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No way I could have written that any more straightforward and you still got it ass backwards. Detest means detest.....ok?
>>>Student describes how she became a Clinton plant<<<
I detest the practice as much as the next guy but is this news after 7 years of Bush's "townhall meetings" where every single participant was screened for absolute loyalty before allowed entrance?
>>>I believe the evidence would compell Ron Paul government to flip on the lights and rip the linoleum off of this cockroach nest.<<<
All by himself? Who would support him? Certainly not the roaches he will be forced to inherit whether he likes them or not. The rot is so entrenched it will take more than one bold man to clean it up, especially if that bold man still affiliates himself with one of the establishment parties. Give me Ron Paul with an (I) next to his name and I'll start to get excited along with millions of others.
>>>but the failed to bring the criminals to justice. YET!!!!!!!! But yes, I think hell is coming to pay!<<<
Wouldn't bet a plum nickel on it. Looking back, Nancy Pelosi was actually pretty candid about leaving the scum alone but the thirst for change got the best of the voters and they ignored it.
“House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi promised Wednesday that when her party takes over, the new majority will not attempt to remove President Bush from office, despite earlier pledges to the contrary from others in the caucus.
I have said it before and I will say it again: Impeachment is off the table,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said during a news conference."
http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2006/11/08/cq_1916.html
She said this before her party was in power, before any investigations and therefore without the faintest clue of whether Bush had committed crimes he should be impeached over in compliance with the US constitution.
What else do we need to know about what she and her democratic party represent?
>>>this is some sick misplaced vendetta going on.<<<
LOL.......your insight impresses as usual. Here's a president who's started a bogus war, has trashed the treasury and has an approval rating statistically tied with the lowest in US history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_rating but why he's being criticized escapes you.
Gee.....I just don't get it. He's at 24%, he supports arsenic and lead in your drinking water, torture and illegal wiretapping but is against habeas corpus, stem cell research and health care for children. He should be popular but he's not so obviously we have a "misplaced vendetta" going on here....
>>>What you are overlooking is that these nations were developed by religious peoples<<<
Not overlooking that at all but we weren't discussing the origins of civilizations but the survival of them with or without religion after you said this:
So, it seems to me, that religion MAY be necessary for man's survival.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=24398971
Absolutely amazing words from someone considered the poster boy for the far right only a few years ago. Which begs the question........what do you call the 24% who are still with Bush and call themselves republicans/conservatives? They're obviously neither so what are they? Fascists who care about human life as long as it's contained within a woman's womb and can still be exploited for political purposes? Looks like a new political segment of the electorate has been identified by accident. I sure wouldn't have guessed one in four was wired like this....
Pat Buchanan wrote that? Link? (checked creators syndicate but couldn't find it).
>>>this is stupid. You are talking about one incident.<<<
One "incident" of Bush/Cheney plucking an innocent man off the street and secretly moving him to Syria for 12 months of torture. And you should have noted that they refused to apologize indicating they see no problem with torturing innocent people and would do it again.
Of course......you see no problem with this either which makes you the kind of american I would rather not have in my neighborhood.
>>>the guy was guilty of aiding terrorists<<<
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers on Thursday offered apologies to a Canadian citizen who was deported by U.S. counterterrorism officials to Syria, where he says he was imprisoned and tortured.
Lawmakers from both parties also called on the Bush administration to apologize to Maher Arar, a Syrian-born software engineer still barred from entering the United States even though the Canadian government has cleared him of any links to terrorist groups.
"Our country made a mistake and has been unwilling to own up to it," California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said. "It reflects an arrogance I don't like to see in our government."
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1827695920071018?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
>>>And there's no proof he was tortured.<<<
Actually there is for anyone who's looking at the facts instead of looking for excuses for George Bush.
"The most fundamental question that has not been answered yet is: Why did the U.S. government decide to send me to Syria and not to Canada?" he said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1827695920071018?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
>>>that's the only one since 2002 and he was guilty? What are you trying to say<<<
I'm trying to say what I said yesterday......that you're not a real republican but a Bush republican. Big difference and you proved it again today.
The Canadian guy Bush sent to Syria for 12 months of torture only to find out he was innocent could just as well have been an american (including yourself) after Habeas Corpus was trashed. But since it's far fetched although perfectly legal you will laugh it off and wonder what all the noise is about.
And that pretty much sums it up. Old school republicans still believe in constitutional principle and doing the right thing while Bush republicans wait for marching orders from above and believe that "the ends justify the means" trumps constitutional principle any day. Wonder what you stood for politically before becoming what you are now.
>>>Look, it's not that civilizations thrived in spite of religion, there are NONE that did so without religion.<<<
What critical role are you saying religion plays that's necessary for a thriving society? And how do you explain the success of much of northern Europe where religion for all practical purposes has been abandoned? These countries have among the highest living standards in the world including some of the highest literacy rates, longest life expectancy and lowest infant mortality rates.
