MSM and polls are nothing more than manipulation tools to sell the next Presidential American Idol to the masses.
Yes.
The also make big $$$ off the race itself. When CNN deleted the list of nearly 181 comments in 2 hours and 6 minutes following the June 5th debate, they did so in their own best interests. Presidential candidates make them lots of money. Anyone who saw those comments already knows who our next president is, so why would they bother watching the debates? Keeping Paul's official poll results low will result in more ad revenue for them, but they've already learned that the internet had more influence over the voting public than they do.
If you haven't seen the deleted comments yet, here they are:
http://www.drawball.com/cnn-removed-this.html
Here's an old FMNN article from 2005 that's no longer on their site, but was posted in a different forum:
Prophet Talk: Internet, Pols' Worst Nightmare?
August 17, 2005
You might think the title of this piece is a little redundant - what with worst and nightmare on the same line -but the point I am trying to make is that pols REALLY hate the Internet. It is probably the worst thing to happen to certain powerful businesspeople and politicians worldwide (those who are interested in exercising more rather than less control over society) since the Reformation and subsequent establishment of the American Confederacy well before the Revolutionary War. Since people only hate what they fear, the argument (according to those who would defend the communication's technology in place) is that the enemies of the 'Net will do whatever it takes to control it. There are a variety of scenarios floating around the "Net on how this might happen, and they can be summarized as those which hold that the 'Net will be taxed to death, propagandized into irrelevance or brought under control through technological adjustments. In this article, I will deal with each of these hypotheses to show why I believe we may have already reached a "tipping point" in which case there is not so much to be done to the 'Net as its enemies hope and its allies fear.
The Internet is not well liked by many in power because it functions as a kind of vaccine, inoculating users against many arguments made by the powerful that rely on a certain level of ignorance to take effect. The Internet is such a powerful purveyor of knowledge because it is a solitary communications that invites leisurely research; viewers can choose what they like and examine the information for so long as they wish. In this, the Internet has much in common with one kind of previous, more primitive technology - books and book printing. Here at FMNN we repeat the same thing over and over again, the Internet is no more nor less than an electronic version of Gutenberg's printing press and will have the same kind of explosive and hopefully bloodless results. Post Gutenberg's this included the Reformation, the collapse of the Catholic church's corrupt religious elite and, finally, the diminishment of the credibility of the Divine Right of Kings which the church had endorsed and subsequent diminishment of monarchial authority. So what do we expect from the Internet? Why much of the same - and in fewer years. (Gutenberg's press took about a century to bite).
The process is well under way. Don't believe me? There is very obviously a movement among certain powerful private and public leaders to create international institutions that can be consolidated into some sort of global governance. Yet the very institutions that are to provide the bedrock foundation for these efforts have, most of them, come under attack in the last few years, and the attacks have not ceased and in fact seem to be having more rather than less effect as time goes on. The United Nations, for instance, is facing a grave scandal that has now implicated Secretary General Kofi Annan's son and brother; the European Union continues to reel from its Constitutional rejection; the Bush Administration, long able to disguise the contradictions of its leader - that apparently he is neither religious nor a small-government conservative - is watching its base peel swiftly away. Something is shaking the pillars of power - something called the Internet. Communication is power. People get on the 'Net and the information they absorb translates into political action, donations and other kinds of activism. It also can result, quite quickly, in the erosion of support for a specific candidate or legislative activity.
Now combine the information on the 'Net with a way of gaining access to it such as the one provided by Google and you have a communication's technology of incredible power, one that makes the pre-Internet information and article databases of a decade or two ago (to which it cost easily $10,000-$100,000 to subscribe per annum) look laughingly primitive. Perhaps worst of all, the Internet provides incriminating linkages in one or two swift keystrokes - linkages that can blow apart years of well-laid plans. If you are interested in who is backing a certain bill or funding certain legislation, a quick trip to the Internet will probably yield the information along with what appear to be certain conflicts-of-interest. Chances are you can find the source and even better you can find out who is behind because of the all-too-human weakness of accepting credit in return for providing funding and services. This has resulted in honorary titles, encomiums and gracious acceptances for well-deserved honors that reveal a carefully branded money trail.
