vadebate

FACT: A not-very-well-liked Democrat, Terry McAuliffe beat an even more disliked Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccineli, 48% to 45.5%.

COWARDLY BULLSHIT PROPAGANDA: In his questionably named “concession” speech, Ken Cuccineli claimed that because he didn’t lose by a bigger margin, it means he and his anti-Obamacare campaign won (we can only hope for more such victories for the Baggers in 2014).

MORONIC SELF-INTERESTED PARROTING: News channels have reported this wholly absurd claim as fact.

In evidence, a robotic newsdrone on MSNBC today promoted Cuccineli’s ridiculous meme (which was clearly being pumped in her ear by MSNBC producers) to Democratic House Rep. Steve Israel, challenging him on how much trouble the Dems could be in when 2014 comes around thanks to this indicator that the public is turning on Democrats because of the troubled ACA rollout.

WHAT???

A terribly flawed and disliked Dem just WON the governorship of VA!!! He beat a Bagger who had been elected Attorney General and was seen as a shoo-in for Governor when he first entered the race! And the MSM takeaway from that is Dems are in trouble in 2014 because of Obamacare? Huh??? The Republican lost, the Democrat won…and the MSM instead adopts the loser’s unsubstantiated tantrum as the way things are and that the loser is actually the winner???

There is absolutely no proof that the ACA’s troubled rollout had anything to do with the race narrowing towards the end. No proof whatsoever. Which, as it’s become known in the cable news industry, is what they call “news”.

Of course, they want conflict because it increases viewership and ad revenue but this is an absolute low.

The only factual data that has been reported is that Cuccineli campaigned hard in the last days of the campaign in the reddest parts of the state. Most rational and honest people would propose that this helped increase turnout from his base and close the gap.

But…for corporate MSM greedaholics, one must always look for the leaden lining in any cloud, no matter how dishonest and unprofessional one has to be to “find” it.

In Alabama, a Tea Party challenger to an incumbent Republican lost as well last night. Chris Christie, a man who embraced Obama and voices support for bipartisanship, won the NJ Governorship by a big margin. So, it doesn’t exactly demand the deductive reasoning skills of Sherlock Holmes to arrive at the simple and factual conclusion that the Tea Party and their agendas including anti-bipartisanship and anti-Obamacare suffered a total loss last night.

However, that doesn’t help MSNBC and other news channels sell ad time for more money to oil companies for their propaganda ads so they readily latch onto any meme that helps them keep the “neck and neck” battle between Democrats and Republicans in place.

Add to this the overblown coverage of Chris Christie’s win. The MSM needs to have the Republicans viewed as having an equivalent-to-Hillary candidate so of course, the Presidential election in 2016 will be…you guessed it…neck and neck.

Christie winning in New Jersey is so idiosyncratic, so locally-based that the extrapolation of his win there to his winning in a GOP Primary for the President and being a “neck-and-neck” opponent to Hillary Clinton (assuming she runs) in 2016 is hardly supported. In the first place, until Hurricane Sandy, Christie was not so popular in NJ. It was the image he presented after Sandy, that won over NJ voters. National voters aren’t and won’t be affected by that, issues and personal history matter in national elections. His record in NJ is poor on jobs (48th out of all 50 states), education and the economy. He is openly hostile to teachers, the poor and anyone who disagrees with him. He opposes abortion rights, public schools and gay marriage. He has many skeletons in the closet, so many that Mitt Romney wouldn’t pick him as his Vice President nominee.

Once again, in assessing the national prospects of a politician, a reasonable person would not just factor in the superficiality, his attractive personality and his wide margin of victory within a state that has had unusual reasons for supporting him, they would also consider his stands on issues, his record and how he is positioned to win a party primary.

The GOP base which is mostly represented by the Tea Party, despises Christie. He represents the kind of Republican they are dedicated to snuffing out. How does Christie ever get to a general election in 2016 without first winning the GOP Primary and these voters? And after establishment GOP Presidential candidates McCain and Romney failing big time, are the GOP core voters who are Tea Partiers really going to once again let themselves be steamrollered by their adversaries in the GOP? And what kind of permanent damage will be done to Christie in a Tea Party dominated primary? How will he be savagely attacked and how will he pander to the extremists in order to try to win?

These more relevant factors rarely enter into the simplistic MSM pronouncements about how amazing and formidable Chris Christie now is because he won a virtually uncontested race (Barbara Buono, his Dem opponent is openly furious about how she had virtually no support from the Democratic Party in her campaign).