"In general, Danes are not very religious, with church attendance being generally low. According to a 2005 study by Zuckerman[1], Denmark has the third-highest proportion of atheists and agnostics in the world, estimate to be between 43% and 80%, as many do not practice their faith."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Denmark
"Sweden ranks aside with France and Russia on having a large minority of its citizens who have no religion. Independent of these statistics, it is generally known that Swedish society, collectively, is comparatively secular and non-religious."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden#_note-55
"In modern times the Icelanders are mostly a secular people with low church attendance."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Iceland
Who's real name?
>>>Let's adopt as a null hypothesis that religion is based on a false belief that a supernatural divinity exists, and that religion is, therefore, a waste of energy and resources.........We would then expect to be able to search history for a people that were able to thrive by abandoning such false and childish thinking.<<<
Sounds like you're equating religious faith with deep thoughts on the origin of the universe, man and life in general. If you understand and appreciate the complexity of the universe you have to believe in religion or your thought process is "false" and "childish"? By that logic the smartest most insightful people in the world should be occupying the US bible belt and all the retards would be on the west coast and the in the northeast. I don't see much evidence of that being the case but you do?
>>>US citizens AREN'T being kiddnapped off the street, you are making that up<<<
Am I?
"José Padilla (born October 18, 1970), also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir or Muhajir Abdullah, is a United States citizen convicted of aiding terrorists. Padilla (see Names below) was arrested in Chicago on May 8, 2002, and was detained as a material witness until June 9, 2002, when President Bush designated him an illegal enemy combatant and transferred him to a military prison, arguing that he was thereby not entitled to trial in civilian courts.
Because Padilla was being detained without any criminal charges being formally made against him, he, through his lawyer, made a petition for a writ of habeas corpus to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, naming Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as the respondent to this petition. The government filed a motion to dismiss the petition...
Padilla's legal team filed a motion to dismiss the case, alleging that during his imprisonment he has been subjected to torture, including sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, enforced stress positions and administered with various drugs including possibly LSD and PCP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Padilla_(alleged_terrorist)
And then there was this:
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers on Thursday offered apologies to a Canadian citizen who was deported by U.S. counterterrorism officials to Syria, where he says he was imprisoned and tortured.
Lawmakers from both parties also called on the Bush administration to apologize to Maher Arar, a Syrian-born software engineer still barred from entering the United States even though the Canadian government has cleared him of any links to terrorist groups.
"Our country made a mistake and has been unwilling to own up to it," California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said. "It reflects an arrogance I don't like to see in our government."
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1827695920071018?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
Granted.......this guy was not a US citizen but he may as well have been. Bush has given himself the authority to declare anyone he so deems an enemy combatant and he can do it without any involvement of the courts. Once he's done that with the stroke of a pen it allows him to strip that person of all legal rights under the US constitution which could easily place him/her in exactly the same situation as the Canadian they hauled off to a Syrian hell hole and tortured for 12 months.
If you were a real republican you would confirm and acknowledge that this is true and you would then admit being disgusted by it. If on the other hand you're a Bush republican you will blow this off as liberal crazy talk and move on to something that will make you feel better. Like Fox news where you'll never hear anything like this....
I've met one Harvey. Maybe not THE Harvey...
>>>Within a civilization, there have probably always been individuals who were either sceptical or disinterested with regard to religion, but there have been no non religious civilizations. So, it seems to me, that religion MAY be necessary for man's survival.<<<
Millions of people are atheists but seem to survive just fine. Are you saying this is possible only because they are surrounded by people of faith? Or what?
>>>Nice, equating relegion with alcohol and crack.<<<
Are you denying that none of the three are necessary for survival and that all three are indulged in for pleasure, relaxation or spiritual stimulation?
>>>If religion was as false and unproductive as you claim, shouldn't some wise people long ago, created an advanced society free of the shackles of religion?<<<
Like asking why some wise people long ago didn't create an advanced society free of the shackles of drugs and alcohol. Answer is: not enough takers. Even wise people will do what makes them feel good, be it getting drunk, smoke crack or talk to invisible people.
>>>Expect serious trouble from my candidate.<<<
Sure wish he'd drop the (R) and turn it into an (I). I bet he'd pick up 15% the instant he did it. Independents are the biggest voting block in the country now and (R) no longer stands for republican but for radioactive, reject, rancid......take your pick.
Many won't consider him no matter what he says as long as he carries the (R) tag..........as a matter of principle for what that party has done to the country for the past 7 years.
>>>Ron Paul is a RINO. Republican In Name Only.<<<
Well......is it him or the current 25% who say they're republicans......i.e. guys like you and razorback? Just to get you started, you both celebrate the biggest expansion of government, government spending and budget deficit in US history and you top it off with a refusal to secure the borders and enforce immigration laws. You also support snooping on US citizens in ways we never dreamed of before and you have no problem with US citizens being secretly kidnapped off the street and sent to dark places of the world for torture and interrogation.
