Not me, them, and in a most disingenuous way:
"The role of partisan media" by Michael Kranish | Globe Staff, October 06, 2013
Related:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
This ought to be good then!
WASHINGTON — The host on Fox News Channel was chipper as ever one morning earlier this year as he welcomed the network’s newest commentator, former US representative Allen West. The Florida Republican was on to discuss his astonishing claim: US Attorney General Eric Holder was a “bigger threat to our Republic” than the leader of Al Qaeda and was guilty of “treason from within.”
Well, he's right about that, but....
It was ideological napalm, and “Fox & Friends” was happy to play along. The producer put up images of Holder and Osama bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Fox host Brian Kilmeade sounded pleased, telling West, “It’s great to have you on board.’’ And West, who declined an interview request, was hardly done. On another Fox program, he branded Obama’s appointment of Susan Rice as national security adviser “a flip of a certain finger in the face of the American people.”
The remarks set off the usual sound and fury in polarized Washington. A liberal watchdog group expressed outrage. Online sites and Twitter followers argued over the charges.
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Nor, it often seems, is there an issue that the dueling cable channels won’t hype for their own partisan purposes.
I believe the term is chutzpah.
Not long ago, some scholars of public discourse dreamed that an era of rapidly proliferating channels and platforms — enabling almost anyone to get airtime for their viewpoint — might soften some of democracy’s rough edges by making it harder for partisans with the loudest voices and biggest signal to hijack the debate.
What the Globe is finding sour is the blogs they vaguely referred to there, and they are bemoaning the fact they they no longer control the agenda of consensus so easily -- all over this falsely presented agenda-pushing division. The subtle insults and cute word play just isn't cutting it for me anymore.
Instead, what was once billed as the greatest democratization of information in the world’s history has helped land us where we are now.
Translation: their arrogant proclamation of control of information had unintended consequences, and you are reading one.
The growing personalization of media sources has yielded a world of competing commentators who, with few exceptions, stake out the rigid edge of their piece of the political spectrum. The profit is in extremity. Any remark can catch fire, and each channel or site can have outsized impact.
I find them to line up behind certain goals in unity, if jou know what I mean.
The result: an explosion in the availability of information has coincided with historic levels of political polarization — the starkest divide since the early 1900s, according to a Duke University study released this year.
The truth tends to do polarize the government from the people to whom they lied.
While many factors have fed this trend, analysts believe that ideological media outlets have contributed significantly and hardened the battle lines.
Is that just super-splendid $hit or what?
For some time, the hosts of some of the most popular partisan shows, such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity on Fox, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and Rush Limbaugh on the radio, have regularly driven the day’s discussion — or at least define its extremes to left and right.
Says jwho?
They provide a forum that can gain a far larger audience than a member of Congress can get delivering a floor speech shown live on C-Span and perhaps covered by conventional news media.
Some hosts, meanwhile, have created media empires that include paid speeches and lucrative book contracts, all of which benefit from high-octane partisanship to keep the customers coming; moderation and compromise are death on ratings....
In an era of shout-fests, Twitter-flames, and comment wars, the danger, in other words, is that the measured voice that leads to compromise has been all but drowned out.
Yeah, time for everyone to chill out and calm down.
* * * * * *
Liberals have also tried their hand at partisan shows, but the megaphone has proven smaller. The failures include Air America, a liberal talk-show radio network, and Current TV, which was sold to Al Jazeera America, which began broadcasting on Aug. 20, promoting itself as filling the need for straight-ahead news programming.
I call it Al-Jewzeera because it has the same corporate focus as the AmeriKan jewsmedia. I suppose Sunni oil kingdom money and its views are not so different. As for Air AmeriKa, I am occasionally subjected to that offensive controlled-opposition slop in the afternoons.
Reasons for the difficulty of sustaining a liberal network include struggles in retaining younger people who get their news online or profess to get their information from sources such as The Daily Show, a comedy show that often mocks Fox (and sometimes Obama).
The most prominent cable purveyor of liberalism is MSNBC. It did well amid the heightened interest of the 2012 campaign but has seen its ratings fluctuate since.
