Stealthy, Like a Ninja...

...Economic Woes Take the Media by Surprise

For the last five years a lot of extremely smart economists have written about the timebomb economics of the Bush administration. Yet the media consistently bought into the Bush administration's strenuous selling of a sunny view of the economy simplistically reinforced by pointing to growth and the stock market while the dollar radically devalued, national debt and the deficit skyrocketed, and salaries froze in place. Plenty of analysis showed that the growth we were experiencing only went to the richest Americans while the rest of the country lived a recessionary existence.

Now that the stock market is catching cold and the subprime crisis and the debt crunch have emerged as high profile news stories, the narrative of the impending collapse of the American economy is so plain to see that even the lamestream media can no longer ignore it.

Watch this clip from CNN. They're covering the economy like it's a natural disaster that just struck out of nowhere. Fear Factor~!


The economy is even sneaking up on the President, who was shocked, shocked, to hear that gas prices are projected to go above $4/gallon.

Crossposted at Ice Station Tango.

TAGS: Economy, Media, CNN, Bush Administration

Cheney Crawls Out of the Bunker

Dick Cheney sat down with that legendary, hard-hitting journalist, CNN's Larry King, and slid some truly heinous statements onto the record.

Cheney claimed:

1. Bush will be fondly remembered on his deathbed.
2. Iraqi's insurgency was not in its "last throes" after all.
3. When Defense Secretary Robert Gates's assistant used the un-patriotic card on Hillary Clinton, Cheney approved.
4. Cheney can't recall if he sent Alberto Gonzales (and Andy Card) to the hospital to get John Ashcroft to sign off on the illegal wiretapping program.

Cute. Let's take them point by point.

1. I find this to be extremely intellectually dishonest. Cheney takes one of the great general truths of the American style of republican government--that our leaders must maintain the courage of their convictions when public opinion turns against them, because traditionally the judgment of the American people is not as reliable as the judgment of our representatives--and he applies it specifically to a policy whose unpopularity is derived from a massive amount of proof that our representatives' policy has failed. On his deathbed--or death prison cot--Dubya will be remembered as the fool that ignored not only public opinion but also the blatantly obvious, self-evident truths emanating from his failed policy.
2. Now you tell us! Well, if your judgment was so poor then, why should we listen to you now? Two years of operating under the wrong assumption has cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers and countless Iraqi citizens. Mr. Cheney, you must resign for your governance is far too perilous to continue even one second longer.
3. You approved of that letter? Really? Does that mean you plan on using the President's executive order to seize her campaign's finances? No? Then stfu, Penguin. Meh!
   
4. I don't recall? I look forward to you saying that again to the Senate Judiciary Committee and then the House Judiciary Committee. I'm afraid that by the time they start subpoenaing you for this episode, something far worse you've done will come to light and we'll just step over the corpse of the Justice Department and move on to that.

AUDIO: Rollins Band - Liar.


TAGS: Dick Cheney, Larry King, U.S. Attorney Purge, NSA Wiretapping

Moore Takes On Blitzer

"Why Don't You Tell the Truth to the American People?"

First I was going to blog about this, then I wasn't, because I saw Station Agent already had a piece up at his place, then I saw some points that other people had missed. You can watch the exchange between Michael Moore and Wolf Blitzer (on CNN's The Situation Room) at Ice Station Tango, but Alternet has a vid that includes the piece by Dr. Sanjay Gupta that led to Moore's ire, links to Moore's site where he defends SICKo against Gupta's attack, and follow up video with Moore and Gupta on Larry King. A fantastic job from Alternet, who had this to say,

He [Moore] has...been ahead of the curve on Walter Reed, the War in Iraq, gun violence, and a host of other issues and all these networks and talking heads can do is try to pick apart his work to "expose" how he's somehow "fudged the facts", always ignoring how incredibly right he has been and continues to be about our American condition. We all love to see Wolf Blitzer (who tirelessly defends CNN medical "expert" Sanjay Gupta) taken down a peg, but the video to your right is really about the whole mainstream media getting called out on their bullshit, which makes it so much more satisfying. Naturally smug bigots like Lou Dobbs act amused by what they consider Moore's "act".

