Don't worry! The Media will grow a spine

One of the memes of the leftist blogosphere is  that the press rolled over the the Bush administration and that if MSM had not perhaps things would not be so bad. The quote below, from Salon, it typical:

Get the media to grow a spine.

The American media's performance in the run-up to the Iraq war was one of the lowest points in its history. Swept up in war fever, the gutless press acted as a quasi-official cheerleader and failed to subject administration claims to elementary due diligence. After 9/11, it was to be expected that large parts of the electorate, and the hapless Congress, would succumb to emotions and the visceral desire for revenge. But the media, which should have acted as the brains of the outfit, abandoned its post and joined in the orgy of uncritical flag-waving. In a contemporary democracy, such a failure has catastrophic consequences. It cannot happen again.

Iraq: The ten commandments | Salon

Well, we needn't worry. Main Stream Media will get their spines up soon. One of the reasons the media have been such wimps is the sense that they'd gone overboard in hating the Clintons during he 90's. With that nice George Bush in power, they could be nice too. Well now that it's the Clintons are back, the press is already back at work - hating the Clintons. And they have a new target. One that they're still trying to figure out how to hate in print (or video or talk): Barack Obama.

Obama will be a bit harder to work over without accusations of racism being lodged. Don't worry though, the MSM's main source, Drudge, will provide the excuse to attack him.

When one of these two becomes President you can count on the media to point out every foible, attack every program and pronouncement, dig deeply into every possible scandal, repeat every  slander and expend great effort in investigative reporting - a skill that's been defunct since the 200o election.

Of course, if McCain gets elected the love affair with him will continue and the press will continue to see its duty as supporting the delusions of the wing nuts who actually control them. (This is an unfair calumny, but if we believe right wing lies - that the press is liberal - why not believe this misrepresentation - the press is a creature of right wing extremism?)

I'm so tired of the bickering

While the pundits and commentariat and the blogosphere go berserk about how Hillary and Barrack are hurting the party, all I can think about is how they're hurting the country.

The fighting about nothing may even be proving Hillary's point: Barrack may talk about working together to solve problems, but he doesn't do anything to actually solve the problems.

I've long supported Hillary Clinton - probably since 1993 or 94. I want her to be president.

I'm inspired by Barrack Obama. Not only his presentation and style, his history and approach: I'm inspired by what he triggers in my memory. I remember Bobby Kennedy. I remember Martin Luther King. I remember John F. Kennedy. I remember the anguish of their murders. I remember the extinguishing of hope. I remember Richard Nixon.

The press, especially the moderators of the debates, love a fight. And they instigate them. All the time. Every day. Every debate. In fact calling them moderators is worse than a misnomer, it's a lie. They're instigators, starting fights.

The next time Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton are on the stage together, and even better before then, they must engage in a dialog. Then need to discuss how they intend to solve the problems they mutually agree need to be addressed. Tell us how they would work together, regardless of who was President and who the Senator, to bring their very similar programs to fruition.

Stop fighting about how many angels fit on the head of a pin. Instead inspire the angels of yours and our souls. Tell us how it's going to work. Prove that you can actually make these very urgent problems get better.

As far as I'm concerned, Hillary represents my anger the Republicans: people who use hatred and bigotry to drive wedges between us and rule for their own ends. I want her to go after them. I want her to use the powers of the presidency taken by George W. Bush and use them to remove these enemies of what the USA stands for from the stage. She represents my need for revenge.

Barrack represents what, for 40 years, I've felt was gone forever. The possibility that the USA can be better. That we can all get along. That we can all be free people living together on a free world. Where poverty is ameliorated, war and destruction are interesting historic artifacts, where all you truly need is love.

My cynicism was telling me that while Obama spoke about changing the politics of hate he wouldn't be able to do anything about it. In fact, I feared he was a phony - talking the talk, but not even interested in actually walking the walk.

Now is the time Mr. Obama. Now. Not after the nomination. Not after the election. Now.

Show us that you can work with your opponents to end the rancor. Don't attack back. No matter the provocation from the Clintons and their surrogates. No matter the goading from Tim Russert and Keith Olberman and Pat Buchanan. (I watch more MSNBC - sorry CNN, Fox and the rest.) Reach out directly to Mrs. Clinton. Reach out and show us that you actually can resolve differences and make a difference. Otherwise, sad to say, you are a phony and no more deserve to be president than John McCain the murderous bomber of poor Vietnamese children or George W. Bush or any of the other tools.

Prove you're not full of crap.

A Tragic Flaw

Watching the debate tonight...

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
  - Kurt Vonnegut

Glassbooth - Quiz to help you choose best 2008 presidential candidate

Here's an interesting and entertaining site:

Glassbooth - Quiz to help you choose best 2008 presidential candidate

It's very interesting to use and the results can be surprising. The quiz is in two parts. First you establish weighting factors for various issues. Setting these factors are key in making the results meaningful and I found I needed to revise the weighting once I'd seen how the results came out.

And it's the results that are startling. Not because of who the reveal as the best matches, but that my preferred candidates don't even make the top three through several iterations. Since I'm "So Left" it wasn't a surprise that Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel were closest to my positions, though neither was closer then about 85%, no matter how I adjusted the weighting. What was interesting was how far apart my positions were with my two favored candidates: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

This just serves to prove that even though I say I want to make a rational choice based upon how a candidate matches my positions on issues, the emotional factors are much stronger when actually choosing a favored candidate.

When you use Glassbooth's ability to drill down into each candidates positions on the issues with which you are similar or different in position, you'll see that there's much more gray than black and white. At least for me as I'm often of a much stronger position than the candidates.

For example, on Gun Control, I'm in favor of registering firearms, checking for criminal and mental problems and licensing use based upon passing safety and perhaps even skills tests. (If you can't hit a target, maybe you shouldn't have a gun?)

On the other hand, I do share a most paranoid NRA position: all weapons should be available to the citizenry (and I mean all!) so that we can defend ourselves against not only violent crime, but also against the erosion of freedom or from oppression by the government. If we're not armed then only the Military, the Police and criminals will have guns. If, as we've seen with the Bush administration, our freedoms can be taken away by the government at will, that we can be spied upon, arrested off the street, and sent to concentration camps (Gitmo) to be tortured with no hope of recourse, then we need to be able to fight back and take back our country. This is a basic right we have as Americans. If the political system becomes so corrupted by money from the beneficiaries of oppression then going outside the political system might be needed. Even our nations founders believed this to be the case: see the Declaration of Independence.

I know its absurdly extreme, but it can't be denied that these paranoid fantasies have more relevance now than in the past: the NRA may have a point.

So how does my position match up with the candidates? Most of the democrats would agree to some form of my registration/licensing. In fact, the NRA is in favor of safety testing and might even support licensing based upon the ability to actually hit what you're aiming at if the issue was addressed in an open manner. But I guarantee that no Democratic party candidate, and probably almost no Democrat or Liberal or Progressive would share my paranoid's position. That's reserved for the Libertarian wing of the Republican party, and probably the more paranoid wind of the wing at that.

So Glassbooth becomes a tool for analyzing what you really think is important for the Presidency instead of a matchmaker. One has to analyze how different a candidate is from one's position and what delta can be tolerated. For example, does it matter to me whether John Edwards isn't in favor of having a citizenry armed to the teeth with military grade weaponry? One has to start really thinking about the weighting factors. Does my desire to have a howitzer outweigh the rights of my neighbors to not have someone that heavily armed next door?

Boy does it get complicated.