MediaBloodhound

The Wounded-Courier:Senator Blames Alarmists for Causing Global Warming

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) rebuked alarmists Thursday for “doing more to create global warming than carbon dioxide.”

Fresh off his impassioned defense of a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning this week, Senator Hatch raised the growing global warming debate yesterday. “Before alarmists started to wage their information campaign, we were pretty much in the dark about rising sea levels and melting ice caps. All of this un-American doom and gloom,” said Hatch, addressing his colleagues in the Senate. “But now, by pushing our faces in the preponderance of scientific evidence, reality itself is struggling for legitimacy in this debate, threatening to wash over our populace like a plague of truth. And I’ll tell you this,” he promised, his finger raised defiantly, “I will do everything in my power as a United States Senator to prevent that from happening."

Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, followed Hatch’s statement with his own tough stance. “We will not cut and run from our oil industry coffers,” Inhofe pledged. “We will bring the fight to these global warming alarmists. These tree-hugging, enviro-fascists who’d like us to drive around in Fred Flintstone cars, powered by our feet.”

At a time when Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth is bringing the message of a potential looming environmental Armageddon, and a growing number of Americans feel a crisis might be afoot, Hatch's words were a timely lightning rod for fellow conservatives and heads of big oil in their ongoing battle against incontrovertible truth.

The strategy has already put Democrats on the defensive.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said, "The Democratic Party is a responsible steward of the environment. We will continue to back science over propaganda. We will continue to champion reality over ideology.” Pelosi added, “Unless in cases when it is politically unfeasible." Senator Joe Lieberman (?-Connecticut), fighting for his political life against upstart Ned Lamont, said, "I need contributions. This is a free market economy. Would Hadassah and I prefer fresh drinking water and a future without our house floating away like a bagel chip? Of course. But first I have an election to win." Asked if he'd seen Gore's movie, Lieberman, not backed by Gore during his '04 presidential bid, replied, “Oy, really, who has the time?"

Conservatives took their sharpened message to the airwaves last night. On Scarborough Country, guest John Stossel of ABC News, promoting his new book Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity, called global warming alarmists "little Stalins who want to take away the blind ignorance and mindless gluttony guaranteed all Americans." Stossel explained, “Look, Gore and his alarmist friends are socialists who’d have us banning corporations from dumping toxic sludge into our waters, when I’ve proven in my special report, “Is Toxic Sludge Really Bad for You?” that its effect is negligible. In fact, you’re more likely to die from a kayaking accident than from cancers caused by toxic sludge. Besides," he added, "in the end, it is the wealth of the richest 1% of our population, as evidenced by the end of world poverty in the ’80s, that will once again save us from any global warming.”

The anti-alarmists do seem to be making inroads with their latest offensive.

In today’s ABC News/Washington Post poll, 76% of Americans said they were tired of hearing about global warming, with 65% annoyed it hadn’t already been solved; 59% credit anti-alarmists for helping them refocus their lives solely on financial gain, reality show gossip and increasingly fetish-oriented pornography; and an overwhelming 95% would be happy if their deli meat were just sliced the way they'd asked.

Boarding Air Force One tonight, President Bush said he hadn’t seen Gore’s movie, but did drag Dick Cheney to see Nacho Libre. “I’ll take Jack Black over Al Gore any day,” the president joked with reporters. “But, seriously, there was, uh, um…lots of grass and trees – you know, open spaces of nature in the movie. In between the joviality. You might say it’s an environmentally savvy film. And that it promotes Mexican pride. Plus, you got, uh, my favorite Mexican dish in the title. You see, in other words, I like nachos. So if you can, uh, um, take them and combine them with an environmentally responsible, uh, cinematic experience, then I’m there. Even if Dick Cheney hogs the armrest."

Op-Ed Column:ABC's Stossel Exposes His True Inner Wingnut

John Stossel has built his reputation on busting myths. In reality, Stossel's special reports often rely on cherry-picked information, lopsided interpretations of statistics and a biased conservative slant. That said, I'm not sure if Stossel has ever exposed his extreme rightwing agenda as openly as he does on MSNBC's Scarborough Country tonight. While hocking his book Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity, Stossel employs just that to attack Al Gore and the overwhelming body of evidence that human activity is contributing to global warming. 

Here's a summary of Media Matters' point-by-point rundown of Stossel's whoppers:

• The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report "said we can't rule out that this [climate change] is just natural." FACT: The report concludes that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming" of the Earth.

