Thursday, November 29, 2007

Washington Whore Post BURIES ENRON FRAUD, SEC RULING stories on pages D-1 and D-3....

Today's Washington Post front page leads with more of their favorite fare: Dem. and Republican primary and debate conversational (no hard news) stories... but the post BURIES today's REAL NEWS _DEEP_ in the paper, on pages D-1 and D-3.
On page D-1 is the story "SEC Votes to LIMIT Shareholder Rights." On the heels of the massive ENRON and Arthur Andersen, World Com (etc.) financial scandals, ONE MIGHT THINK that this story deserves FRONT PAGE, A-1 coverage... Republicans are set to LOOSEN the ACCOUNTABILITY of corporations to their stockholders yet again!

Sure enough, BURIED on page D-3 is a Whore Post story "Three Linked to Enron Fraud Plead Guilty."

The Whore Post and "major media" - HELPING the Bush-Cheney Republican Party BURY news of the massive financial scandals and fraud of Enron corp.

This treatment of "hard news" (i.e. burying it) by the Post, also illustrates the COMPLICITY of the Democratic Party 'leadership' of Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Harry Reid: They FOLLOW the "conventional wisdom" notion that the SEC story is "no big deal", and ALLOW the Republicans and post to BURY IT deep in the paper's business section.


SEC Votes to Limit Shareholder Rights
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/28/AR2007112802196.html?hpid=sec-business

Three Linked to Enron Fraud Plead Guilty
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/28/AR2007112802358.html?hpid%3Dsec-business&sub=AR

Washington Post's PRINCIPLES of Journalism.. at least back in 1933....

PRINCIPLES of Journalism for the Washington Post, set by purchaser of the ailing newspaper, West Coast financier Eugene Meyer, 1933:


http://www.washpostco.com/history-history-1925.htm

1933
On June 1, a public bankruptcy auction was held on the steps of The Post's E Street Building and the newspaper was sold for $825,000 to Eugene Meyer, a California-born financier. Meyer was not an experienced newspaperman, but he had strong convictions about publishing a newspaper which he expressed in this set of principles:

* The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.
*The Newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world.
*As a disseminator of the news, the paper shall observe the decencies that are obligatory upon a private gentleman.
*What it prints shall be fit reading for the young as well as for the old.
*The newspaper's duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.
*In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.
*The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs and public men.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Update on the TIME magazine WILLFUL DECEIT, PATENTLY FALSE STATEMENTS in their rah-rah SURVEILLANCE story....

Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald are working on the story of TIME magazine publishing a JOE KLEIN article that was FULL OF PATENTLY FALSE statements, if not DELIBERATE LIES. Here an up-date on our previous post, in the form of an open letter by Greenwald to the editors of TIME:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/27/time/index.html
Mr. Stengel - I'm working on a comprehensive piece for Salon about the process that allowed Joe Klein to publish BLATANTLY FALSE STATEMENTS in his FISA article. I'd like to interview you regarding this matter, including these topics:
*Who edited Joe Klein's piece?
*How could such unambiguously, factually false claims make it into the article, and who is responsible for correcting it?
*Does Time have the responsibility not only to correct mistakes like this but also, where it seems rather clearly to be the by-product of WILLFUL DECEIT on the part of a source, describe how it was tricked?
Could you email me and let me know if you can talk and I can call you, or you can give me a call [phone number]. Thanks -
Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/27/time/index.html

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Media Whores IGNORE the Washington, DC created IRAQ HOLOCAUST.....

In an excellent commentary, Mark Weisbrot details how the "Major Media," week in and week out, copy or replicate the number one propaganda technique of Nazi Propaganda Minister JOSEPH GOEBBELS:
#1. SMEAR your opponents as subhuman, as enemies of all that is good, and as a threat to your nation
#2. FOCUS on the heroic qualities of those in your party, or on your side, in the war against the evil-doers...
#3. IGNORE the TRUE COSTS of one's policies, either by minimizing the human qualities of the victims, OR NOT MENTIONING THEM (victims) AT ALL.

<< Is Washington responsible for a holocaust in Iraq? That is the question that almost everyone here wants to avoid. So the holocaust is denied. >>

======================================

Holocaust Denial, American Style
By Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet.

Posted November 21, 2007.
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/68568/

Institutionally unwilling to consider America's responsibility for the bloodbath, the traditional media have refused to acknowledge the massive number of Iraqis killed since the invasion.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's flirtation with those who deny the reality of the Nazi genocide has rightly been met with disgust. But another holocaust denial is taking place with little notice: the holocaust in Iraq. The average American believes that 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003. The most commonly cited figure in the media is 70,000. But the actual number of people who have been killed is most likely more than one million.

This is five times more than the estimates of killings in Darfur and even more than the genocide in Rwanda 13 years ago.

The estimate of more than one million violent deaths in Iraq was confirmed again two months ago in a poll by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business, which estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths since the US invasion. This is consistent with the study conducted by doctors and scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health more than a year ago. Their study was published in the Lancet, Britain's leading medical journal. It estimated 601,000 people killed due to violence as of July 2006; but if updated on the basis of deaths since the study, this estimate would also be more than a million. These estimates do not include those who have died because of public health problems created by the war, including breakdowns in sewerage systems and electricity, shortages of medicines, etc.

Amazingly, some journalists and editors - and of course some politicians - dismiss such measurements because they are based on random sampling of the population rather than a complete count of the dead. While it would be wrong to blame anyone for their lack of education, this disregard for scientific methods and results is inexcusable. As one observer succinctly put it: if you don't believe in random sampling, the next time your doctor orders a blood test, tell him that he needs to take all of it.

The methods used in the estimates of Iraqi deaths are the same as those used to estimate the deaths in Darfur, which are widely accepted in the media. They are also consistent with the large numbers of refugees from the violence (estimated at more than four million). There is no reason to disbelieve them, or to accept tallies such as that the Iraq Body Count (73,305 - 84,222), which include only a small proportion of those killed, as an estimate of the overall death toll.

Of course, acknowledging the holocaust in Iraq might change the debate over the war. While Iraqi lives do not count for much in US politics, recognizing that a mass slaughter of this magnitude is taking place could lead to more questions about how this horrible situation came to be. Right now a convenient myth dominates the discussion: the fall of Saddam Hussein simply unleashed a civil war that was waiting to happen, and the violence is all due to Iraqis' inherent hatred of each other.

In fact, there is considerable evidence that the occupation itself - including the strategy of the occupying forces - has played a large role in escalating the violence to holocaust proportions. It is in the nature of such an occupation, where the vast majority of the people are opposed to the occupation and according to polls believe it is right to try and kill the occupiers, to pit one ethnic group against another. This was clear when Shiite troops were sent into Sunni Fallujah in 2004; it is obvious in the nature of the death-squad government, where officials from the highest levels of the Interior Ministry to the lowest ranking police officers - all trained and supported by the US military - have carried out a violent, sectarian mission of "ethnic cleansing." (The largest proportion of the killings in Iraq are from gunfire and executions, not from car bombs). It has become even more obvious in recent months as the United States is now arming both sides of the civil war, including Sunni militias in Anbar province as well as the Shiite government militias.

