AARP Under Attack

The "Swifties" are at it again.

Link To Blog on Ad: Here

A Sample of USANext Constituents: Here

Excellent Editorial On Coming Attack: Here

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Why Art Linkletter?

Turns out that Linkletter is the National Chairman for “United Seniors Association” which was an astroturf front group used as a slush fund to funnel money from the pharmaceutical industry and has sinced morphed into the USAnext attack machine. All clear now?

Should we begin an investigation into:

USANEXT.ORG registered to:

UNITED SENIORS
wbrindley@unitedseniors.org
3900 Jermantown Road s
Suite 450 Fairfax, VA 22030
703 359 6500

USA Next hired Chris LaCivita, the former head of the Progress for America Voter Fund and a consultant to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They’re also receiving help from Creative Response Concepts, a Virginia firm that represented both Swift Vets and Regnery Publishing, the publisher of the political smear “Unfit for Command.”

Oh, and the nominal head of USANext? Look no further than the former deputy of the homophobe hate group Focus On The Family. In addition, the new chief of USANext is Charlie Jarvis, a former executive vice president of James Dobson’s notorious group Focus on the Family.

Last year, the group’s annual budget was more than twenty eight million dollars.

Your Medical Records Investigated for Political Correctness

Kansas AG Seeks Abortion Records
Friday, February 25, 2005
AP News

TOPEKA, Kan. — The Kansas attorney general, a staunch opponent of abortion, has demanded the medical records of nearly 90 woman and girls who had late-term abortions, saying he needs the material to investigate crimes.

The two abortion clinics involved in the case say the state has no right to such personal information and are fighting the request in the Kansas Supreme Court.

Full Article: Here

.....

From the New Youk Times:

Mr. Kline's new investigation could yield similar records. His effort became public this week when two clinics whose records are being subpoenaed filed a brief in State Supreme Court to block what they called a "secret inquisition" and "fishing expedition" that threatened the doctor-patient privilege and women's constitutional rights.

Noting that personal details like marital status, race, employment history and emergency contacts are in the records, lawyers for the clinics asked, "How can a woman's method of birth control or prior history of abortions or use of drugs and medications be relevant?"
The brief, which provided the first glimpse into a yearlong battle whose records have been sealed, said the laws cited as the basis for the subpoenas are one that restricts abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy and another that requires health professionals to report suspected child abuse.

When Mr. Kline was in the legislature, he helped write the 22-week limit.

Although Mr. Kline emphasized statutory rape in his news conference, many here on both sides of the abortion debate said they suspected that his real target was doctors who provide late-term abortions.

Full Article: Here

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Are your records next? What happens if a routine blood test shows use of a drug?

The party of small government seems to have forgotten about their position upon the assumption of power. Funny how that works.

Industry Health vs. Your Health

10 Voters on Panel Backing Pain Pills Had Industry Ties
By GARDINER HARRIS and ALEX BERENSON
New York Times
Published: February 25, 2005

Ten of the 32 government drug advisers who last week endorsed continued marketing of the huge-selling pain pills Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx have consulted in recent years for the drugs' makers, according to disclosures in medical journals and other public records.

If the 10 advisers had not cast their votes, the committee would have voted 12 to 8 that Bextra should be withdrawn and 14 to 8 that Vioxx should not return to the market. The 10 advisers with company ties voted 9 to 1 to keep Bextra on the market and 9 to 1 for Vioxx's return.

Full Article: Here

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Should those who "consult" on issues affecting your health care more about the health of the industry or the public?

Profit over people?

What is it going to take for us to figure out that big business at the expense of everything else is not in our best interest. Just WHAT is it that they are trickling down upon us? And, who is responsible for allowing this to happen?

Hint: Who controls all the elected branches of government?

Real Genocide...Ignored

From a New York Times Editorial: Here

Photos don't normally appear on this page. But it's time for all of us to look squarely at the victims of our indifference.

These are just four photos in a secret archive of thousands of photos and reports that document the genocide under way in Darfur. The materials were gathered by African Union monitors, who are just about the only people able to travel widely in that part of Sudan.

