Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Dean and the media conglomerates Posted here Wednesday, February 11, 2004 at 8:57:00 PM     This article on Dean and the Media is worth reading. The point is, he wanted to limit the conglomerates, and they crushed him. True? http://www.makethemaccountable.com/podvin/media/040201_TheScream.htm ********

Bush war record - the drama Posted here Wednesday, February 11, 2004 at 8:54:23 PM     Interesting how it took Kerry to be a serious candidate with a war record to allow the press to go after Bush's. The story is not a story unless contrast can emerge. I'd never thought of that. ********

Bush, Gore and real possibilities. Posted here Wednesday, February 11, 2004 at 3:55:34 PM     I ned to raise the question, as things seem to be falling apart, what do we seriously think would have happened if Gore had been President when 9/11 happened? I am not just talking about Gore's decent tendencies, but the reaction from the press and the republican side, if Gore had not used maximum force, even beyond anything Bush did? I think they would have moved to impeach. If this is right, then it means that the country was already essetially ungovernmable with a reasonable sane policy. This may explain abit why bush acted so stupidly - because ther really was not much of an alternative. Sure, I think that a multilateral police based targeted smart action approach would hev been much better, but woukld it have survived politically? ********

Vidal quoting Franklin Posted here Wednesday, February 11, 2004 at 3:32:55 PM     From Gore Vidal's essential Inventing a Nation. I say essential because he tells the story in a wy that makes it interesting and human and motivated by real people, just as now.. quoting Franklin "America will, w happy country; and England, if she has at length gained wisdom, will have gained something more valuable, and more essential to her prosperity, than all she has lost; 1 be a great and respectable nation. Her great disease at present is the numerous and enormous salaries and emoluments of office. Avarice and ambition are strong passions and, separately, act with great force on the human mind; but when both are united, and may be gratified in the same object, their violence is almost irresistible, and they hurry men headlong into factions and contentions, destructive of all good government. As long, therefore, as these great emoluments subsist, your Parliament will be a stormy sea, and your public councils confounded by private interests. But it requires much public spirit and virtue to abolish them; more than perhaps can now be found in a nation so long corrupted. " Thus Franklin, describing the England of 1783, nicely describes the United States of 2003, a once "great and happy country" being torn apart by avarice and ambition while our "public councils [are] confounded by private interests." Note that we are talking about the same time as Napoleon is getting ready to take france out of the revolution and towards a bureucratic military state of interests. George Washington's 1776 diary note on his new countrymen in general and the Continental Congress in particular is not promr patriots abound: venality, corruption, sh ends, abuse of trust, perversion of 1 to a private use, and speculations upon the rvade all interests." The alternative would be a deep cocnern for the general good and freedom for all, and a recognition of the difficulties of governanace. We need to watch now for how *opposition to Bush* is a cover for class interests. Not a fully free concern for the common good. ********

O'Reilly and Bush Posted here Wednesday, February 11, 2004 at 11:31:12 AM     Is O'Reilly saying he was wrong to support the war an inflection point?   http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&;u=/nm/20040210/pl_nm/campaign_bush_base_dc_3 ********