Is Washington responsible for a holocaust in Iraq? That is the question that almost everyone here wants to avoid. So the holocaust is denied

Sunday, November 25, 2007

How they do it: How TIME magazine and other Media Whores LIE to America, week after week.....

Time magazine's FISA fiasco shows how Beltway reporters mislead the country
Glenn Greenwald
Sunday November 25, 2007
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/25/klein_fisa/index.html

On Wednesday, I documented that Joe Klein's column in this week's Time Magazine contained multiple false statements about the new FISA bill -- The RESTORE Act -- passed by House Democrats last week. The most obvious and harmful inaccuracy was his claim that that bill "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court" and that it therefore "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans." Based on those outright falsehoods, Klein called the House Democrats' bill "well beyond stupid."

That day, Klein responded on his blog to what I wrote without acknowledging that he was doing so and without even telling his readers what the criticisms were. He insisted that everything he wrote was accurate ("as I reported, [the bill] obliquely gives foreign terrorists the same procedures as American citizens, if not the same rights"). He also said that the RESTORE Act was just "a partisan waste of time, fodder for lawyers and civil liberties extremists."

Yesterday -- Saturday night on Thanksgiving weekend -- Klein returned to the Time blog to write an extremely conditional, weaselly, self-justifying and partial "correction" to what he wrote in the print magazine. There's no indication whether any correction will appear in the print magazine, but the online version of Klein's article contains no such correction and still contains all of his grave misstatements.

I don't want the focus here to be on Klein himself. It's beyond well-established what he is and what a slothful, easily manipulated and dishonest "reporter" he is. As deceitful as the correction itself is (for the reasons set forth below), at least he returned to the issue and finally admitted wrongdoing (Klein: "Clearly, I didn't do sufficient vetting of the facts"), which is more than most of this type of pundit typically does.

* * * * *

What I want to do is examine Klein's conduct here to illustrate how so many Beltway reporters (though not all) function. This is not a matter of some obscure error involving details. Because of what Klein did, Time Magazine told its 4 million readers that the bill passed by the House Democrats "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans" and thus shows how Democrats still can't be trusted on national security. The whole column was built on complete, transparent falsehoods about the key provisions of that bill.

Yet look at Klein's first statement in his "correction":

I may have made a mistake in my column this week about the FISA legislation passed by the House, although it's difficult to tell for sure given the technical nature of the bill's language and fierce disagreements between even moderate Republicans and Democrats on the Committee about what the bill actually does contain.
One can debate whether Klein's original, inaccurate claims about the House FISA bill in his Time article can fairly be called "lies" (as opposed to inexcusably reckless inaccuracies). But this statement by Klein in his "correction" unquestionably is a lie.

There is no confusion possible about whether the House bill -- as Klein originally wrote -- "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court." Anyone who told that to Klein was lying. All you have to do is read the House bill in order to know that. Here is Section 2 of the RESTORE Act -- the very first section after the "Definitions" section:


'CLARIFICATION OF ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE OF NON-UNITED STATES PERSONS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES'

Sec. 105A. (a) Foreign to Foreign Communications-

(1) IN GENERAL - Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, a court order is not required for electronic surveillance directed at the acquisition of the contents of any communication between persons that are not known to be United States persons and are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence information, without respect to whether the communication passes through the United States or the surveillance device is located within the United States.

Nobody who can read basic English can fail to understand what this says. As clearly as it can, the bill says that no warrant is required for communications involving non-U.S. persons outside of the U.S. In fact, individual warrants are not even required when a foreign target communicates with someone inside the U.S.; only general approval by the FISA court of the procedures used to eavesdrop is required (see Sec. 105). Thus, Klein's statements about the bill were indisputably, unquestionably false, and all one had to do is read the painfully clear language of the bill to know that.

But Klein, of course, never bothered to read the bill and still hasn't (even though he is published by Time to "report on" and opine about this bill). Instead, even now, he says that he has spoken with both Republicans and Democrats, and while Democrats insist that what he wrote was false, "the Republican Committee staff disagrees and says [his] reporting is correct."

In other words, Klein's GOP source(s) blatantly lied to him about what the bill does and doesn't do in order to manipulate him into uncritically feeding Time's readers the Rush Limbaugh Line -- namely, that Democrats are giving equal rights to Terrorists and preventing the Leader from eavesdropping on foreign Terrorists. And Klein dutifully wrote down what he was told in Time without bothering to find out if it was true and without ever bothering to talk to any of the bill's Democratic proponents. And no Time Editor knew enough or cared enough to bother correcting any of it. And thus, the unfortunate 4 million Americans who read and trust Time now think that the Democrats' FISA bill does the exact opposite of what it actually does.

That is the real story here. That's how our political system works. Scheming GOP operatives feed whispered lies to their favorite, most gullible, most slothful and/or dishonest Beltway journalists. Gleeful and grateful that they have been chosen for this dirty task, these journalists then scamper and write down what they were told and think that, by doing so, they are engaged in what they call "original reporting" -- which means uncritically passing on what they're told by government sources. As a result, they continue to obfuscate every key political issue and mislead Americans by doing the opposite of what journalists are supposed to do.

Even now that Klein knows that he was lied to by his GOP source(s), he still won't say that. Indeed, he does the opposite. He claims that there's some super-complex, clouded ambiguity here that people of good faith (such as his lying GOP operative-source) can see differently (Klein: "I reported as fact a provision of the bill that seems to be disputable, to say the least" and "I was clearly wrong to state as fact something that might not actually be in the bill"). Again and again, Klein defends his lying GOP source by pretending that there is some genuine grounds for disagreement here among good faith ladies and gentlemen that accounts for what he was told.

Worse, Klein now says that none of this really matters anyway, because "we are talking about relatively obscure and unimportant technical details" and his "larger point" about Democrats' excess partisanship is "still true." So Klein's column smeared House Democrats as wanting to protect Terrorists, based on a lie fed to him by GOP sources, and now that it's exposed for what it is, he says that none of that really matters anyway. What matters is that Democrats are still being foolish by not agreeing to the demands of the House Republicans and giving amnesty to telecoms and passing a bill that Republicans like, too.

* * * * *

What a repugnant though vivid microcosm this is for how so many of our Beltway journalists function. They think that their only job is to write down faithfully what they are told by both sides (if we're lucky) and call it a day. If one side is blatantly lying and the other side is telling the truth, that isn't for them to say.

Exactly like a stenographer in a court proceeding, their only job is to record the words that they hear accurately, not to identify what actually is true. And here is Klein admitting -- finally -- that this is exactly what he did (although in this case, he wasn't even a good stenographer since he only wrote down what one side said, not both).

The very idea of a reporter and a major news magazine publishing a piece about a crucial bill that neither the reporter nor any editor has ever even bothered to read is amazing. No blogger that I read regularly would ever think about doing that. But that's how the Bush administration has been able to depict all of its false statements about Iraq, and its illegal spying on Americans, as some sort of complex, impossible-to-resolve "controversy." GOP operatives say "X" and reporters write it down, and it would be terribly "partisan" for them to point out that "X" is actually an outright lie.

