Monthly Archives: June 2005

Dump Duhbya

Which Side Are You On?

Bill O’Reilly: The limits of dissent

No country can win a conflict the way the USA is fighting the war on terror. Every move the Bush administration makes is scrutinized, criticized and roundly chastised by dissenters who firmly believe the president, himself, is responsible for much of the anti-American hatred around the world. The chorus is deafening. Bush “lied” about Iraq. Bush is violating civil liberties by supporting the Patriot Act. The president sanctions torture and is a major human rights violator. Every day there is another page one story telling Americans we are the bad guys.

The dissenters claim that what they’re doing is patriotic, that they love America and just want to improve it. They claim that loyal dissent is one of the finest traditions of democracy.

But there is a difference between dissenting from a war and trying to undermine a war….

It is time for Americans to decide exactly who is looking out for them. The government and military, both of which are trying to defeat vicious killers, or those who are on a jihad to undermine the war on terror in the name of patriotism? The battle lines are clearly drawn. Which side are you on?

Which side are you on? In support of a fallible adminstration that has, in absolute fact, lied and certainly made tremendous errors. How dare you speak your mind! mjh

Theirs

GOPublic TV

The Armstrong Williams NewsHour – New York Times By FRANK RICH

That doesn’t mean the right’s new assault on public broadcasting is toothless, far from it. But this time the game is far more insidious and ingenious. The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers’ expense. If you liked the fake government news videos that ended up on local stations – or thrilled to the “journalism” of Armstrong Williams and other columnists who were covertly paid to promote administration policies – you’ll love the brave new world this crowd envisions for public TV and radio. …

[In a secret study,] guests were rated either L for liberal or C for conservative, and “anti-administration” was affixed to any segment raising questions about the Bush presidency. Thus was the conservative Republican Senator Chuck Hagel given the same L as Bill Clinton simply because he expressed doubts about Iraq in a discussion mainly devoted to praising Ronald Reagan. Three of The Washington Post’s star beat reporters (none of whom covers the White House or politics or writes opinion pieces) were similarly singled out simply for doing their job as journalists by asking questions about administration policies.

“It’s pretty scary stuff to judge media, particularly public media, by whether it’s pro or anti the president,” Senator Dorgan said. “It’s unbelievable.”

Not from this gang. …

Then, on Thursday, a Rove dream came true: Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, ascended to the CPB presidency. In her last job, as an assistant secretary of state, Ms. Harrison publicly praised the department’s production of faux-news segments – she called them “good news” segments – promoting American success in Afghanistan and Iraq. As The Times reported in March, one of those fake news videos ended up being broadcast as real news on the Fox affiliate in Memphis.

Mr. Tomlinson has maintained that his goal at CPB is to strengthen public broadcasting by restoring “balance” and stamping out “liberal bias.” But Mr. Moyers left “Now” six months ago. Mr. Tomlinson’s real, not-so-hidden agenda is to enforce a conservative bias or, more specifically, a Bush bias. To this end, he has not only turned CPB into a full-service employment program for apparatchiks but also helped initiate “The Journal Editorial Report,” the only public broadcasting show ever devoted to a single newspaper’s editorial page, that of the zealously pro-Bush Wall Street Journal. Unlike Mr. Moyers’s “Now” – which routinely balanced its host’s liberalism with conservative guests like Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Paul Gigot and Cal Thomas – The Journal’s program does not include liberals of comparable stature.

THIS is all in keeping with Mr. Tomlinson’s long career as a professional propagandist. During the Reagan administration he ran Voice of America. Then he moved on to edit Reader’s Digest, where, according to Peter Canning’s 1996 history of the magazine, “American Dreamers,” he was rumored to be “a kind of ‘Manchurian Candidate’ ” because of the ensuing spike in pro-C.I.A. spin in Digest articles. Today Mr. Tomlinson is chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal body that supervises all nonmilitary international United States propaganda outlets, Voice of America included. That the administration’s foremost propagandist would also be chairman of the board of CPB, the very organization meant to shield public broadcasting from government interference, is astonishing. But perhaps no more so than a White House press secretary month after month turning for softball questions to “Jeff Gannon,” a fake reporter for a fake news organization ultimately unmasked as a G.O.P. activist’s propaganda site. …

Forget the pledge drive. What’s most likely to save the independent voice of public broadcasting from these thugs is a rising chorus of Deep Throats.

