Back on May 13th Truthout reported that Karl Rove was almost certainly going to be served with an indictment in the Valerie Plame affair. I didn't blog it then because no other blog or media outlet corraborated the story, and it just seemed oh, I don't know...too good to be true?
Since then...two weeks now...there's been no indictment, which is the one thing we know for sure. Truthout issued this article standing by their story; Rove's people have denied it, and Kevin Drum has a run-down of the He said; He said here. Kevin points to this even more direct recap from TalkLeft who both talked to a Rove spokesperson and inclues full text of Truthout's second article because their servers are (were?) apparently overloaded.
Basically Rove and Truthout are falt out calling each other liars. There's no spinning this one. Eventually someone's going to have egg all over their face. Let's just hope it's Rove and his lackeys.
Yes, that's the Democrats to which the post title refers. And it's the title of a great article at the Washington Monthly by Amy Sullivan.
Basically Sullivan makes the case that the image of Washington Democrats as divided and hapless is not borne out by the facts. That even as a minority party who is blocked from getting its agenda to the floor of Congress they have managed to stop Dubya's right wing agenda pretty much cold, yet admits:
"So it is that Democrats can be "hopelessly divided" while voting together 88 percent of the time, according to Congressional Quarterly; just one percentage point lower than the vaunted lock-step Republican caucus. They can be "pathetically ineffective" while dealing a humiliating defeat to the president's biggest domestic policy effort. They can be deemed "weak" and "timid" while setting the terms of the debate for pulling troops out of Iraq."
"Nor are reporters paying attention to Democratic policy proposals, as the party tries to develop a national agenda to run on. Congressional press secretaries say that reporters won't write about their efforts unless or until Democratic legislation comes up for serious consideration. "A lot of reporters tell me, 'Yeah, I'll write about that when it's on the floor,'" complained the Democratic communications director for a Senate committee. "So then some columnist writes that Democrats have no ideas and everybody in America says, 'You're right-I haven't read about any.'"
But it does make one thing very clear: it is up to us, and anyone who sees through the haze of the Republican smear machine and the media's complicity, to spread the word. Our "trusted" news sources certainly aren't going to do it.
Jay Rosen has an important post at the Huffington Post. One that explains why the delay and subsequent furor over Cheney's hunting accident may, in fact, be a part of the plan.
And it does seem a recurring pattern of the Bush Administration. Just when it seems like some real damaging and significant news may finally catch hold with not only our media, but with the populace, some other, more titillating, but essentially less important, story is revealed.
Because the bottom line is that even if Cheney did delay reporting the incident, and even if it was because he was a little afraid that his blood alcohol level was a tad high, no one is going to make the case that he shot the guy on purpose, and nothing is really going to happen as a result of this incident. Even I don't think a hunting accident is cause for resignation for example.
But it has sort of overshadowed the fact that Scooter Libby basically said that Cheney is the one who "authorized" him to leak Plame's name, hasn't it?
How can that not be the biggest story out there?
A little stirring up of the tempest in a teapot. That's how.
Reason #1: Because, when you find well-reasoned and thoughtful bloggers who know where from they speak, you get analysis that defies the conventional wisdom and refuses to be easily categorized.
Today's example is Professor Juan Cole, who most people consider a raving liberal. An yet in his post, Top 10 Myths About Iraq, Cole refuses to adhere to a party line, noting both that "Opinion polls show that between 66% and 80% of Iraqis want the US out of Iraq on a short timetable." and that "The US has a responsibility to get out of Iraq responsibly and to not allow it to fall into that kind of genocidal civil conflict."
Reason #2: Because the mainstream media has their head so far up the Administration's butt they don't blink an eye when a whack job like Ann Coulter uses Japanese internment during WW II as a positive example of wartime powers, similar to Dubya's wire-tapping scheme!
Who's expressing the outrage and disbelief? Bloggers like Crooks & Liars (who has the video) and AmericaBlog, that's who.
So, go, read some political blogs.
More proof that the howls of "liberal media" are unfounded.
Seems that the news media don't think it's worthwhile reporting that in one poll half of Americans already think impeachment is needed, nor another poll showing more than 50% agreeing that impeachment is in order if Dubya misled us about why we went into Iraq. Source: Donkey Rising
Weren't we subjected to endless news analysis of Clinton's chances of impeachment less than a decade ago? And this when less than half of the public wanted that impeachment?
Liberal media, my foot.
This is the kind of thing that drives me nuts. Now Fox News is talking about how "everybody likes the President...personally." Except the left-wing "whack jobs" that is.
Excuse me? I don't know the President. Neither do 99% of the people in this country.
Media Matters spins this by saying, not true, polls show people have an unfavorable view of the President and think he's dishonest...so they don't like him. Nyah. Nyah. Nyah.
I say: he's not paid to be liked. His job isn't to be likable. I don't care if you, Chris Matthews, like the guy!
Is this really the best thing that even Fox News anchors can now trot out about Dubya?
Sorry, sorry state of affairs!
OK, I admit to a bit of a love/hate relationships with the media. I admired the work of Anderson Cooper and others during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. But I think it's a total myth that the media is liberal. I think that Judy Miller and Robert Novak and now Bob Woodward are not exactly coming out of PlameGate smelling like roses. And I think in general the press has acted like a bunch of wimps being terrorized by a schoolyard bully for the last 5 years.
Though, this report from Common Dreams on "Bush's War on the Press" indicates why the media might be rolling over and playing dead.
The tactics:
Corrupting PBS.
Paying Off Pundits.
Turning Press Conferences Into Charades.
Gutting the Freedom of Information Act.
Obscuring the Iraq War.
Pushing Media Monopoly.
Read this report for background on how they've pursued each of the tactics.
Not right. In fact, un-American and unpatriotic. Yes, I will go there!
