As with all of my friends here at the Planet, I was elated last night when President Barack Obama was trusted with four more years to finish what he had started and to lead this country. I had a very difficult time falling asleep last night because I was so hungry for information on several Senate and House results and also the propositions here in California. I won some and lost some but I think the most satisfying victory is that the nation agreed that America is not for sale nor is Democracy. I have to say I was very worried about that, I think it probably caused the most distress I felt about this election. Would the nation stand up and say NO to the oligarchs who are trying to buy this country for themselves? Well I see I should have had faith all along. Of course that is easy to say today but one thing is different, I truly realize that a nation of people who do not remain vigilant and protect that democracy, risk the possibility of losing it all. I also have faith that others are feeling the same way.
Going forward I wonder if the Supreme Court or the Elite in this country will get the message. Will they realize that working together is the answer and creating an atmosphere where you divide the nation is not healthy for anyone? Will they continue to grasp for that brass ring on their merry-go-round reaching for greater power? Will they continue to want only what is good for them and not the country as a whole? Six billion dollars was spent on this election. How much better off would this country have been if that money had been put back into the growth of this nation? I am not excusing the politicians here either, they bought into the billions for election as my inbox would attest. I also have to say I lost a great deal of respect for the parties as a whole as they continued to bombard me with pleas for more money based on scare tactics.(yes i subscribe to both parties so I know what is going on on both sides) I get it that they were just trying to protect their turf, but I still wish they could have remained above the fray and sent a message to the powerful that elections cannot be bought. Upon reflection that still bothers me even though the outcome was in my favor.
One thing I did learn was that social media is a powerful tool to get the message out. I spent days pouring over the McCain campaign dossier on Mitt Romney and posted hundreds of comments to Facebook and Twitter. Both media were excellent for getting the truth out but they were also the home of many lies and distortions. Overall I believe they presented opportunities for many people to learn what was at stake and what the media was not going to tell us. Speaking of the media, in my humble opinion, BIG FAIL….HUGE. just like the powerful they used tactics to drive viewership, not truth. The fifth column in this country needs to look at themselves as well. From Wiki:
A fifth column is a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group, such as a nation, from within. A fifth column can be a group of secret sympathizers of an enemy that are involved in sabotage within military defense lines, or a country’s borders. A key tactic of the fifth column is the secret introduction of supporters into the whole fabric of the entity under attack. This clandestine infiltration is especially effective with positions concerning national policy and defense. From influential positions like these, fifth column tactics can be effectively utilized, from stoking fears through misinformation campaigns, to traditional techniques like espionage.
That pretty accurately describes the Media’s failure in this campaign. I sincerely hope that they will reflect and change their ways, but I am not confident that will happen. In retrospect I have to say that Planet POV and all of you here were so helpful in allaying some of my fears. I know I have not been on the site a great deal, but all of you understood the risks, so many on Twitter and Facebook did not and I hope I did my small part to inform. During the process I met a lot of new people and I am sure made a few enemies but friends are way more important. When the chips were down and important activities happened, I always found my way to the Planet. I want to thank all of you and especially the administrators of this site for keeping it up and running and providing the unique real time open thread. The Planet will continue to be my home and over the next four years I hope we all share the good things to come and inform each other on the not so good things that may come our way. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Oh and President Obama? I still have your back.
I realized after the second debate when the media did not handily call the “winner” Obama that they were out of their minds and shouldn’t be listened to.
But none of us really are in the position to gauge what is “real” are we? We feel we can transcend and get a better view through massive intake of granular and meta info but that can only lead us farther astray.
The big issue for me was the clash of national consciousness and whether we were a small and frightened people or a group of people who possessed the desire for the kind of country that was reflected in someone like Obama when we first voted for him. We are the change and we are more in charge than we may think we are, at least of our own take on things and how we respond to them.
Questinia
I tried to turn off the media but everywhere I looked they tried to get back in my face and then I also wondered if I ignore them, am I going to be out of touch and be sorely disappointed on election night? My saving grace was usually to come here for a dose of reality, I was never disappointed. Thanks for your input.
The media is a failure.
It is not about news, facts and logical analysis.
It is about something else. It is mostly about entertainment and selling an audience to advertisers.
The entertainment includes: sensationalism, pandering. Those things, among others, delivers the audience to the customer.
The audience is not the customer; the audience is the product.
Luckily for me I can view it all with a great deal of skepticism and the knowledge that I either already know the person they bring on as an expert is a sham or I have the ability to do my own research to find out.
yes.
true with me as well.
agrippa, you are absolutely right. The media has turned politics into some sort of new, weird sport. Sports are entertaining and really offer no or very little opportunities for rational thought. Sports are guided by emotion, and as we know, emotion limits critical thinking.
