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Progress Report: Media Think They Know Best

By Faiz Shakir and Nico Pitney and Amanda Terkel and Payson Schwin and Satyam Khanna, Center for American Progress. Posted March 28, 2007.


Journalists seem to have forgotten that they are supposed to be watchdogs -- not cheerleaders of government corruption.

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For six years, conservative domination of Washington created a drought of oversight and accountability. Now, as Congress finally begins to take action and shed light on the executive branch, establishment media figures are aghast. In recent weeks, reporters and editorial boards have repeatedly criticized members of Congress for investigating the White House or acting as counterweights to President Bush. As Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald noted, "Journalists are supposed to be, by definition, eager for investigations of government misconduct. That is supposed to be their purpose, embedded in their DNA." Yet time and again, media figures have ignored public opinion data and claimed that members of Congress risk severe political damage by carrying out their constitutional oversight responsibilities. Journalists have a critical responsibility to not be complicit in corruption, government malfeasance, and possible criminality. They shouldn't be mocking or criticizing efforts to hold the White House accountable; they should be furthering them.

MEDIA: AMERICANS DON'T WANT ACCOUNTABILITY: Speaking about the U.S. attorney scandal last week, CNBC chief Washington correspondent John Harwood claimed that "[i]nvestigating the Bush administration is a lot easier than passing new laws," and cautioned that "[o]ne danger for Democrats is whether they look too political in exploiting this." The next day, NBC's Brian Williams "paraphrased" Harwood's comments, saying, "I can't help but wonder if the Democrats are finding it a little easier to investigate than legislate." Time magazine managing editor Richard Stengel chimed in this weekend. "I am so uninterested in the Democrats wanting Karl Rove, because it is so bad for them," he said, ignoring the fact that criticism of Rove and calls for him to testify have been bipartisan. "[I]t shows business as usual, tit for tat, vengeance," Stengel said. "That's not what voters want to see." In fact, public opinion data shows just the opposite. A USA Today poll conducted this weekend asked, "Do you think Congress should -- or should not -- investigate the involvement of White House officials in this matter?" An overwhelming majority, 72 percent, said it should. Sixty-eight percent said President Bush and his aides should "Answer all questions" rather than invoking executive privilege, and an equal number said Congress should "issue subpoenas to force White House officials to testify under oath" about the matter. This should come as little surprise. Last September, prior to the midterm elections, a CNN poll found that 57 percent of Americans thought it would be a good thing for Congress to "conduct official investigations into what the Bush administration has done in the last six years."

MEDIA: THE U.S. ATTORNEY PURGE IS OVERBLOWN: In mid-January, as early details of the administration's purge of U.S. attorneys began to trickle out, Time magazine reporter Jay Carney was already convinced the story was a dud. "[I]n this case some liberals are seeing broad partisan conspiracies where none likely exist," he wrote. To his credit, two months later, Carney acknowledged he was wrong. But many senior journalists continue to parrot this line, despite the serious wrongdoings and potential illegalities that have since been exposed. This past weekend, CBS national political correspondent Gloria Borger declared that members of Congress pursuing the attorney scandal merely "want to change the subject. ... They don’t want to talk about how they’re doing on the war in Iraq." MSNBC's Chris Matthews agreed. "They divide over the war and fund-raising, but this makes it simple. It's good for fund-raising." A March 22 Washington Post editorial stated that e-mails released by the Justice Department "for the most part suggest nothing nefarious in the dismissal process." (As Media Matters noted, "[W]hile the editorial referred to the 'e-mails that the administration has released,' it made no mention of the entire category of communications that the White House has said will not be released.") Roll Call executive editor Mort Kondracke claimed last week that there's "not a shred of evidence" that "there was a nefarious reason involved" in the firings. Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes agreed: "I'm still waiting to see some evidence of illegality or wrongdoing." Again, the American public is far ahead of the establishment media. Fully 58 percent, including 45 percent of Republicans, "say the ouster of the federal prosecutors was driven by political concerns."


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View:
84% of Americans don't believe the government myth of 9/11
Posted by: LeftWright on Mar 28, 2007 2:56 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Over 60% think there is an ongoing cover-up regarding 9/11.

At least 36% think the US government played a part in the attacks.

So why isn't the msm and AlterNet asking the hard questions and digging for the answers?

$till waiting for my answer, Mr. Holland.

