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Nov. 15, 2006 The democrats won the 2006 election in a landslide. They picked up over thirty house seats, six Senate seats, and upended enough governorships so that they now control 28 out of 50. From reading letters to the editor in newspapers, comments from conservative flamethrowers on message boards, and columnists, such as Jonah Goldberg, who make a living apologizing for right wing policy failures, I can tell the decisive victory by the moderate party sticks in conservatives' throats like a ball of splintered fish bones. Their excuses are comical. They are in a state of denial and some claim there was no mandate and democrats won by a "razor thin" margin. Over the past twelve years republicans have gerrymandered districts across the nation making it nearly impossible for the minority party to win. Today, a thirty seat turnover is the equivalent of at least a sixty seat turnover as in 1994. Democrats won in districts and states which were considered sure things for republicans just a few months ago. Republicans didn't pick up a single seat held by a democrat making the 2006 election an utter shutout. This result is no fluke. A USA Today/Gallup poll asked people who they want to have more influence over the direction of the country: democrats or President Bush. 61% said the democrats. If not for gerrymandering, democrats would control almost two-thirds of Congress. A few pundits blame the so-called liberal media. Here again they are deluding themselves. Conservatives have a monopolistic hold on AM talk radio and even have their own network--Fox News. So the conservatives complain about the mainstream media. Evidentally, when the mainstream media reports the truth and that truth highlights a conservative policy failure, the media is supposedly liberal. There is one man who sends monthly letters to our local paper, The Augusta Chronicle, pointing out what he perceives as liberal media bias in AP news stories. But he never explains how these reports are liberal. Frankly, I don't get it. Here at Useless-Knowledge, Thomas Paine wrote that the headline, "Democrats gain Power," was biased. Well, they did gain power--they were in the minority in the legislative branch, now they're in the majority. I suppose conservatives think only news that is sugar coated with conciliatory conservative talking points is unbiased. Coverage of the 2006 election by the mainstream media tilted to the right. During interviews with politicians almost every news anchor would report that democrats didn't have a plan. A USA Today editorial repeated this fiction. No matter how many times Nancy Pelosi stated the democratic plan--to increase minimum wage, clean up corruption, implement the 9-11 recomendations, etc.--the so-called liberal media would repeat the lie of democrats, disorganized and in disarray. Mainstream media journalists acted incredulous when discussing poll results. Despite what they perceived as good economic news, they couldn't believe democrats were ahead in the polls, and they frequently emphasized how good the economic news was, coming to the conclusion that the war in Iraq was the issue people were voting on. In truth the economic news is only positive for big corporations. Income inequality is increasing, real wages are stagnant, and the average savings rate is the lowest since the Great Depression; all economic figures the mainstream media all but ignored. The final evidence of delusion in the loud screaming chorus of conservative pundits is their admission that we lost the election, but that doesn't mean conservative philosophy lost. I've got news for them: even before the election, conservative philosophy had been rejected by the majority of Americans. Perhaps, that's why they are always so angry--their bigoted uneducated beliefs are in the minority, and the U.S. is at heart a progressive socialist country. If we had 100% voter turnout, conservative republicans would lose every election everywhere. Opinion polls on different issues support this statement. Here's the proof. --82% of Americans support an increase in minimum wage. --79% favor extending health insurance to poor people who can't afford it. --the vast majority of Americans favor keeping Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, and food stamps --a majority of Americans favor socialized medicine. --60% favor keeping abortions legal and the right to have an abortion was overwhelmingly upheld in the conservative state of South Dakota. --56% favor embrionic stem cell research. Only 32% think preventing destruction of human embryos should have priority. --Over 50% favor stricter gun control laws --in some polls over 50% favor impeaching President Bush, if he broke the law which he did ------------ About the author Mark Gelbart: My book, Talk Radio, is a black comedy about a radio talk show host who gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by a loser. www.mark-gelbart.com Email: agelbart@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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