The Politics of Media
By Robert Parry
March 24, 2010
http://consortiumnews.com/2010/032410.html

If you believed what you saw on Tuesday’s NBC evening news or what you read in the Washington Post’s lead editorial on Wednesday, you wouldn’t have a clue that Republicans are engaged in a scorched-earth political strategy to destroy the Obama administration.

Instead, you’d think that everyday Americans are solidly behind the congressional Republicans in their unanimous opposition to health reform (NBC) and that President Barack Obama and the Democrats have done next to nothing to bridge the partisan divide (the Post).

Let’s start with NBC’s biased coverage of Obama’s signing into law the landmark health care reform. The multi-part opening segment could have been scripted by the Republican National Committee.

“Make no mistake,” NBC anchor Brian Williams said, “for millions of Americans who were not in the East Room [of the White House] today, it was the beginning of a fight against what they see as a government health-care behemoth that they have to now live by.”

Then, after dismissing the White House signing ceremony as a political pep rally of “giddy supporters” – and after explaining none of the new law’s features – NBC lovingly interviewed Republicans about their determination to roll back this government overreach.

NBC correspondent Kelly O’Donnell gave Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, his say without mentioning DeMint’s foiled scheme to make health reform President Obama’s “Waterloo” to “break” him. Normally, that would seem like a natural question to ask, but NBC apparently didn’t want to cast the GOP’s stalwart opposition to the new law as part of any partisan strategy.
more....

Progressives Take Heart: Successful Presidents Historically Push for MORE Reform

Very interesting comments by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on the effect of achieving historic legislative success on the agenda of that president. She said the healthcare bill's success will affect Obama's leadership from now on. She cited LBJ's success with passage of the civil rights act outlawing segregation as invigorating him to push for MORE reforms, even tho advisors told him to "take a break." Video (min. .44):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30031533/ns/msnbc_tv-the_ed_show

@Charles, I know, that was the point I alluding to. Completely free press is nearly incomprehensible if ayone with a little cash can produce their own paper (radio or TV show). Sure you'll get some wonderful people out there providing insightful information, and then you'll get a bunch of misinformed nut cases spouting their own point of view, avoiding and misrepresenting facts.

However, the Internet is what it is, most people that go on it can understand this and views it with a bit of incredulity. Yet they'll go and watch CBS, NBC, ABC, etc... and take it as GOSPEL.

I don't know the answer to this dilemma. (I'm sure that's obvious by now). I'm just giving my two cents worth. I appreciate the Internet model, its not perfect, but its good, and I don't see why I have to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Frum on John Yoo: http://www.frumforum.com/the-real-john-yoo

Jon Stewart opened his interview last night with John Yoo by inviting Yoo to give himself a pity party. “You are infamous. Do you feel that … people have impassioned feelings about you without knowing you? Do you feel that’s unfair.”

Yoo gently answered: “The same thing must happen to you.”

That’s the John Yoo I know – modest, realistic, and smilingly tough.

Stewart then tossed him the opposite pitch. “Are you a good lawyer?”

Yoo, startled, “You mean did Bush ask me that – or are you asking me that?” Then, Yoo pushed this aside too. “Well usually they say that those who can’t do teach.”

Yoo had come to the interview to elucidate a couple of simple points. The question he had been asked by the security arm of government was not, “How can we torture?” but “What can we do that isn’t torture?” Yoo is a lawyer, not an expert in interrogation. He did not recommend techniques. He tried to do something that the U.S. government had not done before: define the legal limit of the permissible.

What a softball segment, Thom. David Frum talk about your mother...

Whisky Tango Foxtrot.

By prosecuting them for illegal wars and torture...

Forgot to mention these people are very dangerous as the last week has shown. It is going to get worse. They feel this has been authorized by the likes of Beck, Limbaugh and Fox News.

I studiouly avoid Cutie Kurik nowdays, after hearing her ask the EPA chief "Commissioner, its true that the purpose of the EPA is to protect us from the environment, is that correct?" ...and he said yes.

But I accidentally caught her on 60 mins Sunday interviewing somebody about terrorism, she mention Sheik Kalid Mohammed, or whatever Bin Ladens's successor is called. While she was talking about SKM, they showed a picture of bin Laden in the background! did anybody else see that?

"Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit." -R.E. Shay

The GOP is not only the party of no as in no constructive solutions and no genuine regard for the American labor and products and for the entire spectrum of Right to Life issues but it is using the same tired old tactics wearing a different cloak this time around for the GOP’s one and only purpose for its existence which is protecting the wealthy and corporate elite from paying their fair share of the cost of a free and productive and safe society. This time around they are fraudulently portraying themselves as the party of small government and individual freedoms when for decades beginning with Reagan they drove up record levels of federal debt and deficits to underwrite the unregulated and non-productive largesse of banks, investment firms, insurance companies, and transnational corporations and foreign governments creating by its tax and corporate subsidy policy the greatest re-distribution of wealth to the very thin upper crust of taxpayers in our country in history. Republicans have threatened and weakened through their politics of fear practically every one of our sacred Bill of Rights that distinguishes America from every other country in the world and makes her great. The only thing that Americans need to fear is the return of the GOP to power to resume their destruction of managed capitalism and individual rights that almost destroyed America’s working and middle class during Bush II. Those of the Tea Party Movement who are acting in good faith should fear the GOP far more than the Democratic Party.

Yes Thom, we need to untie the knot between corporations and our government. But doesn't the insurance mandate package, without a public option, tie that knot tighter?

It vexes me to hear progressive commentators lump everyone who is concerned about this mandate into the same pile with right wingers. Over the past week I've heard you tilting in that direction. Maybe I've just been listening at the wrong times.

As you probably know, the legislation just passed exclusively by Democrats was first crafted by the architects of the Contract with America. Without a vocal challenge from progressives to improve this legislation, we could be entering a new era of corporate control.

Some points I meant to make, (sorry!! Between being ADD and having my neighbor who was being forcefully evicted from her apt right next door and, what sounded like, throwing glass at the deputies RIGHT when he took my call,..elaine got twisted around-kind of distracted to put it mildly!!) These are just "notes" I took.
FIRST though-understand, I live in a VERY Conservative SMALL town where folks would rather miss Church than Beck's show. In fact they are planning an "All-Day Celebration Of Freedom" at a local park on April 15th, "honoring" Glenn Beck.
Scary? You Betch'a!!
**********************************************
As far as your earlier caller and the suggestion to "get out there"-it's EXACTLY what Beck is predicting.
I was "graced", with yet another chance to watch the Cons primary "teacher" yesterday while awaiting transportation. I must say, I was almost as enraptured by the show as the others in the waiting room. He spent the first 50 minutes of the show, showing, of course, his "new revelation" he said he came to just yesterday AM. He'd "found" the "connection" of "EXACTLY" what Progressives are doing to destroy the Country. He made a triangle-with God at the bottom, (largest), then Morals, then
Social Justice, Marxism-turned it upside down to show how progressives are "distorting" & "corrupting" Faith, Charity & Justice & even brought Rev Wallis-"Obama's new religious & policy adviser", a "self-described Marxist...
Went on about all this being used to "get you" on subjects of education, health & global warming....
How, because of WHO Progressives REALLY are-->socialists/communists/marxists
AND how WE ALWAYS end up using VIOLENCE
THEN
Word for word from Becks newsletter, and then expounded on during his show:
"how Obama, his team, and cheerleaders in the media have done everything they can to marginalize, discredit and mock those who attend Tea Party rallies."
AND about how the "Progressives will pervert into Violence"
The last 5 minutes were talking about how THEY shouldn't be the first ones to use violence-it will be "the Progressives" who "strike first".
Too late-the teabaggers beat any of us to it. And considering Progressives are the "peacemakers"-WE have NO intentions of taking ourselves down to that level...

I tried to get Thom to challenge David Frum on torture, no dice. A mention of Archbishop Romero on the 30th anniversary of his murder, nope...

Well, for those here I leave you today with:
The Blindfold's Eyes
Sister Dianna Ortiz' story of torture and healing
http://www.grainofwheat.net/ortiz.html
She was an American nun teaching Mayan children in Guatemala when she was abducted by government security forces on November 2, 1989. Taken to a secret torture center in Guatemala City, she was subjected to a horrific ordeal that changed her life forever. She suffered more than 100 cigarette burns on her body while being interrogated. She was lowered into a rat-infested pit filled with decomposing bodies and victims not yet dead. Her hand was forcibly held to a knife as one of her torturers stabbed another female prisoner to death. She was brutally gang-raped by her torturers. But unlike most of the victims of the Guatemalan government's terror campaign, Sister Dianna lived to tell of what happened to her.

