Where would we be without our corporately owned news networks?

In a strong recovery? With a functioning Congress? In the dark about how oil companies are really care about the environment, schools and puppies?

One thing that America greatly values is its free press…which is why its been locked up in a safe that’s hidden miles below the Earth’s surface. Filling in for it, we have a corporatized Mainstream Media which looks just like the real thing only less filling. Having a corporately owned media is a bit of  a trade off for America, like buying a McDonalds hamburger. One one hand, you get a cheap, non-nutritious product that contains excesses of substances that are bad for you and on the other hand…well…maybe there’s not an other hand but you get the idea.

Due to the 24 hour news cycle, news channels are hungry for news all the time. Unfortunately, they have the digestive systems of cows so they digest the same stories in one show after another throughout one or more days. They are also very particular about what stories they consume, they must be high in conflict and rich in advertising dollars. So many stories, despite how true they may be, simply aren’t on the menu for any of the news channels.

Listed below are ten things you will never hear on a news channel for the above reasons…unless we include a celebrity nip slip in this page…which we are still debating.

TEN THINGS YOU WILL NEVER HEAR ON A NEWS CHANNEL:

1. Crazy things that Republicans say aren’t actually equal to sane things Democrats say in response.

2. The oil company commercials we run constantly are full of lies but even though that’s a conflict of interest for a news channel that’s supposed to present truths, we need the ad revenue.

3. Our hosts aren’t really outraged at everything they say they are, they’re more like performers and it’s just an act to get ratings.

4. We miss Sarah Palin.

5. Most of our coverage about President Obama is negative because he’s been too far ahead of Romney and we make more money from advertisers if the Presidential race is tighter because more people will tune in each day to see who’s up or down. Also, our corporate ownership and shareholders want the tax breaks that Republicans would give us.

6. Polls this far away from an election really don’t mean anything but by treating them as if they do, we can create all kinds of stories based upon them that urge our viewers to be greatly concerned .

7. Our gesture towards balance and fairness is having a token person with overly strident views that are the opposite of our core viewers so that they only confirm our core viewers dislike of them and others with the same views.

8. Faves include any story involving sex, missing white girls and threats to Americans. Dislikes include peace talks, good economic news and substantive conversations about issues.

9. We flip a coin to decide which stories we’ll call “Breaking News”.

10. Nothing truly important happened today, sorry.  You could always read a book or get some exercise.

Agar is a gelatin material that’s used in Petri dishes to grow microorganisms such as bacteria. When stepping back to look at American society as a whole, it seems to be submerged in a sociological agar that cultivates the growth of a bacteria that continues to eat away at the nation.

Whether it’s a fair and sustainable economy, our political system, a constructive level of discourse, a sense of community, education, racial and religious tolerance, many of the aspects of America that have been points of pride in the past, continue to decline and in doing so, corrode American society.

There are a variety of “cultures” in modern day America’s agar-rich Petri dish that are decaying what America is capable of being but among the most toxic is injustice.

Americans have been eyewitnesses to crimes committed by the wealthy and powerful and have seen that typically, they escape justice. Wall Street clearly robbed trillions from the world’s economy through sophisticated fraud, the Bush Administration violated the Geneva Convention by using torture and violated our Constitution by secretly spying on the American people, even the Supreme Court has been an accomplice to the wealthy rigging and buying our elections…and no one pays a price.

No one goes to jail. No one is fired. No one is held responsible for their actions. At least, not when they are wealthy or politically connected.

On the other end of the spectrum, we see police let the white murderers of young black men walk free and harsh criminal sentences applied against young men of color.

We see those fervent about their superiority through religion or race given equal time and presented as “balance” against those who stand for equality and justice.

Some may ask at times why some people plan and do such cruel things to others but simply put, an unjust society is an incubator for terrible things. It creates an environment where some feel they have the right to express their own prejudices and pursue agendas that harm the many while benefiting them and the few like them. They have permission because society doesn’t insist on and enforce justice as an absolute and necessary principle.

Living in an unjust America breeds a sense of discouragement and resignation among many that it is just the way things are that the wealthy are above the law and the expectation of simple human decency.

