Minsinformers of the Year

This year, Media Matters has seen fit to award MULTIPLE "Misinformer of the Year" awards.  As evidenced by my own Hall of Fame (December's Inductee's coming soon) I LOVE this kind of thing, so for those who share my interest and would like to see just how bad the Right Wing Media gets, here are the Media Matters:

2011 Misinformer of the Year: Ruppert Murdoch and News Corporation
2011 Misinformer on LGBT Issues: Dr. Kieth Ablow
2011 Misinformer on Climate Issues: Rush Limbaugh
2011 Misinformer on FOX News: Fox & Friends

While all are well earned and richly deserved, ff particular note are Dr. Ablow's views on the transgendered in general, and Chaz Bono in particular, and Limbaugh's absolute gems on the Global Warming.  Mu favorite might just be (emphasis added):

LIMBAUGH: How did I know global warming is a hoax? 'Cause of who's behind pushing it. Liberals. They lie.

[...] If there ever is scientific proof -- and see, I don't need scientific proof because to me the people who are promoting manmade global warming are a bunch of frauds. They are liberals, they lie. It's not a generalization. It is an undeniable truth of life.

While the absolute absurdity of these statement is both undeniable and self-evident, I am tickled pink to see, once again, further evidence of what I always say:

WHEN YOU ARGUE WITH A LIBERAL, THEY'LL PROVE THAT YOU'RE WRONG.

WHEN YOU ARGUE WITH A CONSERVATIVE, THEY'LL PROVE THAT YOU'RE LIBERAL.

And? BOTH will in fact be right!

And over the years, I think that MMFA has done a good job of calling the person or entity that went above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to carrying water for the Right Wing Propaganda Machine.  Past MIY winners include:

2010: Sarah Palin
2009: Glenn Beck
2008: Sean Hannity
2007: Offensive and Degrading Speech (not just Imus!)
2006: ABC
2005: Chris Matthews
2004: Bill O’Rielly

Interesting reads all.  Well done MMFA. I hope that, in future, you will continue this new tradition of award not only an overall award, but awards based on smaller issues as well.

NOTE: In the next couple of days, should more of the issue-based award be named, I will updated this post accordingly.

Forget Fascists... we're actually Nazi's now

Provocative title, I know.

I had to take a break for a few days.  I heard a story on NPR Frito be day morning that was profoundly disturbing.  And my anger It came through in my posts to MMFA on Friday, it came through in my work / in the office, and even my wife noticed it when I got home.  So I had to take a breather.  And you know what? A few days later, and I don't feel any less repulsed by it.

As if the Citizens United decision wasn't bad enough, NPR did a story about ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.  To put it gently, it's a non-profit that hooks up corporate shills and legislators for the purpose of getting really awful legislation passed, and obfuscating where it comes from, and just who's buying the legislator in question.  And because it's a non-profit, and they provide all the "scholarships," (an utterly Orwellian term that almost makes me throw-up in my mouth to use,) any disclosure the Legislator does make just say "ALEC."  NOT the corporation who's really buying them.  And what's more? Unlike with lobby groups (HOW the HELL is this not a lobby group?! WTF?!) Corporations actually get a TAX WRITE-OFF for their donations to ALEC!

So how does this make u s"Nazi's?"  Am I just being melodramatic?  I don't think so. Not anymore.

Do you know where the new, controversial Arizona immigration law came from?  Well, it came out of an ALEC conference.  And who else was in attendance at that conference? Why, the largest private prison company in the country: the Corrections Corporation of America. So follow me for a second here...

In case you were wondering, YES, they are a for-profit company.  They're traded on the NYSE.  You can look it up.  We actually have for-profit incarceration in this country! Maye I'm just a little slow, but I didn't know that. Of course, it's sold as a cost-cutting measure for states - just like everything else we should never even CONSIDER privatizing.  And sure enough: it's cheaper.  Problem is?  If the prisons aren't filled to at least 90-95% capacity, they don't make a profit.

So.... What to do... What to do?

Well... what they DID do was to craft a bill/ law specifically designed to get MORE PEOPLE thrown in prison!  That's the Arizona Immigration law, requiring police to arrest ANYONE who can't PROVE they're not in this country legally, ON THE SPOT.  And, putting aside the whole "innocent auntil proven guilty" implications, of course anyone with two brain cells to bounce together (which excluded most Conservatives apparently) realizes that this is a law aimed primarily at arresting Mexicans.

