Media reluctance to expose and criticize Barack Obama’s many constitutional violations

Obama Administration’s is waging a war on the Constitution, but you'll barely hear anything about it in the mass media. At Truthout, John Cusack of Truthout recently interviewed law professor Jonathan Turley. It's an extended interview that raises many serious points. They explore at depth the moral quandary many voters SHOULD feel, but won't, when enter the voting booth. In a related matter, they suggest that many Obama supporters are followers of a personality cult. And repeatedly, the mass media is going Obama license to do more of the same, despite the lies, despite the trashing of the U.S. Constitution. Here are two excerpts from the long interview:

CUSACK: I hate to speak too much to motivation, but why do you think MSNBC and other so-called centrist or left outlets won't bring up any of these things? These issues were broadcast and reported on nightly when John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez and Bush were in office. TURLEY: Well, there is no question that some at MSNBC have backed away from these issues, although occasionally you'll see people talk about – CUSACK: I think that's being kind, don't you? More like "abandoned." TURLEY: Yeah. The civil liberties perspective is rarely given more than a passing reference while national security concerns are explored in depth. Fox is viewed as protective of Bush while MSNBC is viewed as protective of Obama. But both presidents are guilty of the same violations. There are relatively few journalists willing to pursue these questions aggressively and objectively, particularly on television. And so the result is that the public is hearing a script written by the government that downplays these principles. They don't hear the word "torture." They hear "enhanced interrogation." They don't hear much about the treaties. They don't hear about the international condemnation of the United States. Most Americans are unaware of how far we have moved away from Nuremberg and core principles of international law. [More . . . ]

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Your bi-partisan politicians at work: floodgates to open to Wall Street misinformation

The hucksters are about to fill the airwaves with misinformation. From the New York Times:

Soon retirees and other investors will be barraged with advertisements for private stock offerings — via mail, cold calling, television, radio, billboards, the Internet and so on.Such advertising, which used to be banned under federal securities law, will make it easier for hedge funds, venture capitalists, start-ups and other nonpublic companies to find investors. It will also make it easier for hucksters and rip-off artists to lure people into unsuitable investments and outright frauds because private offerings are not subject to disclosure requirements and other investor protections that apply to publicly held companies. Bipartisan majorities in Congress and President Obama are to thank for this development. Bowing to the financial industry, they joined forces last April to pass a law that requires the Securities and Exchange Commission to lift the ban on mass advertising of private offerings.

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A few agitated thoughts about the Republican Convention

I'm really getting sick of this Republican BS. They are so incredibly ashamed of their extended recent track record that they have banished George W. Bush from the convention, lest he remind us what their program really amounts to, even though he was the President for eight fucking years of lies, waste, ignorance, secrecy, torture, naivete and corruption. Further, they banish Sarah Palin from the stage because even they know that she is a ill-informed PR craving clown. Look, I'm not a big fan of the Democrats these days either, but there is something surreal about this Republican party, a syndicate that plunges us into huge debt with their two non-ending corrupt miserable wars that have no defined objective and then they further plunge us into debt with non-stop tax cuts for the rich (and no, the war continues in Iraq--we just aren't officially there). And then they cart out a candidate who hides his money in Swiss banks after making his multi-millions by plunging vulnerable companies into massive debt using third party money. And now their plan is to have more of the same: Destroy our last functioning social institutions, redirecting those tax dollars to their uber-rich friends too and then the victims--and many of people are truly innocent victims of this insanity--will be showered with unrelenting blame. This Republican Convention is nothing but an hyper-orgy of social darwinism where the corporate media will mostly (luckily there are a few exceptions) pretend that this star-studded stunt is part of normal functioning democracy. No thanks. This is the party of Goldman Sachs--this is the party of big money in search of nothing by more money. They will NEVER have enough. What is being paraded in front of us is actually Oligarchs at Work and their followers who want to believe more than anything else that sucking the treasury dry and otherwise doing NOTHING will somehow make the nation highly functional. Doing nothing does not make for a garden--it makes for a twisted tangled jungle. THAT is the plan. In the meantime, most of those thousands of corporate media reporters in attendance have no damned idea about how to ask a meaningful question, even though 90% of those attending are one half-baked question from being exposed as fear-peddling criminals and chumps parading as paragons of morality. This is shameful, dangerous and sick. The only quick remedy I can think of for what's going on is mass derision. Those of us who are self-critical and informed need to talk up. We need to call and write and make lots of noise, in email, on websites, in newspapers, to our representatives, to our neighbors and to anyone who listens. We need to establish that the new growing trend is that we are not buying any of this. Urge your friends and family to turn off their TVs, to really get informed and join this movement.

Continue ReadingA few agitated thoughts about the Republican Convention

Where did all of those “journalists” come from?

At Salon, David Sirota noticed 15,000 journalists coming of nowhere to cover the Republican National Convention, which is not difficult journalism, but only a big fat staged PR orgy:

More and more media markets in America have become news deserts — places where city council meetings go uncovered, corruption scandals goes unnoticed and huge social ills go unmentioned. Typically, this is explained as a crisis of journalism — more specifically, a crisis of journalism resources. According to media executives’ talking points, news organizations are losing audience share, which means advertisers won’t pay as much for ads, which consequently reduces the revenues that fund real reporting. Rooted in a self-reinforcing cycle, this tautology seems to make perfect sense. The “Dickensian aspect” of real news that affects real people’s lives simply can’t be covered because news outlets just don’t have the resources! There’s just one minor problem with this fable: It can’t be true when the same allegedly cash-strapped media is deploying 15,000 journalists to the non-news events known as the Republican and Democratic conventions.

Continue ReadingWhere did all of those “journalists” come from?