This African Union archive is classified, but it was shared with me by someone who believes that Americans will be stirred if they can see the consequences of their complacency.

The photo at the upper left was taken in the village of Hamada on Jan. 15, right after a Sudanese government-backed militia, the janjaweed, attacked it and killed 107 people. One of them was this little boy. I'm not showing the photo of his older brother, about 5 years old, who lay beside him because the brother had been beaten so badly that nothing was left of his face. And alongside the two boys was the corpse of their mother.

The photo to the right shows the corpse of a man with an injured leg who was apparently unable to run away when the janjaweed militia attacked.

At the lower left is a man who fled barefoot and almost made it to this bush before he was shot dead.

Last is the skeleton of a man or woman whose wrists are still bound. The attackers pulled the person's clothes down to the knees, presumably so the victim could be sexually abused before being killed. If the victim was a man, he was probably castrated; if a woman, she was probably raped.

There are thousands more of these photos. Many of them show attacks on children and are too horrific for a newspaper.

.....

The archive also includes an extraordinary document seized from a janjaweed official that apparently outlines genocidal policies. Dated last August, the document calls for the "execution of all directives from the president of the republic" and is directed to regional commanders and security officials.

"Change the demography of Darfur and make it void of African tribes," the document urges. It encourages "killing, burning villages and farms, terrorizing people, confiscating property from members of African tribes and forcing them from Darfur."

It's worth being skeptical of any document because forgeries are possible. But the African Union believes this document to be authentic. I also consulted a variety of experts on Sudan and shared it with some of them, and the consensus was that it appears to be real.

.....

I'm sorry for inflicting these horrific photos on you. But the real obscenity isn't in printing pictures of dead babies - it's in our passivity, which allows these people to be slaughtered.

During past genocides against Armenians, Jews and Cambodians, it was possible to claim that we didn't fully know what was going on. This time, President Bush, Congress and the European Parliament have already declared genocide to be under way. And we have photos.

This time, we have no excuse.

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The CIA and many think tanks believe that Sudan could be the next Afghanistan - a safe haven and training ground for foreign terrorists. REAL genocide is obviously taking place. So, why Iraq and not the Sudan? Color of skin? No significant oil reserves? Nothing to offer to our economy? No WMD? Oh...nevermind, that apparently doesn't matter anyway.

If it's not one of these cynical reasons, then what?

Where are our values of freedom and democracy and safety for the world now?

Even With Goss, I Guess The CIA Hates America...By Fox News' Standards

War Helps Recruit Terrorists, Hill Told
Intelligence Officials Talk Of Growing Insurgency

By Dana Priest and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 17, 2005; Page A01

The insurgency in Iraq continues to baffle the U.S. military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top U.S. national security officials told Congress yesterday.

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

"These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

Full Article: Here

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Hmmm...those pesky facts just keep getting in the way of ideology. I hate it when that happens.

The Unintelligent Choice

At 10AM this morning, President Bush will name John Negroponte as the new Director of Intelligence for the United States.

Who is John Negroponte?

You may remember him best as one of the key figures in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration. John Negroponte was the ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. While there, he was directed the secret arming of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua to help them overthrow the Sandinista government.

At the time, he also was “cozy” with the chief of the Honduran national police force, Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez. Martinez ran the infamous Battalion 316 death squad. Battalion 316 “kidnapped, tortured and murdered” dozens of people while Negroponte was ambassador. Negroponte, however, turned a blind eye to the death squad and ignored the gross human rights abuses so Honduras would allow bases for U.S.-backed Contras.

Full Article: Here

It's Not Fraud If You're A Republican

Lawmakers Told About Contract Abuse in Iraq
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff WriterTuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A03

A government contractor defrauded the Coalition Provisional Authority of tens of millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction funds and the Bush administration has done little to try to recover the money, an attorney for two whistle-blowers told Democratic lawmakers yesterday.

