TURTLE THOUGHTS

Republicans (A Lot of Them) Support Obama's Healthcare Reform Plan

One inherent weakness in today's news media mindset is that issues always boil down to two equal and opposite sides. And they keep reporting within that frame of reference--Dems vs Reps for instance--even when a cursory review of the facts shows that an issue in question, say, Obama's healthcare reform plan, is something supported by all Democrats and abhorred by all Republicans. Not the case at all, when you know there are a few Dems who are against it, but a much more impressive list of Republicans who have endorsed Obama's vision for heatlhcare reform:

"And earlier this week, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg came out in support of reform, joining two former Republican Senate Majority Leaders: Bob Dole and Dr. Bill Frist, himself a cardiac surgeon. Dr. Louis Sullivan, Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George H.W. Bush, supports reform. As does Republican Tommy Thompson, a former Wisconsin governor and Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush. These distinguished leaders understand that health insurance reform isn't a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, but an American issue that demands a solution.

That's a quote from today's weekly radio/internet address by Obama, lifted from Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly's Political Animal.

Headline of the Day: Is Your Baby Racist?

Seems it's a just a tiny step from diapers to Klan robes for some babies. Beyond that, the Newsweek article by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman has some important points to make about children, parental attitudes, and race. It features work conducted by the Children's Research Lab at the University of Texas.

Vittrup also asked all the kids a very blunt question: "Do your parents like black people?" Fourteen percent said outright, "No, my parents don't like black people"; 38 percent of the kids answered, "I don't know." In this supposed race-free vacuum being created by parents, kids were left to improvise their own conclusions—many of which would be abhorrent to their parents.

The study took place in relatively liberal Austin, TX, where researchers got another surprise:

These parents were to discuss racial equality on their own, every night for five nights.

At this point, something interesting happened. Five families in the last group abruptly quit the study. Two directly told Vittrup, "We don't want to have these conversations with our child. We don't want to point out skin color."

Vittrup was taken aback—these families volunteered knowing full well it was a study of children's racial attitudes. Yet once they were aware that the study required talking openly about race, they started dropping out.

It was no surprise that in a liberal city like Austin, every parent was a welcoming multiculturalist, embracing diversity. But according to Vittrup's entry surveys, hardly any of these white parents had ever talked to their children directly about race.

The article's in-depth and goes on to talk about education, how kids group themselves according to race, and how topics like Black Pride have a significant impact.

 

Jim Cooper Upset with Kos

You know the poll I wrote about earlier that the Daily Kos commissioned in Congressman Jim Cooper's District?  It made Jim all mad and stuff!

"60 Minutes" Creator Don Hewitt Has Died

Don Hewitt, the man who created TV's first news magazine, 60 Minutes, has died at age 86. His vision ushered in a change in television news, opening the door to everything from 20/20 to Dateline to Primetime and all the shows like them. He was doing reality TV before anybody even came up with the phrase. RIP.

Don Hewitt (1922-2009)

Bob Novak Dies

The death of Washington mainstay Robert Novak puts me in mind of that great Moms Mabley quote:

"They say you shouldn't say nothin' about the dead unless it's good. He's dead. Good."

 Robert Novak (1931-2009)

The DC Disconnect from the Rest of America

If you're looking for a good example of why the DC Villagers are out of touch with the rest of the United States, just click over to the Washington Post website where you can read all about "poor" families barely getting by on just $300,000 a year. And it's not a tongue in cheek kinda story but a full-blown, miss-the-mark, WTF-were-you-thinking kinda story. Here's a sampling of the comments:

Is this satire ?? Are you kidding me ??
Please tell me that this is a joke ... please, please
The reality that someone in a position of responsibility in a FINANCE company is so far moved from financial reality ... I'm speechless! Someone needs to send this article to her employer.

I keep looking for a point in the article where the Post goes "Yeah, we know this sounds like we are the most out of touch morons since Thurston Howell the Third" but there doesn't seem to be one. If it was a joke, then yes, they managed to fool me into thinking they somehow consider the travails of someone that has gotten *down* to merely ten times the average salary in the U.S. as somehow tragic. Are they are out of their pointy little heads?!?!

