Y cn't vn b hnst wth yrslf, wkly ttmptng t rbt th dftcrt tg whl cltvtng yr crvn hrry wth th cptltn gmbt.
[Editor: ignore=off]Man, the program's got some serious bugs today.
Time to call in the experts, or it won't even remember punctuation!
Posted by euzoius at December 2, 2006 07:28 AMGreat post and links.
I am so pleased to have internet access to world media and news. Of course, according to Newt "let's do it on my desk" Gingrich I shouldn't be trusted with that access. It's dangerous to our liberties, and so I should lose that liberty, to protect my liberty.
If anything can reverse the corporate media dominance it has to be revisiting the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that allowed over 80 media companies to merge into 5 mega-media corporations. Divestiture must be forced under antitrust legislation. Without that it is apparent that the only place left is the internet. Beyond Olbermann, I choose to get national and international news from the net and blogosphere. The final nail in the MSM coffin for me was Puff Piece Katie at CBS. And it's interesting to note that I rarely watch 60 minutes since I stopped watching CBS news. Even when there is something noteworthy on the MSM I go online and watch the streaming video of it rather than suffer the entirety of the crap on the MSM news.
Regarding Iraq, I doubt if we ever leave it. It is part of 30 years of planning and deployment of assets to control Middle East oil. From the development of the Rapid Deployment Force to permanent bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and apparently Israel, we are there permamnently. What I foresee occurring is the partitioning of Iraq into 3 "states" and the U.S. moving the entirety of its assets to the Kurdish North. The PNAC and Neo-Con plan will be implemented, although I doubt they thought it would take this long owing to the fact that they got an idiot elected to the office of President. I'm sure they didn't factor that into their equations of conquest.
Can the Dem Congress prevent any of this? It really just depends. If we fail to see reform of lobby rules and true accountability of the members of Congress I think all is lost. I'm amazed at how the Republi-cons were willing to sell America down the tubes for what amounted to be a pittance considering the money under their control and what they dole-out to their contributors. Where else can a couple hundred thousand dollars buy access to billions of dollars of federal funding?
Posted by phidipides at December 2, 2006 07:55 AMSteve, would you please throw Benito off this thread. He offers nothing but bs and then flees. What is the point of postings his comments?
Posted by Judith at December 2, 2006 08:08 AMYou can't even be honest with yourself, weakly attempting to rebut the defeatocrat tag
Defeatocrat? You guys are a bunch of losers, ergo the election results. Fucking losers! You can't even get Katrina right. Stand back and watch how the grownups do it, loser.
while cultivating your craven hurry with the capitulation gambit.
How many republi-cons does it take to fix Iraq? None! Stand and die! That's the republi-con motto. That and spending the surplus and bankrupting the treasury. I guess that's a conservative motto. It's at least a conservative practice. That and destroying the American military.
Posted by phidipides at December 2, 2006 08:16 AMOkay, I'm with euzoius.
That is just a post bot. And one that needs to be booted permanently.
If it is not a bot, Bendodo, please see a physician. I suspect you may have a "brain cloud" (pardon the vague reference to a really bad movie).
Jon Stewart probably summed it up best when he noticed that this administration wants more and more rights for itself and less and less rights for its citizens.
Visual for the day: Elizabeth Dole going through TSA security with the prison cameras on showing her in a screenshot of undress with all the TSA screeners crowded around the screen for a chuckle. Oh the outrage!
The truly sad part of this story is that the media will continue their lies, misinformation, distorted 'truths' and omissions. We crossed some invisible line, and there is no going back now. The media has become the enemy, as far as I am concerned. The days of truth in reporting no longer exists. "The National Psychosis of Political Lying," has also become the National Psychosis of Media Lying.
Posted by Judith at December 2, 2006 08:42 AMMainsailset, yep, and then some security type can write a book about who has big ones, male or female, and who hasn't. May answer a lot of questions.
Posted by Judith at December 2, 2006 08:52 AMGood news. Blogging is considered journalism.
Court decision: Blogging is a trade and bloggers are journalists. Scroll down to the story.
But then we already knew that when the MSM have the likes of Judy Miller.
Nail meet Head.
I've been cooking, trying to use up all my garden veggies that just froze the other night, with the TV on as background noise (I guess) - clicking back and forth between slicing this and chopping that, from CNN to MSNBC. And suddenly I realized I was in a state of mind I can only describe as when you reach the end of the rope with a freaking buzzing fly that will not leave you alone. All that giggling chatter and mindless PAP just finally got to me. Click OFF. Silence. Bliss. (and I think the veggies are going to work.)
re: Bendito. LOL. I didn't even understand what he wrote. That's the kind of troll I can live with !!!
