BottleOfBlog

Liberal Media Wonders Whatever Happened To The Man Who Wasn't There

…Edwards' boundless optimism and energy has his limits, and today he admitted what all the pundits and politicos have been saying for the past month: the Democratic contest is a two-person race, and Edwards is not one of them…

Yes, it is difficult to understand why, as Time Magazine wonders, John Edwards message never caught on with people when all the pundits and all the politicos have been saying for the past month that Edwards isn't even part of the Democratic primary.

When people turn on their TV sets, or open up a magazine or newspaper, or read the news on Al Gore's internets, and all the pundits and all the politicos therein tell them that there are basically two candidates for the Democratic nomination--Obama and Clinton--it sure is a big mystery why a third candidate, John Edwards, somehow couldn't appeal to more people.

Edwards' challenge from the beginning of his presidential quest was to stay relevant…

Yes, Edwards' big challenge was to stay relevant. But what Time Magazine doesn't tell you is that Edwards' big challenge was not to stay relevant to actual voters. No, Edwards' challenge was to stay relevant to Time Magazine.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its latest campaign coverage index for January 6-11, a study that does its damndest to try to quantify which political figures are sucking up the most media oxygen and why.

It found that Edwards only got 7% of political coverage during those days -- less than one-fifth of what Hillary earned, and less than one-forth of that accorded to Obama. Edwards even got less attention than Mike Huckabee, even though he, like Edwards, finished third in the New Hampshire primary…

For literally the past year we've been hearing justifications for the fact that Edwards, despite being competitive in Iowa polls, didn't get the attention that his Dem rivals got -- he didn't raise as much money; his candidacy isn't as historic as theirs; etc., etc. Indeed, the virtual media blackout of Edwards got so glaringly obvious that even New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt urged his paper to give Edwards more attention back in November. At a certain point we should just acknowledge that Edwards basically got screwed and that this shouldn't have happened to the extent that it did.

During the primaries, John Edwards, a former Vice Presidential candidate and totally viable candidate for the Presidency of the United States, got seven percent of the political coverage and Time Magazine is explaining to people now that Edwards problem was that he wasn't relevant to voters. Edwards problem was that his message never caught on.

He got one fifth of the press Clinton got and he beat her in Iowa. Can you imagine how well he might have done if he got five times as much press as he got?

Gee, it sure is a mystery worth explaining why his message never caught on with voters who never got to hear it.

[Edwards’ strategy] at first seemed shrewd: build on Edwards' surprisingly good showing in Iowa in 2004 and make his native South Carolina his firewall while garnering union support…

While he managed to pull out a surprising second-place showing in the Iowa caucuses, beating out Clinton, he placed a disappointing third in New Hampshire and his campaign was stunned when he garnered just 4% of the vote in the Nevada caucuses.

At first, Edwards' strategy seemed shrewd! His second place finish in Iowa was surprising! That's the kind of thing that can really breath life into a campaign. And we all remember how shrewd Edwards seemed and how surprising his second place finish was because of all the attention it got!

For instance, let's look at how CNN, a partner of Time Magazine, couldn't stop talking about Edwards' shrewd strategy that led to his surprising second place finish in Iowa!

DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama's victory Thursday in critical Democratic Iowa caucuses indicate voters saw him as a candidate of change, according to entrance polls…

The finish was a blow to Clinton -- the presumptive front-runner in the months leading up to this year's campaign who had hoped a win in Iowa would be the start of an uninterrupted run to the nomination….

"Just over half of Democratic caucus-goers said change was the No. 1 factor they were looking for in a candidate, and 51 percent of those voters chose Barack Obama," said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider. "That compares to only 19 percent of 'change' caucus-goers who preferred Clinton..."

Twenty percent of Democrats said Clinton's campaign mantra -- experience -- was the most important attribute of a presidential candidate.