• Hurricanes are not increasing in strength due to global warming. FACT: Based on MIT climatologist Kerry Emanuel's study, Gore points out in the companion book to his film that it "supported the scientific consensus that global warming is making hurricanes more powerful and more destructive." The same link was supported in a June 27 National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) study, which found that global warming "accounted for around half of the extra hurricane-fueling warmth in the waters of the tropical North Atlantic in 2005, while natural cycles were only a minor factor."

• Republican Senator Bob Inhofe is not doing big oil's bidding. FACT: As Media Matters reports:

The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) shows that from 2001 to 2006, Inhofe has received more campaign contributions from the oil and gas industries than from any other industrial sector -- more than $300,000. CRP also notes that from 1989 to 2006, Inhofe received more campaign contributions from energy and natural resource interests than from any other sector (the finance sector was the runner-up) with total contributions from energy and resource interests approaching $1.3 million.

• Global warming is not a crisis. FACT: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in 2001 that "recent regional changes in climate, particularly increases in temperature, have already affected hydrological systems and terrestrial and marine ecosystems in many parts of the world" and the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (SPM) found that if global warming trends persisted, the effect on human life could be catastrophic, including "increased flood, landslide, avalanche, and mudslide damage."

• The United States is "the cleanest country in the world." FACT: As The Washington Post reported on Wednesday:

Americans represent 5 percent of the world's population but contribute 45 percent of the world's emission of carbon dioxide, the main pollutant that causes global warming, according to a report by the nonprofit group Environmental Defense.

• People who believe in global warming are socialists. FACT: Stossel is either a McCarthyite propagandist or stone cold crazy. You make the call:

STOSSEL: As we get wealthier, the air gets cleaner, we can afford to do things that maybe, some day, if the globe is warming, we have to make adjustments. It's our wealth that will allow us to save the world. If we let these socialists control our lives, we'll all be worse off.

"It's our wealth that will allow us to save the world"? Je-zuz. Is that the new talking point from Karl Rove? A conservative twist on "the meek shall inherit the Earth"? What's sad is that millions of Americans trust this guy to tell them the truth. That's the brand ABC News has helped him develop for decades. He's advertised as the finger in the eye of conventional wisdom. The champion of common sense. An investigative Andy Rooney.

But Stossel's reporting is egregiously irresponsible. And by giving him a platform, ABC News (not to mention MSNBC, though what do you expect from Scarborough Country?) continues to promote false advertising of the worse kind.

Story of the Day:FEMA Wastes Billions, Poor Still Sent Packing

Remember when the mainstream media was crowing about how Katrina will finally force America to confront poverty?

Today, The Associated Press reports that "hundreds of hurricane evacuees around the country could be evicted in the coming weeks because the Federal Emergency Management Agency has stopped helping them pay the rent" and "more than 12,600 households nationwide found out in April that they were going to lose their rent subsidies."

But don't worry: "FEMA spokesman James McIntyre said he does not expect large numbers of people to be turned out on the street." Whew. I feel better. If you can't take the word of a government agency that, through mismanagement and fraud, just wasted $2 billion of taxpayers' money - $2 billion that could've been used to keep a roof over the heads of the very people it is now casting into the streets - then who can you trust? (FEMA paid up to $1.4 billion in improper claims, including millions of dollars to prison inmates throughout the Gulf Coast and $232,000 to a hotel owner who made up a list of non-existent evacuees; even more absurd, there are currently almost a half a billion dollars of mobile homes lying empty.)

So, according to McIntyre, who would be turned away?

McIntyre said evacuees were cut off if they had been homeless before the storm, were using the money for other needs, or had been displaced by the hurricanes from housing they didn't own — "those living with Grandma when the storm occurred."

But if an entire family was "living with grandma when the storm occurred" - not visiting, but living - then why shouldn't they be counted as having their home washed away, too? Moreover, McIntyre's quote itself, "those living with Grandma when the storm occurred" comes loaded with class condescension, cultural insensitivity and racist overtones.

The government is eager to have these poor disappear once again. And the mainstream media, in ignoring their plight, makes a mockery of the outrage that fueled news coverage during Katrina and a joke of the predictions that our nation would be forced to substantively address its poverty ills.

