I'm NOT a "conspiracy theorist", but....

Early this week I heard Thom Hartmann in coversation with a caller. the subject was why the press has seemingly been against Obama, and pro Clinton at this particular time. When was the turning point? they brought up the idea that in mid April Obama had made the statement that he would ask his AG to “immediately review” potential of crimes in Bush White House. I remember seeing that LARGE on the HuffPo home page. )cause I pointed it out to a co worker by saying "THAT is another reason why I'm voting for him") I haven't heard any other candidate even talk about this possibility -- and I haven't heard that discussed since. Is this whey the press is now against him?

Thom had suggested that there was something similar that Howard Dean had promised right before the "Dean Scream" became looped 24/7.

then I saw this article on HuffPo, and it feeds my conspiracy theory...ok, just kiddding with that one, but I really DO believe that the Press has WAY too much power in our elections:

"Let's start with a hypothetical situation: Suppose a small group of people controlled the press, and they wanted to ensure a Republican victory in November. A few weeks ago Obama seemed to be riding a wave of inevitability and positive perception. The Democrats seemed to have settled on a candidate, and he scored well against the Republicans because he was seen as post-racial and post-partisan. If this group were to write a memo to the media, what would it say?

Their game plan would have very specific objectives:

1. Extend the Democratic primary race as long as possible.
2. Remind the public that the seemingly "post-racial" Obama is a black man; make him seem as scary-black as possible.
3. Strengthen Hillary Clinton's image with white working-class voters by making her appear populist, folksy, and one of them. Conversely, characterize Obama as an elitist who is out of touch with "real people."
4. Break down Obama's post-partisan appeal to independents and Republicans by linking him to the divisive left/right politics of the 1960s"


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/coffeecups-and-gutterball_b_99831.html

I think you are dead on.

The sad thing is, the Clintons are riding the friendly GOP wave and helping them achieve their objective in destroying the Democrats' chances in November.

close to the Republicans. They take Republican policies (NAFTA, GATT, WTO and welfare reform for humans but not for dependent corporations) and wrap it in friendly Democratic veneer. These policies are injurious to the working class, which is the majority of Americans. People accept it because Clinton says he "feels our pain." Yeah right, Mr Chappaqua. Ms Park Ridge knows NOTHING of depending upon a paycheck and an employer for making it day to day. I don't are how many truck beds she stands in.

being in Bosnian Sniper Fire and she gets pass.

You're the liar.

they played the Wright clips. He made fun of cable news to Chris Matthews in a very dismissive way that indicated it may be a theme of his campaign to criticize the way the media covers the campaigns.

But no, I've thought the same thing, that this was all because of Obama's reversal on investigating the Bush crimes.

The goal is to damage the Democrats as much as possible. You do that by keeping the slash-and-burn primary going for as long as possible. If Hill were on top, they'd be pulling her down again. Then in the leadup to the General, they'll try to smash the survivor & build McCain, the maverick, the war hero, etc.

The more the establishment pushes back on Obama, the more I feel he's the 'real deal'.
The establishment is terrified that the status quo gravy train may be coming to an end.

Exploit Obama's horrible handling of his judgment issues in making Wright an unjettisonable-negative asset and then jettisoning him in a sorta-kinda way;

Exploit Obama's horrible handling of his close associates, specifically a known domestic terrorist in Ayers and a known slime-ball slumlord and racketeer in Resko;

Exploit Obama's horrible handling of his verbal gaffes - specifically "clinging to guns and religion", which alienated a large number of people.

Aside from those issues, yeah, Obama was riding a wave. To bad he tried to hang ten on the surfboard of his candidacy and ultimately wiped out himself.

Ayers??? not quite. they were on the same board. Research the boards Hillary has sat on from her corporate days and you'll find some unsavory characters as well. Not to mention the Clintons pardoned a terrorist from the same organization before leaving office. I think that giving a pardon to a terrorist is much more of a seal of approval than merely sitting on a board with them and others.

Also...I do believe the Clintons have done business with several slime balls in their history.

tax evader...but then again that's a WHITE collar crime...all hail Wall Street is the Clintonian mantra.

unless Clinton is a big hypocrite.

McCarthyism may get in the way of earning millions and helping their rich friends....but go here and read something written by Stanley Fish in the 4/27/08 New York Times

Hillary needs to get out of the swift boating business, does she not recall that friend of John McCain selling videos alleging that her husband was a drug runner who allowed planes to land in Mena AR? What about the innuendos that she and Vince Foster were seeing one another and that his suicide was not a suicide?