9/11 Truth ends war.

The truth shall set us free. Love is the only way forward.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

» Some of that steel may still be somewhere! Posted by: Robert_Hoogenboom@leftfoot.com.au
» Sources please Posted by: Ayla87
» What don't you believe? Posted by: LeftWright
» RE: 84% of Americans don't believe the government myth of 9/11 Posted by: Robert_Hoogenboom@leftfoot.com.au
» Clue @ the CON STATE Posted by: Hal
» Conservasaurus - Posted by: LeftWright
Journalists are people
Posted by: kepstein7777 on Mar 28, 2007 3:24 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Where did we get this idea that journalists are higher beings with a higher calling than the rest of us?

Maybe it came from the Vietnam/Watergate era, or Ed Murrow...I don't know. But just as in every other job, honesty, integrity, and courage are more the exception than the rule.

The reality is that you have to dig around for real news, and you're not going to get it from the mainstream US media. Will you find good music by listening to top 40 stations?

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

» RE: Journalists are people Posted by: ProgressiveManiac
» RE: Journalists are people Posted by: Logic's Edge
» RE: Journalists are people Posted by: CatDad
Accountability @ CARNY CORP AMERIKA
Posted by: Hal on Mar 28, 2007 4:18 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Is it really news a U.S. media apparatus is as cooked a sham as the Washington runway brothel it’s supposed to check and report on?

I often put links up on a Mockingbird MSM sellout along with its bogus carny “leftwing” press but it seems people are that cynical they’d rather zone out on NASCAR or WWE wrestling than consider the obvious.

As an example…

If the MSM had actually done anything like its job, a blatant 911 cover-up would have been busted wide open weeks if not days after the event . And the nation would have never been railroaded into a blatantly phony “war on terror” foisted on no more than lies for Big Oil and the usual fascist oligarchs pulling the old cartel strings.

But if that had happened, the government would have been brought down under a stink of blood money corruption so deep it would have forced a “constitutional crisis”. Of course, we the people would have had to actually think about restoring democracy under a real republic over a genuine open market economy. Naturally that would mean no more “Federal Reserve” Corp (not federal, no reserves) con for the sting that keeps on stinging.

And at the end of the day, that would leave us with a nation the like of which the founders intended…

Go figure.

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A = B+C+D+E+F
Posted by: american on Mar 28, 2007 5:12 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
A = The "elite"
B = The executive
C = The congress
D = The courts
E = The banks
F = The press

Apply this formula and the behavior of "our" major institutions becomes clearer.

The same individuals, families, and groups own large blocks of ownership in banks, newspapers, manufacturing companies, transportation companies, etc. (Not bad in and of itself so long as morals are adhered to, although histories show wrongdoing to gain financial fortunes by many current "elite.") The illusion that there are seperate powers is one that is religiously worked by all information outlets adjunct to these institutions. There is a mutiny, as you might say, (to steer the ship from disaster) and all the arms of this "elite" juggernaught are fighting it off as violently as any malevolent ship captain of the 19th century.

We are running all over the place trying to put out their little fires (excuse the metaphor switch). A more efficient avenue of protest would be to assemble at the gates of the wealthiest prep schools. Nearly all of the leaders failing us, whether they now be in politics or industry, have funneled through their ivied gates. The fact that you don't read about the significance of this is a parcel of evidence in and of itself.

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The sleepwalking press: betrayers of the American people with blood on its hands.
Posted by: HughScott on Mar 28, 2007 5:36 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Tragically for our GIs in Iraq and their families, the only Americans making a sacrifice in Gulf War 2, the U.S. electorate didn't learn in 2004 what a devious president Bush was because the media failed to perform its most important duty: uncovering dishonest government leaders.

How else can you explain a self-taught journalist like me finding a falsified White House biography on the Internet that claimed George W. had flown Air National Guard jets almost SIX years when the actual time was 27 months.

There were other misrepresentations as well -- all intentional, not typos or mistaken dictation.

Of all places, Bush’s bogus bio had been published on a State Department website for the whole world to see. Everyone except the sleepwalking press, that is.

To validate my discovery, I called the Boston Globe. Impressed, it ran the story the next morning, on 02/28/04, under the headline, “Bush Bio on Web Inflates Guard Service,” and gave me credit as the source.

