Not Just Your Average Well-Written Rant

A most enjoyable -- and dead-on -- must-read.  Be sure to click the link and treat yourself to the entire piece; here are just a few choice bits:

 

Fox News is an oxymoron and Cheech and Chong would have made a more credible team of war correspondents than Geraldo Rivera and Ollie North. ... With its red-faced, hyperventilating reactionaries and slapstick abuse of lame "liberal" foils who serve them as crash dummies, Fox News could easily be taken as pure entertainment, even as inspired burlesque of the rightwing menagerie. But the problem -- in fact, the serious problem - is that Fox isn't kidding, and brownshirts aren't funny.

 

Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly became so infuriated by the son of a 9-11 victim who opposed the war... that he cursed the man and even threatened him off-camera. ... Neil Cavuto celebrated the fall of Baghdad by informing all of us who opposed the war in March, "You were sickening then, you are sickening now." If reports are accurate, these troubled men are neither bad journalists nor even bad actors portraying journalists -- they're mentally unbalanced individuals whose partisan belligerence is pressing them to the brink of psychosis.

 

But the scariest thing about Fox and Rupert Murdoch, the thing that renders them all fear and no fun in a time of national crisis, is that they channel for the Bush administration as faithfully as if they were on the White House payroll. Like no other substantial media outlet in American history, Fox serves -- voluntarily -- as the propaganda arm of a controversial, manipulative, image-obsessed government. ... I swear I hate to stoop to Nazi analogies; but if Joseph Goebbels had run his own cable channel, it would have been indistinguishable from Fox News.

 

[Murdoch] is an insatiable parasite, a vampirish lamprey who fastens himself to English-speaking nations and grows fat on their cultural lifeblood, leaving permanently degraded media cultures in his wake. Rabid patriotism is a product he sells, along with celebrity gossip, naked women and smirky bedroom humor, in every country he contaminates. ...

 

Murdoch's repulsive formula has proven irresistible from Melbourne to Manhattan... His great fortune rests on his wager that a huge unevolved minority is stupid, bigoted, prurient, nasty to the core. ...

 

Is it sheer coincidence that the president's stage manager, Greg Jenkins -- responsible for the notorious flight-suit landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln, and for posing George Bush against Mt. Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty -- was recently a producer at Fox News?

 

If these elaborate tableaus Jenkins choreographs for President Bush seem clumsy, tasteless, condescending and insulting to your intelligence, you must be some kind of liberal. ...

 

How stupid are we, finally, how easy to fool? Fox News is... not a news service, certainly, nor even the sincere voice of low-rent nationalism. It's a calculated fraud, like the president who ducked the draft during Vietnam, and even welshed on his National Guard commitment, but who puts on a flight suit stenciled "Commander-in-chief" and plays Douglas MacArthur on network TV. ...

 

The invasion of Iraq was in no way what it seemed to be, either. Saddam Hussein was never a threat to the United States. His "weapons of mass destruction" remain invisible, his terrorist connections remain unproven, and he had absolutely nothing to do with the destruction of the World Trade Center. Most cynical of all was the "liberation" lie, the administration's sudden concern for the helpless citizens of Iraq. Saddam, as grotesque as he was, wasn't getting any meaner, and "liberators" like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were doing brisk business with him when he was in his murderous, citizen-eating prime (and in Cheney's case, as recently as 1999). ...

 

According to polls, at least half of us were so eager to be deceived, we believed the one lie Bush never dared to tell us, except by implication: that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ... "The Moron Majority," declares the headline in The Progressive Populist. ...

 

It violates democratic etiquette to call your fellow citizens "idiots." (Unless they're liberals -- "We all agree that liberals are stupid," writes Charles Krauthammer.) Fortunately, the PC wordworks has coined a new euphemism to replace the ugly word "retarded." It's "intellectually disabled," and we have it just in time. ...

