...that keep me in the game.

I remember coiming to DU for the first time (could it be?) seven years ago (almost to the day; my first post was 5/21/01).

One super-hot topic of conversation way back then, back when we were using boulders as mouse-clickers and nobody had been forced just yet to realize that, yeah, it is that bad now...

...we on DU really really REALLY were wrapped up in re-establishing the Fairness Doctrine regarding media ownership.

Seven years later, I find this random link on the AP wire:

Senate votes to roll back media ownership rule
By JOHN DUNBAR, Associated Press Writer
17 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Senate Thursday night voted to nullify a Federal Communications Commission rule that allows media companies to own a newspaper and a television station in the same market. The unusual "resolution of disapproval," sponsored by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and 26 other senators, was approved by a voice vote. The measures sponsors include both Democratic candidates for president, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois.

Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has described the agency's action as a "relatively minor loosening" of broadcast media ownership restrictions. The rule was approved by the FCC on a 3-2 party-line vote in December with both Democrats dissenting. The FCC decision allows one company to own a newspaper and a broadcast station in the nation's 20 largest metropolitan areas. The TV station may not be among the top four in the market, and post-transaction, at least eight independent media voices must remain. The rule replaced an outright ban on cross-ownership.

Dorgan said the FCC action opened a "gaping loophole for more mergers of newspapers and television stations across the country." Martin has said any exception to the media ownership rule would face a "very high hurdle."The House is also considering a nullification of the ownership rule, but even if supporters are successful, the measure would likely be rejected by President Bush.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said he was "disappointed with the Senate's action" and would recommend to the president that he veto the bill. "The FCC's approach modernizes a 30-year-old rule in a way that im the financial viability of the newspaper industry, which faces an increasingly competitive media market," he said. The FCC's media ownership decision has been met with opposition on both sides. The newspaper industry has complained that the FCC did not go far enough, while activists who want to keep big media companies from getting bigger said the agency went too far.

Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, opposed the FCC's action. In recent years, we have seen an increase in coarse and violent programming, coupled with a decrease in local news and hard-hitting journalism," Inouye said Thursday night. "To say these trends are not in the best interest of the American people, and especially our youngest citizens, is clearly an understatement."

Obama issued a statement supporting the vote.

More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080516/ap_on_...



Yeah, the sneaky bastards actually pulled this off (pending successful veto override)...

While everyone was watching the California gay marriage development (I'd be impressed if I wasn't from Massachusetts... ), these bastards passed legislation that will (if it survives) help to keep our scary media ownership caste from using the 224 channels they own to inculcate (via subtle broadcast noise) people with the unswerving belief that all gayness makes the Baby Jesus cry, ergo gayness must be exterminated...turn to channel 9 if you're confused.

Hm...spook the Jesus freaks with bi-penis/quad-ball weddings, and then pass monolithic free-info legislation while everyone is looking the other way.

Heh. I love it when the good guys manage to pull off a good old-fashioned bait-and-switch.

***HEY LOOK, MARRIED HOMOS!!!***

(p.s. your TV news now has 0.0007% less outrageous bullshit in it)

(p.p.s. and that 0.0007% willl save seven or more lives, maybe, if we all keep pushing)

Barr announces Libertarian White House bid
Former Republican's entry could cost McCain votes

WASHINGTON - Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr launched a Libertarian Party presidential bid Monday, saying voters are hungry for an alternative to the status quo who would dramatically cut the federal government.

His candidacy throws a wild card into the White House race that many believe could peel away votes from Republican Sen. John McCain given the candidates' similar positions on fiscal policy.

Barr, who has hired Ross Perot's former campaign manager, acknowledged that some Republicans have tried to discourage him from running. But he said he's getting in the race to win, not to play spoiler or to make a point.

More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24582429/

Screw the hand-wringers and the always-wrong punditry who want it to be damaging so they can be buzzards as usual.

This has been one of the better things to happen in America in a long time. Both candidates deserve our gratitude, but Clinton moreso for staying in even after the numbers ran out of spinning space.

Think about it.

