The Dark Wraith has an excellent post on the Plame Affair today. Check it out.
Contemplating Persia
Fixer pulls it all together. A must read.
This is insanity. We’re staring down the barrel of a gun, and it’s being held by our own president, flanked by his ruffian gang of true believers who have fond memories of the Cold War. Destabilization is the name of this game; there’s no opportunity to grab power when everyone’s getting along. Sick fucks.
Stop the world. I wanna get off.
US Intelligence: Oh, the Irony
Wouldn’t it be just fantastic to get a job for which you’re resoundingly unqualified just because you’re a partisan prick?
I hope the next Democratic President appoints me Secretary of Agriculture, because I like the taste of corn.President Bush on Thursday named John Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and currently the administration's top representative in Iraq, to be America's first national intelligence director.
It's a sudden job change for Negroponte, a career diplomat. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has been serving as U.S. ambassador in Baghdad since June.
Announcing the move at the White House, Bush said that Negroponte understands global intelligence needs because he's had a long career in the foreign service.
"John will make sure that those whose duty it is to defend America have the information we need to make the right decisions," Bush said. "We're going to stop the terrorists before they strike."That’s interesting. Because just last night on the news, I heard Porter Goss saying that terrorist cells in the United States are regrouping and that it’s “only a matter of time” before they strike again. Seems to me what this administration needs more than an intelligence coordinator is a message coordinator. I thought that was Karl Rove’s job, but now maybe he’s too busy making policy.
Said Bush: "He understands the power centers in Washington."
Translation: He understands that intelligence is just another tool to advance my agenda.
Those of us with longer memories remember Negroponte as the ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, where he
played a prominent role in assisting the Contras in Nicaragua in their war with the left-wing Sandinista government.He and our new Attorney General should get on great.
Human rights groups alleged that Negroponte acquiesced in human rights abuses by Honduran death squads funded and partly trained by the CIA. Negroponte testified during the hearings for the U.N. post that he did not believe death squads were operating in Honduras.
And by the way, have you heard Donald “Douchebag” Rumsfeld may be resigning? Looks like Joe Liebertwat may take his place. A kiss is never just a kiss.
Shakes Exposed!
Well...
...whaddaya think?
Open for votes.
(Of course, this entire endeavor will be rendered moot unless someone with more knowledge than I have can tell me how to stop my apostrophes from becoming weird hieroglyphic symbols.)
[UPDATE: Old layout back, clearly. The new one was shit on Firefox. Screw it!!!]
Mergers & Acquisitions
In all fairness, Bush did promise to be a uniter:
Iran and Syria, who both are facing pressure from the United States, said Wednesday they will form a "united front" to confront possible threats against them, state-run television reported.Huh. I wonder who they’re talking about?
"In view of the special conditions faced by Syria, Iran will transfer its experience, especially concerning sanctions, to Syria," Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran's first vice president, was quoted as saying after meeting Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Otari.
"At this sensitive point, the two countries require a united front due to numerous challenges."
Otari concurred, saying, "The challenges we face in Syria and Iran require us to be in one front to confront all the challenges imposed (on us) by others."
The report did not specifically mention the challenges, but both countries are under U.S. economic sanctions and the targets of intense American pressure.Oh.
This is not good news, not good news at all. It’s a good thing that back when Bush and Co. were rattling their sabers about invading Iraq, the Democrats weren’t intimidated into capitulation for a lunatic war plan by threats of being called traitors and that the media did such a stellar job of debunking their misinformation campaign and didn’t do everything they could to reinforce the Bushies’ claims of ties between Saddam and 9/11, instead keeping the electorate well-informed and mitigating their thirst for revenge with a calming dose of reality, thereby keeping us from getting ourselves entangled in a vicious quagmire of guerrilla warfare, at least partially funded from one of the two countries mentioned above, resulting in the dubious election of the very kind of leadership that would our worst nightmare, all while our troops become overextended and our relations increasingly strained with the entirety of the Middle East. It’s really a good thing all that happened.
Oh.
Well, I guess we can all just keep our fingers crossed that neither of the two countries in this interesting new partnership suggest to the other one that if there were ever a time to feel emboldened, what with a new friendly government about to take control of Iraq, many of the Iraqis pretty pissed at the US, and Crazy-Ass Kim Jung-Il hopping around his garden of warheads trying to get our attention, this might be it.