I agree with Brandip_77: this was insulting for the Post to waste 40 inches of newspaper space, countless hours by reporter/photog to write an article on a woman who has SO MUCH MORE than most Americans have or will ever have. Please -if the economy is taking a bite out of the Steins lifestlye , cut a bunch of s*** out of your ifestlye (i.e Nanny, cell phone for kid, gardner, etc).
The Post should keep writing stories about those REALLY struggling, not wasting precious newsprint and newspaper space on a ridiculous story like this. An editor approving this story idea missed the boat

This article points out a major problem with the media. How many WAPO reporters identify with Ms. Steins more than they identify w/a single mom making less than $100k living in PG county or any other less prosperous area?

Our media members no longer help provide the checks and balances to protect those who have less power. Everyone is cynical and everyone wants money.

Senate Staffer Turned Journalist Turned Marine Killed in Afghanistan

Bill Cahir was the best kind of American. You could count on him to do what's right. He was a Senate staffer and later a journalist. But when 9/11 happened, Cahir joined the Marines. He wanted to be on the frontlines for his country. I am sad to learn of Bill Cahir's death on August 13th when he was killed by enemy fire in Afghanistan's Helmand province. He leaves his parents and his wife of three years who is pregnant with twins. This report from Cahir's former employer, the Lehigh Valley Express-Times, is heartbreaking.  

          

Corporate Lobbyists Go To Any Length in the Assault Against Health Care Reform

As you follow the health care reform debate (and any other significant debate in Washington), it would be helpful to keep this in mind from consultant Bob Lewis, president of IT Catalysts, Inc., a consultancy specializing in IT organizational effectiveness and strategic integration.

In mass media, the entertainment or information isn’t product — it’s bait. The audience is the product, of which advertisers are both customer and consumer.

Lewis wrote those words in a column posted in 2002, and it's even more salient today. Don't be suckered by talk of horrible "government bureaucrats" making decisions about your health care. The people currently making those decisions are insurance company employees who have every incentive in the world to deny a claimant's coverage.

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are government run programs, and I'm not hearing anybody enraged about health care reform talking about doing away with them. If government run health care is bad, there'd have been a long-running grassroots movement against it.  So don't be fooled: This fake, corporate/ industry astroturfing we're seeing now is just smoke and mirrors.

            

(Image from FarLeftSide.com--h/t to Crooks & Liars as well as D.Aamodt)

Helen & Margaret Remember Sexy Uncle Walter

Margaret and Helen ("Best Friends for 60 Years and Counting"), the world's most amazing old lady bloggers, remind us that the late Walter Cronkite wasn't just a great news man--he was a stud.

Helen gets started by talking about the critics of health care reform...

 Rush Limbaugh,  a man who will never have to worry about the cost of insurance and  admits to a prescription drug addiction, actually wants to challenge Obama on healthcare reform.  Really? I am just stunned.  And now they attack Walter Cronkite … the most trusted man in America… Uncle Walter.   I guess the Americans with Disabilities Act needs to be revisited again to include “Republican” as a form of mental impairment because this has gotten out of hand.  And I will gladly give up my  mobility impaired classification and the great parking space that goes with it to make room for them.

Let me tell you about Walter Cronkite.   Besides being sexier than Rush will ever be, Cronkite was someone you could respect even if you didn’t agree with him.  He knew the difference between news and opinion and was quick to announce when he had switched from one to the other.  Each evening for years he brought millions of Americans together to know and better understand the world around them.  He was a man’s man who wasn’t offensive to women – unlike Rush who is an ass’s ass who couldn’t pay a woman to respect him… and I am sure he has tried.

Margaret responds....