Should we tell union members that Hillary is anti union because she served on the board of directors of Wal Mart? Talk about slimy associates!

With whom did Hillary associate while a student at Wellesley during the 1960s? WHY was her husband in Moscow during the height of the Viet Nam war? Oh the swift boating could go both ways, but Barack Obama is not taking his campaign ideas from the mouth of Karl Rove or from the mouths of the very same group of people who handed the house of representatives and the senate to the Republicans in 1994, 1996, 2000, and 2004.

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/much-ado/

snip

More than a half century later, “McCarthyism” was joined in the lexicon by “Swiftboating,” the art of the smear campaign mounted with the intention not of documenting a wrong, but of covering the victim with slime enough to cast doubt on his or her integrity. Now, in 2008, after a primary season increasingly marked by dirty pool and low blows, “McCarthyism” and “Swiftboating” have come together in a particularly lethal and despicable form. I refer to the startling revelation — proclaimed from the housetops by both the Clinton and McCain campaigns — that Barack Obama ate dinner at William Ayers’s house, served with him on a board and was the honored guest at a reception he organized.

Ayers is a longtime professor of education at UIC, nationally known for his prominence in the “small school” movement. Dohrn teaches at Northwestern Law School, where she directs a center for child and family justice. Both lend their skills and energies to community causes; both advise various agencies; together they have raised exemplary children and they have been devoted caretakers to aged parents. “Respectable” is too mild a word to describe the couple; rock-solid establishment would be more like it. There was and is absolutely no reason for anyone who knows them to plead the fifth or declare, “I am not now nor have I ever been a friend of Bill’s and Bernardine’s.”

Least of all Barack Obama, who by his own account didn’t know them that well and is now being taken to task for having known them at all. Of course it would have required preternatural caution to avoid associating with anyone whose past deeds might prove embarrassing on the chance you decided to run for president someday. In an earlier column, I spoke of the illogic of holding a candidate accountable for things said or done by a supporter or an acquaintance. Now a candidate is being held accountable for things said and done four decades ago by people who happen to live in his upper middle class neighborhood.

snip

But the literature the Clinton campaign is passing around about Obama and Ayers cannot be explained away or rationalized. It features bold headlines proclaiming that Ayers doesn’t regret his Weathermen activities (what does that have to do with Obama? Are we required to repudiate things acquaintances of our have not said?), that Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s senatorial campaign (do you take money only from people of whose every action you approve?), that Obama admired Ayers’s 1997 book on the juvenile justice system, that Ayers and Obama participated on a panel examining the role of intellectuals in public life. That subversive event was sponsored by The Center for Public Intellectuals, an organization that also sponsored an evening conversation (moderated by me) between those notorious radicals Richard Rorty and Judge Richard Posner (also a neighbor of Ayers’s; maybe the Federalist Society should expel him).

And the press fails to talk about all the good things that Mr. Ayers has done. However, the press is grasping at straws trying to dirty Obama with that one. It is not as if this is his best friend or something.

and Rich's wife Denise was closer to Clintons than Ayers ever was to Obama.

Clinton thinks YOU and his other supporters are stupid and wouldn't pick up on the fact that he pardoned another one of Poppy Bush's IranContra operatives. He never told you about that in his book, did he?

:hi:

who was actually convicted of crimes, unlike Ayers who was never charged or convicted of anything.

Bill and Hillary. Know them by whom the have pardoned. Were the women pardoned because the Clintons agreed with them and their tactics?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardons_controversy

# Linda Sue Evans and Susan Rosenberg were pardoned. Weather Underground members, they were imprisoned on weapons and explosives charges.<17><18>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Sue_Evans

Linda Evans (born May 11, 1947, in Fort Dodge, Iowa) is a radical American leftist who has served time in prison for her role in domestic terrorist activities.

snip

Evans began working in the May 19th Communist Movement splinter from the Weather Underground to develop clandestine armed urban violence as part of a multi-level overall revolutionary strategy. Evans was arrested on May 11, 1985 and charged with acquisition of weapons, ID, safe houses, finances, political and military training and actions to bring terrorist activity in the U.S. Targets of these activities included the U.S. Capitol Building, National War College, Navy Yard Computer Center and Navy Yard Officers Club, Israeli Aircraft Industries, the FBI office and New York Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Rosenberg