Now... normally a law like this might meet with some public backlash, so what to do... what to do...  Well... The politicians could take to the airwaves, making up all kinds of nonsense and slander to turn public sentiment against Illegalls, yes, but also against Mexicans as well as Immigrants in general.  (Hey: That fits right in with thier anti-Muslim agenda anyway, right?) 

So... You've got politicans using the media to vilify an already small and unpopular minority group, with few rights, and no means to recourse, spreading all kinds of false information about them and the affect they have on our society - much of it 180 derees divorced from reality - all to drum up support for a bill designed to do nothing else but to get as many members of this very minority group carted off to prison as possible.

Um... How is that NOT Nazi, exactly?  The only separating this from the gas chambers? Is the GAS!

And you know what?  Putting aside that we're not actually KILLING them - fair enough - from a certain POV, we're actually WORSE than the Nazi's.  Yeah, seriously.  Stay with me now... You see... Hitler, in his own perverse way, actually believed that what he was doing was right.  As despicable, and unimaginably inhuman as it was? His "final solution" was being done for purely idealistic reasons: to "save" Germany.  Of course... his ideals were utterly monstrous. But why are WE doing the same thing? Sure, the politicians would have you believe that it's all to "save" America.  (Sound familiar?) And in that way it's every bit as misguided as Hitler's persecution of the Jews was.  But the fact is? That's all bullshit. I almost wish they were being that twistedly idealistic about it.  The REAL reason we're vilifying and incarcerating Mexicans?

Is so that a for-profit corporation can make more money.

That's it.

And that's beyond fascist... that NAZI territory, plain and simple.  I've taken some time to try and view this from any other perspective and I just can't see one.  We're fucking Nazi's.  Congratulations America, you now incarcerate minorities for no greater, misguided "ideal" than INCREASED CORPORATE PROFITS.

And you know what? Goebbels would be utterly HUMBLED by what the Right has managed to do to OUR media.  HE had to at least make an EFFORT! OUR Right-Wing scumbags?  Have Fox News cheerleading for them, propagandizing for them, as a matter course, no longer even bothering to keep up the PRETENSE of doing otherwise... and MAKING A PROFIT DOING IT!!! And the rest of the media follows suit for fear of being branded as "Liberal biased!"  They've turned the media against their opposition, either vehemently or passively (which is far more effective anyway) and they didn't have to spend a single Penny of government money to do it!  Goebbels's could certainly have learn a thing or two from Murdoch, Ailes and company. He had to make an effort.  The Right in this country? Has made it the natural default perspective!

Anyway, I'm done.

For awhile, actually.

Seriously.

I'm going to take a little break.  I have to.  You can't wake up to the realization that your country incarcerates people for profit, and that politicians use the media to market the policty, FALSELY vilifying the people in question, and yet only one, single arm of this so-called "liberal media" (NPR) is even talking about it...and think that anything you can do or say is going to accomplish ANYTHING.  This story just... crushed me.  It swept away my last hope that this country even has a soul left to save.

George Carlin once said that fascism would not come to America in Brown-Shirts and Jack-Boots, but rather wearing Nike's.  Well... it's not about Nike, but the point was positively and prfoundly prophetic.  And it will simply not serve my mental health to keep railing against such utter hopelessness.  I need a little time to recharge my batteries.  Find a different direction to take this in.  So... we'll see how it and where it goes.

Oh, ad uh... BTW...

There's an election tomorrow.  So, vote. I guess.  It's supposed to be important... or something.

And just like Glenn Beck, I'm not going to tell you who to vote for.  Honestly, I don't really think it matters anymore anyway.  But UNLIKE Glenn Beck, I'm going to give you this advice:  WHATEVER you do, don't vote for

As three wise men once said...

"All we have to fear, is fear itself!" ~Franklin Roosevelt

"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." ~Yoda

and, perhaps the most important lesson for these spineless, useless Democrats to learn:

"Given a choice between a Republican and a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they'll choose the Republican every time" ~Harry Truman

...

WHY, with 20th Century icons like Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson to draw inspiration from, do they decide instead to take their lead from the likes of BILL CLINTON? 

WHY?!

Why should Corporations NOT have free speech?

There are TWO items from my last post that I felt needed some 'splainin.