What makes her story especially disturbing is the complicity of her own government in her torture. The U.S. government funded, trained, and equipped the Guatemalan death squads responsible for torturing countless victims, including Sister Dianna. Her torturers answered to an American whom they called "Alejandro." Her ordeal ended when "Alejandro" removed her from the torture center, noting the international notoriety of her abduction, and drove her ostensibly to meet "a friend" at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City. Having every reason not to trust "Alejandro," she escaped him, and with help from fellow missionaries, she made her way back to the U.S. And in spite of repeated efforts to obtain information from the U.S. government, "Alejandro" has never been identified.

Her abduction was an embarrassment to the U.S. government. Embassy officials, along with the Guatemalan government, tried to discredit her story. The U.S. Embassy circulated a rumor that her abduction was faked to cover up a lesbian affair that had turned sour. When a delegation headed by her religious order met with Embassy officials in Guatemala in March 1990, political affairs officer Lew Anselem was quoted as saying, "I'm tired of all these lesbian nuns coming down to Guatemala." Ambassador Thomas Stroock, who was present at the meeting when the comment was made, did not object to it. Later, in an unrelated investigation on clandestine activities, a former special agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency said he was at the U.S. embassy in Guatemala a week after the November 1989 incident, and he was jokingly asked by a group of agents and embassy officials "if Dianna Ortiz had been good at sex." He denied that he was the American who participated in her rape and torture. He also noted that those present seemed amused by Sister Dianna's ordeal.

AcORN was the epitome of neighborhood empowerment. Anathma to control freaks.

Nels,
It's another donut hole. Between 144% and 400% of poverty level will receive a subsidy to offset the cost. Below 144% qualifies for Medcaid while over 400% is responsible for full cost of private insurance.

OK Charles, I see now. I didn't catch the "between 144% and 400%" qualifier.

This might interest some, or maybe not...

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/24/headlines#15

Salvadoran President to Issue Formal State Apology on 30th Anniversary of Romero Murder
And today marks the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of the Salvadoran Catholic Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero. Known as the “voice of the voiceless,” Romero was a prominent advocate for the poor and a leading critic of the US-backed Salvadoran military government. He was killed while delivering mass at a hospital chapel, reportedly on the orders of the US-backed death squad leader Roberto D’Aubuisson. Earlier this month, Romero was one of the historical figures deleted from Texas’s social studies curriculum as part of the sweeping changes approved by the state’s Republican-dominated board of education. The board voted to omit Romero from history lessons after deeming him to be “insignificant.” This year marks the first time the El Salvador government is commemorating Romero’s murder. President Mauricio Funes is expected to issue a formal apology today on behalf of the Salvadoran government.

Thom,

Two recent articles of interest in Science last week:

1) Markets, Religion, Community Size, and the Evolution of Fairness and Punishment

"Large-scale societies in which strangers regularly engage in mutually beneficial transactions are puzzling. The evolutionary mechanisms associated with kinship and reciprocity, which underpin much of primate sociality, do not readily extend to large unrelated groups. Theory suggests that the evolution of such societies may have required norms and institutions that sustain fairness in ephemeral exchanges. If that is true, then engagement in larger-scale institutions, such as markets and world religions, should be associated with greater fairness, and larger communities should punish unfairness more."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/327/5972/1480

Probably too late for anyone to read but Thom is not looking at the stock market.

United Healthcare stock has gone down every day this week. Healthcare (not insurance) companies have gone up; e.g. Medrontic

I also wanted to express appreciation for calling it "insurance reform". Even Laura Flanders keeps calling it "care reform". It took me months to stop that when i decided to last year, and it really amazes me how many well educated people cannot see the importance of the distinction.

Such is the degree of confusion and malaise in this country that perfectly intelligent and well informed people can't actually think for themselves despite earnest attempts to do so.

Thanks also for the "stock market report"! At times like this i like to keep track of it, but often forget, like i did this week as i hold no stock myself. The story of Caterpillar stock was especially interesting, even though it is the insurance companies' fates that are much more relevant.

MESSAGE FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF IRONY:

While I personally dislike the mandate, the constitutional issue is settled by the Militia Act of 1792 which REQUIRED all white males of a certain age to purchase or otherwise obtain certain items (gun, ammo, etc), just as the health care bill just passed requires all adults to purchase or otherwise obtain health insurance - see http://www.constitution.org/mil/mil_act_1792.htm