What does that do to the Petri dish of American society when injustice is virulent? Doesn’t it create an ideal breeding ground for the kind of racism, intolerance, chauvinism and venomous “debate” that has become so mainstream today? Doesn’t it foster the growth and broad acceptance of hateful extremism such as that which has overtaken the Republican Party? In fact, could today’s GOP exist as it is if not for being in an “agar” of injustice?

If Americans witnessed on a regular basis that no one is above the law, especially the wealthy and powerful, might there not be at least some shared belief in justice and fairness amongst most Americans? And if that was the case, might there be more common ground and civility expected of each other?

Instead, in an environment where the law only applies to “the little people”, living in an unjust society is eventually taken for granted by the majority and they become more accepting of seeing that reflected all around them.

By the time the Dems won back Congress in 2006, Nancy Pelosi had already promised in the campaign that Democrats would not seek to impeach Bush for crimes he clearly committed. It’s easy to understand her caution, she likely was concerned that such an action could boomerang against them and generate greater support for Bush, as well as dominate their new term and keep them from accomplishing much of anything.

However, one could connect a direct line between that decision and the decline of the nation’s faith in their government, let alone the rise of the racist Tea Party and the de-evolution of the GOP into a hate machine. We had a President who violated our Constitution and international law (not to mention seizing an unprecedented expansion of power for the Executive Branch) and yet, out of political expedience, the other political party chose to give him a Mulligan because of political considerations.

After that, did anyone really expect that the CEO of Goldman Sachs might go to jail for criminal acts? Or BP execs whose intentional skirting of safety rules caused a platform to explode that killed people and destroyed the livelihoods of many others?

The public outcry and protest to bring George Zimmerman to trial for shooting the unarmed Trayvon Martin was a victory that people can be proud of but consider that in 2012, the functioning of justice in this nation is so hobbled that it required a huge public groundswell just to arrest a white man for killing a black teen.

The entire GOP/Mitt Romney platform is amazingly built right on the principle of injustice. The wealthy should have more, the majority and the poor should have less and give more of their tax money to enrich the wealthy. Health Care and education should only be available to the wealthy, corporations should be free to poison most Americans and be unfettered from robbing them of fair pay and their nest eggs.

How can such injustices be so broadly presented as a viable platform to run on? Of course, the rabid Right Wingers just want Repubs to win, they’re too tunnelvisioned to see they’re voting against their own futures and interests but as the media presents such injustices as reasonable, many others climb on board.

It seems surreal that most all of the historic injustices exhibited throughout American history including racism against blacks and Hispanics, religious intolerance, male domination of women and their rights, the wealthy dominating the majority and their democracy, homophobia, The Confederacy’s animosity and opposition to The North, all of these hateful and unjust sensibilities are all rolled into the basis of the 2012 GOP.

The media cooperates by presenting the GOP and their commitment to injustice as an equal alternative to the Democrats’ views of a fairer society. Really? Prejudice is equivalent to tolerance? Greed is equivalent to fairness? Hate is equivalent to compassion?

Of course these are not equivalents and presenting them as such undermines what should be shared principles of all Americans.

Though I think it is only a weak camouflage for greed, I could accept a GOP that believed in Trickle Down economics as more viable than Keynesian economics…as long as they shared the principles of compassion for Americans who weren’t among those promising to trickle down wealth. I don’t think it would be a better world if there was only one party in America, there is a role for a GOP in American politics but not as a party of unrestrained greed and hate. Those are not constructive political values, they are instead what have traditionally been called sins and failings of human beings.

A number of Americans appear to be so fed up with injustice that they have become activists and rise up against them when they appear.

As Americans, we sit back and hope for our nation’s economy to be repaired so we can get back to where we were. When it comes to justice, that’s not the way it works. It will take the people continuing to gather behind the principles that unite us all as Americans and make it clear to the rest of our society, including the media and the GOP, that we won’t accept injustice as a reasonable alternative to what is just, we won’t accept having it constantly presented or proposed as an equivalent or valid position on any issue.

If there is justice for all in our economy, politics and society, many of the problems we face today as a nation could be addressed. People will accept sacrifices for the greater good when it is fair and all people, rich and poor, are asked to reach down just as deep to help. And in a society where justice prevails especially against the wealthy and powerful, there is no breeding environment for the hateful prejudice and class warfare of the current GOP.

