ABC calls the election for Obama, based on election polls

Doesn't bother waiting for voters to vote; actual election results deemed irrelevant

From ABC's banner headline:

BREAKING NEWS

BASED ON EXIT POLLS AND REPORTING, ABC NEWS PROJECTS SEN. BARACK OBAMA WILL HAVE ENOUGH DELEGATES TO CLINCH THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION TONIGHT.

BREAKING NEWS: OBAMA CLINCHES DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION

If Hillary doesn't give a concession speech tonight, ABC is guilty of the worst sin of journalism: deliberately peddling lies - that is, fraud.

If you read the actual story, it turns out the race isn't over - ABC is trying to make it be over. They are using the power of their pen to try to affect the outcome of the process in a way that, up until now, was always considered unethical.

And apparently, they're not the only one.

In the past, there were concerns about calling an election before it was over. It is acknowledged and well-known that this tactic discourages people from voting and thus affects the outcome.

Those concerns were dismissed today as the media scrambled to help prop up Barack Obama's claims to the nomination.

Knowing he is too weak to actually allow the voters to participate in a free and fair election, a huge and colossal effort has been thrown into demonstrating that it is all over - that there is no reason to show up for the final primaries*.

Just in case any would-be voters out there didn't get the message, ABC includes this helpful image:


Surely today is a day that will be remembered in the history of American democracy**.
___________________________________
* Am I the only person out there wondering, okay, so why is he so unwilling to wait until the votes are in, if it is really all settled?

Not to mention - why would Hillary announce her sudden willingness to be VP right before, rather than right after, the election? You would think that even if she had abruptly decided to quit - again - her pride would want her to gather as many votes as possible before bowing out?

(By the way, just how many times has the press reported her ready to quit?)

** assuming the history of American democracy is remembered at all.

right wing talking points

Both sides have heard it. Republican talking points - in the mouths of Democrats.

The latest is amusing:

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

Barack Obama - as quoted by Rush Limbaugh.

Sounds like a Republican trick to me. People are still making the argument that X is right/wrong because the Republicans say this or that - and everyone knows that truth = the opposite of whatever Republicans (or Fox News) says!

Guess it's time for more co-evolution. Learn how to tell truth from fiction. Know what you believe. Learn to think critically. Don't make it so easy for them to play games with peoples' heads.

(and, no, I'm not saying anything specific about Obama's latest gaffe - if it really happened, it is funny and stupid and we should all have a laugh. But this is getting ridiculous; people are trying to rely on where the media stands on this or that issue to determine what a 'real' progressive 'ought' to think about something. Wake up! You can't do that! It is a lazy man's shortcut and it says something really ugly about progressives - who think they are so smart - when such an obvious tactic has caused such widespread disarray. You cannot know which side the media is on, because they are playing games with your reality. They are expecting you to guess what is going on and they are confusing the signals. Stop falling for it! The one thing you can know about Rush Limbaugh is that he was not kidding when he said his goal was to create chaos in the Democratic camp.)

gimme comes with an "or else"

via Tennessee Guerrilla Women

"There is no way the super-delegates can take this away from Barack Obama. There will be race riots in the street."

Okay, this is a pretty shockingly irresponsible statement. It's true that throughout the course of Obama's campaign, MSNBC pundits have promoted the network's beloved Democratic candidate by making numerous veiled threats of race riots in the streets, but this is the first time I've heard the threat stated so explicitly. My initial reaction was the thought that Hillary would surely drop out of the race now. I mean surely even the all-powerful Evil Hillary wouldn't want to be responsible for causing race riots in the street.

After that thought, I wondered what kind of person would demean and insult not only the entire African-American population, but also the very concept of democracy itself, by speaking so approvingly, and thereby promoting, violence in the streets?

So I googled Michelle Bernard. And, yep, she is that kind of person. Michelle Bernard is the CEO of the rabidly conservative anti-feminist Independent Women's Forum - a group with strong ties to the Bush Administration....

~snip

...MSNBC, we hardly knew you.

Go read the rest and check out the links. Like this one*:

Rush Limbaugh predicted on January 28—shortly after the South Carolina primary and before Super Tuesday—that Clinton ads would make Obama "appear darker than he is," alluding to Time magazine's infamous O.J. Simpson cover. He even repeatedly likened Bill Clinton to the notorious public-safety commissioner and Klansman Bull Connor, branding the ex-president "Bull Clinton."

Declaring that he knows the Clintons "like every square inch of my glorious naked body," Limbaugh predicted that they were "going to pit" Hispanics and blacks against each other. "The message is going to be: 'Hispanics, don't let them take me out, and don't let them—those black people—marginalize you.' "

Or this one:

The IWF, like many such groups, is founded as a non-partisan 501(c)(3) group. As such, the group does not endorse candidates. But it does promote a range of conservative causes.

All that is well and good—and Michelle Bernard is the group’s CEO. Which leads us to a puzzling question: As a major conservative, why is Bernard appearing on Hardball so often—to gush about Obama?

As if anyone didn't already know which candidate "the Establishment" wants us to vote for.

____________________________________

*Sorry about that bit about Rush and how well he knows his - ahem - naked body. (I know - I'll have nightmares too.)

kill the monster - at any cost!

Obama 'possibly to claim victory', says the New York Times.

Senator Barack Obama has chosen to spend Tuesday night not in Kentucky or Oregon, the two states that will be holding their primaries that day, or even at his home in Chicago. Instead, Mr. Obama’s staff announced on Saturday, he will be returning to Iowa, where he won the Democratic caucuses way back in January and has at least two good reasons to revisit now.