Katrina Evacuees May Face Eviction, by Bill Poovey
The Associated Press

Story of the Day:New and Improved Taliban With Extra Violence

From a story that popped up on the ABC News website (not World News Tonight, mind you):

Coalition forces battling the Taliban across southern Afghanistan aren't fighting the same bearded extremists they toppled in October 2001. It's as if the sequel to a horror film is being replayed across southern Afghanistan this summer. Call it "Taliban II." They're back, reloaded, and more ruthless than ever.

Hey, didn't we defeat the Taliban according to Resident George? It seems like it was only yesterday...

That's why I said to the Taliban in Afghanistan: Get rid of al Qaeda; see, you're harboring al Qaeda. Remember this is a place where they trained -- al Qaeda trained thousands of people in Afghanistan. And the Taliban, I guess, just didn't believe me. And as a result of the United States military, Taliban no longer is in existence. And the people of Afghanistan are now free. (Applause.) In other words when you say something as President you better make it clear so everybody understands what you're saying, and you better mean what you say. And I meant what I said. (Applause.)

President George W. Bush
September 27, 2004

Take a bow, George. And kudos to the mainstream media as well for sticking to this administration's tunnel-vision on Iraq rather than underscoring its failure to sufficiently deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan or the hunt for Osama. Lately, reports on the revitalized Taliban have begun to pop up with more regularity; though the story over there has, up to this point, remained largely on the periphery, characterized as something that could easily be quashed with a swift military operation or two. The Bush administration depended on the image of a successful post-war Afghanistan - in part to get re-elected - but this image has been greatly misleading. And the mainstream media, in shunning the focus Afghanistan deserved, aided and abetted this administration's rosy impression, thus contributing to the Taliban's resurgence. Yet now we are presented with reports of the Taliban's comeback as if its reconstitution happened overnight.

Suicide attacks and roadside bombs -- once unheard of in this country -- are now almost a daily occurrence. The Taliban seem unconcerned if they hit civilian or military targets. On Tuesday, a suicide bomber in northern Kunduz killed two and injured eight. A suicide attack near the Bagram Airbase on Monday wounded two children. Soldiers with the U.S.-led coalition are currently battling the Taliban across four southern provinces: Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul and Uruzgan. More than 1,100 -- most of them Taliban -- have died in the vicious fighting. Reports vary but all involve violence such as Taliban soldiers gouging the eyes out of prisoners they capture in the South or burning down schools that offer co-ed classes. Last week ABC News received a grisly video release. It pictured the Taliban's ruthless one-legged commander Mullah Dadullah beheading alleged spies for America.

So, once again, the mainstream media woefully covers an unfolding story - as with, say, the existence of WMD in Iraq pre-invasion or cronies and incompetence in the case of FEMA's preparedness for Katrina - and then reports the resulting disasters as if there were no cause and effect from the vacuum of knowledge created by underreported or toothless coverage. Similar to the administration's cries "no one could have predicted this" - from commercial planes being used as weapons to levees being breached by hurricanes - the mainstream media also refuses to take responsibility for incompetence.

And now we have this:

Experts agree that it may be possible that the Taliban are going it alone thanks to drug money. It's impossible to know how much of Afghanistan's $3 billion opium trade ends up in terrorist coffers, but Helmand province -- a place where the Taliban have the deepest ties to the drug trade -- will produce about $1 billion of opium this year alone. This is why the fighting going on in Afghanistan currently is so crucially important to the future stability of this region -- and to the world itself. If this conflict continues to fester, Afghan heroin may well fund the next terrorist attacks.

Bush desperately wanted to be a war president. The mainstream media duteously fulfilled his wish. Together, their relationship has unleashed a series of disasters of nightmare proportion.

Unfortunately, it's only the U.S. public and the rest of the world who seem to be affected.

They're Back: A New, Vicious Taliban Take Shape in Afghanistan, by Gretchen Peters
ABC News

Story of the Day:The Little Bush Bounce That Could

For weeks now, the mainstream media has been touting a Bush bounce, repeatedly referring to The Decider as decidedly "energized" or "invigorated." This self-fulfilling media prophesy coincided with the convergence of Zarqawi's death and Karl Rove's dodging of indictment, and reached absurd heights with Bush's recent surprise visit to Iraq.

