Watching the Deniers lose the election over Climate Change is Grim : Ryan Grim, the blogger who brought them down

KOCH BROS suffer a GRIM fate

Out here in rural Nova Scotia, people have a particularly vivid way of saying their chances are toast : they are "screwed : screwed and bored". That is what the feckless Democrats and Obama would have been, if not for a relatively obscure blogger named Ryan Grim.

Blogosphere brings down the GOP with just one post 

His brief blog post - recollecting Romney a year earlier vowed to kill FEMA, stalled the Mitten's "BIG MO"  - nixed, at the stroke of a computer keyboard, all the billions the reality-deniers spent in dark money, trying to steal the American election.

Sandy-the-storm could have gone either way, in terms of any incumbent president's popularity .

This is because no true storm of the century can ever be cleaned up in a week or so - leaving a whole lot of cold, hungry, tired people ready to blame anyone and everybody - particularly the person at the top.

But a less than miracle-working but still highly efficient federal rescue effort is a hell and a half better than no federal rescue effort at all - such as Romney had proposed to provide if he was elected.

FEMA suddenly became the fastest and simplest way to tell Dems and GOP election promises apart - and many people suddenly recalled that Obama's much hated support for big government could look pretty good ,whenever big storms come calling.

And with climate change promising more and more bigger and bigger storms, maybe Obama and the Democrats had a point, after all.......

Paywalls are GATED COMMUNITIES : 1% of the news from 1% of the people . Isn't it time you switched ?

Fewer and fewer people, the young particularly, are willing to spend a thousand plus dollars a year to get the bottom 1% of the news from the top 1% of the people.

Paywalls are, in fact, nothing new : that $1 a day for a newspaper , the $8 news magazine, or the $80 a month to the cable giant to get CNN and MBCN news can really add up : many middle class and working class homes pay plus or minus a $1000 a year to get their news and entertainment fix.

So who voluntarily pays billionaires a thousand plus dollars each year to be fed the lies by the billionaires' minions in newspapers, magazines and cable TV ?

Well the old do - out of force of habit. There was no alternative when they were growing up and if you didn't pay the tariff, you got no news at all.

Older people are even willing to pay THREE times to get TV news from their government broadcaster : once in taxes or license, once again for viewing it on cable and yet again for mental cost of viewing all the inane ads that fill public broadcasters' TV networks.

Personally, I refuse to do so and wish nothing more than to see Canada's glossed-up, hyped-up  CBC TV disappear today, if not sooner.

By contrast, CBC Radio is modest in its glitter, free of ads, available without cable fees and well worth the small amount of our taxes that funds it.

But in truth , I get my news mostly via unpaid, volunteer, amateur, bloggers on the blog-o-sphere.

Where do they get it ?

The same place the tree-killer newspapers have always got it : from the press releases of all those wanting their story told more widely than their own direct efforts can achieve . That means just about everybody : from the local garden club to Exxon-Mobil.

Example : my tax dollars now subsidizes an ever growing PR department at my local oh so friendly police and fire departments.

Why ? Well , since commercial radio stations don't really have news departments anymore and the remaining reporter ranks at my local TV station and newspaper are steadily getting smaller, the police feel their side of the crime story isn't being reported.

One of the few sacred budgets at hard pressed local governments are those for fire and police, because they are traditionally so astute at seeing that their efforts are omnipresent in the news.

Formerly, they could rely on "capturing" the reporters assigned to the regular police beat : all police successes were touted and all police failures discreetly buried.

But today the real reporters are dedicated amateur bloggers and they don't depend for a living on the police feeding them friendly "scoops" and exclusive backgrounders --- instead they raise awkward questions about the releasing of lists of unsolved murders  and the like.

Today, we see the potential of getting 99%, not 1%, of the news and reality out there.

"99% of the news, from the 99% , for the 99%".

Panicked , police forces are spinning their PR output to any and all media looking outlets : and that includes bloggers with just smart phones as well as fossil media with their acres of soon-to-be-rusting "Big Iron" printing presses.

So when - and not if - traditional media disappears, we will still get lots of news: PR hacks will spin their charm and an universe of journal-ists that get their bumpf will either swallow the story wholesale or tear it apart limb from limb, just as the tree-killer press always used to do.

Life will go on, obla dee obla da ....

As newspaper readers "stroke-out", the media will also push up daisies

TV news and paid Newspapers to "stroke-out" as audience dies ?

The median age of the viewer of Fox News is white and male, yes yes, but he is also 65. Yep : Sixty-Five.

Don't blame Fox execs for forcing climate denial upon their hapless victim cum viewers : they are merely serving their unique slice of the human demographics what they want to hear.

But as they stroke-out and pass on , will TV news shows, talk radio and newspapers do likewise ?

In the mature industrial powers, the average age of TV news viewers and paid-for newspapers are retirees, no longer in the active workforce and born way back in the 1940s or even earlier.

By contrast, the readership of the blogosphere is born in the 1950s or later and still active in the workforce.

Deniers of climate change are merely defending the high school "modernity"science they learnt back when they were kids while the post-modern readers of blogs see the world outside getting hotter and wonder where it will all end when they are old.

No wonder the blogs have one take on the climate and the newspapers have quite another : both are faithfully serving their loyal customer base.....

1%'s newspapers leave century's biggest news story to the 99%'s blogosphere

And that is 100% alright by me !

No one ever went broke, underestimating the intelligence of a newspaper owner...

If the newspapers, owned by the same rich 1% whose other corporate investments are causing destructive climate change, choose to deliberate ignore the century's biggest news story, they will just dig their own graves a little faster than they already are.

In their place, the amateur blogosphere, owned by the 99% and sharing the concerns of the 99%, will have to cover the biggest scoop of the century, unimpeded by the pros of  Wapping et al.

How sweet is that ?!

With idiots like that for enemies, what blogger needs friends .....

Blogosphere OWNS climate change debate: bad news if you own newspaper shares

Newspaper shares worth almost as much as RIM shares

The new global divide is over the Globe itself, over climate change in particular.

And unlike the tired old left versus right divide, it is largely being fought over on the blog-o-sphere, not in the mainstream media.

This is bad news if you are still part of the left and right wing or if you own newspaper shares.

(These two categories actually tend to go together: old ideologies huddled for warmth around old technology).

By ignoring the new global divide between greens and deniers, the oldstream media risks becoming irrelevant to the biggest issue dividing the 21st century.

The biggest news story of the 21st century.

And the mainstream isn't covering it.

How irrelevant is that ......