Had Klein even bothered to read the Democrats' bill before calling it "well beyond stupid" and passing on lies about it, he would have had a real story. This:

Last week, House Democrats passed a bill that allows the government to eavesdrop on foreigners outside of the U.S., but requires court approval to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens inside the U.S. But GOP operatives/politicians have spent the week telling reporters that the bill does the opposite, falsely claiming that it gives the same rights to Terrorists that it gives to U.S. citizens.
Those are the objective facts. That is actually what happened. Yet Klein's function -- like those of most of his colleagues -- isn't to report what actually happened, so he'll never say that. And thus, Time has yet again completely misled its readers on a critical political issue by passing on GOP falsehoods as fact, and they are highly unlikely to do anything in the way of alerting their readers to what they did, let alone reporting the real story here: how and why that happened.

UPDATE: Jane Hamsher breaks this whole matter down to its essence. Atrios adds some observations about what would occur if the Joe Klein situation were reversed.

Wall St. Journal whores the "WACKY LEFT drives Clinton out of mainstream" meme...

In this article the Wall Street Journal whores its favorite meme: that the "loony left" is responsible for all the defeats of losing Democrat candidates and leaders, from John Kerry to Tom Daschle and all the losing Democrats before or after.

But the facts are that Al Gore won the popular vote DESPITE DOING NOTHING to HIGHLIGHT THE PLIGHT OF TEXAS SCHOOLCHILDREN tossed off of pre-school, after-school, and health-care programs by then Texas Gov. George W. Bush's signature TAX CUTS FOR MILLIONAIRES and BILLIONAIRES.

Al Gore ran a miserable campaign that REFUSED to use an issue DEFINING THE CRUELTY and crass greed of the Right-Wing agenda... the agenda that the Whore Street Journal pimps every day, day in and day out, DESPITE that agenda's DEVASTATING IMPACT ON NATIONAL SECURITY.

The Wall Street Journal worships only one god - the god of MONEY, MAMOM, cold profit, AND GREED.

AMERICA DID NOT WIN WWII and become a world superpower by putting GREED and PROFIT above the spirit of MUTUAL COOPERATION and SHARED SACRIFICE.

But the GHOULISH LIARS of the WHORE STREET JOURNAL will FOREVER attempt to justify their "GREED IS GOOD" agenda, through snarky editorials such as this one.

WHORES STREET JOURNAL pimps their "LOONY LEFT DRAGS HILLARY DOWN" insanity:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119577999706601663.html?mod=blogs

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Media Whores work relentlessly TO IGNORE the McClellan "Bush, Cheney Rove, and Card INSTRUCTED ME TO LIE about Plame scandal" story



All The President's Liars: Where the Hell are The Washington Post and New York Times on McClellangate?!
November 21, 2007
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steve_yo_071121_all_the_president_s_.htm

McClellan book publisher furiously backpedals on significance of the books revelation, that Bush, Cheney, Rove, and WH Chief of Staff Andrew Card had WH spokesman Scott McClellan LIE to the American public during the CIA outing scandal....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21917188/

========================

Monday, November 19, 2007

Thomas FRIEDMAN of the New York Time, displays his AIPAC, neo-con, Warmongering INSANITY; calls for DICK CHENEY to be the DEMOCRAT's VP nominee!!

Hat-tip to ThinkProgress.com,
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/11/19/friedman-keep-cheney-on-for-another-term/
and Mathew Yglasias,
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/11/worst_oped_day_ever.php
for capturing and pointing out the sheer INSANE WAR LUST of Thomas Freidman and his employer, the "we LOVE TRASHING NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATIES, while THREATENING NUCLEAR ANHILATION to those we declare to be enemies" NEW YORK TIMES.
NO article or editorial ever published by the NEW YORK whore TIMES has ever quite captured the sheer insanity of the TIMES' devotion to the neo-con, Neo-Confederate, AIPAC war-lust, and designs for imperial hegemony and nuclear-backed intimidations -- and there have been many hundreds if not thousands of such NYT articles over the past decade urging, demanding, and white-washing wars, invasions, occuptaions, torture, spyng, and retributon (including WILLIAM SAFIRE's NYT "RETRIBUTION AGAINST FALLUJAH!" op-ed that advocated a massive reprisal against Fallujah that was indistinguisable from German treatment of GUERNICA, the embattled city in Spain bombed to rubble by Luftwaffe bombers during the Spanish Civil War) - as much as this insane THOMAS FRIEDMAN article, calling for DICK CHENEY - of HALLIBURTON STOCK OPTIONS/DEALING WITH IRAQ behind back of US/UN EMBARGO on Iraq infamy! - to be the choice of DEMOCRATS for their VP nominee in the 2008 elections!

Mr. Friedman, Mr. Safire, Mr. Sulzberger, and the entire top echelons of the New York Times have simply GONE BATTY with POWER, GREED, uncheked influence over the US news industry, and neo-con war-lust: it is THEY (and other AIPAC NEO-CON Straussian imperialists) over the past decade who have sought to LEGITIMIZE the Republican Right-Wing agenda to TRASH INTERNATIONAL TREATIES - including prohibition of TORTURE and restraints on NUCLEAR PROLIFERATIO - and who now seek to grind every nation on the earth under the bombs-and-bullets BOOT HEEL of US military "enforcement", aka threats or outright "war on terra" aggression.

THE NEO-CON WAR LUST AGENDA to CONQUER IRAN, IRAQ, SYRIA, and CASPIAN OIL NATIONS is INDISTINGUISHABLE from the German desire to CONQUER POLAND, Western Europe, and Russia, except that the Nazis did not have the massive NUCLEAR ARSENAL that Israel and America have today.

=========================================

Channeling Dick Cheney
[i.e., "Dick Cheney for DEMOCRATIC Vice President nominee" !!]

By Thomas Friedman
New York Times columnist
Published: November 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/opinion/18friedman.html

I have no idea who is going to win the Democratic presidential nomination, but lately I’ve been wondering whether, if it is Barack Obama, he might want to consider keeping Dick Cheney on as his vice president.

Skip to next paragraph

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman

Go to Columnist Page » No, I personally am not a Dick Cheney fan, and I know it is absurd to even suggest, but now that I have your attention, here’s what’s on my mind: After Iraq and Pakistan, the most vexing foreign policy issue that will face the next president will be how to handle Iran. There is a cold war in the Middle East today between America and Iran, and until and unless it gets resolved, I see Iran using its proxies, its chess pieces — Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and the Shiite militias in Iraq — to stymie America and its allies across the region.

And that brings me back to the Obama-Cheney ticket: When it comes to how best to deal with Iran, each has half a policy — but if you actually put them together, they’d add up to an ideal U.S. strategy for Iran. Dare I say, they complete each other.

