Fora TV discussion of "the Daily show"

"Journalists Rachel Davis Mersey and Ted Anthony defend "The Daily Show" from NPR's Ira Glass, who argues that the program, while good satire, is a poor substitute for actual, in-depth news coverage."

the complete video is here.

Euronews: 2 stories

"Eyes in the sky helping with major disasters"

The tragic earthquake in Haiti last month triggered a vast international rescue effort. And space played a vital role in saving lives. Observation satellites are helping by providing crucial information in the emergencies that follow major natural disasters....




Euronews interview with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan

an invisible coup, pt 2

Since my post from the other day I notice that Xymphora has also posted about the presumptive coup, citing the same PressTV item, and "Xenophile" left a telling comment:

Xenophile 08/04/2009 08:47 AM
That sounds like PressTV's revenge for Western coverage/promotion of the astroturf revolution in Teheran.

Lemme see if I get it: a Saudi dissident quoted from the Arabic-language Iranian channel by the Iranian official press is the source. À consommer avec moderation.

I also came across this: (September 2008)
from Stratfor.com,

Iranian media reported a failed coup attempt in Saudi Arabia on Sept. 3, citing an Arab publication. The details of the reports suggest, however, that they are unfounded. Tehran’s move to pick up the story is likely Iranian psyops against Saudi Arabia, designed to undermine global confidence in the stability of the world’s largest oil producer.

Why I mistrust Obamacare, pt 2

A reminder(above). This is from a speech Obama gave in Chicago in 2003. I guess that was then.

See also:

San Francisco Chronicle/AP, July 3rd:
"Under Senate health care plan, either way you pay"



John Dickerson, Slate, Tuesday, July 7, 2009:
"Going Public, Quietly: Why Obama wants to be as vague as possible about health care reform"



Michael Lind, Salon, July 21st: "Healthcare reform: More raw deal than New Deal"
We need universal, citizen-based healthcare. It doesn't look like Obama and Congress are ready to give it to us



Bruce A. Dixon, Black Agenda Report,Weds, 07/22/2009:
"Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?"

(via Skookum)


Lambert at Corrente, 7/21:
'How the Dems and "progressives" are selling you the "bait and switch" of public option'



and finally, Wikepedia's US healthcare reform article, which keeps growing. More later.


cross-posted at Dead Horse.

Sanford and the Son

Mark Sanford: OK, I'm not going to say, I don't know what the big deal is, because I know it IS a big deal. Cheating is wrong, darn wrong. I let my wife down, I let my adorable children down, I let the employees of the state of South Carolina down, the voters, even the reporters who heard about the emails but were forced to behave as if they didn't know where I was. I let all of you down, and I'm sorry.

Narita Barnswell(AP): Governor, how do to intend to show the people that your no-good South American hussy meant nothing to you, and you mean to move on?

Governor Mark: Narita, I'm not going to say that, because I still love Maria. I don't want to be a hypocrite.

Bing Mathers(Fox News): Governor, are you saying you don't care what the South Carolina voters or even Fox News viewers think, that you are going to choose love over propriety and your miserable career? Is that what you're saying?

Jesus(suddenly appearing): Bing, I think the governor has spoken from the heart. Like me, he values love, and understands its transcendent quality. Mark, I love you, and if you really love your antipodean floozie, I want you to know I support you, as long as your heart is true and your kids don't have a problem with it. Have you asked them?

Gov. Mark: huh?

Jesus: I've noticed that kids from wealthy, loveless families often figure out pretty quickly if mom and dad don't love each other, and if they're good kids the hypocrisy usually gets to them. Or they grow up to have problems with booze and prescription drugs, or maybe betting on the horses. It's a toss-up.

Lori-Ann Santoro(CNBC): Jesus, if that's really you, are you saying the republican party should stick by the governor?

Jesus: Honestly Lori-Ann, I couldn't care less what the republicans do. They're mostly a bunch of soulless weasels, just like the democrats. I'm just here to support Mark, because I believe in love. Does anybody have any pertinent questions?

Dennis Perrin(suspicious character): Hi Jesus. Dennis Perrin here. My question is: will the Lions ever have a decent team again?