Emotion is also a huge factor in the success of propaganda, namely fear. The GOP and their media accomplices use fear very effectively. If it weren’t for “The Fear Factor,” Bush II would never have been reelected to a second term.
Agrippa
That was really driven home to me this morning when I read a post on HP about Don Lemon discussing on CNN how he got butt hurt when some comedian “mistreated” him in some hotel lobby. WTH? Who really cares, except the people sitting at that round table at CNN, the tea party network.
Fifth Columnists indeed, Sue.
The problem with nailing the RW plutocrats for their racism, their traitorous actions or their terrorism is that they have already kind of insulated themselves from such accurate descriptions by pre-attacking their adversaries as being all of the above…for attacking them and their agenda.
The Repub strategy is to always accuse your adversary of your own sins and attack them for their strengths. Haven’t we had enough of that? Haven’t we figured out that ploy?
It’s time to call racists, liars and class warfare driven plutocrats exactly what they are and let the chips fall wherever they may.
Well you know I am not going to disagree with that. How much better off would we be if even some of that money was used for the homeless to give them a hand up, not a hand out?
The one house that Mitt Romney can not buy. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151130937811275&set=a.180479986274.135777.177486166274&type=1&theater
Indeed Patsy.
Well you can try to buy it, but thank goodness, this time, the deal for Romney fell apart.
Indeed. Here is another you might find interesting.
https://twitter.com/hannahkmay/status/266605202474414080/photo/1
That is rich! My kids will love it 😉
Wonderful post, Girlfriend! I think you remember that well over a year ago I was thumping the drum for ‘Get out there! Register voters! Drive them to get ID! PAY for it if you have to! Then drive ’em to the polls!” And that is EXACTLY what happened.
I was watching Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworkers, who put his folks out walking precincts. I spent my weekend on phone banks in the Sac Labor Council. I had door hangers when I got home from candidates AND on issues. The people phoning were everybody – white, Black, Latino, old, young, male, female. It was so cool! They are my fave folks – and this is RIGHT in the middle of a strike at a supermarket, too. But they never stopped. Worked right up to 6 pm yesterday. GREAT people!
We went back to basics. We have not got billions in money – but we have millions of PEOPLE. And we had to know that what works is – WORK. And we did it. And we won.
Now I suspect the RW plutocrats will take away this message – WE LOST! THAT MEANS WE DID NOT SPEND ENOUGH!!! OUR MESSAGES WEREN’T MEAN ENOUGH!!!
Well, I love what a Black preacher taught me once: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you always got.”
They failed. They will fail again. We won – so we will win again. You cannot get where you want to be by doing what did not work the first time. Even progressives think you can win by doing the losing thing BIGGER.We know we win by doing the right thing all of the time.
You have real people standing up for themselves. You have real candidates hearing that and responding. That is what wins.
For forty years too many of the progressives have sat on their butts and wanted an Imperial president to save them. And they let a lot of what occurred happen. We, the REAL people, have been out doing what needs doing, and we cannot stop, we cannot sit back, we cannot let the passivity of the left and the power hunger of the right become the mainstream again.
We can keep the power if we want to. But it will take eternal vigilance. Now and always. Democracy is a right, but it’s also a gift, and it needs tender and eternal care. No slacking off!
I know you are right. I think I did my little part, no I know I did my part. One of my favorite sayings is:
“Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
– Teilhard de Chardin
How great it would be if those who claim to know god, actually did know him. de Chardin knew, even then that man was to busy with pretending to know what fire was to actually experience it.
I have had that little scroll for over 40 years now and always hang it where I am reminded everyday.
Spot on an as eloquent as usual CL.
Like Patsy posted the White House is the one you cannot buy.
But of course the GOP will learn all the wrong lessons AGAIN. George Will just thinks the GOP needs to employ tokenism and nominate someone like Rubio. Base Republicans think they just need to nominate a REAL conservative. They have not learned that even though teabaggers are like 2-10 the last two election even at the Senate level that America is not buying radical conservatism (sure and oxymoron but we are talking about the batshitecrazy GOP). Last but not least like you said the GOP will still think they can win with another plutocrat. They just need a better salesman to be the plutocrat. Damn the torpedoes (real issues) full steam ahead.
Wonderful article Sue, looks as if we were thinking along the same lines about CU and the moneybags losers.
No, thank you Sue, we might be the glass, but you are the fine wine keeping us alert and informed with your wonderful insight into the dark side, and we are eternally grateful for that. Cheers!
I found this interesting.
50 States/Results
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/2012-election/50states-results.html?wpisrc=nl_fix
And this.
Unraveling secret money in California
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-unraveling-secret-money-in-california/2012/11/06/de91c954-2851-11e2-96b6-8e6a7524553f_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
Thanks for those links Kalima. I am going to read the state by state later tonight. I read a few and the conclusions are interesting such as in Alaska:
“As expected, Republican Rep. Don Young retained the state’s only seat in the House. Comparing the funds raised by him and his opponent indicated that his return to the House was a virtual certainty. He raised almost $1 million compared with the $14,000 reported by his opponent.”
