Pro-Obama Bias and the Mythical Liberal Press

Just went to Lou Dobbs' website to vote No on whether the media is biased toward Obama. The Yes votes outnumber the No votes by a large margin, but there was a reminder that the poll is not scientific. Nor, is it serious. The media panders and miseducates us and then asks us what we think, based on the mind-deadening pablum they try to shove into our mouths.

The observable fact is that the press mounts 24 x 7 coverage of every Obama mistake or every Reverend Wright outburst while barely covering McCain's retinue of plutocrats and gunslinger lobbyists or his incomprehensible economic policy. And this constitutes a pro-Obama bias? I think it lends credence to those who argue that the press is protecting McCain. But that's not the intuitive take. The "mainstream press" is liberal, right? Except that the mainstream is FOX News these days. More people watch FOX than any other news network and by a good margin. That would make FOX the most mainstream of all the news networks. In recent years, CNN has moved further to the right just to survive. But none of the networks show me a liberal bias. Keith Olberman's Countdown at MSNBC is not typical of anything on that network or on any other. One show is not a bias.

No one in this country knows what a real liberal or pro-Obama press looks like because no such thing exists in this country.

Hedge Funds Give More to Obama

According to a Reuters report, hedge fund managers have thrown more than twice as much money at Obama's campaign as they have at McCain's. From the report:

New figures show the Illinois senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has drawn $822,375 in campaign contributions from employees of hedge funds, compared to $348,300 for his Republican rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

The figures, compiled for Reuters by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign finance research group, reflect mounting concern over the rising cost of health care and other domestic issues where several hedge fund managers said Obama had an edge over McCain.

The New York Times business section ran a similar story on April, 22 and gives a list of Obama's wealthiest donors.

Democrats have not been altogether difficult for hedge fund managers to deal with. New York Senator Charles Schumer last year defended the 15% tax rate that a number of hedge fund managers pay on income from fees they charge for managing other people's money. As was widely reported in 2007, Schumer argued that to charge higher rates would be to discourage "risk-taking", as though entrepreneurs were the timid sort and need to pay less in taxes than do construction workers and secretaries in order for us to keep them out there taking risks for the rest of us.

It is a good thing then that small business owners are hardier sorts because neither Party is working very hard to give them 15% tax rates on income.

Combustion Engines

I have named this blog after a song called "Here Comes a City" which was written by Robert Forster and Grant McLennan and which appeared on the final Go-Betweens album "Oceans Apart". Grant McLennan passed away in his sleep a few months after the album came out. He had been gone a few months before the day I found out. The news flew into my eyes slowly as I skimmed a magazine. I had found his obit by serendipity. He was, for me, a great writer of pop songs as well as being one of my favorite poets. Although I had never met or communicated with Grant, I grieved for what felt like my loss. His and Robert's songs caused combustion in my head like no other music has done.

Obama caught fire in there, too, the first time back during the Democratic 2004 Convention, and then again this past spring. The flame flickers at times. But John McCain has never even managed a spark.

No one has ever seen a thought, much less an inspiration. But neuroscientists have seen parts of the brain light up when we think or react. Those lights, like cold fires seen from the air, indicate that the mind is in the brain. Maybe. As fire is to a hot coil on a stove top, inspiration might be to the material brain. Touch combustible material to the red hot coil and you get a fire, but the material coil is not itself the fire. Touch certain words or music or some emotional artifact to the brain coil, and there is combustion also, in the form or elation or inspiration. What are these in relation to the brain?

A country is an idea, an emotional idea. I have always lived in the United States. But I have lived in various countries. A new country is coming, driven by the mind's combustion engines, or at least that is the metaphor that appeals to me. By train and automobile over the past two centuries, the great migration continued, and the idea of the country spread, replacing the ideas and elations whose spires had risen here before we came.