Also from "Angry Bear"

Sunday, November 23, 2008

David Sirota has it right....

rdan

David Sirota at Salon has reflected my take on media and says it much better than I. And here in addition to the first link.

If you’re having trouble remembering what the recent election was all about, rest easy: You’re probably not going senile — you’re likely experiencing the momentary effects of brainwashing.

For weeks, your television, newspaper and radio have been telling you that America is a "center-right nation" that elected Barack Obama to crush his fellow "socialist" hippies, discard the agenda he campaigned on, and meet the policy demands of electorally humiliated Republicans.

This is the usual post-election nonsense from the Braindead Megaphone, as author George Saunders famously calls our political and media noise machine. When George W. Bush wins by 3 million votes, the megaphone blares announcements about a conservative mandate that Democrats must respect. When Obama wins by twice as much, the same megaphone roars about Democrats having no mandate to do anything other than appease conservatives.

It's confusing, isn't it? We hazily recall backing Obama and his progressive platform. Yet, the megaphone's re-educative shock treatment aims to wipe away that memory and conjure eternal conservatism from our spotless minds.

Luckily, we have polling to maintain our sanity.

Public opinion surveys show that most Obama voters knew the Illinois senator was a progressive when they cast their ballots — and that those votes for him weren't just anti-Bush protests; they were ideological. According to a post-election poll by my colleagues at the Campaign for America's Future, 70 percent of Americans say they want conservatives to help this progressive president enact his decidedly progressive agenda.

But we have a possible 1 trillion dollar federal budget deficit:

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"A trillion-dollar deficit is not only something you wouldn't have seen in an economic textbook, it is something that even a science fiction writer would not dare mention," said Stan Collender, one of the nation's most respected budget analysts, who was a budget staffer for both the House and Senate and now works for a Washington corporate communications company.

A serious problem with Medicare expenditures and a growing burden of using increasing % of income for health care, shrinking state and local government revenue for services, a trade imbalance that makes recovery seriously difficult for most Americans, and some economically oriented ideologies that can only claim purity and offers 'if only', 'other factors all being equal' (slipping past the need for an answer), and platitudes about 'the force' taking care of things come what may, externalities not being important.

Spinners are pretty much bankrupt walking that talk...(then the flip side accusation is communism and 100% government. That kind of argument has nothing to do with thinking, but simple personality structure...nuanced being not understood). So the blathering is part of needing to publish something every day instead of saying 'I don't know', 'I need some time to think on it', 'Watch carefully to match intent and behavior'. 'oops.' Can voters handle nuance. Not many I know. Quite a quandary, yes?