In the high stakes game of Presidential one-upmanship, Mitt Romney has responded to President Obama’s support of gay marriage by declaring that he supports the right of corporations to marry.

“Corporations are people, my friend. White people with nice hair and attractive shoes. They can propagate and multiply just as people do and as any businessperson can attest, they can screw multiple partners,” Romney explained. “Why should they be denied the same ability to get divorced and be paid alimony that other people have?”

Announcing his position at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Romney went on to explain that gun manufacturing corporations should be allowed to have shotgun weddings, the energy industry deserves to have a nuclear family if they so choose and competing corporations should have the moral right to get into bed with each other.

When asked about Same State Corporation Marriage, Romney stated that he opposes it. “I believe in the absolute commitment to the ideals that marriage represents but depending upon what’s reflected in the latest polls, I can be flexible on that,” Romney smiled.

Romney also announced a new internet business he is launching that will be an online dating service for single corporations to meet other single corporations, with marriage in mind, called, “eHaromney”.

Dismissing the protests against corporate marriage as “fear mongering” and “prejudiced”, Romney stated that it doesn’t weaken the institution of marriage to open it up to corporations, it strengthens it.

“When you have corporations investing themselves in marriage, it affirms marriage…even if they sell short down the line and cause it to crash,” Romney added. “Marriage should not be dictated by politicians who decide who should or shouldn’t be married…if you’re straight of course…marriage should be dictated by the free market. I am a firm believer in supply side marriage, meaning that the more marriages wealthy people and corporations have, the more marriages will trickle down to the majority of Americans. We can’t afford to have a marriage deficit in this country and thanks to Obama and his regulations, we have less marriages in this nation than we should. Every time you look at the bill for your or your children’s weddings, remember who’s responsible for it being so high…Barack Obama. If we allowed corporations to provide more marriages in this country, prices would go down and we’d have more domestic, domestic security.”

Romney chuckled about having a crush on Exxon when he was a teenager and said that he can understand what corporations and those who love them are going through when they’re denied the right to marry.

“There were times in my youth when I wished so hard that I could marry who I really loved but society wouldn’t let me. I remember being taunted by lesser children, ‘If you love money so much, why don’t you marry it?’ I wish I could have and I know many like me wish they could today. Well, we may not be there yet but we are in a time where the highest court in the land has declared that corporations are people and all people…who don’t like Broadway showtunes that is…should have the right to marry in this country.”

Though he wants to return the focus of his campaign back to the economy, this is a cause Romney vows to continue to pursue.

“I’ll take credit for freeing the slaves and winning World War II but taking credit for corporations being able to marry will be the most satisfying of my preposterous claims to date,” declared Romney.

When faced with an unrelenting media that was convinced that it had cornered President Obama in a compromising position on gay marriage, President Obama responded with the cool, class and principle that he typically demonstrates and made it clear that he does indeed support marriage equality for all Americans, including those in the LGBT community.

It is poignant that the first African American president of the US has also been the first one to state that he believes all American men and women are entitled to the right to marry another who they love without exception.

However, Barack Obama was already on record as supporting gay marriage when he ran for Senator. It was only when he ran for President that he modified his public opinion to that of supporting civil unions but not gay marriage. Considering that the 2004 election was heavily swayed against John Kerry and Democrats by Karl Rove’s hammering on gay marriage as a divisive issue, one might say that it would only be prudent not to invite the same hateful campaign and potential results by openly supporting gay marriage in a 2008 Presidential campaign. Some may find that as not being courageous but others may argue that it is more pragmatic to hold back such an opinion in the short term to be able to help the LGBT community in the long term than to announce it and possibly lose the White House to an anti-gay Republican who would harm the LGBT community.

In a purely factual sense, did anything really change yesterday? Did President Obama really change his mind on gay marriage or was his explanation of evolving on it just being diplomatic? Admittedly, only Barack Obama knows what he thinks so it must be stipulated that this is all supposition.

We do know that President Obama has always supported gay rights as President, through hate crime legislation, repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) and not defending The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) from legal challenges. There doesn’t seem to be any specific item that benefits the LGBT community that Obama hasn’t already been supporting. So though yesterday’s statement was a change in rhetoric, it doesn’t seem to be a change in Obama’s absolute support for LGBT issues.