At Obama's caucus-night headquarters in Des Moines, the hall filled with people late Thursday in anticipation of the candidate's speech…

Obama's victory came despite Clinton's support from EMILY's List…

The Clinton campaign itself also contacted tens of thousands of Iowans who had never caucused…

Appearing in front of cheering supporters Thursday with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, at her side, Clinton refused to back down...

"I am so ready for the rest of this campaign and I am so ready to lead," she said, smiling.

And there's more. The whole article is about Obama--fine, he won--and Clinton, who came in third.

Edwards, who shrewdly and surprisingly finished second, gets mentioned four times with an entire twenty words devoted to him.

Half of those words were "and", "the", "a", "North Carolina" and "also".

John Edwards campaign, the one that pulled the Democratic party millimeters towards the left where most Americans interests and hearts reside, was killed by your Liberal Media.

They hated him, they ignored him, they buried his message, and wrote him right out of the simple and exciting narrative of a two candidate race between an establishment woman and a fresh faced black man. Which was the story they always wanted to tell and was waaaaaay more interesting to them than writing all that boring blah, blah, blah whatever about falling median incomes and jobs going to Whereeverstan and something stinks and poor people are Americans, too, and whatever!

Let's talk about what's really important in this campaign: is Hillary showing more milky white cleavage these days to counter the fact that most voters think black guys have big dicks? Or maybe she's going totally lesbo with her staffers to triangulate and negate the big, black dick factor!

John Edwards may not have been the best Democratic candidate. I thought he was. But that's a personal preference, and come November I'll gladly, gleefully pull the lever for either Obama or Clinton.

But the John Edwards' Presidency was not killed because of his campaign. It wasn't killed because his message didn't catch on. And it didn't die because of money or relevancy or hair cuts or mansions or any of that other bullshit.

His campaign died because all the pundits and all the politicos killed it. Because they hated it.

And his campaign died because, once again, the good people of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina--three states you'd have a hard time finding anyone else in the remaining 47 states saying are representative of America--got to have their ridiculously disproportionate say in who will be the next President of the United States.

For the Democrats, twenty three of the most populous states in the country have zero say in who is going to be the Democratic candidate until, election after election, the field is narrowed to two.

I live in one of the ten most populous states in the country, and, in the last twenty years, I have never been able to cast even a single vote in a Democratic primary.

But every four years, the people of Iowa have a slate of six or seven or eight candidates.

The people of New Hampshire can vote for any number of candidates.

The people of South Carolina get to cast the deciding votes on whoever's left from Iowa and New Hampshire.

And the other forty seven states have to go along.

Otherwise, their delegates get stripped and they have to go along, anyway.

And afterwards, Time Magazine explains to you that the vote that 98% of you never got to cast for the candidate you never got to see 93% of the time was a clear indication that some message you never got to hear just didn't resonate with Americans.

The Man Who Wasn't There, Part III

The Nation -- In the edgiest debate of the Democratic presidential race, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton repeatedly engaged on Monday night in bitter and at times personal exchanges with one another.

And John Edwards effectively pointed to the heated squabbling between the two frontrunners in anticipation of Saturday's South Carolina Democratic primary as a deviation from the issues that matter…

Clinton accused Obama of doing legal work for a Chicago slumlord and charged that her opponent "did the bidding of the insurance companies" when health care was debated in the Illinois legislature.

Obama told Clinton he was fighting to help workers in Chicago when "you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of Wal-Mart…"

Way to go, Obama! Way to go, Hillary! Way to get on a national stage and make a powerful case that Democrats are a bunch of hypocritical stooges for corporate interests!

Karl Rove couldn't have said it better! Or for a bigger audience.

Christ, it's like having Joe Lieberman back in the Democratic primaries. Only worse.

I mean, only centrist Democrats, with their DLC Democratic strategists, could unbelievably make the party, whose leading candidates are a woman and a black man and the son of poor mill worker, look like a bunch of sexists and racists, and corporate lackeys.