In 2016, Christie won’t be running uncontested in the GOP Presidential Primary and if he somehow won that, he won’t be running uncontested in the General Election. So the comparisons are invalid.

And if the MSM truly thinks margins mean everything, isn’t it funny how they aren’t trumpeting the nearly 50% margin Bill DeBlasio won by for mayor in biggest city in the nation, New York? That is a massive margin, it’s over double the allegedly “big” win by Christie, by the MSM’s logic, why doesn’t that represent that Democrats are hugely popular and that DeBlasio could win the Presidency? Oh, that’s right, his win is more of a local phenomenon because he’s not needed to promote their national horse race but Christie is.

Is winning the NJ Governorship a bigger deal than winning the Mayor’s seat in NYC? Let’s look at some numbers:

Population for the State of New Jersey: 8.865 million

Population for New York City: 8.337 million

Not a big difference in the number of people being governed, is it?

And yet, New York City represents a much larger, more dynamic economy with a far greater impact on the nation as a whole. So if the MSM was fair, it might be representing that DeBlasio’s win is of far more consequence to the nation than Christie’s, that DeBlasio’s job as mayor of NYC will be far more important than Christie’s admitted half-term Governorship of NJ (his upcoming Presidential campaign means great neglect of his duties as governor) and the greatest mandate in this election was for a Democrat, not a Republican.

We live in a time when there is no shared reality we can rely on, when we can all witness the same events but we accept that others will use their agendas to try and convince us that we didn’t see what we saw. Every time they win at that, we lose as a society…and we lose by a huge margin.

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fjb
Member
fjb

The old adage; believe half of what you see and none of what you read, seems to be the standard for accepting the Media. One has to have the desire to dig deeper into issues to get to the truth, and they may only find a hint. Some don’t have the wherewithal and just accept what they are told, i.e., the baggers and many of the left.
One must also remember that the Media is driven by the 1% and they only want what is good for them.

kesmarn
Admin

Could I just add another welcome to the Planet, fjb? Hope to hear more from you!

Kalima
Admin

About the news media and their “reliable” sources. Oops. 😳

‘60 Minutes’ apologizes for Benghazi report

CBS retracts its report on the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound, says it was misled by source..

http://wapo.st/18deApt

KillgoreTrout
Member

Kudos Ad. Very well thought out and written. You make some encouraging points. The ACA glitches will be smoothed out and the law’s popularity will grow. I have no doubt about that. I think even some middle class and poor TPers will like it, once they see it’s advantages over high priced, unreliable health insurance.

Today’s cable news outlets are shameless. The vastly different views of the same event show their unending attempts to keep the “sport,” alive. The networks have turned the basic ethic of genuine journalism on it’s ear, for advertising dollars.

I heard a funny analogy about this type of “reporting,” a while ago. One network reports that a cat was struck and killed by a speeding car today. The other networks report that, today a cat committed suicide by jumping in front of a speeding car. 😉

jjgravitas
Member
jjgravitas

Lex Luthor would love this. I would actually like to see a presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie … the extremely competent woman beloved by the world running against the elephant-shaped republican whose own party doesn’t like him. It remains to be seen whether Christie would sacrifice his integrity to run for president the way Mitt Romney did.

kesmarn
Admin

If he has any integrity to sacrifice, jj. I think Christie has a personality that is very similar to the Mayor of Toronto’s.

kesmarn
Admin

AdLib, Robert Reich had a similar take on the media’a post election spin:

Always listen for the day-after adjectives, which give a clue as to how candidates and issues will be framed in the future. In talking about Chris Christie’s win in New Jersey, the Washington Post writes of “pragmatic, as opposed to ideological, governance.” But in describing Bill de Blasio, the media uses the adjectives “left” or “left-leaning.”

In an era when almost all economic gains are going to the very top, when poverty is increasing, and when median household incomes are dropping even with two wage earners, to be in favor of raising taxes on the wealthy and providing better schools to everyone else should not be considered “left.” I’d call this pragmatic. By the same token, to be against raising the minimum wage — as is Chris Christie — is not a sign of “pragmatism.” I’d call this ideological.

agrippa
Member
agrippa

This so called ‘news media’ is silly. Which is why I do not watch TV ‘news'(if it bleeds, it leads). There no ‘good old days’ in the news business ( reference that old play “The Front Page”). In a sense, people like Cronkite were the exception.
It is not political bias so much, as no news outlet is impartial. It is that there is little actual reporting going on. Actual reporting is difficult.

kesmarn
Admin

…and expensive. And sometimes dangerous, They don’t want to spend the time, the money or the effort to do it right.

kesmarn
Admin

AdLib, you are the clearest thinker I know of in the realm of politics and the media. Once again you’ve proven your ability to cut through the BS and the corporate spin to expose the MSM’s sleazy manipulative techniques and their crass greed.