Outcry grows over public TV, radio
By Matea Gold and Jube Shiver Jr.
Times Staff Writers

The consultant, Fred Mann, categorized segments as “pro-Bush” and “anti-Bush,” according to copies of the reports obtained by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.). Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a frequent White House critic, was labeled “liberal” because he questioned Bush’s policy in Iraq.

Mine

Cal’s Convenient Memory Lapse

Cal Thomas: Bias runs deep at PBS

Does this statement by Moyers on his Nov. 8, 2002, “NOW” program sound like it comes down on the side of the public? “The entire federal government — the Congress, the Executive, the Judiciary — is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate. That mandate includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to give up control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine. … And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture.”

Moyers is entitled to his views. What he is not entitled to is taxpayer money to promote them. …

Tomlinson is addressing the bias that inhabits the minds of those who believe liberalism is truth.

“[T]he bias that inhabits the minds of those who believe liberalism is truth.” Notice this very slick phrase. It implies that those who believe sham-conservatism is the truth have no biases. It more strongly suggests that it isn’t possible for any liberal thought to actually be true (or any bogus-conservative thought to be false). It hints that liberalism is a mental illness. Nice guys we’re playing with, don’t you think?

Here are a few things Calcified Cal studiously ignores — his is an assiduously cultivated ignorance.

I’m a taxpayer and I can name more taxpayers who disagree with Cal than agree with him. So, if they can use my tax money to make bunker-busting nuclear bombs that violate international treaties and up the arms race, then they can spend 1/1000th as much of Cal’s on PBS.

Most of PBS is educational, informational, and, lastly, entertainment. Very little is really news, though, of course, to Cal’s ilk, everything is propaganda, for or against his views.

Bill Moyers left PBS more than 6 months ago. NOW was reduced to 30 minutes a week. A couple of weeks ago, I saw an interview of 15 minutes with a journalist on the rise of the dominionists (the most self-righteous of the neo-non-con-artists) and then, gasp, 10 minutes or more of the infamous Roy Moore, who says if you ain’t Christian, you ain’t an American. Pretty close to balanced; two minutes more of Moore and I would have shot my TV. He’s nuts. But that impression comes from nobody but himself.

I have only seen Calcified Cal Thomas once (though I flagellate myself with his columns quite often). Where? On NOW, in an interview with Bill Moyers. Why do you suppose Cal chooses not to mention his opportunity to stand up to Bill and the rest of us? Could it be that he realized THE TRUTH undermined his screed? This was not just a 30 second sound byte used to distort his views, it was a real interview where he steadfastly represented himself as would anyone who hasn’t the slightest doubt he is speaking for god and talking to a child. I would gladly watch Cal again in some environment where he wasn’t free to bloviate without any balance — the very thing he claims he wants — that would not be on FOX. He is articulate and courtly, like an unlovable grandfather ready to hit you with his cane.

The Radical Wrong believes there is only one truth: someone’s ‘literal’ interpretation of the Bible. Everything else is subject to opinion: worthwhile opinions coming from those they agree with and seditious/blasphemous (no difference anymore) opinions used by awful people they disagree with to fuck up a world that would be wonderful if only we were all shipped off to Gitmo.

The Radical Wrong works relentlessly at discrediting all sources of information not in their steely grasp. Therefore, all of PBS is untrustworthy because of one former employee and all of FOX is god’s word because of Cal. Sweet con they’ve got; all they had to do was delude themselves first, then move on to the rest of us. mjh

Cal Thomas

Dump Duhbya

An Open Letter to Karl Rove

picked up 9/1/08 by
www.bushinbox.com

Dear Karl Rove,

Thank you for reminding us that 9-11, like Jesus, belongs forever to the Republican Party. I know you know that the public seldom punishes dim-witted, chest-thumping chickenhawks (just where were you in Vietnam? Dodging the draft like Dick or buzzing the Gulf of Mexico like Duhbya?).