Aw, heck. What am I worried about? Condi’ll sort it all out for us. She’s really good at her job.
Redesign
Having received an overwhelming response to my requests for comments on the design of the blog (my inbox was stuffed with comments!), I think the consensus is that the light text-on-dark background design is rubbish. So I'm working on a redesign that will hopefully be more readable, and I'm hoping to have it up sometime tonight.
Thanks very much to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts.
Off on One
Warning: I’m really annoyed. This post is probably unfit for children and, well, most adults.
This article in the Washington Post is making my blood boil. First of all, it’s reporting that the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, has ordered the words gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender be removed from the title of a talk about preventing suicide in the GLBT community—an important issue, as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people are two to three times as likely to kill themselves than average.
This is totally fucking infuriating, for what I assume are obvious reasons (you know, bigotry-driven censorship, that kind of thing), and Pam and BlondeSense have excellent coverage, which I highly recommend.
Now here’s the other thing that has me going apeshit. The WaPo article opens with this:
A federal agency's efforts to remove the words "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual" and "transgender" from the program of a federally funded conference on suicide prevention have inspired scores of experts in mental health to flood the agency with angry e-mails.WHAT THE FUCK? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! A conference that is geared toward preventing suicides in a community is being required to omit the four words that describe what the conference is about—you know, the words that will actually inform GLBT community members who might be at risk for suicide that there’s help to be found—because the administration doesn’t like those words (read: doesn’t like those people) and issues a thinly veiled threat to withhold their funding if they don’t comply with the change. But that isn’t the main point of the story. No. The main point is that these fucking assholes who clearly don’t give a shit whether every single member of the GLBT community offs themselves are being persecuted. The federally-funded bigots are getting angry emails, and that’s the motherfucking lead of the story. Unbelievable. Not to mention that fuckwits like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh go around calling liberals traitors and jihadists and all kinds of fucked-up shit every day of the fucking week, and I don’t see that making headlines in the tossing WaPo.
"It is incredible, the venom from these people," said Mark Weber, a spokesman for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that is funding the conference and told presenters they should remove the words from the title of a talk.
"My boss is being called a Nazi," Weber said, referring to SAMHSA Administrator Charles G. Curie, whom President Bush appointed in 2001 to run the $3.2 billion agency.
You know what the headline of this piece of shit article is? “Request to Edit Title of Talk On Gays, Suicide Stirs Ire.” Subhead: “HHS Is Being Accused of Marginalization.”
How about “Request to Edit Title of Talk On Gays, Suicide Indicative of Continuing Attacks on GLBT Community by Administration.” Subhead: “HHS Is Practicing Bigotry.”
How about “Request to Edit Title of Talk on Gays, Suicide Risks Increasing Suicides Due to Misinformation.” Subhead: “HHS Not Concerned About Health of Gays”
How about “Request to Edit Title of Talk on Gays, Suicide Intolerably Prejudiced.” Subhead: “Blogger Goes Berserk.”
It’s complete bullshit that this story was framed so as to make the administration the victim of intolerance, right from the fucking headline. If only those gays weren’t so touchy, this wouldn’t even be a story. It’s the ire that makes the headline; not the underlying bigotry that induced it. By the time you get through reading about the ire, the incredible venom, and the fascist prick getting (apparently somehow unfairly) called a Nazi, does it even matter what people are mad about, or is the important thing that they’re clearly being unfair to the poor old Bush administration, who was only trying to whitewash any reference to gays out of a talk designed to possibly help save their lives? Do the calm and reasonable representatives of the conference have any chance to be heard fairly after the introduction identifying those who object as “venomous”?
Fucking WaPo wankers.
Let’s face it—these assholes deserve angry emails from mental health experts, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered people, and anyone with a goddamn brain. It’s such a ridiculous situation that how angry people are in response to it is so not the story. The story is that this is another example of the Bush administration’s attacks on the GLBT community, another example of their strong-arming a group that doesn’t bend to their agenda, another bloody example of craven ideological posturing in pursuit of a radical social agenda that seeks to disenfranchise anyone who isn’t straight, white, and rich.