Jesus: Man, I don't know. They really ticked the Big Guy off when they refused to trade Barry Sanders, and I don't mind telling you He was hoping for a chance to see Barry play in the Super Bowl, just once. There was a time, they could have gotten an entire defensive line for him, but they decided they'd rather hold him back and sell tickets.

Gov. Mark: Wait a minute. Jesus, are you saying you couldn't care less about my career?

Jesus: Yes. Don't you already have enough money, and didn't you say this Maria is your "soul-mate"?

Gov. Mark: I'm sorry, but I'm confused. I'm doing the right thing, by sticking with my marriage. It's what the voters want.

Jesus: Oh, me. It's what this crowd of moralizing drunkards wants, because they want to scold you on the television and feel powerful when you subsequently toe the line. As far as I can see your marriage ended a long time ago, when you and the missus stopped loving each other. You don't even know or care what the voters want. Maybe you don't even care about what you want. I remember whispering in George Junior's ear a few years ago, about how he needed to take that wad of money his parents gave him and go open a video store in Houston where he could spend the rest of his days harmlessly ogling Rice co-eds renting R-rated movies, instead of running for congress. Because I knew his thwarted desire would keep screwing itself tighter and tighter, and maybe someday he'd kill thousands of people. But he didn't listen either.

Look. Some people in this world have a buffet of choices and others don't, but you seem to think you deserve some kind of credit for pretending you belong in the latter group. A waitress at the Waffle House who's boyfriend is in jail and can't get help raising her kid falls in the no choice category. You don't. Maybe you were so deliberately clumsy about ducking out of the country because you wanted to be caught, you wanted your hand forced so you could come clean and stop being a hypocrite. If that's the case, why are you back-tracking now?

Gov. Mark: I want to do what's right.

Bing Mathers: Jesus, doesn't the governor deserve credit for trying to set right his life, even under such intense media scrutiny?

Jesus: Even under-- do you hear yourself? Bing, neither you nor any of these other characters give a damn about the governor's life, let alone the well-being of his soul. You're just peeved because Fox wouldn't fly you to L.A. to cover Michael Jackson's death.


Helen Thomas(important old lady): Jesus, if we could back up just a bit please. Are you saying weasels don't have souls? What about otters?

Jesus: Hey, Helen. No,I'm not saying that, I just didn't want to call them a bunch of soulless jerkwads, because it doesn't sound like something I'd say. So I tried to put it in terms most of you could relate to. Weasels are OK, and so are otters. Anyway guys, I got other stuff to do. Let he who is without sin, etcetera etcetera. I'm outta here. (Jesus leaves.)

Gov. Mark: What about me?

(a far away clap of thunder is heard. The reporters all go "ooh" and move to the windows of the conference room to look. It starts to rain.)

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

not a twitter revolution

from the Real News.

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

The Real News talks to UAW retirees

Retired Auto Workers have their say, pt 1.

Part two is here;
Part three,
Part four, and
Part five.

Is TV news one-sidedly in support of Israel?

from The Real News:Is TV news one-sidedly in support of Israel?

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

Killing your newspaper

Two recent articles, one in Time and one on the web in Salon.com, discuss the decline of the newspaper.

Walter Isaacson, in Time,
“How to Save Your Newspaper”, Feb. 05, 2009 and

Gary Kamiya, Salon,
"The death of the news: If reporting vanishes, the world will get darker and uglier. Subsidizing newspapers may be the only answer"

I would've liked to be able to post a response to Isaacson at Time's web site, but only Salon allows this:

Half-empty? No!

Dear Gary Kamiya,

1.With all due respect, I think you are 100 per cent wrong.
If the internet didn't exist, this article about the "death of the newspaper" would appear in some indie weekly, like the Village Voice, just as somebody else wrote about it recently in Time.
Newspapers have supposedly been dying for several decades now, and the culprit is clearly TV, not the internet.

I would argue that the internet has increased newspaper readership substantially, just not in as profitable a form as big media magnates would like. If anything, I suspect that ad revenue from the internet has probably helped stop the bleeding a bit, and (somewhat) deccelerated the rate of decline of traditonal newspapers at the hands of TV.