So the press still thinks money is the key…..tsk tsk
The second one appealed to the investigator in me. I always love to see people who go after what is not right in front of them.
And yes, you are right, we both had the same uneasy feelings
😆 Sue, now I’ve started you off on another hunt for that mysterious $11 million and the donors. Best of luck.
You are right Kalima but in this one I am going to follow the path already laid for me.
You go girl, have at ’em. It will be interesting to see where that path can lead, and I disagree that some people don’t have to disclose, I believe everyone should if they have nothing to hide.
[img]http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/75940_470897336293938_620765265_n.jpg[/img]
Sue, we owe you a debt of gratitude as well. I think you were among the very first people here to sound the alarm about the dangers associated with and the agenda of the religious right. You picked up on that before many others did.
Thought you might be interested in these post-election reflections by our friend Frank Schaeffer:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frankschaeffer/2012/11/do-christians-have-something-better-to-do-than-spending-the-next-4-years-hating-and-lying-about-president-obama-the-way-they-did-for-the-last-4-years/
Kes that is the cutest thing ever.
Unlike Romney, he is a baby-magnet. Even through the screen.
Thanks Kes but I am not that good if I don’t have others to validate my writing and investigation. You all did that.
Oh my word Kes that piece was so good. He put into words what I have been trying so say in a “politically correct” manner for months. I fully believe the win(again) for Obama in Iowa was partly from Evangelicals who normally will vote a Republican ticket but in light of their faith could not hit the button for a cultist. I saw a BBC documentary and the guy went to Iowa and interviewed many evangelicals and they mostly said, “No to Mitt Romney because of his church”. Personally I do not know if the Mormon church is a cult or not, but Evangelicals have been saying that for years. Then they turn around and vote for Mitt because they hate the president so much.
Schaeffer hit the nail on the head. He is honest and forthright. Too bad more people who are anti-religious do not seek out the progressives in the movement but rather base their opinion of religion on people like the far right.
I am going to book mark that post and share it far and wide, thanks so much it gave me hope and validated everything I thought and said over this past year.
The largest “religious movement” in America is walkaways. They largely don’t come to us, though if they have been booted out over a gay or lesbian child, they may. But people are SO harmed by the religious right they don’t see ANY faith organization as safe.
We are growing oddly enough. It’s masked by major splits – so if the whole Episcopalian Diocese of San Joaquin divides with the anti-GLBT folks going Anglican, then it overshadows the rush BACK to the very same churches of people who were hurt by the hate and are now coming back. That Diocese is the fastest growing area of religious entities in America – but everyone measures it as LESS populated since about half departed to ally with the Anglican church of Argentina (and good luck to ’em with all that cultural uneasiness!) Same with the splits in the Lutherans and Presbyterians – those returning are not even noticed, only the ones who left.
We probably won’t be around as denominations in a century – but we WILL be around as a spiritual center. It may be churches without walls or large ones of mixed backgrounds, but we WILL be here. I hope it will be to offer total love and complete acceptance – the world needs that. However we do it, we WILL do it. And the world will be kinder for it.
I agree that a spiritual gathering could be what is best for everyone. Perhaps if there were more spiritual people there would be fewer congregations of “religious” status. I prefer the spiritual as opposed to the religious, but that is just me. I would like to see those walkaways perhaps move into a spiritual group rather than just denouncing the whole enchilada.
I was kind of a walkaway but mine was more organized religion as a whole and it took me a long time to reason that being spiritual has nothing to do with organized religion.
I think any firm belief in the “one true god,” way of thinking is, by nature not spiritual at all. It is divisive, which is basically the antithesis of spirituality.
It builds walls instead of bridges. It separates instead of uniting.
You are more familiar with the Tao, does it speak of a supreme being? Or is it pure spiritualism? Personally I don’t know who or if there is one true god.
Sue, the Tao is mysterious, and, I think for a reason. Nobody knows all the answers and the Tao, by being mysterious, it makes one think of all the possibilities. As much as our human minds are capable.
My understanding is the Tao is a creative force in the universe. Not a “being,” but much more natural. Much more. Basically it’s Nature. It suggests (not commands)that we learn great lessons from Nature as to how Nature is very much a part of our lives. We ARE nature, as much as anything else in the Natural world. The wonderment of Nature is how everything is interlocked, entwined I would say. That is where the spirituality comes in. It is a recognition that we are all just smaller pieces of the same whole. That we are all intertwined in the great scope of things.