Posted by garyb50 at December 2, 2006 09:30 AMRight you are. I came to the blogs tired of the bs and the fawning up to the administration and gop. The drolling over Bush and trying to cheerlead for him. The constant sneering of the dems and eye batting to the gop. I knew I was not getting any real news, just spin.
frustrated I began to search for blogs that did not have a right tilt. Finding them and linking to more was a breath of air. Even today, I hear about things on the news that is usually reported earilier in the blogs. 24 news cycle and they are behind the blogs. I can't wait to read the real story behind the story. and intellegent writing as opposed to the fluff and celebrity chasing the supposidly real news is reporting to cover for the fact that they are not up to being real journalists anymore. It's so much easier to do pop psychology and celebrity gazing.
And in case you guys don't know: thank you for saving the news and bringing it to us and doing so for peanuts. We, out in the world, do appreciate you guys.
The Iraq war, however, offers no avenue of escape. None. When the day finally comes when it truly has to sink in to the American public that we’ve lost the war and that all has been utter futility in only making us manifestly less safer, well, the hell to pay will never be fully recovered from... for corporate “journalism.”
Then you expect a mea culpa? Ha! I don't see how they can stop lying now. They will have to blame SOMEONE other than themselves... and I tremble to think who it might be.
Posted by Ralph at December 2, 2006 08:33 PMThe purpose of the media has nothing to do with truth and it has everything to do with marketing. As a media subscriber you are a commodity that is bought. Advertising revenues support the media and they depend entirely on viewership/readership, and the more of you that watch or read something and the better the mood that you're in, the higher the advertising rates with their ensuing sales. So the goal of the media is to maximize the size of their happy audience. Do they do that with the brutal truth about how nasty the US government is, which puts everyone in a foul non-buying mood, or with mindless feel-good pap that put everyone in a positive buying mood? Sports, beer and reporting "breaking" news--bread and circuses for the proles are the market-tested ways to increase sales and profits, which is the American success story.
Posted by Don Bacon at December 2, 2006 08:40 PMIn the 2008 elections, candidates are going to run on 'bring them home now' platforms if they are smart. Noone is listening to what the people truly said in the midterm election. The war is the gift that will keep on giving to progressives-unfortunately at great and sad cost.
I still can't get over this clown being president at all.
Paradox and everyone else, there is much to clebrate. I had an amazing conversation with a financial analyst friend who pointed out that the entire hideous corporate media is doomed by a failing biz model,i.e. content bundling.
Google makes it possible to unbundle content. Why pay for an expensive cable package when you only care about two shows or a cd that only has 2 good songs?
The arrogance of mega media is in its consumer product side as much as it is in it's propagandist 'reporting'.
We are at a time when blogs offer more accurate news than old networks, You Tube has better entertainment, I tunes just lets you buy the song and so on.
Oh and craigslist is eating the print news media's classified ad revenue.
Thus it makes sense that these dying hogs rush to embrace the Bush kleptocracy. They figure it'll stave off the inevitable. Keep an eye on the share prices of monstrosities like Time Warner, Disney, Fox and so on.
There will be some serious, troublesome death throe thrashing and the swine are doing a fine job of accelerating their doom by foisting sub par 'product' like fake news that merely drives droves of end users away.
Posted by Chris Rich at December 3, 2006 06:02 AMChris may be on to something.
News Report:
AS the ratings have rolled in for the first three weeks of the new television season, one question has dominated the conversations inside the industry's executive suites: what the heck is going on?
Network executives are baffled by a season unlike any seen before. Returning hit shows like "Friends" and "E.R." are losing significant numbers of viewers from previous years. New shows have performed far worse than almost anyone expected, a result capped off Monday night when the Fox network started two shows that had received huge promotional pushes during the baseball playoffs, "The Next Joe Millionaire" and "Skin," and they posted crushingly disappointing numbers. And men between 18 and 24 are apparently deserting television in droves. So far this year nearly 20 percent fewer men in that advertiser-friendly demographic are watching television during prime time than during the same period last year.
The drop-off in these viewing figures tabulated by Nielsen Media Research is inexplicable to industry executives. "Frankly what we're seeing strains credulity," said Alan Wurtzel, the president of research for NBC.
Posted by Don Bacon at December 3, 2006 08:55 AM
I'm sorry, the article I referenced above is three years old. I don't have a TV so it wasn't apparent to me.
I still think Chris's point may have validity--we just need more current information.
Posted by Don Bacon at December 3, 2006 10:32 AM