First of all... that crack about applying the second amendment "six times" on those who keep forgetting about the first amendment? That was really beneath me. I'm not MUCH better than that, but I AM better than that. Now, don't get me wrong: If Anotin Scalia walked out of the courthouse and was struck by lightning I'd laugh my fucking ass off and pop open a bottle of champagne. But I would not see even a Government and Supreme Court overrun with Tea-Bagging Klansman "fixed" by violence and revolution. If someone WERE to kill a Supreme Court Justice, or any other public official, they should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. I refuse to be the "Ann Coulter" of the left. Hopefully no one took that LITERALLY.

The OTHER was a clarification on why I do not apply my vehement and unconditional support of free speech to Corporations. Why would someone as zealous as I am about free speech want to put a limit on Corporate Speech?

First of all, let's be clear what we're really talking about. I don't care if a corporation wants to advertise, nor do I think it's the Government's job to make them prove their claims, etc... Outside of pharmaceuticals, which are regulated for obvious reasons, I don't care WHAT businesses say within the course of DOING BUSINESS. Nor do I really even care if they want to run ISSUE ads - if ExxonMobil wants to try and make the case that Oil and Gas are preferable to Solar? Go right ahead. That's really not much different than advertising anyway.

What I'm talking about here, is PARTISAN and ELECTORAL issues. If ExxonMobil wants to say "Vote for Palin" or pay for some Anti-Abortion ads (or any issue that DOESN'T have anything to do with their course of business) I have a problem with that. In fact, I'd go even beyond Austin. Forget regulating it, and treating it a political contribution, I'd be in favor of outright BANNING it. There are two reasons why.

The most commonly used reason is that corporations, with all their vast resources, can (and do) drown out the voice of the individual. So allow their free speech allows them to prohibit ours. I agree with that. I think it's reasonable, and it's why I support both the Fairness Doctrine and Net Neutrality.

But there's another way in which corporations act even more insidiously when they "speak." First of all, you have to realize that corporations don't really SPEAK. They SPEND MONEY to get a certain message put out there. And that money is, of course, the property of the shareholders. So who decides what the Corporation wants to "say?" Well, that's the board of directors, who are elected by the shareholders. Typically this includes several of the BIGGEST shareholders. Now, if assume for the moment that since most boards, consisting of very rich, very white, men and their proxies, the "shareholders" are "electing" people to put out Conservative, Corporatist, Republican message. And if they were polled according to their shares of the company, you might find rations reaching 90-some percent in favor. BUT, when you consider how many people own stock - usually though a 401-K - and that most of that stock is owned through MUTUAL FUNDS, and most Blue Chips are carried by pretty much every Mutual fund, you'll conclude that something like 90+% of the electorate owns SOME miniscule percentage of... ExxonMobil, for example. And if you were to poll that group BY PERSON, I submit that you would find their political demographic matches the general public pretty closely - IOW: It would cover a broad spectrum, with almost equal representation of Liberals and Conservatives, Republicans and Democrats.

Now... Why is that important?

Simple: Because corporate speech results in the ULTIMATE "winner takes all" approach to political speech! A dozen or so men decide what the Corporation will say, and end up speaking for literally Tens of Millions of Shareholders, not to mention Hundreds of Thousands of EMPLOYEES, many of which may not feel that the Corporations POLITICAL message matches what THEY want to say. So now, not only is the moneyed interest drowning them out... WORSE: They actually using assets partially OWED by that person to put out a message contrary to their beliefs! And I mention employees, because I do believe that they are stakeholders in a Corporation every bit as much as the shareholders are. One might also consider the CUSTOMERS to be stakeholders as well. After all, I give MY MONEY to that corporation. What right do they have to use it to put out a message that I don't agree with? OK, of course I can't just take my business elsewhere, but I think you're getting the idea.

When a corporation "speaks" it does on behalf of shareholders, employees, customers, and arguably other stake-holders as well. And it does so WITHOUT REGARD to those people's wishes. And THAT to me is why it's not the same thing. They don't just drown me out, the SPEAK for me, using assets that I own a piece of, to say something that I wouldn't say.

One more thing, regarding corporate boards. Those members that didn’t just BUY their way on were elected by the shareholders to RUN THE BUSINESS. If I'm a voting shareholder, then I want to vote for the guy who's going to make me the most money, all else being equal. I shouldn't feel as though I need to vote for someone I believe to be the less competent person because of political considerations. If you restrict corporate "speech" to those areas that are directly relevant to their business, then I don't HAVE this conflict.

ANYWAY, that's why I don't consider Corporate Speech to even fall under first amendment protection.