Orthodox religion doesn’t really make this connection. Christianity says that mankind was kicked out of the garden. I don’t even see how that would be possible. We ARE the garden, or at least a part of it. How can we be expelled? It just doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t know if there is or isn’t a supreme being, but my reason tells me, no there isn’t. Some would call me agnostic, and maybe, in some way, they are right. I call myself an atheist, because what makes sense to me doesn’t include some sort of “being.”
Got it, I still have that book in my kindle collection to read. Someday soon
This is from wikipedia;
“The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a new religious movement or other group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre.[1] The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices. The word was first used in the early 17th century denoting homage paid to a divinity and borrowed via the French culte from Latin cultus “worship”, from the adjective cultus “inhabited, cultivated, worshipped”, derived from the verb colere “care, cultivate.”
I would classify Mormonism as being bizarre.
Then it is a cult and they have gone against everything they previously spoke of by backing a cultist. See why I do not trust the organized religion thing?
Excellent piece Sue. The good guys won despite all the efforts on the dark side.
Indeed the media is wholly complicit for what went on during this election. Faux News and right wing radio was just a continual ad for the GOP. I hate to say at least prime time MSNBC was about the same. Of course the big difference was that the right wing media was selling an inferior product and MSNBC was endorsing a good product. CNN was simply the definition of corporate MSM but by keeping pundits like Erick Erickson they proved they want to lean right.
One of my biggest disappointments is how Gallup joined Rasmussen in being propagandists using their influential polling firms to forward the right wing media’s delusions. For Gallup to have Romney ahead by 5 points a couple days before the election and for both Gallup and Rasmussen to be tied for the 24th most least accurate polling firms was part of the propaganda machine. Both polling firms had obvious bias toward Republicans on the order of 3+ points which is huge in such a close election with so many polls.
However nothing was worse than the media letting Romney and the right wing getting away with so many lies. Romney will go down as the most mendacious general election candidate in modern history with not just flip flops on every single major issue but continuous lies about the President’s record. I’m not naive. All campaigns spin and stretch the truth but Romney ran a post truth campaign. But what should we expect from a candidate who lied about his name in his first debate during the primaries and in his first attack ad about Obama.
I wish I could say that Republicans or at least the media will do so honest soul searching but they will not.
No wonder 4 out of the top 6 groups you discuss also happen to have the highers percentage of psychopaths.
1. CEO
2. Lawyer
3. Media (TV/Radio)
4. Salesperson
5. Surgeon
6. Journalist
7. Police Officer
8. Clergy
9. Chef
10.Civil Servant
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-barker/which-professions-have-the-most-psychopaths_b_2084246.html
Thanks KQ. You know I really tried not to let those polls bother me, but of course they did to a certain extent. I hear you on all points. That is why sites like this are so important to support. Some people like to say “oh no here you come with a blog post” mainly because they do not want to either hear another opinion or believe that opinion could have been formed from real facts.
I had someone on FB tell me today he deleted one of my comments because his friends do not like facts. How incredibly ignorant is that? He is my nephew so I will cut him some slack but he does not understand that he undermined the idea of free speech by doing that to someone. He did not seem troubled by his actions. {{{{sigh}}}}
I agree with you that the right is, for the most part, not going to give. They are so entrenched in the meme they have been supporting for the last 30 years or so, they cannot see a way out. Some truly frighten me.(see the splc article in OT)
It is my feeling that as long as the public supports the cable media stations, they will not change their stripes. Orwell Rolls in his Grave was produced quite a while ago and the sentiments in that documentary are just as true today. Thanks for your kind words.
I saw some poor lady on twitter, tweet that her husband isn’t talking to her because she supports the president and he blames her for Romney’s loss.
Sure I want more people, especially in my demo middle aged white males to come towards my point of view, but if you are gonna be that hateful and that much in denial I don’t mind seeing them stay where they are.
Damn KQ that is pretty bad. My husband and I have many different points of view but for the most part we respect the other. Of course ours are of a more banal nature, Raiders v SF 49ers etc but still we have never come to that end.
You are right though, I don’t want the haters contaminating my space either.
Remember what Murph posted last night – the Lysistrata Ladies of Missouri not only voted for Claire McCaskill BUT GOT THEIR HUSBANDS TO VOTE FOR HER TOO!
Not every husband is a boor nor every wife a saint (OK maybe MOST wives…) We have evidence from Murph that the Lysistrata Ladies did something amazing. Murph was very kind – he never asked about their presidential vote, and maybe they DID go Romney. But they made a HUGE step forward by rejecting Akin. Every step toward sanity is a step toward a better society.
The poor woman whose husband berates her has a man in her life who is an abuser on many levels I suspect. And my advice to her would be to cease telling him what she thinks and does! Or leave. him if he’s dangerous. Depends on his overall behavior.
That is sad – but only she can figure out if he’s worth it. Our nation will go on. The very personal is up to her. The national is up to us all.