For me, a Republican, and millions of Democratic voters as well, the implication of that headline was crystal clear. Had we known about Bush’s falsified biography in 2000, he wouldn't be our 43rd U.S. president

Think about it. The 2000 election was too close to call. Disclosing George W.’s missing (AWOL) Guard service would most certainly have caused some of the 25 million war veterans and active duty personnel to switch their support to Al Gore, who served in Vietnam and won the Bronze Star.

Despite Shrub's ability to hide his past transgressions, he still lost the popular election by 538,000 votes and only became Commander-in-Chief after winning Florida's Electoral College with a paper-thin margin of 537 ballots. A mere 300-vote swing would have made former Army Sgt. Gore the winner.

Of the thousands of enlisted servicemen who supported Gov. Bush in the Sunshine State, how many do you suppose would have voted as Democrats after learning he had shirked his sworn military duty during the Vietnam War? Three hundred, perhaps?

How about a slam-dunk 3,000 -- the reason Dub-ya cheated in 2000 and did so four years later. Winning obviously meant everything to him; being an honest candidate with integrity did not.

Unfortunately, the Globe published my scoop on a Saturday and it died the same day when no other newspaper or media outlet carried the story. For that reason, I always end my AlterNet comments the following way:

Hugh E. Scott, editor of King-George.biz -- the only website with hardcopy proof of White House corruption.

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Film on “Radical Islam” Tied to Pro-Israel Groups by Khody Akhavi
Posted by: rwa on Mar 28, 2007 8:13 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
A controversial documentary on the threat of radical Islam, promoted by the two most-watched U.S. cable news networks, was marketed and supported in part by self-described “pro-Israel” groups, according to an IPS investigation.

Abbreviated versions and segments of “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” ran on FOX News and CNN, but neither station disclosed the film’s connection to HonestReporting, a watchdog group that monitors the media for allegedly negative portrayals of Israel.

HonestReporting marketed “Obsession” but denies it produced or funded the project.

“We initially gave some guidance to the ‘Obsession’ staff,” wrote Pesach Bensen, editor of Mediabackspin.com, the organization’s weblog, in an email response to IPS. “We’re thrilled to see it succeed beyond our wildest expectations.”

When “Obsession” was released last year, news pundits and anchors on FOX and CNN praised the independent film for its candid look at Islamic militancy. FOX incorporated footage from the film into a one-hour special, which aired seven times in November 2006. CNN’s right-wing pundit Glen Beck called it “one of the most important films of our time”. Sean Hannity of FOX News described it as “shocking beyond belief”.

While such enthusiasm from right-wing talk show personalities comes as no surprise, mainstream cable news programs also appeared to accept, without question, the premise of the film, which explicitly compares the threat posed by radical Islam to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Consider, for example, CNN news anchor Kyra Phillips’s exhortations during an adulatory interview in December 2006 with Raphael Shore, the film’s producer: “I encourage everybody to see this movie, you definitely get an incredible education from watching this film. The movie left many of us speechless. We appreciate what you’ve done.”

HonestReporting was founded in 2000 by British university students who objected to what they considered anti-Israel coverage by European media in response to the second Palestinian intifada.

Brian Gaffney, executive producer of the FOX News Documentary Unit, declined to comment on whether HonestReporting’s connection was disclosed to the audience, or whether FOX was aware of the organization’s ideological perspective.
“There is no mistaking that this was a film with a clear point of view,” Gaffney wrote in an email to IPS. “Its forceful case against Radical Islam spoke for itself.

In the case of CNN, which ran segments of the film in the context of a joint interview with Shore and cast member Nonie Darwish, it appears that producers were unaware of the connection.

“I was told that HonestReporting was not involved with this film,” said CNN's Megan Mahoney...

“Obsession” features interviews with Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, investigative journalist Steve Emerson, Itimar Marcus of Israel-based Palestinian Media Watch, and Daniel Pipes, a controversial scholar whose website campus-watch.org sparked criticism in 2002 for its alleged McCarthyesque attacks on Middle East studies professors.

Its production credits include the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, a translation service founded in 1998 by Col. Yigal Carmon, who spent more than 20 years in Israeli intelligence...

While the film contains disclaimers stating that “it’s important to remember most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror,” critics argue that it makes little distinction between the religion of Islam and the political realities that inform terrorism.