1. When was the last time you can remember so many people, so many usual non-voters, so many new voters, so many Black and Hispanic voters whose absence from the polls tends to directly affect their lives, almost always to their deficit, with much more immediacy than in other blocs of voters.

That right there is a coalition, shades of what Bobby Kennedy and later George McGovern were trying to pull together. Bobby had it, and maybe they laid him low exactly because he had it. McGovern tried, and did really well considering what he was up against in his own party. The party powers (explained by Hunter Thompson as "the Meany, Daley, Humphrey axis") fought him tooth and nail all the way to the convention, where he scrambled their eggs using the new convention rules he had written with his own hand after the '68 debacle (at the behest of M-D-H, ironically enough).

The Bobby/George (sorta Teddy) coalition still exists, and pretty much has to deal with the same shit their predecessors went through 36 years ago: shitass war, bastard president, fucked economy, contempt and violence from cops (less so now, but a groom did just take a pound of lead to his grave from four shooter cops who were declared guiltless...just sayin') and a general sense that rules don't apply to the political leadership, and the whole promise behind the idea of America looked a lot like some campy bullshit from the 50's. Thus began the 70s.

And:

2. I just LOVE that all these back-of-the-list states get a chance to decide the fate of the planet. Seriously. Remember last time in '04, all the bitching about so many states not getting to be involved after Super Tuesday. Well, be careful what you wish for. But it's magnificent. Give a citizen a shoven, tell them their digging will really make a difference and means they are totally involved, and they'll dig deep enough to be stopped by granite bedrock.

Indiana changed history. NC did, too. West Virginia is next up to be the center of the world, then Kentucky and Oregon...and the last to come are Montana, South Dakota...and Puerto freakin' Rico. I don't think that island has ever swung electoral weight. Now it does. All of them bursting with Democratic voter interest, they're in this thing for real, they have two prime super-sharp rumble-ready yet historically distinctive candidates to follow. State after state has reported primary voters making choices in the booth, beause they couldn't decide between this pair of ass-kickers, and when our voters are charged up to vote like they have been since February, when turnout and new voters skyrocket, we always always always win.

If this swings right in November, that enthusiasm might take root and stay a while...another midterm, a re-elected president...etc...

Democracy will be better for this campaign. I am grateful to Senator Clinton for staying in this long, though she is not my choice. Her staying in has given millions of Americans a piece of the best part of this national idea, which many had lost long ago in resigned surrender to the fact of their electoral irrelevance. She gave them back their participation and truest way to be a patriot actively involved to move things towards that better possibility we all know can be attained.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if that very ballot-borne blessing to voters, real involvement creating genuine influence, is maybe some part of the unspoken iron that has kept her on that bastard road. If so, she has done an amazing service to the country. If it is merely a consequence shaped by other motives, and not even a hidden idea anywhere in the campaign braintrust, well, it happened anyway, and she's pretty awesome for it, even by accident.

When Black voters turn out in monolitic numbers in every state (which they would most likely do for either candidate), it will checkmate the bloc of GOP base voters. Young voters, new voters, pissed Democrats, independents who want to shake shit up, and a large majority of erstwhile Clinton voters despite the volume of "no way" threats should Obama win through. They'll vote, most of them...and if only half vote, the slack will be picked up by a lot of folks on the Left who don't want McCain, and who see the larger social and historical context involved in a Black man becoming president.

It cannot be avoided, and if it is achieved, we will be just a little bit better as a nation for it. Ditto on many equally important yet different social/historical levels if Clinton wins through. The descendants of less equal Americans whose lineage has ancestors who lived fettered and powerless, literally and figuratively. Society, religious fundamentalism and black-letter law saw them as dumb beasts unfit to occupy the same space as decent people, or as petticoated chattel denied books and education and doomed to the empty existence of an inanimate decoration who could breed, had no legal defense against abuse, and usually kept quiet. Women have enjoyed the right to vote for less than 100 years, Black people less than 50, generally speaking. Think about that, and then consider those two again.

Yeah, this is good shit. This is big.

