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Saturday, August 07, 2004 |
Paul Krugman VS Bill O'Reilly on Tim Russert's CNBC Show.
Once again Bill O'Reilly exposed himself as a right wing bully! Oh excuse me...a "fair and balanced" right wing bully. The Tim Russert show is much different than "Meet the Press." It was supposed to be a debate, but what it really was, was a platform for Bill other than his show to vent his rage at Paul and the NY Times because they never reviewed any of his books. After the first half-hour where the conversation was mostly about the economy, It didn't take more than three minutes for O'Reilly to arrogantly wave his finger in the face of Krugman because Paul called O'Reilly a liar. Bill kept misquoting Paul's book about how Bush's tax cuts would cause a recession. Krugman obviously knows a whole lot more about economy than Bill O'Reilly, who by the way sided with every Republican theory on economy.(Isn't he an Independent?) The second half dealt with the war in Iraq and that's where O'Reilly put on the boxing gloves. In one exchange about Fahrenheiht 9/11. O'Reilly slandered Paul by saying, " A Nazi propaganda movie...cut and paste, hmm... Bush as a corrupter, and you know...to reinforce Krugman's paranoid delusions. Then O'Reilly said," I don't know how any responsible journalist could actually say that propaganda is valuable. I don't know how anybody could do it!
Paul Krugman quickly jumped in with." Well that would kill Fox News entirely!"
O'Reilly's had the audacity to call Krugman’s response "a cheap shot."
Bill got in enough low blows to disqualify Andrew Golota.
It wound up to a feverish pitch by the end when O'Reilly tried to deny that he said that Michael Moore hated America. Krugman was armed with something that infuriates O'Reilly-The Truth-in the form of O'Reilly's own quote from his radio show. Bill blathered on about where Paul got the source of the quote, and tried to defend himself by not disputing the quote but smearing Media Matter.org In the end it was a sad night for O'Reilly, but it made for some fun viewing.
7:52:25 PM 
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Sibel Edmonds a former FBI translater and whisleblower asks The 9/11 Commision:
Your commission, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, was created by law to investigate "facts and circumstances related to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001" and to "provide recommendations to safeguard against future acts of terrorism", and has now issued its "9/11 Commission Report". You are now asking us to pledge our support for this report, its recommendations, and implementation of these recommendations, with our trust and backing, our tax money, our security, and our lives. Unfortunately, I find your report seriously flawed in its failure to address serious intelligence issues that I am aware of, which have been confirmed, and which as a witness to the commission, I made you aware of. Thus, I must assume that other serious issues that I am not aware of were in the same manner omitted from your report. These omissions cast doubt on the validity of your report and therefore on its conclusions and recommendations
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/080304W.shtml
4:23:29 PM
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3:58:44 PM
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Oxycotin Conservative Republican
Tired of good old Rush Limbaugh? Listen to The Politnics new song.
Just click on Oxycotin!
3:50:18 PM
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Katherine Harris is at it again.
Rep. Katharine Harris has earned herself another dubious distinction. After doing her best to secure Florida's electoral votes for President Bush in 2000, the former Florida secretary of state turned U.S. Rep is now inventing terror plots to boost Bush's campaign. With such strong qualifications for office, who would have imagined such a thing could happen? The Herald Tribune reports this story> Excerpt: VENICE -- Officials in Indiana and Washington, D.C., said they are dumbfounded by a statement U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris made about a terrorist plot to blow up a power grid in Indiana.In making the statement during a speech to 600 people Monday night in Venice, Harris either shared a closely held secret or passed along second-hand information as fact.A staff member of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which oversees the nation's intelligence operations, said he had heard of no such plot. http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2004408040633
3:45:23 PM
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The Real reason America went to War with Iraq.-Commentary
President Bush, responding Thursday in Columbus, Ohio, to questions Kerry has raised about his motivation in going to war against Iraq. Bush said his decision to strike there was a profoundly difficult and personal one. "Committing troops into harm's way is the most difficult decision a president can make," Bush told an audience of nearly 1,000. "That decision must always be last resort. That decision must be done when our vital interests are at stake, but after we've tried everything else. There must be a compelling national need to put our troops into harm's way. I felt that."