Now try again to convince me you're a better republican than Ron Paul is.
>>>Lemme connect the dots as you seem unable to<<<
If you're as smart as you think you are, why can't you produce a response without telling others how stupid you think they are? Go back and check your own record. I bet 90% of replies include calling the recipient an idiot or similar.
>>>The White House PRess corps is over 90 % democratic ( by voter registration )<<<
You keep harping on the reporters party affiliation but ignore the effect it's having. Have you watched those press briefings the past 7 years? Especially leading up to the 2004 election I can't imagine an honest objective observer would have pegged 90% of those reporters as liberals. Even worse leading up to the war. Many of those reporters have admitted they were more concerned about access than asking tough questions.
>>>IF you really think the NYT doesn't have a liberal bias you really are hopeless<<<
Weird how there are no variables in your reasoning. Everything is either or.........PERIOD. (Is it ever partly cloudy where you live?).
I point out that the NYT was instrumental to Bush in selling the Iraq war and the only conclusion you can draw from that is that I think the NYT doesn't have a liberal slant. Of course they do, but that hasn't stopped them from being extremely helpful to the most radical rightwing administration in US history.
Who cares if they squawk about welfare, national healthcare and abortion rights as long as they promote a war that was a republican reelection guarantee in 2004 and a permit to print money for their contributors for the past 4 years. And ........you think the current supreme court would look as it does if the Iraq war never happened? That alone will pay off for conservatives for decades. But you'll never concede any of this because 90% of journalists are registered democrats so naturally they'll hurt conservatives.
I won't call you an idiot but I will call your thought process primitive.
>>>A long article that is long on opinion and short on fact<<<
So you post an even longer article that's basically unrelated. Vintage Bush republican debating - the big picture always gets lost. Who said a word about how journalists vote? I didn't, and nobody in the story I posted mentioned it. I don't dispute that a majority of them may vote for democrats but that doesn't mean they can't be bullied into slanting their reporting the other way or at the very least towards the center.
You forgot to address this by the way:
And if that doesn't impress, can you name the country's two largest newspapers (both of them "liberal") that went so far astray in helping Bush sell the Iraq war they had no choice but to apologize in public once the lies began to surface?
Liberal newspaper giants working with a neoconservative White House in promoting the country's first ever preemptive war and you're still complaining about the liberal press? See why you're not credible?
>>>I love everyone, even the morons that think there is some attracttion to the skinny Coulter.<<<
Thanks for explaining and confirming. Easier to understand your Coulter attraction now that we know your only problem with her is that she's not fat enough.
>>>The MSM is overwhelmingly dem/liberal<<<
What Liberal Media?
by ERIC ALTERMAN
[from the February 24, 2003 issue]
This article was adapted from Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (Basic), published in February (www.whatliberalmedia.com).
Social scientists talk about "useful myths," stories we all know aren't necessarily true, but that we choose to believe anyway because they seem to offer confirmation of what we already know (which raises the question, If we already know it, why the story?). Think of the wholly fictitious but illustrative story about little George Washington and his inability to lie about that cherry tree. For conservatives, and even many journalists, the "liberal media" is just that--a myth, to be sure, but a useful one.
Republicans of all stripes have done quite well for themselves during the past five decades fulminating about the liberal cabal/progressive thought police who spin, supplant and sometimes suppress the news we all consume. (Indeed, it's not only conservatives who find this whipping boy to be an irresistible target. In late 1993 Bill Clinton whined to Rolling Stone that he did not get "one damn bit of credit from the knee-jerk liberal press.") But while some conservatives actually believe their own grumbles, the smart ones don't. They know mau-mauing the other side is just a good way to get their own ideas across--or perhaps prevent the other side from getting a fair hearing for theirs. On occasion, honest conservatives admit this. Rich Bond, then chair of the Republican Party, complained during the 1992 election, "I think we know who the media want to win this election--and I don't think it's George Bush." The very same Rich Bond, however, also noted during the very same election, "There is some strategy to it [bashing the 'liberal' media].... If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one."