Susan Lisa Rosenberg (born 1955) is an American radical who drove the getaway car in the Brinks robbery (1981) in which two police officers and an armored-car guard were killed.<1> After living as a fugitive for two years, she was arrested with an accomplice in 1984 while unloading 740 pounds of dynamite and weapons from a car into a New Jersey storage locker. She had also been sought as an accomplice in the 1979 prison escape of Joanne Chesimard.<2> Rosenberg was sentenced to 58 years in prison on the weapons and explosives charges, but was not tried for the Brinks robbery and deaths. She was pardoned by President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001, his final day in office.<3>

Rosenberg was born in Manhattan and she attended the Walden School and Barnard College.<4>

Ayers was charged with inciting to riot and conspiracy to bomb government buildings. Said charges were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct, not because he was exonerated at trial.

What does Ayers say about his days of planting bombs at the State Department and the U.S. Capitol?

"Guilty as hell, free as a bird, it's a great country!" Bill Ayers

We know the Clintons. We know that these shady associations do not effect
their policies or the way they will run the country. That's the advantage
Hillary has over Obama: 8 years of peace and prosperity during Bill's Presidency.

We don't know Obama. So, we need to ask him lots of questions until
we feel comfortable with him and his shady associations.
Unfortunately, asking questions about
these things are not allowed. He throws a tantrum and refuses to debate,
and his supporters here blame it all on Hillary.

So, his polls continue to slide.

it's not like the Clintons have stood still for the last 8 years, there have been more shady associations.
Peter Paul and Stan Lee for example, that trial is starting soon, and that's not gonna look good. (I'm a big Spiderman fan and you just don't screw w/Stan Lee IMO!)

Plus this little Gem:

Bill Clinton pardoned sixteen members of the FALN organization. These men belonged to a Puerto Rican freedom terrorist group, which was responsible for planting over 130 bombs in public places in the U.S. They killed six people and injured seventy. (Genovese and Almquist, 83) The FALN represented the single largest terrorism campaign in the U.S. “Yet Clinton’s clemency released individuals from prison after serving less than twenty years of terms running from fifty-five to ninety years.” (Fisher, 590) Again, President Clinton did not follow formal pardon procedures. He skipped the Department of Justice and attorneys. The FBI did not conduct any background checks and the FALN did not even execute a formal request. These facts, coupled with the Department of Justice’s 1996 denial of their clemency, make Clinton’s motives highly questionable. (Fisher, 590) The fallout was terrible for Clinton, receiving bipartisan condemnation and public fury. The Houseof Representatives later passed a resolution condemning Clinton’s pardon as an explicitly illegal action. One person, however, may have benefited from this clemency grant. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the President’s wife, won her senatorial bid for New York in the following election. She was elected senator in a state where 1.3 million Puerto Ricans would vote in the election. (Corzo, 14) Whether New York’s large Puerto Rican population voted on her behalf is not clear in the literature, but speculation leads to few legitimate justifications. Investigations were launched to find reasonable grounds for the clemency. However, “Congressional efforts to learn more about the FALN matter came to an end when Clinton invoked executive privilege to refuse subpoenas from congressional committee.” (Fisher, 593) As the critics raged, the White House maintained that the pardon power is not subject to legislative deliberation.

http://www.providence.edu/polisci/students/clinton_pardons/high_profile.html

seems to have some affect on their policies....The Media may have led you to believe it didn't affect their policies.

why can't we have a debate where these types of questions are asked of both candidates???????

Kind of difficult if Obama refuses to debate.

that's why I actually liked the youtube debates early on. the people get to ask the questions (of course someone picks the questions, but.)
I hope they do that again in the GE.

do you beat?

45% of Democrats are hanging on to Obama, his support only changing at the margins when this stuff blows up.

his support against McCain is largely steady despite the beating he's been taking.

in a decade or two our media will improve or it will be our version of Pravda in which everybody knows what it's reporting and nobody believes it.

The Clintons's best friends.
Go figure!

...not really responding to the Wright story to the degree the media has covered it.