There can be confidence again in America’s government and society but not until there is a return to being a nation of laws and justice. Americans are empowered and work together in a culture of justice and fairness, they become apathetic and divided when injustice dominates.

People need to be held accountable for their actions, no matter who they are. Allowing people to be “Too Big to Jail” and refusing to apply justice due to political calculations, no matter how well intended, is a miscalculation.

Americans need to see that we have a just society, they need to have some universal values such as a sense of fairness to be able to live and work together on the big problems we face. And the huge partisan gulf in this nation needs to be bridged, greater injustice won’t do that.

As a kid, I must’ve recited The Pledge of Allegiance thousands of times but did the meaning of the words really register? Though I’m not a rabid nationalist and not too sure about having national Pledges of Allegiance, the final part of it should be listened to repeatedly by the MSM and the GOP until it sticks:

…with liberty and justice for all.

By now it has become crystal clear that to Republicans, no news is good news. It doesn’t matter whether Osama Bin Laden is killed, the economy is recovering from the worst recession in recent history or diet donuts have been invented that actually reduce your cholesterol and make you lose weight, the GOP is bent (in many ways) on spinning every bit of good news that comes into something terrible.

As the Party of Nope and Deranged, the GOP has come to realize that there is no way enough people will vote for their party based upon their policies that only address the desires and needs of the top 1% and religious fanatics. So, their only path to power is by piling as much manure on top of President Obama and Democrats as possible and counting on people being so offended by the stench that they stumble away and blindly tumble into the sewer known as the modern GOP.

In order for this cynical plan to work, the GOP must respond to any and all positive news like they were cantankerous old people (which many Republicans naturally are anyway) but instead of replying to, “Hey Grandpa, I pitched for my Little League team for the first time!” with “Keep it up and you’ll suffer the rest of your life in excruciating pain from your rotator cuff!”, the GOP comes up with various ways to describe great things as Roves in the punchbowl.

So, since we are always seeking ways to offer olive branches to the other side in hopes of bringing everyone together, we have worked up a list of issues and responses that Republicans can use at a moment’s notice if a particular piece of good news rears its pleasant head in the future.

LIST OF REPUBLICAN RESPONSES TO GOOD NEWS

1. If unemployment continues dropping and GDP and other economic indicators rise:

GOP: “Now the elitists in the Democratic Party including President Obama are trying to use numbers and math to convince Americans that things are getting better in this country. Math may be their God but we believe in the one true God and we object to this continuing attack on religion! We don’t need math or numbers to know what’s happening in our economy! We have our guts to tell us and Rush Limbaugh! The more these numbers rise, the more Big Arithmetic is taking away our freedoms!”

2. If President Obama achieves a foreign policy success in North Korea, Iran, Israel, etc.

GOP: “Reducing political tensions is playing into the hands of Al Qaeda and all of those who want to harm us. The less threats and wars we have, the less we’ll spend on protecting ourselves. Military equipment manufacturers will be paid less and less and eventually  shrivel and die, leaving America helpless and vulnerable thanks to “peace”. Then you know who’ll be free to invade and take over America? Al Qaeda, communists, socialists, Russians, Taliban, Gypsies, Cubans, Slytherins, Morlocks, yodelers, mimes and many others who hate America!”

3. If a cure for cancer, Alzheimer’s or another devastating disease is discovered thanks to federal funding of science and medicine:

GOP: At a time when unemployment is so high in this nation, thanks to our government, the need for doctors and nurses will now drop and hundreds of thousands if not millions of them will lose their jobs. Those having their Alzheimer’s cured are forgetting about the salaries of many job creators and little people in the pharmaceutical and medical industry that their conditions have been paying for! Our President wants us to be selfish and only care about ourselves and our health instead of the health of our economy. Sick is good! Good for business and good for America! Health care is thumbing our nose at God’s great plan for the uninsured. If He wanted everyone in America to be healthy, why are there so many Arby’s around?”