And if all that isn’t enough, this paragraph slips in with nary the written equivalent of a raised eyebrow from the author:
The title rewrite was one of several requested changes. Another was to add a session on faith-based suicide prevention, said Weber, who said he believes the brouhaha is all a misunderstanding.A session on faith-based suicide prevention for the GLBT community?! Is this administration on fucking crack?! Yeah, I can imagine that a person who’s heard his or her whole life that the Bible says they’re going to hell is really going to warm to getting a faith-based solution shoved down their fucking throats. It’s not like being told you’re hellbound because of who you choose to love might possibly be a contributing factor to the increased suicide rates in the GLBT community or anything. But the wisdom of this is not questioned; instead the sentence is completed with administration reassurances that it’s all a misunderstanding.
Yeah, it’s a misunderstanding all right—the same “misunderstanding” that plagues every objective, policy, and maneuver of this cold-hearted administration: that they are the only people who fucking matter in this country. That everyone else is expendable, and everyone else’s wants and needs and lives places a distant second to the advancement of their horseshit agenda.
And it’s a “misunderstanding” on the part of the Washington Post, who have forgotten that their role is to truthfully inform, and thereby protect, the public, not twist stories until the perpetrator of hate and political opportunism has become the victim.
“Objectively” reported news, slanted so as to favor the administration and discredit those who have legitimate complaint with the issue being reported, is propaganda, pure and simple. And the more stories we read like this, where we don’t call it for the crap that it is, the more they get away with.
And a final note to the Bushies: You really ought to do everything you can to prevent suicide in the GLBT community. Otherwise, who will you have to pick on in ’08? Ya pricks.
The hits keep coming
Okay, normally I don’t print someone else’s post in its entirety (except when I steal Fixer’s), but you’ve gotta read this. From South Knox Bubba:
-----------------
There's been so much coming at us for the past week or so it's getting impossible to keep up. It's interesting how these things just blow by with hardly a mention on page A9 and we're on to the next big story like Prince Charles or Michael Jackson. Here's a random sampling of the insanity we call government...
· Bush submitted a $2.57 trillion budget to Congress but failed to include the costs of the Iraq war, which is apparently being run off the books. The other shoe dropped yesterday when Bush asked for nearly $82 billion for the war. Maybe they should deduct the $9 billion that has gone missing in Baghdad.
· Condi Rice said earlier in the month that invasion of Iran is not on the agenda and that "diplomacy can succeed." A few days later, she rattled the sabers and issued the ominous warning that Iran must halt their nuclear program or face the "next steps".
· North Korea claims it now possesses nuclear weapons. Bush says he hopes they will give up their program so life will be better for their impoverished people. So much for fighting the Axis of Evil over there to prevent mushroom clouds over here. I think North Korea just wants us to invade them so they can get in on the reconstruction gravy train. Too bad for them they don't have any oil.
· The 9/11 Commission divulged (conveniently after the elections of course) that the FAA had received more than 50 intelligence briefings with warnings about potential al-Qaida hijackings and suicide missions in the spring and summer prior to 9/11. This story has virtually disappeared off the radar.
· The Senate put up roadblocks against class action lawsuits. This will, of course, benefit Corporate America, and particularly tobacco companies. It will also get these cases in Federal courts, where, guess what, George Bush and Haliburton appoint the judges. We are going to have us some tort reform, a little bit at a time.
· Bush threatened to veto any legislation intended to "fix" the recent Medicare "reforms" that include prescription drug benefits that benefit the pharmaceutical industry, the cost of which Bush lied to Congress about and threatened to fire a DHHS employee if he spilled the beans before they voted on it without reading it. The White House accused Democrats of "undermining these reforms." This is, I believe, what they call "hardball".
· Bush continues to lie to the American people about the looming Social Security "crisis". And he's getting away with it. Mr. Bush, where are the WMDs? And why should we believe anything you say about imminent threats?
· Republicans started their campaign of character assassination against the new Democratic Senate Minority Leader. It's not enough to take everything. Anyone who questions you must be destroyed.
· Karl Rove is promoted to deputy chief of staff and now has an official role in U.S. policy.
· The head of a Republican consulting outfit was sentenced to jail for tampering with the 2002 midterm elections in New Hampshire by jamming Democrat phone lines for people requesting rides to the polls. The executive director of the NH Republican Party also pleaded guilty.
· Top election officials from Ohio and Florida failed to appear before a Congressional committee investigating the 2004 elections. What are they trying to hide?