I will NEVER EVER forget the Iraq war and how the media played a part in getting us there.

the gov't-backed "military specialists" who were trotted out the all the networks to spread the propoganda. Which NO ONE is talking about.

and it's not like they talked about global warming, the economy, monetary policy or any other significant domestic policy in the 45 minutes that they weren't talking about Iraq --they were talking about crap.

there's not much else to say about Iraq; we've heard it all.
Everyone has heard both candidates on this; we know their differences.

The candidate's platforms are pretty darned close. Very few differences.
So, all that is left to talk about are their histories, experiences,
scandals, personalities, philisophical/religious make-up, mindset, etc.

why go over Iraq for the 25th time, only 4000+ of our soldiers died there?:eyes:

MSM follows the dirty laundry; the 24/7 coverage has turned our "news"
into tabloid coverage.

Obviously, when Rev Wright created that soap opera, the "news" is going
to focus on it. People are fascinated by the personalities.
And the Press is making money because of it.

It's not Hillary's fault; it's not George Bush's fault.

The only people that have control over this are the subjects of the stories.
If Rev Wright had just stayed on vacation, we wouldn't be here.

I like conspiracy theories too, but I also like to see people take
responsibilities for their own choices, actions and words.
That's Presidential behavior.

From HuffPo:

1. "Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist."
- Pastor John Hagee in his book What Every Man Wants in a Woman (Charisma House, 2005)

2. "The Quran teaches that . Yes, it teaches that very clearly."
-Pastor John Hagee

Living Liberally :: Top 10 Outrageous Quotes From McCain's Spiritual Advisers
3. "I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans...I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are -- were recipients of the judgment of God for that...There was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades.... The Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment."
-Pastor John Hagee
4. "The military will have difficultly recruiting healthy and strong heterosexuals for combat purposes. Why? Fighting in combat with a man in your fox hole that has AIDS or is HIV positive is double jeopardy."
- Pastor John Hagee on Don't Ask Don't Tell

5. " will open the door to incest, to polygamy, and every conceivable marriage arrangement demented minds can possibly conceive. If God does not then punish America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."
- Pastor John Hagee

6. "It is impossible to call yourself a Christian and defend homosexuality. There is no justification or acceptance of homosexuality.... Homosexuality means the death of society because homosexuals can recruit, but they cannot reproduce."
- Pastor John Hagee

7. "Only a Spirit-filled woman can submit to her husband's lead. It is the natural desire of a woman to lead through feminine manipulation of the man...Fallen women will try to dominate the marriage. The man has the God-given role to be the loving leader of the home."
- Pastor John Hagee in his book What Every Man Wants in a Woman (Charisma House, 2005)

8. "I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore."
- Rod Parsley in Silent No More (Charisma House, 2005)

9. "Gay sexuality inevitably involves brutal physical abusiveness and the unnatural imposition of alien substances into internal organs, orally and anally, that inevitably suppress the immune system and heighten susceptibility to disease."
- Rod Parsley

10. "Only 1 percent of the homosexual population in America will die of old age. The average life expectancy for a homosexual in the United States of America is 43 years of age. A lesbian can only expect to live to be 45 years of age. Homosexuals represent 2 percent of the population, yet today they're carrying 60 percent of the known cases of syphilis."
- Rod Parsley

That and more.

Up to that point, I'd still been dismissive of both Hillary and Obama as candidates worthy of progressive support, and bemoaning that Edwards had left the fray.

When I heard him turning up the heat and actually substantively going after what was done with NAFTA and Hillary's position on it, it started to get me interested in him more and I've liked more since then when he's made similar dents in other issues (not as strong as Edwards would have and as I would like, but giving me stronger hints that he's the right person from the choices we have).

The corporatists watching this same speech probably got the same clues that I did that he WASN"T their man and decided to go after him then more. And with the attack dogs going after him more and more, that reinforces my feelings that he's the one that will hopefully make at least a dent in the corporatocracy later.

Before I was saying that he really needed to come out and be more substantive with his "change" mantra that he was campaigning on successfully, but that I couldn't just join that cheerleading until I understood what it meant. I still feel frustrated that I'm not hearing that message, but knowing the avalanche of crap thrown at him recently, and perhaps some huge crap that was shoved Edwards way before he pulled out, I'm beginning to think that for this election, perhaps his very "measured" dosage of grass roots stances, instead of heavy campaigning on them, will be what's necessary for him to get elected, and hopefully later once he's president, he can lead us for changes in things like public campaign financing, instant runoff voting, less corporate supreme court justices, breaking up the corporate media companies, etc. that can start tearing down the K Street lobbying mechanisms that have enabled such a constriction of our choices in elections at this point. With more mainstream financing of his campaign instead of corporate lobbyist financing, he's strongly able to do this now moreso than previous candidates.

