John Allen Cassady
Gerald Nicosia
The 2012 Election Day in the USA may well become known as the day that Journalism died because no matter what happens the actual results will be the subject for an eternal debate. Brad Friedman, who is the leading spokesman for the critics of the unverifiable results produced by the electronic voting machines, has, in a preemptive move, been labeled as the voice for a conspiracy theory and thus all skeptical responses to the final counts will have been neutralized before they can be printed in the next day's newspapers.
If Mitt Romney wins, there can and will be no criticism of
the outcome. Any Progressive voice who
dares to contradict the news will be trashed as a conspiracy theory lunatic by
the conservative noise machine just as Friedman was.
If President Obama wins, the conservative propagandists will discredit his win without in the least way casting any doubt on the electronic voting machines.
Either way partisan gridlock will ignore any attempts to let
fully fact checked journalism play the roll of umpire or referee. Then on one side or the other major segments
of the American population will have serious doubts about the validity of the
next President's right to occupy the White House.
If Journalism per se is DOA, what then will columnists, who don't want to be a cheerleader for either side, write about?
Lucy, the building in Margate, New Jersey, which resembles an elephant, apparently escaped major damage in Hurricane Sandy. That fact may not be of much importance to readers in Western Australia, but anybody who flocked to the Jersey Shore during their formative years, will be glad to know about Lucy's good fortune. Folks who have never heard of this bit of unique American architecture, will probably appreciate the chance to click on a link that will produce a photo of the storm's photogenic survivor.
http://boingboing.net/2012/10/30/lucy-the-elephant-1881-novelty.html
The folks in France
and Germany may possibly get
some reliable journalism about the election, but will the people in Australia and Great Britain get unbiased reports
in their national media which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch?
We could write a column that asks what happens to the personal belongings of people who lose their homes when banks foreclose. If the personal belongings and furniture are not moved, do the banks have a legal right to sell the items left behind? Are the people who buy those goods still known as shinnies or is the use of that word forbidden in the land that was built on the principle of freedom of speech?
In Berekley
CA, the voters will decide about
enacting a sit-lie law. According to
information we received from a member of the city council, Berkeley has, in the past, enacted a sit-lie
law and lost a sum of money when the ACLU took the municipality to court. Berkeley
lost that past case and perhaps could become the target for some "those who
forget the past" criticism if history repeats itself.
Has the national news media reported that California Governor Brown has stated that the California Highway Patrol may be used to supply some law enforcement services in the cash strapped cities that are struggling with smaller local police forces? Would using the California Highway Patrol that way be similar to sending members of nationally known baseball teams to substitute for the professional hockey players who have been locked out by the team owners? (Just asking.)
The debate in California
over Prop 32 has us asking this question:
If businessmen can not run ads which make fraudulent statements, why
then can the people known as corporations run political ads which make
fraudulent claims? If two political PACs
run contradictory statements, wouldn't one of those ads have to be making some
false statements?
If Mitt Romney had been elected President in 2008, would FEMA already have been disbanded? If so, would America see the wisdom of cutting taxes for the billionaires while simultaneously dividing the job FEMA does among 50 different state levels of bureaucracy? What's not to love about duplicating the miracle of the loaves and fishes using bureaucrats?
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