In a primary of unprecedented, historical, and progressive firsts--where, for the first time in the history of our country, the two leading candidates for President of the United States were candidates simply as people without regard to their race or their sex--and these two idiots have managed to make race and sex an issue.

They seem unable to stop tarring Democrats as racist, sexist, unreasonable, uncivil hypocrits, all the while singing the praises of Ronald Fucking Reagan.

I can barely stand to listen to either one of them.

The Republicans have handed them this election. It's a Democratic White House. And not because of anything Democrats have done. Lord knows they haven't fought against having troops in Iraq until 2018 and beyond. They haven't fought against that appalling Iran resolution. They didn't fight against that awful bankruptcy bill. If their constituents hadn't howled bloody murder--along with Republicans--Democrats would have "compromised" on privatizing Social Security.

Jesus, Obama was bringing it up even after we shouted it down.

The two of them have no stomach whatsoever to fight the worst Republican president and Congress in the history of our country, but they are ready to go bareknuckled at Democrats every chance they get.

In short order, Edwards had gotten the best of both his opponents. That was the order of the night. Again and again, Edwards took the side of one of the frontrunners against the other, effectively serving as an arbiter between the two.

It was an ideal position for Edwards, the outsider candidate who is struggling to distinguish himself from two opponents with more money and better poll positions.

Not to mention the fact that they, as far as Americans know, apparently exist.

But the former senator from North Carolina had to fight for it. More than half an hour into the debate in South Carolina, where voters will participate in a high-stakes Democratic primary on Saturday, CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer had presided over what was essential a showcase for Clinton and Obama.

"Are there three people in this debate, not two?" interjected Edwards. The 2004 Democratic nominee then delivered what may have been the most effective soliloquy of the night. Referencing the bitter back-and-forth between his two opponents, Edwards asked, "This kind of squabbling -- how many children is this going to get health care? How many people are going to get education because of this? How many kids are going to get to go to college because of this?"

"I respect both of my fellow candidates," he continued, "but we have got to understand this is not about us personally. It's about what we are trying to do for this country,'

Of course, Blitzer interrupted. But Edwards held his ground. "Let me finish here," he said. "Lord knows, you let them go on forever."

The crowd cheered as loudly as it had for anything said by Obama or Clinton.

Anyway, there is actually a liberal media. It's tiny and hard to find. But that's how they saw the debate: Edwards won, while Obama and Clinton continued to act like jackasses who'd throw their own mothers under the campaign bus to get elected.

Course, if you, like most of America, read the corporately owned, conservatively dominated, imaginary "liberal" media, you'd know who the real winner in last night's Democratic debate was:

MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina (CNN) -- The gloves came off quickly Monday night as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama traded blows just days before the South Carolina primary, and two weeks before voters in 24 Super Tuesday states weigh in on this wide-open presidential contest...

Still, there was no clear winner in this Democratic slugfest, the most contentious yet, unless you count John McCain, the Arizona Republican senator who took the gold in last Saturday's South Carolina Republican presidential primary.

That's right--John McCain.

And it shouldn't surprise you that a Republican, in a field of really sorry hopeless Republicans, won a Democratic debate. If you recall, back in November of 2007:

He was nowhere to be found on stage, but Rudy Giuliani's campaign shrewdly rushed to declare victory after Tuesday night's Democratic debate in Philadelphia - chiefly because the former New York mayor emerged as the preferred whipping boy among the seven Democratic rivals.

Shrewdly, said your liberal media, approvingly.

In November of 2007, the presumptive Republican nominee was the clear winner of the Democratic debate in Philadelphia. In January of 2008, the new presumptive Republican nominee was the clear winner in the Democratic debate in South Carolina.

With such a pathetically weak and unpopular Republican field, one can only guess which Republican will win the next Democratic debate!

And that's what Democrats are up against.

And neither Obama, nor Clinton seem to notice or care.

