This is the day Americans are supposed to “elect” a president and, despite the naysayers who call the inconvenient truth about election thefts “conspiracy theory,” the Big Money Masters behind the curtain will determine the winner: the awesomely evil Barack Obama or the supremely evil Mitt Romney, i.e., if we don’t again have to suffer months of limbo until the decision winds up in the hands of the US Supreme Court.
Whatever happens today, at least we will be spared the 24/7 deluge of lie-filled political ads and robocalls.
American politics has never been pretty but, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that opened the money floodgates, this election cycle has taken us from the gutter to the sewer.
From the presidential down to local elections and referendums, Big Money and their Super PACs have spent nearly a half-trillion dollars, if not more, enriching the corporate media and trying to scare people into voting one way or the other. And these are the Big Money people who call themselves job-makers and insist they can’t afford to pay a few bucks more in taxes—never mind paying a fair share—because it will hinder their ability to make jobs. Are you laughing yet? Nope, they can’t afford another dime in taxes but they can spend a half-trillion or more on political campaigns. Imagine how many jobs that money would have made.
Ah, but it is more important to keep the corporate media’s coffers full, less the presstitutes out their and their candidates’ lies, distortion and omissions. Good grief, that might produce an informed electorate—the last thing Big Money wants, so when the people aren’t being scared by the crap, feed them diversions: phony reality TV shows, Dancing With the Stars, schlock sitcoms, baseball, football, basketball. The latest iPad and iPhones took up more airtime and print than calling the pols on their lies or discussing how Big Money’s hired help can easily rig elections, without a leaving a trace, thanks to electronic voting and tabulation systems.
And let us not leave out diddling absentee ballots—i.e. those that don’t get “lost”—and failing to count provisional ballots, especially those that don’t support Big Money’s candidates.
Since Big Money favors Republicans, despite Obama bending over backwards for them, lets play up phony vote fraud to engage in voter suppression by putting people through hoops to get voter ID cards; purging the voter rolls of “illegal” immigrants, people whose signatures don’t match what’s on file and any other excuse you can think of; failing to restore voting rights to felons who served their sentences; and on and on—you know, the things that keep non-Republicans from voting. Add to that voter intimidation with billboards threatening them with prison, robocalls telling them to vote on the wrong day or in the wrong place, threatening them with the loss of their jobs if Mitt Romney doesn’t win the White House.
In 2004, the Republicans and the corporate media presstitutes had a field day calling John Kerry a flip-flopper. In 2012, Mitt Romney has flipped and flopped a hundred times more but it has been barely mentioned. Shoot, the corporate media presstitutes haven’t even called him out for saying he is a job-maker. The only jobs Mitt Romney has made have been in China and wherever else he shipped jobs to from the plants whose assets he stripped, loaded with debt and closed here.
Yet, Mitt Romney gets away with saying he will make 12 million jobs? Where? How? The country doesn’t need 12 million more hamburger flippers, hotel housekeepers, bartenders, nurses’ aides, hospital orderlies or latrine cleaners. Bain Capital wasn’t and isn’t in business to make jobs. Bain is and was in business to make money period.
Then there is the matter of Mitt Romney’s secret plan to fix the economy, make jobs, cut taxes, get rid of regulations and balance the budget. Sounds very Nixonian. Remember Dick Nixon’s secret plan to end the war in Vietnam, which raged on for another four years? But the corporate media presstitutes accept Romney’s nonsense with few questions asked.
Of course, we know Mitt Romney wants Roe v. Wade overturned, despite attempts at flip-flopping on that one, and he has vowed to get rid of Planned Parenthood. But there’s no war on women, right?
In the 1960 presidential campaign, before the corporations totally took over the media, the big issue was John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism. Good grief, we couldn’t have a president who was a tool of the pope. Kennedy forthrightly put that issue aside by pledging his first allegiance was to the country, not his church. He kept that pledge, too. He said no to the United States Conference of Bishops who wanted taxpayer money for parochial schools. Kennedy even went so far as to reject appointing an ambassador to the Vatican: “I am flatly opposed to appointment of an Ambassador to the Vatican. Whatever advantages it might have in Rome—and I’m not convinced of these—they would be more than offset by the divisive effect at home.” (Look magazine, Mar. 3, 1960).
But the corporate media presstitutes practically ignore Romney’s Mormonism. Do they not know that to be a Mormon in good standing one must be obedient to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS)? They don’t raise an eyebrow when he puts his church ahead of his country and his family. When they do raise questions, he weaves, waffles and dodges.
Then there is the matter of Lying for the Lord or “Lying for the cause of righteousness.” When asked if he believed the White Horse Prophecy attributed to his church’s founder, Joseph Smith, he replied, “I haven’t heard my name associated with it [the White Horse Prophecy] or anything of that nature. That’s not official church doctrine. There are a lot of things that are speculation and discussion by church members and even church leaders that aren’t official church doctrine. I don’t put that at the heart of my religious belief.”
What is the White Horse Prophecy? In short, it is the belief that one day the US will be transformed into a Mormon theocracy. Mormons believe they will reign with Christ (who they believe is the brother of Satan, and who will have his Second Coming in Jackson County, Missouri and Jerusalem) for a thousand years. Again, Mitt Romney skated on whether he believes in this prophecy and he got away with it. Then he has gotten away with a lot of things, including producing more than two years of his tax returns, because the presstitutes who work for the corporate media know better than to demand answers.
Not that Barack Obama has taken any heat from the corporate media for continuing and adding to the George W. Bush policies of usurping our freedoms, the illegal alleged killing of Osama bin Laden, continuing to commit war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya, committing crimes against the Iranian people with dreadful sanctions, giving himself the right to have people, including US citizens, detained, imprisoned indefinitely without due process and even killed. And that is unlikely to change whether he or Romney “win” the election.
As for third parties, fuhgeddaboudit. The corporate media want no part of them. It’s all about keeping the Republican/Democratic duopoly in play in order to rake in the greenies from Big Money.
If Americans had any sense, they would have demanded hand-counted paper ballots and there would be a grand housecleaning today—the White House, the Do Nothing Congress and right down to the state and local levels. Don’t hold your breath, because it ain’t gonna happen. So once again, just like Charlie Brown believing Lucy will hold the football, we the people lose.
Bev Conover is the editor and publisher of Intrepid Report. Email her at editor@intrepidreport.com.
Great article, Bev.
I had never seen the word presstitutes. Great word. Did you invent it? If so congratulations.
Best wishes,
Richard John Stapleton.
I can’t take credit for “presstitutes,” however, I was the first or one of the first persons to use the term “corporate media” in 1998.
I love how most of the article is anti-Romney, with a small snippet at the end which is almost anti-Obama… and here I was hoping for a more unbiased view given the title of the article
Gerald Celente is the first person that I recall using the apt term “presstitutes”.