Election 2012: Are We Too Dumb for a Free Press?

MeanMesa's 2012 Apologia

Now that the election is behind us -- at least, apparently behind some of us -- MeanMesa must now make an admission of sorts.  During more normal campaigns, MeanMesa loves to campaign, loves to pass out campaign message cards throughout the neighborhood, loves to argue with folks from the opposing sides of things.  

MeanMesa was and is a proud voter registrar, licensed in New Mexico to undertake that important task.  This season that resulted in registering 41 voters, often voters who required re-registration because they had recently moved since the last election in 2010.  That 41 registrations included 6 for Republicans and 11 for Independents, and accounted with some satisfaction, even those encounters were accomplished without the wild partisan rancor which was clearly the first impulse.

However, this time around, MeanMesa was thoroughly filled with an infuriating torment not experienced recently.  The anger level this time was so high that no candidate could have reasonably expected to benefit from MeanMesa's usual eagerness to, shall we say, "mix it up."  The best, that is, the most constructive decision was to simply stay home.

Of course, there are always moments in any campaign.  This time?  Not moments.  MeanMesa's ensuing state of mind watching this election could only be described as a state of "standing rage and horror."

Two issues were the instigators of this unhelpful state.  First, the public media's conduct during this latest election was a disgusting display of monumental cynicism and arrogance.  Second, there actually were matters which fully deserved the complete attention of the American electorate, urgent decisions, which were never addressed.

The result?  The Republic was "flying blind."

Let's take a look.

The 2012 Election Was a "Free Press" Failure

One of Six Lies Constantly Aired in Romney Campaign (image source: Veracity Stew)

This may seem like a rather bitter comment, but let's review just what went on during the campaigns.

The "free press" is designed to function in roughly the same pattern at the "free market."  In that market, goods and services are offered, purchased and consumed.  If those paying for and consuming the goods and services are satisfied, they return for more.

If, however, these market or media consumers are not satisfied, what follows is the almost mythical neo-con creature called the "market correction."  The "free market" gets to be "free" -- in this case, without regulation -- because when the value of something falls below the price of that thing, the "free market" simply and automatically "corrects" itself, and the consumers buy something else.

This is exactly the logic -- granted, ideological logic which is usually perhaps too pure to always be entirely functional -- which theoretically justifies our country's great reluctance for any legislative preemptive interference in the production of such products.  The vaguely defined acceptable exceptions to such a ban on interference arises with products which are intentionally fraudulent by design, products which threaten peoples' lives and health or products which threaten the Republic.

Colgate Palmolive is not allowed to produce and market botulism flavored tooth paste, snake oil carcinogenic baldness cures or brief case sized h-bombs.

The "free press" has definitely been just this outrageous before, so what was different this last time?  After all, unlike the consequences of the Hearst Yellow Press of the past, we didn't start a war with Spain or Nicaragua even between our own North and South halves this time.  We did, however, probably come fairly close to starting one with Iran.

That would be, "starting a war with Iran" not because we needed to fight Iran, but because the prospect carried a certain momentum of political advantage -- not to mention the associated profits from military procurement..

In MeanMesa's view, 2012 was, actually, a far more dangerous dalliance in the art of media driven incendiary flamboyance, deception and danger than the reportage which incited the Spanish American War.  The "infuriating part" mentioned above has everything to do with what happens when there was no "market correction" to campaign media products even when there clearly and desperately needed to be one.

During the Romney/Ryan campaign, there were no dissatisfied consumers among the GOP population who symbolically "voted with their pocket books"  and demanded something more realistic and productive.  In other words, there was no compensating "market correction" for a campaign media product which should have been quite unacceptable to its target audience.

All those Republicans, 47% of the nation's population, listened to the statements and proposals of the Romney campaign and had no trouble voting for the man and the party.  If the "market correction" for the "free press" idea had been performing as it was traditionally intended to function, the media consumers who ultimately voted Republican would have insisted on something of better quality -- far better quality -- to have come out of the GOP's wildly financed campaign.

Worse, with a billion dollars worth of Citizens United "walking around money" in their pockets, the Republicans effectively stifled any possible constructive campaigning which might have come from the Democrats' side, too.  Democrats in the 2012 campaign had some questions to answer themselves, but with the crazy people on the other side throwing balloons full of blood every minute in a relentless twenty four hour saturation campaign, those questions never saw the light of day.

All through this, the media simply kept "playing ball."  Why was that?

Taking Media Ownership "Down the Rabbit Hole"

Here's one clue.

At the rather impressive site for Injustice Facts  we find this note about media ownership in the United States: [http://factcheckinginjusticefacts.wordpress.com/about/]

"There are 1500 newspapers, 1100 magazines, 9000 radio stations, 1500 TV stations and 2400 publishers owned by only 3 corporations."

It would be painless enough to simply shrug the shoulders and consider the above to be nothing more important than an interesting anecdote, an innocent and more or less predictable development of "the natural course of events" in a lassaiz faire economy.  That may well be an acceptable explanation, but there is a seriously dark, seriously sinister side to this "innocent" development when its effect is to fundamentally undercut the democracy.

However, right here let's divide this business into two parts, one for each of the players.  "Players?"

Who has the nation's wealth? (image source)

Yes.  One of the parties involved here is clearly the oligarch class with their corporate infatuation with finally accomplishing total ownership of the nation.  As of this posting these "fun loving, risk taking" corporate oligarchs have managed to consolidate the lion's share of the entire wealth of the country under their control.  This situation has grown worse since the chart (above) was made in 2007.  [It's present here because it is so extremely straightforward.]

A similar situation -- also quite predictable -- follows this same pattern as we examine the income of Americans.  Those with the largest incomes see those income rates rise while the incomes of the "lesser classes" are actually declining.

The $27 Mn income rates for those in the little orange box is AVERAGE. (image source)

Now, we've all seen charts of this sort before, but there is remains just a tiny tidbit of "fact facing" to do with this post.  This post is not merely an invitation for visitors to simply join in for more complaining.


The "blue" folks in the first diagram and the "orange" folks in the second diagram intend to own everything before they are finished with us.  They've already made an impressive start.

However, in 2012 these oligarchs are not yet bold enough to make a country-wide attempt at something akin to an outright coup.  Lacking the bravado to move to simply quash the electoral democracy, we find these interests in 2012 meddling with the election and voters at state levels.

Don't be confused.  Every act of voter suppression and disenfranchisement we saw in the 2012 election originated with the "blue" and "orange" crowd.  There may have been some soothing confusion from the feathers and fog around the details, but facts are facts.  The oligarchs have an obvious ambition to finally eliminate the democracy.

And, since the elimination of the democracy turns out to be just a little too frightening for them at the moment, the next, safest, thing for their attention is the manipulation of the electorate.  That scheme needed media ownership to get off the ground.

At this point, it's already well off the ground.