In our time, there is a very real struggle for the soul of our country.

And neither Obama nor Clinton seem to want to fight for it.

They want to talk about unity and civility and inclusiveness, and whatever.

Four years ago, the highest ranking military officers in this country were publicly discussing turning our country into a military dictatorship.

In seven years, we've gone from a $230 billion surplus to nearly doubling the national debt.

We have secret prisons, "First Amendment Zones", millions of missing White House emails, billions of missing dollars, two hopelessly mismanaged wars, warrantless wiretaps, we torture people and destroy the tapes.

This is not the time to be all fucking touchy feely.

This is a time to scrap. And not with the people--Democrats--who didn't create this godawful mess.

John Edwards was a lousy Senator. And he was a lousy Vice Presidential candidate. But he strikes me as a man who tried to play the game and wound up getting played himself. And he's a little smarter now, and little bit bitter about it, and a little bit angry about it. And he doesn't need the money, and he doesn't need the fame, and all he wants to do is feel his fingers wrap around the tape.

And we ought to put the bat in his hands.

He might be full of shit. But, honestly, he's the only one promising to swing it.

It'll Be Totally Worth It

As President Bush arrives in Saudi Arabia today, America's Arab and Israeli allies have been buzzing about the recent sea change in Washington's perception of Iran. The December report by the U.S.'s top spy office stating Iran had abandoned its effort to build nuclear weapons was one of the biggest U-turns in the recent history of U.S. intelligence.

Behind the scenes in Washington, it marked a reversal of a different sort: After years in which Bush appointees and White House staff won out on foreign-policy matters, career staffers in the intelligence world had scored a big victory…

In the case of the Iran report, the about-face was made possible in part by a 2004 restructuring that gave intelligence chiefs more autonomy. New procedures for vetting and authenticating reports also helped insulate analysts from White House involvement.

"White House involvement" is, of course, a common journalistic term of art for "fucking it up" or "getting it wrong".

Really. That's what it means.

Mr. Fingar was tasked with implementing many of the reforms called for by Congress. This included putting new safeguards into the system to authenticate reports' sources and to prevent intelligence being cherry-picked to support previously developed theories…

The result was that the White House was essentially locked out of the process. This marked a big change from the years leading up to the Iraq war…

See? I told you.

We, Americans, are going to spend billions of dollars and maybe dozens of years erasing each and every awful stain The Accidental President has left upon us--fiscally, socially, morally, institutionally, Constitutionally and internationally.

It's so awful what this guy did to our country.

On the other hand, it's good to see some people have already started.

Well, Maybe He Gets Some Press...

...in Europe

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Ask corporate lobbyists which presidential contender is most feared by their clients and the answer is almost always the same -- Democrat John Edwards…

But beyond his profession, Edwards' tone and language on the campaign trail have increased business antipathy toward him. His stump speeches are peppered with attacks on "corporate greed" and warnings of "the destruction of the middle class."

He accuses lobbyists of "corrupting the government" and says Americans lack universal health care because of "drug companies, insurance companies and their lobbyists…"

"The lobbyists and special interests who abuse the system in Washington have good reason to fear John Edwards.

"Once he is president, the interests of middle class families will never again take a back seat to corporate greed in Washington," said campaign spokesman Eric Schultz.

And that is exactly why John Edwards gets no press in America.

Because, if our corporately controlled "liberal" media let more Americans know that Edwards was a serious threat to the pervasive and corrupt influence of corporate lobbyists on our American democracy, they might actually fucking vote for the guy.

The guy could actually wind up President! And then where would we be?

I'll tell you: we'd be in some crazy fucked up society where a corporation with a post office box in the Cayman Islands has less say on where tax dollars go than a taxpayer in the United States.

And that's just not right.

The Founding Fathers certainly wouldn't have included freedom of the press in the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights if they could have possibly imagined it might somehow lead to empowering the voters in our democracy.

