We're all victims of the compliant US media shamefully assisting the extremist administration into transforming America into a dictatorship and ignoring one of the most serious threats facing America's democracy today -- riggable voting machines.
There are alternatives to the overwhelmingly fascist media. I'll share some with you later.
Independent new sources can be found here at these links:
[A href="http://www.rawstory.com/"]http://www.rawstory.com/[/A]
[A href="http://www.thenation.com/"]http://www.thenation.com/[/A]
[A href="http://www.bradblog.com"]www.bradblog.com[/A]
hub_spinner wrote:
We're all victims of the compliant US media shamefully assisting the extremist administration into transforming America into a dictatorship and ignored one of the most serious threat facing America's democracy today -- riggable voting machines.
Like your views, hub-spinner
There are alternatives to the overwhelmingly fascist media. I'll share some with you later.
There are plenty of alternatives.
The problem is, the vast majority of Americans believe that (and I've heard this expressed several times) the truth lies somewhere between the conservative Fox News and the "liberal" CNN. I had a friend who said that he watched both, so as to gain a balanced understanding of the issues.
What most people don't understand is that on the issues that really matter, the difference between Fox News and CNN is pretty much non-existence. Like the difference between the Republicans and Democrats. Often it's just a difference in tone, rather than substance.
The internet will turn the tide. CNN is a slimy, spineless, pro-Fascism apologist news service, no two-ways about it.
No. It won't turn the tide.
Americans are jaded and lazy when it comes to politics.
It's really too late for access to the truth to make any real difference IMO.
We will wait until a crisis to act, and then act (as we did after 9/11) in a mindless, reptillian manner, making the situation even worse. Then we will go back to business as usual.
The system will maintain equilibrium for as long as possible, but let's face it, the future looks grim.
I hope you're wrong, Tenkani, for the sake of America and for the sake of the world.
tenkani wrote:
There are plenty of alternatives.
The problem is, the vast majority of Americans believe that (and I've heard this expressed several times) the truth lies somewhere between the conservative Fox News and the "liberal" CNN.
Then watch MSNBC. (http://discoverseattle.net/forums/richedit/smileys/Happy/6.gif)
Sad thing is that most americans still believe that iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that the terrorists on 9/11 came through Canada.
Yes, most Americans believe that Sadaam had something to do with 9/11. Even after all the lies and manipulation that has surfaced.
Mainstream journalists are terrified of doing any real investigative work when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. Ok, closer to the truth is probably that the journalists aren't assigned projects like that. The particular political leanings of a reporter are irrelevant for the most part. Individual reporters (unless they're superstars like Dan Rather) don't decide what stories to cover, or how they should be reported.
Mainstream news, like most of Americans television, is all about selling advertising time. In other words, we get the news we ask for. We aren't being challenged and engaged because that's not what sells product.
"the journalists aren't assigned projects like that."
Of course they aren't. Who wants to be labeled by the conservative media a "traitor." Edward R. Murrow would have been shot if the things he did during McCarthyism Era was today.
And real news here doesn't sell. We like the Natalie Hollaway stories.
Exactly. Why? Because the real, important news stories tend to be complex. They require some knowledge of history, culture...in short, CONTEXT. It's hard to spoon-feed a story like that in 30 seconds.
Whereas hearing about Clinton getting his dick sucked is an issue where people can react from emotion rather than intellect. It's like easy listening news. Completely un-challenging and IMO uninteresting. And Bush is the easy listening president.
The funny thing is people don't like depressing stories so news agencies move away from the hard news into the fluff stuff but yet the country can't get enough of Natalie Hollaway, the next kidnapped teenage girl, the duke rape case and laci peterson cases.
I don't think it's depressing stories that bother people.
Like you said, folks tune in for stories of rape, murder and all manner of other atrocity.
They just don't like having to think.
Enter the "infotainment" industry (http://discoverseattle.net/forums/richedit/smileys/Sad/8.gif)
or they like to be told what to think:
(http://www.eurweb.com/images/articles/200601/bill_oreilly(004-headshot-from-tv-mad-med).jpg)
Sportsdude wrote:
"the journalists aren't assigned projects like that."
Of course they aren't. Who wants to be labeled by the conservative media a "traitor." Edward R. Murrow would have been shot if the things he did during McCarthyism Era was today.
And real news here doesn't sell. We like the Natalie Hollaway stories.[/DIV]
[FONT color=#00007f]Who cares how anyone is portrayed by the conservative media? Unless, of course, it's in a derogatory sense - in which case it's complimentary. [/FONT]
The conservative P.R. machine is very good at what it does.
They turned "liberal" into a dirty word in the media.
Everyone's terrified of the Republicans, which is partly why Demos are so f*cking innefective.
Spineless, whining little shits (//forums/richedit/smileys/Angry/5.gif)
republicans are not republicans anymore. They have been hijacked by conservatives. The last real 'republican' president was Nixon.
