Lying us into war with Iraq was wrong but doing it before we had got Ossama or finished the job in Afghanistan that was stupid. England going along with Bush’s plan was stupid and shows a desire to let themselves be hurt to be liked.
I’m surprised Darth doesn’t have more nice things to say about Tony.

Listening to the same dark side proponents that gave us our wars, our economic disaster, and a complete breakdown of regulatory bodies – that’s the hallmark of the commercial media and the White House has commented rather consistently on the folly of taking advice from proven incompetents. Putting out the facts is their job, and it looks to me like the Obama administration goes off task by telling the press that facts matter, when our press has shown that it is irreparably committed to shiny objects instead.

Obey this one rule: don’t buy garbage.

It’s big money against the people.

Why are you surprised at anything anyone says or does?

You should look into media campaign that began a few weeks ago; a slow roll out of business writers and economist rewriting the history of the financial collapse.

Good morning, pups. It’s the Pasty Little Putz and Prof. Krugman today. The Pasty Little Putz, in “They Chose Celebrity,” says the Republican Party needs leaders who prefer the responsibilities of leadership to the pleasures of fame. No shit?! Who’d a thunk? Prof. Krugman, in “The Phantom Menace,” says the scare stories from Wall Street seem to be intimidating Washington from doing more to rescue the economy.

Here they are.

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and the biscuits are out of the oven. I’ve come to realize that Willie Geist is even stupider than Joe Scarbrough. This morning, when talking about an astronaut’s daughter who was born while he was on the space station, he said she’d never forgive her father and, to quote him: “no Father’s Day for him.” As the icing on the cake when discussing Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse having explained that the health care bill was about as long as a Harry Potter novel Mr. Geist explained that Harry Potter books were too long for him to read. Christ. He makes Joe sound almost adult… Have a great day.

I heard that nonsense from Willie Geist. My grandson had finished all of the Harry Potter books before his nineth birthday. To bad it can’t be written in comic book format for rethugs.

Morning all!

On the bright side, it looks like Glenn Beck is gettin’ ready to run for prez.

Good morning everyone.

Thanks, glad to be spared reading Pasty, and watching the morning Joe (Sixpack understood in this sentence).

Is that fame? though, I wonder, or the inability to fade away gracefully after making a complete mess of the job they swore to do, representing public interests they fought so hard against.

The thing that particularly galled me was the assumption that the little girl “would never forgive her father” for not being present at her birth. I guess he’s too shallow to understand the possibility that maybe in the future she’ll brag to her friends that her dad was up in space when she was born. Is there some clause in their contracts that says they are required to be petty and stupid?

Stupid doesn’t threaten the bosses. How many kids are born while their dads are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Good (cold) morning Attaturk. It is the fault of the Liberal Media. If Conservatives ran the media they would be honest and accountable.

Pop-ups are the level these folks are on.

Does Geist think that the troops are having kids back home that will never forgive them for being away too? Bet you’ll never hear anyone spewing off on that theme.

I see foothillsmike tho’t that way, too.

Absolutely, well said.
Who the hell is Geist?

And now an announcement from the Institute for the Advancement of Conservative Science:

Nothing happened before 1-20-09

Pop-up books are very complicated to make and some can be quite beautiful. Much too good for the Rs. SUNY-New Paltz did an exhibit in their art gallery several years ago, but I can’t find anything about it on their website.

Really, I did love them as a child, but they did beg the question, often substituted lovely pictures for worthwhile prose, imho.

I think they are supposed to be visual art, not written art.

Attaturk: (and also topless women, but that’s really Rupert’s fault)

No, that’s a cultural difference: Europeans don’t think it’s dirty to look at breasts.

Someone said the other day, I think it was here at the lake, that it was unfortunate that Australia got the convicts and we got the Puritans.

OT Richard Trumka will be on WJ 8:30 EST.

Follow the frikkin’ money!

Drug and insurance money pours in to the lobbyists offices AND political party coffers AND Media Company Advertising Departments. Take the drug and insurance ads off of television and there would be no profits for these companies.

Is this really so difficult to grasp?

Remember when it was illegal to advertise prescription drugs on TV? Those ridiculous ads that spend 5 seconds on brand image and the balance of time listing the side effects of the untested drug are merely cover for the direct bribery that is controlling the media, and thereby, the debate.

Take prescription drug and insurance advertising off the air. Americans don’t need insurance – they just need CARE. Make it illegal to donate to political activities. Make a debate network publicly available for free – where all political discourse and education can reside. Ban lobbyists.

If you want the problems to go away – eliminate the incentives built into the present system. Fire the existing politicians. They are criminals if they are voting in favor of legislation promoted by their donors. The system has morphed into one that facilitates high treason – the methodical destruction of the country under the disguise of apparent normalcy – as portrayed falsely by the complicit media barons. The plot by the CFR, the FED and their fascist oligarchs, to destroy America from within, has succeeded. They have sucked the host dry and are picking over the bones.