Everyone, even Jon Stewart, has been remarking on how the Washington Press Corps finally seems like it's developed some, um, backbone, in their recent grilling of pathetic Scott MacLellan, the Turdblossom himself. (Don't get mad at me, that's Dubya's nickname for him...charming, right?)
Anyway, they're now grilling MacLellan "mericlessly", although frankly I'm not sure why everyone's obsessed with whether MacLellan misled...shouldn't they care a bit more that Bush and Rove and Cheney did?
Anyway, before you get too proud of the press corp, Digby reprints a transcript of an exchange between Bush and 2 White House reporters back pre-backbone days.
Pa. The. Tic.
The lack of a true independent and competent national press is a critical problem for this democracy. And lest you think I'm capping on the press without qualification to, it was Carl Bernstein on The Daily Show who said that the press just aren't being very good at their jobs...that a story like Watergate would still break if the reporters were there to break it.
Last month when the world was going crazy about Howard Dean saying the Republican Party was a "white, Christian" party I was really bemused. OK, I know he meant it as a bit of a slam, that their perspective is extremely limited, but it's true. In fact these same Republicans make a lot out of the fact that the U.S. is still statistically Christian when justifying any of their most radical proposals. (As though self-identified Christians were all that monolithic in their beliefs.)
And it's not as though the media doesn't make much of this same rather homogenous party make-up. The media makes a point of it too, particularly when convention times roll around.
Yes, I guess we're not used to politicians who dare to poke holes in our inflated senses of openness and diversity.
But to recap: Dean said something that was true, and that was only stating observable fact: is someone white? Is someone Christian. Any judgments on whether being white and Christian in and of itself is a good or bad thing was left unsaid.
Now Senator Rick Santorum (R-CrazyLand) is basically saying not that Massachusetts (Republican Governor aside) is the land of liberals...no that's an old canard, overused by now. It no longer holds its power. Now he's saying that that liberalism is why the Boston Catholic Church diocese is at the center of the Church's sex abuse scandal.
And where's the media firestorm? Well, we got Senators Kennedy and Kerry raising a stink, but honestly is this being discussed in the morning talk shows or in the Op-Ed pages?
No.
Now, I happen to agree that this comment from a crazy man may not be more important than uncovering Rove as a traitor, or how many civilians are dying every day over in Iraq, or the battle over the next Supreme Court Justice appointment. Fine.
But neither was Howard Dean's factual statement about the statistical make-up of the Republican Party.
And that didn't stop anybody.
Liberal Media my liberal foot.
Used to be, back in the good old days, that even Republicans could confess they felt disappointed, nay appalled, by the actions of Richard Nixon. Hey they might not have hated him all along, but they could recognize that he was responsible for his actions, that they were some pretty nefarious actions, and that he deserved to be booted from office for them.
Sure, they'd bring up China blah blah blah and maybe even the environment, but the basic truth wasn't altered: Nixon shamed himself and his Party by using the powers of his presidency to commit proven criminal acts and then conspire to cover them up.
And one of the rare parts of this entire, the original, -Gate, was that the trials were held in courts not the press, and actual wrong-doing was proven and punishments handed out. OK, not to Nixon himself, but to other folks.
Well, times have changed. We know Nixon inspired Ah-nold, and now the right-wing crowd have gone beyond saying that Nixon did good things outside of Watergate. They are now saying that those who exposed Watergate and brought down Nixon are responsible for all sorts of horrible things, the genocide in Cambodia, the loss of the Vietnam War etc.
Because I guess it's just a given that had Nixon stayed in office for those 2 more years everything would have been wildly different????
(These are, I'm sure, the same people who thought it wouldn't distract Clinton at all to have to deal with a sexual harassment suit while trying to conduct his Presidency.)
What amazing chutzpah and BS.
Read about it on MediaMatters.org
Read it and feel dirty.
Forgive my naughty Jon Stewart homage in the entry title, but after reading this WaPo article on Judith Miller I'm really at a loss.
There are two reporters who are going to go to jail (probably) for not revealing their sources on a story they never covered...the Valerie Plame outing.
Meanwhile Robert Novak (Stewart's favorite punching bag...there, is that better?) remains untouched.
Is there anyone out there who can explain it with any explanation other than the right-wing Justice Department is letting Novak, a right-wing commentator, off the hook while making so-called liberal journalists walk the plank?
Since I just quoted the Daily Kos in my last post, I thought I should take a moment to comment on the latest non-scandal.
A couple of weeks ago the blue world was up in arms about pundit/mainstream media "journalist" Armstrong Williams taking $240K to tout Bush's "Leave Your Child Behind" program and to convince their black journalists to tout it too.
This looked bad. So naturally the so-called-liberal-media had to come up with something on the other side...to look objective, get it?
They found their bait when a Dean campaign official said they had paid two bloggers for a few months. She implied they were paid to actually blog about Dean. The bloggers say they were paid to consult on creating and promoting Dean's blog community. She said, well, okay we didn't tell them to blog about Dean, but it was definitely an "internal" goal.
Either way, here's the difference, in brief, between Willams and the blue bloggers:
Blogger #1 stopped blogging as soon as he was hired by the Dean campaign. And didn't blog again until the consulting gig was over.
Blogger #2 disclosed repeatedly that he was a paid consultant for Dean AND was a completely partisan blogger to begin with...never once even attempting to appear unbiased or objective.
Do you see the difference here? Do you get why there is no equivalence between these two scenarios?
Here's what Kos, himself, has to say.
When the media stop equating "equivalence" with "fairness" we'll be a lot better off.
While the mainstream (supposedly liberal) media has pooh-poohed from the start the very idea that there were many (and significant) voting irregularities on November 2nd, the outcry from the grassroots organizations around this country have refused to simply sit down, shut up and "get over it."
Whether or not the outcome of the election is changed, we should all care about:
1. Electronic voting machines counting more votes than people or "losing" votes altogether.
2. Voting machines showing a Kerry vote as a Bush vote, until eagle-eyed voters caught it at the end and went back and changed it. Cause: "Miscalibration." Yikes!