Well Mr. President this is what I feel.
That "compelling national need" to go to war is a neoconservative view on foreign policy. A Washington-based organization known as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), funded by three foundations closely tied to Persian Gulf oil and weapons and defense industries, drafted the war plan for U.S. global domination through military power. In a report just before the 2000 election The PNAC spells out their plan. The process of transformation, the plan said, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor. The PNAC is part of the New Citizenship Project, whose chairman is also William Kristol, and is described as a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz signed a Statement of Principles of the PNAC on June 3, 1997, along with many of the other current members of Bush's war cabinet. Wolfowitz was one of the directors of PNAC until he joined the Bush administration. The group’s essential demand was for hefty increases in defense spending. The increase in defense spending is to bring about two of the other principles: to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values and to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles. A subsequent PNAC plan entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century, reveals that the current members of Bush's cabinet had already planned, before the 2000 presidential election, to take military control of the Gulf region whether Saddam Hussein is in power or not. Even should Saddam pass from the scene, the plan says U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain, despite domestic opposition in the Gulf States to the permanent stationing of U.S. troops. Iran, it says, may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests as Iraq has. A core mission for the transformed U.S. military is to fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars, according to the PNAC. The strategic transformation of the U.S. military into an imperialistic force of global domination would require a huge increase in defense spending to a minimum level of 3.5 to 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, adding $15 billion to $20 billion to total defense spending annually, the PNAC plan said.
Doesn't President Bush's recent response to Senator Kerry explain it all? Didn't al Qaeda pose a more imminent threat to our country than Iraq since it was al Qaeda who actually attacked us and not Iraq! Well you and your friends at the PNAC got their "compelling national need" when two airliners struck the World Trade Center on September 11th. I only wish your administration had the moral fortitude to be honest about it.
3:42:57 PM
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NANOOK AND ME
A fresh look at the nature of documentaries can be found in an article by NANOOK AND ME in the New Yorker
by LOUIS MENAND http://newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?040809crat_atlarge An excerpt:
"Fahrenheit 9/11" and the documentary tradition. One common reaction to "Fahrenheit 9/11" is that it shows you things that have never been seen before—the "Pet Goat" and "Now watch this drive" clips, scenes of carnage and brutality in Iraq, Saudi-schmoozing, Ashcroft singing, Al Gore being forced to reject repeated petitions by black representatives to contest the official counting of the electoral-college votes in the 2000 election. It may be that most of these things were shown somewhere, but the movie is designed to make audiences feel that they have never been seen, or that, having been seen, they have been deliberately suppressed. Robert Greenwald’s "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism," a movie that has yet to tempt a distributor but has been exhibited in special screenings, and that circulates, samizdat style, on videotape and DVD, is a forceful reminder of how vicious the cheerleading is. "Outfoxed" ought to be a redundant exercise. The right-wing bias of Fox News, whose laughable motto is "Fair and Balanced," is not something that ought to require a documentary to uncover. But where is the mainstream media? The answer is that the mainstream media is a place where Tucker Carlson is identified as a "political analyst." Reporting on television is now accompanied by so much partisan yapping disguised as analysis, and there is such a panic to get anything on the air that comes over the transom regardless of the source (like pictures of John Kerry in a silly hat), that the other networks have to feel uncomfortable about accusing anyone else of confusing news with opinion. "Outfoxed" suggests, in fact, that competing news organizations, like CNN, having seen that flag-waving attracts viewers, are starting to imitate Fox.
There may be a few viewers out there who continue to confuse Bill O’Reilly with Eric Sevareid. "Outfoxed" will disabuse them.
3:41:04 PM
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3:40:03 PM
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Partisan yapping disguised as analysis.
While watching the Democratic convention this past week, I was appalled by the fact that partisan ideologues were trumpeted on the air via CNN, MSNBC, and of course Fox News, as authentic analysts. After John Kerry gave his speech, Joe Scarborough, one of the MSNBC panel, the ex-Republican congressman, wasted no time in bellowing that John Kerry blew it. He rushed his speech. The rest of the panel were flabergasted.