Vice President Cheney is the hawk-eating hawk, who regularly swoops down and declares that the U.S. will not permit Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Trust me, the Iranians take his threats seriously. But Mr. Cheney’s Dr. Strangelove imitation is totally wasted with President Bush and Secretary of State Condi Rice. Because the president and secretary of state have never been able to make up their minds as to what U.S. policy toward Iran should be — to bring about regime change or a change of behavior — it’s impossible to have any effective diplomacy.

If she were taking advantage of Mr. Cheney’s madness, Secretary Rice would be going to Tehran and saying to the Iranians: “Look, I’m ready to cut a deal with you guys, but I have to tell you, back home, I’ve got Cheney on my back and he is truly craaaaazzzzy. You guys don’t know the half of it. He thinks waterboarding is what you do with your grandchildren at the pool on Sunday. I’m not sure how much longer I can restrain him. So maybe we should have a serious nuke talk, and, if it goes well, we’ll back off regime change.”

Instead, we just have Mr. Cheney being Mr. Cheney, but the Bush team neither carrying out his threats nor leveraging them to drive meaningful diplomacy with Tehran. There’s no good cop, it’s just a bad cop/bad cop routine — a big reason our Iran policy has been a failure. It has not stopped the Iranian nuclear program or changed the regime.

“For coercive diplomacy to work you need to be able to threaten what the regime values most — its own survival,” said the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Robert Litwak, author of the book “Regime Change.” “But for coercive diplomacy to work, you also need to be ready to take yes for an answer.”

Mr. Obama, by contrast, has “yes” down pat. As he said on “Meet the Press” last week: “I would meet directly with the leadership in Iran. I believe that we have not exhausted the diplomatic efforts that could be required to resolve some of these problems — them developing nuclear weapons, them supporting terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas.”

I think a President Obama offering to go to Tehran would have a huge impact on that country and create lots of internal debate, especially if we made clear that America would be satisfied with a verifiable change of Iranian behavior.

But Mr. Obama’s stress on engaging Iran, while a useful antidote to the Bush boycott policy, is not sufficient. Mr. Obama evinces little feel for generating the leverage you’d need to make such diplomacy work. When negotiating with murderous regimes like Iran’s or Syria’s, you want Tony Soprano by your side, not Big Bird. Mr. Obama’s gift for outreach would be so much more effective with a Dick Cheney standing over his right shoulder, quietly pounding a baseball bat into his palm.

Mr. Obama would also be more effective if he not only stressed how much further he was ready to go than the Bush team to engage Iran, but also how much further he would be ready to go in bringing meaningful leverage on Iran — by, say, opting for a gasoline tax that would help bring down the price of oil, or by abandoning the anti-Russia policies of the Bush team and trying to enlist Vladimir Putin, or China and India, on our side to bring real pressure on Tehran.

In sum, Mr. Obama’s instinct is right — but he needs to dial down his inner Jimmy Carter a bit when it comes to talking to Iran, and dial up a bit more inner Dick Cheney. If Democrats want to win this election, they have to get these two in balance — they have to learn how to criticize the Bush record from the right and the left, to show they can be better at engagement and coercion. Successful diplomacy requires both. Americans will want to know that Democrats can do both. My guess is that many still aren’t sure.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

New York Times - LYING neo-con WHORES - deconstructed in one paragraph...

In our previous post, we attempted to deconstruct the DECADE, dozen-years-plus neo-con agenda of the New York Times. At every turn, they have boosted and trumpeted invasions, stolen elections, stonewalled investigations, promoted looting-of-the treasury tax cuts for billionaires as economic policy; they have ignored perjury and obstruction of justice re the "outing" of a CIA undercover agent by the White House to smear and intimidate whistleblowers; and they consistently WHITEWASH or ignore or bury deep in their pages dozens of other administration and Republican scandals, including the connections between then president Bush and ENRON Chairman Ken Lay that were far more SCANDALOUS than any Clinton connection to the "Whitewater" routine real estate flop that was only a tiny part of the Republican dominated "DEREGULATIONS" that stiffed American taxpayers with the TRILLION DOLLAR S&L debacle.
Below, a reader comments to Stephen Schlesinger's delusional op-ed, saluting the neo-con New York Times as some sort of paragon of progressive, 'small-d' democratic America.

==========================================


RASPBERRIES TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-schlesinger/kudos-to-the-new-york_b_73122.html?load=1&page=2#comments

The idea that the Times can rescue itself from journalistic ignominy with a couple of politically correct and ineffective editorials is absurd. You say The Times has "at moments given pause?"

Moments? In total, more like decades, such as the years-long persecution of the innocent Wen Ho Lee, the years-long flagellation of the Clintons over non-existent Whitewater "scandals", the repeated false "reporting" in the years before and after the Iraq invasion (not to mention the internal whitewashing of editorial responsibility for the lies put into print) , the character assassination of Al Gore during the 2000 campaign, and even now the Times's Pentagon reporter unquestioningly repeats the flagrant lies about Iran supplying Iraqi insurgents with IEDs and other weaponry.

"Imagine this country without this paper." ? One can only wish! For 7 years The Times's news pages have been to Bush what Pravda was to Brezhnev. Occasional remonstrances from their op-ed pages from the likes of Krugman and Dowd and a few editorials mean nothing compared to the pro-Republican, anti-Democratic propaganda that has permeated their news pages for over a decade.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

You've GOT to be kidding! Stephen Schlesinger - Harvard, Time - opines that NY whore Times is a "FLAG of PROGRESSIVE THINKING"!

WOW! Mr. Schlesinger's defense, nay COMMENDATION of the New York Times is so over-the-top, so wacky, that we simply must ask "Is Mr. Schlesinger actually that IGNORANT, or is he so blinded by his Northeastern/Harvard/Time/AIPAC bias, that he actually believes his own propaganda?"

Mr. Schlesinger actually COMMENDS the NY Times for "reprimand[ing]...the Bush administration... for Blackwater lawlessness" but a quick glance at the NY Times front page today reveals NO COVERAGE (much less consternation, much less front-page screaming headlines) of the State Department's Inspector General Howard J. "Buzzy" Krongard COMMITTING PERJURY before Congressional Committee, in his on-going efforts at the State Department (in his role as Inspector General charged with INVESTIGATING Blackwater!) to MINIMIZE, WHITEWASH, and COVER UP Blackwater's.... "LAWLESSNESS", to steal Mr. Schlesinger's word.

(here is a TVnewsLies.org clip from our previous post on the perjury and Inspector General whitewash/cover-up)

Howard J. Krongard, US State Department Inspector General lied under oath to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform It seems that federal prosecutors have been looking into allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse in Iraq by Blackwater, USA. And, surprise, surprise, Krongard was on the carpet for interfering with the investigation.