And that's just a random week in the first month of Bush's second term. We're on the Doom Train with the Masters of Disaster at the throttle. They are drunk on power and determined to run America off the tracks. And nobody seems to care, or really even notice.
OK, then.
-----------------
The problem seems to be convincing others that it’s real, and that these things matter. Come on, people, wake up!!! And stop telling me how your life hasn’t changed. Yes, it has. It may have changed in ways you don’t see, but care of the Patriot Act, you have less right to privacy than you used to if you’re ever suspected of a crime; care of the class action legislation mentioned above, you have less chance to win a fair settlement if a corporation defrauds and/or injures you or a loved one; care of Bush’s foreign policy blunders, you are less safe than you used to be, as anti-American sentiment has increased around the world during his tenure as president; care of exploding deficits, tax cuts during wartime, and other fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush administration, your dollar is worth less than it used to be; care of a railroaded and spineless media and an administration that endorses propaganda, you are less informed about the truth than you used to be; and that’s just to get us started.
The world around you is changing, and if your life has changed so infinitesimally that you have yet to notice, it won’t stay that way forever. And what of the people whose lives are changing? The neighbor who loses his job, then his healthcare, then his home to pay hospital bills? How close does it have to get for you to notice?
How much do we all have to lose before you feel like it’s worth paying attention?!
Fuck.
It's Really a Schoolyard in Hoboken
On Monday, we (meaning someone totally not me) discovered that CNN was using the same aerial photograph to represent nuclear facilities in both North Korea and Iran. It was clever, their cropping and enlarging part of one image so they didn’t look exactly the same, but you just can’t fool all of the people all of the time, no matter how hard you try.
While there were some very amusing comments on this particular story, including Me4President’s wise observation, “That is sneaky of Iran. Building their nuclear bombs in North Korea. Or is it the other way around? Either way, we should invade Cuba,” it seems our fun is over. Dark Wraith reports:
Good morning, Shakespeare's Sister. As a closing note on this ugly little piece of disinformation, CNN has now edited the article on North Korea, replacing the picture of the suspected Iranian nuclear facility with one of a "suspected North Korean" nuclear facility and inserting a "Correction" box well down in the article.And Shakespeare’s Sister puts her ear to the ground.
This all was done well after the article was no longer available as a primary link in their news cycle.
Today, the one photograph you present here is again being used by CNN to show a "suspected" Iranian nuclear facility. I suppose that this is okay: now that they've gotten their propaganda message straightened out, they may proceed with being a responsible journalistic mouthpiece for the Pentagon as it whips us toward yet another war that simply must be fought.
The Dark Wraith braces for the drumbeat.
Well done, CNN. Thanks very much for your contribution to the downfall of our democracy.
Selfish Hedonist
If you recall, conservative carpetbagger Alan Keyes commented (among many other asinine things) that Dick Cheney's daughter Mary was a "selfish hedonist" for being an out and proud (snicker, snicker) lesbian (ahem, Uncle Tom, ahem) during his comical run for Illinois U.S. Senator against Barack Obama, who wiped the floor with his ass. The ironic part was that during his entire campaign he had his own little selfish hedonist at home - daughter Maya Marcel-Keyes - who made no attempt to hide her sexuality on her personal blog.
Well, if the world didn't know it before, they sure do now - according to CNN, Maya has been cut off from the Keyes Klan, and she's become outspoken at gay rights rallies (now that her daddy's campaign is over, of course). I suppose one can't blame Maya for not being more outspoken during the campaign. She is young, probably very afraid, probably was threatened during that time to keep quiet. Obviously Papa Keyes doesn't read the internets, though! Still, it is good to see her speaking up for herself and other gay children who have been kicked out of their homes. The ironic part, of course, is the sheer hypocrisy of a man who runs on a "family values" message while criticizing other people's families for having the same "shameful" skeletons he harbors in his own closet.
Everyone knew Keyes didn't have a chance in hell against Obama, but the fact that anyone voted for him at all (I believe the end result was 70-30% or so) is deeply disturbing. Even his party was embarrassed of him, throwing him out against Obama as their sacrificial lamb. Get real, GOP, and stop insulting us with this predictable horse shit. The main difference between transparent ideologues like Keyes and "compassionate" conservatives like Bush (who probably doesn't personally hate gays but uses us as kindling on his political bonfires) is that Keyes clearly believes the nutjob shit he spouts and is embarrassing vocal about it. Illinois obviously wasn't buying, but what if he had taken the show to another, less reasonable state?