 

The stupidity of those who buy [the troop-support doctrine] is no more astonishing than the hypocrisy of those who sell it -- Republicans who preach our sacred duty to the army's morale and simultaneously cancel $15 billion in veteran's benefits and 60 percent of federal education subsidies for servicemen's children. If you can't believe that, look it up.

 

When is it too late to wake the sleeping masses? When a Fox TV show for amateur entertainers turns up more voters than Congressional elections? ...

 

There's a chilling suspicion that major architects of our current foreign policy are insane. ...

 

I believe that the split between liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican is inconsequential compared to the real fracture line, between Americans who try to think clearly and those who will not or cannot. What hope, a cynical friend teased me, for a country where 70 percent believe in angels, 60 percent believe in literal, biblical, blazing Armageddon, and more than half reject Charles Darwin? ... American readers have purchased 50 million copies of Tim LaHaye's gonzo Apocalypse novels, still more evidence that what awaits the United States of America is not a physical but an intellectual Armageddon.

 

When the sand begins to grip us and no lifeline appears, we clutch at straws. Yet there's anecdotal evidence that the polls could be wrong. ...

 

Hal Crowther

Weapons Of Mass Stupidity: Fox News hits

a new lowest common denominator

Creative Loafing

June 4, 2003

 

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What Is It with Bushies and Boozed-Up Kids?

Police Arrest Majority Leader’s Teen Son. The son of Senate Majority leader Bill Frist is in trouble. Sunday, the senator's son, Jonathan Frist, 17 was arrested for DUI and possession of alcohol by a minor. [NewsChannel 5]

 

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This Could Be the One to Break the Dam Wide Open

I know, I know -- you've heard "Bush lied about WMD" stories until they're coming out of your ears -- but this one's big stuff:  This is an admission from a credible eyewitness to the WMD lie.  Read the whole thing -- and you might want to save the page (as opposed to just bookmarking it) for future reference.

 

In the end, this could very well be the story that puts Bush away:

 

Ex-Official: Evidence Distorted for War. The Bush administration distorted intelligence and presented conjecture as evidence to justify a U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a retired intelligence official who served during the months before the war. "What disturbs me deeply is what I think are the disingenuous statements made from the very top about what the intelligence did say," said Greg Thielmann, who retired last September. "The area of distortion was greatest in the nuclear field." Thielmann was director of the strategic, proliferation and military issues office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. [Associated Press]

 

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Where We Should Have Been, Instead of Iraq

French Soldiers Arrive in Congo With a Tough Mission. French soldiers arrived in Bunia on Friday, the first of 1,400 troops dispatched by the U.N. Security Council to restore law and order. [New York Times]

 

Fresh fighting hits DR Congo. Violence erupts in the north-eastern town of Bunia, just 24 hours after the arrival of French peacekeeping troops. [BBC News]

 

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Lest We Forget: It's Not Over in Afghanistan, Either

Blast hits Kabul peacekeepers. A bus carrying international troops is hit by an explosion in the east of the Afghan capital, with fatalities reported. [BBC News]

 

US rhetoric dangerously out of step with realities on the ground in Afghanistan. The announcement by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a brief visit to Kabul on May 1, to the effect that the military phase of the campaign in Afghanistan is over, took American soldiers in the country by surprise. Kabul is supposed to be relatively safe because of the presence of some 11,000 foreign troops from the US, Australia, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, who are regularly involved in firefights with Taliban and al-Qa’ida supporters. In August this duty will be taken over by forces from NATO, which has now been assigned a new role as an extension of the US military. It may be recalled that when the Americans were going to attack Afghanistan in October 2001, they spurned offers of help from NATO member-states. Now the Americans want help from NATO because they themselves are involved virtually daily in fights outside Kabul. On May 7 the UN suspended mine-clearing operations after its workers came under fire near Qandahar, leaving one Afghan dead and three injured. [Media Monitors Network]

 

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Welcome to the Newly Liberated Iraq