Mr. SCHLESINGER, YOU, SIR, ARE A FOOL if not an outright IDIOT! You actually belive that one, two, or even three editorials buried deep in the editorial section of the Times comprises a COMMITTMENT to "progressive thinking in America"?
QUITE THE OPPOSITE! DESPITE their AKNOWLEDGING that Blackwater is LAWLESS, that the administration's stem-cell policy "IS A FIASCO" perpetrated to appease the administration's reactionary, fundamentalist supporters; and that the Bush-Cheney administration is SUBORNING OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE in the Miers/Bolton CONTEMPT and SCORN of Congressional Subpoenaes, the WHORE Times will do EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER to KEEP THOSE STORIES _OFF_ of the front page... where they would make a difference!!

In an insightful column a week or two ago, Frank Rich wrote of the "GOOD GERMANS AMONG US", decrying America's complacency with the roggue, lawless Bush administration. Mr. Rich didn't specifically single out his employer in his commentary, even though, of course, the TIMES has been at the epicenter of EVERY Republican outrage and atrocity of the past dozen years, from helping Republicans turn "WHITEWATER" into a "Monica- Did she, or didn't she" IMPEACHMENT, to sneering at Al Gore all through the summer of 2000 while GIVING Texas Governor George W. Bush a FREE PASS for his long record of scandals, including AWOL/Desertion from the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war, to the stolen election of 2000, to of course Judith Miller and the Times ENCOURAGAING and ENABLING the LIES TO WAR against Iraq in early 2003. Indeed, Mr. William Safire, long the signature columnist of the Times (and former NIXON SPEECHWRITER and Nixon apologist) was THE FIRST AND MOST VOCAL to call for MASSIVE RETRIBUTION ON FALLUJAH for the ambush and gunning of BLACKWATER MERCENARIES there. Mr. SCHLESINGER, the LEVELLING of Fallujah is in NO SMALL PART the work of William Safire and the New York Times!

Like a "GOOD GERMAN" in World War II, you will take the reports of "Jewish TERRORISTS ("IRAQI INSURGENTS") SHOT WHILE TRYING TO ESCAPE" as a perfectly valid excuse to wipe an entire town, village or community RIGHT OFF THE MAP.

====================================

Kudos to the New York Times

by (IDIOT!) Stephen Schlesinger
Kudos to the New York Times
Posted November 17, 2007


The Friday, November 16th editorial page of the New York Times demonstrates why this newspaper these days remains the most important organ of opinion in the country. In three hard-hitting editorials, the paper gave expression, in unvarnished, well-argued, and concisely-honed paragraphs, to outrage over the shameful behavior of the Bush Administration in three instances -- White House defiance of Congressional investigations; the Blackwater mess; and the stem cell fiasco.

The first editorial, "In Contempt" slammed the refusal of two of Bush aides, Chief of Staff Josh Bolton and former White House counsel Harriet Miers to respond to congressional subpoenas to testify in the United States attorneys scandal. Their disregard for congress's right to call witnesses was, as the paper said, not only an illegal obstruction in a lawful probe of an abuse of authority by the government, but also a dangerous effort to upset our careful system of checks and balances.

The second editorial, "Prosecuting Blackwater," reprimands the Bush Administration for its continuing failure to impose penalties on the lawless behavior of the Blackwater guards who killed at least 14 Iraqis in an indiscriminate and unjustified shooting spree last September.

Finally "A Stem Cell Achievement" chastizes President Bush for hobbling stem cell research because of the religious right. While the Times has at moments given pause in the past over events like its flawed coverage of the US decision to invade Iraq, its editorial pages continue on most occasions to hold high the flag of progressive thinking in America. Imagine this country without this paper.

Media whores Trumpet Bonds Indictment; they almost ignore PERJURY re State Dept. Oversight of BLACKWATER hired gunmen in Iraq....

Once again, America's criminally negligent, fraudulent, and corrupt "Major Media" use their influence and corporate bias to make a MAJOR SCANDAL of the Barry Bonds indictment - the FBI announcing the prosecution immediately after Attorney General nominee Mukasay's nomination sailed past the somnolent senate - while almost IGNORING THE CLEAR PERJURY on the part of the STATE DEPARTMENT's INSPECTOR GENERAL, Howard J. Krongard, known as "Buzzy" Krongard, who was charged with doing a thorough if not criminal audit into Blackwater's conduct of multi-million dollar State Department "security" contracts in Baghdad, Iraq.

THE AMERICAN CORPORATE MEDIA will try to move HEAVEN AND EARTH to WHITEWASH the CORRUPTION of the Bush administration, and they have learned that the easiest way to do so is to entertain the masses with an overblown CELEBRITY SCANDAL.

Martha Stewart: SENT TO PRISON for "dumping" $55,000 worth of ImClone stock, a company she had NO contact with.

George W. Bush: "DUMPED" one-third-of-a million dollars worth of HARKEN ENERGY stock, WHILE ON THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS _AND_ on the AUDIT COMMITTEE of Harken. Bush DUMPED his shares after the SEC ordered Harken to issue a revised P/L (profit/loss), a new statement when the SEC realized that Harken's original P/L statement was fraudulent.

The revised Harken P/L statement corrected previously stated PROFITS to be actual LOSSES.

Mr. Bush DUMPED his shares in ADVANCE of the new P/LOSS statement - CLAIMING IGNORANCE of the new loss figures! Even though he had a HARVARD MBA, and sat on the AUDIT COMMITTEE!

Harken's method of trying to write off losses as PROFITS - using deceptive accounting - would be systematized on a grander scale 20 years later, when ENRON executives "sold" Enron's I.O.U.'s to wholly owned subsidiary companies (created specifically for that purpose), who then wrote Enron's FUTURE PAYMENTS on those debts as IMMEDIATE PROFITS, and then marked that subsidiaries so-called "PROFITS" back to Enron's tally sheet. PRESTO! LOSSES (debts) have been magically transformed to PROFITS on Enron's books. This deception, this fraudulent accounting, ALLOWED ENRON EXECUTIVES to DUMP THEIR SHARES on an unsuspecting workforce and public; looting investors OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS - with the complicit approval of the Bush-Cheney administration.

The media has taken these simple stories: HARKEN ACCOUNTING FRAUD and Enron accounting fraud - and made them into "ancient history" complexity - and they have NEVER SOUGHT TO LINK Mr. Bush to those frauds (or held him to account for his "DUMPING" of his Harken energy stock in violation of SEC regulations, which required PRIOR APPROVAL for a company board member to sell shares of a company that he sits on the board of.)

But CNN, Fox 'news', ESPN, and other network executives LUST at the images of Bary Bonds being led into court in handcuffs, or tried for perjury - while they happily PRETEND NOT TO NOTICE YET ANOTHER example of Bush-Cheney CORRUPTION, the vast overpayments and hired-gun license-to-kill the administration has granted BLACKWATER mercenary 'security' company.

=============================================


Barry Bonds vs. Howard Krongard: And the Winner Is…
Reg, Contributing Editor, TvNewsLIES.org.
http://tvnewslies.org/blog/?p=670

…and the winner is Howard, J, Krongard, - a name barely known to most Americans, and someone who remains barely known, thanks to the corporate US media. Here’s the competition:

A top story this week in the news: Barry Bonds was indicted on charges of four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. Bonds stands accused of lying under oath to a grand jury about his use of steroids. If he is found guilty on all counts, Bonds faces up to fifteen years in prison.