During the conduct of the Romney campaign, the commercial media rolled over like a "lumber camp whore."  Not once did a single commercial network issue an order to its star pundits to ask a "follow up" question from Romney.  It wouldn't have mattered if such an order had been given, Romney would not have answered.

Normally, we would assume that this arrogance would have resulted in a massive "market correction" by media news consumers, but we saw that this didn't happen.  The agonizing tableau just continued, day after day, oozing its way through the most awkward of moments of candidate silence without missing a beat.

Barack Obama made a mistake as he entered the first Presidential debate.  He assumed that it would be a debate, but it was not.  The "hired guns" among the commercial media pundits rushed to proclaim his performance a loss.

At that precise moment the cash flowing from the "blues and the oranges" from the charts above had already reached the billions.  Interestingly, that massive flow of money, we now see, included plenty of Saudi royal money and Chinese "foreign corrupt practices" bribes and gambling money gleefully shielded by Citizens United, a ruling from a Supreme Court just as much in the "blue and orange" pockets as the media.

All this "free press" sell out would never have been possible without another set of "players."

The "Other" Players

We could have expected the media consuming public, religiously turning on the tube in an effort to educate themselves before casting their ballots, to fairly quickly reveal their intolerance with the prospect of being so cheaply manipulated, but we didn't see this.  When MeanMesa says "we didn't see this," we are addressing the extremely unexpected complacency of the 47% of voters who so tacitly just accepted this treatment.

MeanMesa, prior to this election, would have naively presumed that no more than 5% or 10% of the electorate would have ever gone along with treatment so amateurish, cynical and brutish, that is, would not have been at all interested in having anything to do with a candidate or campaign so insulting.

It would be a mistake, a grave miscalculation, to look at this anomaly in the wrong time frame.  What occurred in 2012 required a voter demographic which had been cultivated and groomed for years prior to the oligarchs' "big move."  They didn't begin this fight with this election or with the Citizens United ruling or with the coup d'etat by their Supremes in 2001.  This fight was already road weary when the "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards were going up in the illiteracy zone.

You can't come up with voters like these in a matter of just a few months or years.  It took decades.

And, those who have ambitions of destroying the democracy have been at this for decades, working hard.  The stakes were -- and are still -- astronomically high.

Poverty. illiteracy, malnutrition, stagnation in public education, Jim Crow Laws, racism, intimidation, voter disenfranchisement, misinformation and outright corruption -- not to mention the dedicated "leadership" of the dirty shirt preachers and half-witted coaches -- have all served to "soften up" and "prepare the field" in the oligarchic anti-democracy campaign.  When American civics could only be taught with textbooks from the Texas School board library, the dies was cast.

The quality of citizenship continually descended.

An exaggeration?  More ranting and raving from MeanMesa?

Explain why millions of Americans listened to what Mitt Romney said and then voted for him.

Circus of the Bizarre: Irony, Racism & Bedfellows

 No Cake and No Candles at the Big "Irony Party"

MeanMesa is not usually particularly interested in another expedition to breathlessly unveil the ironic.  Typically,  discussions of such matters tend to be a bit smarmy and lifeless, populated with fantastic laments and crushing pessimism, faux "bright shiny objects" interesting only to those already invested in the darkness.

However, destiny itself occasionally breaks the tedious malaise which is the predictable companion of the hours in coffee shops -- always accompanied with the sighs, of course -- which we are prone to spend bemoaning the outrage of the latest crop of these ironies which has beset our otherwise dismally uneventful world.  Now, irony-wise, what had traditionally been rare, tasty figments for our complaints has become "a tide at flood."

Desperation seeds the fields where irony flourishes.

Bedfellows, bedfellows.  (image source)

Bedfellows-wise, the hybrid seeds have sprouted like New Mexico milk weeds after a rainy spring.  Let's look at a few of these unlikely alliances.

1. Catholics and Mormons

 Mere weeks ago, the "men in dresses" were quietly condemning the Mormons as apostates who had dared rewrite the holy book of the Catholic franchise for their own connivance.  Now, as mentioned in a previous MeanMesa post, these same liturgical, Vatican purists find themselves eagerly embracing the very heretical center of their previous outrage and offering themselves as "ground troops" in replacement for the now defunct tea bags. 

When the Mormon opened the door of opportunity for the re-subjugation of women, the modern army of Gustavus Adolphus returned as the carnivorous  scourge of the Bible belt -- and probably, also Pennsylvania and Ohio.

2. Catholics, Mormons and Evangelicals

Likewise, the self-purified arrogance of the evangelicals was just as eagerly set aside for an unholy union with the anti-uterine Catholics.  The "old rugged cross" crowd swallowed their first class reservations to paradise to make an unthinkable alliance with their previously disdained Papist neighbors.  Just as unworkable as welding tin to butter, inspiration married obedience.

And, this newly discovered, pragmatic tolerance of these evangelicals didn't stop there.

The Catholics and the Evangelicals had tasted the "sweet nectar" of Mormon cash when their unlikely alliance had savaged homosexuals in California during the Proposition 8 "election."  This historically unfathomable dalliance,  forged on bloody opportunity, turns out to be a tempting one with enduring attractions.

3. Catholics, Mormons, Evangelicals, Republicans and the Bible

Biblical principles of tolerance, hospitality, peace and compassion were obstacles -- narcotic anathema -- to the looting schemes of the GOP's oligarch class.  Unleashing the corporate media on the illiterate base, health care became demonic, minorities were to be feared and hated, Iran was to be bombed and the political concept of "plundering unto Caesar what is Caesar's" became the new golden calf without the Moses.

Every "principle of Jesus" had been systematically dismembered with a craven brutality, elaborately justified at every turn of the screw.  Only the parts which were either painful or economically self-elevating were left in place.

Dig out your old Biblical Concordance and review the table of ancient Israel's ultra militarized "good kings."  After the repulse of the prehistoric savagery subsides a little, investigate exactly why they are considered to be such "good kings."  For these folks, "freedom" means "serfdom instead of outright slavery," not liberty.

4.  Zionist, Wahabist and Christian Super PACs

GOP billionaires such as Sheldon Adelson gave tens or hundreds of millions to any primary candidate who promised to attack the Jewish state's nemesis, Iran, with American blood and treasure. As, one after another, the "ripest" of the most bellicose of the primary possibilities spoiled on the tree, the billionaires quickly changed the "pay to" lines on their "freedom of speech," ROI investment checks.

The Citizen United Super PACs provided a new, invisibly legitimate, host for vast sums of smelly money.  MeanMesa has been watching "doe eyed" for the first glimmer of evidence that Saudi and Kuwaiti dollars are also patiently wending their way through "cleansing intermediaries" to the campaign war chest of the, of course, latest war monger's Super PAC.  Most of the Middle Eastern dictators are shopping for a low cost, bargain basement vengeance on the Persians paid in full by Americans who will be the only ones left with bloody hands -- and even emptier purses.