“It’s all part of that industry of Muslim bashers,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

commondreams.org

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Then vs Now
Posted by: NoPCZone on Mar 28, 2007 8:38 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Back when Vietnam was being covered by TV, the people doing it were Journalists from the old school and had come up from Newspapers and wire services. Today's crop are the products of local TV. Need I say more...

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The media is owned by the same interests who backed Bush in 2000
Posted by: thoughtcriminal on Mar 28, 2007 9:32 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It should be clearly understood that the US corporate media doesn't 'report the news'; they are a propaganda and entertainment service. They operate at the 'intellectual level' (The NYT, the WSJ, the WP, etc.) and at the 'emotional level' (essentially all the television news - FOX, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.). Anyone who gets their news soley from such sources will certainly have a highly biased view of things - and this is deliberate.

Just go to http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/ to find out who owns your local newspaper. For example, the Los Angeles Times is owned by the Tribune Corporation. Who are they? Go to http://finance.yahoo.com/lookup and get their stock ticker symbol (TRB). They are a major corporation, with $7.5 billion market capitalization. So... who owns them? Scroll down the left of the yahoo finance page until you see "Major Holders".

Dissecting the ownership page is tricky. Look at the top for "% of shares held by institutional and mutual funds"; if this number is small, it probably means the corporation is controlled by secretive hedge funds, who (thanks to Bush's SEC appointments) don't have to reveal ownership... very similar to the financial secrecy surrounding US corporate investment in the Nazis in the 30's (that SEC rule dates back to 1940 and was inspired by the Nazi financing; IG Farben, Standard Oil (Exxon), etc.).

In any case, for the Tribune (LA Times) some of the main KNOWN holders are Barclays (top holder of Exxon), State Street, Fidelity, Vanguard - banks, who probably keep their client list very private, and who are also the major holders of defense corporation stocks, pharmaceutical stocks, oil and coal stocks - you get the picture.

The banks and hedge funds and private equity groups simply use their media holdings to promote their economic and political agendas. Since the war in Iraq, aka Wall Street's War, has been immensely profitable, with the goal being the control of Iraqi oilfields and a complete privatization of Iraqi resources (water, etc.), the wholly owned US corporate media continues to support it.

After all, the war would never have been possible without the loud support of the US corporate media, who actively participated in the lies and deception, fully knowing what they were doing.

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All I can say is
Posted by: Mewsician on Mar 28, 2007 10:17 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Thank God for the Internet. It is coming into its own just in the nick of time, and will hasten the demise of the appallling elements in the MSM that have wholly abdicated their responsibilities as watchdogs. I shudder to think what conditions this country would be facing without the explosive growth of blogs and citizen-journalists; to every cloud there is a silver lining, and the Internet is the silver lining to the cloud of the MSM's failures.

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What the media should be and is!
Posted by: Conservasaurus on Mar 28, 2007 12:26 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The media should be impartial, and put forth honest reporting, unaltered by political opinions etc. The NY Times is a perfect example of a paper that is toitally driven by an extreme liberal agenda that makes suspect anything it prints!

There are pro conservative papers as well that are just as bad but the Times has actually jeapordized the US security in some instances. Too bad, they have a great Automotive section!

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» Huh???? Posted by: CatDad
For newspapers, February was the cruelest month. So far. By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Posted by: rwa on Mar 28, 2007 1:22 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Revenue from advertising was in striking decline last month, compared with February a year ago, and were generally weaker than analysts had expected.

“I’m reluctant to say that a single data point is a trend,” said Barry Parr, a media analyst at Jupiter Research. “But those are scary numbers, especially when we’re not in a recession.”

At USA Today, the nation’s biggest newspaper, ad revenue was down 14 percent this February, compared with February last year. Gannett, which owns USA Today and is the nation’s biggest newspaper company, reported that its overall ad revenue declined 3.8 percent in February from February 2006.

Ad revenue at The New York Times Company fell 6 percent overall, declining 7.5 percent at The New York Times; ad revenue at the company’s New England Media Group, which includes The Boston Globe, was down 4 percent. At The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones, it was off 10 percent.

The Tribune Company, whose papers include The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun, reported losses of more than 5 percent. So did McClatchy, whose papers include The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee and The Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky...

Most of the numbers were worse than January’s and came after a difficult year in which many newspapers continued to pare costs by laying off employees, shrinking the physical size of their print publications and reducing benefits. Several newspapers also tried raising revenue by accepting advertising in prominent spaces that they had long reserved for news...