Meanwhile, Zarqawi was replaced in less time than it takes my next New Yorker to arrive, and his death has had no substantive effect on lessening the violence in Iraq. Karl Rove may have circumvented indictment, whether by offering some juicy tidbits to Fitzgerald or some other means, but the fact still remains that he leaked Valerie Plame's name and The Decider decided way back then, with the press corps his witness, that he would fire any leaker in his cabinet. So why does Rove still have his job? And why is the mainstream media once again giving this administration a free pass. If someone is charged with murder and rape, but beats the murder rap, the rape charge isn't then summarily dropped; it stands unless the accused can convince a jury of his peers otherwise and if it sticks the accused must serve his debt to society. Apparently, our mainstream press metes out justice much differently. Finally, there's Bush's goofy cameo in Iraq? Jon Stewart said it best, addressing our brave leader directly: "You were in Baghdad for six hours. You weren't even in the real Baghdad. You were in the Green Zone. That's like going to the Olive Garden and saying you've been to Italy." The national press, though, treated his skittish pop-in as if he were Churchill on a victory lap. They even accepted the White House decree banning photographs of our fake cowboy president in his protective gear. (Incidentally, have we ever had a president more insecure with his own self-image? Between his runway catwalk in that moose-knuckled flight suit and the fact he's more concerned with his aging abs than world crises, Bush makes Nixon look as confident as Brad Pitt.)

But never mind all those pesky facts and that downer called "reality." The Bush administration wanted a bounce, and the mainstream media was more than happy to help it turn that frown upside down.

In the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, Bush's job approval rating rose from 33% to 38%. But the real story here is that even after beating the "we're turning a corner" media drum for a solid fortnight, these numbers (especially when you factor in a margin of error of three or four points) are still pretty dismal. What the bounce hype has accomplished, however - aided of late by the overblown depiction of Democrats in disarray over Iraq - is pull Bush's numbers back from the precipice. Just enough so he has room to stumble and descend again without reaching lows that would collectively convince the public that this administration and the Republican Party are cooked. Consequently, the mainstream media's CPR has breathed new life into GOP chances in the midterm elections, which, by extension, further decreases the likelihood Bush and his capos will be held accountable for their crimes in office.

That is no small favor.

Bush Approval Rating Eases Off the Brink, by Gary Langer
ABC News

Story of the Day:Cartoonist Slams MSM for Ignoring Election Theft Article

Ward Sutton illustrates the mainstream media's willful ignorance of RFK Jr.'s well-documented election fraud report in Rolling Stone.

It's Sunday; laugh a little. Before you start crying.

What If They Stole an Election and No One Cared?, by Ward Sutton
Sutton Impact

From the Archives:Tangled Up in Flu

(This MediaBloodhound op-ed column was originally posted on November 22, 2005. With the helping hand of the mainstream media, bird flu is one of the Bush administration's most successful weapons of mass distraction. It also happens to be paying off handsomely for Donald Rumsfeld. Take a closer look at what's behind this fowl hysteria.)

With our color-coded terror alert system having long been Chicken Littled to death, support for the war evaporating and President Bush’s poll numbers circling the drain, a fresh tactic of fear mongering and diversion was to be expected. Especially when the mainstream media, smarting from the sucker punch of Katrina ineptitude, began to betray flickers of journalistic integrity.

Cue the bird flu.

From the outset, the mainstream media, in lockstep with the Bush administration, have pumped us with fear. A fowl shock and awe campaign of near daily reports – at a rate eerily on pace with news of fallen US soldiers - tell us how the H5N1 avian virus is looming, tearing through Asia and one mutation away from decimating the world’s population in a matter of days or weeks. Yet they have simultaneously withheld or glossed over information necessary to fully grasp the machinations behind this poultry pandemonium, while insufficiently covering the actual state of our country’s preparedness. 

First, and potentially foremost, there’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s stake in this paranoia. From 1997 to 2001, Rumsfeld served as chairman of Gilead Sciences, the biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the drug being touted as the cure-all for this rampaging virus. Though the exact number of shares Rumsfeld owns in Gilead isn’t known, its estimated worth is somewhere between $5 million and $25 million. Since the buying frenzy for Tamiflu – marketed dutifully by the mainstream press - Gilead’s stock has jumped from $35 to $54 a share, earning the Chairman of the Bird, already one of the wealthiest members of the Administration, around $2 million. 

Rumsfeld has, on record and through the services of his legal counsel in an effort to avoid accusations of insider trading, reportedly recused himself from any decisions involving a potential avian flu pandemic and Tamiflu. Though, in July, the Pentagon bought $58 million of the drug for U.S. troops and Congress is deliberating over a multi-billion dollar purchase. Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical company that manufactures and markets Tamiflu, projects 2005 sales of the drug to reach $1 billion, a near 400% increase from 2004; analysts at Morgan Stanley estimate Tamiflu sales could reach $3 billion over the next two years.

