Some themes just keep popping up and today AlterNet is running a story on a topic I hammer on quite a bit, Are we REALLY as (and this is key) ‘evenly divided’ as the corporate owned media pretends we are?
Where Are We Really?
If most Americans don't really identify themselves on a left-right scale, and often hold complex and conflicted opinions on subjects that don't line up politically with the labels they choose, how do we figure out what people really think?
In a 2011 paper (PDF) on the polarization of Congress, Ferguson pointed out that it may well be a mistake to assume that people vote based on “hot-button” issues like abortion or gay rights. “Huge numbers of people holding hot-button attitudes continue to affiliate with the 'wrong' political party,” he noted. (This played out in California, when the referendum banning same-sex marriage passed at the same time Obama swept the state's presidential vote.) [snip]
(One piece of Florida's report that was interesting was that so-called conservative political affiliation strongly correlated with a large percentage of blue-collar workers in a state, but those self-identified conservatives “appear to be split along class and income lines when it comes to the issue of whether government should provide help for the poor.” He cited a survey by the Pew Research Center, which found that 57 percent of Republicans with family incomes of less than $30,000 said that government does not do enough for the poor. Unsurprisingly, the rich Republicans think the government is giving too much of their money away. Of course, Florida doesn't bother extrapolating this information to the idea that maybe conservatism as defined by Republican politicians simply isn't as popular as its reputation but that would be complicated.)
As I have pointed out repeatedly, only one in five voters ‘self-identify’ as Republican. This information comes from the ‘registered voter’ information people file when they (appropriately enough) ‘register’ to vote.
The ‘crux’ of my argument has been (and remains) it is MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for a conservative to ‘win’ election, yet they do all the time and it’s usually a ‘squeaker’!
IF the ‘corporate owned media' can be trusted.
Understand, there is NO ‘independent verification’ of ANY election results and ‘poll workers’ are politically appointed!
Could this be part of the reason why we, in defiance of all logic, constantly see this sort of bullshit going on? (Mr. Krugman’s ‘Moochers against Welfare’ editorial from today’s NY Times…)
Left to our imagination is whether or not we live in a nation populated by the most highly educated but terminally STUPID people on the planet…
Or are we faced with the much more likely scenario of living in a society cursed with an ‘untrustworthy’ media? One that reports what it is paid to report while completely ignoring whatever is, er, detrimental/derogatory to the status quo?
Or is our society ‘insane’…trapped in a ‘self-destructive cycle’ of repeating the same behavior, over and over again, each time expecting a different result!
Which is to point out that if people ‘don’t know’ what happens when they vote conservative by now, chances are good to excellent they never will!
And, chances are (in for a penny, in for a pound) the corporate owned media will continue to curse us with corrupt politicians until our civilization collapses!
This goes far beyond Democrat and Republican…we have transitioned all the way to Criminal/Victim!
When the criminals make the laws, their victims have no place to hide…
And the only way to protect themselves is the take the law back into their own hands!
Which leads us to our final offering a story about what happens when ‘bad behavior’ is incentivized
As it happens, after a decade of Moscow’s investment, a trans-Siberian oil pipeline is scheduled for completion in this year’s third quarter. That will create opportunities for Russia to export petroleum more cheaply than its current railroad shipments to a Pacific port where it is then pumped into tankers for shipments to Japan and South Korea — two countries that, as strategic American allies, will be looking for substitutes to Iranian oil.
The new pipeline, called the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, forks in Siberia so that oil can be sent either to China or to the coast, for export to other Asian customers. It will give Russian exporters the ability to easily exploit likely price differences between customers like China, if it continues as expected to buy Iranian oil, and Japan and South Korea, which probably will not.
“They could arbitrage between the two,” Mr. Mercer, the analyst, said of this Russian flexibility, “and it could play to their advantage.”
You have to be a ‘gray-beard’ like me to remember the gas lines of the mid-Seventies (fucking weird how ‘That Seventies Show’ totally ignores this reality.)
We weren’t ‘out of gas’ then and we aren’t out of gas now…but oil is over $102 a barrel just on rumors of an Iranian embargo.
So the question, good citizen, is ‘Are we REALLY that stupid?’ How long are we going to let these criminals keep getting away with this shit?
the 'wrong' party keeps winning (which is excellent for the > One Percent!) but the rest of us are getting, er, 'spanked'...when we should be the ones doing the spanking!
Just something to chew on as you get ready for what passes for your 'weekend'...
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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