MSNBC officials declined to comment but clearly they have bet on commentary to attract a regular audience of liberal viewers.
That's why we call it the Most Shitty News Broadcast Channel, although I must admit I never watch it.
* * *
At CNN, meanwhile, the mantra is that the network can prosper by catering to a large slice of viewers who want independent-minded news, not opinion.
I never watch ZNN, either.
* * *
White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer often finds himself on the receiving end of this multifront media border war, trying to figure out how to respond to countless tweets, blogs, and breaking stories, many of which are potentially harmful to Obama. Every day is an exercise is combatting and controlling the message....
He's that busy at imagery, illusion, and propaganda, huh?
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I keep waiting for the Broken City installment dealing with the influence of AIPAC and WINEP.
In days past I may have found a newspaper story or two interesting. Now, pffft!
Here are the guys behind the strategy, or so I'm told, although it appears the Koch brothers are cool when it comes to childcare at the Military Institute of Technology. What I'm finding is the more print my agenda-pushing war paper gives to an issue the less I want to read it. It even has its own notebook now.
Related:
"Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made a surprise announcement that he would recall next week almost all of the 400,000 civilian employees of the Defense Department who had been sent home when the government shut down. Hagel said the decision that most of the department’s civilian workers would now be exempted from furloughs came after Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers interpreted a stopgap budget law to include a larger number of workers."
No parti$anship there.
And that "furlough" is nothing more than a paid vacation?
"Furlough pay would negate shutdown savings; Added expenses contrast with talk of fiscal restraint" by Noah Bierman | Globe Staff, October 08, 2013
WASHINGTON — A vote over the weekend to grant back pay to furloughed federal workers would negate any savings from a government shutdown and is more likely to raise net costs to taxpayers, according to government and outside estimates.
This whole political $hit-fooley is now a farce.
The move highlights another peculiarity of shutting down the government: under Washington’s political calculus, sending employees home for an indefinite period does not save money.
Instead, if the Senate agrees and President Obama signs the legislation as expected, it will mean hundreds of thousands of workers will get what amounts to extra paid holidays — which they didn’t want — even as millions of Americans are unable to visit national monuments, process loans, or obtain other services.
Un-flipping-believable!
“The public doesn’t have a whole lot of respect for the efficiency of the federal government,” said G. William Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center who served as budget director for former Republican Senate majority leader Bill Frist. “Well, they should have even less when they’re getting paid for not doing anything.”
It is not only lack of respect, it is contempt.
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There are probably going to be secondary costs, marginal in size but symbolically significant, which have yet to be estimated. They include the expense of getting the government back on its feet once the shutdown is over and paying for higher bids submitted by contractors who are hedging against future instability.
Taxpayers get $crewed no matter which way they bend!
The director of the Congressional Budget Office has said shutdown-related waste is compounded by the uncertainty and planning required by government agencies before the shutdown, as they put off projects and drafted contingency plans.
“You can’t explain it very well” to constituents, conceded Senator Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican. “It doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t agree with the shutdown in the first place.”
But, he said federal workers should still get paid.
“We caused this headache. It wasn’t them,” Flake said. “We ought to make them whole.”
Yes let's make those federal workers whole again -- which the House did to 407-0 vote.
How about making the nation and its citizen taxpayers whole, huh, Flake?
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A new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed growing disapproval of the way Congress and Obama are handling the budget controversy.
But the GOP continued to bear the greatest responsibility, with 70 percent of respondents saying they disapprove of the way congressional Republicans have handled the matter. Democrats in Congress got 61 percent disapproval for their performance on the matter; Obama got 51 percent disapproval.
What you notice is the numbers are all over 50 percent. Divide them by two and add the result to the original number and that will give you the true pulse of the people. We BLAME BOTH PARTIES for the state of the nation because BOTH have EARNED and DESERVE BLAME!
--more--"
Meanwhile, the Obamacatastrophe is being debugged after the hacking of the exchanges.
Also see:
I'm Glad the Government is Shut Down
Obama the Obstructionist
Wild Day in Washington
Slow Saturday Special: DC Driver Was 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist
Globe buried that story quick.
I'm a little sour on them, folks, so I don't know how much more I can give you.