Well, something like that, yeah.
The Republican party is in the hands of extremists and corporate interests, and you're right, it wasn't always that way. Republicans used to be the anti-slavery party.
Anyway, I keep hearing that a lot of moderate Republicans have been completely sidelined by their party. They are voiceless, which is sad.
And at the same time, "extremists" in the democractic party, that is, real liberals, have been sidelined as well. So the Republican message is one of short-sighted, narrow-minded ultra-conservatism, while the Democratic message is...well, it's missing. Hopefully they can find it before the next election but I doubt it.
Democrats biggest problem is that they want what the Republicans want. They go after the same people instead of the 175 million out there that don't vote but would vote if they had a voice. For example Kerry going duck hunting, Hillary going after video games. Those are all Republican issues.
When the democrats get away from the wannabe republican mantra and go back to FDR principals of a liberal view with light socialism, then they are getting somewhere. There still stuck on Bill Clinton. He could get away with acting like a republican in the south and a liberal in the north because he grew up in a trailer park in Hope, Arkansas. Therefore his message worked. Ever since Bill the democrats have been trying to copy that image which is something they are not.
Gore tried to make himself a southerner by saying he was from Tennessee even thou he grew up in D.C. Kerry tried to make himself look like an every man but he got swift boated. Hillary is going down that path which I don't get because there are no undecideds when it comes to Hillary. You either like her or you don't. So instead they are playing the 2 for 1 card. Double your value, you get Bill and Hillary. Might work might not.
[FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00"]It is fair to point out that there are journalists (and politicians), though few and far between who have enough spine to stand up for what is right:, such Plain Dealer reporter Alison Grant (and Senator Debra Bowen).[/FONT]
[A href="http://www.cleveland.com/business/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/business/1145867701235570.xml&coll=2&thispage=4"]http://www.cleveland.com/business/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/business/1145867701235570.xml&coll=2&thispage=4[/A][A href="http://www.cleveland.com/business/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/business/1145867701235570.xml&coll=2"][/A]
"Michael Kohn, general counsel for the National Whistleblower Center, sees Heller as a "quintessential whistleblower" in the vein of Daniel Ellsberg, who released the classified Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971. The Times' publication of lengthy excerpts shed damaging light on the U.S. military's execution of the Vietnam War.
"This is a very rare instance," Kohn said of the Heller case, "in fact the only one of which I'm aware, in which a whistleblower has been charged with a felony. I find it outrageous."
The documents allegedly leaked by Heller show Diebold lawyers budgeting for Diebold's criminal defense. Diebold was indeed referred by Calif. Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to Calif. Attorney General Bill Lockyer, recommending criminal charges. Lockyer failed to act.
Yet Heller goes to trial today for allegedly leaking the documents proving that Diebold knew in advance that it was lying to the California secretary of state. The lies Diebold told were material, and caused the elections for the 2004 presidential primary to melt down in Alameda and San Diego counties, with hundreds of polling places unable to make the customized-but-lied-about firmware work, disenfranchising thousands of voters.
* * * * *
Because the information was publicly released, it was able to impact public policy. And as a general public policy guideline, every day that important evidence is withheld from the public means one more election gets run on defective, hackable equipment that also miscounts votes by accident.
Still unresolved: GEMS central tabulator hackability - it's alive and well and has never been corrected.
Still not solved: Diebold memory card hackability -- though test labs claim that Diebold misrepresented the interpreter and interpreted code to them, so they improperly passed the system, allowing it to be certified -- the system is STILL certifed.
Still out there ticking like a time bomb: Customized Windows CE operating system on the Diebold TS-R6 and TSx touch-screens. Used to penetrate the system in Emery County, Utah. Test labs now admit they should have tested it, but didn't, and the systems were improperly certified. The problem has not been corrected and is likely to impede the integrity of the 2006 federal election.
Calif. Attorney General Bill Lockyer also was informed of the improperly certified Windows CE, its risk to the voting system, and the fact that Diebold misrepresented it to the testing labs. He was informed formally of this in Nov. 2003, but did no investigation and took no action against either Diebold or the test labs, who should have caught this.
Lockyer also knew of the problem with GEMS hackability and Diebold's misrepresentation of GEMS as a "secure" system, but took no action and did not investigate.
* * * * *
Thanks to Stephen Heller and others like him. When it comes to elections, there can be no justification for keeping information away from the public while allowing public officials, ballot initiatives, judges, presidents and control of the U.S. congress to take place. If information is withheld, the damage cannot be undone.
The fact that, as far as I know, there will STILL not be any paper trail (paper ballots) to check in the next presidential election is the biggest f*ckup in U.S. electoral history IMO.