So, if Alternet did such a fantastic job, what could yours truly possibly have to add? Just a couple points I'd like to highlight from the videos. First, from the 'reality check' of SICKo. Dr. Sanjay's voiceover says, "Moore presents a lot of facts throughout the movie. But do they all check out? Keeping them honest, we did some digging." I'd just like to restate MM's point again based on that quote. When, pray tell, has CNN or anyone else in the Corporate Owned Media (COM) ever done some digging to keep the Republican Administration honest? It seems that they have two sets of journalistic standards, one for the left and one for the right. Kind of a reflection of what the Bush 'Justice' system has become, with one standard for the administration and one for everyone else. It's about time that the media itself had someone keeping them honest on the airwaves. (They've always had it on the internet, at Media Matters.)

My second point is from the exchange between Moore and Blitzer, where MM finally gets the Wolf to admit out loud what CNN's standards have devolved to, "We have commercials, this is a business obviously." That's his best defense against Moore's criticism of CNN's coverage. He can't even claim that they are not biased, but offers this up as an explanation.For him to blatantly admit that the content of a news program is influenced by the will of the sponsors says a lot, none of it good.

Wolf Blitzer is nothing more than a spewing piehole, who says what ever he is paid to say, with less credibility than a sideshow barker at a cheap carnival inviting you into a tent to see a two-headed dog.*

My final point is that the Canadian health care system is a lot better than it is portrayed in the US, even by Moore. Wait times are high sometimes, but here is the critical difference. In Canada, the length of time you have to wait for a procedure is mainly based on how serious your condition is. If you need lifesaving surgery RIGHT NOW where I live, they will put you on a helicopter and fly you to Toronto if need be (about 100 miles) RIGHT NOW if the surgery can't be performed locally. And the government will pay for the whole thing, including the helicopter. If you've got a boil on your ass, the details of that story may change, it's true.

In the US, your wait time has little to do with the nature of your medical condition, and a lot to do with how much money you have, and how much you have invested in health insurance. If you are not covered, your wait time could be THE REST OF YOUR (short) LIFE. With over 45 million Americans having no insurance whatsoever, and over half of the rest being underinsured I would say that's a big difference. I told the tale of a Canadian friend of mine who had serious medical issues in A Personal Story back in January, and that was contrasted by this guest post from Kristen Hannum At Our Expense. Kristen's sad experience (her brother died, more from being uninsured than from his underlying condition, an inflamed appendix) led her to start Ave Cassandra, one of the best single-issue blogs there is. If you are interested in the issue of health care in America, bookmark that site.

* The real reason I had to put up this post. I came up with this great line, and I couldn't just use it in comments on another blog, now could I?

TAGS: Michael Moore, SICKo, Health Care, Media Bias, Wolf Blister

The Fearless Fosdick Presidency

As a kid I loved Al Capp's long running and very popular comic Li'l Abner. Li'l Abner himself had a favorite comic strip he read, called Fearless Fosdick, a parody of another popular comic of the time, Dick Tracy. While Tracy was upstanding, stalwart and fearless, Fosdick was naive, feckless and blindly loyal to authority. Kind of like Alberto Gonzales, or countless other Bu$hCo™minions.

Fosdick was introduced on Sunday, November 2, 1941, as Li'l Abner's "ideel" — not just a favorite comic strip character, not just a role model, not just an object of abject, undying worship, but his ideel itself, so tough that on the rare occasions he isn't wearing his black suit, he pins his badge to his bare chest. For the duration of that storyline in Abner's United Feature Syndicate comic, Abner's emotional roller coaster was tied to the ups and downs of Fosdick's adventures in Dogpatch's newspaper. Its happy conclusion, amid piles of bullet-riddled corpses of innocent bystanders, brought euphoric glee to the enraptured boy. (from Toonopedia.com)

Fosdick's most memorable attribute though, was his response to being wounded.

