You’d think that the story of a president who cannot appear in a 90 minute debate without the help of an electronic transmitter to feed him his answers would be worthy of reporting in a major newspaper if they had the goods.
What is truly scary about this is that even despite the help, he sounded extremely stupid and unprepared. This is the man with his finger on the button. The NY Times had excellent evidence that he had cheated in the debates and they punted. What would it have taken for the press to feel it was important to reveal this to the public, Bush screaming into his tie “Turd Blossom, I’m dyin’ out here?”
So Dean is going to be chair. Bobo Brooks just said that he was a bit too “secular” and “strident.” Oh my goodness, have we made a big mistake in not electing a santimonious wimp? I always get so worried when we don’t take the GOP’s sincere advice about such things.
Look, one of the biggest problems the Democrats are going to have over the next three years is getting the attention of the media. Media Matters has documented the over representation of Republicans on the cable gasbag shows and it’s truly alarming. And the liberals they do invite are often boring and ill prepared compared to the more “strident and religious” Republicans.
This is a huge problem. One of the reasons, I believe, that Bill Clinton was able to succeed was because he had a very high Q rating. (Don’t hassle me, readers, about using this obnoxious term. It’s relevant whether we like it or not.) He has tremendous personal charisma and he performed a high wire political act that was irresistable to the media. And it helped us get our message out, even when he was taking a lot of heat.
Howard Dean is like that in his own way. He creates a stir; you never know quite what’s going to happen. He fascinates the media and they will be paying very close attention. I don’t doubt that he will be undisciplined at times and create some trouble, but he will be visible. And every time the media calls on him is another chance for him to pound home our message.
Right now the biggest danger for Democrats is that we are becoming media ciphers. It’s not that we don’t have some power in DC. The social security debate shows that we can affect the process if we stand together. But as far as the country is concerned we are becoming invisible and we have to deal with that if we are to compete.
They are going to slam us no matter what we do. Dean, as a fascinating political figure, will be invited to personally respond. And he tends to do it memorably. It’s a mistake to underrate that talent.
… media standards are also at stake. The eagerness of some media organisations to repeat sensationalistic rumors without verification has raised serious concerns about journalistic standards at a time when Turkey — which hopes to receive a date for starting EU membership negotiations at the Union’s summit later this month — is anxious to demonstrate how far it has progressed.
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Delicious. A DOD front site from “eastern europe” using “media standards” to issue a veiled threat about Turkey’s admission to the EU. Awesome.
Did you notice that our esteemed President essentially committed securities fraud in representing that private investment accounts WILL perform better than anything the present system could do? Certainly, no one can honestly make that statement and any stockbroker making such a statement would be violating Rule 10b 5 of the Securities Act of 1934.
To which Kleiman added:
Which reminds me of my favorite snarky policy suggestion: How about applying the Sarbanes-Oxley certification process to budget submissions and other communications from the Executive to Congress or the public? Someone ought to be prepared to say about each submission, “Yes, I understand what’s in this document, and certify that it is accurate.”
This is another good line of argument. I think it hits a certain common sense chord to say that the president is overselling the market, especially right now. People just went through a very thorough retrenchment with their 401k’s and are very well aware that the market does not always go up. We should force the Republicans to explain why people should feel confident that they are guaranteed to make more money in the market as Bush says they will. And after they sputter their bromides about the long term gains in the last 70 years, blah,blah,blah, perhaps the Democratic spokesperson or legislator ought to turn around and say “everyone knows past performance is no guarantor of future returns. It’s the most basic and essential disclaimer given by anyone who works with stocks and bonds.”
Since we are talking about exposing millions of retirees to the stock market, shouldn’t the president be willing to apply the same rules to himself and certify his proposal with the standard Oxley-Sarbanes disclaimer: “Yes, I understand what’s in this document, and certify that it is accurate.”
It would be an interesting television moment anyway.
I think that CNN just reported that the DOD paid hundreds of “writers” to write for fake web sites. We’re not sure just who is involved though. (Wanna guess?)
My stars. Can it be true? Our government is using propaganda to influence foreigners? Say it ain’t so. Somebody get Jeff Jarvis some smelling salts, stat. He’s going to swoon the minute he hears about this…
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. Department of Defense plans to add more sites on the Internet to provide information to a global audience — but critics question whether the Pentagon is violating President Bush’s pledge not to pay journalists to promote his policies.
The Defense Department runs two Web sites overseas, one aimed at people in the Balkan region in Europe, the other for the Maghreb area of North Africa.
It is preparing another site, even as the Pentagon inspector general investigates whether the sites are appropriate.
The Web sites carry stories on subjects such as politics, sports and entertainment.
Information warfare
The sites are run by U.S. military troops trained in “information warfare,” a specialty than can include battlefield deception.
Pentagon officials say the goal is to counter “misinformation” about the United States in overseas media.