Schoolgirl is feared dead amid spate of rapes and abductions in Baghdad. They say that abductions and rape in "liberated Iraq" are only rumours. But on 22 May, Baida Sadik left her home in Shaab City, Baghdad, for school and never returned. Her fellow students said they saw her being shoved at gunpoint into a car. It was just after 8am. She is - or was - 16 years old. [The Independent]

 

Simpson berates 'trigger-happy' troops. BBC news reporter John Simpson has hit out against the "trigger-happy" behaviour of US troops in Iraq and claimed he saved an old Iraqi man from being shot by gung-ho marines. The veteran reporter, who spent time with American forces in Tikrit, praised British troops for their conduct during the war but said in an interview with Soldier magazine that the Americans "lost all control - screaming, shouting and kicking people," adding that US soldiers' fear of snipers led to a 'shoot first, ask questions later' attitude. [Guardian Unlimited]

 

Police station torn down in defiant Falluja. Iraqis carrying hammers and axes take part in a public act of defiance against the US military. [Guardian Unlimited]

 

U.S. To Ban "Incitement" Against Occupation In Iraq. In a move that is likely to trigger an outcry from Iraqi parties, politicians and scholars as well as international human rights advocates, the U.S.-led occupation administration said Thursday, June 5, it would outlaw any "incitement" against the Anglo-American forces in Iraq even inside mosque. The new measure, which is to "go out fairly shortly", would prohibit "incitement" to "armed insurrection", including attacks on the U.S. and British troops, an administration spokesman said. He said the ban would be applicable even to mosques if preachers encourage attacks against the Anglo-American forces in their sermons, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP). [IslamOnline]

 

As Iraqis' Disaffection Grows, U.S. Offers Them a Greater Political Role. American officials, responding to growing Iraqi disenchantment, offered to give Iraqis more authority in an American-controlled interim administration. By Edmund L. Andrews and Patrick E. Tyler. [New York Times]

 

Iraq Stabilization Impinges on Army Rotation, Rebuilding. The struggling campaign to stabilize postwar Iraq has frustrated U.S. Army plans to reduce troops there and begin replenishing a military force stretched exceedingly thin by war and peacekeeping commitments, a senior Pentagon official said yesterday. Asked if he had ever seen the Army so stretched, the official said: "Not in my 31 years" of military service. [Washington Post]

 

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When Even a Nixon Henchman Suggests Impeachment...

Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction: Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense? To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose." [John Dean, FindLaw]

 

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Story 'Deeply Embarrassing' to U.K. Army Scrubbed?

Why did this story, posted at approximately 8:00 p.m. EST June 7, 2003, suddenly disappear from the ABC Online site?

 

British soldier held in Iraq in child porn probe. Two British soldiers in Iraq have been arrested as part of an inquiry into pornography offences, one of them over allegations relating to children, the ... [ABC Online, Australia]

 

The only source with the story is now the UK Mirror:

 

Iraq Troops in 2nd Child Porn Probe. A second Intelligence Corps sergeant has been arrested in Iraq after child porn pictures were allegedly found on a military laptop computer. The soldier is being quizzed in the southern port of Umm Qasr by Special Investigations Branch officers. The Mirror revealed yesterday how officers are already quizzing another sergeant from the same unit. He was held on Thursday after a superior officer reportedly used the suspect laptop. The two soldiers, who led "eyes and ears" interrogation teams during the conflict, will be flown home for a fuller investigation this weekend. Their laptops have already been sent back for specialist examination and military detectives yesterday raided their homes at Derring Lines army base, near Brecon. The MoD said: "Two soldiers have been arrested for possessing pornographic images." This latest scandal is deeply embarrassing to the army. Military police in Iraq are already investigating three allegations of war crimes committed by British troops. A senior officer said: "We fear sad and isolated incidents will detract from the bravery of our soldiers during the war." [Mirror.co.uk]

 

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More on Georgie's Delusions of WMD