The lawyer, Alan Grayson, represents two former employees who charged in a federal lawsuit that the security firm Custer Battles LLC of Fairfax was paid approximately $15 million to provide security for civilian flights at Baghdad International Airport, even though no planes flew during the contract term. Grayson said the firm received $100 million in contracts in 2003 and 2004, despite a thin track record and evidence the government was not getting its money's worth.

....

"I wish I could tell you that the Bush administration has done everything it could to detect and punish fraud in Iraq," Grayson said. "If I said that to you, though, I would be lying."

The Pentagon has suspended Custer Battles from receiving new contracts, but Grayson said the Justice Department declined last fall to help pursue the case, now pending in federal court in Alexandria.

....

After an interview with Custer in January 2004, agents from the Pentagon inspector general's office wrote, "Battles is very active in the Republican Party and speaks to individuals he knows at the White House almost daily, according to Custer." A White House spokesman had no immediate comment.

Article Link: Here

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Shocking...not.

Bush Lies To Conservatives To Get Elected...Duh

Ex-Aide Questions Bush Vow To Back Faith-Based Efforts
By Alan Cooperman and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff WritersTuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A01

A former White House official said yesterday that President Bush has failed to deliver on his promise to help religious groups serve the poor, the homeless and drug addicts because the administration lacks a genuine commitment to its "compassionate conservative" agenda.

David Kuo, who was deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for much of Bush's first term, said in published remarks that the White House reaped political benefits from the president's promise to help religious organizations win taxpayer funding to care for "the least, the last and the lost" in the United States. But he wrote: "There was minimal senior White House commitment to the faith-based agenda."

Article Link: Here

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Gullible or just stupid? Oh, wait, nevermind...ideology over reason, faith over facts...I get it...both.

Bush's Class-War Budget

By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times
Published: February 11, 2005

It may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends. Yet his latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action. And it offers the Democrats an opportunity, if they're willing to take it.

First, the facts: the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes. One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid for about 300,000 people. Another would deny child care assistance to about 300,000 children, again in low-income working families.And the budget really does shower largesse on millionaires even as it punishes the needy. For example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities informs us that even as the administration demands spending cuts, it will proceed with the phaseout of two little-known tax provisions - originally put in place under the first President George Bush - that limit deductions and exemptions for high-income households.

More than half of the benefits from this backdoor tax cut would go to people with incomes of more than a million dollars; 97 percent would go to people with incomes exceeding $200,000.It so happens that the number of taxpayers with more than $1 million in annual income is about the same as the number of people who would have their food stamps cut off under the Bush proposal. But it costs a lot more to give a millionaire a break than to put food on a low-income family's table: eliminating limits on deductions and exemptions would give taxpayers with incomes over $1 million an average tax cut of more than $19,000.

It's like that all the way through. On one side, the budget calls for program cuts that are small change compared with the budget deficit, yet will harm hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Americans. On the other side, it calls for making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and for new tax breaks for the affluent in the form of tax-sheltered accounts and more liberal rules for deductions.The question is whether the relentless mean-spiritedness of this budget finally awakens the public to the true cost of Mr. Bush's tax policy.

Until now, the administration has been able to get away with the pretense that it can offset the revenue loss from tax cuts with benign spending restraint. That's because until now, "restraint" was an abstract concept, not tied to specific actions, making it seem as if spending cuts would hurt only a few special interest groups.But here we are with the first demonstration of restraint in action, and look what's on the chopping block, selected for big cuts: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health insurance for children and aid to law enforcement. (Yes, Mr. Bush proposes to cut farm subsidies, which are truly wasteful. Let's see how much political capital he spends on that proposal.)

Until now, the administration has also been able to pretend that the budget deficit isn't an important issue so the role of tax cuts in causing that deficit can be ignored. But Mr. Bush has at last conceded that the deficit is indeed a major problem.

Why shouldn't the affluent, who have done so well from Mr. Bush's policies, pay part of the price of dealing with that problem?

