Taking a Vacation
I will be on vacation for the next week, recharging the batteries and spending some quality time with the family. Blogging will return in full force a week from today. Enjoy the convention.
-Goose
Signatures
by Thomas Burns
Republished with the permission of Thomas Burns.
Many thanks are in order
I want to thank Apnu for taking the time to tweak the code for this page so that it works better in Mozilla/Firefox. You rock! Hopefully everyone’s browsing experience will be better for it.
-Goose
Kerry’s war didn’t end in the Mekong
Tarred as a flip-flopper by Bush, he hasn’t wavered since Vietnam
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday July 22, 2004
The Guardian
John Kerry’s political education is far deeper than that of senators who have merely legislated. He has journeyed to the heart of darkness many times and emerged to tell the tale. It was not simply that Kerry’s commander in Vietnam was the model of the blood-thirsty bombastic colonel in Apocalypse Now. Kerry’s combat experience didn’t end in the Mekong, but moved into the dangerous realm of high politics. From his first appearance on the public stage, giving voice as a decorated officer to the anti-war disillusionment of Vietnam veterans, when Richard Nixon and his dirty-tricks crew targeted him, he has uncovered cancers on the presidency. This is why the Bush administration fears him. He has explored the dark recesses of contemporary history, often without political reward. Tarred as a “flip flopper” by Bush’s $85m TV ad campaign, Kerry in fact is one of the most consistent politicians of his generation.
"Talking Points…"
“…they’re true, because they’re said alot”
Conventional Wisdom
[RealPlayer required]
Courtesy of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Heinz & Kerry
TCF, in response to last weeks post regarding Pittsburgh blogs asked the following question:
“On the second day of the Edward’s Coronation World Tour, I heard CNN explain that the setting for the news conference was not an insignificant decision.I never knew the Heinz’s family business has long been rooted in Pittsburgh. Although, not familiar with the facts on the scope of the entity Heinz, I got the sense its influence on a respectful Pennsylvania electorate, has not been lost on a savvy Kerry campaign.Care to elaborate?”
Being that I am not a native Yinzer, having only moved here five years ago from Atlanta by way of Detroit, I am fully unqualified to speak on the history of Heinz in Western PA. I could certainly give my opinion but instead I would like to defer to you the reader. Any native willing to submit an explanation please submit it in the comments section below.
On the Road Again
Travelling on business today but here are a couple of articles to look at:
Truth, Consequences of Kerry’s ‘Liberal’ Label
Republican Help Pushes Nader Close to Spot on Michigan Ballot (Free Subscription Required)
Talk amongst yourselves…
The Right Wing Squares
Media Accountability
Regular “Comments” readers should have gathered by now that one of the overarching themes of this site is media accountability and the role of the independent media in our democracy. As Americans we live under a government which states in it’s founding document that it was created ”by the people, for the people.” Unfortunately, this principle is irrelevant if the information we are given does not do an adequate job of informing us of the those issues that are vital to our interests.
As an undergrad I majored in communications and minored in journalism which fueled my passion about these issues. I understand that Americans are working longer hours for less and less pay and as a result we have increasingly less time to educate ourselves on matters of personal and public importance. With this in mind, we take for granted that the organizations entrusted to provide us with this information have our best interests in mind. Disturbingly, I have come to realize that this is simply not the case.
The majority of the media in this country – newspaper, radio, book publishing, television networks, and cable & satellite – is owned by six mega-corporations. In a nutshell, the goal of these corporations is to maximize profits for the benefit of their ownership, the shareholders, not you and me. As a result, the news product we receive from the corporate media looks more and more like a tabloid magazine then journalism. More importantly, with the advent of The Fox News Channel the model has begun to shift from news reporting to molding of public perception via opinion and, nay I say, propaganda. The Fox News model has been so financially successful that it has lured the other cable news networks into following their lead. As a result, today’s media consumer can expect to turn on the television and be greeted by 24-hour “news” dominated by hours of pundits debating the “facts” of the Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, or Scott Peterson trials. Discussions of serious issues of global importance are argued about by Republican and Democratic partisans spewing talking points and seeing who can shout the loudest. Journalists and reporters have been replaced by stenographers and hacks who, out of sheer laziness and in the interest of cutting costs, simply echo White House press releases no questions asked.
This is unacceptable and a detriment to our democracy. Case in point, in her book The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing oily politicians, war profiteers, and the media that love them Amy Goodman had this to say about the role the media played in building American consent for the War in Iraq.
“The media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) did a study of the”experts” who appeared on-camera on the major network news shows during the critical week before and week after February 5, 2003- the day Secretary of State Colin Powell made his case to the UN Security Council for invading Iraq. This was at a time when 61 percent of Americans supported more time for diplomacy and inspections. The FAIR study found that only 3 of 393 sources – fewer than 1 percent – were affiliated with antiwar activism.”
The rest is history. No questions from the media about the “smoking gun” in the form of a “mushroom cloud”, no questions about the mobile biological weapons vans, no questions about the stockpiles of WMD, all of which have since been proven to be false. The media were complicit in creating public support for this war, a war that is not in our best interest but has certainly been in the best interest of many corporations.
It is my opinion that our corporate media has fallen asleep at the switch. Therefore, it is up to us to change the direction the media has taken. The first thing you can do is start seeking out independent media outlets who are not beholden to corporate interests. My favorite is DemocracyNOW! which is available via the internet at www.democracynow.org, on several public radio and television stations, and on DishNetwork channel 9415 (Free Speech TV) and on DirectTV via World Link TV Channel 375. Also, I urge you to join MoveOn.org in their efforts to get FOX News to stop misleading their viewers by claiming to be “Fair and Balanced.” Lastly, have a look at the following sites; FAIR, MediaCarta, MediaChannel, Media Matters for America, Take Back the Media , and the IndyMedia collective.
Telling Comparison From The Washington Post
Thanks to Markos for pointing out this comparison.
A Bit of Wisdom From Jon Stewart
[RealPlayer required]
Courtesy of TomPaine.com and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
AMY GOODMAN IN PITTSBURGH, PA, FRIDAY, JULY 16, 7:00PM
Friday, July 16, 7:00pm
Pittsburgh, PA
Carnegie Mellon University Center 5000 Forbes Ave
A Benefit for Pittsburgh Community TV and Pittsburgh Campaign for Democracy Now!
Tickets: $12 students, $15 general admission
For more info: 412.322.7570
For the latest information, check http://www.democracynow.org/book
—
Amy Goodman, host of the national, daily radio/TV program Democracy Now!, is on a national tour to mark the launch of her first book “The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them” (co-written with her brother, journalist David Goodman).Spread the word! For event details and a complete schedule of tour dates, and how to order a book as a gift, for yourself, or for a library or a prison book program, go to http://www.democracynow.org/book. The book tour website has downloadable posters, flyers, and an easy event-by-event Email A Friend option.
—
About “The Exception to the Rulers!”
“Hard-hitting, no-holds barred brand of reporting… fierce and tireless.”
-Publishers Weekly
“What journalism should be: beholden to the interests of people, not power and profit.”
-Arundhati Roy, author, The God of Small Things
“Amy Goodman has taken investigative journalism to new heights.”
-Noam Chomsky, author, 9/11 and Hegemony or Survival
“Amy Goodman [carries] the great muckraking tradition of Upton Sinclair, George Seldes, and I.F. Stone into the electronic age.”
-Howard Zinn, historian and author, A People’s History of the United States
“Pick up this book, shake your head in disbelief and disgust as you read it, and then…go raise some hell!”
-Michael Moore, Academy-award winning director, Bowling for Columbine and the rulers take exception!
“Hostile, combative, and even disrespectful.”
-President Bill Clinton
“A threat to national security.”
-The Indonesian military
“Not easy-listening.”
-The New York Times
“I have advised my mother to talk to no reporters because of … people like you.”
-Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
Postponement
by Thomas Burns
Republished with the permission of Thomas Burns.
GOP’s "Christian Nation" Platform
It seems the Texas GOP is living up to it’s nation-within-a-nation reputation once again by approving a plank in it’s platform stating that “the United States of America is a Christian nation.” Cathy Young of Reason Online has written an excellent piece on the subject entitled, GOP’s “Chrisitan Nation”: New excuses for a bad idea. The talking point reasoning used to justify this position is that 82% of American’s are Chrisitan and therefore it only makes sense to call the nation a Chrisitan nation. On Hannity & Colmes guest host Mike Gallagher said on the subject,
“If a neighborhood had 82 percent of the population that was Italian or a town had 82 percent of the population that was Polish, we’d call those communities Italian or Polish towns.”
Young’s retort to this position was simple,
“If we’re going by the numbers, why not have a party platform asserting that the United States is “a white nation”? After all, 77 percent of Americans are white.”
I agree with her positions completely. The adoption of this statement effectively says to the 18 percent of Americans that are not Christian (of which I am one) that they are second class citizens. I just don’t see how taking this position can possibly have any positive effect other than to stroke the ego’s of Bush’s Christian fundamentalist base. Besides, what ever happened to the separation of church and state? I think Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackburn said it best in the 1992 Lee v. Weisman ruling,
“When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs. A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.”
Bush move to ban same-sex marriage blocked
Bush move to ban same-sex marriage blocked
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush has failed in his attempt to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage after a divided U.S. Senate blocked the measure, virtually killing it for at least this election year.
Gee, with that one off the table I wonder what the fear-mongers will try next to get their Christian-right base to the polls in November?
For the Record, Senator Edwards
Have a look at this post from Gone Mild entitled Edwards – Vile Ambulance-Chaser? It outlines the case the GOP is using to slander Senator Edwards for being a trial lawyer.
***UPDATE***
I thought it worth noting the two links djhlights posted in the comments section of this post as they pertain to this discussion. First is this Washington Monthly artlicle, John Edwards, Esq., and the second is this post by djhlights from last week entitled, Bring on the Trial Lawyer slam! Enjoy!
Fair and Balanced…Yeah, Right
In his piece entitled “My First (and Last) Time With Bill O’Reilly” Bill Cole, legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, exposes in a few brief paragraphs the crux of the problem with Bill O’Reilly and The Faux News Channel in general. What you see from this piece is that O’Reilly’s No Spin Zone is nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it is embodiment of the textbook definition of spin. It is a joke, and a sick one at that, for Faux News to continue to deceive their viewership by portraying themselves as anything other than the biased right-wing propagandists they truly are.
Want to learn more about exactly how unfair and unbalanced The Faux News Channel really is? Great, then head over to MoveOn.org and join in on one of the over 3,100 house parties happening Sunday evening, July 18th. At the party you will get to see Robert Greenwald’s latest film entitled Outfoxed, “a documentary film that exposes Fox for what it is: partisan spin, not news.” During the party you will also be participating in an interactive online conference call with Al Franken and Robert Greenwald.
Donate to CFLF
Blogroll
Pennsylvania Blogs
The Liberal Media
Blogging Liberally
Advertising
Comments From Left Field is a member of...
Memeorandum
Archives
- 2010: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2009: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2008: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2007: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2006: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2005: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2004: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2003: J F M A M J J A S O N D
Blog Stuff