5. Debt Haters and Debt Creators

After the lawyers at Freedom Works incited dozens of drooling tea bags into a frenzy with "barely legal" assertions about the national debt a couple of years ago, spending cuts and a grotesque, suspiciously targeted, sort of clanky, pointless austerity became all the rage -- enough of a rage to usher an unprecedented clutch of adolescent tea bag crooks, ne'er do wells and opportunists into a House majority.  The modern product of this newly forged power -- for example, the Ryan budget -- is, of course, a predictable "second wave" of an identical debt catastrophe.

Characterized as "marvelous" by the GOPCon Presidential nominee, the Ryan budget would borrow an additional $5 Tn or so to finance more tax cuts for the oligarchs and their corporations.

Sobering up following this "Normandy Landing" of sudden political power, the House tea bags have now robustly demonstrated that they have absolutely no idea about what to do next.  The gaseous tea bag "groundswell" has been relegated to the parks' nearest litter can while the nova-faux Republicans gleefully ban Sharia Law in Oklahoma, name post offices and fiddle while the economy continues to burn.

Feeling even more, quite justifiably, cynical and deceived, the now discarded tea bag horde finds itself in its new resting place under the bus.  The tea bags wanted less debt, but they elected debt creators beyond the scope of anything they had seen in the past.

6. Lovers Infatuated with Simultaneously Larger and Smaller Government

Everyone saw the paradoxical glory of the "Keep Big Government Away From My Medicare" signs at those tea bag "rallies," too.  However, at both the state and federal levels the small government hacks have now trotted out dozens or hundreds of big government programs.

Suspiciously profitable drug testing for food stamp and unemployment recipients, suspiciously Medieval vaginal movies for women seeking reproductive health services, suspiciously ideological contempt indictments for the Attorney General and even suspiciously 1940's style calls to investigate elected "anti-American" actors in the Congress are just a few of the antithetical "low hanging fruits" which are supposed to still be narcotically tempting to the groaning hill billies in the American Legion bar at midnight.

In the educational vacuum of American politics smaller government is implied to mean lower taxes and greater liberty.  The sickening almalgam which has oozed from the ideological purity bunch amounts to little more than an "economy pack" of previously pent up, screwball, illiterate, social vengeance.

WTF?   No, WTU - Willard "The Uniter"

Of course, it's not actually Willard himself.

It turns out that religion, political ideology, favorite economic policies, war or peace are all issues set aside easily for this new political base.  MeanMesa is sure that Willard, in self-aggrandizing, quiet moments, sees himself as the brilliant populist who has managed to hammer all these traditionally antagonistic political interests together into an razor edged sword which will be ushered into the Oval Office on a tide of suddenly discovered political excitement.

Unfortunately, that "razor edged sword" will be more like a cast iron "wind kite" on a calm day if Presidential power is ever added to the mix.  If Willard were in power, all these chaotic voices would immediately commence their respective demands in retributive compensation for a few months of shallow loyalty.

What in the world has put all these players together this way?

If each group had been asked only a few months ago to define the priorities driving them forward, the answers would have spilled all over the table and onto the floor.  Yet, we suddenly see all these "cats and dogs" marching more or less coherently in an unexpectedly organized lock step.  What, exactly, is the glue holding this thing together?

The answer isn't pretty.

In every case the sign on the tent reads the same.  Racism.

At present the influence of the "special interests" controlling the Congress is based on money and avarice.  All that would continue, but, added to the vomitous recipe, would be a staggering gang of "special interests" driven by even less comprehensible priorities.

MeanMesa will see you at the polls in November.

2012 GOP -- When Sweet Temptations Grow Cold

Dreams, Nightmares and Toothaches

This MeanMesa posting is made in the first week of April, 2012.  The general election in November is seven months in the future.  Like most interested Americans, MeanMesa has watched the daily episodes of the "little circus of horrors" into which the Republican Primaries have steadfastly and relentlessly transformed themselves.

Further, plenty -- perhaps, too many --  progressive comments have already accompanied the dizzying descent of the Grand Old Party.  Every liberal voice from the painful laments of the deep breathing, hand wringing "death of democracy" types to those bravely churning the zany escapades into to "comedy butter" for progressive radio shows has slowly encountered a painful void of further, possible  commentary, that is, a conceptual vacuum of "anything more to add."

MeanMesa has no intention of simply joining in with the complaints,  adding more "feathers to the fire."

Instead, it's high time to look carefully at what, exactly, the owners of the Republican Party were dreaming that this April might deliver.  You know, the dreams that bunch was exciting themselves with a year ago.  What did they see as they imagined what April of 2012 would appear to be in their fantasies?

For convenience, let's call this phenomenon their "April Dream."

Damn!  It's already April, and we were supposed to be WINNING! (image source)

 GOP "April Dream" Number One:
Obama Destroyed

When we visited the Republicans in April of 2011, a year ago, we would have found America's richest -- and most ambitious -- citizens in a state of optimistic excitement.  Some of the relentless media attacks on the President were beginning to show promise.  The saturation campaign had introduced any number of grotesque, carefully designed "prevarication gambits" through the controlled media.  Some had flopped in a few days, but others had slowly gained traction with the uninformed and uninterested citizens, still deep in the throes of the national calamity of 2008.

For a while, it seemed that any message which could be reduced to a bumper sticker phrase was "good enough."  The manufactured image of the President certainly included plenty of "red meat" issues, that is, incendiary propositions which would not bear even the most casual investigation.  These would be the Kenyan, socialist, Reverend Wright "hate America," palling around with terrorists sort of messages.

Neither the elite Republicans who were paying to broadcast these messages nor the majority of American voters who heard them took this stuff seriously.  However, as per design, the least educated among the Republican base loved it. 

This mixed, incomplete reception did not discourage the owners.  They knew full well before hand that the best that could be expected from this ridiculous move was targeting only the lowest of the "low hanging fruit" among their base.  Anyone even slightly more skeptical would, most likely, not be particularly interested and certainly not persuaded.

However, this left the "slightly higher low hanging fruit" as the next target.  Adding no more than one half a teaspoon of restrained sophistication to the "red meat recipe,"  the same media asset began to work on the group next to the bottom.  With these messages, a little over simplified, not especially accurate ideological inertia could be scratched out with the semi-conscious among the party's followers.

Here, Obama had to be cast as an "out of touch" incompetent -- "in over his head." Naturally, the inevitable contradiction with the facts of his administration's successes were not a problem.  Facts cease to be a hindrance when those facts are unknown -- and, not just "unknown," but also actively and  deliberately distorted and misreported.  With this target, the blame game could also be initiated.  In no time, Obama had handed over the bank bailout of TARP money, done everything possible to wreck the stock market (which was doubling in value) and sold out the American Dream with dozens of broken promises.

Moving up the chain from "lowest" and "not quite so low" among the "low hanging fruit" in the GOPCon base, we find Republican voters who are both mildly interested in the substance of such messages and, shall we say, ostensibly fairly literate.  The propaganda to this bunch had to amount to more than birth certificates and secret Muslimhood -- those cheap shots could, reasonably, only be expected to work on the American Legion beer hall crowd.

