As the US at last gets to vote on the most important election in human history (it must be, to judge from the legion of BBC staff running around over here to cover it), the BBC’s coverage of the whole scene has been making me think of the following from Through the Looking Glass:
‘I can’t believe that!’ said Alice.
‘Can’t you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.’
Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’
‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
The BBC definitely wants you to believe some impossible things when it comes to the President and the current situation in the US. You’ll most likely hear some of these at some point today during the BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage.
(NOW UPDATED TO INCLUDE LINKS, because defenders of the indefensible have decided to be intellectually dishonest today and pretend they’ve never read anything on this blog. I’ll add more later today and this evening when I have more time. Everyone is welcome to post examples in the comments.)
1. Tea Party-led Republican intransigence has blocked His every move for the last two years, but the President has saved the economy, and we’re on the road to recovery.
2. The country is more divided and polarized than it has ever been before due to Tea Party and Right-wing media rhetoric, while at the same time you’re expected to believe that the President did not begin His term in office by sitting down to the negotiating table and telling Republicans, “I won”, and that He has not said or done anything divisive, ever.
3. The Democrat super-majority in Congress – absolute control of both houses – for His first two years which let Him do whatever He liked (except pass a budget, which even the Dems in the Senate weren’t stupid enough to vote for) without bothering to get a single Republican vote, was a Golden Age of Congress getting things done.
4. The only real reason people are voting against the President is racism, or crypto-racism, even though nobody complained when George Bush had a black man and then a black woman as the second-most powerful person in his Administration, and the Tea Party movement was ready to support Herman Cain. All those people who voted for The Obamessiah in 2008 and are not voting for Him today have suddenly reverted to being racist.
5. It’s perfectly natural for Hispanics to vote for their own kind, and want more of their own kind to come to the US. Any laws which impede that are immoral, and the only reason to oppose this kind of racialist thinking is racism.
6. Romney, like George Bush, is a walking gaffe machine, and the President has made only two minor missteps in five years (including the 2008 campaign).
No, thank you. I’m off to vote as soon as I finish my breakfast.
I don’t recognise any of the above. But then I’m in the UK watching and listening BBC, but guessing what I want it to say.
I’d vote for Romney just to kick the BBC up the ……….
If I was an American consul, I’d want Romney to win- having a chucklehead like Obama in the Oval Office could get you killed.
Prole, don’t even try it. That’s a very dishonest thing to say.
That makes no sense at all.
There’s a U.K. ‘Operation Black Vote’, but no ‘operation white vote’.
http://www.obv.org.uk/news-blogs/obama-good-news-us-and-world
That party they’re planning’s going to go down like a wet fart in a lift.
If Obama wins, don’t bother watching the next episode of Question Time or the bBBC in general! I suspect that all those threats to put your foot through the television set will finally come to pass!
At least this should cast a shadow over their celebrations:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2228582/Cocaine-perfect-heart-attack-drug–use-times-year.html
Quite Interesting…
Stephen Fry @stephenfry
Voting time in the US. None of my business, but I have met Mitt and … well. Please not. Please.
… in a sort of Clarke County, don’t do as I claim, do as I say kind of way.
Now, Bruce & Stevie… and you’re really talkin’.
Stephen Fry – epitomising all that is wrong with the BBC.
I have no problem with journalists or top management having political views. Human beings have them. My objection is that they express them openly and still expect their claims of neutrality to be taken seriously.
To be fair Mr. Fry is a sometime presenter who I suspect works on a freelance basis. He should not be bound by any demands to show neutrality. Broadly though, far too many journalists and full time staff such as Richard Bacon et al really do need to be reigned in. If the mantra is objectivity then said objectivity must stand up to scrutiny. At the minute there doesn’t even seem to be a pretence. That is not nearly good enough.
Not for much longer.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9659692/BBC-presenters-face-pay-cuts-amid-tightening-of-tax-status.html
If anyone wants to deny the effect of years of cBBC, of uni, of their parents being stuffed for liberal foie gras with the bloody Guardian and the BBCs output…try supporting Romney in an election we don`t even get to vote in and see what Twitter brings…Facebook etc.
It`s as if they`ve had Guardian papier mache blown up their noses by way of cavity wall insulation where a brain ought to have been.
Tomorrow belongs to them, and they`ll begin to believe it if the USA doesn`t confine Obama to historys bin.
Really hope Romney stuffs the BBC and Guardian by winning big… we`re going to need him in the Middle East very soon.
This article might cheer you up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/22/university-of-colorado-pr_n_1822933.html
The latest (yesterday) Rasmussen opinion polls have (within a margin of error) Romney to win 263 electoral college votes, Obama 243 with two states (Ohio and Wisconsin) tied. Obama would have to win both, Romney either one.
It could be a long night.
Black Panthers.
In case BBC-Democrat hasn’t spotted them:-
“New Black Panthers back at Philly voting site.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/06/new-black-panthers-back-at-philly-voting-site/
….meanwhile, Fatty Mardell is claiming to be terrified by 68 year old grandmothers with Tea Party signs.