Bond is hardly alone. That the media were biased against the Reagan Administration is an article of faith among Republicans. Yet James Baker, perhaps the most media-savvy of them, owned up to the fact that any such complaint was decidedly misplaced. "There were days and times and events we might have had some complaints [but] on balance I don't think we had anything to complain about," he explained to one writer. Patrick Buchanan, among the most conservative pundits and presidential candidates in Republican history, found that he could not identify any allegedly liberal bias against him during his presidential candidacies. "I've gotten balanced coverage, and broad coverage--all we could have asked. For heaven sakes, we kid about the 'liberal media,' but every Republican on earth does that," the aspiring American ayatollah cheerfully confessed during the 1996 campaign. And even William Kristol, without a doubt the most influential Republican/neoconservative publicist in America today, has come clean on this issue. "I admit it," he told a reporter. "The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures." Nevertheless, Kristol apparently feels no compunction about exploiting and reinforcing the ignorant prejudices of his own constituency. In a 2001 pitch to conservative potential subscribers to his Rupert Murdoch-funded magazine, Kristol complained, "The trouble with politics and political coverage today is that there's too much liberal bias.... There's too much tilt toward the left-wing agenda. Too much apology for liberal policy failures. Too much pandering to liberal candidates and causes." (It's a wonder he left out "Too much hypocrisy.")
In recent times, the right has ginned up its "liberal media" propaganda machine. Books by both Ann Coulter and Bernard Goldberg have topped the bestseller lists, stringing together a series of charges so extreme that, well, it's amazing neither one thought to accuse "liberals" of using the blood of conservatives' children for extra flavor in their soy-milk decaf lattes.
Given the success of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, the Washington Times, the New York Post, The American Spectator, The Weekly Standard, the New York Sun, National Review, Commentary, Limbaugh, Drudge, etc., no sensible person can dispute the existence of a "conservative media." The reader might be surprised to learn that neither do I quarrel with the notion of a "liberal media." It is tiny and profoundly underfunded compared with its conservative counterpart, but it does exist. As a columnist for The Nation and an independent weblogger for MSNBC.com, I work in the middle of it, and so do many of my friends. And guess what? It's filled with right-wingers.
Unlike most of the publications named above, liberals, for some reason, feel compelled to include the views of the other guy on a regular basis in just the fashion that conservatives abhor. Take a tour from a native: New York magazine, in the heart of liberal country, chose as its sole national correspondent the right-wing talk-show host Tucker Carlson. During the 1990s, The New Yorker--the bible of sophisticated urban liberalism--chose as its Washington correspondents the belligerent right-winger Michael Kelly and the soft, DLC neoconservative Joe Klein. At least half of the "liberal New Republic" is actually a rabidly neoconservative magazine and has been edited in recent years by the very same Michael Kelly, as well as by the conservative liberal-hater Andrew Sullivan. The Nation has often opened its pages to liberal-haters, even among its columnists. The Atlantic Monthly--a mainstay of Boston liberalism--even chose the apoplectic Kelly as its editor, who then proceeded to add a bunch of Weekly Standard writers to its antiliberal stable. What is "liberal" Vanity Fair doing publishing a special hagiographic Annie Leibovitz portfolio of Bush Administration officials that appears, at first glance, to be designed (with the help of a Republican political consultant) to invoke notions of Greek and Roman gods? Why does the liberal New York Observer alternate National Review's Richard Brookhiser with the Joe McCarthy-admiring columnist Nicholas von Hoffman--both of whom appear alongside editorials that occasionally mimic the same positions taken downtown by the editors of the Wall Street Journal? On the web, the tabloid-style liberal website Salon gives free rein to the McCarthyite impulses of both Sullivan and David Horowitz. The neoliberal Slate also regularly publishes both Sullivan and Christopher Caldwell of The Weekly Standard, and has even opened its "pages" to such conservative evildoers as Charles Murray and Elliott Abrams.
Move over to the mainstream publications and broadcasts often labeled "liberal," and you see how ridiculous the notion of liberal dominance becomes. The liberal New York Times Op-Ed page features the work of the unreconstructed Nixonite William Safire, and for years accompanied him with the firebreathing-if-difficult-to-understand neocon A.M. Rosenthal. Current denizen Bill Keller also writes regularly from a DLC neocon perspective. The Washington Post is just swarming with conservatives, from Michael Kelly to George Will to Robert Novak to Charles Krauthammer. If you wish to include CNN on your list of liberal media--I don't, but many conservatives do--then you had better find a way to explain the near-ubiquitous presence of the attack dog Robert Novak, along with that of neocon virtuecrat William Bennett, National Review's Kate O'Beirne, National Review's Jonah Goldberg, The Weekly Standard's David Brooks and Tucker Carlson. This is to say nothing of the fact that among its most frequent guests are Coulter and the anti-American telepreacher Pat Robertson. Care to include ABC News? Again, I don't, but if you wish, how to deal with the fact that the only ideological commentator on its Sunday show is the hard-line conservative George Will? Or how about the fact that its only explicitly ideological reporter is the journalistically challenged conservative crusader John Stossel? How to explain the entire career there and on NPR of Cokie Roberts, who never met a liberal to whom she could not condescend? What about Time and Newsweek? In the former, we have Krauthammer holding forth, and in the latter, Will.
