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Mon 31 Dec, 2007 11:36 am
Thank you truth teller, Brent Budowsky, for exposing the Media's stupid arrogant belief that they are best at choosing who shall be president. I blame the Editor class for this assignment corruption. ---BBB
Brent Budowsky served as Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, responsible for commerce and intelligence matters, including one of the core drafters of the CIA Identities Law. Served as Legislative Director to Congressman Bill Alexander, then Chief Deputy Whip, House of Representatives. Currently a member of the International Advisory Council of the Intelligence Summit. Left goverment in 1990 for marketing and public affairs business including major corporate entertainment and talent management. He can be reached at [email protected].
Media Insiders Shaft Biden, Richardson, Dodd, Kucinich and America
by Brent Budowsky
Posted December 30, 2007
Immediately after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto the front page story in the Washington Post about Pakistan and the presidential campaign did not even mention Joe Biden, the only candidate who seriously distinguished himself on the Pakistan crisis.
Upon reflection, the Washington Post editorial page, which has supported Bush on the Iraq war as Pravda supported Leonid Brezhnev, followed up with a lead editorial on candidates and Pakistan, which, incredibly, did not even acknowledge of Joe Biden.
Here is why the major media, including the daily newspapers, has lost such credibility with the American people and in the case of insider print media, so many subscribers who moved their business to internet sites, including this one.
It is not only Biden. The insider political media is now embedded with, and morphed into, the insider political classes to the point where they part of the same beast. The insider political reporters have moved beyond the courtiers that Stephen Colbert so brilliantly satired two White House correspondents dinners ago; and have fully joined the home team of the insider Washington establishment.
This class decided a year ago which candidate was inevitable, and which candidates were exiled into the insider media gulag, destined to disappear as though they never existed.
By any standard, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd stand at the top of the list in presidential qualification, stature, substance and a lifetime of depth and achievement. A reasonable person might conclude that each of these three, has equal or greater qualification to be president as any of the three leading Democrats.
Yet from the beginning, they were banished by the insider classes like the Soviets banished dissidents in the Gulag, like Pinochet banished the disappeared in the darker days of Chile.
Biden, Richardson and Dodd simply did not exist in the eyes of the annointing class, a group of political insiders with an extremely narrow life experience beyond their life as political insiders with each other.
Biden, Richardson and Dodd are the political detainees of our time, the political prisoners of our democracy, treated with contempt and scorn by the elites of the political press who, by doing so, are showing their contempt and scorn for the standards of professionalism in journalism, and their contempt and scorn for the very notion of the role a free press should play in our democracy.
Who do these people think they are, that during most of the presidential debates, the three candidates with such vast experience had to virtually ask permission, to sandwich a few seconds of their views, into the most boring, shallow, vapid, pointless debates that any serious democracy could possibly conduct at such a momentous time in our history?
Regarding the last Iowa Democratic debate, who do these sainted Iowa debate organizers think they are, that Alan Keyes gets prime participation in the Republican debate while Dennis Kucinich is banned from the Democratic debate?
I cannot even show minimal professional respect; only an idiot would give Keyes prime exposure while treating Kucinich like a Guantanamo detainee; and the idiots that made this decision have far too much power, in Iowa and nationally, for the health of our democracy.
The internet will continue to mature; grow and flourish over time; some reporters and some television will rejoin the real America and prosper while major newspapers such as the Washington Post will careen towards obsolescence and ultimate extinction unless they dramatically get with the program of true democracy and serious standards of journalism.
In the meantime, the reason the so-called pundits and media elites are almost always wrong is they are so divorced from the real America and so embedded into their provincial elitism.
The only thing that is truly inevitable is that the courtier classes and incestuous bonds between media insiders and political insiders are destined to fade further into the mist, until they are left with large galas of insider self-congratulation, and no remaining customers as the real America takes its business elsewhere.
To Iowans For Biden, Dodd, Richardson, Kucinich, Paul &
Rock The Vote: To Iowans For Biden, Dodd, Richardson, Kucinich, Paul, and Gore
by Brent Budowsky
Posted January 2, 2008
You read it here first: after Iowa and New Hampshire the pundits will proclaim 2008 The Year Of The Political Independent that will advantage Barack Obama and John McCain, and disadvantage Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney.
The great realignment is at hand, and it is anti-Washington, anti-establishment, and anti-Bush with the potential outcome of the next FDR and JFK-style eras being a progressive centrist alliance between progressive Democrats and political independents electing a reformist President and Congress.