I will not speak for anyone but myself. And, so I must say:

After 9-11, I wondered what happened.
The Neo-cons wondered how soon they could invade Iraq.

I wondered how anyone could hate us so much as to kill thousands of people.
Pseudo-conservatives proceeded to kill hundreds of thousands.

I wondered what would prevent this from ever happening again.
The Radical Right moved quickly to curtail our freedom and hide everything they could.

I wondered about the Saudis, who carried out the attack, who were given a free ride by Duhbya, who holds their hands and kisses their … cheeks.
The Bushites wet themselves over all that oil in Iraq that would pay for everything.

I thought Religious Fanatics will plunge the world into war.
America’s Religious Fanatics continued to build the Christian Nation of America.

Yeah, it’s true, the Left and the Wrong did respond differently. The Left wondered about our place in the World; the Wrong wondered how to shift the blame to the Left.

None of this could have happened without you. It was a surprise to see you come out from the shadows as you try to pimp yourself to the next idiot. Go fuck yourself. mjh

Dump Duhbya

the Republican fist with its middle finger held erect

The Independent Weekly: Shame is for sissies BY HAL CROWTHER

Bolton is simply the Republican fist with its middle finger held erect, a calculated insult aimed at the Democrats, the media and the world–a rude gesture of unprecedented arrogance and defiance. Is this a coarse joke, irony served White House-style? For America’s most visible and sensitive diplomatic post, they offer the ultimate anti-diplomat, an obnoxious bully so incapable of diplomacy or common tact that he offends everyone he encounters, Democrat or Republican, ally or enemy. …

You don’t have to be subtle, as the White House constantly reminds us. You don’t have to reckon with irony, that last refuge of the effete. Just change the words, repeat them incessantly, and disparage anyone who resists them. Incompetent, arrogant and inflexible, the Bush administration White House has scored its greatest successes changing the words America uses, and reorganizing its flow of information.

Totalitarian thinkers, Hannah Arendt once wrote, are characterized by “extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it.” If you told me 20 years ago that a cocky free press, still flaunting Richard Nixon’s scalp, could be reduced to groveling impotence by the likes of George W. Bush, I guess I’d have laughed at you. …

Journalists–journalists by true vocation as opposed to some who list that occupation on IRS returns–are largely immune to ideology, rhetoric and partisan politics. We have no heroes among politicians; we’ve seen too many clowns and thieves on both sides of the aisle. We don’t vilify the president because we disagree with his philosophy; he has no philosophy. We oppose him because we’re conditioned to hate liars, hypocrites, bullies and “serial abusers of little people,” and he’s assembled the most frightening collection we’ve ever seen.

By branding all unfriendly journalists (and other Americans who criticize the president) “liberals”–embittered members of a losing team–Karl Rove and company have ingeniously compromised fair comment and legitimate dissent. …

In fact, some of the most articulate criticism of the White House has come from conservatives.

“Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation as president will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations,” argued American Conservative magazine, endorsing John Kerry. “The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation’s children. … It is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy.”

[Thanks to A&JP via MR.]
=====
The Independent Weekly: In the realms of the unreal by Hal Crowther (2004-08-04)

It turns out that Ronald Reagan’s greatest achievement was not saving us from the Soviets, but saving us from the rabid neocons in his own administration who were spoiling for World War III. Advisers like Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld seemed so crazy for nuclear confrontation that they spooked poor Reagan, the primitive optimist. He ignored their advice and negotiated with Gorbachev, and then purged most of them when they were caught in bed with Ollie North. George W. Bush, of course, brought back this whole flock of indicted and discredited chicken hawks, who then crafted the “muscular” foreign policy that lured us into our apocalyptic fiasco in Iraq. …

Americans were like moths to Reagan’s pale flame. His myth seemed to generate a hunger for illusion, a distaste for bare fact and hard truth that has become pandemic and changed the face of our culture. It’s no wonder that “leaders” like Bush tell implausible, even fantastic, lies–“We’re doing this for the Iraqis”–and expect Americans to believe them. It’s not surprising that their language reverses or obliterates meaning, like the voice of Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984. Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Clear Skies Initiative and the Healthy Forests Initiative all mean the exact opposite of what they say; when President Bush publicly thanked Donald Rumsfeld for “a superb job” in the heat of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, what he must have meant was “You incompetent bastard, you’ve ruined us, I wish I could kill you.”