Another reader mentioned the UK's Guardian, approvingly. I imagine that reader wouldn't have access to the Guardian if not for the 'net. I know that I've also read scores of Guardian stories, but I've never bought a paper copy, or even seen one. Likewise, I hadn't even heard of Hong Kong's Asia Times, another supremely valuable "paper", let alone read anything in their pages, before I had internet access. I'm pretty sure my story applies to many people.

There will always be a demand, at least among some people, for serious journalism, and newspapers will continue to exist, but they need to figure out a way to make viable a business model whose bread-and-butter is the internet.

We will lose the paper that is all things to all people, with a section for everybody from most demographics, all rolled neatly into one rubber-bandable unit, and I can understand why some people will miss that, but I suspect that's inevitable.

But I'm very skeptical that subsidies are the answer. The subscriber model, like the one that

The Real News

and others have been trying to foster might hold some promise.


2. Still, there's no question, there is a huge mis-allocation of resources, and I think that somewhere down the line that needs to be addressed. Just think of how many news bureaus, of both the television and newspaper/net variety, you could open with just the salaries of Katie Couric and Brian Williams(!). Maybe we need a Big Hair Tax, with the proceeds given as grants to struggling news centers.

But that would be unfair, amusing as it is to momentarily daydream about. Better yet, reintroduce steeply progressive taxation and trust-bust the big media monopolies, and nobody would have a multi-million dollar salary, while thousands of others would have more mundane but practical opportunities to do real journalism. Sadly, I'm still dreaming.


from Walter Isaacson's insipid article
“How to Save Your Newspaper”, which I mentioned earlier:

This is not a business model that makes sense. Perhaps it appeared to when Web advertising was booming and every half-sentient publisher could pretend to be among the clan who "got it" by chanting the mantra that the ad-supported Web was "the future." But when Web advertising declined in the fourth quarter of 2008, free felt like the future of journalism only in the sense that a steep cliff is the future for a herd of lemmings. (See who got the world into this financial mess.)

Newspapers and magazines traditionally have had three revenue sources: newsstand sales, subscriptions and advertising. The new business model relies only on the last of these. That makes for a wobbly stool even when the one leg is strong. When it weakens — as countless publishers have seen happen as a result of the recession — the stool can't possibly stand.

me: this reasoning is garbage-- revenue from everything declined in 4Q 2008, as the recession intensified. And the “three legs of the stool" argument is also bollocks: broadcast television was immensely profitable for decades of “giving away” their content for free, while just depending on advertiser revenue. Now they have more competition, from cable TV and other media, but the advertiser-based model is still working pretty well for them. How could they otherwise afford to pay Brian and Katie all those previously-alluded-to millions if the "one-legged" advertiser-revenue model wasn't working for them?

Isaacson wants newspapers to go to micropayments, a particularly regressive idea that enemies of a mostly unregulated internet have been touting for some time now. It's also Big Brother-style intrusive-- do you really want your web surfing/consumption habits so closely monitored? Ultimately, of course, people like Isaacson attack the internet as it is presently formulated because it represents a rejection of authority-driven media, and, therefore, a rejection of the authority of the Walter Isaacsons of the world-- and a threat to their high-paying jobs.

UPI: grappling with gitmo

I'm impressed that UPI (apparently) didn't encounter any "let 'em rot" types in the informal polling seen here, although I guess people might censor themselves when they're on camera out on a public street in a way they might not in a more anonymous venue. I'm also guessing the nice young lady who commented about the oddness of the concept of "outsourcing" prisoners to foreign countries is unaware of the practice of extraordinary rendition, or that Bill Clinton authorized the CIA to do it after Oklahoma City in '95.

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

Brian Conley leaves China

photo of Brian Conley(on the right) and Jeff Jarvis, c. 2006, courtesy somethingtobedesired.com

from a sequence of emails from Eowyn Rieke, Brian Conley's wife:

1.Brian Conley, founder of Alive in Baghdad was arrested Tuesday, August 19th while in Beijing. Press inquiries may be directed to press@aliveinbaghdad.org



2. According to the US Embassy (last update received 11:30 pm US EDT Saturday, August 23) there has been no big change. They still anticipate that the 8 US detainees will be deported on August 30. They are advocating for earlier release, but have not received a response from the Chinese authorities.