Much more than nostalgia seems to have motivated that decision. If things continue to go as well for Mr. Obama this week as they have so far this month, with a romp in North Carolina, a strong showing in Indiana and daily growth in his support among party superdelegates, he could actually end up with enough pledged delegates to proclaim, without fear of contradiction, that he is now the Democratic nominee for president.

"Without fear of contradiction" is, of course, an in-your-face lie from yet one more media outlet that is committed to choosing our candidate for us - even if it means spending its own credibility.

Here is to hoping the Democratic party does not try to push this rule-bending and cherry-picking far enough to abandon even the pretense of legitimacy.

Crowning the chosen one early is a clear win for the Republican party. The elite has successfully split off one half of the party and used it to attack the other half.

The new organization Clinton Supporters Count Too doesn't have its own web page up yet. But there's a new message out through Katalusis:

Make calls to OR and KY. We will have another stunning victory in KY and close the gap in OR. We believe the opposition will announce that he has won the nomination on May 20th after the polls close. It will not be believable when Hillary is announcing a HUGE VICTORY IN KY.

Unfortunately, I have a sinking feeling that the media narrative is already set up to cover this. They know Obama is going to lose KY.

Also going on:

Just like our last puppet-in-chief, the press is giving Obama a free pass over his total ignorance and frequent gaffes:

What it says is that I’m not very well known in that part of the country. Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, not only because of her time in the White House with her husband, but also coming from a nearby state of Arkansas.

Devil in a pantsuit or the demonization of Hillary Clinton in the Chicago Tribune points out the difference between ordinary sexism vs. this particular (sinister) narrative:

This, though, is something different and more sinister, because it is not just a commentator's opinion about a person's fitness or unfitness for public office. It is not about using colorful, vivid language in order to wish that a person might or might not continue a campaign. It is an unprecedented public call—albeit metaphorically, but still violently and persistently—for a person's death.

In their landmark book of literary criticism "The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination" (1979), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar were among the first to spotlight this noxious theme, this isolation and ridicule of powerful women by labeling them crazy, hysterical, perverse, monstrous. To challenge male domination—of the world, or just of oneself—was to be risk being marginalized, ostracized, locked away like Rochester's wife in "Jane Eyre" (1847), the fate that gave the book its title. In real life, behavior that strayed from the polite, demure norm expected of women in the 19th Century was rewarded with psychiatric evaluations and often, imprisonment and death.

(By the way, that book she mentions is a really, really great book.)

Hillary Clinton, speaking directly to bloggers (wow!), talks about the attacks launched against her.

Rick Montgomery in the Kansas City Star says working-class whites encompass about half of the electorate, depending on how you define working class - and white.

Eight in 10 of those working-class whites voted for Clinton over Obama. Only about half said they’d go for Obama over McCain in a general election.

Leon Panetta, who served as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, told The Washington Times: “If that continues, there is no way the Democrats can win in November.”

nefarious goings-on

The LA Times suggests the row with Rev. Wright might be Hillary's fault.

It seems a Hillary supporter was definitely involved the event organization. That means they have a legitimate excuse to use the word "nefarious" to describe the inherent deceitfulness of Clintons:

It won't take very much at all for Obama supporters to see in Wright's carefully arranged Washington event that was so damaging to Obama the strategic, nefarious manipulation of the Clintons.

There's something sort of infuriating - and sort of comical - about them trying to make Rev. Wright somehow be something...Hillary should be ashamed of?

Looking at today's politics page, though, I suppose they think they are generous to even mention Hillary's existence. I count over a dozen Obama headlines and a few brief mentions to the two of them - Obama and Hillary - down at the bottom of the page.

They do, however, provide full coverage of any/all donors and superdelegates who defect to Obama.

Which is still better than the NY Times, apparently. Am I missing it, or did they forget to include pro-Hillary bloggers in among the "liberal" (pro-Obama) and conservative bloggers, in their coverage of what is being said "out there"?

CNN stumps for Obama (some more)

headline: Obama movement gets angry

You know, I clicked on the CNN video image because it looked like maybe there had been violence. I thought, oh no, has it started already? Pushing and shoving - that was what the icon looked like to me. Like maybe a fight had broken out.

But, no, it's just CNN doing its best to make sure that happens later. To warn us that Obama backers are very angry, and if we elect Clinton, it would be a bad thing.

Nice little narrative they've got set up there, don't they?

First, Obama isn't a political campaign - it's a movement.

And, CNN tells us, the internet is full of rage. Never mind how many of those bloggers are paid. Never mind that the bloggers overrepresent a single demographic.

Frat Boy is America now (until the general, when I expect CNN will suddenly remember it prefers McCain). We are supposed to let the least experienced choose our candidate. Is it just me, or is there an edge of "or else" thrown into this mix?

And what would happen if Clinton got elected the nominee? Let's cut to an Obama supporter to find out! Let's talk about how it would make them very angry. Because we all know that's how elections are run - vote for my candidate or else the kids will throw a temper tantrum.

Isn't CNN sort of encouraging an irresponsible attitude here? Oh - I forgot - they like it when the Democrats have riots, don't they? Nonstop coverage. Who would have imagined such a thing could happen?

Never mind that most Democrats have voted for Clinton. Yes - Clinton has more Democratic party votes than Obama, who has relied on those college kids to get mommy and daddy to indulge them (for the nomination - not the general election). (See Young Obama Backers Twist Parents' Arms, NYTimes)




The fact is, the entire media has thrown in for Obama.

Who gets to choose the President again? Oh yes - the wealthy guys who control the three companies that own almost all the media outlets in America. And they want Obama - precisely because it is now increasingly obvious that Obama cannot and will not defeat McCain.