Who do you like?

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by wil

If Hillary and Obama go at it hard enough and Edwards plays his cards right he could slip in.

If it comes down to Edwards vs Huckabee, I just might have to go riot in the streets!

[wil]

Originally Posted by seattlegal

If it comes down to Edwards vs Huckabee, I just might have to go riot in the streets!

Don't riot, vote third Party!!

I see a potential for Edwards but currently think Obama will be the candidate. I don't see Huckabee having a chance. The Republicans are going to pick from the smoke-filled back room, and then do the charade at convention. If they were smart they'd pick McCain, he being the only one that pols high against Democrats, as he is also appealing to the conservative wing of that party.

Edwards I believe could stand up to the Republican fray, Obama I feel won't make it...not this time, but 4-8 years from now he'll be a viable candidate.

CCS- fear works with our voting public, why would they throw away an effective tool? Like negative adds, everyone will continue to use what works, despite what we say we don't want, as long as it is beneficial it will continue.

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by wil

Don't riot, vote third Party!!

I dunno, wil, two Nanny-Staters wrapped in the banner of class warfare would call for something more than just voting third party, imo. It would call for exposing them for what they are.

[China Cat Sunflower]

It's interesting. As the second tier of candidates drops out you lose the real points of debate. The first round of cuts are the real foreign policy wonks like Joe Biden and Chris Dodd. Duncan Hunter on the R side is no foreign policy slouch. It all seems to come down to trust. Who do you trust to change things? But I don't want to trust. I don't want broad themes and catchy phrases. "Change", what the hell is that? I guess I'm either jaded or jaundiced, but unless a miracle happens I don't see us getting universal healthcare, or out of Iraq, or our jobs magically returning from the Far East anytime soon. But I still love the horse race!

Chris

[China Cat Sunflower]

I was thinking about the media and the press coverage of the New Hampshire primaries. It seems like the media is a lot like organized religion in that it wants to be the sole provider of the over simplified narrative. It seems that the press, in it's ginormous bloated estimation of itself, has forgotten that facts even matter. I was amazed today to see the amount of attention the media payed to, not the story, but itself. How could everyone have been wrong about Hillary? Well, everyone wasn't wrong. The media was wrong. Their simplistic little mytho-jingle narrative was wrong. So what did they do? They covered themselves, not the story. They tried to salvage their credibility and somehow spin the story of them being wrong about the story into yet another story, with another slightly differently twisted plot line of their own invention.

When we finally exterminate all the lawyers we might as well get the talking heads too. It'll be a mercy killing.

Chris

[China Cat Sunflower]

Here's a snappier version from the blogoshere:

I awoke today, and the very first thing I heard was NPR talking about how Clinton showed emotion in a coffee shop, a moment which "defined her campaign" and "changed the dynamic" and "sealed her victory" and "duct taped the leprechaun" or whatever the hell the pundits are calling it these days. Then they had a spirited argument about Obama's blackness and how very much it didn't matter but mattered anyway because... something. And they played a clip of Colin Powell, who is currently the Media Designated Black Guy for these sorts of things, and Colin Powell thinks it's very inspirational that Obama could arise from his foreign-assed, terrorist-loving roots to being something something something.

And there was record turnout in New Hampshire, but that doesn't have to do with the hotly contested races in a year of vital national issues, but was because of The Nice Weather. People in New Hampshire don't like to vote when it's too cold out -- they get sluggish, like fence lizards. That's why they all live in Florida now, and New Hampshire remains open to the public only for show.

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Chris

[China Cat Sunflower]

Posh Spice tops Mr. Blackwell's worst dressed list.

Chris

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

I was thinking about the media and the press coverage of the New Hampshire primaries. It seems like the media is a lot like organized religion in that it wants to be the sole provider of the over simplified narrative. It seems that the press, in it's ginormous bloated estimation of itself, has forgotten that facts even matter. I was amazed today to see the amount of attention the media payed to, not the story, but itself. How could everyone have been wrong about Hillary? Well, everyone wasn't wrong. The media was wrong. Their simplistic little mytho-jingle narrative was wrong. So what did they do? They covered themselves, not the story. They tried to salvage their credibility and somehow spin the story of them being wrong about the story into yet another story, with another slightly differently twisted plot line of their own invention.

When we finally exterminate all the lawyers we might as well get the talking heads too. It'll be a mercy killing.