So I, for one, applaud our Free Press, for their childish and spiteful--yet principled--blackout on John Edwards.

As a lobbyist who asked not to be named, so that he or she may maintain their awesome and disproportionate influence over our elected representatives anonymously, so awkwardly put it:

One business lobbyist, who asked not to be named, said Edwards "has gone to this angry populist, anti-business rhetoric that borders on class warfare ... He focuses dislike of special interests, which is out there, on business."

Christ, the last thing the voters need is something that they want!

No, what they need is someone representing them who knows where their funding comes from.

"My sense is that Obama would govern as a reasonably pragmatic Democrat ... I think Hillary is approachable. She knows where a lot of her funding has come from, to be blunt," said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Stanford Group Co., a market and policy analysis group.

This is the kind of thing Europeans, with their five or six weeks of vacation and universal health care, can hear about it, but Americans can't.

Otherwise, the next thing you know, we Americans will wind up with five or six weeks of vacation and universal health care. And we wouldn't want that, would we? When we could be fantastically working longer hours, with no health care, at two or even three jobs?

I can not think of one single better qualification for any government office than being the most feared candidate by corporate lobbyists.

Edwards ought to make it his campaign slogan.

Though, even if he did, who, in America, would know?

The Man Who Wasn't There, Part II

A new study finds that John Edwards doesn't exist.

Allow me to explain.

After John Edwards placed second in the Iowa caucus on January 3, Elizabeth Edwards took to the airwaves to argue that his finish should occasion the media to stop covering the Dem contest as little more than a showdown between two political superstars, Hillary and Obama. Not surprisingly, nobody listened to her.

Comes now some statistical evidence of this fact. The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its latest campaign coverage index for January 6-11, a study that does its damndest to try to quantify which political figures are sucking up the most media oxygen and why.

It found that Edwards only got 7% of political coverage during those days -- less than one-fifth of what Hillary earned, and less than one-forth of that accorded to Obama. Edwards even got less attention than Mike Huckabee, even though he, like Edwards, finished third in the New Hampshire primary...

I didn't need a graph or a study to tell me that. The guy is under a virtual media blackout.

I swear to God, if he wins a primary the Big Story will be about how Hillary or Obama came in second and Edwards won't even get mentioned until the sixteenth paragraph.

It's shameful.

But that's your Free Press. That's your "liberal" media, laboring under the glorious protections of the First Amendment of our Constitution, and actually undermining our democracy.

The End Of The Road

The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule. Despots stripped of power are transformed from monsters into buffoons. And this is the metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency…

It is the end of the road for George Bush. The world takes less and less notice of him. He strutted and swaggered across the stage. He bellowed and raged. He plundered and murdered. And now he wants to be anointed as a peacemaker. His presidency, like his life, has been a tragic waste. But he at least he has a life. There are tens of thousands of mute graves in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan that stand as stark testaments to his true legacy. If he wants to redeem his time in office he should kneel before one and ask for forgiveness.

That's Chris Hedges. He wrote a pretty good book.

In 2003, Americans booed him, and turned their backs on him, and shouted him down, and finally unplugged him to shut him up.

Some people in the audience even cried, because he insulted war, which in 2003, was an American value.

Though, you know, everything he said was true.

Dude's spot on again.

I Think That's A Conservative Estimate

He's a poll cellar-dweller whom even GOP presidential candidates sneer at, but George W. Bush and some congressional backers see happy days for the prez this year. His fans have dubbed it his "legacy year"…[b]ut more immediately, they are predicting a remarkable poll shift to about 45 percent favorable by the time he leaves office next year.

Puh-lease, when Bush finally leaves the White House, I think about 80% of Americans will have a favorable opinion of that.