We can increase the likelihod of early release by continuing to apply political pressure. If you are close friends or family of any of the detainees, or have good contacts in the offices of US Representatives, US Senators or the State Department please contact them and ask them to press the issue with the State Department and the US Embassy in Beijing.

We can also continue the pressure via media coverage. The Washington Post published an excellent editorial on Friday, August 22 and an article on Saturday, August 23. That should help elevate the issue of Tibetan repression and Chinese intolerance of free speech. But more is better! Please, keep talking to any press contacts you have, especially those in major media outlets.

We're in a dangerous time in the press cycle -- the Democratic National Convention is about to start and the Olympics are about to end. As a result the Beijing detentions and issues of human rights in China may just get lost or ignored.

If you want to get really mad, listen to "Reviewing the Beijing Olympics." At about minute 04:30 they discuss freedom of the press and repression of protests, stating "we believe that the police here are under orders not to detain people immediately if they are not causing a public disturbance." How utterly ridiculous and totally irresponsible. That section of the report ends with "It looks like the iron fist is increasingly gloved in velvet." Please please consider writing a letter to NPR asking them to produce a story that presents the truth about press freedom in China during the Olympics.

If you are in the New York Area, there are a bunch of solidarity events planned for tomorrow (Sunday, August 24). See the end of the email for more information.

There will be a special episode of Alive in Baghdad this week, with a short segment on Brian and his detention. Thanks to Students for a Free Tibet for helping us gather some information and footage.

And finaly, I've spent a lot of today pondering a question that came to me sometime last night -- If this is how the Chinese government treats US citizens when the eyes of the world are focused on China, what do they do to Tibetan and Chinese activists, who have no real rights, when no one is watching? I can't even imagine.

Keep an eye on the Free Tibet 2008 website, where you can get the most recent updates.



3. and finally,
We just got word that Brian and friends are on a plane to Los Angeles, arriving Monday morning. He was released with 7 other US citizen detainees: Jeff Goldin, Tom Grant, Mike Liss, James Powderly, Jeff Rae, John Watterberg and Jeremy Wells.

They have been released 6 days early, largely (we believe) because of political pressure and media attention that forced the US Embassy to take action.

The fate of the other 2 international detainees, Florian Norbu Gyanatshang a Tibetan with German citizenship, and Mandie McKeown from Britain, is not clear. Please feel free to call their respective embassies and urge their immediate release. For more info on phone numbers and other action steps, see the Free Tibet 2008 website.

Was the Iraq war worth it? --UPI video

Although several of the respondents are clearly buying into the myth that the US presence is preventing greater instability, at least the UPI is asking people a question that remains mostly unspoken on American television news.

June 2nd CBS News story- Dover, Tenn

I tend to rag on domestic TV news for its superficiality, and naturally I still think it's mostly well-deserved. But I want to take note when they do good, like with this CBS News story from this evening's broadcast by Seth Doane about a foodbank in rural Tennessee. I've never heard of Doane before-- maybe he's a young and idealistic type.

"Are there days that you …" CBS News correspondent Seth Doane began asking.

"That we don't eat?" Liz Thomas said while standing in line at a food pantry. "Yeah."

Torture, inc and other items

Jonathan Schwarz calls attention to a FAIR fundraiser; I visited, and saw this:
TV’s Low-Cal Campaign Coverage: How 385 stories can tell you next to nothing about whom to vote for"
By Jon Whiten (May/June 2008)

as you may know, FAIR stands for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. I think they shouldn't change their name, but maybe change their acronym to FEAR, as in FairnEss and Accuracy in Reporting, even if that doesn't make a lot of sense. Because maybe then more people would tune in, and give them lots of money as Jon Schwarz advises. Besides, we seem to live in an age in which fear is the key.


Mister Schwarz also has a post by Nell Lancaster of A Lovely Promise, "No Torture. No Exceptions. Just a Few Qualms."

When I saw this the first thing, greedily, that I thought was, "Oh, great. Now Nell Lancaster is going to be a big shot, and won't want to join my new group blog." (more about this later.)
Lancaster criticizes the group she discusses, RejectTorture.org, for making a primarily utilitarian argument against torture, and not discussing the humanitarian aspect. She does this within an otherwise approving context, although she also notes their tangentially humanitarian argument, that torture "betrays our values", and seems to dismiss that as an appeal to American exceptionalism*.