And when all that enthusiasm gets released come November (having been bottled since the primary vote they cast which shool the pillars of the Earth), when Black voters and young voters and independents combine with that large swath of Dem voters from our base (union members, teachers, smart people who don't resent paying taxes because they like roads and schools and garbage getting piked up and stuff) combine with the activist base who ALWAYS love to vote

...I do believe...

...we're gonna blow the fucking doors off McCain's bullshit bus tour. And pick up Senate seats, and House seats.

No promises, no sure thing, anything can happen and we're up against ghouls in blue suits who have power beyond reason or the protection of law.

But whn voters care, they can stand up next to a mountain and chop it down with the edge of their hand.

Thanks, Hillary. Thanks, Barack. Try to see if you can keep it going through these last states. Montana deserves it after dumping Conrad Burns in '06, and we bomb Puerto Rico with radioactive cannonfire in practice for war, so those voters deserve to swing the bat for real contact.

Behold this slightly improved democracy, new voters, psyched voters, and a hard choice between candidates.

History made no matter what.

Raise a Glass to the Tired Campaigners
By Michael Powell
The New York Times

May 6, 2008, 7:40 pm

In the last hours of yet another election day — the 42nd? The 44th? Did I miss the trip to American Samoa? The Obama campaign turned to drink in North Carolina.

Barack Obama spent half an hour or so working the neighborhood of Downtown Raleigh, and more to the point a bar called The Raleigh Times (Want a metaphor for our business? This was the site of the now-departed Raleigh Times. No inebriated editor types immediately visible). He walked in, hand in hand with Michelle; she was more or less immediately handed a pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Mr. Obama found himself momentarily beerless. As the primary season has semi-bizarrely centered of late on his eating and drinking (he stands accused of doing too little of either), he moved quickly.

“Where’s my beer?” he asked, loud enough for the reporters to hear. What’s your pleasure, Mr. Candidate? He eyed an array of mighty fine micro brews on tap, from the loverly amber Maharaja IPA to the “naturally cloudy” Blanche Bruxelles. He zeroed in on the mass market. “PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon, for the unitiated),” he said.

An Illinois man recently asked to be buried in a casket in the shape of a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, but I digress. Mr. Obama held up the pint, said “Cheers!” and quickly took a sip, then another, then another. Having established he was a sport — albeit not an inebriated one — he set to working the crowd.

He talked the economy with a banker and a business woman and then turned to the very perky Allison Humphries, who wore an Obama button. She was “in sales” and set about trying to convince him to order up a beautiful set of counter-tops for the White House. What kind do they have at the White House, she asked. Mr. Obama squinted at her, and shrugged. “I really don’t know what kind of countertops we have there,” he said. “That’s waaaaay out of my depth.”

He moved away; she shook her head. “He thinks I’m kidding …”

More: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05... /

No, this isn't a "concern" post. If you don't know what I mean here, look around. Looks like Mr. Blumenthal has been working hammer and tong to proliferate all sorts of right-wing psycho rumors about Senator Obama. Y'know, the ones that say he's a Manchurian candidate Islamofascist mole who hates America when not on drugs and intends to sell the Sixth Fleet to Osama etc etc etc.

I read a lot of his books, and did a long interview with him back in '03. This part jumps out:

WRP: A great deal of what the right puts out into the mainstream news media comes from think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. They have a fearsome machine for crafting and disbursing messages. Why haven't Democrats developed the same political infrastructure the right has?

SB: In the 1980s, I studied the rise of conservative infrastructure. I wrote a book about it that was published in 1986 called 'The Rise of the Counter-Establishment.' When I was a reporter with the Washington Post, the Post published many of my reports about this. It was considered to be a revelation by people, but the right had already been devoting decades to this, and it?s been now decades since I first did that basic reporting. The right's infrastructure is now far larger than, I think, all but a few people understand.

I believe they spend about one quarter of a billion dollars a year on this infrastructure. Their funding is highly centralized and coordinated; call it a 'Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy' if you like, but it is done through a small group of people who generally direct funds to dozens of right-wing groups including the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, and so on. There is nothing like it beyond the right.

