Your Librul Media: If You Read the WaPo, You'd Never Know The Democrats Won The Election
By Susie Madrak Sunday Feb 08, 2009 12:00pmI'm browsing the Washington Post op-ed pages this morning. Let's see: "Revenge of the Tax Code", a column by some guy I never heard of named Chris Edwards which starts out tagging Democratic nominees for their tax problems and turns into a full-court press for... the regressive flat tax! I mean, WTF? But then all becomes clear: Chris Edwards is tax policy director at the Cato Institute!
Then I move on to "Here's How to Make a Real Stimulus Take Flight", a piece by two guys named Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, in which they explain that the absolute best use of stimulus money would be... to further expand the military! I became suspicious when they started singing the praises of the F-22 Raptor in the dreamy tone most men reserve for talking about their first car. ("A 1968 Dodge Dart, the kind with the slant six engine!")
So I skipped ahead to the end of the column. Sure enough: Tom Donnelly is a resident fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Gary Schmitt is director of strategic studies there.
How can this be? Surely there's a Democratic liberal in here somewhere...oh wait, here's a pitch for more cancer funding from pancreatic cancer victim Patrick Swayze. Well, he is a Hollywood actor, he probably is a Democrat...
Oh wait, something approaching a liberal position: "You Can Cap The Pay, But the Greed Will Go On."
Author note: Rakesh Khurana is a professor at Harvard Business School. Andy Zelleke is co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Hot damn, I finally found me some liberal elitists!
I move on to "Foreign Spies Are Serious. Are We?" Michelle Van Cleave served as head of U.S. counterintelligence from July 2003 through March 2006. She is a senior research fellow at the National Defense University and a special adviser to the Project on National Security Reform. Well, she's not affiliated with any right-wing think tanks, but she worked for Doug Feith and was a consultant to the CIA - so I'm guessing not a Democrat, and not a liberal.
Oh wait, better luck in the other sections. Here's a Georgetown professor talking about a revival of liberal patriotism.
But then David Broder says he's skeptical of terms like "blue wall" - even though he exhorts the Republicans to climb it.
Personally, I really liked this article about finding your one true Valentine. But then, I would - after all, I'm a bleeding heart liberal.
Generally speaking, though, if you were looking for liberal voices to speak out on national policy issues, issues that might interest the politicians (okay, their staffers) who pore over the Washington Post every day, well, you should probably look elsewhere. They say they have liberals over at the New York Times, so maybe next week I'll give it a look!
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Is there a Green Hornet Institute?
I'm seeing double.
To the press the normal way things work in Washington is that Politicians say things to get elected, but once elected they leave those things behind.
Politicians come to a Government dominated and sold to the highest bidder, they leave government to peddle influence and make vast sums doing it.
They may even again return to Government and oversee the very people who have been paying them so handsomely.
According to the press' standard, knowing how the system works and being happy makes one savvy.
According to the Left, that makes one CORRUPT.
That is why the press praises Obama when he refuses to 'bow' to the Left.
Did y'all see Bill Moyer's Journal last Friday? They had Glenn Greenwald, and some other blogger, who's full name I never caught, but who set off my gaydar, arguing much the same thing.
found in its entirety here.
I was inspired, seeking to parallel, synthesize and add my own, but not to purloin the language.
Jay Rosen and Glenn Greenwald were at the top of their form. If I am in any league like theirs, it is in one of spirit alone.
As for gaydar, if it is needed, and I don't think it is, one should keep it to one's self.
Is gaydar kinda hard to turn off after it gets triggered, like a car alarm? And does it make the same sound?
Can a straight man like me even have a gaydar, or is that like some kind of Little Orphan Annie decoder ring?
gaydar's now a plug in app on the i phone.
On a serious note, Steve Colbert when he was on the daily show interviewed a young brit who came up with a paging system that gays could let each other know when they were in close vicinity. Colbert transformed into psycho therapist, pulling it out of the inventor that he was indeed gay, even though he insisted he was not, it was very funny. I'd include the clip but you tube took it down.
There's no such thing as a straight man.
Only men that have not met me.
;)
(stolen from Will & Grace)
Harvard, Liberal? Are you some sort of 70s throw back?
Glenn Greenwald shredded the liberal Post myth(yet again) this past Tuesday on his blog at salon.com...