At first glance, the Web pages appear to be independent news sites. To find out who is actually behind the content, a visitor would have to click on a small link — at the bottom of the page — to a disclaimer, which says, in part, that the site is “sponsored by” the U.S. Department of Defense.
“There is an element of deception,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “The problem,” he said, is that it looks like a news site unless a visitor looks at the disclaimer, which is “sort of oblique.”
The Pentagon maintains that the information on the sites is true and accurate. But in a recent memo, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz insisted that the Web site contractor should only hire journalists who “will not reflect discredit on the U.S. government.”
The Defense Department has hired more than 50 freelance writers for the sites.
Some senior military officers have told CNN the Web sites may clash with President Bush’s recent statements. “We will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda,” Bush told reporters on January 26. “Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet.”
Bush made those comments after it came to light that the administration had paid several commentators to support U.S. policies in the U.S. media.
Many Democrats have called for an end to what they call administration propaganda within the United States.
But many lawmakers view the rules for handling information overseas as a separate issue.
On Thursday, Lawrence Di Rita, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, asked the Pentagon inspector general to examine Defense Department activities, including the Web sites in question, to see that they fall within the guidelines Bush laid out.
Di Rita said the department wanted “to make sure that we are staying well within the lines, and I believe we are.”
Rosenstiel said there is a reason why rules exist to separate journalism from government information. “Anytime that the government has to assure you, ‘Believe me, take my word for it, I’m telling you nothing but the truth,’ you know you should be worried,” he said.
According to Powerline, it’s CNN who is guilty of propaganda:
When Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, groundlessly slanders the American armed forces by accusing them of “targeting” journalists for assassination, one could reasonably wonder whether he was engaged in journalism or propaganda. Many have also been wondering when the news side at CNN–as opposed to the public relations side–would start reporting on Jordan’s incendiary speech in Davos.
A reader pointed out that earlier today, CNN finally did address the issue of journalism vs. propaganda. You might think they’ve finally broken their silence about Mr. Jordan. But no! It’s the Pentagon CNN is accusing of putting out propaganda
[…]
There you have it: CNN spreads misinformation about the American military; but when the military tries to defend itself against misinformation, it’s “propaganda.” And, while it’s perfectly OK for CNN’s top newsman to “reflect discredit on the U.S. government,” CNN criticizes the Defense Department because DOD prefers not to do the same. This is the topsy-turvy world of the mainstream media.
Hohkay. Except, you know, government propaganda is a slightly different animal, isn’t it? The DOD is perfectly within its rights to put up a web site defending against misinformation. But these web sites are designed to look like “news sites” that are giving unbiased information. Call me crazy, but that just doesn’t seem like an upfront operation.
And it certainly will be interesting to see who these taxpayer funded “freelance” writers are, won’t it?
And whatever stupid thing Eason Jordan said, it doesn’t really fit the term “propaganda” very well. I’m sure they’ll say (absurdly) that it reflects the hatred of all things military in the liberal media, but unless there is a systematic intention to portray the military as assasinating journalists, then it’s really more of an off the cuff remark than actual propaganda. And, you know, it’s really hard to take seriously anyone who decries propaganda when Republican mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh are out there spewing eliminationist rhetoric about liberals to 20 million ditto-heads all day long.
Let’s face facts. The extremely dishonest approach that the Republicans are taking to bring African Americans on board with their privatized personal retirement plan is just downright racist. I’m sure that the creationist right believes that the fact black men don’t live as long as whites is God’s intention but the truth is that they wouldn’t die younger if it weren’t for poverty, disease and crime which are immoral reasons in a rich country such as ours. It’s bad enough that this is happening today, but the administration is selling the idea as something that will continue for at least the next forty years as a selling point for destroying social security. It’s is another case of their outrageous pomo up-is-downism.
Farhad Manjoo has written a definitive piece on this issue for Salon (cute day pass today) in which he points out that the slack jawed media has gulped down the entire meme and is regurgitating it whole:
The idea that blacks are being cheated by Social Security could prove to be a powerful rhetorical weapon for Republicans. Already, the media is falling for the story line. CNN, for example, broadcast a heart-tugging story Thursday that focused on the plight of the dependents of African-Americans who die young. The network interviewed Barbara Haile, a black woman whose husband died of cancer in 1997. He was 50 at the time of his death; through payroll taxes, he’d been contributing to Social Security for about 30 years. But because he hadn’t reached retirement age, neither he (nor his dependents) were eligible to receive any money from Social Security.
Under the Bush plan, conservatives say, Haile would have been eligible to receive the money that her husband had been collecting in his “personal account,” invested in the stock market. Because blacks (especially black men) have lower average life expectancies than whites (especially white women), the current system is unfair to them, Republicans contend, and private accounts would be a boon for them. Although CNN did interview supporters of the current system, the emotional upshot of its report was clear: Social Security screws poor black people and President Bush wants to help them out.