The reason for this is that, for may years, people thought the right was on the margins, on the fringe, not to be taken seriously. Part of that is because there is very little genuine scholarship going on over on the right. There are a lot of polemics, a lot of ideological sharpshooting, a lot of tendentious studies done that use and manipulate statistics. The Heritage Foundation doesn't have a single scholar of any standing. AEI is filled with the likes of Richard Perle and Robert Bork. Liberals, if you will, believe in the broad-based institutions of American society, including universities. The right wing is doing everything it can to polarize every single institution it can, from the media to the academy, and now trying to consume even religion in its ideological wars.

You can see that through the heavily-funded, carefully targeted splitting of religions by the right, such as the Episcopal Church over the gay bishop. All of that is funded and directed, part of a strategy. Do not doubt it. Now, the Methodists are targeted. The Southern Baptists convention was turned in the 1980s. Its very theology, on the question of abortion, was altered. It was altered directly by a political aide sitting in the Reagan White House as it was being re-written. Such is the priesthood of the believer.

Democrats have only lately come to this realization that there is such a conservative infrastructure, that it has an enormous impact on politics, and that it is fully integrated into, and even taken over, parts of the Republican party.

One of the glitches in the Democratic state of mind was that the accusations against the Clintons were somehow just about the Clintons. There had to be something to it, because where there is smoke, there is fire. There were so many accusations. How could it all be untrue? After all, the Clintons came from darkest Arkansas. There had to be something wrong, some dark spot in their background. And so the Democrats believed it was about the Clintons personally. Then Al Gore ran for President, an Eagle Scout. And he was transformed into a liar and an exaggerator, though the charges against him were lies and exaggerations. Then Tom Daschle, a mild person of integrity, was demonized as lacking patriotism. Then Max Cleland, the Senator from Georgia who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was conflated with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and was too stunned and shocked even to reply. He lost his seat, the one seat that was the margin in turning the Senate.

So, the Democrats have slowly and belatedly come to the realization that the whole campaign to grab power against them may not be about individual persons and their foibles. Maybe its about power itself, and the Republican impulse and will to power.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/120803A.sh...

I don't have any bad feelings because he's working for Senator Clinton; I'd be frankly surprised if he wasn't. But he gets whackeed for driving drunk, and now he's taking pages out of the very same playbook he concentrated years of scholarship on exposing and denouncing.

Bums me out.

http://howinsaneisjohnmccain.blogspot.com /

Do it.

Here's the first story on that page:

http://howinsaneisjohnmccain.blogspot.com/...

Barack Obama Realizes Running For President Completely Sucks

WASHINGTON - After a long primary campaign in which he has been forced to answer questions about his unstable former pastor, flag lapel pins, and assorted crazy people he once met a long time ago, all while consuming a bewildering array of fatty food products in crappy diners across America, Barack Obama announced on Monday that running for president completely sucks. "This blows. I'm sick and tired of running for president," he said. "Now watch Fox News quote me saying 'that blows' and try and convince people I snort cocaine."

Campaign officials admit that the beleaguered Obama has been questioning why in the hell anyone would even want to be president. "Oh sure," campaign manager David Plouffe admitted. "Just the other day he told me that no sane person would ever want to be president. Then I reminded him that he's running against two people who actually are insane. That got him through the day."

Political analysts are mixed about how Obama's sudden realization about the sheer suckitude of running for president will affect the race. "Jeremiah Wright, Jeremiah Wright, Jeremiah Wright, Jeremiah Wright, Jeremiah Wright," Bill O'Reilly told reporters, "Jeremiah Wright, Jeremiah Wright, Weather Underground, Jeremiah Wright."

Obama confirmed that there were times he wondered if this whole president thing could possibly be worth it. "That situation room in the White House had better be seriously James Bond. I'm talking exploding pens and cars with missile launchers. Otherwise I might as well have just stayed at home and gotten some sleep this past year."

...more...

Bye. See you tomorrow. You'll be reading this shit all night and L-ing your A O.

You're welcome.

We're going win.