Naturally, slightly more complex topics cam to the fore.  Health care reform offered all sorts of possibilities for misinterpretation, and the stubborn economic disaster set a fertile foundation for engendering all sorts of dread and desolation.

By April, these plutocrats imagined, the public image of Obama would have veered to a dismal low, consistent with that of the tea bags and FOX pundits.  In fact, the comment was made in progressive circles that these relentless efforts had created a "caricature" of Obama, foretelling serious political problems when the "actual" Obama was finally encountered in the general election.

Among the Republican base the substantial number of "pure, cutural racists" remain comfortably committed to "following orders," especially when routinely inflamed by the owners of the party.  However, a minority of these voters is actually being stripped away by events.  They have become more willing to set aside their racial hatred of Obama in hopes that some of the administration's recovery efforts will actually bear fruit.

So, what is the "actual" Obama the Republicans had hoped so much to have laid to waste by this time?

Admittedly, "approval numbers" tend to be a flippant measure of election outcomes, but they will serve here.  The "background approval rating" of the President has been increasing steadily while the same rating for any of the likely Republican nominees has been static or decreasing.  [The idea of "background" means that the "approval" is not necessarily tied to any specific performance or accomplishment.  It is more of a "gut feeling." The Republican problem is that a similar "gut feeling" of approval was instrumental in the 2008 landslide which placed Obama in office.]

GOP's "April Dream" Number Two:

High Unemployment and Economic Disaster

Since George W. never existed, this must be Obama's fault. (image source)

After raising a royal "stink" about the national debt during 2010 and 2011, the Republicans found themselves "married" to the Ryan House budget, widely known as the "kill Medicare" and "starve Grand Ma" plan, but also known as a debt ridden borrowing proposal which would increase the current $14 Tn debt by an additional $3 Tn in the next ten years.

Because debt reduction had been voluminously touted as a "jobs creation" strategy -- in the absence of any other action on the problem -- the new debt increases required to pay for the oligarch tax cuts turned out to be no more popular than a "fart in a spacesuit."  Meanwhile, the public spectacle of complaining about "no jobs" while blocking any job creation bills and busily eliminating state employee jobs in 100,000 job packages while simultaneously proposing more debt for high end tax cuts finally began to sink in among the voters.

Ooops. We paid the tea bag House to sabotage every effort. (image source)

During the first nine months of 2011 the Republican elite were gratified, their scheme was enjoying continuing high unemployment without much of a break accompanied with a delightfully lack luster GDP growth rate.  In the tea bag controlled House, any job creating spending bill was dead on arrival and economic stimulus was a knee slapping horse joke.  These conditions were not missed as the latest priorities of the heavily controlled, on going media blitz were set, month after month.

The President's approval rating dipped to a, for them, very promising low.

However, during the last quarter of 2011, the President, still smarting from the out right rejection of his jobs bill, the continuing onslaught against any reform to the nation's self-destructive health care and total Republican obstruction of even a traditionally comfortably bi partisan transportation construction proposal began a modest course of executive action to do what he could on his own.

The economic disaster ploy exploded to include threats to shut down the government, block the credit extension for the national debt, destroy the postal service and rescind Wall Street regulations passed a year before.   House Republicans dutifully did what they could to increase unemployment with a stranglehold on federal to state support.  Teachers, policemen and firefighters were being pink slipped at an alarming rate.  The totals of House tea bag induced unemployment increases added roughly one million more Americans to the rolls.

Simultaneously, food stamps, Pell Grants and even unemployment benefits were taken hostage to extort an extension of the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy.  Through all of this the vast population of Americans still trusting commercial networks -- already the property of the Republican elites -- for news about the nation's condition were fed a relentless diet of "class three" lies.  ["Class Three Lies" are direct prevarications based on ideology, misrepresented economic facts and an amazingly arrogant refusal to report entire stories.  "Class One" lies are the Muslim business, the birth certificate and racial suspicion.  "Class Two Lies" are founded on quips of factual data heavily "reinterpreted" by commercial media.]

Students in public schools were prohibited from hearing the President's encouragement to stay in school or State of the Union address.  Presidential speeches were 30 second network clips followed by 5 minutes of conservative counter arguments.

The "April Dream" was to create an image of a President cowering behind the walls of the Oval Office, unable to do anything to assist an economic recovery.  The miracle is that without ever having been reported by the oligarchic media, the President's record was actually pretty well known among American voters -- and, they approved.

GOP's "April Dream" Number Three:

The Missing Mayhem

Every resource available was dedicated to the success of the Tea Party "Movement."  There were literally glaciers of microphones, buses, podiums and happy policemen, but even more remarkable, the fledging "grass roots" effort was receiving month after month of relentless "unsolicited" publicity worth millions.  Not only were the planned events broadcast daily months in advance, the media coverage was the predictable hour by hour, breathless story, too.

The "April Dream" was that by now the tea bags would be on an unstoppable "March to the Sea," ruthlessly crushing every liberal alternative, and even when it wasn't "crushing," the story could be painlessly augmented into a matter of grave national relevance by every network from FOX News to PBS.

However, April found the massive commercial campaign stuttering, near oblivion from disinterest.  The 2010 victories for the tea bags have turn sour in a very, very big way.  The shady millionaires the 2010 election inserted in the House have proved to be little more than arrogant, adolescent political hacks obsessed with banning Sharia Law from Oklahoma and naming post offices after their friend.

On the other hand, the Republican reactionaries instantly fell in love with the fear generating possibilities of the Occupy movement.  Even if the tea bags had fallen asleep in their wheel chairs, and fear mongering about Occupy suddenly received much of the unused publicity which had been freed up following the dismal glacier of disinterest which had settled on the tea bags.

Carefully crafted police violence executed by previously invisible, "freedom loving" tea bag mayors caught the public interest for a week or so, but then opinion polls and social media rapidly swung around to an energetically sympathetic position with Occupy instead of running in terror.

Gigantic demonstrations such as the ones about immigration and Wisconsin union busting were cleverly ignored by the oligarchic media, but again, social media, well populated by participants with cell phone cameras, proved to be beyond the control of the cash monsters, and the word was spread.  Shamed, the networks finally capitulated with a few quick video clips and a few biased "two sides of the issue" crafted to instill fear in the masses followed up with "that's all the time we have" faux coverage, but by then the stories had "grown legs" on the internet.

In the "April Dream" every American over fifty was supposed to be terrified by out of control minority rapists roaming the streets, and every American under fifty was supposed to be skulking in his kitchen with his rifle cleaning kit, getting ready for the "big one."  The country was supposed to be in a threatening chaos, and the listenership and credibility of the "red meat," hired radio pundits was supposed to be sky rocketing.