Yet none of this warrants further investigation by our mainstream press. Not Rumsfeld’s highly questionable conflict of interest, nor the blatant connection between fear mongering for bird flu and the surge in Tamiflu profits. Nor the fact that bird flu mentioned daily in the same breath with Tamiflu inevitably cements - or brands - this drug’s position as the #1 bird flu panacea in the minds of consumer-conditioned Americans. It’s the same marketing technique that once convinced two-thirds of our population that Saddam orchestrated 9/11. 

Making matters worse, there’s evidence Tamiflu may not be very effective in fighting an avian flu pandemic. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who’s spent decades studying pandemic flu, said governments should be preparing to cope with the pandemic instead of relying on drugs and vaccines to control it. If the H5N1 avian flu began to infect humans easily, he believes it would move too quickly for drugs and vaccines to be of much use. Additionally, we only have enough Tamiflu to treat about 2.3 million Americans right now, with another 2 million treatments arriving by the end of the year; yet, according to University of Virginia flu expert Frederick Hayden, about 90 million Americans would need the drug if a pandemic occurred and, at current capacity, it would take about 10 years to produce enough Tamiflu to treat just 20% of the world’s population.

A vaccine is also problematic. Development is a painstakingly slow process and the vaccine must match the virus to be effective. But no one can predict how, or at what rate, it will mutate. The World Health Organization (WHO) has already confirmed a patient in Vietnam infected with a Tamiflu-resistant strain. Moreover, few American drug companies still manufacture vaccines. Why? Diminished long-term profit motive – money is in the treatment, not prevention. Dr. David Fedson, an American scientist and former director of medical affairs for the French pharmaceutical company Aventis Pasteur MSD (now Sanofi Pasteur), says, “We have a toxic mixture in America of a corporate culture that is inappropriate for producing vaccines for national security, and a political culture that is unwilling to accept government responsibility for ensuring it is achieved.” The influence of this culture has also thus far permeated the international approach to preparedness: Tamiflu is being stockpiled by wealthy countries in North America and Europe rather than in the impoverished countries, like Vietnam, where an avian flu pandemic is much more likely to start. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “On present trends, most developing countries will have no access to vaccines and antiviral drugs throughout the duration of a pandemic.” Just the right mix for another Katrina, but on a world stage.

So what topped President Bush’s list of pandemic priorities and was received virtually unquestioned by our mainstream media? A call to dismantle the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the active duty military from undertaking law enforcement duties. Yes, nothing like a little martial law to clear up your bird flu. Our Conniver-in-Chief’s logic: “If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country? And how do you, then, enforce a quarantine?” He added, and you can feel him biting back a smirk, “And who best to be able to effect a quarantine?”

Predictably, rather than come up with an effective pandemic influenza plan, the Bush Administration seizes an opportunity to exploit this nightmare scenario by unconstitutionally expanding the powers of the military. As the Washington Post put it, “That comment - conjuring images of soldiers shooting as sick people try to cross a cordon sanitaire - could have been a scare tactic. In fact, there is no legal, let alone ethical, means of enforcing mass quarantine in this country, and flu viruses, which don’t always produce symptoms in the early stages, wouldn’t obey them if there were.” And is it a coincidence that the US military - listed separately from the civilian-only priority groups in the Bush Administration’s plan - will be first in line for Tamiflu? They will be protected, so they can police how those who are not survive. Comforting.

And who’s been tasked to protect our nation during such a calamity? Meet the next crony poised to make FEMA clown Michael Brown look competent. Stewart Simonson, Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). His qualifications? A former corporate lawyer for Amtrak, with no public health management or medical experience, he’s a known political hack whose every job since graduating from Wisconsin Law School in 1995 has been arranged by former HHS Secretary and longtime Republican Governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson. Simonson also earned points within the Administration as the inside lackey who championed Cheney’s and Libby’s efforts to convince HHS public health experts that Saddam was poised to hit the US with biological weapons.

Representative Henry Waxman, who included Simonson in a list of five “inexperienced individuals with political connections” in this Administration, cited Simonson’s July appearance before the House Government Reform Committee, where he “claimed he had sufficient funds to purchase influenza vaccine and antiviral medication for the nation. The next day his office submitted a funding request to Congress seeking an additional $150 million for flu vaccine and antiviral medication.” Whoops. Instilling more confidence, at a recent Homeland Security hearing on government response to a chemical or biological attack, Simonson said, “We’re learning as we go.”