Hit reset.

It would seem to me anyone who has seen the “horror” of war is less inclined to take a “shotgun approach” to “war,” unless absolutely required. Zee “silver spoons in derrières” corpo-aristocrats who have decimated this republic and the constitution under the color of law as forewarned by Jefferson have no problem sending people to premature death to further corporate oil’s interests in the world.

What is the next Gleiwitz, incident to predicate a war on for corporate greed, profit and the perpetuation of the very costly oil delivery system to America, for very powerful oil interests who desire our addiction to their form of stored potential energy, like a drug dealer or a tobacco dealer?

I do not expect many to get it!! Looking at the would through the lenses of instilled addictions via the “men in little black boxes” feared by Kierkegaard! The bottom line is the “tentacles,” of corporate America control media, brainwashing truth into fiction for the sole purpose of leveraged economic servitude to insure profit, like drug dealers… Lets wipe that slate clean and continue the perpetual rape of Americans by corporate identity’s self serving entities, as Jefferson and Madison so rightly feared. Due process for corporations at the expense of life and liberty now makes every American a Dred Scott! WTF!

Who the hell is Geist?

He’s the moron who’s got the show before Morning Joe. He also shows up on Joe’s side show. He’s Bill Geist’s kid. I used to enjoy his dad’s writing.

If you think Australia was fortunate, you need to read The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes.

Gosh and I thought he was Tucker Carlson’s younger brother.

The road to fascism goes right through Irresponsible Journalismville.

Off to be a cog in the medical industrial complex.

Is this a case of the privileged boy becoming an instant expert on everything because he can afford to go out to dinner three times a week?

Page 3 is a Murdoch invention.

Speaking of Australia. OT My local “newspaper”, Murdoch owned, is running a front page screed from Anthem Insurance telling us why our property taxes will sky rocket under the Health Care thingy. Journalism anyone?

the guys who are always wrong have “expert” status, the guys who are always right get “fringe opinion” status

wonderful

Sorry, but it’s way, way too early in the morning for Søren.

BTW….. Why did it take Ford Motor Company only 18 months to retool and start making tanks for England after the Germans decimated the Brits in N Africa. Why did Churchill meet with FDR?

How about “War on Energy” commensurate with the America’s WWII effort to rid the world of Nazis? This type of application of effort by Americans would liberate America opposed to leveraged economic servitude to ENERGY corporation more concerned with profit and less with liberty and freedom, except to the extent it insures their existence and status quo interests analogous to that of a King defeated by AMERICAN PATRIOTS WHOSE LIVES WHERE CONTROLLED TO THEIR DETRIMENT, BY A KING AND HIS CORPORATE COHORTS IN COLONIAL TIMES…. WTF AMERICA!!!!!!!!!

Yes. I like Bill Geist and was disappointed to see his son. It seems like everyone routinely on Scarborough has to be an obsequeous bobble-head. Scarborough seems to enjoy making an embarrasing display of the children fo more cabable parents; i.e., Willie and Mika. I can’t watch.

When access trumps accuracy, the American media is the result. Tragic.

WIPE THAT SLATE CLEAN?

Still one of the best Scarborough put downs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mk18af8z9Y

Apt observation. I still wince whenever Cokie Boggs Roberts slouches around still capitalizing on her Dad’s career as if she actually got a hold on insider knowledge instead of selling her name.

One of the BigMedia favorites is in my email “top headlines” section:

Gaps for consumers in Democrat health care bills

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091123/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul

The reporter seems to use proper grammar and use “Democratic,” but the headline writer, usually not the same person as the reporter, decides to use the Repub slur by leaving off the “ic,” which they’ve been working feverishly to embed in the public discourse. Since it’s the AP, my bet is Ron Fournier himself or one of his little toadies made the headline.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/07/060807ta_talk_hertzberg

Even William F. Buckley publicly refused to use “Democrat Party,” but not today’s GOP (Got Ours, Piss-off)!

Too bad America was discovered first. Just think how different America would have turned out if Australia had been first. Could also explain why these puritanical christians hate criminals so much too and go to extreme measures to lock them up.

Sounds like self hate then.

Yes, the fourth estate isn’t accountable to anyone. I think the internet is the only place, along with a few radio stations, a few magazines and fewer newspapers, where reliable push-back is to be found. But the principle actors (the politicians, the CEO’s, the cultural warriors, the analysts and pundits) almost never get asked the hard questions. It really is infuriating. TV is really an opiate.

TV is really an opiate.

Especially when you look at it in totality (not just *news*). There’s a reality show for everyone……….house wives, cake bakers, bounty hunters, hairdressers, wedding planners, brides, ad nauseum………you get the idea. And basically everyone of these pieces of trash show supposedly real humans behaving badly/irrationally.

The other day an acquaintance stated she had no interest in helping out a friend who no longer has health care coverage.

“I have no interest in helping. It is my responsibility to just take care of my family. That’s it. Anyone else needs to deal with their own responsibilities, ” she said.