I wonder if the Reject Torture people are right to de-emphasize the humanitarian aspect, not because it isn't valid but because of how aggressive the right-wing noise machine in (seemingly) discrediting arguments against torture, and if as a consequence people are less likely to be reached by such an argument because it's tied in with the conditioned response of liberals and liberalism being self-indulgent exercises in feel-goodism.(I sound like Ned Flanders all of a sudden!)

But it also occurs to me that part of the problem is that Americans don't know too much about the robust street-fighting tradition of liberalism, denatured as it has become by corporate media insistence that Martin Luther King was just a guy who wanted to hug everybody and Malcolm X is just a movie you can order through Netflix. And then there's the tradition, well before the days of Jerry Falwell and the Left Behind series, of American religious figures fighting the good fight for abolition.

(Whistler Blue in ATR's comments mentions the National Religious Coalition Against Torture)


Elsewhere, Rob Payne in
"Indoctrination Nation" says
"We believe ourselves to be more civilized because we have car keys and unmanned drones."

And Chris Floyd has an excellent piece, referenced by Rob,"Outer Darkness: The Gulag Cancer Grows, State Terror Intensifies"


*which inevitably reminds me of Rob Payne, as well as why I wanted to ask her and Rob and 1-3 others to try a group blog I've been mulling over.

It's True, you know*

photo copyright Brendan I. Koerner

Who, you may ask, is Brendan I. Koerner? Mr K. writes periodically for Slate, and Hugozoom's (two or three) regular readers may recall I posted this arresting image* from his website from last fall. He informs me he has a book out, Now the Hell Will Start, which he describes as a "non-fiction account of an American G.I. who married into a tribe of Indo-Burmese headhunters, circa 1944." The book's website is here, and he has an article, "The Greatest Manhunt of WW II" referencing it in Slate this week. Oh, and congratulations Brendan, on your new little one.

photo cropped from original for proper formatting.

the Real News in Kentucky

5/25: Elsewhere, Barbara O'Brien of the Mahablog writes:

I believe I read somewhere that African Americans are the only voting demographic that never gave George Bush a majority of popular support, even during his glory days after 9/11. This, I believe, gives African Americans bragging rights as the smartest voting demographic.

Conversely, we might ask ourselves, Why are so many white voters so stupid? I’ll give that some thought.

A recent Newsweek poll suggests a “lurking racial bias in the American electorate,” Darman writes. Do tell. I’m not surprised by racism. I’m surprised people are surprised by racism.

I note that some people seem to have become a bit untethered of their common sense about this because of their support for one candidate or another. Avedon Carol for example-- whom I generally value-- seems to have developed a blindspot here(as well an unwillingness to admit she favors Clinton over Obama.)

In January, apropos of the NH primary results, she wrote:

"But I don't believe for a minute that Democrats said they were going to vote for Obama because it sounded acceptable but they were too racist to actually do it. I just don't."

Again no to truce

In the summer of 2006 I watched David Martin on CNN tell Katie Couric:

"it's always the same pattern- first there is a period of calm, then Palestinians target and attack Israeli civilians, then a counterstrike." I paraphrase, but it so angered me that I wrote it down in a notebook, trying to get the wording right(I am TIVO-less, but I'm not complaining ).

I don't think that's the order at all, especially since he said those words in June as the 2nd Israeli war on Lebanon was starting, and he had to be aware of the shelling at the beach a few weeks earlier that killed the family of Huda Ghulia.

Anyway: here's another sequence of events in 2008. I wont say "first, thing x happens", because thing x is happening all the time in Israel and Palestine, and sometimes it gets reported over here, and sometimes not. Anyway, definitive starting points are very much in the eye of the beholder.

April 24th: Helena Cobban: Tahdi'eh-- Hamas says Yes

Israel rejects Hamas truce offer
(01:13) Report

April 25 - Reuters- A proposed six-month ceasefire is dismissed by Israel as a ruse by Hamas to re-arm and re-group after recent fighting. Hamas, after talks with Egyptian mediators, is calling for a mutual cessation of hostilities in Gaza along with an end to a crippling Israeli-led blockade of the territory.Paul Chapman reports.