‘The Blaze:-
(inc streaming video)-
“NEW BLACK PANTHERS BACK AT THE SAME ’08 POLLING PLACE IN PHILADELPHIA”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/new-black-panthers-back-at-the-same-08-polling-place-in-philadelphia/
That’s nothing, and Atty. Gen. Holder already decided in 2009 not to prosecute this stuff. In any case, defenders of the indefensible will call us racists for thinking it’s a problem.
However, the following are a different matter, and will not be reported by the BBC:
Election Judge Wears Obama Cap While Checking in Voters in Obama’s Chicago Ward
Intimidation in Detroit: Report of GOP vote observer chased by man claiming to have gun, Obama supporter punches woman in face
Photo: Voters in Philadelphia forced to vote next to giant Obama mural
Obama Poster Hanging in Florida Polling Station
Philly GOP: Poll inspectors being ousted for Dems
All of the above are patently illegal, and there’s no room for interpretation like with white people claiming to be intimidated by the presence of scary-looking black men.
Yet the BBC focuses exclusively on Republicans possibly disenfranchising non-whites. Agenda? What agenda?
Meanwhile on the previous thread, one of the regulars posts a link to a eugenicist website, and not a peep from the rest of you. Do I take it you all approve?
On the plus side, st least we haven’t turned a blind eye to someone forceably aborting the allegedly inferior for decades, so we have that over the Saville Broadcasting Corporation (motto: Nation Shall Speak Carefully Worded Denials Unto Nation).
DJ, eugenics is entirely of the Left…
‘Regulars’ and ‘You’s’ and ‘Other Threads’.
Careful or Jim & Nicked will be imposing a moderator fatwa on you for OTing.
Maybe most folk figure spending time discussing stuff is more productive than getting logged in notebooks for approved sentiments?
Of free speach yes -Don’t you?
Speech: allways get that wrong
“a eugenicist website”…well well! Bloody lefties again as they are the only ones that seem to support eugenics!
they did invent it!
Abortion the biggest killer of humans ever is a lefty policy.
The poster probably approves ( tho’ not necessarily…maybe some false flag?), but just to whom are you adressing the Q of ” the rest of you”.
Pray share with us.
Most of the old Labour left were eugenicists and influenced the next generation.
William Tell….Did you approve of the BBC having Nick Griffin on Question Time?
Here are three different recent BBC articles fretting over how voter ID laws might cruelly disenfranchise minorities, robbing them of their Gaia-given human right to vote. Each features clearly partisan language and is balanced in favor of the opposition side.
Judge blocks Pennsylvania voter ID law before election
Voter ID laws: will new rules keep voters from the polls?
Texas voter ID law rejected by federal judge
I just voted in Manhattan, NY, one of the bluest of the blue Democrat States in the country. The Left-leaning New York Times, one of the top newspapers in the country and perhaps the most influential, endorsed the President. There are Obama/Biden stickers on lots of cars here. Both Senators are (currently: Sen. Gilibrand is up for re-election) are Democrats. The Governor is a Democrat, and the mayor was a life-long Democrat until that became inconvenient when he wanted to run for office. He still legislates as a Democrat, and holds all the approved thoughts. Since 2008, the Democrats have controlled both chambers of the State Legislature.
However, New York does not have a law requiring voter ID.
My neighborhood is something like 80% Hispanic, many of whom would be described by the BBC as living in poverty. Well more than half the staff running the polling station were either black or Hispanic (or both, if you want to go there).
However, I was required to show my photo ID not once but twice. The first time was so the could figure out which line I belonged in, and the second was to receive my ballot. Before I was handed my ballot, I was then required to provide my signature. I was even scolded because it didn’t much resemble the signature they had scanned from several years ago when I renewed by NY State ID.
So I’d like to ask the BBC: Does NY deliberately disenfranchise blacks and Hispanics in this way? Is my polling station run by racists? Also, if requiring a photo ID actually does harm to these people, why are the activists not working to help people get IDs instead of trying to enable the possibility for fraud?
I have just today voted by post in the election for the county’s Police and Crime Commissioner. The election is Thursday 15 November but I requested a postal vote as I shall be away from home that day.
The protocol is that I have been allocated a numbered ballot form, given in my name (therefore the ‘secret’ ballot is traceable) and I have had to give my date of birth and sign a form accompanying it, so that the authorities can check these against my absentee-voter application form.
All very rigorous, but if I had been able to turn up in person, all I have to do is say who I am and they give me a ballot form, no questions asked.
I’m not entirely sure if my “secret” ballot is traceable or not. I was signed in and given a numbered card with my name written on it, which was turned in after I filled out my paper ballot and scanned it in. But that shows only that I had voted and where, not my actual votes. I don’t think the ballot itself was numbered in any way that connected it to me, but I wasn’t looking that closely.
An own goal. The UN election officials are “amazed” US voters don’t have IDs. Duh!