3. Long lines to vote that mysteriously only occur in poorer, more divrse and more Democratic-leaning precincts.
4. Disproportionate numbers of self-described Democrats being told they have to fill out provisional ballots.
When you read about the kind of "glitches" experienced, and where, and how many, it's hard to dismiss them. And one editorial in the Baltimore Sun even dares to suggest that perhaps the outcome of the election was, once again, not the will of the people.
If Republicans refuse to care about such issues, it will surely come back to bite them as soon as Democrats shed their darn morals and learn to be as conniving and corrupt!
I heard a suggestion that perhaps George Soros, if he really want sot impact elections, shouldn't be funding MoveOn, but rather should buy Diebold!
And the sad, sad truth is that in today's American "democracy", that may well be the best advice!
Sources:
Associated Press
See Paula keep the Republican "mandate" spin going with her current online poll:
Looks like it's another 4 years of the so-called-Liberal-Media being complicit in spreading the propaganda out of the White House.
Thanks for the link, Robin.
I'd say he's trying to influence the electorate to influence their leader.
But of course, it's a rally-round-our-leader move to report it as something more specific (and unsupported.)
Thanks Liberal Media.
Earlier I posted a clip of Jon Stewart's appearance on 'Crossfire' where he basically told Begala and Carlson that they were, how can I say this..."partisan hacks." And that their lack of actual, honest, fact-based debate was "hurting America."
The appearance has caused a ruckus with some predictably riled up conservatives, like Douchebag of Liberty Robert Novak.
Meanwhile this clip has traversed the world and been high on every political blogger's list of things to talk about.
Very Important Blogger Dave Weinberger has written his own take on it here, and I have to disagree with one thrust of his post:
"When you come down to it, Jon Stewart's segment on Crossfire was actually sort of lame. He told the hosts that they're playing into the hands of the politicians and corporations, but he didn't tell them how. He called them hacks but didn't explain in what sense. He said they were degrading democracy but not what an alternative might be. When people replay this segment in ten or fifty years, they'll wonder why it mattered."
Find out why I think he's got it all wrong in the extended entry:
First of all, Weinberger seems to be avoiding mentioning the fact that it was tough for Stewart to get a full sentence out once it became clear to hosts Carlson and Begala that he wasn't there to be their funny monkey. They weren't about to give Stewart a soapbox and just let him go.
But even with what Stewart did manage to get out, I disagree that it wasn't perfectly clear what he meant and why it mattered.
He basically accused them of parroting their respective sets of cliche talking points, liberal and conservative alike. That's how they are playing into the hands of politicians. That's why they're hacks. There's not an original thought out there when it comes to many of these pundits. If you've heard your aunt, the Limbaugh listener, spouting the exact same catch phrases as the President or his spokesmen, or Bob Novak or Tucker Carlson...then you know exactly what Stewart is talking about.
And he did not say they were degrading "democracy". He said they were hurting America.
That's quite different I think. The media is hurting America by their unwillingness to do their real job...to be the Fourth Estate, to be our last protection from political corruption and the like. To actually ferret out the truth, not accept like baby birds spoon-fed pablum.
The media has confused presenting both sides without comment as being balanced and objective. Well, when one side is a lie and the other truth, it hurts us all for the media to be loathe to point it out. Just look what happened to the guy who dared to write in a memo that if Bush's lies were total and egregious, and Kerry's mis-statements were minor or a matter of context...then that should be pointed out! Horrors! How unbalanced. How biased!
What BS.
My mom and I are both regularly polled online by Zogby. One of his polls once asked you to name the three groups you felt were responsible, if you had responded that the country was on the wrong track.
Later we were surprised to discover that we had both listed the media among our top three.
The mainstream media has abandoned the public interest, and in so doing, yes, they are hurting America.
Stewart didn't explain what they should be doing. But that's because it all boils down to one simple request:
Turn down the volume, and start telling the truth.
I thought it was crystal clear.
Of course, D.C. isn't allowed to be a real state with real representation...think it's due to the large African-American population there? Nah, couldn't be right?
Anyway, the House of Representatives has voted to repeal a law on DC's books since 1976.
Why? To appease the gun lobby.
Interesting side note:
This source article from the WaPo uses a headline focusing on Congress "repealing DC's law."
Other source articles, like the AP, I've seen use a headline that instead focuses on "Restoring gun rights to DC residents."
Only, they didn't want the rights apparently, since they've never, themselves, undertaken to get rid of the municipal law. In nearly 30 years.
But it's a liberal media.
According to Paul Krugman...it's not likely.
Read his column here. I hope he's wrong. I'm pretty sure he's not.
Full text in extended entry:
Swagger vs. Substance
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times
Published: September 28, 2004
Let's face it: whatever happens in Thursday's debate, cable news will proclaim President Bush the winner. This will reflect the political bias so evident during the party conventions. It will also reflect the undoubted fact that Mr. Bush does a pretty good Clint Eastwood imitation.
But what will the print media do? Let's hope they don't do what they did four years ago.
Interviews with focus groups just after the first 2000 debate showed Al Gore with a slight edge. Post-debate analysis should have widened that edge. After all, during the debate, Mr. Bush told one whopper after another - about his budget plans, about his prescription drug proposal and more. The fact-checking in the next day's papers should have been devastating.
But as Adam Clymer pointed out yesterday on the Op-Ed page of The Times, front-page coverage of the 2000 debates emphasized not what the candidates said but their "body language." After the debate, the lead stories said a lot about Mr. Gore's sighs, but nothing about Mr. Bush's lies. And even the fact-checking pieces "buried inside the newspaper" were, as Mr. Clymer delicately puts it, "constrained by an effort to balance one candidate's big mistakes" - that is, Mr. Bush's lies - "against the other's minor errors."
The result of this emphasis on the candidates' acting skills rather than their substance was that after a few days, Mr. Bush's defeat in the debate had been spun into a victory.