Mark Fratrik, an economist at BIA Financial Network, said the February results were “not a blip on the screen.”

“It’s fundamental, what’s going on with newspapers,” he said. “The younger groups, the most desired demographics, are just not reading them. They aren’t listening to traditional radio either, but I tell radio broadcasters that they’re lucky not to be in newspapers.”

Mirroring the slide in ad revenue is a long slow decline in circulation.

Newspaper circulation nationally reached its peak in 1984, when there were 1,600 morning and afternoon paid dailies with a circulation of 63 million. With the rise of cable television and, later, the Internet, newspaper circulation began to decline. Today there are 1,450 paid dailies with a circulation of 53 million. The losses have accelerated over the last two years.

While many newspapers still have healthy profit margins, their costs are up and ad revenue is down.

nytimes.com

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» what people buy: Posted by: rwa
The Case for Impeaching Fraudo, Freako, and Fredo-Part I: Obstruction of Justice
Posted by: Lazerus on Mar 28, 2007 2:30 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Bush (incompetent fraud = Fraudo) lied about his criminal behavior and record and being AWOL from the Alabama National Guard prior to the election and his intervention on behalf of Enron’s Ken Lay after the election. Cheney (scary freak = Freako) lied about his health-status prior to the election and the cause for war with Iraq after the election. Gonzalez (nickname Fredo) counseled that the President is virtually above the law in general and is not bound by the quaint restrictions of the Geneva Conventions in particular. The media gave them a pass on these lies and others too numerous to mention.

The Bush Administration has initiated a preemptive war that has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people; embraced torture, scientific censorship, book-burning (the EPA's so-called Library Plan), a state-sponsored religion, and intentionally politically divisive issues such as gay marriage and flag burning; made conflict-of-interest appointments that weaken regulatory oversight of the private sector; took actions that constitute violations of the right to privacy, the Constitution, the laws of the U.S.A., and international treaties; dismissed those who opposed these violations of national or international law; and systematically lied about all of the preceding transgressions and crimes.

Unfortunately, there is no Bush precedent in lying to the American people and/or Congress about the who, what, where, why, and how of war. (See Part II of this posting for support.) Congress wanted to be lied to about the Iraq War, because all of the evidence that is cited now to highlight Bush's duplicity was available to inquiring minds before the vote on the Iraq War resolution. And Bush is smart enough not to appear under oath before Congress or a Grand Jury, because lying under oath is an impeachable offense, as President Clinton learned, even over something as seemingly trivial as to whether he was engaged in an extra-marital affair. Therefore, short of impeachment, he is immune to the consequences of his lies not under oath, while we are not.

Committing or conspiring to commit misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, and dereliction of duty during time of war might be an impeachable offense, because through his lies he is aiding and abetting the enemy while enriching himself and his friends at our expense. But making the case would be dicey, because Congress has aided and abetted him in this with its own misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, and dereliction of duty, even though it was on the Republican watch. And remember who voted for the Feingold Resolution? Not Obama or Clinton.

Violating the Geneva and U.N. Conventions regarding the initiation, conduct, and adjudication of war should be an impeachable offense, but the Raging Right would spin it as an alien intrusion on our God-given right to conduct war in whatever way we see fit, so it would not carry the required political weight. Now all we have to do is burn the Reichstag (Twin Towers?), and we can begin to round up the usual suspects (homosexuals, flag-burners, liberals, Jews, gypsies, pornographers, degenrates, tramps, and thieves).

Now, as with Nixon, Bush is likely to have engaged in obstruction of justice, whether protecting his friends in Enron from the regulatory consequences of manipulating the energy market, political manipulation of the federal investigatory priorities for political gain, or firing those who did not play ball with his politicized DOJ agenda. So those who see no significance in the confrontation with the President over the firings of the eight Federal Prosecutors, think again.

The dark-ages of the Bush Administration and the sorry state it has left us in as a nation must come to an end as soon as possible. The means to that end is impeachment. The basis for impeachment is obstruction of justice. Let's get on with it.