If the last shall be first, Dennis Kucinich has fired the first cannon by urging his supporters in Iowa to vote with Barack Obama and if the supporters of Biden, Dodd, Richardson, Gore and Democrats for Ron Paul take this course and rock the vote for Obama or Edwards in Iowa, the revolution begins.
The proposition in Iowa is simple: the Iowa caucus is now a referendum, yes or no, on whether the Democratic nominating process is declared over, before it begins in earnest, with the insider establishment coronating it's candidate, Hillary Clinton, or whether the real campaign begins with a reformist victory in Iowa that sets loose powerful forces for true change.
January 3 in Iowa will be the Lexington and Concord of our times, and in this year of the political independent the issue will be decided by the most disenfranchised, disrespected and disempowered groups in American politics, who are:
Progressive Democrats who hunger for a leadership of principle and courage in the battle against the worst President in our times, and any times, and political independents, who are fed up with the demeaning negativity corruptions and gridlock of our age, and who are 70% united with progressives against the hallmarks of the Bush years.
To young people especially, do not let the "grown ups" disenfranchise you by deliberately scheduling the caucus on a date they think you will be away on college break. Shame on them, power to you.
Rock the vote: come back by plane, train, bus, or foot. It is your country and your future; you can change the world. You will have a story to tell for a lifetime and historians will write about what you do.
To supporters of Biden, Richardson, Dodd, Kucinich, Gore and Democrats in Iowa for Ron Paul, ignore the insiders, because they are wrong. As Democrats will gather on a cold Iowa night, in a razor thin campaign, you have the votes to light a fire that will change America, and leave the insiders commenting with awe about what you do.
Here is why I urge supporters of Biden, Dodd, Richardson, Kucinich, Gore and Democrats for Ron Paul to walk into the Iowa caucus and cast your votes for either Edwards or Obama which will change American history and keep hope alive for your number one candidate.
If Hillary Clinton is formally handed the crown though achieving only a 30% plurality in Iowa, the election in November will be between a Republican who embodies the reactionary way of Bush 44, versus a Democratic Party that feels vindicated and victorious by a practice of surrendering, positioning, maneuvering and a failure to fight for the dreams we hold dear, even when we stand with 70% of our country.
If Hillary comes in second, there will be an open process that continues and a debate that only then begins in earnest. If Hillary comes in third, our democratic process will break open to the skies with an explosion of energy, vitality, and activism throughout the Democratic Party.
This is not about Hillary; it is about democracy, about what Democrats stand for and fight for, about whether we hear the message of the American people that business as usual in Washington must end.
Make no mistake, the objective fact is this: Hillary has alienated the vast pool of political independents and is the one major Democrat who therefore cannot possibly win a landslide and could hand to Republicans an election victory that would be another inexcusable defeat for Democrats and tragedy for America.
If we rock the vote, Hillary will get her second change in this campaign, and let her fight for it with what she believes in, what she stands for, not sending surrogates out to demean other Democrats or campaigning on the vanities of restoration or inevitability. If she wins after a truly open contest, she will be a better candidate and leader for it.
If we rock the vote let Biden be Biden, let Richardson be Richardson, let Dodd be Dodd, let Kucinich be Kucinich, let Obama be Obama, let Edwards be Edwards, let Gore tell us where he stands, and let them ALL be heard, in a TRUE process of democracy with the REAL debate our country deserves, and demands.
Already the television insiders are planning to ban certain candidates from future debates, beginning with the shameful exclusion of Dennis Kucinich in Iowa and Ron Paul from an upcoming debate.
The debates that were never serious, will be the debates that will soon be silenced, but this will change if the supporters of Biden, Richardson, Dodd, Kucinich, Gore and Democrats for Paul in Iowa rock the vote, open the process and restore democracy to a tired and decayed system.
If Obama and Edwards finish first and second in Iowa, the closed process opens, and the voice of the disenfranchised majority will be heard.
Our democracy will be replenished with the only restoration that matters, the restoration of the Democratic Party as the party of the people, and the restoration of our democratic government being of the people, by the people, and for the people.
To supporters of Biden, Richardson, Dodd, Kucinich, Gore and Democrats for Ron Paul: on January 3 you are the stars, you are the leaders, and you are the Thomas Paines of our time with the power to rock the vote, and change the world.
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