The instigation for all of this was an interview on a news media show, NBC’s Meet The Press. A guest on the show, Vice President Biden was asked if he supported same sex marriage and he explained that he did. This was not news, Biden has been a supporter of gay marriage for some time. Yet, his expressing an openly known view on this was apparently, just the opening the Mainstream Media was looking for.

The MSM treated that statement of well established fact as if it was a big scandal which it wasn’t. They seemed very energized about having a juicy hot button issue with which to go after Obama. Their incessant pounding on this finally bore fruit yesterday with Obama’s declaration.

Is this a case of the media creating an exploitative story for financial and/or political benefit or were they just doing their job and holding a politician’s feet to the fire? One might consider the MSM’s simultaneous lack of interest in holding Mitt Romney’s feet to the fire on claiming credit for the GM bailout, something he flatly opposed and is an enormous lie or his weaseling around on immigration, now claiming he is trying to figure out his position even though he has stated his anti-immigrant “self-deportation” mentality in front of the whole nation.  The MSM doesn’t seem to pursue this ongoing gusher of Romney lies with much fervor. However, if Barack Obama had lied or flip-flopped about supporting gay rights, the resulting firestorm could easily be envisioned.

On the down side, “news” and conflict was once again manufactured by the MSM. On the up side, the  LGBT community now has their President clearly expressing his support for marriage equality. There is good that has come out of this but that does not appear to have been the intention.

The media coverage of Obama was particularly rough at the beginning of the year, with an average of nearly 47% negative stories compared with slightly more than 15% positive stories during the first four weeks of January, Pew found. As the economy and his poll numbers improved in March, so did the favorability of his media coverage, but the president still has yet to see more positive coverage than negative in 2012.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/23/news/la-pn-obama-suffers-more-negative-press-than-gop-pew-study-shows-20120423

There is a clear and distinct pattern in the MSM of promoting negativity towards Obama as the above study reflects. This is not to say that Obama expressing support for same sex marriage is a negative thing but the reality is that it may alienate some voters in swing states. Understanding that right now the country is evenly divided on the issue of gay marriage and knowing its track record in being used against Democrats to defeat them, it seems more intuitive to view the MSM as knowing that blowing this up into a huge story could have been damaging to Obama’s campaign hopes.

What if they threw a scandal and nobody came? Unfortunately for the MSM, this is what they’re having to scramble over today. In the aftermath of President Obama’s announcement, the outrage has been narrowly limited to the usual suspects, right wing evangelical homophobes and Republicans in the House…if there’s a difference. The media continues trying to fan the flames this morning with little oxygen being added, the surprise and disappointment is palpable. So, the principled MSM has pulled a Romney and is now spinning to the memes, “It will be a wash,” and “This could mainly benefit Obama with his base.” What a difference a day makes in the world of failed MSM memes.

Meanwhile, staying true to form, the House Republicans have leaped over helping the economy and Americans once again to pass today a bill that would prohibit the Department of Justice from using taxpayers dollars in any future fight against DOMA. Now that should create a lot more jobs and freedom!

It’s pretty much a moot point now to question whether this statement from Obama should have been positioned as “earth shattering” since the MSM’s pronouncement of it being so makes it so. But it remains a meaningful question to ask if our corporate media is meddling in our elections and democracy to benefit themselves. After all, a closer race means more avid viewing of their networks and greater ad revenue. What is also unavoidable is that the corporations which own the news networks would realize big financial gains from the tax cuts proposed by Romney and the GOP. Since all corporations have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to provide the greatest revenues possible to them, how are these corporations not obligated to support the politicians and party that will allow them to do so?

Is the corporately-owned media actually in the business of dictating what happens day to day in our democratic campaigns and possibly even the results? Are they deciding what issues will be debated and which ones won’t? Or are they just reporting what they should and what Americans are most interested in…or what will lure in the most viewers and ad revenue?

There are so many critical issues right now in this nation, the economy, health care, energy, entitlements, class warfare, women’s rights and on and on. Yet, for whatever motivation, the MSM often elevates the more emotional and superficial edges of issues than the core of issues.

If the MSM truly is creating news instead of reporting it, if the corporations that own the media can hobble the candidates they don’t support and promote the ones they do, we are living in dangerous times indeed.

