How The Debt Ceiling Talks Have Strengthened President Obama | Resurgence | Big Think

Forcing President Obama to focus on the debt ceiling issue night after night for weeks on end has changed him for the better. Unfortunately for congressional Republicans, this manufactured fiscal crisis has drawn battle lines in the sand that are impossible even for the president and his cherished bipartisanship ideals to ignore. President Obama normally has a tendency to see himself as a open minded big picture thinker with the ability to keep a lot of balls in the air at once, tethered to no particular ideology other than the most efficient solution to a problem. This may be a good way to manage an administration, but it leaves something to be desired when it comes to the care and feeding of a presidential image.

It often takes a crisis to get this president to remember that he is a Democrat. In fact, it often takes a moments like these to get this president to remember how to speak directly and clearly to the masses on whose behalf he ostensibly toils in the Oval Office.

How The Debt Ceiling Talks Have Strengthened President Obama | Resurgence | Big Think

U.S. Press Too Busy Cheering On Vile Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn To Be Real Reporters

 

I didn't pay any attention to this Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case until I started reading "can DSK resurrect his political career?" type headlines. Because the victim in this case is not a squeaky clean, never broke the law before type of person who can be portrayed as an innocent wide eyed victim, does that mean that the same act of forcible sexual conduct that got Strauss-Kahn locked up in the first place, the act that we have established WITH PHYSICAL EVIDENCE, is moot?

The victim, who has been relegated to being "the maid", or "the chambermaid", is written about as if she is so much trash for daring to spit out Strauss-Kahn's unwanted sperm from her mouth AND COMPLAIN ABOUT IT. As if she is less than a human being for NOT HAPPILY THROWING HER LEGS OPEN and allowing someone with DNA matching Strauss-Kahn's to rip at her vagina to his heart's content.

Why is this case really going south? Could this revelation about the direct connection between Strauss-Kahn's legal team and the D.A.'s staff have something to do with it?

The attorney said he found out for the first time when he read a recent New York Times article that one of Vance's top aides is married to one of the lawyers on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. Thompson explained: "That troubled me because I believe that as a lawyer for the victim, the DA had an obligation to tell me that one of his aides is married to one of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's lawyers."

I had to read this IN A TURKISH NEWSPAPER'S ONLINE EDITION, because the punk ass motherfuckers in our press are too busy cheerleading Strauss-Kahn to victory as the next president of France.

Can you believe this shit? Is Cyrus Vance Jr. or III or whatever version of the acorn he is that has fallen from the tree of A FAMOUS FATHER that fucking stupid? But then again, I guess it doesn't matter if the national press doesn't see fit to lambaste the Manhattan D.A.'s office about such an obvious conflict of interest for a few days.

Our jails here in America are full of men who have been convicted of rape on less evidence than what has been publicly revealed in the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Maybe the latest allegation against Strauss-Kahn by the blond haired, doe eyed French novelist Tristane Banon will provoke some of our slack assed media types to remember how to do some homework on their favorite international playboy banker.

"It ended really badly. We ended up fighting. It finished really violently . . . We fought on the floor. It wasn't a case of a couple of slaps. I kicked him, he unhooked my bra, he tried to open my jeans . . . I said the word 'rape' to scare him but it didn't seem to scare him much, which suggests he was used to it." 

— Tristane Banon, French journalist, in a 2007 interview reprinted in The Telegraph.

Most of the people who hold themselves out as journalists and publishers should just jump off the top of the nearest tall building for all the good they do their profession. If rich white man worship is the beacon that guides their so-called "research" into ALL aspects of the case, they need to just print a disclaimer on the front page of their publication, just like cigarette manufacturers do - WARNING: THE WAY WE DOWNPLAY FACTS, LOGIC, AND ESTABLISHED LEGAL PRECEDENT IN ORDER TO PANDER TO THE NEEDS OF THE RICH, FAMOUS AND POWERFUL MAY CAUSE A READER'S HEAD TO EXPLODE. 

Investigative journalists should need bullet proof vests. They should require a bomb sweep of their houses every so often. They should have the crooked and corrupt among us afraid of every issue they publish, lest another one of their sordid secrets sees the light of day.


Instead, we get love notes to a vile, ill mannered motherfucker like Dominique Strauss-Kahn strewn all across the front pages of our papers and our evening news because he is rich, speaks French, and has become an expert at appropriating the power derived from handing out a pile of someone else's money as if it is was his own.

Today At Big Think: Why The Hell Is Strauss-Kahn Wearing A Halo All Of A Sudden?

Today's topic at my blog "Resurgence" on BigThink.com:

Why The Hell Is Strauss-Kahn Wearing A Halo All Of A Sudden?




The words in every story I read about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case seem to trill at the thought that he may go free. I am seriously convinced that we really should think about closing all of our journalism schools down. How does Strauss-Kahn, a man with a long sordid history of abusive behavior towards women whose sperm was found on the uniform of accuser Nafissatou Diallo, get to wear a halo all of a sudden?

Murder is always murder. Assault is always assault. It would seem to follow that rape is always rape. But rape is often seen by the public and the press as situational, although the number of variables involved in determining whether a person has been raped are very similar to the number of variables involved in determining whether a person has been assaulted.

The number of women who have been willing to go on record about Strauss Kahn’s tendency of sexual harassment and violent sexual behavior towards women suggest very, very strongly that the number of women he is likely to have sexually terrorized in his lifetime is up into the triple digits. Because for every woman who is willing to talk about this to the press, you can believe that there are dozens who will not.



Read More...

BigThink.com is a global forum connecting people and ideas.

You can access hundreds of hours of direct, unfiltered interviews with today's leading thinkers, movers and shakers, and, best of all, respond in kind. You can respond to the interviewee, respond to a responder or throw your own question or idea into the ring.