Here's a comparison: the Bush budget proposal would cut domestic discretionary spending, adjusted for inflation, by 16 percent over the next five years. That would mean savage cuts in education, health care, veterans' benefits and environmental protection. Yet these cuts would save only about $66 billion per year, about one-sixth of the budget deficit.On the other side, a rollback of Mr. Bush's cuts in tax rates for high-income brackets, on capital gains and on dividend income would yield more than $120 billion per year in extra revenue - eliminating almost a third of the budget deficit - yet have hardly any effect on middle-income families. (Estimates from the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution show that such a rollback would cost families with incomes between $25,000 and $80,000 an average of $156.)

Why, then, shouldn't a rollback of high-end tax cuts be on the table?

Democrats have surprised the Bush administration, and themselves, by effectively pushing back against Mr. Bush's attempt to dismantle Social Security. It's time for them to broaden their opposition, and push back against Mr. Bush's tax policy.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

They Were Warned...And Did Nothing...Part II?

Newly released memo warned of al Qaeda threat

Document described during 9/11 hearings
Friday, February 11, 2005
Posted: 8:20 AM EST (1320 GMT)
CNN.com

Article Link: Here

The memo dated January 25, 2001 -- five days after Bush took office -- was an essential feature of last year's hearings into intelligence failures before the attacks on New York and Washington. A copy of the document was posted on the National Security Archive Web site Thursday.

...

He described the network as a threat with broad reach.

"Al Qaeda affects centrally our policies on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia, North Africa and the GCC (Gulf Arab states). Leaders in Jordan and Saudi Arabia see al Qaeda as a direct threat to them," Clarke wrote.

"The strength of the network of organizations limits the scope of support friendly Arab regimes can give to a range of U.S. policies, including Iraq policy and the (Israeli-Palestinian) Peace Process. We would make a major error if we underestimated the challenge al Qaeda poses."

...

It recommended that the new administration urgently discuss the al Qaeda network, including the magnitude of the threat it posed and strategy for dealing with it.

The meeting on al Qaeda requested by Clarke did not take place until September 4, 2001.

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I guess tax cuts for the rich and telling the world to go pound sand on nuclear treaties and the environment were more important.

Media DOES Matter...Again

Article Link: Here

Beyond 'Fair and Balanced
'Sinclair, the pro-Bush broadcaster, is waging war on the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys"
By ERIC KLINENBERG

Hyman, a former Navy intelligence officer whose walls are covered with drawings of battleships, shows off the Sinclair operation with the pride of a new parent. Local news is the most lucrative part of the business -- in a typical market, it accounts for a third of all ad revenue -- and Sinclair has come up with a novel way to make it even more profitable. First, the company slashes news staffs at its local affiliates to as few as fifteen employees, compared to as many as eighty at its competitors. Then it produces programs at its headquarters, called News Central, that are designed to look like local news. As we tour the studios, Hyman calls my attention to the anchor desk and backdrops, which have been created to match those at Sinclair affiliates. That way, when the company's on-air personalities sit in Baltimore and banter with local anchors, viewers think the broadcasts are taking place in their hometown. "There's no indication that these pieces are coming from News Central in Maryland, no disclaimer," says Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, a media-reform group based in Northampton, Massachusetts.

In addition to deceiving viewers and cutting costs, Sinclair's news operation enables it to shape the tone and content of the evening news at every local station. The company delivers its message in News Central segments it labels "must carries" -- those that every affiliate is required to air. In addition to Hyman's editorial, these segments often include "Truth, Lies and Red Tape," which trots out examples of government waste, and reports by Sinclair's Washington bureau that are skewed to the right.

Behind the scenes, Sinclair gives generously to Bush and the GOP. A report by the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity found that ninety-five percent of Sinclair's $335,000 in campaign contributions since 1998 have gone to Republicans -- "a lopsided record of giving unmatched by other major television broadcasters." All told, the company gave $23,000 to Bush and $217,000 to the Republican Party.

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If the only information one gets is designed and developed to be bias, then what do you expect from the people who watch it?