I could go on, but the point is clear: Conservatives are extremely well represented in every facet of the media. The correlative point is that even the genuine liberal media are not so liberal. And they are no match--either in size, ferocity or commitment--for the massive conservative media structure that, more than ever, determines the shape and scope of our political agenda.
In a careful 1999 study published in the academic journal Communications Research, four scholars examined the use of the "liberal media" argument and discovered a fourfold increase in the number of Americans telling pollsters that they discerned a liberal bias in their news. But a review of the media's actual ideological content, collected and coded over a twelve-year period, offered no corroboration whatever for this view. The obvious conclusion: News consumers were responding to "increasing news coverage of liberal bias media claims, which have been increasingly emanating from Republican Party candidates and officials."
The right is working the refs. And it's working. Much of the public believes a useful but unsupportable myth about the so-called liberal media, and the media themselves have been cowed by conservatives into repeating their nonsensical nostrums virtually nonstop. As the economist/pundit Paul Krugman observes of Republican efforts to bully the media into accepting the party's Orwellian arguments about Social Security privatization: "The next time the administration insists that chocolate is vanilla, much of the media--fearing accusations of liberal bias, trying to create the appearance of 'balance'--won't report that the stuff is actually brown; at best they'll report that some Democrats claim that it's brown."
In the real world of the right-wing media, the pundits are the conservatives' shock troops. Even the ones who constantly complain about alleged liberal control of the media cannot ignore the vast advantage their side enjoys when it comes to airing their views on television, in the opinion pages, on the radio and the Internet.
Take a look at the Sunday talk shows, the cable chat fests, the op-ed pages and opinion magazines, and the radio talk shows. It can be painful, I know, but try it. Across virtually the entire television punditocracy, unabashed conservatives dominate, leaving lone liberals to be beaten up by gangs of marauding right-wingers, most of whom voice views much further toward their end of the spectrum than any regularly televised liberals do toward the left. Grover Norquist, the right's brilliant political organizer, explains his team's advantage by virtue of the mindset of modern conservatism. "The conservative press is self-consciously conservative and self-consciously part of the team," he notes. "The liberal press is much larger, but at the same time it sees itself as the establishment press. So it's conflicted. Sometimes it thinks it needs to be critical of both sides." Think about it. Who among the liberals can be counted upon to be as ideological, as relentless and as nakedly partisan as George Will, Robert Novak, Pat Buchanan, Bay Buchanan, William Bennett, William Kristol, Fred Barnes, John McLaughlin, Charles Krauthammer, Paul Gigot, Oliver North, Kate O'Beirne, Tony Blankley, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Tony Snow, Laura Ingraham, Jonah Goldberg, William F. Buckley Jr., Bill O'Reilly, Alan Keyes, Tucker Carlson, Brit Hume, the self-described "wild men" of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, etc., etc.? In fact, it's hard to come up with a single journalist/pundit appearing on television who is even remotely as far to the left of the mainstream spectrum as most of these conservatives are to the right.
Liberals are not as rare in the print punditocracy as in television, but their modest numbers nevertheless give the lie to any accusations of liberal domination. Of the most prominent liberals writing in the nation's newspapers and opinion magazines-- Garry Wills, E.J. Dionne, Richard Cohen, Robert Kuttner, Robert Scheer, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, Mary McGrory, Hendrik Hertzberg, Nicholas Kristof, Molly Ivins--not one enjoys or has ever enjoyed a prominent perch on television. Michael Kinsley did for a while, but only as the liberal half of Crossfire's tag team, and Kinsley, by his own admission, is not all that liberal. The Weekly Standard and National Review editors enjoy myriad regular television gigs of their own, and are particularly popular as guests on the allegedly liberal CNN. Columnists Mark Shields and Al Hunt also play liberals on television, but always in opposition to conservatives and almost always on the other team's ideological field, given the conservatives' ability to dominate television's "he said, she said" style of argument virtually across the board.
As a result of their domination of the terms of political discourse, conservative assumptions have come to rule the roost of insider debate. And they do so not only because of conservative domination of the punditocracy but also because of conservative colonization of the so-called center--where all action in American politics is deemed to take place.
Consider the case of Howard Kurtz. By virtue of his responsibilities at CNN as host of Reliable Sources and at the Washington Post as its media reporter and columnist, Kurtz is widely recognized as the most influential media reporter in America, akin to the top cop on the beat. There is no question that Kurtz is a terrifically energetic reporter. But all media writers, including myself, walk a difficult line with regard to conflicts of interest. As a reporter and a wide-ranging talk-show host, Kurtz, unlike a columnist, cannot choose simply to ignore news. What's more, the newspaper for which he writes cannot help but cover CNN, the network on which he appears, and vice versa, as they both constitute 800-pound gorillas in the media jungle. Post executive editor Len Downie Jr. says he thinks "the problem is endemic to all media reporters. Everyone in the media universe is a competitor of the Washington Post, and so it's impossible to avoid conflicts of interest. Either we tell him the only people he can cover is The Nation or we set up this unique rule for him that he has to identify his relationship with whomever he writes about." Downie may be right. But the system didn't work perfectly when Kurtz covered Walter Isaacson's resignation from CNN recently. He wrote a tougher piece on Isaacson than most, which is fine, and noted that he worked for CNN at the end, but did not note that the network brass--meaning, presumably, Isaacson--had just cut his airtime in half. (Kurtz later explained this in an online chat.)