4. If President Obama makes a powerful and inspiring speech about the rights of minorities, women or some other issue addressing fairness in our society:

GOP: “Once again, President Obama is trying to divide Americans and turn us against each other. Under the guise of “fairness” Obama wants to sow dissent in the majority of Americans who happily celebrate millionaires and billionaires getting richer because they know that one day, the 99% will become the 1% . It’s simple math and you can’t argue with math…forget what we said about it before, we changed our minds because now it helps us make our point! Obama insists Latinos should be treated as equals even though they’re happiest when they’re treated as servants…if they weren’t, why do they smile so much when you speak English to them? And there is no War on Women. If there was, they’re so inferior to men, they wouldn’t stand a chance of winning and the war would be over before it started. Women are as loved by Republican men as their family dogs and are given a long leash to explore around within reason. Women see a leash as a bond between them and the men they serve, why Obama would have anything against bondage is beyond us.”

5. If the Affordable Care Act is confirmed to save taxpayers a great deal of money and insure tens of millions of Americans who were uninsured:

GOP: It’s no surprise that Democrats are celebrating Obamacare starving insurance companies from the kind of profits they used to make. Obama hates American business, he hates job creators and those who used hard work and the free enterprise to inherit their fortunes and positions of power. Health insurance is not a right, it’s a hot dog dangling on a string that should be able to be yanked out of reach when people are selfish enough to try and grab it and greedily harm insurance company profits. We believe in the free market and in the free market, nothing is free. Except corporate bailouts. Anyway, if the uninsured wanted to be insured, all they’d have to do is get insured in the past when they were healthy and in their 20′s. If they’re too lazy to go back and do that one simple thing, why should insurance companies be forced to help them? As Ayn Rand once said, “I made how much on royalties? Sweet! Everyone else can kiss my Objectivist ass from now on!” Now that is the character of free enterprise and America that this country was founded on and that we believe in.

There will no doubt be many more alarming incidents of “good news”, thoughtlessly intruding on the Republican campaign this year, we can only hope that our modest offerings herein help the GOP to find political black mold in the pot of gold at the end of every rainbow.

In today’s America, games rule. Literally.

We have Hunger Games in theaters, the talent game show American Idol chooses our next musical stars, political games are played by the wealthy and politicians to win the next election, media outlets game their viewers for profits and Wall Street and corporations gamble to win big on all of the above at the expense of 99% of Americans (with tax payer money always there to bail them out).

America has become one big cynical carnival of games but at least the GOP has been considerate enough to throw in a number of clowns at no extra cost.

The problem with everything being a game is that, as in every game, someone has to lose. So when it comes to such things as democracy, health care, economic fairness, etc., areas where there should not be winners and losers but a nation working together and a rising tide raising all ships, there are losers.

So the supporters of class warfare, misogyny, racism, religious zealotry and plutocracy readily compete against the public welfare to bring home the gold.

The other destructive factor in layering everything in society with a game is that the game can become the primary focus and the underlying critical social issues can be neglected and deteriorate. Whether it’s our crumbling infrastructure, stagnant job growth and pay, corporate domination over our democracy, poverty, our manipulative media…it’s all about winning the games piled on top of the real issues instead of addressing the actual issues.

It’s no coincidence that corporations and the GOP use the same playbook in setting up and competing in games. In one way or another, they seem to apply the same game to every situation, “Dodge Bull”. This is basically a game of spending a great deal of money and/or media attention on lies, both in number and repetition, so that the “opposing players” are fully occupied trying to refute lies instead of being able to debate the substance of an issue. The idea is to overwhelm the opponent, rain down on them and the public a torrent of lies so great that they can’t all be caught and fully disproven.

For example, if you watch cable news, you’ve likely been barraged by commercials from oil companies that show people “disagreeing” over more drilling and clean energy then coming to the conclusion that oil companies are magically able to both drill and mine for a dirty, toxic fuel while being ecologically safe. Just ask BP about that or the people who can light their water on fire. Yet, by drilling this pleasantly presented, dishonest message into the heads of the public, they anticipate reaping a gusher of manipulated support. In fact, one of these ads from Chevron claims that the Keystone XL pipeline will bring plentiful and secure supplies of energy to the U.S. and that is a flat out lie. Even the owners of the pipeline are on record explaining that oil from the Keystone pipeline will be sold to the world market, meaning virtually no oil will come to the US from the pipeline. But again, this game is about throwing grit into the public’s eyes so they can sneak across the finish line and grab the oily trophy.

