The national conversation desperately needs some original thoughts right now.  Day in and day out, the media feed us the same tired, irrelevant, political sports coverage –  who is winning, how did they do today, making predictions,  keeping score, spinning –  while failing to cover information voters need in order to make an intelligent decision. And not just the right wing media like Faux Noise.  The absurd, obscene, ridiculous display by the GOP and the “liberal” media in Iowa over the weekend was sickening to say the least.  Sources say the GOP lemmings, that is, the straw pollees, were looking for a party, free food and tee shirts.

I recently spoke with an acquaintance who, if she votes at all, votes Republican, but doesn’t really follow along that much.  Nevertheless, she made this observation about cable news pundits:  “They’re ruining the country.”   I talked to someone about the straw poll grotesqueness today who said, “well, if this is who we are as a people, maybe we deserve to go down. “

But back to the point and perhaps a more positive and hopeful way to think about things.  There is a website called The People’s View, written by, coincidentally enough, a former deaniac that offers daily counter-media narratives that IMHO should have a more prominent place in the national conversation.  So we’re sharing here. 

Please, if you agree, or even if you don’t agree, but  you think there should be more facts, information and multiple points of view reported, not just invented media narratives that pass for reporting,  contact the media.

~ It seems that the mouthpieces and opinion writers of our national media have a fetish: beating up on President Obama. One example this weekend is Matt Miller – a self-proclaimed representative of the “center-left” tells us why the center-left has supposedly had it with President Obama. Evidently the reason is that they are not getting to write the President’s campaign script or dictate his governing methods. Matt Miller, noted supporter of killing public schools, err, I mean of school-vouchers, had this to say:

‘It helps to think like Mitch McConnell… for all the attention it will consume, there is no way the super-committee can deliver… Once Obama sees that this struggle for power ensures no substantive progress in the next 15 months, he has two alternatives. He can campaign small — via Medicare and fresh taxes on millionaires and billionaires, while demonizing the GOP candidate as “worse” — and hope to squeak across the finish line…Or he can go big — with mega-plans for jobs, education, infrastructure, and research and development, while calling out GOP nihilism as the obstacle…’

See, Mr. Armchair Campaign Operative over here is going to give an electoral lecture to the man who defeated two political machines and inherent, institutional political racism to become the first black President of the United States. Also, he is going to presuppose the success or failure of the Congressional committee which has just been formed. Because, you know, Mitch McConnell.

Frankly, this is why the American people are fed up with the beltway. The reason is people like Matt Miller who have lived in the beltway bubble for so long that they cannot see beyond it. Miller wants the President of the United States…. to focus on coming up with a political message for the election – which, incidentally, Matt Miller will tell him – rather than focusing on real, workable solutions for the American people.

Hey, Mr. Miller, have you been paying attention? The President and the administration have been laying out a jobs agenda, working on education reform (see Race to the Top and granting waivers to states from Bush’s “No Child Left Behind”) , and on research and development. In other words, all the things you want him to do. So what’s your problem again?

And the president has been calling out the GOP’s nihilism. I didn’t hear you lose your voice last year trying to warn the American people against handing the keys back to the Republicans [italics BFIA’s], Mr. Miller.

It was President Obama who stood up against the Paul Ryan plan to end Medicare and ended any hope of that surviving.

It was President Obama’s call to the nation that jammed Congress’ phone lines and crashed Congress’ web servers during the debt limit heat. What did you do to “call out the GOP nihilism,” Matt Miller?

The reason the American people are disgusted and that we have a dysfunctional system is that people like Matt Miller believe that we elect Presidents and other elected officials to sit around and ponder how they are going to win the next election rather than lay a foundation for the next generation. We have a dysfunctional system because within the beltway, views like Matt Miller’s that we elect Presidents to give speeches rather than to govern abound and are taken as “conventional wisdom.”

And many, if not most, people in Washington DC buy into that garbage, including elected officials. Hence, the self-fulfilling prophecy and the grinding to a halt of the American system of government.

So no, the Left isn’t “fed-up” with President Obama. But the American people are fed up and disgusted at what passes for journalism and conventional wisdom in our nation’s capital.

Incumbent presidents are re-elected based on what they are able to accomplish for the American people – or at least, that is the way it should be. That is how this President intends to do that. You don’t have to tell Barack Obama about big ideas, Mr, Miller. Step back from your condescending attitude for a second and realize that this President put more big ideas into practice than you beltway folks can ever dream of.

Among this president’s big-ideas-that-have-now-happened category:

• Health care reform (including the largest expansions of Medicaid and SCHIP ever),
• Wall Street reform,
• credit card reform,
• student loan reform,
• the biggest economic stimulus since FDR,
• single-handedly rescuing the American auto industry,
•  the first-ever federal consumer protection agency,
• repealing discrimination against gays in the military,
• education reform,
• putting the way government spends your money online for everyone to see and promoting unprecedented transparency,
• a smart national security policy that is winding down the war even while taking out bin Laden.

I could go on and on and on. So please, one more time, stop lecturing Barack Obama about big ideas. You ought to know better.

Mr. Miller, here’s some advice for you. Find out why your colleagues in the beltway media will not seriously cover the GOP’s Jobs Blockade. Instead of giving condescending lectures to the President, try and fix your own trade – the media.

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