The bottom line is, these are the kind of hypocritical "family values" that are creeping themselves more and more into the psyche of this nation, becoming more and more acceptable to the mainstream population - and that is a disturbing trend that must be reversed!
Gaytrios
Atrios reports:
CuteTo save you from having to actually click through to the idiotic site, here’s the link to Atrios’ gay profile.
The wingnutosphere has taken to posting up fake personal ads with my picture, as if I'd care... Wahhh! They're trying to convince people I'm (horrors!) gay!
who cares.
Why do homophobes always think that heteros who clearly aren’t homophobic are going to be insulted by being called gay? I’ve been called a dyke (or one of a variety of terms for lesbians, and sometimes even the occasional “fag” by the resoundingly unclever and/or gender-challenged) many times in my life, including spending one semester in a university Constitutional Law class being referred to as “the dyke in the back of the class” by the most dimwitted collection of rightwing gits ever collected in one classroom. Why they assumed I would take offense when I was plainly not homophobic is beyond me.
So here’s a note to the Freepers: calling someone like me a homosexual has approximately the same effect as calling me a dentist. That is to say, none whatsoever. It just makes you mistaken, which is nothing new.
The New Progressives
Ron’s got a great post over at Middle Earth Journal called “The real Howard Dean and what it means.” Definitely worth a read in its entirety. In part, Ron says:
We will find that the problem Dean has is not driving away the moderates but keeping the support of those on the left who were his biggest supporters.It’s a fair point, because Dean is a fiscal conservative, which by traditional definitions, makes him a moderate rather than a liberal. But I wonder if we haven’t bid adieu to those definitions, at least to some extent. Someone like me, whose first chance to vote was for Clinton, came of age with a fiscal conservative, and we liked what we saw. Part of this may well be an illusion, created by an atypical economy, but nonetheless, the point remains the same—we are not averse toward fiscal conservatism, or more appropriately fiscal responsibility, particularly as applied with liberal objectives in mind, i.e. less spending on ludicrously unnecessary (and non-functional) defense programs in favor of domestic and international social programs. There is a belief, I feel, that a balanced budget is possible, and that neither social programs that liberals favor nor a reasonable defense budget have to suffer in the process.
It is good policy to have a balanced budget for a variety of reasons, many of which become increasingly apparent with an exploding deficit. If nothing else, we see, as we always suspected, that when attempts are eventually made to reduce a huge deficit, the programs that we support tend to be the first to be deemed expendable. Dean’s centrism is not only tolerable, but embraced by many progressives of a certain age, for which we have to thank Clinton. (Indeed, one might argue that truly progressive politics demands our championing of budgetary moderation, to ensure continued funding for the populist programs that are forever destined to be attacked as "luxuries" during a fiscal crisis.)
I am never accused of being a moderate, but I do support a balanced budget that favors social programs over tax cuts for the wealthy and/or a bloated defense budget. Fiscal responsibility may be considered centrist, but it’s also wise. Dean, where it matters, is resolutely a liberal—he supports for civil rights for all Americans, he supports keeping abortion legal, he does not support the war, he believes in providing accessible and affordable healthcare, etc.—and he will have no problem selling his brand of moderation to me.
American Gigolo
House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer has balls:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEExcellent. Congressman Hoyer’s got the right angle. This is just another in a long series of egregious examples illustrative of the White House’s contempt for integrity.
February 15, 2005
CONTACT:
Stacey Farnen Bernards
(202) 225 – 3130
Hoyer Statement on "Jeff Gannon" Connection to Valerie Plame Leak
WASHINGTON DC – House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer released the following statement regarding revelations that a man who went by the name of “Jeff Gannon,” and who was given White House media credentials despite his lack of qualifications, was given access to classified documents which disclosed the identity of Undercover CIA Operative Valerie Plame:
“Valid questions are being raised regarding the Bush White House’s relationship with James Guckert, also known as “Jeff Gannon,” and his access to documents that revealed the identity of Undercover CIA Operative Valerie Plame.