This time, the first debate will be about foreign policy, an area where Mr. Bush ought to be extremely vulnerable. After all, his grandiose promises to rid the world of evildoers have all come to naught.
Exhibit A is, of course, Osama bin Laden, whom Mr. Bush promised to get "dead or alive," then dropped from his speeches after a botched operation at Tora Bora let him get away. And it's not just bin Laden: most analysts believe that Al Qaeda, which might have been crushed if Mr. Bush hadn't diverted resources and attention to the war in Iraq, is as dangerous as ever.
There's also North Korea, which Mr. Bush declared part of the "axis of evil," then ignored when its regime started building nuclear weapons. Recently, when a reporter asked Mr. Bush about reports that North Korea has half a dozen bombs, he simply shrugged.
Most important, of course, is Iraq, an unnecessary war, which - after initial boasts of victory - has turned into an even worse disaster than the war's opponents expected.
The Kerry campaign is making hay over Mr. Bush's famous flight-suit stunt, but for me, Mr. Bush's worst moment came two months later, when he declared: "There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on." When they really did come on, he blinked: U.S. forces - obviously under instructions to hold down casualties at least until November - have ceded much of Iraq to the insurgents.
During the debate, Mr. Bush will try to cover for this dismal record with swagger, and with attacks on his opponent. Will the press play Karl Rove's game by, as Mr. Clymer puts it, confusing political coverage with drama criticism, or will it do its job and check the candidates' facts?
There have been some encouraging signs lately. There was a disturbing interlude in which many news organizations seemed to accept false claims that Iraq had calmed down after the transfer of sovereignty. But now, as the violence escalates, they seem willing to ask hard questions about Mr. Bush's fantasy version of the situation in Iraq. For example, a recent Reuters analysis pointed out that independent sources contradict his assertions about everything "from police training and reconstruction to preparations for January elections."
Mr. Bush is also getting less of a free ride than he used to when he smears his opponent. Last week, after Mr. Bush declared that Mr. Kerry "would prefer the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the situation in Iraq today," The Associated Press pointed out that this "twisted his rival's words" - and then quoted what John Kerry actually said.
Nonetheless, on Thursday night there will be a temptation to revert to drama criticism - to emphasize how the candidates looked and acted, and push analysis of what they said, and whether it was true, to the inside pages. With so much at stake, the public deserves better.
Great article comparing media coverage of RatherGate vs. The NY Times mea culpa.
Let me guess: more outrage over and coverage of potentially falsified memos exposing Bush's lack of service 30 years ago than of the NY Times and every other mainstream media outlet reporting purely fictional justifications for a real live war, today, from our current sitting government? Because they didn't think to ask for supporting evidence that held up?
Yup. That's it.
As this article says in its closing paragraph:
"If that's liberal media bias, conservatives should want more of it."
So, you gotta love that liberal, mainstream media, huh?
There has been increasingly outrageous language coming out of the Republicans, accusing Democrats or anyone who opposes Bush of being anti-American, pro-terrorist etc. etc.
Most people I meet, just regular people of all political stripes, finds that language disturbing.
If it's a person who wants Bush out of there, they are outraged and truly sick of being equated with a traitor or a terrorist for exercising their right to support an opposition party in a Democratic election.
If it's a person who is planning to support Bush, they are nonetheless uncomfortable with the tenor of these remarks. They try to shrug it off and say "that's just politics as usual", but they know as we all do, that this has gone beyond the usual.
But still the mainstream media can't bring themselves to tell things like they are; they are so polite, so delicate, so "balanced."
The Washington Post, after listing numerous examples of Republican party leaders attacking the very character and patriotism of Democrats, can only bring themselves to entitle the column: "Tying Kerry to Terror Tests Rhetorical Limits".
"Tests Rhetorical Limits"? Could they be any more milquetoast about it?
No, they could not.
Jon Stewart should be a very proud man today.
For once, the so-called-liberal-media has pulled a page from Stewart's book and simply showed the lie between what Dubya says and what reality is.
In this instance it's Peter Jennings showing a clip of Bush claiming that Kerry said the world was "better off with Saddam in power", and Jennings then simply saying "here is what Kerry actually said" and showing a clip of Kerry's speech where he said nothing remotely like that.
It's a Daily Show staple. And I hope it becomes the staple of every mainstream media outlet. it's just so easy to do, what with Bush flip-flopping and plain old lying as often as he des.
Here a place you can download the clip. Note: You must have Quicktime, and for me I had to download the clip, then open Quicktime and open the clip.
I was telling my folks about the story from my daughter's friend who got arrested in NYC.
And my mom was asking why they had not heard about these horror stories in the mainstream media.
The easy answer is that the mainstream media is a conservative media that doesn't want to rock the boat that hard. And that they bought the story they were fed by the Mayor and the Police Department. And that they were just too busy citing unreliable polls to discuss a huge (and ultimately non-existent) Bush Bounce.
I knew that one journalist who was swept up in the arrests wrote her story here in Mother Jones. (Mother Jones does actually qualify a liberal media, no doubt.)
But three weeks later, the story has made it into the Washington Post. And it supports the story told in my original post.
And it still sounds like what might happen in another country.
If the NY Times were truly a liberal rag then they simply never would have entitled their editorial praising Bush's decision to chastise Putin just a tiny bit "More Straight Talk." What a joke. Yeah, Bush, the king of straight talk.
If the NY Times were truly a liberal rag, they would have entitled the editorial (take your pick):
'Finally, Some Straight Talk'
or
'What? Straight Talk from Bush?'
or
'Bush Finally Prioritizes Straight Talk Over a Crony's Interests'
So says I.
Here's a link to a link of an quiz: 2 documents, one on a PC, one on a typewriter, which is which?
I guessed right, but it was just a guess really.
I have to say, I fear the blogosphere is going to expend all their recent, newborn credibility by the end of this election.