Teen killed in Gaza clashes
(01:12) Report

April 26th- Reuters- Palestinians bury a 14-year-old girl killed in fighting between Israeli troops and militants during a raid in northern Gaza. The Israeli army confirmed the arrest raid but said it knew nothing about the girl's death. Israel frequently raids the Hamas-controlled territory in what it calls its campaign to stop cross-border rocket attacks. Susuan Flory reports.

NOW can we call her a monster?

I don't have a book of quotations handy, but I imagine somebody both cleverer and famouser than me has already observed that the things left undiscussed in a narrative are usually far more telling than the things spoken about.
Off the top of my head, the best I can do is Gershwin's line from Porgy and Bess:

The things you're liable
to read in the Bible,
They ain't necessarily so.

American politics is arguably like that. For example, I think about the controversy about Samantha Power calling Hillary Clinton a monster back around five or six weeks ago. Even though it was undoubtedly a spontaneous event(as you probably recall, Power tried to qualify it as off-the-record), but the various players in the Obama and Clinton camps and the media immediately knew how to respond to this, as if a script was ready, questioning Obama's judgment in selecting Power as an adviser, insisting Power apologize or resign, Obama dutifully apologizing for her remarks, etc.

I wondered how many people out there in Real-People-Land even paid any attention to the whole dustup. Not terribly many, I'm guessing. I also wondered, why precisely does Power feel Hillary is a monster? Should I automatically assume it's for reason x or y, and weren't other people curious about Power's reason(s)? I realize this is one of those mutually and tacitly agreed upon things, the rolling out of a familiar script by which to deflect the impertinent questions of people like me, as per the nonplussed onlookers at the parade when the naked emperor goes by.

I'm guessing the answer to my question wasn't necessarily that interesting, that it had to do with Clintonian campaign tactics, but that's not really my point. When the Clintons and Obamas and the TV press and the Powers respond in the preordained, scripted ways, it seems designed to avoid the question, because once you have Sam Power's answer, inevitably other persons with other reasons for regarding Hillary as monstrous might gain some scrutiny, and the next thing you know some of those brains out there in Real-People-Land might start ruminating, and that would be-- I don't know, monstrous.

Likewise, this afternoon I watched the nightly news, and it seemed as if people just stopped dying in Iraq and Afghanistan(just like Somalia), nobody objected to China hosting the Olympics, nobody lost their house, nobody was kidnapped in Colombia, and nobody was waterboarded or forced to evade questions about torture. The only thing worth discussing was the Pennsylvania democratic primary, the most important primary, the most important event ever, since Reagan freed the hostages or Grant surrendered to Lee at Appomattox. The world dutifully stood still. (And yes, this kind of sarcastic trope about a single event being made to dominate the news isn't original either-- just hard to resist.)

There was a sound bite of Hillary Clinton telling a crowd that with her 10 point win, she'd pulled ahead in the popular vote viz-a-viz Obama, and a chart graphic saying that Obama was ahead of her by 600,000 votes, but that Hillary was counting the disputed primary votes from Michigan and Florida, which Obama hadn't contested. The Penn primary, and various prognostications about which states Obama could win in the general election versus ones Clinton could win, was of course pretty much the whole news show. (I watched CBS, but I imagine the others were pretty much the same.)

I saw nothing about the ABC interview HRC gave (admittedly on Monday morning) with Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America-- I heard about that through Raw Story. (But if you knew about it, how could you not wonder about its impact?)

“I want the Iranians to know, if I am president, we will attack Iran,”( if they launch nukes against Israel), Clinton said. “I want them to understand that. … We would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that.”

Clinton said she hoped her stern warning would serve as a deterrent from Iran doing anything “foolish and tragic.”

The quote in the Reuters article is somewhat misleading, suggesting in parentheses that she immediately added "if they attack Israel."(But to be honest, in referencing the video above, it looks as if it's been edited to take some pauses out.)