Instead, although there was some interest, most Americans, already numbed by the House tea bag ranting and rumbling, considered the show about as interesting as the third day of a mild toothache.  The voter "excitement capacity" had become exhausted with hyperbole, and even the "net illiterate" were growing suspicious of a poorly played drama.  The "net literate" were becoming outraged with a growing taste for action.

GOP's "April Dream" Number Four:

American Women

Any shift among the vast vote block of women voters was never a part of the "April Dream."  The owners of the Republican Party had, quite reasonably, expected Republican women to vote in a quite traditional manner.  This constituency had never presented a loyalty problem before, and 12 months prior, there was no expectation that it would behave any differently in the 2012 election.

In other words, GOP women voters would do what they always did, that is, vote for GOP candidates along side their husbands.

Further, this "elephant in the living room" had not emerged in the field in a traditional way.  Normally, any "perturbation of the Force" was announced by a few thoughtful but inflammatory speeches, a few nicely genteel demonstrations and a few mild mannered lectures, but in this case, the approach of what Republicans now recognize as "the beast" was silent -- but massive.

At first, these concerns were mere "party favors" engaged by the fact that Republican front runners were respectively Mormon and Catholic.  But, as the bloody primary campaigns took their predictable course, a passing attention was drawn to "supra political" plans which specifically targeted women -- their health care, a stunning vacuum of education support in the Party platform and finally, new rampages about abortion, "personhood" at conception and contraception.

Once attention had been drawn to the regressive efforts in the Presidential campaigns, the unanticipated interest immediately spread to hundreds of anti-abortion bills which had been passed in Republican controlled states, culminating with the arrival of the "largest elephant ever in any living room anywhere" disguised as a pastel colored trans-vaginal ultra sound probe.

Within a couple of weeks, poll numbers for women in general and including women voters supporting Republican candidates careened downward, plunging precipitously "off the cliff" to a 15 or 20 percent shift to "anyone else" -- particularly to "anyone else" with enough sense not to inflame women voters this way.

Remarkably, this was never intended to be in the contest.  These questions were never intended as a "risky gambit" which, if executed successfully, would have increased the number of Republican ballots in the 2012 general election.  These questions were, instead, a stunning example of the "silent marauder," arriving unannounced in a furious mayhem of brutal chaos and destruction.  Worse, unlike the Vikings and VisiGoths, this marauder didn't retreat in the light of the following dawn.

The faces above the pin striped suits in the elite Republican strategy bunkers turned white.  Distraught oligarchic foreheads were placed in oligarchic palms, and oligarchic tears rolled down quivering oligarchic wrists to $3,000 wrist bands and then under the $20,000 oligarchic wrist watches.

This was never supposed to be part of the "April Dream."

A Few Last Words

MeanMesa visitors already know that many more -- large and small -- peccadilloes could be added to the "nightmare side" of the Republican "April Dream."

A party with traditional bad habits of "over reaching," the Republicans in this dark moment will, of course, begin "over reaching" even beyond the "over reaching" they've already done in this campaign.  Further, because they firmly believe that elections can be won with the sole advantage of vast sums of Citizens United cash, they will proceed even though they can't even countenance their own record.

2012 will be decided by what voters know and what voters can figure out based on what they know.

Dissecting Influence in the 2012 Election

 Facing Facts About the Electorate

The Jeffersonian image of an "informed electorate" may bring ideas about education, media and even the adolescent values promoted during childhood upbringing.  One way or another, by the time a voter registration card enters the purses and wallets of Americans, a general body of knowledge and information has amassed in the minds which will, in turn, execute the ballot which accompanies it.

Further, we really can "dissect" the "knowledge" and "information" mentioned before into broad, general categories.  Both represent conceptual fulcrums for the arguments during pivoting political contests.  Knowledge, we may presume, is comprised of structural features which define our Republic -- its history, its organization, its operating mechanisms and, perhaps, even some sort of individual concept of its general philosophy.

Information, on the other hand, is naturally more contemporary.  The contents of this category are conclusions based on applications of the "knowledge" to the immediate challenges and opportunities which are presenting themselves to the Republic.  The voter faces the responsibility of merging the knowledge and information into a more or less coherent model from which reasonable ballot choices can follow.

When all the available components of both knowledge and information have been applied to the immediate moment as well as they can be, a voter among an "informed electorate" is prepared to cast his ballot.

More than enough has been written about the "nuts and bolts" comprising the current political arguments.  Predictably, this present election contest has presented its fair share -- perhaps even more than its normal ration -- of deception, fear mongering, over simplification and outright lies.  Selecting one or another of the most egregious cases of these things has become common fare for what is passing as political discourse.

Discussions of concepts and fundamental issues have largely been set aside in favor of this ever increasing outrage and bluster.  Although ideally this current, agitated  state might be the product of strongly held, thoughtful, political positions of an "informed electorate," MeanMesa grows more and more suspicious that this is no longer the case.

If discussions of opposing politics are no longer simple expressions of the conflict between actual, alternative political positions, what are they?  Posing an answer to this question is the theme of this MeanMesa post.

So, How Do "Political Interests" 

Swing the Electorate These Days?

To simplify this analysis, we can imagine that a typical voter has the equivalent of an almost empty TupperWare container somewhere in his mind.  The "almost empty" part must be stipulated because there will always be a few random things down in the bottom -- a "talking point" or two which seemed especially valuable the eleventh time he heard them, the "no passing stripe" Senator Dry Gulch finally got painted on the highway in front of Aunt Mildred's house or the $5 co-pay reduction on 6 or the 293 billing schedules on his crappy health insurance plan.

As we follow the TupperWare analogy, a political campaign is designed to gradually fill that container with a tid bit here and a tid bit there, a few dangling innuendos, a couple of pregnant, unanswered questions, a few generic promises and a good helping of barely accurate, angrily slung, theoretically possible, mud and character assassination directed at the "other guy."

Day by day, debate by debate, advertisement by advertisement, the TupperWare is gradually filled to capacity with all sorts of things.  Some voters reach the "full" line early in the campaign and then essentially stop adding anything new. Some voters, realizing that their TupperWare is practically empty a few days before the vote, desperately scamper around attempting to add whatever is available so they, too, can stroll into the polling place with their own,  acceptably full, TupperWare.

"Pay Day" comes when that TupperWare container finds its way to a voting booth, the lid is removed and a "catch as catch can" hand full of its contents is removed.  Of course, this vote is then determined by what can be found in the contents of that hand.   Campaigns become so expensive because everything is decided by what comes up with that hand.  For any particular campaign the more "good stuff" the better the election result.

Although this may seem to be a bit caustic as analogies go, we must remember that the voting process has traditionally been somewhat more thoughtful.  We can also note that the sheer volume of persuasive material confronting voters -- each instance with the hope of joining the "contents" of the TupperWare -- has increased exponentially.

When Abraham Lincoln was campaigning for President, the TupperWare containers were essentially filled only by attending speeches, reading newspapers or speaking to one's neighbors.  The messages of a campaign were prepared far more cautiously because, perhaps, the TupperWare could not quite so easily filled when it came time to cast a ballot.