They Were Warned...And Did Nothing

9/11 Commission: FAA Was Alerted to Potential Attacks
Documents Show 52 Warnings Were Received Prior to Sept. 11
Associated Press

Thursday, February 10, 2005; 10:13 AM

The Federal Aviation Administration received repeated warnings in the months prior to Sept. 11, 2001, about al Qaeda and its desire to attack airlines, according to a previously undisclosed report by the commission that investigated the terror attacks.

A previously undisclosed report by the 9/11 commission that investigated the suicide airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon detailed 52 such warnings given to FAA leaders from April to Sept. 10, 2001, about the radical Islamic terrorist group and its leader, Osama bin Laden.

....

According to the report:

-- Aviation officials were "lulled into a false sense of security" and "intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 9/ll did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures."

-- Of the FAA's 105 daily intelligence summaries between April 1, 2001 and Sept. 10, 2001, 52 mentioned Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, or both, "mostly in regard to overseas threats."

-- It notes that the FAA did not expand the use of in-flight air marshals or tighten airport screening for weapons. It said FAA officials were more concerned with reducing airline congestion, lessening delays and easing air carriers' financial problems than thwarting a terrorist attack.

-- A proposed rule to improve passenger screening and other security measures ordered by Congress in 1996 had been held up by the Office of Management and Budget and was still not in effect when the attacks occurred, according to the FAA.

-- Information in this report was available to members of the 9/11 commission when they issued their public report last summer. That report itself contained criticisms of FAA operations.

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Accountability? We don't need no stinkin' accountability!

I guess if one cannot be convinced by the title of a Presidential Daily Brief, 52!!!!! warnings about a possible attack wouldn't make a difference either.

When are you going to get it?

History...it's a bitch...again

From the book, "When President's Lie"

Enjoying a $935,000 annual budget plus eight professional staffers on loan from State, Defense, U.S. Information Agency, and Agency for International Development, Office of Public Diplomacy--under the direction of Cuban émigré Otto J. Reich—also hired by the Bush Administration--the office worked closely with Elliott Abrams,-- a mainstay of Bush Administration national security policy—offered privileges to favored journalists, placed ghostwritten articles over the signatures of Contra leaders in the nation’s leading opinion magazines and op-ed pages, and generally publicized negative stories about the Sandinistas, whether true or not.

In the first year of its operation alone, it sent attacks on the Sandinistas to 1,600 college libraries, 520 political science faculties, 122 editorial writers, 107 religious organizations, and countless reporters, right-wing lobbyists, and members of Congress, according to its own records. It booked advocates for 1,570 lecture and talk-show engagements; in a single week during March 1985, the OPD officers bragged in a memo of having fooled the editors of The Wall Street Journal into publishing an op-ed allegedly penned by an unknown professor, guided an NBC news story on the Contras, written and edited op-ed articles to be signed by Contra spokesmen, and planted lies in the home media about the experiences of a congressman who visited Nicaragua.

Otto Reich boasted of his ability to convince editors and executives to replace reporters he did not like with those he did and warned those reporters who did not cooperate that he would be watching them in the future, a threat that proved effective against National Public Radio, which Reich termed “Moscow on the Potomac.”

Among the lies peddled by OPD agents and employees were stories that portrayed the Sandinistas as virulent anti-Semites, that reported a Soviet shipment of MIG jets to Managua, and that revealed U.S. reporters in Nicaragua to be receiving sexual favors—both heterosexual and homosexual— from Sandinista agents in exchange for favorable coverage. The latter accusation, published in the July 29, 1985, issue of New York Magazine, came directly from Reich, who denied responsibility. Accuracy in Media, secretly under contract to OPD, soon began naming these journalists, despite the fact that the charges were entirely fictional.

Following the Iran–Contra revelations, a 1987 report by the U.S. comptroller general would later find that Reich’s office had “engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities,” and the office was soon shut down.

And now...we see this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6915347/

Media DOES Matter

http://mediamatters.org/static/right-wing-squares.html

Requires FLASH media capabilitiy.

History...it's a bitch...