Chris

The media is owned by far too few conglomerates. No real competition, to insure quality, {except from the internet blogosphere, who get dismissed by the media elites.} What we wound up with is McMedia, rather than the old time Mom & Pop Diners and fine dining eateries.

[Pathless]

Here's a related article:

AlterNet: Should Big Media Choose Our Candidates?

Originally Posted by AlterNet

Should Big Media decide for the rest of us who is -- and more importantly who is not -- a viable candidate for president? It's bad enough that thus far the reporting of this year's quadrennial presidential pursuit has been even more insubstantial than ever, focused on the horse race, the fundraising, the polls, the pundits, the haircuts and assorted other bits of silliness -- anything other than actual issues of concern to voters and importance to the world.

Now we find Big Media, (specifically its Fox/ABC News wing,) determined to narrow the field of presidential candidates before any of us, other than a handful of white people in Iowa, even get a chance to vote!

Both television networks plan to winnow out presidential candidates they deem unacceptable and prevent them from participating in important debates to be held this weekend -- just before the crucial New Hampshire primary.

[Tao_Equus]

Here in the UK the other morning I awoke to our news full of the Clinton comeback. How she had turned round a supposedly double-digit polling deficit into a victory. The daily broadsheets were all emblazoned with pictures and biographies of Obama, caught on the wrong foot by this unexpected result, and going to press to late to change the story.

The media as has been pointed out is too firmly in too few and too biased hands. It does not work along the lines of telling what will happen but of telling you what to do. There is no editorial freedom outside the narrow parameters of the strict line of propaganda. We have nothing we can trust for information untainted by an attempt to control our thoughts except possibly what we can find online. Unbiased truth has become the rarest commodity.

Listening to the post-ballot speeches I too was struck by the lack of policy and the emphasis on hollow sloganeering. But beyond all that it is clear that the Republicans, who control the majority of the US media machine, only fear one Democrat contender. Clinton. They worked hard to claim that scalp at the outset and it backfired and so people may now vote with their heads a little more. They can see the Polls are flawed, the press untrustworthy and rather and go out and back who the media says will be the winner they may go out and back whom they trust the most. However naive trusting any politician may be.

Tao

[Joedjr]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

The media as has been pointed out is too firmly in too few and too biased hands. It does not work along the lines of telling what will happen but of telling you what to do. There is no editorial freedom outside the narrow parameters of the strict line of propaganda. We have nothing we can trust for information untainted by an attempt to control our thoughts --> except possibly what we can find online. <-- Unbiased truth has become the rarest commodity
Tao

Hi Tao,
Nice post! I've been looking lately for -> any <- good news source online. Seems the internet is about cooked. 99% rubbish, except for this forum of course.
As far as a presidential candidate, I'm looking for one that doesn't need to have his or her hand held by a hollywood superstar, and isn't looking to bring back the working slave class of the middle ages.

Joe

[wil]

Originally Posted by seattlegal

I dunno, wil, two Nanny-Staters wrapped in the banner of class warfare would call for something more than just voting third party, imo. It would call for exposing them for what they are.

I think all their dirty laundry will be aired prior to the finals...

Anyone googled- " diebold clinton obama " yet?? hehe

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by wil

I think all their dirty laundry will be aired prior to the finals...

Anyone googled- " diebold clinton obama " yet?? hehe

Oh, yeah. Problem is, you really have to dig deeply to get to the truth...
Here is a Princeton study showing the problems with the The Diebold Accuvote-TS. {Be sure to watch the video.} It's pretty damning. However, New Hampshire uses the The Diebold Accuvote-OS, which leaves a paper trail, unlike the TS. {However, it doesn't mean that the counting equipment for the paper trail can't be hacked, as well. In this system the voter casts his vote on a paper ballot, which is then scanned into the machine, which reads the vote electronically. The paper ballot is then counted separately from the electronic vote, from what I understand.}

[Tao_Equus]

Reading that one can only ask were the designers so stupid as to not realise security would be an issue or was it purposely designed so?

This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities — a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab. Mitigating these threats will require changes to the voting machine's hardware and software and the adoption of more rigorous election procedures.

Such fundamental weaknesses of design are beyond stupid.

Tao

[wil]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Such fundamental weaknesses of design are beyond stupid.

What is the fundamental weakness? That the method for rigging the machines was so easily detectable?

What is beyond stupid? Greed, power trips, ends justify the means?