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Some of that disappeared steel may still be somewhere!
Posted by: Robert_Hoogenboom@leftfoot.com.au on Mar 28, 2007 2:37 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
As someone said, part of the steel may still be somewhere. The thing is to get to Giuliani fast. Wastn't he the one that arranged for the steel to be shipped off overseas as quickly as possible? He and his office, and the contractors involved, know where that steel went. Surely a group of brave individuals, together with some clever, sympathetic lawyer, can think of a few lawsuits that will force him to divulge the relevant information quickly? Who knows, some of that steel may even still be in America. I hate seeing statements to the effect that the steel, the evidence, is gone and that therefore we may never get to the truth!

The prime minister of Australia, Johnny Howard, is wholly on the side of Bush, and is endangering Australia, which has 250 millions muslim Indonesians as its neighbour. He firmly believes that those 3000 Americans were murdered by al Qaeda that morning.

Robert Hoogenboom
Sydney, Australia

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The Case for Impeachment of Bush, Cheney, and Gonzalez – II: The History of Presidential Liars and T
Posted by: Lazerus on Mar 28, 2007 3:06 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Lying to a Grand Jury or Congress under oath would be an impeachable offense. Lying to Congress not under oath to obtain the desired political end, even the cause of war, is the coin of the political realm.

Lincoln lied continuously to the American people and Congress about his abolitionist agenda for the War between the States, allowing it to emerge only in proportion to the fortunes of the Civil War. He even couched the Emancipation Proclamation as for the pragmatic purpose of opening a third front against the Confederate States by depriving them of farm labor while supplying the Union with a new source of highly motivated soldiers, which would have the necessary if unpalatable consequence of recognizing negroes as free men. Only in historical hindsight has the War between the States been transmogrified into the much nobler cause to free the slaves. (Read the Oxford English Dictionary’s History of the Civil War to get an unbiased perspective on its causes, execution, and consequences.)

Roosevelt lied to the American people and Congress, most of whom were isolationists, about the nature and extent of the pre-WWII lend-lease program with Britain.

Eisenhower was not fully forthcoming with the American people and Congress when he withdrew support for the right of the Vietnamese people to vote for the reunification of Vietnam in 1954 or the role of the CIA in toppling the popular Mohammed Mosaddeq in Iran the preceding year, replacing him with the young Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, because Mosaddeq wanted to nationalize the Iranian oil industry, as his more recent incarnation Hugo Chavez wants to do in Venezuela. These decisions, which were made in good faith to limit the spread of Soviet Communism, had the unintended blowback consequences of the Vietnam War and, now, the coming confrontation with Iran.

Kennedy initiated a CIA-sponsored coup in South Vietnam in 1962 that toppled one less warlike U.S. puppet, Diem, to replace him with another more warlike puppet. If the rightness of our cause in Vietnam hadn't been irretrievably lost when Eisenhower froze the free election for national unity, it went up in smoke in that instant.

Johnson was not fully forthcoming about the confrontation with North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin or his pre-war assessment that we could not win the war of insurgency with the nationalists in Vietnam, but he initiated it anyway over fear of impeachment, not a belief in the rightness of the U.S. cause in keeping the dominoes from falling to the Communist hegemony. “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Where is George Santayana when we need him?

And then, of course, there was Nixon. He had the good grace to quit rather than be impeached for obstruction of justice, not lying about his involvement in the Watergate coverup.

If incompetence were an impeachable crime, then Jimmy Carter only survived because he had a Democrat majority in Congress. Reagan's most significant lie was about Iran-Contra, but if his lips were moving, he was lying, even if you could see the strings attached. So even here Bush’s puppet-like, incompetent, lying performance has set no Presidential precedent.

No, if we're going to paint Bush into a corner, where even parsing the definition of "is" cannot shelter one from the consequence of one's lies, it has to be over obstruction of justice. Ultimately, we are and must remain a nation of laws, and even the President is not above the law, the legal pronouncements of a political hack appointee such as Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General notwithstanding.

Lazerus

P.S.

Rather than dismiss members of Congress without the stomach for impeachment with the slang word for the female genitalia, I think it more appropriate to refer to them as eunuchs, geldings, or spays.

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The Case for Impeachment of Bush, Cheney, and Nixon - Correction
Posted by: Lazerus on Mar 28, 2007 3:16 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The Diem Coup occured in 1963, although its engineering by the CIA could have begun in the preceding year.