In the future, I'd like to think that candidates like him can be more open about their plans, with less threat from corporate media and other elements in Washington to do a similar candidate in, and America can have some REAL choices in who runs in campaign. Then Obama will really be looked back on as a "liberator" if he can go down this path. I'm still however, prepared to be disappointed, and that his less dogmatic commitment to what I perceive as people's agenda might in fact reflect that he's not going to do a lot because the forces of corruption still even affect how he does business when he takes office too. But I have to go on "hope" that won't happen, and perhaps that's what his campaign of "hope" is subtly trying to tell us this one time around, so that we won't have to just "hope" a candidate will do the right thing for us in the future when the system has been fixed.

Rich...seems his former wife bought his pardon...no she did not stay in the Lincoln bedroom!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardons_controversy

# Marc Rich, a fugitive, was pardoned of tax evasion, after clemency pleas from Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, among many other international luminaries. He was required to pay a $100 million dollar fine and waive any use of the pardon as a defense against any future civil charges that were filed against him in the same case. Critics complained that Denise Rich, his former wife, had made substantial donations to the Clinton library and to Mrs. Clinton's senate campaign. Emails uncovered during the course of the investigation revealed that her final donation was provided a year before Scooter Libby requested that she approach Clinton for a pardon. According to Paul Volcker's independent investigation of Iraqi Oil-for-Food kickback schemes, Marc Rich was a middleman for several suspect Iraqi oil deals involving over 4 million barrels of oil.<19>

The gave up the role of observer long ago.

:-)

Unfortunately, not this time.

Sorry but he benefited a lot from tons of good news coverage and being promoted as the "only" anti war candidate before the scream. It just shows that they can take down a candidate nearly as easily as they can build one up.

Dean was drawing such large crowds that the media had to cover him. 3K, then 8K, then 10K, unheard of for a primary at the time. Although I do agree that Kucinich got punked on media coverage.

Before Dean was getting those large crowds the press was giving him more positive coverage than any other candidate. He got those crowds because people read about him in an article or heard about him on TV or radio. He got media coverage because he raised money, which is why they started covering Obama too after ignoring everyone but Hillary in the early days of this primary. Also, Dean's crowds don't explain why the media repeatedly called him the only anti-war candidate when there were four. Dean's campaign team deserves credit for having excellent press staff who got him a lot of early coverage and endless stories hyping his internet operation.
I wish I could find the chart the showed Dean's media coverage happening before he rose in the polls but it may not be online anymore. The media did change its attitude toward Dean after he started talking about breaking up the media monopolies and finished third in Iowa, but until that time he was the most corporate friendly anti-war candidate the media could direct anti-war democrats toward.

February 2003.

"Read about him in an article" or "heard about him on TV or radio." Tenuous speculation, lacking supportive proof. Proof or even supporting speculation would be handy.

"I wish I could find the chart the<sic> showed Dean's media coverage happening before he rose in the polls..." :rofl: I wish for things, too.

Oh, you didn't provide one either for your tenuous speculation lacking supportive proof. Hypocrite.
At least a chart supporting my argument actually exists. I didn't just pull the Dean campaign motivational narrative out of my ass.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Otherwise, shut your big yapper! :D

You don't remember Dean constantly being called the "only" or "only major" anti war candidate? Do you not see that as an obvious attempt to drive anti-war voters toward the one anti-war candidate with an agenda not completely hostile to corporate power? Yes, Dean did eventually talk about breaking the media conglomerates in Dec. of '03, but the fact that Kucinich said the same thing at the first Democratic debate months earlier partly explain the difference in media coverage.

You don't remember story after positive story hyping Dean's online organizing? The media ate that shit up.

You don't remember Dean being promoted as the front runner before Iowa even voted? Also feel free to read the two examples in my other response.

And again, here's support for my view that Dean's early media coverage had more to do with his fundraising and a good press team than crowds. From a FAIR article in September of '03.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1153

Coverage of Dean illustrates sharply the media's central equation of money with possible nomination. By the end of June, various pundits began to describe Dean as a potential top-tier candidate--not because of any shift in his appeals to voters but because of his fundraising success. "Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D) announced yesterday that he has raised more than $6 million in the second quarter of this year," Edsall declared (Washington Post, 6/30/03), "an achievement many of his competitors privately conceded will add new credibility to his insurgent bid for the Democratic presidential nomination."