Barry Bonds is obviously a menace to us all. He apparently poses a great threat to all our lives and to the safety of the nation. Let us all hope that justice is done and the full force of the law is brought down on this dangerous criminal.

Non story this week in the news: Howard J. Krongard, US State Department Inspector General lied under oath to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform It seems that federal prosecutors have been looking into allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse in Iraq by Blackwater, USA. And, surprise, surprise, Krongard was on the carpet for interfering with the investigation.

And guess what else? Someone found out that Howard’s brother, Alvin (Buzzy) Krongard, sits on the Advisory Board of Blackwater. When asked about this, Howard told the House Committee that Buzzy had NO connection to Blackwater. He knew NOTHING, not a thing about this, even after a call to his brother. But, but, but after a recess, Krongard knew the jig was up. He admitted that it was true, Buzzy was a member of the Board, but had never, ever told him about it.

Small problem: Brother Buzzy called the Committee and told them that he had, indeed, told brother Howard of his connection to Blackwater. Uh oh. That’s perjury. Howard Krongard LIED UNDER OATH about a matter relevant to an ongoing investigation. Perjury is a crime. Wanna bet nothing happens to the man?

Howard Krongard is obviously not a menace to anyone. He apparently poses no threat to our lives or to the safety of the nation. Let’s all hope that Chairman Henry Waxman doesn’t look too closely into “allegations of perjury” after Thanksgiving, as he has promised to do. And let us all hope that Krongard, like Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and other Bushco criminals continue to escape prosecution and punishment of any sort.

Barry Bonds is allegedly a criminal; Howard Krongard is a servant of the people.

After all, there is something to be said about consistency and cronyism in a ‘time of war.’ And, oh yes, never forget that everything changed after 9/11.

MEDIA WHORES CNN FORCED student to ask "Pearls or Diamonds" STUPID QUESTION at Democratic Debate...

CNN is up to its usual WHORING of American news; selling DISINFORMATION and DISTRACTION stories at every opportunity to ENABLE the radical right-wing agenda (of XPORTING WARS; using military spending as a means to transfer national wealth from working families to the entrenched elite; and aiding the ruling junta in making vital information secret or off-limits.

For example, here is a story CNN and all the other Media WHORES IGNORE:
"HOW MANY FEDERAL DOLLARS have been spent on the "reconstruction" of New Orleans, and HOW, after all those billions of dollars spent, are there STILL MOUNDS OF DEBRIS covering ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOODS, and why has the federal government REFUSED TO DRAW UP A MASTER ENVIRONMENTAL PLAN to guide the long-term reconstruction of New Orleans?"


In yet another example of that "secret" but plainly visible CNN agenda, not only did Wolf Blitzer repeatedly CUT OFF Dennis Kucinich, but the post-debate CNN team included some Clinton campaign hired advisors (James Carville), and pretended the "2nd tier candidates" (Dodd, Richardson, Kucinich, and Biden) didn't exist.

Questions About Carville and CNN
By Julie Bosman
November 16, 2007
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/questions-about-carville-begala-and-cnn/index.html?hp

There are very few political analysts more closely associated with the Clintons than James Carville, who was a key adviser to Mr. Clinton in the 1992 campaign.
So it’s no surprise that Mr. Carville’s appearance on a round table after last night’s CNN-sponsored Democratic debate is arousing some morning-after controversy.
“Would it kill CNN to disclose that James Carville is a partisan Clinton supporter when talking about the presidential race?” wrote Daily Kos. “Would it kill James Carville to disclose that he is a partisan Clinton supporter when on the air talking about the presidential race? Apparently so.”

===================

"Diamonds v. Pearls" Student Blasts CNN (Updated With CNN Response)
16 Nov 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/11/16/diamonds-and-pearls-are-a_n_73024.html


Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred "diamonds or pearls" at last night's debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

"Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN," Luisa writes. "I was asked to submit questions including "lighthearted/fun" questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance."

Now, Luisa is getting "swamped" with critical e-mails.

So what happened?

Writes Luisa:

"CNN ran out of time and used me to "close" the debate with the pearls/diamonds question. Seconds later this girl comes up to me and says, "you gave our school a bad reputation.' Well, I had to explain to her that every question from the audience was pre-planned and censored. That's what the media does. See, the media chose what they wanted, not what the people or audience really wanted. That's politics; that's reality. So, if you want to read about real issues important to America--and the whole world, I suggest you pick up a copy of the Economist or the New York Times or some other independent source. If you want me to explain to you how the media works, I am more than happy to do so. But do not judge me or my integrity based on that question."

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

New York Times WHORE, DAVID BROOKS, tries to WHITEWASH Reagan's RACIST legacy. LIAR!

THANK YOU, PAUL KRUGMAN, and Editor & Publisher editor Greg Mitchell, for BRINGING THIS ISSUE to the forefront of America's press/media consciousness: That President Reagan may have had some terrific good points, but his legacy of RACE-BAITING was ALWAYS at the core of his national electioneering (i.e. the "Southern strategy" - portraying Blacks and other minorities as criminals and welfare cheats, in an attempt to woo White Southern voters.)

===================================

Columnists War Breaks Out at 'NYT'


By Greg Mitchell
November 14, 2007
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003671765


NEW YORK The New York Times Op-Ed page hasn’t been this hot in a long time. Now we are experiencing Columnist Wars, with Bob Herbert this week joining in a rapidly escalating battle between Paul Krugman and David Brooks -- largely over an incident involving Ronald Reagan at a local fair over 27 years ago.

None has mentioned a colleague by name, while tossing around charges such as "woefully wrongheaded" and "agitprop." Outside commentators have now weighed in, but the ball at the Times now rests on Brooks' side of the court.

Krugman kicked it off with a Sept. 27 column on the Republicans’ continuing problems in attracting minority voters. “Republican politicians ... understand quite well that the G.O.P.’s national success since the 1970s owes everything to the partisan switch of Southern whites,” he declared. “Since the days of Gerald Ford, just about every Republican presidential campaign has included some symbolic gesture of approval for good old-fashioned racism.”

Then came this kicker, as Krugman charged that GOP godfather, Ronald Reagan, who “began his political career by campaigning against California’s Fair Housing Act, started his 1980 campaign with a speech supporting states’ rights delivered just outside Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered.”

Brooks took awhile, but fired back on Nov. 9, opening his column: “Today, I’m going to write about a slur. It’s a distortion that’s been around for a while, but has spread like a weed over the past few months. It was concocted for partisan reasons: to flatter the prejudices of one side, to demonize the other and to simplify a complicated reality into a political nursery tale.

“The distortion concerns a speech Ronald Reagan gave during the 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., which is where three civil rights workers had been murdered 16 years earlier. An increasing number of left-wing commentators assert that Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign with a states’ rights speech in Philadelphia to send a signal to white racists that he was on their side. The speech is taken as proof that the Republican majority was built on racism.