The astounding incompetence of this administration is matched only by their insatiable greed and tireless pursuit of more power by any means necessary. It’s a combination that has - and is fixed once again - to cost countless lives. While the Birdman of the Pentagon watches his stock soar with each new avian flu story, the mainstream media is once again driving blind.

The Wounded-Courier:Rove Accuses Dems of “Paper-Cutting and Running”

WASHINGTON, DC - With Senate Democrats already in retreat after attempting to impose an exit strategy in Iraq, White House senior advisor Karl Rove stepped up his attacks earlier today, accusing the Democratic Party of “paper-cutting and running.”

Speaking in Lynchburg, Tenn., to Republicans Against Tits (RAT), an undersexed think tank sworn to stanch the tide of exposed nipples in America, Karl Rove went on the offensive again. “The Democrats see war and ask, ‘Why?’ Republicans see war and ask, ‘Why not?’” he said to the wild applause of the militantly frumpy audience.

With the overwhelming unpopularity of Bush’s war in Iraq, the recent grim milestone of 2,500 dead U.S. soldiers and no end in sight to rapacious violence and spiraling civil war, Rove had ample opportunity to take it to the Democrats after they proposed an exit strategy but disagreed on the timetable. “First the Democrats want to cut and run before achieving victory. But now they can’t even agree on when to cut and run. If you ask me, that’s more like paper-cutting and running. How these people decide what tie to wear in the morning is beyond me.”

Later, on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said, “If we could just put aside for the moment the idea of winning the war against the insurgents or, say, the War on Terror, Wolf. The Republicans are united in our tactical assault on the Democrats’ politically motivated willingness to walk away from a no-win quagmire. And I’m confident the American people understand this.”

On Hardball last night, host Chris Matthews called the Democrats “dead meat on a stick” if they think Americans won’t see them as “effete, Chardonnay-sipping, pinky-in-the-air holding sissy-pants” for requesting an actual exit plan in Iraq. “I think Bush comes off like a finely tailored Genghis Khan here. A real modern-day warrior who is not shaken by the blood of other people’s children. And you have to respect that kind of manly tenacity in the face of an unwinnable war.” 

Some wondered if the Republicans have already won the 2006 elections based on weeklong blows to the Democrats’ testicles. Attending a fundraiser sponsored by Republicans Against Minimum (RAM) – an economics society that claims raising the minimum wage would only make poor people fatter - Senator Orin Hatch reasoned,  “There’s only so much emasculation a party can take before it drops to its knees and weeps the tears of little girls and lost puppies.”

Critics complain that President Bush and the Republican Party have no plan for bringing U.S. troops home and point to polls showing the majority of Americans in favor of a timetable for withdrawal. Decorated war veteran Senator John Kerry, his own military record still under question, offered a plan for full troop withdrawal by July 2007. Said Kerry, “The Republicans and Karl Rove first say cut and run. Now paper-cutting and running. All right. But do you know what their plan is? I’ll tell you precisely what their plan is, and I won’t hesitate to allow the words to pass over my lips and reach your ears, ears that are eager for enlightenment. That much I can most certainly promise you. An oath, if you will, from me to you. And now I will no longer forestall my rather incisive rejoinder. So, here it goes, ready or not. Their plan is, without further adieu, ‘lie and die.’ That’s right, you heard me. Lie and die.” Kerry nodded. “That’s right, lie and die. Catchy, huh?”

The normally soft-spoken Senate Democratic Leader Harry M. Reid, appearing somewhat haggard and smelling faintly of gin and potato chips after a week of unsuccessfully prodding his fellow Democrats to reach common ground, showed some strain today outside the Capitol. “Look, I don’t even have the energy anymore. Are all of you guys in the press smoking monkey dust or something?” Walking away, Reid was heard muttering, “We get hit by al-Qaeda, we attack Iraq. Up is down. Left is right. Peace is war. What, are you f***ing kidding me?”

Following the devastating week of Democratic internal strife, National Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman suggested on Live with Regis and Kelly this morning that Democrats should cede all matters of the Iraq War to the Republicans. “Why fight it anymore?” Melhman said with a shrug. “They’re not a party that enjoys unnecessarily spilling the blood of young men and women. It’s a weakness. It’s maybe time they own up to it and focus on their other strengths.”

