I just saw something Contessa Brewer called "pretty shocking," and I agree. The new Quinnipiac poll. On the question "Who do you trust to handle the economy?" the response was:
President Obama 41%
Republicans 42%
The same poll shows that only 23% of respondents believe the economy is getting better. WTF? How is adding 100,000 jobs a month not an improvement over losing 700,000 jobs a month??
The answer, of course, is that it IS an improvement. And whatever your criticisms of Obama, he WILL handle the economy better than the Republicans would. But far too many Americans don't know that, because of where they get their "facts."
And that is just one example of why Randi Rhodes's rant yesterday struck such a strong chord with me. Below the fold.
Yesterday on Randi Rhodes's radio show, a caller named Jahari from Detroit said,
Randi, you are on fire today and I'm loving it. This guy Breitbart is . . . the proof that we need to show-- to prove that Fox News is an opinion-only network.
And then Randi let loose:
It's not just--- listen to me. It's not just Fox News. It's this whole cabal of intertwined organizations: The Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, which is the Koch family, which is, you know, the big chemical/oil family and their fake grassroots summer protests last summer saying that there would be death panels . . . . It's just a giant cabal of corporate media poisoning of the news.
And if the FCC and the White House and the whole apparatus doesn't understand that it has a humongous media problem, and that America cannot self-govern unless it has the same facts -- and yes, we're free to use the same facts and then have completely different opinions. But you can't have different facts!
And with the Citizens United decision, the cabal has grown to include not only the corporate media, but every corporation that wants to use its money to influence the political process in a way that will enhance its own profits.
The cancer grows. The filth spreads.
There are many important issues facing this nation. The environment. The economy. The rights of marginalized Americans. My pet issue, funding public education.
But none of them -- NONE of them -- is as important as this issue of the influence of corporate money on our national political conversation.
Because as long as concentrated wealth that is directed toward corporate profit-making can overwhelm the voices of individual Americans, our democracy cannot function.
As long as moneyed interests are able to systematically puchase their own "facts" and purchase their own national mouthpieces through which to disseminate their facts to bury and obscure the truth, our democracy cannot function.
America cannot self-govern unless it has the same facts.
And those facts must be true.