Gerrymandering and MSM misrepresentation are two of the biggest hurdles progressives have to deal with before they can effect real change in the 21st century.

With any luck, gerrymandering can be dealt with by each State’s passage of laws that designate non-political committees to re-draw district lines as needed.

And articles like this one will help with wising viewers up regarding the content — and more importantly — the misleading spin of the stuff they’re watching and listening to.

Once a scammer is unmasked, it’s that much harder for him to keep on scamming. Thanks for all the unmasking that you do!

Kalima
Admin

Well it leaves absolutely no doubt about who is paying their wages. The same with CNN cancelling the documentary about Hillary because of ridiculous and quite public outrage from Republican weenies who can’t handle the competition. What’s going to happen once the ACA is running smoothly by 2014 if they can’t handle a documentary now about someone who has not said she will run in 2016? Their “outrage” would be better spent on the TP nuts who dragged them under in the first place. Of course that would involve logic and admitting that they f’up by siding with the nuts in 2010, and when have the GOP ever taken responsibility for anything?

If things continue the way they are going, and Dems are elected anywhere, the GOP TP enablers will have much more than a Hillary documentary to worry about. In fact they should start praying to their God early, he doesn’t seem to like them that much anymore. 🙂

Nirek
Member

Ad, this problem with the media is bigger than we think. The reason it is so big is because the people who listen to Fox, CNN, MSNBC or any other “news” channel think they have it right so there is no sense in voting. We all have to get out and VOTE and bring a neighbor or friend ! We just need everyone to do their civic duty and vote every time there is an election. It is a duty and those who don’t vote are helping the worst politicians get elected.

Dbos
Member
Dbos

Agree adlib so so sick of all their false equivalency ; stories that are not stories pure bullshit comments by iignorant, information challenged congressmen and senators; the dumbing down of America or being Foxed ; all media seems to be following Foxes model of propagandizing the population.

Greta42
Member
Greta42

Thank you for writing this AdLib! I cannot stand the poor job done by the media on everything. They reported Christie’s win as though it was some big bi-partisan event, Dems and Repubs coming together to elect the bully.
The REALITY is that ONLY 24% of eligible voters in NJ actually voted! Only 1/4 of voters went to the polls. So how is this an indication of anything for Christie’s future?

If the senate election had been held simultaneously in NJ, things would have been different. Just 2 weeks ago 48% of the voters went to the polls to vote for CORY BOOKER who won by huge margins. Christie decided to make it a separate election, costing many millions of dollars extra, to have the elections held at different times to ensure his win.
Did I hear anything about this from the commentators? No.

The press is too predictable in its lack of intelligence in analyzing most things and I rarely trust what they report.

SueInCa
Member

WHICH is why I do not even watch MSNBC anymore. I watched that idjit Chris Matthews for maybe 10 minutes yesterday and was contradicting him within seconds. The only way I see Christie as a problem is with uninformed Dems and Indies. I have seen many talk about what a great guy he is because they saw him during Sandy or he signed some bill that they personally agreed was a good bill.

Can you imagine that clown as President? Anger management classes would become a daily class at the White House. George Bush would be looked back on fondly. BUT it could happen because of the uninformed Dems and Indies. I am personally not putting all my eggs in the Hillary basket just yet, I am waiting to see who will primary with her because I see others who would be good. Sherrod of Ohio, Deval Patrick of Massachussetts, Gov O’Malley of Maryland, Elizabeth Warren of MA, Hillary seems to be the favorite of most Dems and I will support her if she wins the nomination but I would also hope she would put Warren or one of these other people on the ticket.

As far as the MSM goes, they want to see controversy so they gin it up. Where, along the way, these people sold their souls, I am not sure. Even Rachel Maddow is less than honest these days. I have watched a bit of AJA and RT News and see a bit of this same thing with them but not nearly as much. RT might be a bit biased against the US in particular but they do make me think and I like that. Our media is a sham and I don’t even think when I watch anymore, I just wonder how many lies they can possibly sell in the space of an hour.
Oh I forgot, Ted Strickland, I think he is from Ohio too. I like his fiery ways.