For Crying Out Loud

I found an article today via Drudge that argues supposed 'vast ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.' The article, to me, shows the incredible difference in divulgence between the Bush and Clinton Administration. The amount of candid news from the predecessor makes Bush's tight-lipped neo-cons seem like dodgy mutes. The writer of the article had one suggestion for the Bush administration...

"SO WHAT should Washington do now? The first thing the Bush administration should do is create a team of intelligence experts -- or preferably competing teams, each composed of terrorism experts and forensic investigators -- to explore the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. For more than a year, the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group has investigated the nature and scope of Iraq's program to manufacture weapons of mass destruction."

BRILLIANT! This is a great idea... maybe then, we could give a good reason to the international community to go to war; build a coalition; and finally have that moral high ground we've been waiting for!! (please note sarcasm)


Did I mention that this same web pub, The Weekly Standard, also published a story about "a poll that found the media to be as liberal as ever." Here is a little piece that got me chuckling:

"Over 40-plus years, the only thing that's changed in the media's politics is that many national journalists have now cleverly decided to call themselves moderates. But their actual views haven't changed, the Pew survey showed. Their political beliefs are close to those of self-identified liberals and nowhere near those of conservatives. And the proportion of liberals to conservatives in the press, either 3-to-1 or 4-to-1, has stayed the same. That liberals are dominant is now beyond dispute.

Does this affect coverage? Is there really liberal bias? The answers are, of course, yes and yes. It couldn't be any other way. Think for a moment if the numbers were reversed and conservatives had outnumbered liberals in the media for the past four decades. Would President Bush be getting kinder coverage? For sure..."

I don't know who these Pew people are, but they apparently have never seen Fox News, MSNBC, The New York Post, or just about everyone else. This brings me to another point...

The majority of people get their news from the good old TV (pronounced like Stevie). An ever-increasing number of people are finding their news on the internet... where they can find news written by people who have the same OPINION as they do. This thing OPINION... what's this? I remember listening to people talk about journalistic integrity, unbiased news reporting, and 'telling it like it is.' The overwhelming majority of talking heads are no more than fame-hungry automatons that tow the company line.

I remember listening to Bill O'Reilly after 9/11 and before the war and how Gung Ho he was about everything... completely blind to sense, reason, international gravity, etc. Now, he is ripping apart the President for the same things he failed to consider. It is both people's job's to consider! The President has to because he needs to maintain a level of trust among his citizens and peers as well as the international community who look to us to fix every problem, yell at us for not doing enough about it, and scolding us for thinking we think it is up to us to fix everything (remember the whole Europe protesting the US for not giving enough aid to Africa for AIDS, etc.)

I didn't write much about it then, but before Bush was planning to go to war, I felt we should sure up some support from our allies, give ample time to the inspectors, y'know, pretty logical stuff.

If you listen to O'Reilly now... he is rabidly against what he'd said before!

Bill O'Reilly is a grandstanding turncoat.

The problem with the people who others get their news from on TV is that they are not journalists. They will take talking points from the Administrations in power as favors so they can eventually get other gigs. This is fine if they weren't portending that their purported news were fair and balanced... or unbiased and unpartisan.

The good thing about the web media growing to be the number one source for news is that people CAN find fair reporting. They can find impartial reporting... if they look hard enough. I don't pretend to be fair and balanced, although I think I am more so than O'Reilly or Hannity or Dennis Miller or Curtis or The Weekly Standard. If Bush was doing a good job I would say so. Seriously. There needs to be a Journalism Renaissance. Instead of having dreams of being a TV Anchor, have dreams about being a respected journalist. Have dreams about being a whistleblower of sorts! For crying out loud have dreams.

I used to think that I had some Republican ideals... smaller government, fair taxes, etc. (not republican on death penalty, abortion, gun laws.) But Republicans now stand for the opposite of those things (the ones not in parentheses) now. They stand for crookedness at every possible angle, from electronic voting, redistributing wealth, tax breaks, environmental pollution and legislation, and war. They are a bunch of white profiteers who can't bear to imagine a world where they don't rig their own destiny. I am aware of the philosophy of Amor Fati (fatalism, determinism)... I just hope that there is some sort of punishment for trying to control your own fate at a mortal price. Surely Karma will get to these fuckers ... and if it doesn't, we will.