“This issue is important from an ethical as well as from a national security standpoint. It is hard to understand why a man with little real journalism experience was given a White House press corps credential let alone access to sensitive security documents. In fact, it only raises questions as to the nature of the relationship between “Jeff Gannon” and the White House, and whether there was an alliance of interests that did not conform to ethical and security standards. President Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush, called the disclosure of an undercover operative’s identity treason.
“This most recent revelation is only the latest in the growing list of ways that Republicans in Washington are attempting to manipulate the American people through the media and avoid accountability. When the Bush Administration had trouble selling its domestic policies, it unethically paid journalists to promote its policies under the guise of journalism. When the Ethics Committee held Majority Leader Tom DeLay accountable for improper actions last year, the Republican leadership simply removed Chairman Joel Hefley (R-CO) and other Republicans from the Committee.
“I encourage the Special Counsel looking into the Plame matter to include “Jeff Gannon’s” ties to the issue in his investigation.”
Steny Hoyer, whose name is so weird, you’d think he was a Republican.
Though Hoyer doesn’t reference Gannguckerton’s email-order stud enterprise, and although a few people have already registered their discomfort with pursuing that direction, it is to some degree an integral part of the story. In addition to its obvious ability to highlight the hypocrisies of this infamously anti-gay administration, it also clarifies one potential (and increasingly likely) avenue Gannguckerton used to get into the White House Press Corps. Let’s face it—we’ve all had enough experience with sex scandals by this point to know we shouldn’t be asking how he got credentials in spite of being a gigolo, but who issued those credentials because he was one (as either a favor to a honey pot or in response to blackmail).
Still, as Hoyer’s press release so eloquently demonstrates, yesterday's expose at AMERICAblog must be viewed as part of a continuing thread, a stepping stone toward the bigger goal of discerning why a man with no discernible journalistic credentials, using an alias, carrying a $20,000 defaulted court judgment against him, and running a side business as a rent boy, was, in a highly irregular decision, issued a daily pass for two years and given access to an internal CIA memo which was summarily used to punitively leak the name of active agent Valerie Plame.
It’s not about the sex, it’s about the access.
We also must remember that Bush, Rove, et. al. don't really have it in for gays. It's just a political tool for them, and in some way, if we don't manage to make this about access to the White House, security failings, the Plame Affair, etc., and the focus remains solely on the gay hooker bit, we're playing to the homophobia of Bush's supporters every bit as much as they did to get elected. We need to make sure that this is only part of a larger story, and not the whole story.
Write to your Senators and Representatives; email people in the media; keep writing about this; keep talking about it. It’s important.
And as a final note, I’ve heard a few mumblings (usually from straight people) about feeling conflicted regarding “outing” a homosexual. That might be a fair discussion under other circumstances, but in this case, I’d like to issue the reminder that no one can “out” someone who’s got their cock and balls all over the internet advertising their services to other men. That’s about as “out” as it gets, so we can save the hand-wringing.
The Pledge
The pledge:
TCF asked me to take this pledge together with other residents of Left Blogstonia (©Rook). I've been remiss about not getting to it sooner.
From this point on, I hope to enlist the help of others in firmly establishing the perception, then the belief that there now exists a clear and dominant Conservative bias throughout the Mainstream Media in this country. We will demand evidence to the contrary, while having at the ready, a large quantity of data indicting those who have enabled the injurious incompetence of the present administration, and hold them equally accountable for the damage.
I am honored that he asked and happy to agree. He is absolutely right. The So-Called Liberal Media (SCLM ©Corrente) should now be referred to as the Lying Right Wing Media (LRWM ©Corrente). They built the meme of the Liberal Mainstream Media (©Instashithead) and it's time for us to tear it down. Join TCF and me in taking the pledge. In my lingo: Fuck their ass until they choke.
Update:
Credit: MSM = Murdoch Seduced Media (©TCF)
Note:
I stole this post in its entirety from The Fixer. I intended to write something about this the morning, but he beat me to it, and why mess with perfection? Plus, I'm lazy.
Help
I've received two emails in the last couple of days that I need help addressing. The first one was about the readability of the site. Is anyone finding it difficult to read, because of the light text on the black background? I had concerns about this when I did the redesign, but this is the first comment I've had that the readability may be compromised. Any opinions here? Do people prefer a cleaner look? Happy to go to a white background with dark text if that is readers' preference.