There’s another side to this,too:
Anti-Social Security agitators such as Stephen Moore, who heads the Free Enterprise Fund, have taken to calling Social Security a “massive income redistribution program” that sucks money out of African-Americans’ pockets and spits it out to whites.
Agitator is the right word. The African American constituency isn’t going to fall for this nonsense. They’ve been handed this kind of flim-flam many times before and they are much too savvy to trust rich white men who try to dazzle them with BS. This stuff goes back a long, long way. Despite the fact that the history of reconstruction has been rightly revised to show that the “scalawags” of the era were not all despicable opportunists as they had been portrayed by southern apologists, it is true that there were southerners who used the newly freed slaves for their own political and profitable enterprises. Many African Americans may have been naive enough to believe their phony pitch one hundred years ago, but they aren’t naive anymore. Stephen Moore is spitting into the wind if he thinks black Americans can’t see through his little shuck and jive.
And they also aren’t idiots. They know that grandma needs that check:
In a Social Security briefing paper, Shelton declares that “almost 80 percent of African Americans over age 65 depend on Social Security for more than half of their income, and more than half rely on it for 90 percent or more of their income.” Basically, he writes, “without the guaranteed Social Security benefits they receive today, the poverty rate among older African Americans would more than double, pushing most African American seniors into squalor and poverty during their most vulnerable years.”
But the main problem with the Republicans’ argument that private accounts would be better for blacks than the current system is not that it’s economically wrong. It’s that it’s gravely pessimistic. As the president took pains to point out in his State of the Union address, Social Security reform won’t affect today’s generation of retirees; it will benefit today’s young people, who will retire 30 or 40 years from now. By that reasoning, conservatives are conceding that blacks will die young not only now but 40 years from now. Apparently, they aren’t concerned about working to ensure that young African-Americans live as long and healthy lives as today’s young white people.
Of course, that’s because the main purpose of this phony sales pitch isn’t really to gain the support of African Americans at all. These modern scalawags hope to gain the support of a few African Americans so that they can use their image to portray their plan as helping poor people.
This is racist on a number of levels, not the least of which is that the Bush administration has made a fetish of portraying themselves as “compassionate” toward the poor with images of adorable black children and high level tokenism. They know very well that the African American community is the most reliably Democratic constituency in the nation. They are not actually making a play for their votes. Their bogus imagery is racist because it has no substance in policy terms and is actually aimed at white suburban voters who mistrust the southern red-neck edge that defines the sound of the modern GOP.
This Social Security marketing campaign, however, takes it to an unprecedented level. The Republicans are trying to convince their suburban white voters that because blacks tend to die young from social causes (which they don’t intend to fix,) they will be “helping” poor blacks if they vote for a privatization scheme (that will cut their guaranteed benefits.) It just doesn’t get any more cynical than using white Americans’ compassion to hurt black Americans — or perhaps using phony white compassion to excuse hurting black Americans. This is low, even for them.
Here’s a little Rovian epistemic relativism for all those staunch Republican southern heritage and new confederacy types to have fun sorting out:
Today’s Republicans are modern scalawags who use blacks to get rich northern white votes. And just like the bad old days, you poor white fellas are going to get screwed too. Which side are you on, boys?
In one hearing that led up to Monday’s decision, Judge Green attempted to see how broadly the government viewed its power to hold detainees. Administration lawyers told her, in response to a hypothetical question, that they believed the president would even have the right to lock up “a little old lady from Switzerland” for the duration of the war on terror if she had written checks to a charity that she believed helped orphans, but that actually was a front for Al Qaeda.
For those of you who are cocooned in the urban conclaves of the Blue state liberal elite, here’s an interesting film series on Truthout by talented guerilla filmmaker Chris Hume (who I knew in a former life) called “Red State Roadtrip.”
Seeing as the Red States cover a lot of ground, many of you liberal Red Staters might get a kick out of it too. This country is incredibly diverse yet we are all so familiar…
May I just make one little observation that seems to have escaped those who believe that Democrats should offer an alternative to the Preznit’s Personal Privatized Individual Retirement Account Security plan? We already are offering an alternative. It’s called Social Security. And we have reams of data about how well it works and how well the experts believe it is going to work in the future.
If the Democrats were as willing as Republicans to present a competing discourse to the public and call it “reality” we would simply take Roosevelts plan with all the added tweaking over the years and present it as our “bold, new” alternative saying that it will cover all retirees AND we will be able to add in death benefits and disability payments too! And you won’t have to do anything but let your employer deduct the same amount its already deducting from your check! This is the step forward we’ve been waiting for! We’ll call it… Super Social Security 2.0.
I think our “alternative” is very marketable. After all, we have 45 million customers right now. Let’s just let them tell the nation how much they like it and propose that everybody should get the same thing. Our new and improved Super Social Security is the innovation everybody’s been waiting for. Order yours today.