Regarding the political coloration of his work, it is no secret to anyone in the industry that CNN has sought to ingratiate itself with conservatives in recent years as it has lost viewers to Fox. Shortly after taking the reins, in the summer of 2001, Isaacson initiated a number of moves designed to enhance the station's appeal to conservatives, including a high-profile meeting with the Congressional Republican leadership to listen to their concerns. The bias reflected in Kurtz's work at the Post and CNN would be consistent with that of a media critic who had read the proverbial writing on the wall.
Whatever his personal ideology may be, it is hard to avoid the conclusion, based on an examination of his work, that Kurtz loves conservatives but has little time for liberals. His overt sympathy for conservatives and their critique of the media is, given the power and influence of his position, not unlike having the police chief in the hands of a single faction of the mob. To take just one tiny example of many in my book What Liberal Media?, Kurtz seemed to be working as a summer replacement for Ari Fleischer when Bush's Harken oil shenanigans briefly captured the imagination of the Washington press corps, owing to the perception of a nationwide corporate meltdown during the summer of 2002. Over and over Kurtz demanded of his guests:
"Why is the press resurrecting, like that 7-million-year-old human skull, this thirteen-year-old incident, in which Bush sold some stock in his company Harken Energy?"
"Laura Ingraham, is this the liberal press, in your view, trying to prove that Bush is soft on corporate crime because he once cut corners himself?"
"Regulators concluded he did nothing improper. Now, there may be some new details, granted, but this is--is this important enough to suggest, imply or otherwise infer, as the press might be doing, Molly Ivins, that this is somehow in a league with Tyco or WorldCom or Enron?"
"Is there a media stereotype Bush and Cheney, ex-oilmen, ex-CEOs in bed with big business that they can't shake?"
"Are the media unfairly blaming President Bush for sinking stock prices? Are journalists obsessed with Bush and Cheney's business dealings in the oil industry, and is the press turning CEOs into black-hatted villains?"
"If you look at all the negative media coverage, Rich Lowry, you'd think that Bush's stock has crashed along with the market. Is he hurting, or is this some kind of nefarious media creation?"
"And why is that the President's fault? Is it his job to keep stock prices up?"
Kurtz even went so far as to give credence to the ludicrous, Limbaugh-like insistence that somehow Bill Clinton caused the corporate meltdown of the summer of 2002. Kurtz quoted these arguments, noting, "They say, well, he set a bad example for the country. He showed he could lie and get away with it, so is that a reverse kind of 'Let's drag in the political figure we don't like and pin the tail on him?'" It was, as his guest Martha Brant had to inform him, "a ridiculous argument," surprising Kurtz, who asked again, "You're saying there's no parallel?" Recall that this is the premier program of media criticism hosted by the most influential media reporter in America. It did not occur to Kurtz to note, for instance, as Peter Beinart did, that Clinton vetoed the 1995 bill that shielded corporate executives from shareholder lawsuits (when every single Republican voted to override him), or that Clinton's Securities and Exchange Commission chief wanted to ban accounting firms from having consulting contracts with the firms they were also auditing. Thirty-three of thirty-seven members of Congress who signed their names to protests against the Clinton SEC were also Republican. The man who led the effort was then-lobbyist Harvey Pitt, whom George W. Bush chose to head the SEC and who was later forced to resign. But to Kurtz it is somehow a legitimate, intelligent question whether Clinton's lying about getting blowjobs in the Oval Office was somehow responsible for the multibillion-dollar corporate accounting scandal his Administration sought to prevent.
The current historical moment in journalism is hardly a happy one. Journalists trying to do honest work find themselves under siege from several sides simultaneously. Corporate conglomerates increasingly view journalism as "software," valuable only insofar as it contributes to the bottom line. In the mad pursuit for audience and advertisers, the quality of the news itself becomes degraded, leading journalists to alternating fits of self-loathing and self-pity. Meanwhile, they face an Administration with a commitment to secrecy unmatched in modern US history. And to top it all off, conservative organizations and media outlets lie in wait, eager to pounce on any journalist who tries to give voice to almost any uncomfortable truth about influential American institutions--in other words, to behave as an honest reporter--throwing up the discredited but nevertheless effective accusation of "liberal bias" in order to protect the powerful from scrutiny.