Op-Ed Column:The Democrats Get No R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Yesterday’s Washington Post report “Democrats Divided on Withdrawal of Troops” is indicative of the mainstream media’s lopsided coverage of Democrats and Republicans. More proof that Dems, their shortcomings aside, are treated like the Rodney Dangerfield of political parties.

First, let’s review for the sake of context.

• We have a Republican president who, under false pretenses, consigned our sons and daughters to a war of choice, resulting in over 2,500 of their deaths, with more than 18,000 wounded - missing limbs, losing sight and hearing, severely burned, suffering brain damage and chronic psychological impairment.

• Inconceivably, this Republican president sent them into battle without sufficient body armor, a clear objective or an exit strategy.

• This same Republican president directly sanctions torture and scoffs at the Geneva Conventions (which, in part, were originally set in place so our own soldiers were less likely to be treated inhumanely should they fall behind enemy lines). Uses fear of “evildoers” for political gain at every opportunity (like other fascist regimes in history). And has invoked unprecedented, unconstitutional and impeachable presidential powers (one of which includes spying on millions of Americans’ phone calls).

• Ironically, with all of his tough talk about doing whatever it takes to protect Americans, uttered ad nauseum like a robotic monkey, the 9-11 Commission graded his efforts in preparing our nation against terrorist attacks with a resounding “F.”

• Furthermore, this Republican president has denied that human activity is directly linked to global warming, gutted environmental laws (that have, and will for years to come, greatly contribute to its expansion) and refuses to sign the Kyoto Treaty.

• Finally, this Republican president let New Orleans drown and, to this day, has not come through on his promises (stated during a nationally televised photo-op) to help its citizens rebuild their homes and lives.

This Republican president has amassed an indefensibly abysmal record. And this Republican-led Congress has staunchly supported him in lockstep fashion.

Yet the mainstream media pillories the Democrats for not unanimously agreeing on the same date for withdrawing our troops from Iraq, while praising the Republicans’ unequivocal support for Bush’s disastrous policy there.

Starting with the headline “Democrats Divided on Withdrawal of Troops,” this Washington Post article gives the false impression that their bone of contention is whether or not to withdraw troops; their disagreement, however, lies in when troops should be withdrawn. The majority clearly agrees that troop withdrawal must be in the plans. A simple edit could’ve clarified their stance: “Democrats Divided on Timetable to Withdraw Troops.” One could argue the Levin-Reed plan speaks of a date for “redeploying” troops from Iraq and does not specify a date for full withdrawal. But, let’s face it, setting a date to start redeploying troops from Iraq instead of setting one for a full withdrawal is largely a nuanced, semantic buffer from the misleading Republican accusations of “cutting and running.” And, yes, a withdrawal under the Levin-Reed plan would take longer than under the one proposed by Senator John Kerry, but the underlying intention of both is to finally provide an exit strategy that Bush and the Republicans have failed to do.

Here’s the article’s intro:

While congressional Republicans continued to show almost unanimous support for President Bush's handling of the Iraq war, Democrats struggled for consensus yesterday, reflecting what some of them called the public's mixed feelings about the three-year-old conflict.

So the Republicans are painted in a positive light for showing “almost unanimous support” for Bush’s failed policy and strategy in Iraq. Can you imagine the same coverage if the Democrats were in power and Iraq had occurred on their watch? It’s simply inconceivable. The mainstream media continues to frame strong leadership - as if taking their cues directly from Karl Rove - on the basis of being decisive rather than sound in judgment (something, incidentally, that Senator Kerry underscored about Bush during their presidential race and the mainstream media found of little consequence – until, however short-lived, they witnessed first-hand in New Orleans a direct consequence of rewarding a leader for being decisively wrong). They reward Republicans for being faithful to party rather than country, something our Founding Fathers cautioned us against.

More kudos for Republican consensus on failure:

Debate and votes on the two measures are likely to be held today and tomorrow, with Senate Republicans happy to clear the way for Democrats to showcase their divisions. Senators predicted that few, if any, Republicans will embrace the Democrats' proposals, mirroring the nearly unanimous support House Republicans displayed last week for Bush's policies.

Not until eight paragraphs into the article are we provided with an accurate glimpse into the Democrats’ view on this issue:

Kerry, Levin and Reed say Iraqis must understand that the U.S. military presence in their country is not open-ended and that Iraqis therefore should step up efforts to train and equip their police and army.

Then, time for more Dem bashing:

GOP leaders took obvious pleasure in the Democrats' disarray, issuing a stream of press releases with headlines such as, "Democrats Divided On The Meaning Of Their Own Amendments."

