Politics is about disagreement. Sure, it's about settling disagreements, but it starts with diverging opinions and, when it works, ends with a direction.
Last night, President Barack Obama disagreed with the Supreme Court's recent (and horrible) decision on corporate propaganda. This decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission continued to drive through the heart of our democracy the conservative majority's stake of an axiom that corporate money equals free speech. Obama was pointed but polite:
Yet CNN, especially the useless Paul Steinhauser, is raising its eyebrows over Obama disagreeing with the Supremes right there in front of them. Cripes, fellows, go ahead and wet your pants if you're that timorous.With all due deference to separation of powers, last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.
I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests or, worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems.
Then, just to be balanced, Steinhauser tut-tuts at Samuel Alito's reaction. Watch the video. All Alito does is mouth (no, not mouth off), "That's not true." CNN implies that Alito is not allowed to visibly disagree with the President.
That is not the country I live in. Honest, polite disagreement is not a threat. The pretense of unanimity is a threat. There's a big difference between SOTU and STFU.
Steinhauser even raises the spectre of Joe Wilson's notorious intemperate outburst. Ah, now we're getting to the truth. CNN thinks it knows how to cover the story so that it need never - ever - worry about distinguishing truth from fiction, right from wrong, or Constitutional from bullshit.
A story about etiquette requires no journalism, just a lot of spouting. Orrin Hatch of course obliges:
I think [Alito] showed quite a bit of judicial restraint.Of course, CNN let Hatch's testable assertion go unchallenged:
President Obama last night wildly mischaracterized the Supreme Court's decision.Our media are not interested in calling bullshit. They're interested in selling bullshit.
10 comments:
>That is not the country I live in. Honest, polite disagreement is not a threat.
Freedom of speech is not about polite speech. Nor is speech free for some, but not others. Got it? Now you are closer to the Supreme's decision.
(If I get a few extra weeks, I'll scroll down to see the crap pie you ate on the Brown election. New reason to live).
Approval? you're lucky to have a visitor! and I need instant gratification!
See, gia, you're an idiot, and I'll still publish your nonsense.
Oh, and fuck you! Free speech, dipshit! Impolite, just the way you prefer.
Free speech is for humans, not for paper entities. You will notice that I didn't even speak to impolite speech. I defended Samuel Alito. I said that he didn't breach etiquette. Based on previous comments, you're no doubt too stupid to recognize that obvious fact. Are my sentences too complex?
Of course, many of your fellow wingnuts have gotten themselves in a froth about how it's President Obama who was rude for daring to have the temerity to disagree with the Supremes. The nerve of that, that, that ... Democrat! He's only President. (I love reminding you of that.) Who does he think he is! Your lily-livered buddies need to get their tighty-whities out of a bunch, strap on some balls, and try not to be such snivelling fools, so easily sent to the fainting couch and the smelling salts. Oh, sorry, too late - someone will have to come along to change their Depends.
If you're looking for a reason to live here, well, my ambitions are not that impossibly large.
Paper entities? Like the Boston Globe? Oh, not that kind of paper..."Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech" So beautifully simple. No reference to paper, paper 'entities' or the size of either that serves as the soapbox.
Fire! Fire!
Oh, yeah, not so simple - unless you're simple-minded.
Freedom of speech is for people. That's what the Constitution's enumeration of rights in the Bill of Rights is about.
The activist right-wing Supremes have steadily extended personhood to the legal fiction that is a corporation. You wingnuts approve, since you find corporations to be the highest human achievement and source of good.
Corporations exist to serve humans, not the other way around. But Republicans and right-wingers just don't get how thoroughly mired in up-is-downism they are.
You're not approving me in a timely manner - here is effectively a double post that gives the last word:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUdFaIYzNwU&
I actually saw your last post within a minute of it arriving. But I was at work, so I couldn't get to Youtube to check the video.
A job, you know. What your Mom has to pay for your basement boy cave.
Sorry my schedule isn't such that you get subsecond service 24 hours a day. Don't get your hopes up that that will ever change.
As for Nick Gillespie: Three reasons are really just one. Hey, it's already bad, how much worse can this be?
And then he has the nerve to complain about the power of paid lobbying!
As an example of my usual high level of service, I moderated your Feb. 1 comment in less than an hour - 4:11 p.m. to 4:59 p.m. Not fast enough? Cry me a river!
Moderated? For the three people on her gettin' all out o' control, I guess.
Fascinating that my post prior to the video post was not 'approved'
Because it cited the entire amendment, which refer not to only and individual, but to "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress." Hardly a 'person' only stipulation.
more hypocrisy: the claim that the Bill of Rights applies only to people but that the second applies to a group and hence invalidates the claim of an individual to have the right to bear arms. Just so you know.
That "Error 404" should have been a tip-off that Blogger ate your comment. I haven't censored anything of yours since at least October, when I started keeping records. You're a narcissistic imbecile if you think I have it in for you.
Then you say, Because it cited the entire amendment, which refer not to only and individual, but to "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress." Hardly a 'person' only stipulation.
You don't get the relation of people and person. Words have meaning here. Go work for Minitru.
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