Theirs

QOTD

“I think if you asked God, he’d say the Ten Commandments were a road map for living. Instead, you have these self-appointed pharisees who think the Ten Commandments can be turned into a stiletto to use against their political opponents.” Representative David Obey, Wisconsin Democrat
—–
Keeping Faith With Religious Freedom By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Thus did Obey offer an amendment to the military appropriations bill calling on the secretary of the Air Force to “develop a plan to ensure that the Air Force Academy maintains a climate free from coercive intimidation and inappropriate proselytizing.”

Obey’s all-American assertion of religious liberty was, for Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.), part of “the long war on Christianity in America [that] continues today on the floor of the House of Representatives. It continues unabated with aid and comfort to those who would eradicate any vestige of our Christian heritage being supplied by the usual suspects, the Democrats. . . . Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can’t help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians.”

Need I point out that paranoid, bellicose, radical right, evangelical Christians are turning themselves into demons without any outside help.

By the way, of our 3 New Mexico Representatives, Udall and Wilson, an Air Force Academy alumna, voted for the amendment while Steve Pearce channeled Joe Skeen and voted against it (alone, as he was, in voting against removing spying on library patrons from the Patiot Act). mjh

Mine

KNME-TV

KNME-TV, Channel 5, is Albuquerque’s public television station (PBS). The station is to be praised for many things and thumped for a few.

In particular, I hope people make time to watch NOW, with David Brancaccio, each week (Friday night 7pm and sometime Sunday morning). One small example of NOW’s value is that months ago they reported the details of the odious Jack Abrahmoff, Tom Delay’s buddy and bagman.

I feared the departure of Bill Moyers and the shortening to a half hour would ruin NOW. Instead, it is still a great show. This week, immediately following the Supreme Court decision on eminent domain, there was a very moving piece on the real people — decent, middle-class, ordinary folks — whose homes can be taken simply to improve the tax base. Out with the poor(er) in with the rich(er).

In the two weeks prior, NOW has dealt with the rising Christian Theocracy in America and its full assault on the independence of the judiciary. Heavy stuff.

NOW has an OK website which tends to lag the shows. To date, they don’t have video, but claim it is coming.

Recently, in the 8:30pm Friday slot, KNME has aired Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria, subtitled appropriately as “Where America Meets the World.” It is novel enough to see a host of Zakaria’s ethnicity, which I wish were unremarkable. He is not only quite a capable journalist but you may not see subjects or guests like his anywhere else. Recently, he interviewed a Palestinian and an Israeli journalist on the never-ending conflict. He dedicated an entire show to interviewing young entrepreneurs in China.

The website for Foreign Exchange is perfect with video and transcripts up to the minute. Excellent.

Now to give KNME the finger: what happened to In Focus with Kate Nelson, editor of the Albuquerque Tribune? In Focus is a show that concentrates on New Mexico and some of the people involved. Nelson has a knack for choosing guests and getting exactly what she wants out of them.

Moreover, the big question is why do we see this single half hour shared by Foreign Exchange, In Focus and Colores! (the latter two very much about New Mexico). Is that the “Minorities and Women half hour”? Would anyone really hate to see McLaughlin bumped? I would briefly miss the aptly named, preening snot, Tony Blankley, model for our new Republican Lords. I would briefly miss the genuinely unique, strange and frightening Patrick Buchannan. I would not miss the shrill liberal caricature of Eleanor Cliff or the tension of ‘who will fill the 5th chair?’ McLaughlin and Buchannan are veterans of the Nixon White House, as are most of Duhbya’s inner circle. Fresh, they ain’t. Bye-bye.

KNME: dump “the yelling people” (as MR calls them) and give us a whole hour of color, OK? Even white people get tired of what white people think — especially the bellicose ones.

Or, get rid of the tedious Charlie Rose and free up hours for more fresh views. mjh