Bush Certainty On Iraq Arms Went Beyond Analysts' Views. The failure of the United States to uncover any proscribed weapons eight weeks after the end of the war is fueling sentiment among some Democrats on Capitol Hill and some intelligence analysts that the administration may have exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq. [Washington Post]

 

Weapons are turned on Bush. Doubts about the administration's claims intensified further after outgoing chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix delivered his final report to the Security Council. Dr Blix said it was "not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for". Although Iraq had left many questions unanswered, he said, one should not assume such arms still existed. [Herald Sun]

 

Some Analysts of Iraq Trailers Reject Germ Use. American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. The Bush administration has said the two trailers, which allied forces found in Iraq in April and May, are evidence that Saddam Hussein was hiding a program for biological warfare. [New York Times]

 

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Mark Morford Delivers Again

As with all Morford columns, clicking the link and reading the whole thing is absolutely mandatory:

 

We are now the world's thug, the snotty spoiled schoolyard bully with deep and rather pathetic machismo issues who no one likes and no one wants to sleep with but who still somehow manages to think he's, quite literally, God's gift to humankind. ... Should we speculate as to why? ... Do you really have to ask?

 

Is it the pesky WMD thing? ... Could it be snide little Rumsfeld bootlicker Paul Wolfowitz's shameless declaration that BushCo's incessant WMD hype was merely "bureaucratic" and "politically convenient" for the war? ...

 

Or maybe all those nations fear and scorn us because current efforts to stabilize war-torn Iraq is right now requiring more than 160,000 American troops, nearly the full force we originally deployed, which you can translate to mean that no more troops are coming home anytime soon. Should we mention that more than 30 U.S. soldiers have died since BushCo declared the war "over?" ...

 

And if you really think this "war" is anywhere near over, if you think we have accomplished anything other than jagged and bloody and iron-fisted empire expansion and increased risk of terrorism, and earning only the openly sad scorn of much of the civilized world at the expense of our integrity, our respect, our pride of dissent and choice and tolerance and balance and fairness, you might just be the ideal candidate, the beloved mutant-patriot creation of the Bush administration's PR machine, the ultimate in myopic lockstep Fox News wet-dream target markets. ...

 

Or maybe it's the thousands of civilians we killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or the countless, possibly tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers we essentially massacred. You think?

 

Ah but why the hell should we care, right? This is the message. This is the pseudo-macho cowboy mantra. ...

 

Mark Morford

Why Does No One Like Bush?

SF Gate

June 6, 2003

 

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Only Bushites Are Created Equal - Everyone Else Can Bugger Off

Filibuster Rule Change Is Urgent, Frist Says. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's proposal to curb filibusters aimed at blocking judicial nominations prompted a passionate debate yesterday over constitutional principles and practical politics, even though there is widespread agreement that his plan is probably doomed. [Washington Post]

 

'Selective prosecution' by Bush administration? After Martha Stewart indictment, group asks 'What about Enron's Kenneth Lay?' [WorldNetDaily]

 

Justice Dept. Draws Heavy Criticism Over Cancelled Gay Rights Event. Democrats and civil rights advocates condemned the Justice Department for barring a gay pride event planned by department employees. By Eric Lichtblau. [New York Times]

 

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Give Me Your Tired, Your-- Oh, Forget It

More Than 13,000 May Face Deportation. Roughly 16 percent of the Arab and Muslim men who voluntarily registered with federal authorities earlier this year may face deportation, although few have been linked to terrorism. By Rachel L. Swarns. [New York Times]

 

In Brooklyn, 9/11 Damage Continues. The signs in Midwood, Brooklyn, surfaced slowly at first. Curry packets at the New Apna Bazaar started to accumulate. The line of cars at the Sunoco station began to thin. Arrests, closer scrutiny and an increased threat of deportation have plagued Arabs and Muslims nationwide. In New York, Egyptians, Moroccans, Jordanians and Lebanese have seen numbers of detentions. But no group appears harder hit than the Pakistanis. [New York Times]

 

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Sins of the Junior

Methodist leaders to Bush: Repent. A group of leaders from President George W. Bush's denomination, the United Methodist Church, have signed a magazine ad asking the chief executive to "repent" of what they consider policies "incompatible" with Christian teaching, reports the Christian Times. The group of 120 signatories to the document, entitled "A Prophetic Epistle from United Methodists Calling Our Brother George W. Bush to Repent," includes seven United Methodist Church bishops. [WorldNetDaily]

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Economic Ruin Begins at Home (Thanks, George!)

