Our Nation at the Cross Roads and Our Media at Cross Purposes

Hey Vig! Thanks for reminding me that I never said what I started to say in my recent post on the free pass being given to Palin (and to McCain) by the MSM.

Daum, after blathering on about Ms. Scott’s identification with Palin, concludes her article with these words: “Game on, folks!” It was Daum's use of sports as a metaphor for this election that so infuriated me.

Why? Because this election is too important to be trivialized as being merely a "game".

Consider this very possible scenario: Aided by voting machines lacking paper copies of the voter’s actual vote and programmed to convert votes for Obama to votes for McCain, and by the growing voter-suppression efforts presently occurring across our land, it is increasingly possible that McCain-Palin could succeed in their attempt to steal the 2008 presidential election. Such an outcome would place Ms. Palin (with her religiosity driven political agenda) but one heartbeat away from:

• controlling our nuclear arsenal;
• from ordering our sons and daughters into any and all wars which God tells her to enter;
• from continuing to mock and denigrate those who would heal the wounds of our mortally wounded body politic;
• and from escalating the relentless onslaught by those Democracy-hating Republican operatives who are determined to impose upon the citizens of this country, their extreme agenda of selfishness and greed, while privatizing (and thus destroying) our beloved country from within.
  

Truly, this election is no mere game. Our nation's very survival as envisioned and called into being by our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) is at stake.

The Republicans are determined to steal a third presidential election. When they return to the White House, they intend to complete the shredding of our Constitution and the bankrupting (both morally and economically) of our Democracy.

Their goal: to establish a Unitary Presidency presiding over a Theocracy; answerable to no one; worshiping at the altar of conspicuous consumption; and tolerating no dissent. Privatized mercenaries will continue Bush's warrant-less-wire-tapping of, and spying upon, the citizenry, who will have been cowed into passivity by the ceaseless fear- mongering spewing forth from the “Bully Pulpit” and the abdication of true journalism by the remnants of the MSM..

This nightmare may sound laughable, Dear Reader, but I believe that these past eight years of Republican Rule, with its resulting divisiveness and continuing brazen attempts to destroy our constitutionally guaranteed Rights have laid the groundwork that will permit the Republican Right to complete their goal of total hegemony within each of the once separate branches of our nation’s governing institutions.

We are engaged in an hidden war, waged in secret, with the outcome determining the quality of life for all Americans. No game this. Rather, it is a necessary war that must be won, not lost.

Note that the continuing falsehoods that McCain and Palin blatantly pass themselves off as righteous “mavericks” when in fact, they are nothing but desperate, hypocritical panderers, liars and lawbreakers. Yet, no one is calling them on their campaign (mis) behaviors.

Two examples of our MIA MSM:

1. McCain continues to use copyrighted music in his campaigning, knowing that he has been asked to cease and desist by the artists whose work it is. NO ONE CALLS HIM ON IT.
2. Palin continues to lie about several actions she claims she took that she didn't: firing her personal chef, eliminating "earmarks", and opposing the "Bridge to Nowhere". NO ONE CALLS HER ON IT.
   

The media is silent, no doubt, in part, because of the publicly staged intimidation scenario, which, during the Republican’s carefully orchestrated convention demonstration by the party’s faithful, succeeded in manipulating MSNBC to banish Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from their accustomed roles during the upcoming campaign debates and on election night.

It seems that Olbermann and Matthews were winning the ratings race and the Republican operatives could not allow their losing product (the McCain-Palin ticket) to continue to flounder for a moment longer in the “Free Market Competition” so adored by Republican ideologues.

As for Obama, he appears to be flummoxed by Palin’s scurrilous lies about him and her inflated statements of her supposed political “accomplishments”. He appears to have lost his focus, looking dazed and uncertain as to how to respond to the slime and filth thrown at him by the Republican operatives.

Obama needs to find his own voice again – not easy to do when the opposition continues to obfuscate, fails to allow its candidate to be questioned by voters or by those in the media (WHAT exactly is it they fear she’ll say without her Teleprompter or Minder?).

Palin needs to be “treated with deference”? Has Obama been treated with “deference” by his Democratic rival, the MSM, or anyone else? Why does Ms Palin need special treatment? The Republicans shout that “she’ll be ready on Day One”, but keep her sequestered while screaming “Sexism”. Just who is being sexist here?

As a woman, I decry this attempt to portray “Sarah Barracuda” as a weak “Little Woman” in need of protection from those big bad boys (and girls) of the media and the public. It is demeaning to all women when Ms.Palin demands special, lenient treatment, and cries “”Sexism!” before a single question had been asked of her.

Ms Palin: Don’t pretend to be an “Underdog” when you’ve spent your brief time in the national limelight dishing out lies and venom that would turn a cobra green with envy.

Meghan Daum’s chatty op-ed piece colludes with the McCain-Palin campaign’s attempt to trivialize, demean, and manipulate what is at stake in this election when they declared: “Oh, this campaign isn’t about issues, it’s about “images”. This favorite Rovian strategy seeks to hide the fact that McCain-Palin and the Republican Party have no solutions to offer that would improve the lives of our citizens.

We voters must consider the consequences of permitting ourselves to be manipulated into trivializing all that is at stake in this election. We cannot permit ourselves the luxury of being seduced by seemingly friendly “folk” who present a “nice”, or novel, or “down home” image.

We’ve “Been there…Done that”.
It is time to clean house.
I’m all fired up and ready to go! How about YOU?