Taking an Equally Cold Look at Voter Demographics

While demographic divisions are usually based on "projective issues" these days -- issues which are both easier to measure and even easier to manipulate as they are exploited for votes -- there may be another interesting metric to consider.  So, what does this possibly mean?

"Projective issues" have to do with the world which is external to the voter.  For example, they certainly include the obvious matters of evangelical beliefs, skin color, economic status and defined or undefined ideological models.  However, the "other, interesting metric" can be a measurement of, you guessed it, the quality of all those additions to the contents of the TupperWare.

In fact, we should also add the state of the voter's information when he reaches the polls to our measurement.  To see this, we must consider the sources of what he has added to his TupperWare along with the reasons he might have been inclined to select those sources.  MeanMesa offers the following little diagram.

In terms of the "state" of the voter, we see that there are, in fact, rather definable categories, each on representing a corresponding percentage of the total voters, but each one also reflecting the specific impact of that category on the election outcome.  Interestingly, the number of voters in a certain categories does not the determine the direct outcome of the ballots cast.  Some categories influence the election not much at all while other categories influence the outcome a great deal, and that influence is not a simple, direct function of the numbers of votes cast by voters in each category.

We can take a look at a few, specific examples,

The "State," Numbers and Influence

 of a Few 2012 Voter Categories

In an attempt to "clear away the fog" a bit, MeanMesa opens the doors to the campaign back offices of the campaigns.  Of course, MeanMesa is not invited to actually visit the boiler room sessions where tactics are discussed, so we'll just have to make do with a few speculations as to what we might have found there. We'll just clip a few of the elements in the diagram for examples.

The first example category:

The "artificially agitated and controlled information" category represents voters who listen exclusively to openly biased information sources.  The information in these TupperWares is actually quite controlled with an endless, repetitive flow of the same kind of issue oriented content.  Because no contradicting content is ever encountered, the credibility of what is received gains an almost unassailable "truth quotient."

We see that the snippets of the red and blue lines from the diagram are almost coincident.  This suggests that the numbers of these voters and the corresponding influence on the election outcome are essentially the same.  The closer the red and blue lines fall for a specific category, the closer the model is to the theoretical "one man, one vote" idea.

In terms of campaigns this is basically a static, dependable block of votes which can be expected to cast ballots in keeping with the very controlled political messaging received.  Further, because there are no "competing messages" in the controlled information, credibility is high and so is dependability.  This category of voters will behave quite predictably in the ballot booth.  

Voters who always listen exclusively to FOX every day, for example, are in this category.  Although profoundly under informed, the voting profiles resulting from such a sole source are rigidly established.  These voters will not "surprise" any observer with unexpected results.  One of the "not particularly factual" things these voters are led to believe is that they comprise a majority in the electorate.

The second example category:

Here we see that the blue line representing the number of voters in this category is significantly higher than in the previous example.  We also notice that the influence [red line] of these voters on the election outcome is slightly higher than the "one man, one vote" idea would suggest from their numbers.

This voting block "fills their TupperWare" from the chaotic information presented on commercial media sources.  We say "chaotic" because, pursuing a commercial interest to appear objective, the commercial media very deliberately hashes what might at first appear to be conflicting positions into a single pot of soup. The priority of "appearing objective" quickly over tops the priority of "actually reporting," resulting in an irritating, yet largely incomprehensible hodge podge of unresolved and unresolvable positions.

Fifty years ago, any major media source worth its oats would eventually have endorsed a candidate as an election approached.  Can anyone imagine one of the modern commercial networks doing something similar?  They have long ago forsaken that brave yet breathtaking moment when they speak editorially about their choice.  Now, these media consider their responsibility met when they continue the flow of perplexing questions not answered and decisions not made right up to the last minute.

This category is the realm of the undecided voter, the fickle independent and the not entirely certain party members.  The infectious fear the networks have for endorsing a losing candidate -- quite beyond any opinion or particular consideration of a candidate's suitability or desirability -- makes the artificial chaos of "reasoned suspicion and indecision" seem the only remaining refuge.  The network fear extends further, too.  Because the tangible reporting is so weak, the media fear the "ratings killing" prospect of "having missed something important."

Predictably, so do the voters who rely on this perpetually unreconciled source of -- by design -- constantly conflicted information.

The third example category:

While this part of the diagram presents the phrase "absorb everything" while describing the political "wonks," there may be some confusion.  We have to assume that "no one can absorb everything."  Perhaps we should say "absorb enough."  When voters in this category enter the ballot booth, they are basically confident that their decision is based on almost everything they needed to know before making an important decision.

This voting block is not criticizing themselves for failing to make an effort to know enough.  Unlike the denizens of the first example category, positions held by these voters have survived the test of conflicting evidence.  Also unlike the first category, voters in this "state" have a "considered uncertainty" -- an unavoidable but acceptable companion to most such reasoned decisions.

We see that the [red] "influence" line is far above the corresponding [blue] "percentage of voters" line for this category.  This is because these voters, equipped with the questions they have resolved about their decision, can influence other voters.  They can be persuasive because their thoughts already contain the resolved product of considering the alternatives to the decision they have made.

The final category in this example shows a tremendous disparity between the actual population of such voters and the influence they wield in the election outcome.  Voters in this category have a firmly resolved voting decision, and they are willing to act in ways which will promote that decision to an electoral result.  Although a small percentage of the total voting population, the influence of these active voters in the election outcomes is large.

A small voting population.  

A disproportionally large influence on election outcomes.

The Parties in 2012

The advantage of the Democratic Party in the coming election is in the number of voters of the last two categories, especially in respect to the willingness of these voters to actively participate in the campaign.  The advantage of the Republican Party is with the concentration of "agitated" and "media reliant" voter blocks  -- voters less inclined to actively promote candidates but with unassailable background information sets.  We can visualize this disparity when we look at this Venn diagram.

The politically active voters are "force multipliers" for Democratic candidates and their campaigns.  The agitated and media reliant voters are, generally, far less active.  They may fervently support their candidates and even reliably vote for them, but they are not as inclined to, for instance, canvass door to door.

Remember, however, this Venn is a diagram shows the distribution of influence -- not votes.  As of now, the Democratic candidates have this advantage.

If YOU would like to influence the 2012 election outcomes, take heed.

Citizens United: Oh Dear. It Wasn't Supposed To Be Like THIS!

So Much For "Activist Judges"

Under the American Constitutional design of the process, laws originate in the law making branch of the three part government -- the legislature.  The Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court made quite a departure from this more traditional idea, ironically, a departure often lamented previously by the most reactionary voices in that very same legislature.

It was essentially a "perfect storm" for the "up is down" folks who will say and do practically anything to keep their base aflame.  After lamenting for decades about Supreme Court "activist judges" making incendiary decisions which undercut legislative extraction schemes, the reactionary corporatists have now turned the tables.  Literally out of the blue, a tedious First Amendment case which began with a Citizens United dirt video about Hillary Clinton was transformed into a nightmarish decision in the hands of the high court.