I can’t decide if this is interesting or just sad. I guess for neo-con cheerleaders, history is only what took place in the last 24 hours.

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U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote : Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.
The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

Pending more detailed reports, neither the State Department nor the White House would comment on the balloting or the victory of the military candidates, Lieut. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for president, and Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, the candidate for vice president.

A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, when President Ngo Dinh Deim was overthrown by a military junta.

Few members of that junta are still around, most having been ousted or exiled in subsequent shifts of power.

Significance Not Diminished

The fact that the backing of the electorate has gone to the generals who have been ruling South Vietnam for the last two years does not, in the Administration’s view, diminish the significance of the constitutional step that has been taken.

The hope here is that the new government will be able to maneuver with a confidence and legitimacy long lacking in South Vietnamese politics. That hope could have been dashed either by a small turnout, indicating widespread scorn or a lack of interest in constitutional development, or by the Vietcong’s disruption of the balloting.

American officials had hoped for an 80 per cent turnout. That was the figure in the election in September for the Constituent Assembly. Seventy-eight per cent of the registered voters went to the polls in elections for local officials last spring.

Before the results of the presidential election started to come in, the American officials warned that the turnout might be less than 80 per cent because the polling place would be open for two or three hours less than in the election a year ago. The turnout of 83 per cent was a welcome surprise. The turnout in the 1964 United States Presidential election was 62 per cent.

Captured documents and interrogations indicated in the last week a serious concern among Vietcong leaders that a major effort would be required to render the election meaningless. This effort has not succeeded, judging from the reports from Saigon.

NYT. 9/4/1967: p. 2.

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When will we learn that hope is not a planning tool and really, really BELIEVING in an ideology doesn’t change reality.

A Conservative on Neo-Conservatism and the Media

End-Timers & Neo-Cons

The End of Conservatives

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts


Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during 1981-82. He was also Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.

I remember when friends would excitedly telephone to report that Rush Limbaugh or G. Gordon Liddy had just read one of my syndicated columns over the air. That was before I became a critic of the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration, and the neoconservative ideologues who have seized control of the US government.

America has blundered into a needless and dangerous war, and fully half of the country's population is enthusiastic. Many Christians think that war in the Middle East signals "end times" and that they are about to be wafted up to heaven. Many patriots think that, finally, America is standing up for itself and demonstrating its righteous might. Conservatives are taking out their Vietnam frustrations on Iraqis. Karl Rove is wrapping Bush in the protective cloak of war leader. The military-industrial complex is drooling over the profits of war. And neoconservatives are laying the groundwork for Israeli territorial expansion.

...

Apparently, Rush Limbaugh and National Review think there is a liberal media because the prison torture scandal could not be suppressed and a cameraman filmed the execution of a wounded Iraqi prisoner by a US Marine. Do the Village Voice and The Nation comprise the "liberal media"? The Village Voice is known for Nat Hentoff and his columns on civil liberties. Every good conservative believes that civil liberties are liberal because they interfere with the police and let criminals go free. The Nation favors spending on the poor and disfavors gun rights, but I don't see the "liberal hate" in The Nation's feeble pages that Rush Limbaugh was denouncing on C-Span.

In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush.

The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism and attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America. Anyone against the war is against America and is a liberal. "You are with us or against us."

This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits no facts or analysis. Blind emotion rules. Americans are right and everyone else is wrong. End of the debate.

That, gentle reader, is the full extent of talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal Editorial page, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and, indeed, of the entire concentrated corporate media where noncontroversy in the interest of advertising revenue rules.

...

The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share the liberals' abiding faith in government. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which permits government to suspend a person's civil liberty by calling him a terrorist with or without proof. Thus, preemptive war, which permits the President to invade other countries based on unverified assertions.

There is nothing conservative about these positions.

Editorial Link: Here

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There it is, in black and white; the strategy to win for the center and center-left. Take that which the neo-cons have abondoned and make it our own.

