Freeze Frame

By mediagonebad Suppose you have a health insurance plan such as Mail Handlers and your employer, the Veterans Administration, required you to opt-out of Medicare if you took it. You pay your premiums, your co-pays and your prescription costs. You visit your doctor regularly and you have lab work. Then maybe you have an X-Ray and visit the emergency room. You may even have surgery which requires a hospital stay and your plan pays 80/20 after you meet a certain deductible. Things are basically going O.K. and you have managed to keep up with the costs and pay your bills. You may go on like this for years and your premiums keep going up. You are retired, stay active, and don’t think too much about your insurance. After all, it has been there for you when you needed it. Then BAM! You have a stroke or another illness that requires a hospital stay and extensive aftercare and physical therapy. It may even require time in a nursing home. THEN you discover that you have to fight with ...

By mediagonebad Before 9/11, George W. Bush was not a popular president and he received much criticism early in his presidency. After 9/11, when the nation was trying to rebound emotionally from this tragedy, Bush’s approval rating went up. Why? After 9/11, the mass media did not challenge him on his facts and allowed him free range to pursue his agenda -- a permanent “war on terrorism,” the occupation of Iraq, approving torture, secret CIA prisons, an end to habeas corpus, and widespread spying on Americans. Criticism of Bush was viewed by the media brass as being unpatriotic and dissenting opinions thus received little air time. Red, white and blue banners decorated the screens of the 24-hour cable news networks and the news anchors wore their new American flag lapel pins. The only “debate” on the news was between the right and the far-right. Today, with the Obama presidency less than a week old, the President has issued executive orders to close the Guantanamo gulag, ban tort...

By mediagonebad Although I support Ralph Nader's independent campaign for president, I am concerned at the vicious lies being issued against Barack Obama by the McCain campaign. Most disturbing of all is the ridiculous notion that Obama is linked to some vague Islamic plot to rule the world and that he is somehow linked to terrorism. McCain advisers know this is false, but they hope that the media will assist them in making this a campaign issue and, by repeating the accusation over and over, will scare just enough people to swing the election in McCain's favor. The McCain campaign is also using a guilt-by-association smear concerning Obama's "link" to 1960s domestic terrorist William Ayers. Although Ayers, who is now a university professor in Chicago, committed terrorism 40 years ago when Obama was just eight years old, he and Obama both served on the board of directors of an education reform group in the 1990s. This is the angle the McCain campaign is using ...

By Mediagonebad The United States is in one hell of a mess. And the mess is so big that our politicians and their corporate sponsors cannot get us out. That just leaves us, the citizens, to pursue this awesome responsibility, this all-important duty. The people of the United States need a new declaration of independence from our government. We need a new constitutional convention to put forward ideas and platforms that reaffirm our commitment to a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." And we need the people power of direct democracy to give every citizen a chance to participate and vote on proposals. Our democracy has been hijacked by a band of right-wing ideologues and zealots who believe -- just like Adolph Hitler -- in worldwide corporate hegemony rather than democracy. The Executive Branch of our government has -- without the consent of the governed -- strayed from its separate but equal position and has taken on the role of an imperial kingdom. A...

By Mediagonebad History will one day portray George W. Bush as a criminal and a warmonger who desired the power of a king to decide law, declare war, curtail civil liberties, and erode the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Bush, Cheney, and their corporate constituency -- the "neocons" -- are presently protected by a timid Congress, a sympathetic Supreme Court, and by a mass media busy distracting the public with sports and entertainment rather than engaging the public with diverse viewpoints on policy issues. We are the citizens.We are the ones who should be deciding policy. We are the government of the people, by the people and for the people. Yet we are routinely left out of policy decisions. When Bush is finally exposed for the criminal he is and his role in fabricating evidence for the Iraq war is finally exposed, what punishment should he receive? Impeachment? Prison? And what of the thousands who died or were injured by guns, bombs and IEDs? What of those w...

By mediagonebad Is the United States on the road to fascism? Below are some defining characteristics of fascism based on the work of Dr. Lawrence Britt (Free Inquiry Magazine, Volume 23, Number 2), who studied the common characteristics of fascist regimes in Italy, Germany, Spain, Indonesia, Portugal, Chile, and Greece. I have applied Britt's characteristics of fascism to the United States and the Bush and Obama administrations. 1. Powerful and continuing nationalism. This is best understood as displays of flags and simplistic patriotic slogans, symbols, lapel pins, bumper stickers, and so forth. After 9/11, George W. Bush used catch-phrases -- like "we have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" -- that were repeated over and over by members of his administration. This is meant to separate "them" (the bad) from "us" (the good) so we can feel good about ourselves as we bomb or starve them into submission to Big Oi...

By Mediagonebad Resistance is futile, America. We have already been assimilated. Not by a foreign enemy or by random terrorists, but by our own military/industrial/media complex that drums thoughts into our heads through repetition, repetition, repetition…. In other words, through the systematic dumbing-down of America. I don’t know who came up with the term dumbassification -- I first heard it from Chuck D of Public Enemy -- but the term seems to fit the passive response of an otherwise intelligent people who have been hoodwinked and pacified by an internal group of Americans who want unrestricted corporate domination over all aspects of American life. A corporate state where American citizens -- and, indeed, the entire world -- are subservient to this military/industrial/media complex. The process of dumbassification begins right in our homes every time we turn on the television and are literally bombarded by commercial messages that chip away at our self-esteem by telling us we...