If September 11 taught the nation anything at all, it should have taught us to value the work that honest journalists do for the sake of a better-informed society. But for all the alleged public-spiritedness evoked by September 11, the mass public proved no more interested in serious news--much less international news--on September 10, 2002, than it had been a year earlier. This came as a grievous shock and disappointment to many journalists, who interpreted the events of September 11 as an endorsement of the importance of their work to their compatriots. And indeed, from September 11 through October, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 78 percent of Americans followed news of the attacks closely. But according to a wide-ranging study by Peyton Craighill and Michael Dimock, interest in terrorism and fear of future terrorist attacks have "not necessarily translated into broader public interest in news about local, national, or international events.... Reported levels of reading, watching and listening to the news are not markedly different than in the spring of 2000," the report found. "At best, a slightly larger percentage of the public is expressing general interest in international and national news, but there is no evidence its appetite for international news extends much beyond terrorism and the Middle East." In fact, 61 percent of Americans admitted to tuning out foreign news unless a "major development" occurs.
The most basic problem faced by American journalists, both in war and peace, is that much of our society remains ignorant, and therefore unappreciative of the value of the profession's contribution to the quality and practice of our democracy. Powerful people and institutions have strong, self-interested reasons to resist the media's inspection and the public accountability it can inspire. The net effect of their efforts to deflect scrutiny is to weaken the democratic bond between the powerful and the powerless that can, alone, prevent the emergence of unchecked corruption. The phony "liberal media" accusation is just one of many tools in the conservative and corporate arsenal to reorder American society and the US economy to their liking. But as they've proven over and over, "working the refs" works. It results in a cowed media willing to give right-wing partisans a pass on many of their most egregious actions and ideologically inspired assertions. As such it needs to be resisted by liberals and centrists every bit as much as Bush's latest tax cut for the wealthy or his efforts to despoil the environment on behalf of the oil and gas industries.
The decades-long conservative ideological offensive constitutes a significant threat to journalism's ability to help us protect our families and insure our freedoms. Tough-minded reporting, as the legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee explains, "is not for everybody." It is not "for those who feel that all's right with the world, not for those whose cows are sacred, and surely not for those who fear the violent contradictions of our time." But it is surely necessary for those of us who wish to answer to the historically honorable title of "democrat," "republican" or even that wonderfully old-fashioned title, "citizen."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030224/alterman2
And if that doesn't impress, can you name the country's two largest newspapers (both of them "liberal") that went so far astray in helping Bush sell the Iraq war they had no choice but to apologize in public once the lies began to surface?
Liberal newspaper giants working with a neoconservative White House in promoting the country's first ever preemptive war and you're still complaining about the liberal press? See why you're not credible?
>>>Journalism: The debate is over<<<
Those numbers are probably about right. That's how the media works. They go with what's fashionable and ratings productive for the moment and republicans right now only activate people's gag reflexes so smart journalists keep a safe distance. Not that democrats are all the rage, but for now.....even at 11%......they seem less toxic.
If there's an honest bone in your body you'll agree with this: The debate is NOT over. Look at a similar survey anytime between 2002 and 2005 and the figures are reversed.
While on the subject of conservative sleaze......hard to keep up with their erotic adventures these days so even though this one is fairly recent, it could be outdated by the time you read it.
October 31, 2007
Apparently the news about Larry Craig didn't make it to La Center. That's where Republican Rep. Richard Curtis lives. There's really no other way to figure out why Curtis thought he could call the cops, tell them every little detail of his sexual encounter with a man he picked up at an "erotic boutique," and expect the matter would be kept quiet. Craig, of course, thought that pleading guilty in Minneapolis would keep his alleged airport bathroom cruising quiet.
http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/davidpostman/archives/2007/10/curtis_told_cops_a_lot_but_tried_to_keep_tryst_quiet.html
Razorback in Detroit?
A true american (at least he thinks so himself) goes off on a rant (about 1:20 into the video). Oh.....and he works for congress...
>>>RE Torture<<<
"In April 2006, in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, more than 100 U.S. law professors stated unequivocally that waterboarding is torture, and is a criminal felony punishable under the U.S. federal criminal code.
On September 6, 2006, the United States Department of Defense released a revised Army Field Manual entitled Human Intelligence Collector Operations that prohibits the use of waterboarding by U.S. military personnel. The department adopted the manual amid widespread criticism of U.S. handling of prisoners in the War on Terrorism, and prohibits other practices in addition to waterboarding. The revised manual applies only to U.S. military personnel, and as such does not apply to the practices of the CIA.[48] However, under international law, violators of the laws of war are criminally liable under the command responsibility, and could still be prosecuted for war crimes.
In 1947, the United States prosecuted a Japanese military officer, Yukio Asano, for carrying out a form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian during World War II. Yukio Asano received a sentence of 15 years of hard labor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding
Oh.....and to anyone thinking about voting democrat for change......