Lazerus

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WHAT NEWS ?
Posted by: VZEQICVA on Mar 28, 2007 3:48 PM   
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When news reporting wasn't just another way to make money it was much closer to the truth. We were better off with 15 min. of just plain news without commercial sponsors. Now it's entertainment, fashion, witty beautiful people and not much about what we should know about. That's why we're reading this. Thanks, ANNA

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Since comments have meandered to impeachment, consider this about Devious Dub-ya.
Posted by: HughScott on Mar 28, 2007 3:57 PM   
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One month before 9/11, President Bush received the following intelligence memo:

"Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in U.S."

Clandestine, foreign government and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S. Bin Ladin implied in television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."

After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a ...(redacted portion) ... service.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an ... (redacted portion) ... service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operatives access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Ladin's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.

Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Ladin associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

Al-Qaida members -- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qaida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks. We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ... (redacted portion) ... service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" Umar Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

End of August 9, 2001, intelligence memo.

As the memo shows, dots leading to 9/11 were the size of Goodyear blimps, but the Bush White House never made the connections, too busy planning tax breaks for the rich and toppling Saddam Hussein. Is that enough to impeach George W.? Of course.

NOTE. The above text was copied from King-George.biz -- the only website with hardcopy proof of White House corruption.

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Today's "News" Shows
Posted by: gladstone on Mar 28, 2007 4:05 PM   
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Might as well be watching the Munsters. You get the same level of "journalism," but with better clothes and music.

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Consolidation of media is the disease - we are the cure
Posted by: UnEasyOne on Mar 28, 2007 7:29 PM   
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Let's face it, 90% of our "journalists" are just whores. They got where they are by toeing the company line whether they believe it or not. What chance do you think an outspoken progressive has of rising to the top in a megacorp owned by right-wing billionaires? MSM outlets are becoming increasingly less relevent. They've been relevent for the last 30 years only because we had no alternative! Choosing what "news" we are going to be spoonfed no longer works. The Gonzoles scandal was considered a real yawner by the MSM - now it has legs. Another one still below the radar, that isn't gonna die just because the MSM wants it to quietly fade away, is the placement of political commisars in every federal agency to spin and control the outflow of information. I used to read my local paper every day. Now they tend to stack up unless I make a real effort. And I am so much better informed than I was! When the time comes to renew my subscription, it's gonna be a real decision - my wife uses the coupons in the Sunday paper.

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STAY ALERT MY FRIENDS
Posted by: ccluelessfl60 on Mar 28, 2007 10:53 PM   
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MSM wants our internet. They did not see it coming ,but now they are really worried that we can ferret out facts that they hide. We do not need editorial opinions when we can share our own take on issues. The powers that be, are staying up nights trying to figure out a way to restrict our right to human discourse. It is still amazing to me I can read what other Americans think and believe without going through a biased filter. But we will have to stay vigilant that they do not take our new found freedoms away from us. AT&T is getting stronger every day and they long for the monopolistic past. So stay alert, my friends, for they are going to keep breathing down our backs.They will revisit net neutrality until they wear us out. But we have to stay alert no matter who is in power.

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What's wrong with this picture?
Posted by: rwa on Mar 29, 2007 7:50 AM   
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March 28, 2007

PHOTO: Graffiti on the wall of a home in the Amil district of Baghdad reads "Wanted blood, Hell for infidels." As families begin to return to the neighborhoods they fled, the threat of sectarian violence remains. (Max Becherer/Polaris, for The New York Times)

What’s wrong with this photo?


This is most suspicious. Call me conspiratorial--please, do; I mean it. It does not offend me in these times. The New York Times published this picture today with this caption: "Graffiti on the wall of a home in the Amil district of Baghdad reads "Wanted blood, Hell for infidels." As families begin to return to the neighborhoods they fled, the threat of sectarian violence remains." But anybody who knows Arabic will notice something really odd and fishy about the graffiti: It is not written by an Arabic speaker. It does not read Arabic, and the basic words for blood and infidels are misspelled, and the sentence structure is wrong. As if it was written in another language and then google-translated, or something.
Actually, it is very similar to a google translation. I just wanted to share this photo and the questions around it - many things going on in Iraq and the Middle East are not as they first appear.

by news about Iraq

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MYTH OF THE LIBERAL MEDIA
Posted by: traynor on Mar 29, 2007 8:49 AM   
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Educate yourselves:
Watch this Video, "The Myth of the Liberal Media"

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