The acquaintance is a Christian. I mentioned that, ” I believe in supporting others in being self-sustainable with economic responsibilities. However, when there are systemic problems we, the community, need to come together and retool the system to make sure people are not hurt through a lack of opportunity.”

She replied, “Again, I take care of mine.”

Wow, tell us about it. I missed it.

If the troops come home with uranium poisoning so their children are born genetically deformed, then there would be a reason to think about what is unforgivable.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/

That is going to hurt his feelings.

Republican definition of accountability: “Heckuva job Brownie” and Medal of Freedom Awards.

The media is basically letting all opponents of health care say whatever the hell they want about health care reform with little pushback.

I don’t know why I continue to be surprised when this happens, but I do…

Why in the world would the mainstream media not play its appointed role in this healthcare “reform” “debate”?

After all, who pays the bills at the mainstream media? Watch the three major networks, watch cable programing, read the major newspapers and other print publications. What do you see endlessly interspersed between the articles? beteen the segments? Ads. Ads from the big insurance companies, healthcare professionals, pharmacuetical companies. Of course they are going to toe the corporate line when push comes to shove! Why in the world would they do otherwise with millions and millions of dollars at stake?

Yet why is this always deemed so mysterious by some? It is as though they expect the debate to revolve fully around “principle” and “justice” and “integrity”….around the soundness of the arguments and the ideas in the debate. As though the filthy lucre of the bottom line should be set aside on the House and Senate floors [and on the editorial boards] so we can discuss this like civilized, compassionaite human beings.

It. Is. About. The. Benjamins. It’s always about that whenever enormous sums of money are involved. Unless and until progressives recognize this can only be pushed back by mobilizing from the ground up, we will continue to allow people like Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Harold Ford, the Clintons etc. to channel whatever spontaneous political idealism is still out there into the DNC and the corporate cliques that now control both the Democratic and Republican Party leadership positions.

Has not the current economic crisis taught us anything about how “the system” works? Will it be only the right wing that effectively organizes their base?

Stop relying on the Democrats regarding big ticket economic reforms. For every Kucinich, Sanders, Grayson etc. there are 5 K Street Democrats in the Congress.

Nice screed. I like your style. I’ve been thinking something similar since the Nobel for Peace was awarded to BO. Still, I disagree with your conclusion.

During the brouhaha that followed the announcement, I first responded in the manner you criticize so well: by assuming the prize objectively quantified and measured the trait “peacefulness,” then perforce, all human bias aside, simply assigned it to Obama.

Isn’t this the normative assumption at work? Lacking any detailed knowledge of the actual process, I at first treated the announcement like a weather report: the most peaceful person on the planet today is _________ .

But of course, it was 5 Norwegians, each individually motivated, representing an institution with an agenda of its own. Doesn’t the same apply to actions ascribed to the generic “media?” (BTW, Atrios, that’s a plural noun: The media are etc.)

These are wholly owned subsidiaries of major defense contractors, collaborating in running black psy ops against us. I’m not breaking any news here, so why do georgewalton and I even need to point it out?

It’s right up there with the inexplicable (to me) failure to integrate such things as Perkinsian economic hit men and deliberate “strategic domestic disinformation campaigns” into our real-time analyses of daily events. Until we do, we’ll keep getting jacked by the same carefully crafted myths mistaken for sincere statements.

Some of the basic assumptions of our culture just aren’t true. Nevertheless, they shape the society in which we are right now acting. Namely, the assumption of the Newtonian mechanistic reduction.

By reducing the cosmos, and ourselves along with it, to a mechanism controlled by kinetic activity, money becomes conflated with physical power, it takes the place of units of force like foot pounds and ergs. What a strange way of being in the world for complex biological systems like us humans who just so happen to be absolutely inseparable from the entire planetary biosphere from which we arise!

For example, one of the many weapons we used against Iraq was the largest transfer of cash in human history, effectively firing on them with $100 paper bullets. The dominant mythos today is of a mechanical world, a fully-automatic perpetual motion bogus holy war cash machine. That’s how our economic and political elite conceive of society, as a mechanism to be dominated by kinetic activity as measured by dollars.

The torturers and disaster capitalists have at least this in common. In their world, it’s all about bringing to bear sufficient “firepower,” no matter what the problem. Just as in the “rapport v. torture” debate, torturers and disaster capitalists seem to have no appreciation for kenosis, the power of thin leaves of grass bursting through asphalt from within. On second thought, maybe they do, maybe that’s their greatest fear: that we’ll realize we are the real power here.

So I share your frustration with the slow dawning of awareness of the role of propagandists in our so-called free press. But I don’t think that calls for abandoning people who are making the effort to change things from within Congress.

IMO, they’re human lighting rods. I’d rather see us trying to help capacitate and distribute all that natural energy. Throwing up our hands and shouting “A pox on both houses” may feel good, I’m tempted to do it, too, but where’s that going to get us?