Unemployment Rate Rises to a 9-Year High. The unemployment rate rose to 6.1 percent in May, but the pace of layoffs slowed, suggesting that the economy might have stabilized and could begin adding jobs. [New York Times]

 

As Budgets Shrink, Cities See an Impact on Criminal Justice. Law enforcement officials around the country say they have begun to see the negative results of cuts in recent years in spending on policing, prosecutions and prisons. [New York Times]

 

Is the United States flat-out broke? When the government announced this year its publicly held debt was in the neighborhood of $3.6 trillion, it was quoting a figure that "ignores massive imbalances" in other mandatory spending programs – such as Medicare and Social Security – which actually inflate the national debt by a factor of 10, according to published accounts. [WorldNetDaily]

 

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Why You Should Care About the FCC Decision

The terrible truth. Night after night the bulk of the American people were able to enjoy well-informed reporting, suggesting that the Bush administration's accusations that Saddam Hussein had WMDs ready to use in as little as 45 minutes had no factual foundation. But now, after the FCC decision, these voices will be stilled. We are entering the era of Big Brother. You think I'm joking? [Alexander Cockburn, Creators Syndicate]

 

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Simply & Clearly, Why Bush's Tax Cut Will Kill U.S. Economy

Duped and Betrayed. Translation: wealthy individuals who get most of their income from dividends and capital gains will often end up paying lower tax rates than ordinary Americans who work for a living. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, this latest tax cut reduces federal revenue as a share of G.D.P. to its lowest level since 1959. That is, federal taxes are now back to what they were in an era when Medicare and Medicaid didn't exist, and Social Security was still a minor expense. How can we maintain these programs, which have become essential to scores of millions of Americans, at today's tax rates? We can't. [Paul Krugman, New York Times]

 

Posted 12:56:27 AM   Send comment

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Plain Talk

Out Of Touch: So What? George W. Bush is one of the most inarticulate presidents we've ever had. What's troubling about this particular disability is that it reflects a fundamental distrust of his audience and of his very relation to the ideas he's trying to convey. As a car salesman, I can tell you that persuading someone to buy is a matter of learning to speak their language and understand their needs. ... George W., for all his populist trappings, is removed from the life of the American people. He is the son of a privileged New England family, and after attending Andover, he was accepted into Yale (BA, '68) and Harvard (MBA, '75) as a legacy (i.e., his folks had money and connections, but he didn't have the grades). His business career was built with other people's money, family ties and investors' recognition that a business relationship with the son of a vice-president and then the son of a president was a no-brainer. There’s always someone who'll infuse cash, do favors, or clean up a mess. [Billy Claude Puckett, Flagpole]

 

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Molly Nails It -- All of It

Don't say no one warned you. The [Washington] Post quotes a (naturally) unnamed official saying of Bush, "He does not have the knowledge or the patience to learn this issue enough to have an end destination in mind." Here's a photo-op idea. If Bush does arrange a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine -- and I am rooting for him -- the White House could take down the bridge yet again and have all three of them walk on the water. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, it is hard to keep up with how much damage is being done. Tom (the Exterminator) DeLay, House majority leader, says the 6.5 million working people who got cut out of the tax cut at the last minute are S.O.L. No reconsideration will be allowed -- unless he gets MORE tax cuts for the rich! I love it: These people have no shame. [Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate]

 

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