"UPDATE II: Fairness compels me to note that The Washington Post announced last week that neoconservative war supporter Bill Kristol will now join neoconservative war supporter Robert Kagan, neoconservative war supporter Charles Krauthammer, neoconservative war supporter Fred Hiatt and neoconservative war supporter Jim Hoagland as a regular columnist on the Post's Op-Ed page (along with war supporters David Ignatius and Richard Cohen), so it's not as though one could accuse The Post -- one of the leading arms of The Liberal Media -- of lacking diversity of opinion."
he did forget to mention good ol' George Will-whos been a regular at the Post for more than
a decade.
And Yes(!).. Greenwald's and Rosen's appearance on Moyers Friday was very inspiring !!
No shouting. No lies. And in Moyers, a moderator who hardly said a thing for 30 minutes
of interview. And no commercials. So , why waste time on the Sunday morning drivel shows
that cannot meet any of these standards folks...
to the fact that the republicans are no longer in control of the program, and they will no longer be branded as unpatriotic if they say anything against them.
Remember anytime you criticized Bush or anything he said you were slammed and thrown against the wall and branded as a traitor... I guess they are still afraid... Good Grief just look at what Faux News just did to Russell Tice after he dared to talk... and he waited till after Bush had left town and STILL got attacked for daring to speak out.
As soon as I saw the words “smart politics and sound policy” I skipped to the end to see who the idiots were that wrote this dreck. Once I saw they were from the “American Enterprise Institute”, I passed. Stupid from the start.
I know, I know; hard to believe there wasn't a single word in that story that, at $350 million each, the F-22 is the most expensive jet fighter ever built, and that it was designed to meet the Soviet Union's last proposed, but never built, interceptor.
Nor do they mention that “some” in the Air Force claim that we need the F-22 because, some day, we may have to face - the F-16! We sold so many F-16s to allies and the Third World, if we ever had to fight one of them, we’ll need the F-22 to defeat them!
The F-35 shows every sign of being as much a loser as the F-22 at $355 million each and 2-years behind schedule. It is overweight, underpowered, and less maneuverable than aircraft from 40 years ago.
Heckofajob, guys!
[Deleted. Abusive-Sitemonitor] As a former USAF tech, I can assure you the F-22 costs about 160million apeice, but the detractors like you add in the costs throughout the life of the jet, kinda like saying you drive a 200K Ford Taurus because you put 100 bucks a month in gas into it. The F-35 is on schedule and costs 60 million [Deleted. Abusive-Sitemonitor]. Where you get your numbers is a fucking mystery to me. And less manuverable? In today's materials it's heavier than jets from the 60's. [Deleted. Abusive-Sitemonitor] Both programs employ 100,000 Americans in 45 states. And finally, seeing as you know jack shit about aircraft, the Russian SU-30 is reason enough to continue the F-22 program. Don't even think they don't want to add stealth and thrust-vector, they desperately want to match the F-22. [Deleted. Abusive-Sitemonitor]
[You can get your point across without the invective-Sitemonitor]
one hour and thirty three minutes…
To be insulting.
Troll much?
I'm ex Air-Force, Top Secret Clearance, and surely you understand that most of the lower prices you cite were probably bids for contracts, but inevitably once awarded go over time and budget. The government never seems to fight these "mistakes," and just pay up.
While I was in the service I would say 7 of every 10 jets were awaiting repairs, and about 3.5 were waiting almost endlessly for spare parts that never seem to come.
The turn time on a raptor is about 45 minutes. It is also on time, always has been, and just gets cheaper every month it's in production. And you know it, unless your TS clearance came in a crackerjack box. The F-35's R&D was covered by at least ten countries (you knew that too, right?) and is NOT 355 mil per jet, THAT is the dumbest thing ever posted here.
The F-22 has had NO major problems in the time it's been in service.
This is why idiot neo-cons can call liberals weak on defense, because we end up having one sophomoric know-it-all pull numbers from the sky.
Tell me again TS airforce why we should squander our air superiority. Do you think China has given up on Taiwain? And Russia doesn't think they still own Alaska? Oh wait, our A-10's got our backs.
Inspector Clouseau's Butler has a right wing think tank?
It's O.J.'s "friend".