There were plenty of other things about the Citizens United ruling which were equally troubling.

For starters, there was no precedent.  The ruling was not a mere "adjustment" to some sort of legislative gaffe or ambiguous decision of the past.  In fact, most of the scope of the final decision was never even particularly an element of the case.  In fact, the fundamentals of the ruling were virgin; they had never been before the Court in any similar, recognizable form whatsoever.

It was a dreamy "wish list" sort of pay back which had never seen the light of day beyond the drunken fantasies of ruthlessly power hungry media corporatists.  Chief Justice Roberts and his Supreme cronies scrounged up enough bold judicial backbone to take the odds for such an over reach.  

This gang was even prepared to be satisfied with a temporary victory which would last only long enough for a more reasoned legislature to officially vaporize their momentary hubris.  The corporatists could accomplish a great deal with their new freedom under Citizens United cover if it could be sustained just long enough.  Both the billionaires and the Supreme Cronies decided that the oligarchy's time table for the complete economic take over of all power was close enough to fruition.  Albeit risky, the stakes were sky high, but the moment for action had arrived.

Unanticipated Consequences

Almost immediately from the time of the decision through the subsequent months the predictable tsunami of anti-Obama "creative art work" emerged.  Every sort of bizarre imagery from outright falsehood to laughable fiction, each one lubricated with almost endless corporate resources, rushed onto the already smelly "fact fog" of the corporate media swamp.  The only subtle part of the show was the total absence of a single name in the "paid for" credits.

The menu of the moment is ANYTHING -- especially if it's already dead. 

(image source)

 Viewing Citizens United in the hard light of day.

Everything was rolling along "roses, simply roses" until the oligarchs realized that this snake could crawl up hill just as easily as it could crawl downhill.  When the anticipations of "the night of long knives" materialized into the very sharp fangs of a grotesque clutch of desperate GOP Primary candidates, it was the equivalent of a UPS same day delivery of ammo to a circular firing squad.

The Romney gang dismembered Newt in a week with a multi-million dollar "history lesson" about the Speaker during the Iowa caucus.  Gingrich, never one to slink out of a fight, counter attacked, trimming the low hanging fruit off the Romney bandwagon in New Hampshire before the band could even catch up.  Worse, the Gingrich gang had already contracted a smell factory in Las Vegas to finance a 30 minute "infomercial" [http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2012/01/gingrich-super-pacs-anti-romney-film-features-florida-company.html] about the ground up corpses left in the wake of the Massachusetts governor's corporate "rendering plant," Bain Capital.

There were plenty of other examples, too, but those attacks were funded less than the really bloody ones financed by the big boys. As usual, the Republicans made their traditional misperception error.  The damage was coming from their records, not from media manipulation.

Darn.  All of this was supposed to be happening to the President.

"Not my doing.  The out-of-control 'gangs' did it all."  

But, who were the "gangs?"

Thanks to Citizens United all these miscreant "sore losers" walked away from the mud fest absolutely unsoiled.  "Unsoiled?"  Let's just say, "Largely unsoiled."  A tiny majority of the Republican Primary voters [less than half of the Republican base has a high school diploma] were discerning enough to begin to place blame -- even in the cognitive confusion of a well engineered, media induced "evidentiary vacuum."

The "gangs" were super PACS's [political action committees] where heavy weight oligarchs could offer up vast, raw cash to promote their personal agendas.  We can see the visible fervor of such efforts by simply looking back at the Iowa caucus.

In a race with no -- absolutely none, = 0, not a one -- delegate votes in the Republican Convention, the eager beavers among the cash laden billionaires ponied up tens of millions of dollars from their respective super PAC's -- on all sides.  The "crush Newt" operation was funded with millions.  Later, the "crush Mitt" operation was funded with even more millions.

The Roberts' decision for his corporate masters contained a single, lingering sort of toothless "limit" on the freedom it granted.  The caveat?  There could be no direct association with the products of Citizens United money and the candidate they were supporting.   Amid the tearful accusations, the comedy began with each of the benefactors claiming total ignorance of -- and control over -- the actions of his PAC's.

Lasting, Irreversible, Intuitive Brand Damage

Granted, the "hearts and minds" of the Republican base are distressingly akin to the lumps of coal Santa places in the Christmas stockings of bad children, but there is still the remnant of the now road weary GOPCon talking point claims about "smaller government," "lower taxes," "family values," "less borrowing" and the like.

Before the Democrats have even scratched the little crosses in the ends of their cartridges and rubbed them with garlic, the GOPCons are literally tearing each other to shreds like a team of Komodo dragons salivating over a rotting hippopotamus somewhere in the jungle.  Republicans have recently had a real problem with thinking ahead, and the embarrassing frenzy of this latest bunch is no exception.

Sure, all this blood letting may deliver a state or two in the Primary, but what's left in those "hearts and minds" for the General election has been permanently tarnished.  Whatever candidate they select after this torturous process will still have the baggage these Citizen United attacks nailed to his back in Iowa, South Carolina or elsewhere.

As for the all important Independent voters, they are horrified.

MeanMesa is feeling better about the 2012 everyday.

A Cold Look at Perhaps the Media's Last November

Why Keep Commenting of the US Media Sell Out?

Long before this post had reached even its "zygote" stage, literally volumes had been written about the disastrous state of the US "Fourth Estate."  The media wide collection of irrelevant gobbledy-gook vomiting out of the last, stinky remnants of the commercial media cadaver during this month may be a salient, morbid reminder of precisely what happens when your news corporation -- probably along with the lost souls who used to be the editors -- is finally bought out entirely by the oligarch class.

"I said clean that mess out of the studio.  The next network news editor is here, and we have just received today's facts.  By the way, where's my peacock?""   (image source)

Clare Higgins in Clive Barker's HellRaiser

Of course, all this "victimhood-style" complaining is nothing new -- or rare.  Americans have already moved quite a way beyond the cheaply disguised "objective credibility" sham of the domestic networks.  However, once again -- darkly -- MeanMesa will climb back on the broken down horse for one more visit to the discouraging subject. 

"News Bending" By An Obedient Media

Rather than simply ranting and raving with arms full of more gaseous generalities, maybe it would be fun and educational to consider some specifics.  Although a complete list of such examples would easily exceed the band width limits of a little blogspot like this one, here are a few of the most recent cases.

1.  Taking the Republican "debates" and the Republican "candidates" seriously.

Naturally, such a news extravaganza could not be ignored completely, but hour after hour of self-immolation and embarrassment?    The Republican strategists are jumping out the windows while the 2012 Republican hopefuls just keep staggering forward through the land fill they've already created for themselves, feet in mouth.  Not even the usually effective chit chat about the liberal media is working.