“The truth,” Brook explained, “is more complicated.” He claimed that Reagan had actually attempted to court black votes right after the 1980 convention. Brooks then offered as an excuse for the Mississippi trip: the Reagan campaign “was famously disorganized,” and he was forced to go when locals promised he would be there. When he got there he gave a “short and cheerful” speech: “The use of the phrase ‘states’ rights’ didn’t spark any reaction in the crowd, but it led the coverage in The Times and The Post the next day.”

Brooks concluded: “You can look back on this history in many ways. It’s callous, at least, to use the phrase ‘states’ rights’ in any context in Philadelphia. Reagan could have done something wonderful if he’d mentioned civil rights at the fair. He didn’t. ...

“Still, the agitprop version of this week — that Reagan opened his campaign with an appeal to racism — is a distortion.” Then he smashed Krugman: “But still the slur spreads. It’s spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn’t even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence. It posits that there was a master conspiracy to play on the alleged Klan-like prejudices of American voters, when there is no evidence of that conspiracy. And, of course, in a partisan age there are always people eager to believe this stuff.”

Krugman, no fool, knew Brooks was referring to him and hit back with a post on his www.nytimes.com Web page: “So there’s a campaign on to exonerate Ronald Reagan from the charge that he deliberately made use of Nixon’s Southern strategy. When he went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1980, the town where the civil rights workers had been murdered, and declared that 'I believe in states’ rights,' he didn’t mean to signal support for white racists. It was all just an innocent mistake.

“Indeed, you do really have to feel sorry for Reagan. He just kept making those innocent mistakes.” He then recalled other Reagan “race-baiting” whoppers and added: “Similarly, when Reagan declared in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been ‘humiliating to the South,’ he didn’t mean to signal sympathy with segregationists. It was all an innocent mistake.

“In 1982, when Reagan intervened on the side of Bob Jones University, which was on the verge of losing its tax-exempt status because of its ban on interracial dating, he had no idea that the issue was so racially charged. It was all an innocent mistake.

“And the next year, when Reagan fired three members of the Civil Rights Commission, it wasn’t intended as a gesture of support to Southern whites. It was all an innocent mistake.

“Poor Reagan. He just kept on making those innocent mistakes, again and again and again.” Oh, then there was the fact that “Reagan opposed making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday.”

No word of reply from Brooks, so far, but now Bob Herbert has pushed the envelope with an angry column today which starts, “Let’s set the record straight on Ronald Reagan’s campaign kickoff in 1980.”

He charged: “Reagan was the first presidential candidate ever to appear at the fair, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he told that crowd, ‘I believe in states’ rights.’

“Reagan apologists have every right to be ashamed of that appearance by their hero, but they have no right to change the meaning of it, which was unmistakable. Commentators have been trying of late to put this appearance by Reagan into a racially benign context.

“That won’t wash. Reagan may have been blessed with a Hollywood smile and an avuncular delivery, but he was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon.

“Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew. ...

“Throughout his career, Reagan was wrong, insensitive and mean-spirited on civil rights and other issues important to black people. There is no way for the scribes of today to clean up that dismal record. ...

“Ronald Reagan was an absolute master at the use of symbolism. It was one of the primary keys to his political success.

“The suggestion that the Gipper didn’t know exactly what message he was telegraphing in Neshoba County in 1980 is woefully wrong-headed. Wishful thinking would be the kindest way to characterize it.”

Your move, Mr. Brooks.

----------------------------
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of E&P and author of nine books. A collection of his columns on Iraq and the media will be published in March. His new blog is at: http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

CBS swims against the media "See No Evil" tide: Reports on "HIDDEN EPIDEMIC" of US VETERAN SUICIDES...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3496471.shtml

"Stunning": CBS News Discovers "Hidden Epidemic" of Military Suicides
Rachel Sklar
November 13, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/11/13/stunning-cbs-news-disc_n_72417.html

Tonight CBS will air the first of a two-part series on the "hidden epidemic" of military suicides, revealing numbers that CBS calls "stunning." The report examines data on the suicide rate amongst veterans once they return home, which indicates a serious mental health issue — and a hidden mortality rate.

"We first started researching military suicides because it had never been done before," said Armen Keteyian, CBS News' chief investigative correspondent in a statement forwarded by CBS News. "But when all the data was collected, we were astonished. I had no idea how much of an epidemic CBS uncovered. We expect this to be a wake up call."

Keteyian previewed the segment on the "CBS Early Show" today, saying that the CBS five-month study found that vets were "more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 as non-vets." Chillingly, though the Veterans Affairs Department estimates that "some 5,000 ex-servicemen and women will commit suicide this year,' that's a lowball estimate. Said Keteyian: "Our numbers are much higher than that, overall."

[Update, 5:30pm: CBS has just released some of those numbers: "At least 120 Americans who served in the U.S. military killed themselves per week in 2005, CBS News learned in a five-month investigation into veteran suicides. That's 6,256 veteran suicides in one year, in 45 states."]

According to a CBS spokesperson, the report represents the first time an actual count of veteran suicides at home has been tallied, as opposed to estimates. "We also have number from the DOD of active duty suicides that we believed have never been reported before dating back to 1995," said the spokesperson. "Many believe, including the family members, that they VA hasn't done a true nationwide count of the numbers (which are stunning) because they just don't want to know." This echoes findings in a CBS report on the matter back in January 2004, which focused on soldier suicides during deployment but which also noted that the Pentagon did not count post-release suicides, and that a pre-Iraq war army study had predicted "an impending soldier-suicide crisis" (which, according to critics, was "largely ignored").

The two-part series will focus tonight on the numbers, and tomorrow on how the Dept. of Veterans Affairs is handling this problem (our guess, based on the above: Not well). According to CBS, tonight's segment runs 5 minutes — long for a newscast (though tonight is a single-sponsor broadcast (Pfizer) which will definitely save a few minutes).

Military suicides have been in the news recently owing to the passage last month of the Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act (HR. 327), named for 22-year-old Army Reservist Joshua Omvig who commited suicide a few months after his return from Iraq. The bill "directs the Department of Veterans Affairs to develop and implement a comprehensive program to reduce the incidence of suicide among veterans," by virtue of better screening of veteran patients for mental health, tracking of veterans, better suicide prevention training for VA staff (including designating one suicide-specific counselor at each facility), and a 24-hour mental-health care, including a hotline. The legislation also requires the VA to report back on "status, timeline and costs for complete implementation within 2 years" within 90 days (i.e. by late January). Hopefully they can reverse the trend. If not, hopefully CBS will still be there.

The Veteran Suicide Epidemic [CBS News] (video here)
Vets' Suicide Rate "Stunning" [CBS News]

Related:
Veterans' Suicides: a Hidden Cost of Bush's Wars [Alternet]
Paul Rieckhoff: Suicide: Vets Fight The War Within [HuffPo]
H.R. 5771 [109th]: Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act [GovTrack.us]

Friday, November 09, 2007

Uber media whore Fred Hiatt's Washington Post CAUGHT LYING AGAIN.....INVERTS polling data on the risk of Global Warming as campaign issue for Dems...