Fosdick was a farcical and guileless hack and was never simply wounded. Perpetually riddled by flying bullets, Fosdick's enduring trademark was the Swiss cheese bullet holes revealing his truly two-dimensional comic strip body. (Li'l Abner.com)

- Kind of like Alberto Gonzales, his Department of Justice, or for that matter the entire Bush administration. No matter how many political wounds they endure, no matter how bullet-ridden their credibility, they somehow soldier on, declaring the most damaging revelations not worthy of consideration. 'No problem, it's only a flesh wound.'

The question needs to be asked, and asked repeatedly until a solid answer emerges, how the heck are they surviving? Because, unlike Fearless Fosdick, the Bush administration is not a cartoon within a cartoon, although it appears to be at times.

The short answer is that for six long years they enjoyed no effective oversight whatsoever, with both houses of Congress controlled by the Republican/fascist party. Worse, even since the Democrats have taken control, their investigations can't get any traction in the mainstream media, particularly on television news.

I reluctantly took a break from writing my latest post, on James Comey's revelations about the Justice Department's declaration that the NSA warrantless wiretapping program was illegal back in 2004, and the dramatic hospital bed meeting between Gonzales and then AG Ashcroft, to see what CNN had to say about it. So what did li'l Wolfie have to say on The Situation Room? Nada. Zilch. Bumpkis. Diddly Squat. NOT A PEEP about this story!! What happened to 'if it bleeds, it leads?' Comey's testimony has been described as being "like the script of a Hollywood movie."

But never mind the editorial imperative to make this a major story based on its 'infotainment' value. This is a story about the government repeatedly and knowingly breaking the law, and doing so in order to tread on the rights of US citizens. Constitutionally protected rights. This is EXACTLY the type of story that the fourth estate has the highest duty to pursue.

Like countless other stories that should have brought the Bush government down but didn't, the broadcast media are effectively misinforming the public by simply not informing them. It's as if they had reported the Hindenberg explosion as "some of the passengers' luggage went missing." It is the journalistic equivalent of the philosophical question, 'if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?'

It turns out that the democracy that theoretically, ostensibly, purportedly, supposedly exists in America is anything but. When the government is repeatedly allowed to say one thing but do another, to break the law and tread on the rights of ALL Americans, what you have is a LIE-ocracy, a form of government based entirely on deceit. This is not what America is supposed to be about. It looks more like another Li'l Abner fiction, Lower Slobbovia.

As wretched as existence was in Dogpatch, there was one place even worse: faraway Lower Slobbovia.. ..There was no visible civilization, no money, no hope. The politicians were even more corrupt than in Dogpatch. Conditions couldn't be worse.

With both political parties AND the media under the firm control of a small group of multinational corporations, there seems to be no political wound that will be fatal to this farcical, feckless government. I am reminded of a line from the Elvis Costello song, Watchin' the Detectives;

They beat him up until the teardrops start,
But he can't be wounded 'cause he's got . no-oh-oh . heart.

He's got no heart.

TAGS: Fearless Fosdick, Li'l Abner, Alberto Gonzales, Comey Testimony

Moyers Documents Media Complicity

Bill Moyers' Journal on PBS last night was a ray of sunshine into a very dark place - the heart of the Corporate Owned Media (COM). Last night's piece was titled Buying the War, but could just as well have been called Selling the War. There is a point where complacency becomes complicity, and I think Moyers demonstrated that the COM went past that point a long time ago. Here's a snip from Glenn Greenwald's reaction today,

"..the documentary is -- in one sense -- a very valuable historical account of the corrupt behavior by our dominant political and media institutions which deceived the country into the invasion of Iraq. But on another, more significant level, it illustrates the corruption that continues to propel our political and media culture.

One of the most important points came at the end. The institutional decay which Moyers chronicles is not merely a matter of historical interest. Instead, it continues to shape our mainstream political dialogue every bit as much as it did back in 2002 and 2003. The people who committed the journalistic crimes Moyers so potently documents do not think they are guilty of anything -- ask them and they will tell you -- and as a result, they have not changed their behavior in the slightest."