Go to the MSN Homepage, big article on our buddy Rush. I have more education than him, however, I am not currently buying a $54 million Gulf Stream Lear Jet!
editorial pages I read are packed wall to wall with neocons. E.J. Dionne and a few others spatter throughout, but they are congenial nice guys that never really call out the propagandists on the other side. The local editors may take so called "liberal" stances such as whether local school projects should get through or if taxes should go up to pay for extra cops, but by and large, it's just another spot for neocons to spout off. There is nowhere for a liberal to go in the mainstream to get opinion or even facts save for Rachel and Keith. The whole notion that the MSM is liberal is a big lie perpetrated on a country packed with sheep. I can barely even watch the news anymore. Morning Joe, Glenn Beck, Hannity, Kristol, Dobbs, Blitzer and the whole reich wing crew over at MSNBC I mean these screaming liberals? Are you fucking kidding me?
The radio is even worse, there is not one single liberal voice on the radio in my city save NPR. But NPR isn't screaming propaganda 24/7 it is a news and insight programming channel that more or less only covers national issues. There's no local guys countering the local neocons who day after fucking day pound on local so called "liberals". Even the fucking morning guys who are supposed to be funny are liberal hating bush-bot clones.
I think any semblance of a "liberal" movement in the US is either dying or dead. That the US is descending into fascism with the US citizen holding the door open for it. There will be no "universal health care", there will be no "social security", there will be no "union rights" or worker rights or rights for gays or anyone else.
The only chance I have had as a so called "liberal" in almost all of my ~40 years here on earth to maybe push some good stuff through the door is being squandered. Obama maybe only in office for 2+ weeks but he is fucking up big time. If he doesn't get this right, you can kiss any liberal agenda goodbye. You and I will all watch this moment get pissed down the drain. It will be another 40 years.
Does anyone else see this shit or am I a bat-shit fucking lunatic????
but the corporate media is v. focused and not much in the way of alternate views leak through. even public broadcasting and npr are corporate funded and during the last 8 yrs rec'd higher level of pushback to spout the "company line." link tv is non-corporate but still, unless you access international and/or web-based independent news venues, given the diminishing # of non corporates, it's the corporate hacks who prevail and set the agenda.
that the dem's are not putting up a strong stand (nothing succeeds like success) is frustrating and v. Charlie Brown/Lucy football-ish. sometimes i think the pols are all on the same corporate team .... we need to be addressing big problems ... fiscal, environmental, social ... but we get diverted by this lobbied kibuki where whimpy reid mumbles something & lieberman & nelson etal decide policy. who really is surprised??
and others give hope...maintain integrity and point me in the direction of further good reads. When glen & rosen point to the ongoing insider group think, or krugman (an actual economist) addresses debunked yet sacred chicago sch of econ theory it is heartening...well, there are others incl the brave mr colbert (vs. the gregory guy who danced w/rove)
but only Moyers actually has a MSM program. Greenwald or Kos are usually only brought in on TV so they can be slammed by neocons. And Krugman is constantly interrupted and dismissed on tv. I'm glad we have Moyers, but he ain't no spring chicken!!!!
"We are all socialists now"
http://www.newsweek.com/id/183663?from=rss
Way to climb on Rush's propaganda bandwagon.
Seriously, Bush pumps a trillion dollars in taxpayer money into Iraq and that's okay. Obama tries to pump taxpayer money into our home economy, and it's called "Socialist."
The MSM is hellbent on destroying the middle class.
...that POS propaganda ragsheet is still in business? People are dumb enough to buy it? Wonders never cease.
Hey! My first car was '70 Dodge Dart with a...slant six...engine that...
Oh. Oh dear...
....was a $25 1963 Dodge Dart with a slant six and no rear window.
TV needs a provocateur to entertain. [got that from TV]
TV is hungery for things to say.
The narrative belongs to the provocateur. [not to TV]
I can't wait for the bush trials to start though. Remind me to turn TV back on when they start. I'd even go out and buy a big screen TV to see that.
will never see a court room. you can count on that.
Not even to spark the economy?
When will you people learn this is not about right vs left. This is not about Reps vs Dems. This is a socio-economic political force that is in charge. The we vs them, haves and the have nots. It boggles my mind that people still want division, partisanship, and the two party system. Having to pick between two choices is not a choice. Please, ...wake up and realize that these people in power are rich, elitist, and the opportunists of the World. Socio-Economic system!!!
Thank you Karl, next we'll hear from Groucho.
going over to the NYTimes, they only have Krugman and no one listens to him anyway.
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