FRED HIATT and the whore WASHINGTON POST: PAID, PROFESSIONAL LIARS....

They MANUFACTURE OPINION talking points as "facts" to weave an article where opinion masks as reporting, in this case, INVERTING the risk of global warming as a campaign issue to Democrats, because FRED HAITT and the Washington Post are flat-earth society reactionaries who want to take America back to the good ol' days of Sharecropping & Segregation, if not outright chattel slavery (as the nation's capitol city once enjoyed).
By writing this piece as "GLOBAL WARMING IS A DANGEROUS ISSUE FOR DEMOCRATS!", Mr. Hiatt and his WaPost continue their relentless attempt to minimize and marginalize Global Warming (and other environmental issues) as important national issues, because they agree with the George Bush/Dick Cheney/GOP vision of America as a banana republic, wealthy plantation lords with absolute powe on vast plantations, surrounded by a sea of ignorant, disposable, disenfranchised peons.

TPM catches the essence of the Post's LYING:
<< There was ZERO POLLING DATA in the piece to support this claim. As Matthew Yglesias noted, the basis for it appeared to be little more than the [Washington Post's] "time honored principled Everything is Bad News for Democrats." >>

Of course, David Broder and George Will are the signature staid, fuddy-duddy "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" commenators for the Whore WaPost, and despite OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE - EVERY GLACIER ON EARTH in RETREAT in both satellite photos and in visits to those glaciers - George Will writes op-ed after op-ed saying that GLOBAL WARMING is nothing but a Democrat hoax and a Commie plot!

As we just mentioned, FRED HIATT, GEORGE WILL, and most of the writers and editors of the Washington Post ARE PAID PROFESSIONAL LIARS - royal courtiers and court sycophants to power, wealth, and money.

TPM's insightful conclusion:
Yet despite the fact that lots of Republicans have reached this conclusion, somehow The Washington Post was only able to discover that this is a risky issue for Democrats. This illustrates once again that the default setting for many in the political media is still that Dems are always vulnerable; Dems are always at risk of getting too far ahead of public opinion; and Dems are always at risk of provoking a backlash from the same public that strongly agrees with them.

==================================

Sorry, Washington Post -- Pollling Data Shows That Global Warming Issue Is Risky For Republicans [and NOT for Democrats, as the Whore Post stated in their article.]

by Greg Sargent at TalkingPointsMemo.com
November 8, 2007
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/11/sorry_washingto.php

A few days ago, The Washington Post ran a long front-page story that carried this frightful headline:

Climate Is a Risky Issue for Democrats


There was ZERO POLLING DATA in the piece to support this claim. As Matthew Yglesias noted, the basis for it appeared to be little more than the "time honored principled Everything is Bad News for Democrats."


Well, as luck would have it, we now have some actual empirical evidence on this question: A new poll that, unsurprisingly, finds that the public wants action on the biggest global problem before us right now and that it's a risky issue for Republicans.

The Politico got an advance look at a poll conducted for an environmental group by Whit Ayres, a REPUBLICAN pollster, that surveyed voter opinion on the green question in the 49 closest House districts:

In a presentation similar to ones provided to congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle in recent days, Ayres illustrates how independents — who were responsible for ousting the GOP majority in 2006 — are unmistakably supportive of swift action to cut carbon emissions and require cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by cars, factories and power plants.

Ayres seemed most surprised that independents and, to a lesser extent, Republicans wanted the U.S. to act even if China and India, two big polluters with rapidly growing economies, did not.

The swing district independent voters said they were much more likely to support a candidate who votes to cut carbon emissions.
Republican voters were SURPRISINGLY SUPPORTIVE OF EFFERTS to COMBAT GLOBAL WARMING also made it clear they were much less likely to hold members of Congress accountable if they failed to act anytime soon...

Republicans are split in three camps: a small but vocal group who think global warming is basically a hoax (26 percent of GOP voters in the Ayres poll said it does not exist); a big group that includes GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani who agree the Earth is warming but are reluctant to embrace plans opposed by business or viewed as burdensome government regulation; and a growing number who are pushing for specific, market-based solutions now.


The latter group is on the rise.


In sum, this pollster found that (a) independents, whom Republicans need to win back, are "unmistakably supportive" of action on global warming; (b) that Republican voters are "surprisingly supportive" of action; and (c) that the number of Republicans who want specific, market-based solutions now is "on the rise." While The Politico doesn't provide the polling numbers, the conclusion is clear, and Politico even spoke to "a lot" of Republicans, including a former top Bush strategist, who are saying that inaction on this issue holds real peril for them.

Yet despite the fact that lots of Republicans have reached this conclusion, somehow The Washington Post was only able to discover that this is a risky issue for Democrats. This illustrates once again that the default setting for many in the political media is still that Dems are always vulnerable; Dems are always at risk of getting too far ahead of public opinion; and Dems are always at risk of provoking a backlash from the same public that strongly agrees with them.


It'll be interesting to see if WaPo revisits this issue, now that we have some actual empirical evidence to shed light on the topic the paper reported so extensively on. Somehow one doubts that WaPo will call up Ayres and ask him what gives.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Wash Post editor FRED HIATT LOVES George Bush's SPYING ON AMERICANS agenda...

Hat-tip to Correntewire.com for posting this story - and for noticing the import of FRED HIATT's COMPLICIT-with-SPYING direction at the whore post.

AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein to Senate: "they’re doing a huge, massive domestic dragnet on everybody in the United States"
Submitted by lambert on Wed, 2007-11-07 13:54.
warrantless surveillance
[UPDATE: Comedy gold! Pravda on the Potomac’s eak-chinned Fred Hiatt buries the story on D01.]
http://www.correntewire.com/at_t_whistleblower_mark_klein_to_senate_they_re_doing_a_huge_massive_domestic_dragnet_on_everybody_in_the_united_states
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[our comments]
In typical Washington WHORE Post fashion, editor Fred Hiatt has his junior writer write up an IMPORTANT STORY as a conversational INFOTAINMENT "he said, she said" piece, in this case an AT&T communications engineer explaining that the government (NSA) co-opted AT&T to install MASSIVE SURVEILLANCE EQUIPMENT - equipment that could read and save EVERYTHING TRANSMITTED THROUGH _ANY_ AT&T SERVERS, including data and voice from other telecom companies routed however briefly through AT&T's equipment.

Mr. Fred Hiatt, YOU, SIR, are one of America's TOP FIVE MEDIA WHORES: you put the ILLEGAL SPYING ON AMERICANS on page D-1 as a CONVERSATION piece, but you put the Monica impeachment of President Clinton (and worse than that, entirely FABRICATED fake "scandals" like "Lincoln Bedroom" and "White House trashing") ON THE FRONT PAGE, for days and weeks at a time, in order to help the Radical Right Republicans subvert American democracy.

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A Story of Surveillance

Former Technician 'Turning In' AT&T Over NSA Program
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 7, 2007; Page D01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110700006.html