For those of you who may have missed it, you can watch it here.

TAGS: Bill Moyers, Buying The War, PBS, Documentary

Another First Amendment Right

I've had a great time with Blog Against Theocracy Weekend, which for me was extended for a couple of days of reading terrific, provocative posts spanning the gamut of First Freedoms First issues. Now, back to blogging, but we're not going to stray too far from the nest for our first post-swarm post. Here's how the first amendment reads,

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

The blogswarm has been all about the first 16 words of the amendment, known as the establishment clause. This post is about the next 10 words, which guarantee freedom of speech, and of the press. A number of things converged to compel me to address this subject. The one you're most likely familiar with is the controversy surrounding Don Imus' on-air idiocy. On top of that are a couple of items in my inbox, the first from Blue Gal,

"Thought you would want to see this and maybe even linky.
Ben Heine Silenced by DKos
Ben Heine is a Belgian Cartoonist. A Cartoonist, folks.
Where has this kinda censorship happened before? Huh?"

That's my private inbox. I got this from comments, which I think of as kind of my public inbox.

"hey sbt,
sorry to be off topic, but check this out:
(Link)"

The link goes to an Amy Goodman article in TruthDig called Take Back the Airwaves.

"As the TV pundits on the networks gab about the tens of millions of dollars raised by the top presidential candidates, what they don’t talk about is where that money is going: to their own networks.

Money is now considered the single most important factor in our electoral process. Ideas and issues take a back seat to the bottom line. This prostitution of our electoral process has one key culprit: television advertising."

These three items converge onto an issue so full of complexities that I hesitate to even approach it. Hopefully I can bring out some aspects that will provoke everyone to think it through themselves a bit. I'll start with my off-the cuff response to the TruthDig link, from comments, "The TruthDig article is right on the money, one of my top concerns - actually two - the overbearing influence of money on American politics, and the conflict of interest that DOES exist in a medium that accepts advertising dollars from the candidates."

To continue in that vein, most broadcasting facilities in America are owned by corporate interests who have other fish to fry than just the revenues they make from politicians on a cyclic basis. (meaning those revenues dry up when there is no pending election) They pay taxes, and face various forms of regulations, so it is in their interest to promote politicians that reduce any associated costs. In many cases the broadcast companies are in turn owned by larger corporations. An example of this is NBC, owned by General Electric. (I learned that from Dave Letterman) GE is a huge corporation, with major revenues coming from such things as supplying equipment to the military - guidance packages for smart bombs, that sort of thing. On balance, these concerns could far outweigh something as trivial as a few million dollars in advertising every couple of years. They might even be tempted to side with politicians who were pro-military, interventionist, and in favor of lower taxes, even if their opponents spent twice as much on campaign ads.

These circumstances apply to all the media; television, radio and print - to varying degrees from entity to entity. You might think the truth would stand as much chance in this environment as an elderly lawyer facing Cheney with a shotgun in his hands. There use to be something called the fairness doctrine, which required overtly political opinions expressed over the air to be balanced by someone with a differing view. That died in 1987.

Now we depend on broadcasters to be fair and balanced due to their respect for the fine traditions of journalistic integrity. The problem is, people like Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly etc. don't even pretend to be journalists, but most of their audience assumes that they are anyway. They self-identify as entertainers, commenters, editorialists, or that old standby, pundits. I don't think that word even existed in the days of real journalists like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, or Huntley and Brinkley.

[There is a lot of difference between the legislative control that can be exerted over on-air broadcasting and cable or satellite broadcasting. The former is subject to regulation because of its dependency on a limited electronic spectrum or bandwidth - you can't have two Channel 5's in the same geographical area after all, their signals would interfere with one another. This makes bandwidth a precious commodity which has always been construed as belonging to the public and doled out to the broadcasters as a sacred trust. Cable and satellite can get around this technical restriction, and in so doing escape most of the government's regulative authority. This explains why you see so much of Janet Jackson's nipple on cable.]