There has been declining trust in the MSM as a news source, more and more people are turning to other sources, especially blogs and other internet resources. This is a positive trend and one that should be promoted. It makes sense to remain aware of what the MSM is pitching day to day so a complete boycott would leave one under-informed though reducing one’s viewing of corporate news outlets is one sure way to hit them where it hurts and weaken them.

“Free Press” used to be descriptive, now it’s a demand and one that if more realized, will empower Americans and their democracy far more.

I remember when I was young we would watch shows like Donna Reed, I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best and in everyone of these shows the parents slept in twin beds.  Now when I was that age I probably did not pay that much attention but I do remember thinking how uncool my parents were because I saw a big ole queen size bed in their room.  I mean if Donna Reed did not sleep in the same bed as her husband, why did my mom?  At this time in our household my mom was through with having children so I had no conception of a pregnant mom since I was 7 years old when she had my baby sister and I spent that summer with an aunt in San Diego.  I had friends whose mothers were still having babies but somehow I never made that connection back to sex.  Now I know where the double beds came from and also know my parents were the rule not the exception in bedroom furniture.

All of that occurred back in at least 1963.  That is almost 50 years ago and now we have some people in this country who would like to see us go back to that time.  They want to monitor every part of your intimate life and control what women do with their bodies.  They want to stop abortion, stop contraceptives, anihilate gays, tell you what positions are acceptable, force a woman to have a camera inserted into her body so they can punish her with pictures of a fetus that is probably the size of a kidney bean.  And most of this is supposedly to stop abortions.  I don’t believe it, I believe abortions and gays were designated as wedge issues in order to divert attention from the real objective of the religious right. The right knows Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land since 1973 and they know it would be extremely hard to strike down a law that, on the Federal level gives women protection under the 9th and 14th amendments.  In short, the party  of states rights, personal responsibility, small government ad naseum wants to control the exact things they rail against, rights granted to us by the Constitution.  And I think on their part it is more controlling your ability to make decisions for yourself.  Your right to decide what is right for you and your significant other, your family, your goals in life.  The fact that it is totally out of line with their stated principles has been lost in their fervor for control.  Next thing you know, they will ask for proof that you are following all their rules if you want to vote.

The right can “pray away the gay” because everyone knows it is a life choice not a predispostion you are born with that makes a person gay.  The recent repeal of “don’t ask don’t tell” made the religious right almost go apoplectic and if DOMA is repealed you will hear a loud roar from that side of the aisle.  When the Reverand Gene Robinson was ordained as a Bishop in the Episcopal Church the religious right went ballastic.  No matter that most are not even Episcopalian but to the religious right that does not matter.  This week a document written by NOM was discovered with language to “drive a wedge between blacks and gays” in order to further NOM’s agenda.  What does matter, yet again, is control.  They have tried many tactics to interfere in others’ personal business and never see their tactics as infringing on others rights.  They do not understand how they could be doing so, yet they have no problem screaming, legitimately or not, that their rights are being infringed upon.  They are fully able to practice their religion, so long as that practice does not interfere with a person’s right not to practice religion or to practice a religion sometimes very different from the Religious Right’s.  Part of the problem is that in Christianity they teach you to follow Christ’s commands and two of those the right really take to heart are:

Matthew 28:19:  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Mark 16:15:  And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.

Of course they have many more but these two give them the go ahead to foist their beliefs on every living creature on earth.  They have done so by placing missionaries all over the world but they are saving us for their own special doctrination.  What Christ should have said to them was:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.  But, and this is very important, you must remember my Father gave man free will and that means that some people are not going to take kindly to our little scheme.  That is within their right as a person of free will and you can take a horse to water but you cannot make them drink so please use discretion.

Can you see how that might have helped them in their zeal to Christianize everything?  Neither can I but I did give it a try.  You can see their handiwork in Africa where they have stirred up the pot on LGBT rights and even found a devil named KONY who has been terrorizing his part of Uganda for years.  What they thought was that they could make a video with a cute little kid and soak people for money and no one would question them.  Unfortunately for Jason Russell people all over questioned his motives which resulted in him becoming dehydrated and exhausted.  Then he ended up as a 5150 in the county hospital because he broke down and went into the streets naked in an apparent psychotic break.  I am sure his backers also had something to do with that episode as they probably backed off, ruining his little kingdom and perhaps his life but just like they walked off on Uganda and denied responsibility, they most likely did so here as well.