Again I find myself wondering about the people out there in Real-People-Land. Does the sickness of this register with them? You wonder how many people are even aware and paying attention to this, trying to be good citizens and keeping up with the news while they drown in the soporific horse-race minutiae of who would be more likely to beat McCain in Colorado or Tennessee, eventually giving up on the sucker's game of trying to stay informed.

Some of the articles about this have titles that say Hillary says she will obliterate Iran, while others note the "would be able" and reproduce the quote more accurately. I can't help but be reminded of Kerry's "for then against" position and Bill Clinton's tortuous question about what the word "is" means. If you look at the real-life pacing of her words and her body language, she has unamiguously threatened to attack Iran if she's elected. I think that's a violation of international law, and I'm sure that Mrs it takes-a-village has frightened a lot of ordinary people in Iran, including kids, who are now aware that one of the leading candidates of the opposition party is just as demented as George W. Bush.

In one way, however, the follow up by Cuomo and Clinton was even more disgusting:

Cuomo: Is it difficult to reconcile the logic of a statement like that, with the realities of what it would be like to make that desicion?

HRC: It is. It's very hard. And that's why you hope to deter such behavior.

Boo hoo. Isn't it horrible, when you have to kill thousands of people cause their gummint don't act right, the toll it takes on you? Years ago whenever the Labour party in Israel capitulated to demands from the right that they start yet another offensive against the Palistineans, somebody once referred to the rationalizing speeches offered in the Knesset as "shooting and crying." Only Mrs Clinton seems more gleeful than a good liberal should be about it.

The things you're liable
to read in the Bible,
They ain't necessarily so.

Simon Jenkins:Despite Iraq, America's love affair with war runs deep

Independent(UK): Tough-talking Clinton vows to 'obliterate' Iran if it ever dares to attack US ally Israel

CNN's political blog: "Clinton: Iran would pay a 'very high price' for nuclear attack"

El Baradei interview(from 2007)regarding Iran's nuclear program[video]

Marketwatch: "Has Hillary's tough talk increased pain at the pump?"

Clark(Montana)Chronicle:Ron Paul: Clinton 'doesn't understand the presidency'

Dennis Trainor, Jr: "Hillary: I can do war bigger and better than Bush"

ABC News:"Pennsylvania's Six Week Primary Ends Tonight"
[original title of this ABC article on Tuesday:
Clinton on Iran Attack: 'Obliterate Them']

I guess Slate doesn't exactly ♥ Hillary Clinton

The headline on the Slate article reads,"The Hillary Deathwatch Widget:Embed Clinton's sinking ship on your blog, iGoogle, or Facebook page."

I'm not going to put this on the sidebar as a permanent or semi-permanent fixture, just here for one post. As far as I'm concerned all three of the mainstream presidential choices stink, and HRC certainly is a corporatist, prowar phoney. But even as some of the humor directed at her amuses me, some, mostly photoshopped grotesquerie, is really off-putting.

Occasionally I wonder how much of it has to do with her simply being a woman, since-- inexplicably to me-- most people don't seem that bothered by the dynastic implications of two Bushes and two Clintons possibly ruling governing us for as much as 28 years in a row. Virtually none of the humor directed at her seems to touch upon that. And as far as humor about her ambition goes, well yes, it's certainly fair game, but all the men who ran and are still running are plenty ambitious too.

I guess gender equality means the soulless and power-hungry who would do their damnedest to persuade us to keep ruining our country (and others) via unbridled empire deserve to be blasted, irrespective of their sex. I'd prefer the kind of social progress that involves doing away with soulless and power-hungry leaders who want to wreck as many countries as possible, but perhaps I'm fussy.



(the inset panel above, regarding Scaife, is from Tom Tomorrow. The rest is from Get Your War On.)

The April fool is you

ok, in a nod towards thoroughness, the above links are here:

"Clinton n' Obama shake their fingers at oil guys"

• Oil executives defend soaring profits
• CNNMoney: Congress lays into oil execs
• CNNMoney: Issue #1: America's Money
• iReport.com: What would you ask Big Oil?