Between the Swift Boat thing, the typography thing, and I'm sure there are examples on the left too, bloggers are spinning stories out of control that end up being either tempests in a teapot or even fabrication.
Come one, we got the mainstream media for that, don't we folks?
So, at first the right-wing blogosphere was screaming that it would be impossible for those Bush National Guard memos to have been typed back then. The technology did not exist.
Now, of course, it turns out it did exist.
So, their argument has become one of, well, it's not likely that this guy would have had one of the typewriters that could do that.
That's just a whole lot weaker, guys.
Here's a good blog entry that runs down some of the problems with the argument that the documents are faked.
And here's the always reliable MediaMatters.org to step in and take a look.
And I just have to ask you: why on Earth would the White House have released their copies of the memos and never once brought into question their authenticity? Why? Because Bush must have know that yes, he HAD talked to this guy about getting out of drills. And so on.
The Bush crew aren't even bothering to deny the National Guard charges; they're just saying he was honorably discharged and had verbally discussed this with his commander. I don't think they're even ever saying the Commander agreed to it! BushCo certainly is a master of walking right up to the line between spinning and lying, after all.
People are laying into Kerry for not responding to the Swift Boat thing quick enough, even though he did issue a comprehensive, debunking fact check back on August 5th. Perhaps we should be laying into the media for getting so carried away by a story that turned out to have less plausibility every time someone looked into it.
And now they're getting equally carried away by this implausible story.
Liberal media? Yeah, right.
OK, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released new budget (=deficit) figures today.
Here were the U.S. media headlines:
CBO Projects $442 Billion Federal Deficit
And the lead paragraph:
The federal deficit will swell to a record $422 billion this election year but fall short of even more dire forecasts, Congress' top budget analysts projected Tuesday in a report that became instant fodder for both political parties.
Here's the BBC's headline:
US budget deficit outlook worsens
And its lead paragraph:
The US is set to rack up an even bigger budget deficit than originally thought over the next decade, officials say.
Insert confused head shaking motion here.
Sources:
BBC News
Associated Press
Well, the short story is that this coming year doesn't look as bad as it was maybe going to, but the projection over 10 years looks even worse.
Which tells cynical me one thing:
They are trying to make the near term look less horrible before the election, so they're back-loading the numbers.
So I suppose if you plan to not be alive over the next ten years, AND you have no children or grandchildren that you care about getting saddled with the worse figures, AND in fact you feel no empathy whatsoever for anyone else's kids or grandkids...then everything's ducky.
But I'll say it again, exactly what liberal media are people complaining about?
Here are some of the stories today, leveraging the inside squabbling and "anonymous" discontent within the Democratic Party.
While the media should be exposing every inconsistency and lie to be found in the Dynamic Duo of Dick & Zell, they are instead enjoying undermining Kerry, and democrats are lending a hand.
It needs to stop now.
Source:
9/2/04 Washington Post article all about the Democrats "Depression"
Washington Post article...while ostensibly about Kerry sharply responding to RNC Convention charges, it is liberally spiced up by discussion of shake-ups in the Kerry campaign, anonymous Democrats talking about Kerry's mis-steps etc. etc. I mean with friends like these!
And don't get me started on the blogosphere. here is just one example.
Am I the only one getting the RSS feeds from the Kerry Rapid Response Team?
Or the only one who checks out the blog and headlines at the DNC site?
Instead of carping on the Democrats, why not contact your local or the national media to ask them why they're not doing analysis, or at least broadcasting the Democrats' analysis, of the RNC speeches?
Self-deprecating ways can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Don't fall into the trap.
And here is some new polling data to make you feel better.
Yeah, the NY Times is so liberal.
That's why they run an article about the protests in NYC and make sure to focus on the few ugly incidents.
With tens of thousands of protesters in NYC, there were 11 arrests. ELEVEN.
But I'm glad the NY Times made sure to seek out those stories to focus on, and to not waste one word asking the protesters why they had come to NYC and what they stood for.
I do think I have uncovered why some folks are still Bush supporters after all his "miscalculations."
It's "Mis-speakers for Bush" I think.
Get a load of this one:
"A person came by and used an explicative and stuck his finger in our face," said Deb Etcheson, an alternate delegate from Iowa.
Not an explicative! Gasp!
Perhaps he was just trying to explain to you that Bush is bad for this country and the world!
I am so infuriated.
I don't normally listen to talk radio of any sort, but I was driving in my car, my iPod was out of juice, and the radio was boring me. So I turned to NPR.
Supposedly liberal NPR and supposedly liberal Fresh Air.
They were interviewing Rick Santorum, extreme right wing congressional dude, and they were talking about abortion. And man, Santorum is smooth. you cannot deny how well these guys talk on point and coin a phrase. Activist judges blah blah blah, deciding from on high how Americans should lead their lives blah blah blah. mean, I'm sorry, isn't it the Republican trying to dictate from on high what I can do with my own body?
But anyway, he then goes on about how more Americans support the Republican platform than the Democratic platform when it comes to abortion, because the Democrats support "abortion-on-demand at any point in a pregnancy."
So right when I got home I went and actually read the Democratic Party Platform. (You can download it at this link.)
And here's all it has to say about abortion:
"We will defend the dignity of all Americans against those who would undermine it. Because we believe in the privacy and equality of women, we stand proudly for a woman's right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay. We stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine that right. At the same time, we strongly support family planning
and adoption incentives. Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare."
And Roe v. Wade does NOT guarantee abortion on demand at any point in a pregnancy, or we wouldn't have these states voting in various restrictions on abortion.
And liberal NPR, liberal Terry Gross? DOES NOT CALL HIM ON IT AT ALL.
And here's the email to email the show and complain about it. Which I'm going to do right now.
The text of my email complaint is in the extended entry:
Here's the email I just sent:
I have to say I'm very disappointed in an interview with Rick Santorum I caught on today's Fresh Air.