What they are really doing is testing their beliefs on the rest of us, how far can they go, what is the breaking point, how could that be managed in a perfect circumstance?  And a perfect circumstance to them is control of both houses of Congress, the Executive Office, The Supreme Court and local and state offices .   Another area of control they have been building is the Military.  They are making sure their friends have contracts for services, that Jesus is in training documents for our armed forces and of course that our military hardware and troops have the tracts necessary to preach their gospel to the world and in my eyes that is a perfect storm.  In this perfect storm they truly believe they can fundamentally change this country into what they claim our forefathers wanted for us.  God knows they have said it enough for anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention, to know and understand.  But people still either do not know or think “It Can’t Happen Here!”  During the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust did good soldiers not help the cause along?  Did they not believe in the oath they took to protect and defend the constitution, the Roman government, the Vatican, Hitler?  Whatever they promised to uphold is exactly what they did.  What would make anyone think that a military today that has been trained as they have and now been steeped in religious training would speak out or deny their Commander in Chief or their Generals?  Sure some would but to disobey a direct order is just not in a soldier’s nature.  If it were we would not have had a Holocaust, a MyLei, a Fallujah and many millions would have lived.

If you look at the whole picture, you have to admit they are working towards something and if you have seen them in action the past three years, you KNOW they do not like to be out of power.  One thing I can say for them, in power or not, they have never lost site of the prize.  They have worked diligently in many different areas to consolidate power and the rest of us have not.  They already had their “Pearl Harbor Moment” and you see how well that one worked out.  I am watching every move they make, how about you?

Click on the PTODE image to enlarge.

If anyone has any recommendations for changes or additions I’m always open to suggestions.

I’ll begin by saying that the Presidential debate which I attended earlier today was very enjoyable. This was despite five of the seven candidates not turning up. Four of them simply didn’t agree to come, while one dropped out at the last second to give a television interview. Interestingly enough, of the two candidates that did show up – David Norris and Michael D. Higgins – both are former university lecturers and both repeatedly stressed the need for young people to be involved in politics. There’s a point somewhere in there, I think.

Due to the drought in candidates, the format of the meeting wound up being more akin to a presentation and exploration of ideas than a formal debate. This, in my opinion, was a welcome change from the media driven debates – read: scandal driven – that have taken place over the last few weeks. It also allowed for a more relaxed atmosphere, which I felt reflected well on both candidates.

Since Norris and Higgins are both liberals – and proud of it too, according to Norris, who lambasted the media for trying to turn it into a dirty word – there was substantial agreement on most issues. There were, of course, differences. Norris, being a social campaigner, focused more on social issues. He highlighted his success in bringing about the introduction of significant child abuse laws in the early 1990s, which placed the well-being of the child above every other consideration, and his more recent efforts to have same-sex – that’s the popular term over here – marriage legalised, resulting in the passing of a civil partnership bill.

Higgins, instead, focused more on the economic side of the issues. He attacked the Austrian economic model – by name: something which is rarely done – and it’s insistence on unregulated or lightly regulated financial systems. He pointed out that this model allows for people to be irrational, but insists that the market is always rational, which, as he said, leads to a ludicrous contradiction. Something which I agree with wholeheartedly. He ended this line of discussion by underlining the fact that we know that many of the problems today emanate from Austrian Economics and that this is being ignored by ideologues, which is exacerbating the problems and making them harder to solve.

Closer to many Planeteers , America featured rather prominently throughout the debate. When Higgins was speaking about the economics of the current financial crisis he mentioned the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act as an example of the deregulation which ultimately created the current crisis. When speaking of the vilification of the word “liberal”, Norris mentioned that the Democrats in the United States have become afraid of identifying themselves as liberal and that such cowering is what leads to people like George W. Bush being elected, culminating in war and financial crisis.

Closer to home, both candidates denounced the bailing out of non-systemic banks such as Anglo-Irish. Norris also told the audience to see through the myth that Germany is bailing out Ireland to the reality that Ireland is bailing out German banks.

There were also one or two questions raised regarding the constitutional powers of the President and other such matters, but I won’t get into them here.

Well, I was hoping to have more to talk to you about regarding this debate, but with two candidates showing up only so much can be said. I will, however, be posting an article or two before the election on the 27 October. If you’re interested, then I hope that you’ll read them.