Noting that Dean had raised $9 million in the first half of 2003, Nagourney (New York Times, 6/30/03) proclaimed, "The figure stunned his rivals and transformed Dr. Dean from a maverick into a more traditional contender." Gephardt and Lieberman, Nagourney added, "who had weak financial showings in the first quarter," needed "strong showings" for the second quarter "to erase any concerns among Democrats about their viability."

"The media made Dean."

You don't remember Dean constantly being called the "only" or "only major" anti war candidate? Do you not see that as an obvious attempt to drive anti-war voters toward the one anti-war candidate with an agenda not completely hostile to corporate power? Yes, Dean did eventually talk about breaking the media conglomerates in Dec. of '03, but the fact that Kucinich said the same thing at the first Democratic debate months earlier partly explain the difference in media coverage.

Kucinich got the short end of the stick- see post #44, agreed. However, how large were Dennis' crowds and how much money had he raised? Like it or not, those are the benchmarks that the media takes note of.

You don't remember story after positive story hyping Dean's online organizing? The media ate that shit up.

Exactly.

You don't remember Dean being promoted as the front runner before Iowa even voted? Also feel free to read the two examples in my other response.

Right before Iowa he was speaking in front of crowds in the 10,000 range, practically unheard of in modern primary history. Kerry was speaking to crowds of 500-800.

And again, here's support for my view that Dean's early media coverage had more to do with his fundraising and a good press team than crowds. From a FAIR article in September of '03.

9-18-2003
Dean-a-Palooza
It has been a long day already. The Dean rally at Portland State University earlier that afternoon drew about 5,000 people, an enormous number for a presidential campaign at this stage.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20031006/taibbi

8-29-2003
Sprinting early in the 2004 race Dean draws huge crowds but also runs risks in U.S.

12-8-03
Live From KSG - Presidential Candidate Howard Dean Draws Crowds to MSNBC's Hardball
http://media.www.harbus.org/media/storage/paper343/news/2003/12/08/News/Live-From.Ksg.Presidential.Candidate.Howard.Dean.Draws.Crowds.To.Msnbcs.Hardbal-574505.shtml

Etc...

came months after he had been getting more and better media coverage than other candidates, not just Kucinich.
Where do you think those crowds came from? Did people just magically google Howard Dean's name? No, they heard about him in the news. I know this disrupts the Dean narrative that he was a rebel who rose from nowhere with help from no one in the media but his biggest contributor in the early primary was employees of AOL/Time Warner and he was pumped up by the press early for months.

That would be ridiculous. Equally ridiculous is your assertion that the media was pumping a fringe candidate from the get-go. Kerry, Gephardt and Edwards had more coverage at the outset due to their pulpits in Congress. Only 12% of his contributions were from business so I'm not sure where you're going with that point. It was clearly a grassroots campaign. A direct precursor to the campaign that Obama is now running and, likely, campaigns of the future. I'm not delusional enough to think that he was a progressive saviour, though. He was another centrist candidate but one that spoke against Chimp forcefully. That was the appeal.

Simply put, if he had gained minimal contributions and lukewarm support he would have gone the way of Dodd, Biden, Kucinich and Gravel.

I remember the people who looked Dean up online after seeing an article about him or on TV opposing the war. People who knew nothing about Sharpton and Kucinich. The media drove that election.

How about the early coverage on Meet the Press where Dean got mentioned every time someone was rumored as a candidate for President because he was the only announced candidate early on. That was a smart move that raised his name recognition when most people didn't know who he was. I specifically remember news stories over a year before Iowa that were about other candidates considering a run where Dean was mentioned at the end as the only announced candidate.

the Kerry Commission's findings that BCCI was much darker and that CIA-cocaine connections could not be ruled out.

Perhaps because Governor Bill knew about Mena's airport?

Perhaps that's why the Bush Family Cartel would rather have Hillary as Investigation Opposer-In-Chief?

Bill ALWAYS does what Poppy tells him to do.

Oh and did you hear?
If Hillary wins either IN or NC tomorrow the voting machines were fixed.
If Obama wins, they were okie dokie.

:tinfoilhat: