My 2nd proposol for a major Democratic platform for 2004 (along with the return of the Fairness Doctrine): propose that the rest of the Bush tax cuts be rescinded and replaced, dollar-for-dollar, with a tax cut geared exclusively to the bottom 50% (i.e., primarily payroll tax cuts). This would eliminate the lie...er...claim that Dems want to raise taxes and put the onus on the Bushies to explain why the upper 1% is more deserving of a tax cut then the bottom 50%. It is also a plan that is extremely simple to explain to voters (unlike Gore's 2000 tax plan which was just a hodge-podge of targeted tax cuts that few people understood the details of). It's time to get simple folks.
Friday, November 29, 2002
Some interesting things to note aboute Howie's column on Gore: 1. He admits that the VRWC is real:
Not since Hillary Clinton has a prominent Democrat so publicly ripped the conservatives for making people with D after their names look bad. (Although in Hillary's case, what the VRWC was charging � that her husband was carrying on with the intern � turned out to be true.)2. The conservative media is a reality:
The conservative media aren't going anywhere. Deal with it.3. Conservatives have been using the shibboleth of the liberal media to scare their base:
Let's say Gore is right, that conservative news outlets are trying to blacken the reputations of people like him. Doesn't complaining about it just sound like whining? Or is he playing to his base, the way conservatives have done all these years by moaning about the liberal media?It is interesting the kind of things that can be revealed when someone thinks they are actually defending their paymasters.
Howard Kurtz's recommendation to Al Gore: lie back and enjoy it.
Krugman takes the pass from Gore and carries it into the end-zone...
In Media Res This week Al Gore said the obvious. "The media is kind of weird these days on politics," he told The New York Observer, "and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party." The reaction from most journalists in the "liberal media" was embarrassed silence. I don't quite understand why, but there are some things that you're not supposed to say, precisely because they're so clearly true. The political agenda of Fox News, to take the most important example, is hardly obscure. Roger Ailes, the network's chairman, has been advising the Bush administration. Fox's Brit Hume even claimed credit for the midterm election. "It was because of our coverage that it happened," he told Don Imus. "People watch us and take their electoral cues from us. No one should doubt the influence of Fox News in these matters." (This remark may have been tongue in cheek, but imagine the reaction if the Democrats had won and Dan Rather, even jokingly, had later claimed credit.) But my purpose in today's column is not to bash Fox. I want to address a broader question: Will the economic interests of the media undermine objective news coverage? ...Krugman does a much better job with media criticism then Gore does. Where Gore focused primarily on personalities and institutions (Rush and FOX in this case), Krugman uses this criticism as a launching point for a much more important discussion: the failure of media de-regulation. The Democrats need to realize that they will never have any electoral success as long as the media is dominated by conservative owned corporations. These corporations are quite willing to flex their muscles to distort and smear Democratic positions. Unfortunately, so many of Democrats are also in the pocket of these same media organizations that few of them have the ability to openly criticize them without being destroyed. Gore has already been destroyed, yet he still has a national platform. Thus, he is in the best position to take on this problem head on. But he needs to get past the personal criticisms and move on, as Krugman has, to an examination of the deeper issues involved. Furthermore, he needs to make recommendations for how to change things. My recommendation: make a return of the Fairness Doctrine one of your top policy planks. If nothing else, forcing this issue into the public debate will require the mainstream media to defend itself openly against the kind of criticism that has, up until now, been primarly limited to the backrooms of the internet. This will be a war of epic proportions, so anyone who chooses to take it on must approach the battlefield with a large amount of ammunition. They will need reams of examples of conservative bias in the media as well as hundreds of pages of talking points designed to deal with the inevitible scoffing that will be received. Furthermore, who ever does this will need the intestinal fortitude of a giant because they WILL be excorciated in the worst possible terms. But it is only with a loud and long term call for change that anything useful will ever result from it. So none of this Daschle-like whining about right-wing attacks and then meek crawling back into a cave at the first sign of criticism for your criticism. Laugh it off and hit them back even harder. There are plenty of resources for this already on the internet: The Daily Howler, Media Whores Online (unfortunately on hiatus until 2003), and a new site just started called Take Back The Media. This could take years folks.
Wednesday, November 27, 2002
The wit and wisdom of Henry Kissinger:
"The illegal we can do right now; the unconstitutional will take a little longer." " Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians did to each other?" Henry Kissinger, about the genocide in Cambodia perpetrated by the U.S.-supported Pol Pot regime "The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people." Henry Kissinger commenting on Chile, prior to Augusto Pinochet's U.S.-supported / CIA-facilitated military coup against Chile's democratically-elected President Salvador Allende " Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty..." U.S. Ambassador to Chile, three years before the US-supported coup against Chile's elected President Allende
Nov. 27 � BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Western planes flew over Baghdad on Wednesday, setting off air raid sirens in the Iraqi capital, an Iraqi civil defense official said. The official said the planes did not launch any attacks. The sirens sounded at around 1:30 a.m. EST, shortly after U.N. weapons inspectors began their first field mission in four years in search for banned weapons. The all clear was given around 10 minutes later.Look to see these kind of provocative fly-overs to increase. Bush is essentially using American flyers as bait for Sadaam to shoot at. I guess they are just worms to him.
It's up! Gore's TV War: He Lobs Salvo at Fox News (timed link) I draw attention to the final paragraph:
For now, Mr. Gore can only attempt to explain what motivates the ceaseless lampooning he continues to face from America�s columnists and commentators. "That�s postmodernism," he offered. "It�s the combination of narcissism and nihilism that really defines postmodernism, and that�s another interview for another time, if you�re interested in it.No doubt a few of the media whores will have to crack a dictionary or two to figure out how much he just insulted them. You know, I hope Gore does run. I don't expect him to have an easy time of it. He may very well lose. He may very well divide the party. But running is the only way he can hold on to the spotlight long enough to keep these kind of charges on the media radar screen. If he were to announce that he isn't going to run he would disappear within 5 seconds of opening his mouth to make the announcement. There's a bigger battle for Gore to win then the nomination of the Democratic party.
Tuesday, November 26, 2002
Al Gore attacks FOX NEWS, Rush Limbaugh and the WASHINGTON TIMES in an interview set for release on Wednesday, DRUDGE has learned... Why is it that the right always seems to think that attacks on their character is newsworthy? Bush is called a moron by some mid-level member of the Canadian government and suddenly it is an international incident! FOX, Rush and the Washington Times are (allegedly) attacked by Gore and it is an outrage! But when someone attacks someone on the left... Well, that's just presenting the truth.
Why are Republicans so sensitive about negative opinions with respect to their leader? Why do they get all upset when some lower-level member of a foreign administration happens to make a mildly nasty comment about Dubya? They say that we shouldn't care about foreign opinion. Yet they seem to care about it an awful lot. Political Correctness lives and it is a Republican disease.
Phoenix Woman, a poster on a forum I regularly follow (Bare Knucles Politics) made the following points in response to something I had written: When any Republican tries to tell you that "the recession started on Clinton's watch," remind them that: -- When Clinton was in office, the economy was going at such a white-hot pace that economists seriously worried about it "overheating." That's why Greenspan was doing everything he could to cool it down. -- The economy finally started to cool down in the middle of 2000 (remember, moderate "cool-down" was a GOOD thing at this point), but growth was still either neutral or positive right up until March of 2001, two months into Bush's illegal reign -- and about the time most businesspeople started realizing how crazed he was. -- The dot-com bubble did indeed burst on Clinton's watch, but that wasn't Clinton's fault, but simply the law of economic gravity making itself felt. And the dot-com collapse doesn't explain why so many traditional "old-economy" businesses have been going belly-up under Bush's watch. To which I responded: I believe it also should be pointed out that a President should not be measured so much by the problems that occur on his watch, whether they be economic or foreign, but by how he REACTS to those problems. No one can predict disaster. No one can entirely prevent travails. But what a good leader can do is prevent those problems from growing into something even bigger then they originally were. Clinton did this repeatedly, whether it was his handling of economic crisis in Mexico, Russia, and the far east. Or his handling of foreign policy problems in Ireland, the Middle East, or Kosovo. He kept a lid on these problems and managed, in many cases, to improve them. Name one thing that has gotten better since Bush became "President".
Monday, November 25, 2002
If Bush were to whack Laura, how would the media handle it? David Podvin theorizes Of course, if the media were to actually report on David's column they would most likely report it as an example of the hatred some feel towards Bush. The fact that it is actually an attack on them would be completely missed.
Sunday, November 24, 2002
A definite must-read article from Nicholas Confessore about his fellow NY Times editorialist Paul Krugman Comparative Advantage: How economist Paul Krugman became the most important political columnist in America This article of special significance for the clues it provides about the continuing corruption and decadance of the mainstream media in America. Our political reportage is dominated by a combination of right-wing fellow travellers who aren't afraid to be blatantly partisan in their work and who are in turn teamed up with "liberal" commentators who, predominelty came from a more objective tradition in journalism that forces them to speak for both sides, even though the other side is alread well represented. Yet, the worse of it is that these self-same "liberals" are the most enamored of the idea that facts are not as important as not being seen as boring or a nag. Mickey Kaus says it best in this article, when asked to comment on Krugman's continued harping on the lies of the Bushies with respect to the tax cut: "He is obviously a very smart guy, basically liberal, with complicated views, who once recognized when his own side was wrong. And at some point he switched and became someone who only sees what's wrong with the other side, in fairly crude terms," says Mickey Kaus. "The Bush tax cut is based on lies. But it's not enough to criticize a policy to say that it's based on lies. You have to say whether it's good or bad for the country." Which just proves that master Kaus has completely lost sight of the fact that a lie can itself be bad, regardless of how good may be the policy one is lying about may.