You allowed Santorum to characterize the Democratic position on abortion as "on demand at any point in a pregnancy" without saying a word.
Since when did journalistic objectivity mean letting people spout untruths and simply calling it the other side of the issue?
Here is the exact verbiage from the Party Platform (downloaded from http://www.democrats.org)
"We will defend the dignity of all Americans against those who would undermine it. Because we believe in the privacy and equality of women, we stand proudly for a woman's right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay. We stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine that right. At the same time, we strongly support family planning and adoption incentives. Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare."
Not quite the same.
In fact quite different. So when he's misleading your listeners into thinking that more Americans support the Republican position on abortion than the actual, true Democratic position on the issue, I think it's your journalistic duty to set the record straight.
Watch this very brief clip. It's the man who helped get Dubya, along with many other sons of the wealthy, into the National Guard.
And it's about how he feels about that now, and especially after a visit to the Vietnam Memorial.
I'm just saying: why does the so-called-liberal media continue to give so much airtime to the by now thoroughly discredited Swift Boat Prevaricators, and continue to let Bush slide on his War exploits (or lack thereof)?
Don't believe there's such a difference in coverage?
Check out this from MediaMatters.org if you don't believe me.
The Daily Kos makes a pretty good point about the lineup of this Sunday's political shows.
It's all military/security/war-oriented. Generals and national security experts and advisers and so on and so fort. And not a one who seems likely to discuss the latest (and disappointing) economic figures.
Let's not forget that Bush I was a "war president" but lost because the populace came to believe that this was less important than the fact that he seemed completely out of touch on the economy.
Don't worry, the "Liberal Media" won't make that same mistake again. They won't let us think too hard about the good old "Are you better off?" question this time around.
So sad how easy it is to be cynical these days, don't you think?
Luckily, John Kerry fills me with hope.
I'm not using this entry to comment on the overall Sandy Berger escapade.
What I do want to point out is that the so-called "Liberal Media" got themselves worked into a frenzy over this, quoting every outraged Republican they could find as they swore to investigate swiftly and surely. (Oh, had they shown nearly the same fervor over ferreting out the traitor who exposed Valerie Plame.)
And the thrust of every Republican diatribe was that Berger must have removed documents that would shed a bad light on the Clinton Administration. Of course, they had nothing to back that up, but they made sure the implication got well-spread.
And, let's not even talk about how this story "broke" in the press immediately before the release of the 9/11 Commission's Report, even though it had been ongoing and known about within the Administration for nine months.
But did you all hear that the Commission has formally announced that Berger did NOT take any originals or remove all copies of any document? That basically every document that should be there, is there?
Major conspiracy theory debunked right there.
But did YOU hear about it?
Well, now you have.
Source: 8/3/04 Salon.com article
This is one of my pet topics, as you may have noticed.
This time, Paul Krugman covers it, and I don't think I need to say anything more than Read It.
I got an excellent email this morning from a dedicated East Bay Democratic Party Activist, named Lucy.
I haven't posted one of my "Liberal Media Debunking" posts lately, and she provided the perfect fodder.
If you were tracking news this weekend, as I do, you doubtless saw the story about the latest Associated Press poll that gives Bush a slight lead in the electoral college count. I remember feeling surprised, but I try to avoid poll stories in general. I don't want to either get complacent, nor get too annoyed.
But Lucy makes the point that we need to pay attention not only to the polls that the mainstream, so-called-liberal media is reporting, but the ones they don't report.
Like it or not, perception is reality. Polls can be self-fulfilling prophecies. So, it's important to broadcast the news that the mainstream media may not want you to hear: that Kerry is a projected winer by many, many different analysts, and that our efforts are having and will continue to have a positive impact on this election.
Read about some of those polls in the extended entry:
So, here's the Associated Press story on their poll.
first thing you notice? Although the headline says: "AP: Bush Leads Kerry in Electoral Votes", they are citing this lead in the 39 states they are willing to call. In other words, neither candidate has enough electoral votes to win in those 39 states that the AP is willing to call, but bush leads amongst those 39 states.
So we all know it's supposed to come down to the swing or battleground states, so what is news about this anyway?
And why does the headline not draw that distinction?
And this was the only poll covered over the weekend by the major news outlets...and it was covered extensively.
Meanwhile, Lucy found 6, count 'em, 6 polls or analyses showing Kerry ahead.
These are:
Electoral Vote Predictor
(Check this one out because it also pokes holes in the analysis accompanying the AP poll results.)
DC's Political Report
(Also a partial electoral projection, but in Kerry's favor)
Rasmussen Reports
(Also a partial with Kerry leading)
Even the right-wing Hedgehog Report shows Kerry leading.
Bottom line: the media doesn't report reality, it shapes it.
And it's a shame.
And it's up to us to combat complacency and get the word out.
I saw the documentary, "The Hunting of the President" yesterday afternoon. (It's playing at the Aquarius in PA if you're interested.)
This movie examines the truth behind the catch-phrase "vast right-wing conspiracy", at least when it comes to the efforts to destroy President Clinton throughout his career.
And the way the mainstream media laid down and rolled over and participated in the proliferation of unproven palaver reminds me of their same dereliction of journalistic duty over the War on Iraq.
But there's a liberal bias. Uh huh.
Here's my review:
Review of "Hunting of the President
Out of "Kenny Boy" Lay's legal woes coverage, that is.
They're being awfully genteel and not bringing up the close, personal (and financial) relationship that "Kenny Boy" and Dubya enjoy.
Liberal Media, my bleeding heart liberal ass!
Check our Salon.com's amusing take on it here.
Salon.com does a good job debunking that myth with one simple item on poll analysis.
This only supports what I've been saying all along: the right can whine all they want about a "liberal media", but it's a big smoke screen. The mainstream media has never been so craven, so pandering and so right-wing.
Check it out here.
You can find my movie review at this link on my personal blog.