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/06/foreign_election_officials_amazed_by_trust_based_us_voting_system
I always make a point of criticising any immoderate or hotheaded calls for violence or mass deportation, although they often look like a case of booze or poetic licence at work. After that I leave it to people’s common sense to be able to take or leave a link.
Do these sites actually advocate sterilising people, as advocated by the Fabians in the first few decades of the 20th century and as carried out by the Swedish Social Democrats between the wars? In that case they should be wholeheartedly condemned-but I suspect you are using the term in a vaguer sense for emotive impact. Couldn’t be bothered to go and look at the site myself.
I don’t know about any of you, but I will be following the US election to night on Al Jazeera, Fox and France 24.
What good is the license to me?
David
It would be a very powerful pieceof analysis if across the next day you could provide evidence from the coverage to support your assertions. I’ve not heard anything yet to support them, but the night is young.
Oh, really, Jim? This is all news to you, eh? Or are we pretending we’ve never read the blog before today? I’ve updated the post to accommodate, and will add more later.
If you’re playing a different game, let me remind you that a prediction is not an assertion.
D.B. wrote the other day about how “ill-informed some of the BBC’s journos are about US affairs”, after some of them tweeted about the independent Bloomberg being a Republican.
Andrew Marr on Start the Week yesterday said “the mayor of New York, who’s a Republican, Bloomberg, actually endorses Obama as a result of it.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01npgn5, 21:36 in.
How uninformed is that?
Defenders of the indefensible will remain silent, unless one of them is foolish enough to point out that Bloomberg was a Republican for a minute or two.
His track record says all you need to know about him. Registered as a Democrat when Clinton was President. Decided he was a Republican when Bush was President and he decided he was going to run for Mayor of New York. Stayed a Republican for two terms but after Bush was replaced by Obama decided to jump ship again and run as an Independent.
My only conclusion with that kind of behaviour is that he will say or do anything to curry favour in his desperate pursuit of power .
Bloomberg switched to Republican so he could run for mayor without having to bribe the Democrat machine in certain boroughs. Simple as that. Officially, it was because he felt he’d stand out more among the Republican candidates. And if you believe that, I’ve got a nice local bridge to sell you.
In the interests of balance – and just by doing this the site has become more balanced than the BBC on this issue – here’s a report of Republican voter fraud:
Oregon elections worker fired after allegations of ballot tampering
Chrysler official: Workers given day off to vote
Could there be any relevance to this?
Plan gives unions majority stake in Chrysler
To avoid a bankruptcy of Chrysler LLC at the end of the week, the Obama administration is trying to push through a deal that gives the automaker’s unions majority ownership – a deal that could blow up if the company’s lenders reject it.
The administration moved to put its labor allies in the driver’s seat a day after General Motors Corp. announced a restructuring plan that would give the government majority control of the auto goliath in exchange for wiping $27 billion of taxpayer loans off the books, while GM’s unions would get a 39 percent stake in the company.
I see DB has already struck back, but it’s worth noting here. Daniel Nasaw is a dishonest Beeboid:
After the President said, “Vote”, He then told His followers that “Voting is the best revenge.”
I hope Obama loses, but don`t find this too bad myself.
All he`s done is take an Swinburne line( I think!) about living well being the best revenge…and who`d argue with that?
Well the BBC and Guardian would-so , in truth , would the Democrats of which Obama is the gargoyle…for living well without the States blessing or its redistributed taxes, is “unfair” and “unequal”…yet when Mandelson or Gore do it…well the fruits of virtue, no doubt.
So it`s not that bad to me, unless you let Obama get away with his half quoting….but, R.E.M do a fine take on the poem in a recent song of the same name.
They`ll be Democrats too?…we`re left with Clint, Ted Nugent…still, be great to see the liberals stuffed!
An extra prayer tonight!
If it’s no big deal, why did Nasaw leave that out? I know why: the Romney campaign incorporated it into a riposte message: “Don’t vote for revenge – vote for love of country”. Nasaw deliberately left it out so he wouldn’t be seen as playing into the evil Republican’s hands.
Might it be too much to ask for good old Ted Nugent to stand next time? Forget the policies, the entertainment value alone would be worth it!
Saw Ted at hammersmith odeon in 1976
Just a point of information
Explains a lot. Sorry, Tongue in cheek Stewart. 😉
I’ll be your Brechtian archetype any time.
This blog is a breath of fresh air. Am sitting watching the BBC’s ridiculously biased coverage of the presidential election with everyone interviewed being pro Obama, and the mood becoming increasingly ecstatic as Obama votes come through. Every single reporter is a die-hard Obama supporter, its so biased its absurd!
Hi Clara,
Join me and David on the other thread (seven impossible things). We are up late, slagging off the BBC. Well, I’m up late, David is in the USA.
Yes, like Phillipa Thomas just working very hard to find a way to ask the DNC Chair in the most leading way possible if the Dem voters were still “inspired”.
p.s. its funny if you put the tv on mute and look at the facial expressions of the reporters when Romney wins a state 🙁 and when Obama wins a state 😀