Back to Imus. To me the biggest effect of this story has been that it has given the rest of the media an excuse to conduct their own senseless swarm over a relative non-issue. I can't believe how much airtime has been devoted to this over the last couple of days. Oh, yes I can. On top of the questions of who's Anna Nicole's baby's daddy and who has a chance to advance on American Idol, it's helping the Corporate Owned Media (COM) to push the real news (like White House illegal emails, for instance) off the headlines. And flash to CNN et. al. - it only takes 30 seconds to announce that charges have been dropped in the Duke lacrosse rape allegation case, not 25% of total airtime for 48 hours. How about mentioning the recently released scathing report on Walter Reed Hospital? Oh, right - that one makes Bu$hCo™ look bad. Or how about this story that totally yanks the rug out from under the DoJ's reasoning for firing David Iglesias? Oh, right...

What we have here is a failure to communicate the truth to the American people. That is serious business. Listen to Abe Lincoln on this one,

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts."
-- Abraham Lincoln --
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
-- Abraham Lincoln --

The thing is, the COM are trying to fool all of the people - by not bringing them the real facts. At least not the relevant facts. I would support Don Imus's right to spew whatever idiotic diatribe he likes. It is after all his First Amendment right to do so, and the best way to deal with an abuse of free speech really is with more free speech. But there's a problem with that.

More and more, free speech in America is being defined as 'money talks.' After Nixon was brought down, not by the FBI, not by Congress, not by the Department of Justice, but by the media, the right wing responded in a predictably slimy way. First, they bought up as much of the media as they could. Second, Reagan appointed head of the FCC Mark S. Fowler worked to abolish the fairness doctrine. Third, FOX "news" and a number of right-wing news consortia spent a lot of money and time on a relatively unknown Florida case to establish as a matter of law that they had a RIGHT under the first amendment to LIE to their audiences. That's right. No, that's very, very wrong. Sad, but true. PLEASE click the last three links - herein lies the oh-so-sad truth of how the first amendment is being interpreted in modern America. Lincoln would weep.

The complexity of this issue derives from the tension between First Amendment free speech guarantees and the necessity in a democracy, recognized by Lincoln, of the electorate being informed by the truth. As the Third link shows, the right wing are exploiting the first amendment in order to manipulate the American political arena. Swiftboat Veterans For Truth cynically relied on the First Amendment to get their message out, for instance. FOX "news" regularly exploits their position to act as a blatant propaganda arm of the GOP. How much of this form of freedom of speech can America stand before democracy itself falls?

As American journalist A. J. Liebling of the New Yorker magazine pointed out, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." In modern times, the impact of YOUR freedom of speech can only be meaningfully measured against that of those who own, not just a newspaper, which is expensive enough - not even a chain of newspapers, but a freaking television network. Think about that. Here are a few more talking points for discussion.

"Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."
-- Hugo L Black --
"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."
-- George Orwell --
"All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values."
-- Marshall McLuhan --
"Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless."
-- Sinclair Lewis --
"The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
-- Henry A. Wallace, Vice President to FDR, 1944 --
The Danger of American Fascism

TAGS: First Amendment, Free Speech, Freedom of the Press, Propaganda

What We Laughingly Call the News

LMAO!

What We Call the News | Send To Friends | Funny Animations at JibJab

h/t - RW Research

TAGS: Jib Jab, Humor, Funny Because It's True, Sad Because It's True

The Media is Sick

And Needs Help Badly

The longer Barack Obama lasts on the national stage, the clearer it becomes that our national media has no Earthly idea how to cover race relations in the United States.

On her radio show yesterday, Rachel Maddow talked about how frustrating it is going on these news shows and discussing ridiculous topics such as:

IS BARACK OBAMA BLACK ENOUGH?

Uh... What? Also, throw in some atheist bashing and fun with rape.

Part One


Part Two


By the way something, nothing in there about the Iraq War, the resolution in the House, Doug Feith, Scooter Libby, global warming, the carrier group on its way to the Persian Gulf... All of these things.

TAGS: Barack Obama's Blackness, CNN, Media Bias, Rachel Maddow

Crossposted at Ice Station Tango.