(Here's a hint: I liked it. I found it moving and powerful. I think everyone should see it before they dare to criticize it.)
David Brooks published an interesting editorial in today's NY Times.
It examines one sentence Kerry uttered in reference to an ongoing activist effort going on in Cuba. And it uses this sentence to generally damn his approach to foreign policy.
Brooks is a good enough writer, and he turns this brief utterance about an issue that wouldn't top most American's list of concerns into an indictment of Kerry in pretty good fashion...until he simply can't contain himself and HAS to find a way to plug Dubya in the closing statement of his piece.
But, oh the unintentional irony! Here's the closing sentence:
"There's a reason Carter, Reagan and George W. Bush all turned, in different ways, against this approach. They understood that democracy advances security, kowtowing to dictators does not. Most of all, they didn't want to conduct a foreign policy that would make them feel ashamed. "
Oh really, Bush II doesn't want us to feel ashamed? Hmmm, then why DO we?
You can read the little email I sent Brooks (at dabrooks@nytimes.com if you would like to write him too) in the extended entry:
My letter to Brooks:
Dear Mr. Brooks:
I found tremendous irony in the following closing paragraph from your editorial today:
"There's a reason Carter, Reagan and George W. Bush all turned, in different ways, against this approach. They understood that democracy advances security, kowtowing to dictators does not. Most of all, they didn't want to conduct a foreign policy that would make them feel ashamed."
If you are NOT ashamed by the foreign policy of George W. Bush, then you have either not been paying attention (which I doubt) or you are simply another apologist for dishonesty and dishonor.
As the polls will tell you, the American people are more and more turning against this President's actions in Iraq, with majorities now not believing him, nor believing IN his rationales for the War.
And nothing could our shame nation more than undertaking the killing of thousands of civilians, the torture of numerous prisoners in our care, and the putting of our volunteer military in unnecessary harm's way...based on deception and probably just plain old incompetence too.
Your overall editorial was compelling and potentially convincing until you threw it all away to throw in an unwarranted and unintentionally humorous plug for Bush.
My blog is more about immediate reaction to the day's news and events. well, that's what most blogs are, actually. And I like to point out instances of the clear right-ward bent of the mainstream media.
Occasionally I run across someone who has clearly done a more historical analysis of an issue.
Here's a link to a debunking of the myth of the liberal media, and in particular mentions the unfortunate demise of the Fairness Doctrine, which is becoming more and more painful as the mainstream media get concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer corporate hands.
More about the author of the piece in the extended entry:
Steve Kangas is a Christian conservative and veteran, turned liberal.
His basic bio is here: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Aboutme.htm
He also runs the web site: Liberalism Resurgent: A Response to the Right"
Check him out.
Check out this item from Salon.com. This is a stunning achievement:
"Arbitron shocker: Franken beats Limbaugh
Boy, talk about burying the lead. In its Monday profile of the new liberal talk radio network Air America, the New York Times spent so much time dwelling on the financial woes that have reportedly plagued the start-up company that it wasn't until the 15th paragraph that readers learned this bombshell: Talk radio novice Al Franken's new Air America show beat conservative kingpin Rush Limbaugh in New York City where the two go head-to-head every weekday afternoon from noon to three o'clock. That's according to preliminary Arbitron rating estimates for April.
Heard in New York on WLIB-AM, whose ratings were virtually non-existent prior to switching over to Air America's programming earlier this year, Franken and the rest of Air America's 10 a.m-to-3 p.m lineup grabbed a 3.4 rating among listeners age 25-to-54. By contrast, Limbaugh who has been the most highly rated political talk show host in America for the last decade, and who is heard in New York on talk radio powerhouse WABC, lead the station to just a 3.2 rating. There's more (although the Times forgot to mention it): Among listeners 18-to-34, Franken and WLIB won in a knockout, garnering a 2.9 ratings share compared to WABC's dismal 0.4 showing."
-- Eric Boehler
We are being subjected to Bush and all the free PR in the world he gets from the mainstream media. We hear about every speech, and we hear repeatedly his empty words about democracy and high ideals.
Meanwhile we're told, as Democrats, that our candidate is uninspiring, or uninspired. Well read this quote and tell me you're NOT inspired:
"America is more than a piece of geography, it is the most powerful idea in
human history: freedom and equal opportunity for all… I am running for
president to renew that idea and spirit again."
Well, believe me, as much as I liberally quote the NY Times and Washington Post in this blog, I didn't get this quote from any such mainstream news source, but rather Arianna Huffington's syndicated column.
I constantly hear people wonder why Kerry isn't out there "fighting back." Well, if you dig around you can find these great gems from speeches he's giving every day. But we need the media to cover those speeches.
You know what I'm going to suggest, don't you?
Use the SCC DP letter writing tool to write your local media outlets and tell them you want equal time. If they're going to cover every comencement speech given by a guy who wouldn't go to his own daughters' college graduations, then cover every speech of Kerry's too.
I continue to try to debunk the Myth of the Liberal Media as often as I can, because it is one of the more upsetting directions this country has taken. With consolidation of the media in the hands of but a few, quite wealthy and Bush-supporting magnates, the idea that the media is liberal is another head-scratcher for me.
Here's a little item from Salon.com pointing out how the NY Times...a "loony left-wing rag" according to one of my right-wing friends, is doing the same number on Kerry that they did on Gore.
DON'T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT THIS TIME.
Remember to make your voice heard. Send letters to the editor, call talk radio. Whatever it takes to combat the right-wing media :)
Salon.com's Article on the NY Times slanted coverage
Full text is in the extended entry:
Salon.com Article Full Text
A year's worth of presidential campaign coverage is sure to produce all sort of head-scratching dispatches, as journalists scramble to produce copy from the trail regardless if much news is happening. But for suspicious Democrats still smarting over how the press treated Al Gore in 2000, and specifically how reporters from the New York Times routinely dealt with Gore in a caustic, nitpicking way, there are disturbing signs of déjà vu from Sen. John Kerry's campaign. A peculiar, wildly dated article in Saturday's Times served as the latest evidence.