"Michael Mukasey drew closer to becoming attorney general Friday after two key Senate Democrats said they would vote for him despite his refusal to define an interrogation technique that stimulates drowning as torture."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/02/national/main3446088.shtml
>>>but today we cant imagine the fact that a maniac might start a fire on a hillside? Seems like a cheap and easy way to raise a lot of hell to me.<<<
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=24247129
Check your calendar again. Your response is dated 10/25/2007 at 10:31:45 AM to my post (about the "fox stuff") which was dated 10/25/2007 2:30:39 AM.
>>> try thinking and speaking for yourself instead of using the words of a blog writer<<<
Disingenuous at best since the whole story was written around a Fox news video/audio clip they even made a center piece out of. If you're unhappy with the author, skip the commentary and watch & listen instead and tell me what's different. Or is the implication that since the video link was published by a source you dislike, the video/audio can't be trusted and may have been tampered with?
>>>its been listed in the al queda play book. it could easily be somebody else. I dont see how you can distinguish one nut from another<<<
You and others bitching about this are missing the point. It's not that it's completely implausible that terrorists could start wild fires. It's that a network that pretends to report fair and balanced news used a 4-year old story and called it 5 days old and "expanding". In other words.........this was not commentary on what terrorists are capable of but what Fox news is capable of in terms of trying to scare the hell out of americans and build support for the Bush regime. Understand?
>>>are you a Muslim?//<<<
Don't think so unless you know of any muslims with blond hair and blue eyes.
Unbelievable. After all this you still don't understand what it's about. Nobody ever said they stated that. What they did state was that a 4-year old Arizona republic story was 5 days old and was "being expanded on".
I'm done with this ok? You're making a complete ass of yourself trying to prove that your favorite news source really is fair & balanced.
What am I lying about? This story was based on Fox news video and audio. See the logo in the lower left hand corner? Watch and listen to the damn thing and then tell me what part of the reporting on this was inaccurate or untrue.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Fox_advances_theory_that_CA_fires_1024.html
Can't believe you're starting this again as if it hasn't been thoroughly covered already. Forgot this?
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=24026881
>>>Maybe you should stop watching Fox News Channel so much.<<<
Don't even know what station it's on since it's been de-selected on my Direct TV menu since 1999. Never, ever watch it but it's obviously an important part of your life judging by the ridiculous amount of bullshit you're producing in their defense.
>>>Proof that dick n dumbya believe crazy people
without question..........<<<
"Alwan was caught when CIA interrogators were finally allowed to question him and confronted him with evidence that his story could not be as he described it. Weapons inspectors had examined the plant at Djerf al Nadaf before the fall of Baghdad and found no evidence of biological agents."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/60minutes/main3440577.shtml
".........when CIA interrogators were finally allowed to question him". Says it all doesn't it. No serious fact finding missions were allowed until AFTER the war was started.
>>>They pointed to a 2003 FBI memo<<<
And stressed that "the Arizona Republic have been carrying the story and they continue to expand upon it".
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=23988122
>>>I don't know. I guess it depends how closely they follow the teachings of Muhammad.<<<
That's a problem isn't it? The war on terror is in progress but there's no way to identify the enemy until they've already killed or tried to kill. Good mission for the US military in your opinion......especially since there are at least 6 million muslims living in america?
Bush compares Democrats to those who ignored Hitler
Actually I agree with him. Bush keeps borrowing from the nazi playbook and the democrats ignore it. Maybe not the kind of agreement he was looking for but agreement nonetheless.
Bush compares Democrats to those who ignored Hitler
By David Jackson, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats have not learned the lessons of history in dealing with the threat of terrorism, President Bush said Thursday in pressing for action on several fronts.
"(Osama) bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them," Bush said during a speech at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "And the question is, will we listen?"
Bush made the speech as he continues to press Congress to act on what he says are essential parts of the war against terrorism: the confirmation of Michael Mukasey as attorney general; the extension of a measure that allows warrant-free eavesdropping; and several spending bills, including one for the Iraq war.
He said the speech was not "political rhetoric" or "an attempt to scare people into votes."
"Politicians who believe we are not at war are either being disingenuous or naive," Bush said. "Either way, it is dangerous for our country."
The remarks were his second in two days claiming the Democratic-controlled Congress was too slow to act. Wednesday at the White House, Bush called for action on a number of domestic issues.
Thursday, Bush said terrorist threats have not grown more distant with time, and those who plotted the 9/11 terror attacks "intend to strike us again."
"We must take the enemy seriously," Bush said.
He repeated earlier criticisms of a move to combine spending bills for the Defense Department and veterans programs with one for labor, health and education matters that Republicans consider bloated. Bush also lamented that his emergency spending request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still languishes.
"When it comes to funding our troops, some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground, and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters," he said.
Contributing: Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-11-01-bushdemocrats_N.htm