November 26, 2007 archive

Monday Morning News Drop

Hello and welcome to the second installment on MMND.  Today we will do things a little differently, due to the Holiday there weren’t many stories released on Friday that would qualify for our regular approach.  Instead, headlines from various news sources across the country will be the focus.  The same basic question will apply however: when will the Corporate Media focus on these important stories?

As a reminder to news editors in Corporate Media establishments.  Well over 2/3rds of us Americans are paying attention.


IndyStar.com has some gut-wrenching statistics posted regarding child-poverty.

The number of Hoosier children living in poverty has increased by nearly 21 percent since 2000, a growth rate nearly twice that of the U.S. average for the period.

If these statistics do not cause a major upheaval in the way Indiana allocates it’s resources, there is little hope for Indiana in the future.


For antiwar Yellow Dog Democrats, 1968 looms again

Six months ago, I was confidently telling people that if the Democrats couldn’t win the presidency in 2008, we should just disband the party.

Lately, I have started hedging my bets.  

And an hour with the front section of Sunday’s New York Times was enough to make me think that we are headed for another heartbreaking and unnecessary loss.

What did we learn today from the “liberal media?”

1. Violence is on the decline in Iraq.

2. One brigade of US troops has started to pull out.

3.  The troop surge has not produced the political progress that was promised, so the Bush administration is simply downsizing its goals, to make it look like progress.

4.  The Democratic presidential candidates appear ready to soften their stances, or at least their language, on Iraq and change the subject to domestic issues.

Here we go again.  

We will be fooled again, it would appear.

Which brings us to the question: What is an antiwar Yellow Dog Democrat to do, after reading that one of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy advisors, Michael O’Hanlon, is saying:

“The politics of Iraq are going to change dramatically in the general election, assuming Iraq continues to show some hopefulness,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s and a proponent of the military buildup. “If Iraq looks at least partly salvageable, it will be important to explain as a candidate how you would salvage it – how you would get our troops out and not lose the war. The Democrats need to be very careful with what they say and not hem themselves in.”

Vice Presidential Treason, 1807-style

“There! You see?  I was right!  I was only thirty years too soon.  What was treason in me thirty years ago, is patriotism now.”

                — Aaron Burr, upon hearing of the Texas Revolt, 1836

Perhaps someday, if the neocon plan works out and America does manage to establish itself as the master of a global hegemony of subject nations and enslaved peoples, the 9% of our fellow citizens who don’t think Dick Cheney sucks will be able to point to some future event and try to use it to vindicate not impeaching the current veep now – but I rather doubt it.  History is not kind to fools and poor leaders – and only occasionally rewards the schemers and the scammers – yet it has always been notoriously difficult to pry such men from perches of power, since the people with the ability to do so often lack the chutzpah of their intended target.  

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll meet a veep whose poor decision-making skills (and chutzpah) may have actually eclipsed those of Fourthbranch.  We’ll also contemplate the scary truth that it wasn’t until after he’d left office that our first Treasonous Veep engaged in his zaniest schemes of usurpation.

Pony Party: Sunday music retrospective

Gifts



Kansas: Wayward Son

Glenn Greenwald: How Beltway reporters mislead the country

I have recently started visiting some of the blogs in the blogroll (from a meta standpoint I’ll tell you that while a lot of the places you can visit are the same here as at dK, here they open in a NEW window which is a feature I find highly superior).

One author I find is almost as important as Monday through Thursday with Jon Stewart (who memorably said to Tucker)-

  • “It’s not so much that it’s bad, as it’s hurting America.”
  • “It’s not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery.”
  • “You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.”
  • “You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.”

and Stephen who said this about all of them, the vacant gape mawed Villagers drooling at the trough of slime that turns them into zombies-

… let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know – fiction!

is Glenn Greenwald at Salon (that’s a zoom link btw, that way you can decide how you want to open it.  That and using a storyonly/Permalink are two courtesy lessons I owe to CSI Bentonville).

Every day he comes up with something that is at least worth looking at and today was no exception-

Exactly like a stenographer in a court proceeding, their only job is to record the words that they hear accurately, not to identify what actually is true. And here is Klein admitting — finally — that this is exactly what he did (although in this case, he wasn’t even a good stenographer since he only wrote down what one side said, not both).

The very idea of a reporter and a major news magazine publishing a piece about a crucial bill that neither the reporter nor any editor has ever even bothered to read is amazing. No blogger that I read regularly would ever think about doing that. But that’s how the Bush administration has been able to depict all of its false statements about Iraq, and its illegal spying on Americans, as some sort of complex, impossible-to-resolve “controversy.” GOP operatives say “X” and reporters write it down, and it would be terribly “partisan” for them to point out that “X” is actually an outright lie.

Had Klein even bothered to read the Democrats’ bill before calling it “well beyond stupid” and passing on lies about it, he would have had a real story. This:

Last week, House Democrats passed a bill that allows the government to eavesdrop on foreigners outside of the U.S., but requires court approval to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens inside the U.S. But GOP operatives/politicians have spent the week telling reporters that the bill does the opposite, falsely claiming that it gives the same rights to Terrorists that it gives to U.S. citizens.

Those are the objective facts. That is actually what happened. Yet Klein’s function — like those of most of his colleagues — isn’t to report what actually happened, so he’ll never say that. And thus, Time has yet again completely misled its readers on a critical political issue by passing on GOP falsehoods as fact, and they are highly unlikely to do anything in the way of alerting their readers to what they did, let alone reporting the real story here: how and why that happened.

Impeachment: If not now when?

The title comes from an op/ed published in Sundays Seattle Post Intelligencer.

Americas Founding Fathers no fools they understood that humans were flawed and will always be flawed. So, in constructing the foundations that would become the Republic of the United States of America they included provisions within the constitution which gave the legislative branch the right to remove from public office those officials which had violated official ethics standards or the law it self.

Given that as a starting point isn’t it a reasonable assumption that when an elected official or officials deliberately obstruct the Constitution and the  Bill of Rights that the legislative branch would take upon themselves to not only investigate the violations but initiate impeachment proceedings if the allegations are proven to be true? Yet the legislative branch and its leaders have failed in their responsibilities as elected officials to represent the citizens of the country who elected them.

Leadership and the responsibilities  that come with it are difficult if it were not then anyone could be chosen to lead. No matter ones party affiliation your allegiances are not to the party or its supporters its to the Constitution.  I know this has been said a thousand times but the oath office does not say “I will preserve protect and defend my right to hold power and my political party.” It does say Preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies both foreign and domestic.

Iraq: What we do know has happened

Whatever the reality behind the statistical studies of civilian deaths in Iraq, some hard facts are known. In an online chat, Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post, and author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, gave some hard answers. As recounted on the Editor & Publisher website:

Obama on Marijuana

On the issue of medicinal marijuana, Obama said that if the “best way to relieve pain and suffering is through medicinal marijuana,” then it’s something he’s open to.

http://www.wibw.com/home/headl…

Not too swift, Obama, but, in our drug-crazed country, truly enlightened.  

Curiously the New York Times only reported that Obama was against legalization and admitted he had inhaled (unlike Bill Clinton).

Pure madness.  There is a tiny list of people who are allowed to have marijuana but no one is allowed to sell it to them.  The first person that finally got on the list had glaucoma.  He had a choice between breaking the law and going blind.  The lawbreaker had been arrested numerous times.  Pain in suffering is hardly the only medicinal effect of marijuana.  I believe it has been approved for multiple sclerosis sufferers to help with tremors.  In cancer patients, it not only helps with nausea but increases the appetite.

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