No matter the D nominee.

We're going to win.

Period.

End of file.

It's Funny How Funny Just the Facts Can Be
'Daily Show' Staffer Mines News for Laughs

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 30, 2008; Page C01

So here's Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq four years ago, describing the situation in a TV interview in September 2003: "We're not in a quagmire," he's saying confidently. "The progress is unbelievable."

So what about that progress, general? Because here's Sanchez, now retired, talking about Iraq in a video clip from last October: "There has been a glaring, unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders. . . . There's no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight."

The before-and-after videos didn't air on CNN or MSNBC or ABC. Instead, the revealing sound bites ran back to back on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." The satiric Comedy Central program regularly unearths telling footage ignored or overlooked by the real news guys.

Or, to be specific, Adam Chodikoff does.

Chodikoff, 37, doesn't perform on the show or write the gags that pepper Stewart's take on the day's news. But as the show's chief researcher and video wiz, he's the vital link in the program's comedic ecosystem. Chodikoff's job is to dig through the vast quarry of TV news footage to find the nuggets that form the program's pointed, often eye-opening "reporting." In a manner of speaking, he's an investigative humorist.



More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...

Sounds familiar...right, I did a lot of that myself.

K'.

1. 1886 Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad...14th Amendment rights given to corporations, blessing these faceless non-things with the same rights as you and I.

Hedges needs to explain how to undo that.

2. Buckley v. Valeo, 1976...campaign donations are ruled to be free speech, thus birthging the legalized wholesale bribery of everyone in government down to the guy who waters the grass. This isn't really any sort of controlling law nowadays, because a) there are nine others far worse and far harder to regulate; 2) even if there was a perfect campaign finance reform law passed today, 30 years of corporations using their 14th amendment rights to buy politicians by the long ton using big green expressions of free speech. The deal went down when Reagan still knew what an MX missile looked like.

Fix?

3. Truman Doctrine + 1947 "Permanent Wartime Economic Footing" bill that gave us the DoD and so much else, thanks to Kennan's long telegram from Moscow that basically used 8,000 well-crafted words to say "Stalin is fucking crazy and his army is huge." I'm too goddam tired to go back and nitpick Cold War decisions. The fact remains that containment, whatever merits it had back then, became it's own reason for being well before they laid Jack low for daring to upset the applecart (which is true even if you think Oswald did it, everyone with a grudge against JFK was dancing to the Cold War beat, it was basically the gravity that held it all together...and paid the bills, and kept citizens scared, which made them easy to manage, etc.)

So, Eisenhower tried to warn us and became Cassandra with General's stars, and the containment policy pushed 60 cents of every dollar into the coffers of defense companies, who became powerful enough to not just buy politicians with their 14th amendment and 1st amendment privileges, but became the revolving-door staffing firm for the Pentagon...work for Boeing/United Defense/GE/etc. while the other party has the Oval, become an assistant undersecretary to whatever if your guy wins, and spend all your energies making sure your once and future employers get a piece of as many contracts as can be found...go back to Boeing or whatever if your guy gets defeated or if you just want another Jag in the driveway...pass the torch to the next eager beaver. It's been this way for more than sixty years.

Now, the economy depends upon the preparation for and waging of wars...of course, push it too far and you wind up creating the current mess, expensive gas and food shortages and all that, but whatever. I'll bet every dollar I have now and will ever make in my life that the people who put this deal together, the Iraq alchemists specifically but the whole defense/war crew in general also, I'll bet with total confidence they wouldn't know hunger or deprivation or fiscal doom if all three stood on their shoulders and pissed in their ears.

So.

If someone decided by fiat to undo the laws behind the concept of corporate personhood today, it would pretty firmly shatter the entire global economy, cause mass starvation and worldwide chaos, and would do so before the sun came up tomorrow.

Besides, nobody's going to make it go away. We have to get a case before the supreme court to get it fixed. Which means we need to win elections to make sure there aren't any nutbag crazy people on the court. That means we have to do unsavory things like vote for shitass Democrats and congressional candidates who have the D but are pro-life or anti-environment or whatever fillth some of them drag with them...because that one shitbag congressmen means majority rule, which lays the groundworl for the next elections, and undoing GOP redistricting, and maybe we can get the judges we need.

