The head of UAW in our CD was one of the Clinton delegates selected.

The media have spent the last 7 years repeating every bit of spin this Administration has fed them. They have not covered or downplayed stories critical of the Administration.

And these nimrods will probably “wake up” — or at least put on a show of appearing to wake up — just in time to pile on to a Democratic president & Congress.

Upstairs description of the debate as “journalistic dodgeball:” CLASSIC!!

Author Barstow speaks from inexperience , lack of imagination, deliberate not-knowing or to collect a reward for lying.
There is always “something” exchanged, even if only a favor to a friend to receive a good feeling or pride, or ensure continuity of the relationship; or to a non-friend to accomplish his disappearance.

Often, the key to “no”quid pro quo is merely the untraceability of the “something”, such as oft stated desire to hire the other after his retirement; or PR’ing the other fellow for a later benefit.

It really only takes imagination to create untraceable “somethings” with utterly no documentation.

I attended the 4th congressional district’s convention.

There were 89 voters in the Uncommitted caucus, 49 in the Clinton caucus. Not exactly a good indicator for Clinton, in a district that has trended red. The Uncommitted caucus participants were clearly NOT CLINTON supporters, as they were very happy when both selected Uncommitted Delegates said they would support Obama should they go to Colorado.

The Uncommitted caucus finished earlier than the Clinton caucus, in spite of the size of the group and the number of potential delegates running for the two seats. They had no problems whittling it down to the two folks who’d been working for the Obama campaign for as long as 14 months.

There was only one formal member of the Clinton campaign in attendance, and they’ve only been working for that campaign for a few months.

Across the entire 4th district in attendance, there were (2) people wearing Clinton buttons. In contrast, there were (8) folks wearing Obama buttons, (2) more people wearing Obama t-shirts, and at least (3) people with Obama signs and bumper stickers.

Lastly, one of the delegate candidates was a high school teacher, who in explaining why he wanted our vote, said that of his 300 students in a northern Michigan public school, that he had no problems finding kids to represent Obama’s and McCain’s campaigns in a mock election exercise, but NONE to represent Clinton. (For this reason I am so sorry that we couldn’t elect a second male delegate; this person clearly wanted to teach his students more about democracy by example.)

(I have some reservations about what actually happened in the Clinton caucus, which I did not observe; there were UAW members in that caucus, while the bulk of UAW downstate were in the Obama camp. Was there some effort to shape delegate outcome here? Hmm.)

The energy in this overwhelmingly white district isn’t with Clinton. They will be very disappointed if the outcome of Michigan’s delegates and superdelegates does not match the energy.

… the media is not dependent on government officials, or the lowest-common-denominator aspects of popular culture, or anything else like that because it has been seduced by those forces but because the media previously had come to see itself as a failing, gutted enterprise. [italics rOTL

Larry, I’d started to suspect the same thing — when did the press begin to view itself as so powerless?

But we’re finally glimpsing the cumulative social (and personal) costs of ‘bad information’ in may areas:
– steroids in baseball
– stock analysts putting “Buy!” signals on Enron stock without understanding, or inquiring, how that company actually made money
– write-downs on billions of Big Shitpile mortgages; the ‘information value’ of the mortgages is so low that no one seems able to accurately price them
– dangerous products being sold
– media outlets accepting questionable ‘experts’ as interview subjects, including corporate-funded pseudo-scientists who shill that global warming is not attributable to oil or fuel consumption (!)

The cumulative costs are not sustainable. Neverthless, I’d argue that George Soros is correct in pointing out that after 1980, America became a ‘feel good society’ and wanted to be told Sweet Lies. That’s basically a form of letting the nuts run the insane asylum, or the criminals run the prison.

People of integrity refuse to lie — witness Al Gore and many climate scientists.
People with no integrity are willing to shill for just about anything.

The media was complicit in telling Sweet financial, environmental, and political Lies; whether it can survive the damage remains to be seen. The media lost more than their virginity — they lost their fundamental purpose. Here’s hoping they can reclaim it.