Senators Clinton and Obama care(a lot), and they're angry, and they're not afraid who knows it. When HRC voted for the Iraq war resolution in 2002, undoubtedly it had nothing to do with oil, any more than her subsequent unwillingness to defund the war or commit to ending the war in the next four years. Of course Obama has also demonstrated an unwillingness to defund the war or commit to getting out by 2012, but that's different-- he had the guts to oppose the war as a state legislator. Then, when he was running for the US Senate in 2004 and was invited to speak to the democratic convention that summer, he had a chance to reiterate his stance on the war before a national audience-- but he recognized that might embarrass the headliner, old for-it-before-he-was agin' it John Kerry, and decided not to. (I guess that's different too.)

But with the "off the books" financing of the Iraq debacle-- and the utter unwillingness of Obama and Hillary Clinton to publicly draw the connection between the war,the weakening dollar, and the ever-upward spiraling of dollar-denominated oil prices, I question whether the democrats represent a substantially more sober answer.(yeah, you care-- but who cares?)

I'm sure John McCain cares a lot too, but his nomination is nicely sewn up, so it's not so pressing for him to be so demonstrative this early.

I don't know when I first watched a tv report about congress calling executives in front of them to scold them and beat their chests in righteously populist fashion for the cameras. When I was 11? 12? I used to love watching the news when I was a kid, and although I don't remember for certain, I imagine I took these sorts of dog-and-pony shows at face value when I was a kid and I watched the CBS morning news with Hughes Rudd before going to school.

That was such a long time ago, and although I remember the news in the late 70s being less mediocre, journalistically speaking, than today's focus-grouped soft-edge presentations, I also wonder if that's just the natural consequence of a middle-aged man romanticizing something from his youth at the expense of the present. I DO remember that news about celebrities wasn't a big deal in those days, as well as Rudd's wizened, subtly sarcastic manner. CNN's Jack Cafferty is the closest thing on TV news to a similar sensibility, and he seems like something of an artifact, what with CNN having gone (fairly precipitously) downhill in the past eight to ten years, especially after Lynn Russell left(I often think that maybe she saw the writing on the wall and decided she didn't want to be part of the crappy new order.).


Was the news coverage better? In spite of today's 24 hour news channels, I'm inclined to think so. Does that mean that better news coverage makes for more sensible, skeptical citizens-- in other words, were people smarter back then? Well, they did foist Ronald Reagan on us in November of 1980, the start of our modern age of the unraveling social compact, but the Ayatollah had our hostages, and there was that botched rescue mission, etc. Besides, how were they to know Reaganism would have such far-reaching effects?

When I watch the news, especially when the reporter cherry picks one or two presumptively representative man in the street interviews, I wonder about whether or not people are dumber as a consequence of post-deregulation Potemkin village news. And of course, there's also the pressure of Reagan-style federal tax cuts, shifting spending to the states, which consequently spent less on education. I don't know how you'd objectively factor in the effect of the more extreme religious fundamentalists, who insist that science may not offend when kids come home with tales of degenerate relativism, etc.

(The fact that, in spite of how outrageously the domestic media has sucked up to Junior and protected him from our knowing more about the conduct of the war, the war and the president are still as unpopular as they are, suggests holding out some modest hope that our collective intellect still has some functioning grey matter.)

What I do know is, selective man in the street interviews and stories asking "what would you ask Big Oil" notwithstanding, certain questions wont get asked, on tv, or even in print(and in print online) . How about a story asking

"are the congressmen just covering for their own failures in trotting out the oil executives?" or
"When congress scolds big business on tv, does anything get done as a consequence?"

(The silence is part of the disinformation-- so when you have such thoughts, if you do, you are more likely to dismiss them, maybe out fear that you might be a crank, or seem like one to others.)

Or, "should we spend more on public transportation?"

Or, "do you think we should bring back the 55 mph speed limit to reduce oil consumption?"

Of course, the lawmakers could just do that without putting on a show. I'd favor a 100 kph(@61 mph) national speed limit, and maybe by getting people to learn the conversion they'd start using their noggins too.

Now, I don't believe the lawmakers mean to do any of those things-- they're boring and don't involve an immediate or certain political reward. So I'm inclined to think today's event on capitol hill may have been scheduled for April first by persons with a sense of humor, albeit humor that involves laughing at you and me.


see also, Christian Science Monitor: "With gas costly, drivers finally cut back:
A decline in miles driven is the first since 1980"

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