i have observed for these weeks, not show Ron Paul's numbers, or his face (as if he wasn't in the fucking race). Now one must wonder, "is it really that difficult to show one more person's numbers? i mean, it is an even 6. they can show 3 and 3 on two frames, or 2 2 and 2 on three frames. When i added up the numbers there is a decent remainder of points left out of the 100. And many times, the remainder (Ron Paul's give or take a couple points) would be even greater than the 3rd place republican nominee. Yet ABC and FOX think somehow fourth place is worth showing more than third place. obviously because fourth place is beating third (O.o???).Or maybe it could be that they habitually forgot about Ron Paul, (give them a break, the news reporters work hard. They can screw up with our news info sometimes)
Anyway, all i'm trying to get across is that maybe we should think and question if 1) the political-media complex, is truly "reporting" the leading candidates, or 2) the media influences who becomes the leading candidate and eventually the winner, via the "best teacher of all" - repetition. As well as HOW strongly media influences the outcomes of the election... I've read one research that said the biggest factor of winning the elections is media coverage. - how much time and how often your name and face is on the boob tube.
Lets pray America doesn't go down the toilet.
How can you cry about the media not reporting the leading candidates and also cry about the media not reporting Ron Paul? Ron Paul has no chance of winning so I guess the media is reporting him fairly.
If you also watched the news, you would see that the current Republican leader, John McCain, has not had favorable media coverage at all. He hasn't been presented as a front runner by the media ever since his campaign went broke in the summer and all of his staffers started jumping ship. It wasn't until he won New Hampshire and South Carolina that he was given the go ahead by the media. Hillary Clinton was constantly reported by the media as the dominating front runner and Obama still owned her in Iowa. The Republican winner of Iowa got almost no press coverage until he started dominating straw polls in Iowa. YOU THINK THE MEDIA MADE MIKE HUCKABEE? We all know who made Mike Huckabee.
I really have no idea what you are talking about and that probably has something to do with your love for Ron Paul.
On February 08 2008 01:42 Hawk wrote: If it's McCain vs Clinton, I'd put my $ on McCain.
Some republicans might hate McCain, but they all HATE hillary, as do many dems.
Hell, even if Obama gets the nod and goes against McCain, it's going to be difficult for the dems.
umm no.. why do you keep saying a lot of democrats hate hillary? Have you not been paying attention to the primaries? It's obvious a lot of democrats support her. Yes some democrats do not like her, but most of the hatred for her comes primarily from republicans.
And if you just look at the sheer number of votes Obama and Clinton are getting vs McCain and Romney (LOL) the two republican frontrunners, it's a complete joke. Obama and Clinton are getting tons of votes/supporters.. it's the republicans that are having a hard time.
People are sick and tired of republicans in the white house.. seriously... that's all it comes down to.
Clinton gets a lot of votes from 60+ democrats.
She is less popular among young democrats (like 30%)
Talk to a lot of democrats.. for a lot of people, you either love or hate hillary. There's like no middle ground with her for most.
na theres people who wants obama to win, but would be fine with hilary too since bill is also on her back
Yeah, I'd end up voting for her just based on the fact that I couldnt take another dumbass republican in office at this point lol
I'm going to have to seriously examine if I'd really vote for her (as opposed to 3rd party or something) if she is nominated and against McCain. Their positions are almost the same (many are identical if you look on their websites), on the surface, except for two things: Iraq and health care. Those are two pretty important things, and although I tend toward Hillary's view, I still have to think about it.
I don't like McCain for being a "hawk", but the Clinton's weren't great in their foreign policy either. Hillary made the case for Iraq, rather than just supporting it, which might be more than McCain did at the time. While Hillary wants to leave now, I don't think this is because of her own judgement, but popular opinion + party opinion. McCain at least had a better strategy for success in Iraq, so I'm not sure who to trust. I do want Americans out of Iraq, but I'm not sure that in the big picture Hillary will handle the withdrawal and Afghanistan war (plus any unforeseen conflict) better than McCain will.
On February 08 2008 06:09 BlackJack wrote: YOU THINK THE MEDIA MADE MIKE HUCKABEE? We all know who made Mike Huckabee.
Evangelicals? Which makes me glad he didn't get coverage. Automatically picking up some evangelical votes in a state that only contains a small percent of total delegates, while having no chance of winning isn't a reason to get air time as far as I can see.
Hillary is probably easily the most hated candidate, that's kind of hard to argue. Here's a rather old poll but it demonstrates this point.. http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1376
On February 08 2008 06:13 BlackJack wrote: Hillary is probably easily the most hated candidate, that's kind of hard to argue. Here's a rather old poll but it demonstrates this point.. http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1376
Those numbers are really really close though. They don't prove sufficiently that she is hated beyond the limits of other candidates.
On February 08 2008 06:20 CaucasianAsian wrote: does anyone else think that McCain and Bush sound almost exactly the same voice wise?
! I noticed this too yesterday when I saw one of his speeches. His voice is slightly squeakier, although he has very similar hand gestures while he speaks (open hands with both palms facing audience and embracing them).
I'm also happy Mitt Romney pulled out. Anything that pisses off conservative Republicans is a good thing.
Ron Paul still has a chance to win since he won 42 delegates recently.(won missouri) What I can't believe is that people are dissing and saying Paul is shit and yet they vote for greedy hypocritic, corrupt, corporatist liars such as Romney , Fuckabee, McCain (continue the war, has numerous scandals of corruption) whom are going to continue Bush's legacy. And yet Paul has had one of the consistent records of honesty and integrity, being againts the Iraq war from the very start and following the constitution strictly with no signs of corruption at all, no aid from corporations or no sign of questionable greed for power and money. I just don't get the stupidity or the irrationality of some people here sometimes.