How long can this go on? The more optimistic might predict that such a powerful trend implies longevity. Pessimists believe otherwise and point to such 'Net negatives as the recently created Child Protection Act, just introduced into the Senate in July. "The purpose," reads the Act's language, "is to set tighter age verification standards to block minors from entering Internet pornography sites; and provide funding and support to law enforcement efforts [via a "pornography tax"] to combat Internet and pornography-related crimes against children." Yet, the legislation, once posted on the 'Net, received the following after-chat analysis: "Taxation will require enforcement. Enforcement will require surveillance. Surveillance will lead to avoidance activities (encryption etc). Avoidance will lead to ever more intrusive and complete surveillance [and] surveillance of one type of content is readily transferable to the others. …"
It would seem in this case anyway, that an alert 'Netizen had already analyzed what sounds like responsible legislation and generated a plausible universe of potential ramifications. This person is not alone. A web column at Kentroversy.com recently elevated this approach to an art form, presenting no less than four separate indicators of possible peril or as the writer (one Kent Daniel Bentkowski) puts it, "self sanitization." Four points follow:
(1) "United Nations or U.S. Control of Domain Name Servers." He notes that with the impending release of Internet 2, the "sanitization" of the medium is upon us, and cites a July article from the London Guardian website reporting that the Bush administration was taking control of the thirteen root servers, which control the domain-name servers, thereby regulating Internet traffic. Although the Guardian holds with the conventional view that controlling the internet is beyond even the grasp of the empire-builders, Bentkowski concludes, "While I would like to believe that [this is true], my intuition tells me that all mainstream papers have more to gain by lying than they do by telling the truth.
(2) The Internet will be used as part of a terror attack against the USA. Bentkowski points to recent (and not so recent) TV show plots (Fox's "24" among others), as blueprints for "conditioning the public to expect both terrorist attacks and anti-constitutional infringements of liberty."
(3) "Passage of hate-crime and hate-speech laws. It is important to note that the real reason why hate-crime laws are passed is NOT to protect anyone's religious beliefs, ethnic heritage, or racial identity. This does not mean, however, that religious beliefs, ethnicity, and race are NOT used to enflame such issues. … Most people cannot see these laws for what they really are -- which is to stifle debate or silence a large group of people on a particular subject that has been deemed 'off limits' by the globalists."
(4) "Taxation of Bandwidth and E-Mail" … Bentkowski predicts the imposition of so many taxes on Internet usage that it will become financially difficult for anyone to reach a large audience. … The taxation of either or both bandwidth and e-mail will affect the underlying operation of the Internet.
Sounds convincing - but I'm not quite sure. The Internet is not a stationary device in terms of technological progress and despite Bentkowki's skepticism that the Internet is indeed a controllable medium, the advent of wireless Internet and technological advances may make it difficult in the short term for the Internet to be brought under control of any one faction. (In fact FMNN was perhaps the first to research the big "Internet 2" projects now underway and to sound the alarm about the potential - but not in any way certain - ramifications of these efforts.) Even if a terrorist attack is blamed on the 'Net, authorities' attempts to pass laws to crack down on the 'Net may well be greeted with a good deal of "push back" - one that will only increase viewers' certainty that it is not the 'Net itself which is at fault but other outside circumstances. Worst case (or best), those who seek to manipulate the 'Net by blaming it for terrorism, nuclear or otherwise will probably push more viewers into the skeptics' camp. Finally, taxation is a method of slowing the progress of the 'Net but one that lacks swiftness and surety.
When I look at the history of great communications revolutions, it seems to me that they are not so much "brought under control" as, inevitably, run their course. They leave behind great socio-political change and add much to human progress. We will see if the Internet conforms to this model.