Hearing Tucker Carlson utter the words "creepy and ghoulish" as CNN immediately cut to him after Ron Reagan gave his speech on stem cell research is not analysis, it's partisan opinion. Paul Krugman of the NY Times has a wonderful article entitled " Reading the Script" in an excerpt :CNN used to be different, but Campaign Desk, which is run by The Columbia Journalism Review, concluded after reviewing convention coverage that CNN "has stooped to slavish imitation of Fox's most dubious ploys and policies." Seconds after John Kerry's speech, CNN gave Ed Gillespie, the Republican Party's chairman, the opportunity to bash the candidate. Will Terry McAuliffe be given the same opportunity right after President Bush speaks? Please read this fairly short article.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/03/opinion/03krug.html
3:38:57 PM
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Book Review- A must read-5 stars*****
Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War CabinetBy James Mann This riveting book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the underpinning of American foreign policy. It is written in a non-partisan way and profiles Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, Armitage and Wolfowitz . Editorial ReviewsAmazon.comWhile campaigning for president in 2000, George W. Bush downplayed his lack of foreign policy experience by emphasizing that he would surround himself with a highly talented and experienced group of political veterans. This core group, consisting of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, and Condoleezza Rice, has a long history together dating back 30 years in some cases. Dubbing themselves the Vulcans, they have largely determined the direction and focus of the Bush presidency. In this remarkably researched and fascinating book, Mann traces their careers and the development of their ideas in order to understand how and why American foreign policy got to where it is today.
3:37:45 PM
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The Terror Alerts
How many New Yorkers and Americans were terrified by the latest televised terror alert by the head of Homeland Security Tom Ridge this past week? How many Americans were also skeptical of those alerts? Are they veritable messages to the public at hand or have they become a political tool used by our government? A great editorial concerning these issues appeared in Friday's New York Times: Excerpt:
Our lives have changed so much since Sept. 11, 2001. We know that we may never again be free of the threat of terrorism. It's been a tough adjustment for everyone, and the burden on President Bush is especially heavy. Given the unprecedented circumstances and the costs of making a mistake, it's easy to understand why the administration has had so much trouble managing the way it informs the public about potential danger. But after 17 months in which alerts blinked from yellow to orange and back a half-dozen times, the White House should be past its learning curve. It isn't. The events of this week showed starkly that the system is not working.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/opinion/05thu1.html
3:36:40 PM
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Iraq Shuts Al-Jazeera Baghdad Office for a Month
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq ( news - web sites)'s interim government ordered Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite television network to close its Baghdad office for one month on Saturday, a move criticized as unjustifiable by the channel. Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, confirming the decision at a news conference, said a commission had been monitoring Al Jazeera for the past four weeks to see whether it was inciting violence and hatred, and that the decision had been taken "to protect the people of Iraq." "It's regrettable and we believe it's not justifiable," Al Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said. "This latest decision runs contrary to all the promises made by Iraqi authorities concerning freedom of expression and freedom of the press." Iraqi Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib said this week that Arabic satellite channels were encouraging kidnappings by showing images of hostages threatened with executions. Another government official at the press conference said the station had "encouraged criminals and gangsters" in Iraq. Al Jazeera's Ballout denied the charge. "We are not a political organization that is for or against anybody. We display what happens on the ground as objectively as possible and in a balanced way," he said. Ballout said the television would continue to cover events in Iraq despite the closure. "I'm not going to say it will be easy, but again a creative journalist will try to get a comprehensive and balanced story out there," he said. Earlier this week, the station reported a videotaped statement from a militant group linked to al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi saying it had released two Turkish drivers because their company agreed to stop working in Iraq. Scores of hostages from two dozen countries have been seized in the past four months. Most have been freed but at least 10 have been killed, and at least 20 are still being held in Iraq. Last month, Al Jazeera, accused by the United States of graphic and anti-American conflict coverage, unveiled a code of ethics it said would ensure balanced and sensitive reporting. Jazeera won over millions of Arab viewers before and during the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan ( news - web sites) in 2001 after airing exclusive footage of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden ( news - web sites) following the September 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. cities. (Additional reporting by Heba Kandil)
3:35:45 PM
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3:33:47 PM
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3:30:53 PM
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Test
1:35:14 PM
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© Copyright 2004 John Amato.
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