2.  Pretending that a majority of American voters are actually "moving to the right." 

How many times have we heard this bit of nonsense being injected into pundit analysis on a different topic?  The majority of Americans are wounded.  Not only this, that majority knows what happened, who did it to them and why no one reasonable can fix it.

3.  Constantly promoting the idea that domestic austerity has anything to do with anything.

The official GOPCon line is that the 99% must volunteer for even more suffering.  They know that they can't govern and can't make good on their promise to create jobs or help the economy.  They know that their record is the ultimate, toxic candidate killer from hell in a general election.  MeanMesa estimates that the recent PR "spending cuts" gizmo has persuaded 5% of the voters who didn't need persuading anyway.

4.  Down playing everything which could possibly lend credence to the Occupy movement.

For example, even the usual "marble in a mayonnaise jar" BBC treatment of American news included an interview on November 18 with some plucky Brit "expert" who categorically announced that the Occupy was already dissolving and that it would amount to nothing by spring.  MeanMesa, always anxious to help out the BBC, suggests that this interview be saved on a hard drive for future reference.

5.  Pretending that the "super committee" on debt reduction was ever expected to actually reduce debt, much less help the economy.

Wringing their hands like the parents of a fourteen year old girl out on her first date, the media has spent hours with the "Oh dear, will they, or, won't they?" question, trying to instill even a tiny bit of relevancy -- or interest -- in the issue in the minds of jobless Americans who are losing their houses this week.  Worse, any time the public response to this effort becomes too discouraging for them, the story immediately descends to the Greek and Italian debt crisis.  Yawn.  The "super committee" was never intended to do anything.  It will probably succeed with accomplishing that "low bar."

6.  Medicare and Medicaid are routinely imaged as irresolvable conflicts for the budget which must now be sacrificed.

Both programs were initially funded just fine.  Since then, Republicans have "followed orders" from the bosses who have always thought that Medicare and Medicaid money belonged to them.  When the autocrat loaded Medicare's heavily sabotaged Part D Pharmaceutical borrowing -- plus interest -- to the mix, both were destined to bankrupt themselves while his friends were salivating over privatizing the $2 Tn trust fund.  There is nothing wrong with either program which cannot be fixed.  Social Security contributes absolutely nothing to the national debt.  It is totally funded for years.

7.  There are always "two sides" to everything, and the paralyzing Republican obstructionism is only criticized for political reasons.

This line probably worked for a while.  At the time of this posting, polls show 76% of voters no longer buy it.  Even a majority of Republicans answered "yes" to the poll question:  "Are the Republicans purposefully sabotaging the economy to win the 2012 election."

8.  There is absolutely no mention of the amount the Republican "spending cuts" have reduced the national debt or the number of jobs the Republican "jobs plan" have helped create.

The answer to both questions is not surprising.  Republican "spending cuts" have been primarily "drive by attacks" on ideological targets. The amount of real debt reduction amounts to peanuts.

As for jobs, the number of jobs is zero.  The Republican "jobs plan" has not created a single job.  In fact, no one who pays attention to anything beyond FOX News can even tell you what the Republican "jobs plan" actually is.

Opinion polling suggests that voters are slowly realizing both facts.  The media has meticulously worked to counter this growing realization, either articfially contradicting them or simply avoiding any mention of them.

9.  Reporting about the Occupy Wall Street Movement always contains right wing talking points, over reporting of usually "perpetrator incited" incidents and conclusions that Occupy is basically without merit and meaningless.

These are some of the most expensively repeated and cheaply uniform talking points in any campaign conducted recently, both signs that the "people" who can place specific "words" into otherwise banal news stories are quite concerned.  The BBC "reporting" on Friday, November 18, is a good example.

The BBC "expert" brazenly reported that "very few" protesters remained active in the movement, that it was quickly dying off and that it never meant anything in the first place.  On November 17, there were more than 12,000 protesters in New York.  That figure is from police estimates, but neither Reuters, CNN/US, The Examiner nor The Washington Post included that number in their reporting.

Instead, all these "news" services noted that 300 protesters had been arrested.  MSNBC used the word "thousands" in its description of the Day of Action.

10.  The "uprisings" in Wisconsin and Ohio are routinely characterized as ineffective "labor movements."

Of course, labor unions are involved in the protests in both places, however during the show down in Madison, well over 100,000 Wisconsites appeared at the Capitol in Madison.  Equal coverage was given to 300 tea bags who were bussed in by the Koch Brothers' American for Prosperity money funnelled through Dick Armey's California Law Firm, Freedom Works.

It will be interesting to see the orders for media treatment of the successful recall of the Koch Brothers' Wisconsin Governor, now officially under way.  The recall petitions took in 60,000 signatures during the first 48 hours.

The election in Ohio merited the chortled smile of PBS NewsHour's Judy Woodruff.  She was "shocked, I tell you, shocked!" It was, no doubt, discouraging to Judy to see all of her efforts at such a careful bias falling to ashes before her face.  The actual facts of the story rose up in highly visible contradiction to an election which had been continuously presented as a "non starter."

11. Media reporting constantly downgrades the scope of carefully engineered voter suppression and preparations for election fraud in states with Republican governments.

The anti-democracy tea bag "backlash" is easily visible in the draconian addition of registration and identification obstacles put in place in nine states so far.  Although there is no evidence of wide spread voter fraud, hundreds of thousands of legal voters are being disenfranchised with the new requirements.  The media dutifully repeats the lie that voter fraud is a gigantic problem.

In Texas and a few other states, Republican redistricting plans which would eliminate voting blocks of minority Hispanics and blacks are all headed directly for court action established under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  Oooops.

12.   Language:  Pay attention to how often the word "trying" is attached to reports of President Obama's efforts to do anything.

We had to have at least one example of the contextural bias which is being so artfully inserted in "news" stories.  The one selected here is the word "trying."  When the President undertakes any effort whatsoever, his actions are described by adding the word "trying" to the reporting.

The President is trying to move his jobs bill through the Congress.  The President is trying to convince European leaders to establish a bail out fund.  The President is trying to restore the economy.  After listening to literally hours of "trying," the FOX talking point that the President is ineffective is tediously reinforced, creating a stronger and stronger, shadowy foot hold in the subconscious minds -- even the minds of those viewing the commercial media.

Of course, cheap tricks such as the "trying" gimmick are never challenged by sources more concerned with their image than MeanMesa is.  Should a reasonably adept reporter take note of such a sinister, cheezy subtlety, he would worry that either no one would understand his point or that a hired chorus of FOX monkeys would manage to embarrass him.

MeanMesa suspects that the relentless over use of this word probably won't end until November of 2012.  The language based propaganda examples are legion.  The commercial air waves, now with FCC licenses unfettered by the annoying old "public good" clause or any detectable interest in honest reporting, manufacture these little things in hordes -- like fleas in a puppy mill.

(A MeanMesa note:  the yellow background was selected for these examples in keeping with a design format for "yellow press.")

The Conclusion:  A One Liner

The Democrats can lose the 2012 election to the media.