Mitt Romney’s entire campaign is based wholly on the Dodge Bull game. He spent millions inundating Republican primary voters with lies and attacks against his opponents…and almost nothing on explaining why he should be President. Which is more important to voters in the long run? And Romney spouts one easily provable lie after another in attacking President Obama, almost gleefully admitting it’s all just a game of Dodge Bull.

Elections have become just the game of manipulating perceptions, a game of illusions. There is so little honest debate and expression. There are those like Romney who could only win an election by playing this game and those like Obama who have to respect the game or be demolished by it.

Why do Americans have such low regard for their government and their democracy in general? Could it be because they have seen this game mentality in campaigns and in office and recognize that part of the game is to show a patronizing concern for their welfare and democracy itself while it’s really all about these politicians winning? Re-election, handouts to their cronies, legislation for their corporate contributors, maybe many Americans see the game quite clearly and see it as rigged against their ever really winning.

Playing just to win the game may prove one good at playing games but it distracts from answering important questions or solving important problems…and that’s exactly the point and purpose.

Which brings us to the corporate media. No need to go into great length as I’ve addressed this in prior posts but the corporately owned media is in the ad money game so whatever they can do to break their previous high scores, they will and need to do. To win at that game, they need to play another game with the public, “Outrage”.

Unfortunately for the MSM, the actual news of the day just won’t fill 24 hours of broadcasting, reality isn’t as prolific or “sexy” as corporate media outlets need it to be…so they invent their own reality that is. Each day is a desperate hunt by them for something someone says or does that they can pour gasoline over and throw a match on it so they can turn to the public and tell them how outraged they should be at it. The simple fact is, conflict attracts viewers (ever see people look away as they approach a car accident?), they know this so they manufacture all the conflict and outrage they can to keep and attract viewers, allowing them to charge more for advertising.

Add to this the political agenda of the five corporations that own all major media outlets and you have what we have today, media that doesn’t just report the news, they also create some of it…which is part of this same game.

When Hillary Rosen, who has no connection to President Obama, was painted as evil by the corporate media for her remarks about Ann Romney, the media splashed that all over Obama. Days later when Ted Nugent, who is officially lauded by Romney as his supporter and advocate, infers that he would try to kill Obama if he was re-elected and urges people to chop off the heads of their political opponents, the corporate media doesn’t make a peep about Romney being impacted by this.

The Presidential Photo Finish Game that the corporate media is playing is the cause. Right now, Obama is ahead of Romney in most non-partisan polls. As mentioned, conflict drives people to watch and read the media. So, a tight Presidential race means more revenues to these corporations. Is it then so mysterious that the corporate media jumped at the opportunity to damage Obama’s lead with a manufactured attack on him while rejecting a far more appropriate opportunity to hold Romney responsible for the threats that an official and sought out supporter of Romney’s delivered?

There are sneaky ways that the media accomplishes its goals, sometimes by default instead of design. There are those like Fox News that play the game by plainly fabricating outrage and openly presenting politically motivated falsehoods as news to harm their political adversaries and give a hate fix to their hate-addicted audience. Then there are outlets like MSNBC which present those and other contrived outrages to inform their viewers about them or to discuss their legitimacy. By not talking about the real issues and discussing the games others are playing, they are actually playing the game just as much as the originator of them…and winning as much by doing so. In any case, there’s no way to ascertain the true intention, whether the coverage of such games comes from genuine concern or is just an intentional twist on the original game, feigning concern as a way to keep playing the game and increasing revenue without alienating viewers who might otherwise object.

Must we accept that everything has to be a game? Our democracy, our health, our nation’s future? Does everything of consequence have to be shoved aside to make way for a never-ending competition over money or power?

There is a very encouraging trend, a way that Americans have been kicking over the game board with a growing frequency that’s quite heartening.

There were other instances before it but the big Wisconsin protests against Gov. Walker’s outlawing of collective bargaining rights, seemed to kick off a series of occasions when Americans said, “We’re not playing your game!” There was the political explosion of Occupy Wall Street, people standing up against The Susan G. Komen Foundation’s game to damage Planned Parenthood, people rejecting the Rush Limbaugh game to destroy and diminish the voices of women to stand up for their rights and people refusing to accept the racist game of the Sanford Police Department to allow white people the right to shoot and kill black people.