Rotten To The Last Oily Drop

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - President Bush warned Tuesday that surging oil prices threaten the U.S. economy and urged OPEC nations to boost their output. His plea drew little sympathy from oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which said production levels appear normal…

He promised to tell Saudi King Abdullah that American families are being hurt by oil prices that have topped $100 a barrel, more than three times what they were when he took office…

In public, the same Bush whose early career was in the Texas oilfields and who said during his 2000 presidential campaign that the president must "jawbone" oil-producing nations to drop rates had been silent about the issue on this eight-day trip until Tuesday.

Well, that's not much of a surprise, is it? I mean, he didn't do anything he promised in his 2000 presidential campaign.

He raised the subject here, in the country with the world's largest supply of oil, during a morning meeting with Saudi business leaders, saying oil prices were very high and "tough on our economy." He spoke more directly, but still gently, in an afternoon meeting with reporters who were unexpectedly summoned to the guest palace where he stayed one of his two nights.

"I hope that OPEC, if possible, understands that if they could put more supply on the market it would be helpful," he said.

Bush conceded that, in reality, increasing ouput would be difficult. The demand for oil, particularly from China and India, is stretching available supplies, he said. And "a lot of these oil-producing countries are full out" in terms of what they can produce, he said.

Wait a second! I thought refinery capacity was causing high oil prices!

[Bush] urged Congress to pass legislation to help homeowners refinance. Bush also called for expanding petroleum refining capacity and exploring for energy in "environmentally friendly ways."

"We have got to understand that if we are worried about gasoline prices, we ought to expand refineries here in the United States, and we ought to explore for oil and gas in environmentally friendly ways in the United States," he said.

But, gee, if there's no surplus on the market, and crude is selling for $100 a barrel, how would being able to refine more of it substantially lower gas prices?

The answer is: it wouldn't.

Bush has been pushing that bullshit on us since gasoline was $1.50 a gallon. And it doesn't have anything to do with cheaper gasoline. It has to do with gutting the Clean Air Act.

That's it.

Why do reporters keep humoring this loser like he's some kind of Oracle when it comes to economics, and diplomacy, and our American government?

He doesn't know anything. He's like some stupid looking parrot prop on a pirate's shoulder in a made for TV movie that squawks bizarre jibberish for comic relief.

After seven years, just address him with the respect he's earned:

"Hey, monkey, say something funny for the camera!"

Oh, Wow, Big Surprise

WASHINGTON - Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.

What???

But, but, but I thought we could trust the government to conduct wiretaps without warrants!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush on Sunday defended his administration's use of wiretaps on U.S. citizens without a court order…

Bush on Sunday described his program as "necessary to win this war and to protect the American people," and added that the program has been reviewed "constantly" by Justice Department officials.

What kind of constant review?

We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence," according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

It was being so constantly and carefully reviewed to make sure that the Fourth Amendment rights of American citizens weren't being violated and it was so necessary to our national security that no one noticed that they were listening to a bunch of dead phone lines? No one remembered to pay the fucking phone bill???

And the phone companies cut off FBI wiretaps of "suspected" al-Qaeda terrorists because the phone bill wasn't paid? Aren't these the same people who are now claiming they should get immunity for willfully and knowingly violating our Constitutional rights because they were being patriotic? They were doing their patriotic duty?

So these companies--these American companies--were willing to break the law and violate their fellow Americans' Constitutional rights for the sake of national security.

But only if they got paid on time.

Any fucking Congressman votes for immunity for these mutherfuckers needs to get run out of Washington by a berserk crowd of justifiably angry citizens, carrying torches, tar, and feathers.

If we ever find out truly what these incompetent imbeciles did with this unchecked, un-Constitutional power, we'll surely all be appalled.

Again.

Though this? This comical mix of incompetence and greed, and laughable dishonesty?

Unless you're a moron, this isn't even interesting.

All The Bees In Auckland

Will leave their yellow stripes at home, and sadly buzz in black.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Sir Edmund Hillary, the unassuming beekeeper who conquered Mount Everest to win renown as one of the 20th century's greatest adventurers, has died, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark announced Friday. He was 88.