The second one was about HaloScan comments not working. Apparently, at least one person is not able to bring up the comments box when clicking on the link. Does anyone else have this problem? If so, could you please email me at shakespeares_sister@comcast.net and let me know? I'd like to have some idea of how pervasive the problem is before I contact HaloScan.
Thanks to those who emailed me to let me know about these issues.
Weimart
Via LaborBlog (to which Kos and the Alternate Brain are pointing, among others), we find a link to a NY Times article reporting that the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart:
has agreed to pay $135,540 to settle federal charges that it violated child labor laws in Connecticut, Arkansas and New Hampshire.Needless to say, no other company has the privilege of getting 15 days’ advance warning to clean up any potential violations before inspectors arrive, particularly a company with such a long history of employee abuses.
Labor Department officials said most of the 24 violations covered by the settlement involved workers under age 18 operating dangerous machinery, including cardboard balers and chain saws. In the agreement, Wal-Mart denied any wrongdoing.
[…]
The Labor Department and Wal-Mart signed the agreement on Jan. 6, but made no public announcement. The department disclosed the settlement yesterday after a reporter questioned officials about concerns raised by several department employees that the agreement gave Wal-Mart special favors.
[…]
A provision also promises to give Wal-Mart 15 days' notice before the Labor Department investigates any other "wage and hour" accusations, like failure to pay minimum wage or overtime.
Unbelievable. Guess $275 billion dollars a year of business buys a lot of favors.
Midnight Cowboy
If Dr. James Dobson is concerned about gay sponges, he might want to turn his attention to the White House, which seems to be absorbing all manner of faggotry into its hallowed halls these days.
First, there was the ascension to the RNC throne by Ken Mehlman, a 38-year-old single man who won’t answer questions about his sexuality on the record. Then came the sordid details about J. Jeff D. Gannguckerton, a story that just got blown wide open (pun oh so intended) this morning by John Aravosis with the revelation that the White House Press Corps reporter with dubious credentials and access to internal CIA memos is a rent boy.
Now, Raw Story is reporting that White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, whose mother is on the fast track to the Texas governor’s mansion, and who is himself married, was a frequent visitor to gay clubs in Austin, Texas. Allegations about McClellan’s sexuality have been known by the White House since September, when BlogACTIVE.com’s Mike Rogers called the White House Press Office.
None of this would matter, of course, except for two key points, the first being the unmitigated temerity of a political party seeking to codify discrimination into the United States Constitution against a portion of the population from which they are yet willing to draw the head of the RNC, their Press Secretary, and a media operative used to lob partisan softball questions at White House Press Conferences.
The second, and frankly more important, issue is why a man with no discernible journalistic credentials, using an alias, carrying a $20,000 defaulted court judgment against him, and running a side business as a gay hooker, was, in a highly irregular decision, issued a daily pass for two years and given access to an internal CIA memo which was summarily used to punitively leak the name of active agent Valerie Plame. There’s something rotten in D.C., and this tale has more unraveling yet to do.
Media Irresponsibility-a-Go-Go
BradBlog brings us the truly unbelievable incident of CNN using the same photo to represent nuclear facilities in Iran and North Korea:
Two stories posted in the last week on the CNN website, one on nukes in Iran last Wednesday, and another on nukes in North Korea on Saturday, both use the same aerial photograph of the same purported nuclear power plant!North Korea:
Iran:
Look closely—you’ll see one is simply a cropped and enlarged portion of the other image.
Brad thinks there may be something rather sinister going on; I’m not convinced that’s the case, but at minimum, it was a pretty big screw-up. It was exactly images like these that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the UN (and the world) that made our case for invading Iraq—a presentation that convinced many Americans that a war was necessary.
In presenting images ostensibly of the nuclear facilities of Iran and North Korea, the other members of the Bush-designated Axis of Evil, especially directly after a State of the Union address where a war president has vowed to “end tyranny,” one would assume a credible (?) news organization such as CNN would be more conscientious. This isn’t a misidentified picture of the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, for crying out loud. This is the kind of stuff that informs the public about whether there is a case for war. After the enormity of mistakes that were made last time we found ourselves discussing potential responses to a nation harboring weapons of mass destruction, one would think a bit more care would be taken to avoid mistakes such as these.
Our media has seemingly become patently incapable of doing fair, accurate, and responsible reporting with any degree of competency. It would be laughable, if it weren’t so tragic.