Attacking the Messenger - That Darn Media Filter

Spin Buster

January 26, 2005

Bypassing that Dang Filter

For an administration that places a premium on secrecy while openly holding the media in contempt, the Bush administration sure pays a lot of attention to journalists.
Just how much time -- and money -- they spend has recently been exposed in a couple of high-profile payola scandals. In early January we learned that commentator Armstrong Williams was paid $241,000 by the Education Department to help promote President Bush's No Child Left Behind bill in his journalistic offerings. And in a similar story, today we hear that Maggie Gallagher, a syndicated columnist who repeatedly defended the Bush marriage initiative in 2002, failed to disclose that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to publicize and promote the proposal. According to the Washington Post, "Her work under the contract, which ran from January through October 2002, included drafting a magazine article for the HHS official overseeing the initiative, writing brochures for the program and conducting a briefing for department officials." Gallagher also received $20,000 of a Justice Department grant to the National Fatherhood Initiative in 2002 and 2003 for writing a report for the organization.

While that doesn't quite sink to the level of the Williams fiasco, it turns out there's more. Both while under contract and after, Gallagher appeared on television promoting the initiative and wrote syndicated columns in support of the president's plan -- all while failing to disclose her contract. Her excuse? Well, she just plum forgot. "I would have, [disclosed the contract] if I had remembered it," she said. (If only we all had the luxury of "forgetting" a nice check for $21,000 that arrives in the mail.)

On the heels of all this comes an Associated Press story that hit the wires this afternoon headlined, "GOP Seeks Donations to Get Bush Plans 'Past the Liberal Media.'" It seems that Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman sent a fund-raising email out Wednesday morning telling supporters that donations are needed "to get the president's message past the liberal media filter and directly to the American people." Funny, isn't it, how at the same time the administration gets busted for paying off columnists to tout its programs, all of a sudden it needs cash to "get past" the media. Just this morning, the president told reporters at a press conference that "all our Cabinet secretaries must realize that we will not be paying, you know, commentators to advance our agenda. Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet."

This isn't the first time Bush and his crew have complained about the "filter." In October 2003, the president complained that "Somehow you just got to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the American people." Back then, the president was talking about stories coming out of Iraq that focused more on the post-invasion carnage than, say, repainted schoolhouses. Today, the filter they hope to end-run around is coverage of negative responses to his plan to partially privatize (yes, privatize) Social Security.

According to this logic, it's not the administration's policies that draw the heat, it's just that darn media filter which keeps reporting those inconvenient facts.

--Paul McLeary

Can Iraq Be A Liberal Democracy?

Elections Are Not Democracy

The United States has essentially stopped trying to build a democratic order in Iraq, and is simply trying to gain stability and legitimacy.

By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

"Feb. 7 issue - By the time you read this, you will know how the elections in Iraq have gone. No matter what the violence, the elections are an important step forward, for Iraq and for the Middle East. But it is also true, alas, that no matter how the voting turns out, the prospects for genuine democracy in Iraq are increasingly grim. Unless there is a major change in course, Iraq is on track to become another corrupt, oil-rich quasi-democracy, like Russia and Nigeria."

"This is a complaint one hears over and over again. America is spending billions of dollars in Iraq and getting very little for it in terms of improvements on the ground, let alone the good will of the people. "Most of the money is being spent for reasons of political patronage, not creating the basis for a real economy," says al Khafaji. Most of it is spent on Americans, no matter what the cost. The rest goes to favored Iraqis. "We have studied this and I can say with certainty that not a single Iraqi contractor has received his contract through a bidding process that was open and transparent."

"Much of the reason for this decline is, of course, the security situation. The United States has essentially stopped trying to build a democratic order in Iraq and is simply trying to fight the insurgency and gain some stability and legitimacy. In doing so, if that exacerbates group tensions, corruption, cronyism, and creates an overly centralized regime, so be it. Lawrence Kaplan, a neoconservative writer passionately in favor of the war, who coauthored "The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission" with William Kristol, has just returned from Iraq and written a deeply gloomy essay in the current The New Republic. His conclusion: "The war for a liberal Iraq is destroying the dream of a liberal Iraq."

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