On February 08 2008 08:04 MenzieK wrote: Ron Paul still has a chance to win since he won 42 delegates recently.(won missouri) What I can't believe is that people are dissing and saying Paul is shit and yet they vote for greedy hypocritic, corrupt, corporatist liars such as Romney , Fuckabee, McCain (continue the war, has numerous scandals of corruption) whom are going to continue Bush's legacy. And yet Paul has had one of the consistent records of honesty and integrity, being againts the Iraq war from the very start and following the constitution strictly with no signs of corruption at all, no aid from corporations or no sign of questionable greed for power and money. I just don't get the stupidity or the irrationality of some people here sometimes.
Then Ron Paul better some major zerg ad blitz and fast or pull a miracle out of his political hat so that media notices him.
On February 08 2008 06:04 MYM.Testie wrote: And Hilary leading polls vs Obama? vs OBAMA!! This man is adored, so Hilary must be doing something right.
is this a joke? hillary is the establishment candidate, she was overwhelmingly favored going into this. not to mention the Clinton brand is immensely more known than obama.
the only thing surprising about the results right now is that obama's still in it.
Now that's what one might call a heckuva coincidence. A handful of weeks ago, Bill Clinton disentangles his investment partnership with billionaire Ron Burkle, producing an estimated $20 million windfall. And now we learn that the suddenly flush Clintons are loaning Hillary's campaign $5 million from their joint assets to bridge it through a funding rough patch.
Talk about windfalls. This is a veritable bonanza not only for enterprising reporters and snoopy researchers, but also for any Republican candidate that could potentially face Hillary in November -- if she wins the nomination. That is, if she doesn't first drown in a sea of sleaze of her own making.
This newest episode in the Clinton finances opens up a field of questions that could make Whitewater and Hillary's long-forgotten but near-magical touch in commodity trading look like kid's stuff. And with a lot of time to kill between now and November, there's going to plenty of opportunity to rake through it all. Make that, parse through it, as it is the Clintons we're talking about.
It puts front and center the question of just how rich are the Clintons, and how did they get so rich? Current estimates of their joint wealth range from $10 million up to $50 million or more, a long way to come from when they first got married and they struggled to make the $14,000 mortgage on their first modest Arkansas home.
Quite a nice pay-off for a supposed career of 35 years, as Hillary repeats every day, "working to bring positive change to people's lives." While Clinton touts her decision to come out of law school and work not for Wall Street but rather for the Children's Defense Fund, the truth is that she spent only a year there. (And then omitted her mentor Marian Wright Edelman from among the 400 others she mentions in the acknowledgemets of her autobiography because Edelman had broken with her when Bill Clinton abolished the federal welfare saftey net in 1996).
For half of her professional career Clinton really worked not at all for The Little People, but rather for Arkansas'most elite business-connected law firm, representing big corporations and serving on their boards.
In fairness, though, the bulk of the money earned by the Clintons has been acquired since Big Dawg left office and started socking away huge book, speaker and, um, consulting fees. Indeed, their entire fortune has been made since leaving the White House. Renting out the Lincoln Bedroom was but a Ma and Pa operation compared to what came in its wake.
Let's be very clear about this. We're not just talking about Bill cashing in by smoking some cigars and telling some good stories to a bunch of banquet goers. It also means such smelly deals as him serving as an "advisor" to Dubai, when he coached their government on how to swing a port deal with the U.S. (that failed). That's after the oil sheiks shelled out $300,000 in 2002 to have Bill address one of their summits (There was also a direct link between Dubai and the investment fund with which Burkle and Clinton were partnered).
Then there was that revoltingly sleazy little deal revealed by The New York Times in which the former president served as a broker/fixer between a Canadian mining entrepreneur and the dictator of Kazakhstan, greasing through a multi-billion dollar uranium deal. Mr. Clinton's fee? A previously undisclosed "donation" of more than $30 million to his charitable Clinton Foundation from the grateful Canadian capitalist.
A honcho at a Canadian bank specialized in mining said the deal was a result of a "fantastic network" with Bill Clinton at its top.
None of this illegal, we think. And the money given to Clinton's foundation is not supposed to be the same personal funding that was used as a bridge loan to Hillary's campaign. And there's nothing against the law about a former president serving as a high-end errand boy for Arab Sheiks. Nor is it illegitimate to make a stack of dough fronting for dictators, pushing ghost-written books, or serving as hired jester for private corporate banquets. Except with the Clintons, of course, there's always the slippery questions of definition. Whose money is whose? Where does Bill's end and Hillary's begin? What's the line between personal funding and political funding? Charitable versus political donations?
One might also argue that what Bill does is not necessarily what Hillary does. Except that Hillary has based her entire campaign on being a faithful offshoot of his legacy.
What we know for certain is this: When Barack Obama said yesterday that we can expect Republicans to find a "whole dump truck" of dirt on Hillary, he knew what he was talking about. She just pumped $5 million worth of fuel into its tank.
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich gave his approval to Arizona Sen. John McCain’s White House bid Saturday, telling a conservative crowd that political victory was more important than ideological purity.
“I think it’s a totally honorable thing to say 'I support the candidate but I oppose the policy,'” he told activists gathered for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
Later, he made his view more explicit: “As a citizen, I would rather have a President McCain that we fight with 20 percent of the time than a President Clinton or a President Obama who we fight with 90 percent of the time.”
He said he had traveled to Idaho last weekend, when Illinois Sen. Barack Obama attracted a crowd of at least 16,000 in Boise, and that the ability of a Senate Democrat to attract a crowd of that size in that solidly-red state was “inconceivable.”
EPT