Written by Jodi Wilgoren, the Political Memo piece headlined "Kerry Words, and Bush's Use of Them, Offer Valuable Lessons in '04 Campaigning," detailed how when Kerry was asked about his vote last fall against president Bush's request for $87 billion to fight the battle in Iraq, Kerry famously said, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion -- before I voted against it." The article offered up the Bush campaign not one but two opportunities to recall how they rejoiced over the awkward sound bite: "You don't get gifts like that very often," said Bush's media man Mark McKinnon, then adding, "There was a clear ripple of excitement that rolled through the campaign -- not quite as big as the Dean scream, but it was a ripple." The Times phoned up a University of Wisconsin poli-sci prof who dutifully mocked Kerry's choice of words: "It's like something Comedy Central would do." And the piece detailed how the Bush campaign immediately dropped the dubious Kerry quote into an attack ad.
Does most of this sound familiar? It should, Kerry's quote was uttered 53 days prior to Saturday's left-field article, and was documented at the time by every news organization in the country, including the Times which has now printed the infamous Kerry quote in ten separate articles. So why return to the topic nearly two months later?
Wilgoren tried, at the very end of the article, to give the piece a larger context by suggesting Kerry's not the first candidate to be stung by his own words, and then reached back 12 years to the Republican primaries when Pat Buchanan ran ads featuring the first president Bush's "Read my lips, no new taxes" pledge. Yet incredibly, the Times failed to mention the fact that just three weeks ago, the current president Bush served up his own sound bite gift for Democrats when, during an April 13 press conference he stumbled badly when asked, looking back on Iraq, what his biggest mistake was. Flummoxed, Bush responded haltingly, "I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer."
Three days later the DNC used Bush's own words against him and turned his non-response into a devilish 30-second ad of its own. The only difference is, according to a Nexis search, the Times has never reported on that campaign ad.
-- Eric Boehlert
You may have heard about this latest controversy: Ted Koppel's 'Nightline" did a show entirely comprised of reading aloud the names of service people killed in Iraq.
Sinclair Broadcasting pre-empted the broadcast of that episode on its stations. Sinclair and its executives happen to be, you guessed it, ardent Bush supporters.
Sinclair's contention: that is it not balanced to honor those service people, while highlighting the cost of war, without also acknowledging the other side of the coin...the benefit of the military action. They claim that to do so was political statement, not journalism.
Let's leave aside for a moment whether or not Bush's war has achieved any of the positive goals he laid out. Let's leave aside whether there actually is another side of the coin.
Leaving that aside, there is definitely a part of me that does see the Nightline episode as political statement, not news.
You may be surprised, but you can read why I haven't lost my liberal mind in the extended entry:
Reading the names of "victims" aloud has become a fairly common event, usually at political rallies or memorials. In contemporary times, I believe it came into vogue during the unveiling of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Then, as now, part of the point was to open people's eyes to the very real human costs of political or governmental ignorance, or even just apathy.
They've also used this sort of roll call connected to WTC memorials, Oklahoma City memorials etc. Again, usually such a roll call is part of a memorial or political rally, not part of the nightly news.
The exception may be that in the days immediately following 9/11 it was fairly common for both TV news shows and newspapers to run photos and bios of the victims of 9/11.
So, there is some validity to Sinclair's claim that this isn't reporting, but rather politicking. What Sinclair isn't acknowledging, however, is that this is but one feeble, much-delayed political statement after months of equally unbalanced political statements from the media supporting the White House's version of events overseas.
When the War on Iraq started the national media essentially abdicated their role and responsibility to be independent, investigative and non-partisan. They reported what was spoon-fed to them by the White House, including widely using the White House code name for the immediate onslaught of the war, "Shock & Awe."
Where was the reporting of the costs of this action, to balance out the gung-ho admiration for our military might?
I'm not saying the news media should have wanted us to fail, but shouldn't someone have questioned what we were "succeeding" at, and how?
And here we are a year later and only NOW is the media starting to challenge and question the Administration AT ALL.
So, Sinclair and their "protesting too much" offends me, not because they would be wrong if this episode was happening in some alternate universe where the media had been thus far doing their job, but because they are wrong in this, the real world, the real, complex world that is all too often neither black, nor white, but shades of gray.
Like any of the fanatics who cannot adjust either their beliefs nor their subsequent actions in the face of reality, Sinclair and its leaders keeps their blinders firmly on, seeking fairness and balance only when that would serve their limited, unchanging and certainly skewed world view.
If you have not heard of this, please try to contain your excitement.
Starting today, March 31st, at noon, a new talk radio station will be launched. A liberal talk radio station!
It's called Air America, and the kick-off show will be a daily show at noon called "The O'Franken Factor" hosted by none other than my hero Al Franken! (Gotta love the title, don't you?"
It won't be on air n San Francisco right away, but it will available to anyone with an Internet connection (that would be you since you're reading this) at the following URL:
Tune in and support this new, lone, liberal voice amongst the rightwing radio din.
I hope I'm not the only one that finds this story disturbing.
The Administration has released advertisements extolling the virtues of the new Medicare bill that Bush signed into law this year. The ads, however, are disguised as news reports given by a fictitious journalist.
The ads were then sent specifically to local news stations across the country. The ads were sent along with a script suggesting what the actual news anchor could say as a lead-in to the fake news report.
Now, some apologists will claim that such "video news releases" are not new, and that the Clinton Administration also used them. But to quote abcnews.com, here's the difference:
"The segments released during President Clinton's administration, however, clearly stated at the beginning that they were produced by the government — something the Bush video news releases do not."
Such a pattern of deception is emerging from this Administration that I am not surprised by this story, but I am disturbed by it. It all goes back to my fear of the small ways that Bush and his crew are destroying the soul of America.
(And those news stations? Should be ashamed!)