It seems that many Americans have had enough of games and players. With so many huge issues facing us, we don’t have time to keep spending our days playing the MSM’s “Untruth or Dare” or the Republicans’ “Green Lie, Red Lie.” Our society, infrastructure, economy and sense of community have been deteriorating because they’ve been neglected and ignored by those who would rather win their games. They haven’t an interest in solving the serious problems facing Americans.

Most Americans enjoy games for fun but when it comes to our future, we need to put the games aside and get something meaningful done. Perhaps more and more Americans will feel the same as those who are already standing up and tell those who try to game the majority of Americans, “game over”.

The Obama Tax Returns for 2011 are a prime example of this. After watching coverage of the returns on CNN, MSNBC, CBS and Current, I conclude that only Current was interested in a full coverage of what the tax returns meant. Print media coverage has been almost uniformly poor. On line, coverage has been very misleading on the right, and sparse on the left.

The Basic Info:
$5.6 million income; $1.8 million Federal Taxes.
The Obama’s paid 20.1 Percent IN FEDERAL TAXES;
They gave 22.5 Percent TO CHARITY.
That’s 42.6 Percent of their total earnings….Plus
Continuing payouts to 10 Charities from $1.4 Million Nobel Prize Money.

The Obama’s’ overall rate is .5 Percent lower than the median top one percent income earner and is much higher than that of most middle-income Americans. Households making between $60,000 and $100,000 paid on average 8 Percent of their income in federal incomes taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center. Obama’s average tax rate over the last ten years has been nearly 30 percent. Like many of the wealthy Obama has benefited from the current tax structure, and from deductions, most notably those for donations to charity. Obama has also contributed significantly to his own retirement accounts.

The Obama’s donated $172,130 to charities in 2011, 22.5% of their adjusted gross income. The largest beneficiary was the Fisher House Foundation, which received $117,130 — the after-tax proceeds of the president’s children’s book, “Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters.” Fisher House Foundation is best known for the network of comfort homes built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers. Fisher homes are donated to the military and Department of Veterans Affairs so that families can stay nearby while a loved one is receiving treatment. Additionally, the Foundation ensures that families of service men and women wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan are not burdened with unnecessary expense during a time of crisis.

In addition, there were the ongoing donations from the $1.4 million in Nobel Prize money not included on the form because President Obama turned it entirely over to charity. Nobel pays out its prize money in annual allotments. The Obama’s donated all of the prize money to 10 charities. Full list at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-donates-nobel-prize-money-charity

The first couple paid $31941 in Illinois income tax. Plus undisclosed Cook County Property Taxes.

WHY WASN’T ALL OF THIS IN THE GENERAL MSM COVERAGE? DOES IT MAKE OBAMA LOOK TOO GOOD? How about a comparison with previous presidents? Or with current GOP leadership?

This is the president putting his money where his mouth is.
It deserved fuller coverage.

BUT….the Media in general, even the so-called Progressive media, want (need) a tight race. Tight races sell newspapers, magazines, books, advertising time. They build readership and viewership. They make money. Lots of money.

SO….for example, Fox emphasizes that Obama paid less than the “average” (more accurately the “median”) top one percenter and ignore how small that “less” is and how much the Obama’s gave to charity. Furthermore, most income earners at the level of the Obama’s in the $5 to $6 million range pay taxes at levels far closer to the 14 Percent paid by Mr. Romney last year. Fox has also used the line that Obama’s rate is lower than his secretary’s- a shot at the Buffet rule icon.

Huffington Post, has had two stories on the Obama taxes. The first headlined “Obama Tax Return Released For 2011″ is very brief, provides no analysis and invites readers to study the linked tax returns for insights. Ridiculous.

The second HP story has this headline: “Obama Tax Return Claims Mortgage Deduction That Most Helps The Rich”, a reference to a $10,000 home mortgage deduction. Misleading.

So, if they won’t tell the truth or spread the word, those who support the progressive agenda better do the job.