#2 is a SCOTUS ISSUE, too. Look up.

#3. Heh. The beast of the bunch. Hold on tight, this is the short version.

There are maybe 5000 people in America who think Vietnam was fucking great, just a magical time, the best of days. Are they insane? Debatable, but far more important is the fact that they are the 5000 who profited each and every day of that 20-year war. That was the payday, the "fuck off" to Kennedy and his Peace Corps shit, the "fuck off" to Johnson's Great Society, it was two decades of looting the Treasury for every dime and dollar they could find. Thousands of helicopters shot down? Someone got paid when the government bought them. Sixty zillion bullets? Ditto. Grenades, planes, jeeps, uniforms, rifles, food, boats, bandages, plasma, morphine, REMF headquarters, radios, napalm, agent orange...all that shit cost money, and the defense boys were happy to cash the checks.

For twenty years. Imagine getting a paycheck every day for two decades. That's exactly 7,300 paychecks...and you don't make what these guys were making.

They took that money and bought congress, adopted a nitwit president with a talent for speech delivery, they made him think Star Wars was feasible, and...oh yeah, couldja deregulate all those rules about media ownership when you get a sec?

Cool. Trifecta. The former General Electric spokesman spent trillions building missiles to defend us against a threat that no longer existed, a little fact we didn't know at the time, spent trillions more building giant laser space frisbees that still make even the most dour astrophysicist at JPL giggle like a titmouse every time he hears the words...Can't even watch the movies anymore, because the title on the box is enough to get him going...

...and spent thirty seconds on the phone with Congressman Inthebag to get going on the deregulation of media ownership, courtesy of his man in the FCC...and then it was magic time.

The nation has been braced for war since 1941...and the cost of that rigid preparedness has begun to make itself known as neighborhoods rot and schools crumble and FDR's policies slowly fade away...

...and that isn't a sustainable situation, because Americans are generally good and moral and know enough to understand when they're getting fucked over...


...so we have to keep their eyes on the ball...we have to make sure they believe we are always on the edge of annihilation...

TV stations. Radio stations. Buy the news outlets, and buy the news. By the time Bill Clinton got to DC, the deal had gone down. He might as well have jumped into a shark tank with a pork chop tied around his neck.

The long version is more than I can deal with, but trust me: it sucks about forty billion times more than this stuff.

Thus...I agree with Hedges entirely, and have no interest in posturing and polemics. I did that shit for a log time, because it is important, because people need to know the score, because preaching to the goddam choir is the only way to get the goddam choir to sing.

But polemics won't settle up with corporate personhood and what it means down to the very DNA of the country.

Won't settle up with hand-dog congresspeople bought off by the above invisible personages who have rights like I do.

And won't untangle war from the foundations of the economy, won't de-zombify three generations of fear-hammered obedience from the citizens we need to win the argument.

Won't let the seven monolothic TV news outlets stop being owned by corporations that turn a galactic profit by making us stupid and afraid, which lets them do things like profiteer for five years in Iraq (see: Vietnam, the other payday), so they make us stupid and afraid by way of TV, which everyone watches, and hats over the windmill boys, someone's getting rich today!

Buying out the media was the masterstroke.

So yeah, I dig Hedges, and have probably written five dozen essays like this one, and it won't fix a damned thing.

We gotta dig in, and win slow, and prepare for the fact that most of us won't live long enough to see any of this fixed to any significant degree.

I don't expect to, even if I live to be 123.

Don't care. I don't matter. The rule of law and the idea that is America deserve nothing less. If I can do something, I will do it, and there it is. If that's a failure of nerve, I don't want to know what nerve is. Adlai Stevenson described partriotism as not some flailing energized shouting hysterical noise, not rhetoric and short-term goals, but instead as "the long, steady, patient dedication of a lifetime."

Good words...cuz that's how long it will take. For openers.