It’s telling how similar that headline is to the one the Washington Post chose for its article. Is it not merely the subtext of the WashPo headline?

The best example of the report's bias, however, is that this was saved for its final paragraph:

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) acknowledged his party's divisions over Iraq but played down the significance. "One thing Democrats agree on is this war has taken too long, it's too expensive and costs too many lives and too many soldiers injured," he told reporters. "We all agree there should be a change in the course of the war. We all agree that there should be redeployment starting sooner rather than later."

Reid attempts to make quite clear to the mainstream press and the American people that it’s the Democrats’ common ground - a joint belief we need to lay down an exit strategy in Iraq and the underlying reasons why - that is of much greater importance here. Not the quibbling over when to exit.

But, whereas the Republicans are the star basketball players rarely called for fouls or traveling, Reid and the Dems don’t get any breaks from the refs in the mainstream media. His quote is sidelined to the last paragraph of the article. His point clanking off the rim and quickly forgotten, if ever read.

I tell ya, no respect, no respect at all.

Story of the Day:Solomon Decries Double Standard for Barbarism

Today, media critic Normon Solomon nailed the unbalanced nature of what constitutes barbarism in the eyes of our mainstream press.

The Baghdad bureau chief of the New York Times could not have been any clearer.

"The story really takes us back into the 8th century, a truly barbaric world," John Burns said. He was speaking Tuesday night on the PBS "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," describing what happened to two US soldiers whose bodies had just been found. Evidently they were victims of atrocities, and no one should doubt in the slightest that the words of horror used by Burns to describe the "barbaric murders" were totally appropriate.

The problem is that Burns and his mass-media colleagues don't talk that way when the cruelties are inflicted by the US military - as if dropping bombs on civilians from thousands of feet in the air were a civilized way to terrorize and kill.

When journalists maintain a flagrant double standard in their language - allowing themselves appropriate moral outrage when Americans suffer but tiptoeing around what is suffered by victims of the US military - the media window on the world is tinted a dark red-white-and-blue, and the overall result is more flackery than journalism.

Based on the available evidence from Abu Ghraib to Afghanistan to Guantanamo, anyone who claims that US foreign policy does not include torture is disingenuous or deluded.

Reporters for the New York Times and other big US media outlets would not dream of publicly describing what American firepower does to Iraqi civilians as "barbaric."

Cited here regularly, civilian casualties receive little attention in the mainstream media; they are usually an afterthought in reports, mentioned in passing and often placed in the final lines of a story, lines that many readers will not even reach. Further into Solomon's article, he paints an apt metaphor to illuminate the madness of accepted "collateral damage."

We hear that of course the US tries to avoid killing civilians - as if that made killing them okay. But the slaughter from the air and from other US military actions is a certain result of the occupiers' war. (What would we say if, in our own community, the police force killed shoppers every day by spraying blocks of stores with machine-gun fire - while explaining that the action was justifiable because no innocents were targeted and their deaths were an unfortunate necessity in the war on crime?)

Then Solomon addresses the underlying absurdity of the mainstream media's Iraq War coverage, and cites author Beau Grosscup, a professor of international relations at California State University in Chico:

Meanwhile, routinely absent from the US media's war coverage is the context: an invasion and occupation fundamentally based on deception.

"The Bush strategy for victory is about to begin," Grosscup said Tuesday. "US and Iraqi forces have surrounded the city of Ramadi. Food and water have been cut off. Next is the 'Shock and Awe' strategic bombing of the city, to be followed by 'mop-up' operations: ground troops, snipers and aerial 'support.'" Grosscup added: "It is the hallowed 'Fallujah' model, intended to bring 'stability' by flattening the city with civilian death and destruction. It is a 'clean' way to victory, one supported by Rep. Jack Murtha, who would withdraw US troops from Iraq but continue to engage the 'enemy' from far away and from 15,000 to 30,000 feet above with air power. By October 2004, this 'clean war' had killed close to 100,000 Iraqi civilians and thousands more since. But, as any enthusiast of strategic bombing would say, it is the price of victory and somebody has to make the ultimate sacrifice. Terror from the skies, anyone?"

Without maintaining a single and consistent moral standard in their work, journalists - no matter how brave, skilled or hardworking - end up prostituting their talents in the service of a war machine.

I couldn't agree more.

Their Barbarism, and Ours, by Normon Solomon
Truthout