There is no reason that after someone makes their electronic choices on the machine, they can't be shown their paper ballot (sealed behind a transparent window) so that they can verify the two votes match. Then, in the case of a questionable election result, the paper ballots can be cross-checked against the electronic. Essentially, each machine would have a printer integrated into it. Since every cash register around has something like this, I'm thinking that the price must not be too outrageous. And weigh saving a few bucks against eliminating the possibility of having the election results hacked.
I have yet to hear a rational reason that this would be impossible.
Check out this great news source: [A href="http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/"]http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/[/A]
Yeeeeeah, I may just wait on checking downwithtranny until I'm not using my work PC.
EDIT: LOL. Ok, I seriously need some glasses. Or maybe my mind is just in the gutter
(http://discoverseattle.net/forums/richedit/smileys/Happy/18.gif)
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[A class=Agenda onmouseover="doRollover(this, 'transparent', '#ff0000')" onmouseout="doRollover(this, 'transparent', '#444444')" href="http://www.truthout.org/" target=_blank][FONT style="COLOR: #444444" face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Truthout[/FONT][/A]
[A href="http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/2006/04/voting_machine_trouble_looms.aspx"][FONT size=2]http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/2006/04/voting_machine_trouble_looms.aspx[/FONT][/A]
[H1]Arkansas Blog[/H1] [H2 id=banner-description][/H2] [DIV id=pagebody] [DIV class=pkg id=pagebody-inner] [DIV id=alpha] [DIV class=pkg id=alpha-inner] [P class=content-nav]Voting machine trouble looms
[DIV class=entry id=entry-227] [DIV class=entry-content] [DIV class=entry-body] The Pulaski County Election Commission held an emergency meeting this morning to discuss impending problems with voting machines as the May 23 primary election approaches.
"We made the commissioners aware that we are going to be shorted the expected number of touch screen units," said commission director Susan Inman. "The state didn't order enough for us to fulfill our request."
It's not just the machines that are late in arriving. The machines need special software to operate, and the vendor, Election Systems and Software (ES&S), has not provided the software in time to test it before early voting begins.
"We had to order ballots, but we have no method to test the ballots to make sure they properly tabulate," Inman said. "In other words, we are having thousands of ballots printed, but we don't know if they work or not. It makes me nervous."
Inman said they almost certainly will not have enough units in time for the primary voting, as they expected, so they are making alternative plans that include utilizing paper ballots at early voting locations, "which we do not want to do."
This is a statewide issue, because the transition to touch-screen voting is taking place throughout Arkansas. Therefore other counties have the same problems and concerns, Inman noted. She said she is staying in constant communication with ES&S and the secretary of state's office.
The Pulaski County Election Commission will meet again on Friday morning to continue discussions about the issue.
[DIV class=entry-more id=more][/DIV][/DIV][/DIV][/DIV][/DIV][/DIV][/DIV][/DIV]
A excellent news source, superior to the Overwhelmingly Fascist News Media, is [a href="http://www.rawstory.com/"]www.TheRawStory.com [/a]
[p style="font-weight: bold;" class="blogSubject"][a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/the-media-isnt-supposed-_b_20521.html"] The Mainstream Media is a Shameful Cesspool of Lies[/a][/p][p class="blogSubject"]by Adam Fulford
[/p] [p class="blogContent"]The wave of the future is Independent Bloggers such as [a set="yes" href="http://www.rawstory.com/" rel="nofollow"]www.rawstory.com[/a], [a href="http://www.blackboxvoting.org/" rel="nofollow"]www.blackboxvoting.org[/a], and [a href="http://www.bradblog.com/" rel="nofollow"]www.bradblog.com[/a] who are NOT beholden to corrupt bosses and greedy sociopathic corporate interests. Such Bloggers practice the kind of well-researched journalistic integrity grotesquely lacking in the shameful and cowardly American Mainstream News Media (or, more accurately, the Overwhelmingly Fascist American News Media). According to a journalist I know well (a former Forbes editor), people in the American news media today are ashamed of themselves and embarrassed to be a part of their profession. And they should be ashamed of themselves, since journalists in the American news media today are truly among the most vile and disgraceful whores on the face of the planet. The cowardly and corrupt Mainstream American News Media whores have blood on their hands; they aid and abet the traitors carrying out the War Against American Voters and spread the propaganda that facilitates the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians. Thankfully, some people possess the moral fiber and intelligence to accurately report news via blog/alternative news sites such as [a href="http://www.rawstory.com/" rel="nofollow"]www.rawstory.com[/a], and [a set="yes" href="http://www.blackboxvoting.org/" rel="nofollow"]www.blackboxvoting.org[/a], [a href="http://www.theyoungturks.com/" target="_self"]http://www.theyoungturks.com[/a], and of course [a set="yes" href="http://www.bradblog.com/" rel="nofollow"]www.bradblog.com[/a]. While being a mainstream "journalist" is a mark of shame, the title of "Blogger" is a badge of honor.[/p][a href="http://www.rawstory.com/"][/a]