Lion in Winter. Good movie. Richard and the boys are about to be executed. Richard tells the others to stand up with pride and dignity when the axe falls.

One of his boys says, you fool, what does it matter how a man falls down.

"When the fall is all that's left," Richard replied, "it matters a great deal."

Sorry for the noise, I'm not angry or anything, but damn...this man excells at his job, which makes him twice as important and relevant and just really refreshing...because he's becoming a rare breed of cat in that fetid jungle some still call "journalism" with a straight face.

He's uncommon as a professional, and is also pretty much singlehandedly maintaining normal gravity over there on Planet WaPo...where Pincus blew the lid off the OSP and WHIG in 2003, where Froomkin does his thing, where a few stolid sould still write about the real world...and they get the stuff published...and after reading their stuff, you can flip to the editor's column and get your daily dose of CRAZY...cuz the editors haven't read their own reporters' stuff for maybe 2,000 editions or so by now, and every word they write is proof.

Froomkin today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...

Better, Froomkin yesterday:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...

He spends three pages describing Cheney's belief that no laws apply to him.

I dare ya to check out the Op/Ed page. I don't have the stomach for it today. Let me know what happens.

P.S. Those requiring pure waters in which to swim, i.e. if you don't read anyone who isn't for your candidate, rest easy. Froomkin stays away from any of the campaign folderol, but usually goes after McCain as if the presumptive GOP nominee shot his dog and egged his house.

Don't know if this point has been brought up here or not, but it seems pretty clear to me.

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

100+ rec's.

“In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.”

100+ rec's.

Maybe now, as an honest dialogue about race in this country begins, a dialogue called for by Senator Obama and a dialogue to begin in the United Church of Christ among 5,700 congregations in just a few weeks, maybe now, as that dialogue begins, the religious tradition that has kept hope alive for people struggling to survive in countless hopeless situation, maybe that religious tradition will be understood, celebrated, and even embraced by a nation that seems not to have noticed why 11 o'clock on Sunday morning has been called the most segregated hour in America.

100+ rec's.

Just sayin'.

...they ain't even hiding it anymore...

...p.s...this guy is batshit crazy, hilariously so...

Zirkle rails against the ‘great porn dragon’ and its influence over Jews.

Tony Zirkle, a GOP congressional candidate in Indiana, recently came under heavy criticism for speaking to the American National Socialist Workers Party (ANSWP) on the 119th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birth. At the event, Zirkle “stood in front of a painting of Hitler, next to people wearing swastika armbands and with a swastika flag in the background.” On his website, Zirkle has responded to the criticisms by railing against Jews and prostitution:

I’ve been getting a flood of e-mails and phone calls, some of which include death threats, about my attempt to raise awareness of how the great porn dragon inspires Jews into pornography and prostitution and then, like the snake he is, turns the public against the Jews. Some have questioned whether there is any link to Jews and porn-prostitution. <…>

Unfortunately, those Web sites are just a small fraction of evidence you can find on a Google search of combinations of “Jews” “pornography” “sex slavery” “Israel” and “prostitution.” Let’s save our Jewish brothers and sisters from this tyrant king porn dragon before we get to another world-wide pogrom.

According to the Indiana News-Dispatch, the “effect of pornography and prostitution on young, white women and girls” was also the subject of Zirkle’s speech at the ANSWP event.

Link: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/25/zirkle... /

More: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/24/indian... /

...I hate Illinois Nazis...

Yup.

Kinda says it all right there.



Bush voices concern about record oil price
Reuters

Tue Apr 22, 2008

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Tuesday said he was concerned about record-high crude oil and gasoline prices, and said the United States needs to tap an Alaskan wildlife refuge to boost supply.

"I am obviously concerned for our consumers," Bush said at a news conference along with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

(snip)

Bush reiterated his call for the U.S. Congress to overturn a long-standing moratorium on drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), home to wildlife like polar bears and migratory birds.

"We should have been exploring for oil in ANWR," Bush said. "As a result we are dependent on foreign sources of oil."

Link: http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN...

http://3trillion.org/