Helen, dear, we can certainly agree on one thing for sure. Walter Cronkite was a very sexy man. I  tell you, he was the Anderson Cooper of his day. He could melt my butter each and every evening.   He could toast my bread on both sides.   He could float my boat, row it out to sea, and wait for it to return with the tide any day of the week.  Although, I’m not quite sure what that means, I do know that Walter Cronkite was a real man.  And, my dear Helen, that’s the way it is…

I just love them. (h/t to Bill in Portland Maine, the funniest writer at the Daily Kos)

Beer Summit? This Is Why TV News Sucks

So Obama has a beer with the blowhard professor and the cop who got mad because the blowhard professor didn't kiss his ass. And the media are calling it The Beer Summit. If they gave half as much attention to healthcare reform as they give to this piece of stage craft, we'd all be a lot better off.

They focus on this trivial nonsense because it's easier to report than, say, the war, or H1N1, or healthcare reform. But in order to justify it, they call it The Beer Summit, mostly because it's cute, but also because it confers a veneer of importance and/or relevance to the event that doesn't otherwise exist. 

                    

Cronkite Got It Right--If Only Today's News Anchors Had His Courage

The passing over the weekend of Walter Cronkite is made especially sad by knowing that he was one of a kind. Unlike today's he-said/she-said anchors, Cronkite brought real analysis to the news. Part of his job, he believed, was to get to the truth and report the truth in the proper context.  Salon's Glenn Greenwald is calling out Cronkite's modern day counterparts, urging them to emulate Cronkite, not just praise him.

Cronkite called it like it was during the Vietnam War. He also called it like it was in the days before Bush's disastrous invasion of Iraq. If we'd paid as much attention to Water Cronkite in 2002 as we did in 1968, just think how much better off the United States would be today.

                                                     

"What do I regret? Well, I regret that in our attempt to establish some standards, we didn't make them stick.  We couldn't find a way to pass them on to another generation."--Walter Cronkite

David Brooks Lets a U.S. Senator Get to 2nd Base Then Gushes About It on MSNBC

Here's an item for the Things I'd Just As Soon Not Know but Tell Me Anyway category. New York Times columnist and PBS/NPR commentator David Brooks told MSNBC that he sat next to a Republican Senator at a dinner during which the senator kept his hand on Brooks' inner thigh throughout the evening.

Brooks wouldn't say who it was (my money's on Lindsey Graham, but there are just so many possibilities, who can say? Yeah, I know Crist isn't actually a Senator, but he's running, so I included him.) 

I wonder, why the heck would Brooks say this? Does he really want us to cogitate on the thought of him letting somebody grope him all night, even if that person was a United States Senator?  Are we supposed to admire his restraint or be disturbed by his nonchalant attitude? And doesn't he seem to have the oddest bit of pride about the whole thing? If it had been the president, would Brooks have let him go all the way? (Well, we all know the answer to that question.)

When the news mannequin asked him if he'd had a couple of drinks, Brooks said he was just trying not to be too dignified and stuffy. Well done, David! Well done.  After whoring for these guys in your columns all these years, you're finally getting some recognition for it.

 

 David Brooks relaxes at home (left) and but butches it up for work (right).

62 Years After the Alien Invasion

             

It was on this date, July 8th, back in 1947 that newspapers and radio broadcasters trumpeted the news that an alien saucer had crashed near Roswell, New Mexico.  Later, the military said it was just a weather balloon, but already it was too late. The word was out, and the next 60 years would be marked by countless stories and alleged sightings of alien spacecraft. Their reasons for being here? Something about anal probes and cow mutilations, I believe.  The reported sightings have dropped off considerably since everybody got cell phones with camera capabilities, but that doesn't necessarily mean all those previous sightings were hoaxes or alcohol-induced hallucinations...it just suggests that space aliens are notoriously camera-shy. Except those above I guess. 

The Truth Hurts

It's been true the whole time. There's always been one real journalist at Fox News. He remembered what he learned in Farley Hall in the mid-80s.

 (Shepard Smith exhorts grads at Ole Miss)

 

Bill O'Reilly Complicit in Doctor's Murder?

The murder of Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas physician who was one of the few doctors willing to perform late-term abortions in the US, is the latest example of domestic Christian fundamentalist terrorism. Tiller was gunned down while handing out programs as part of his usher duties at church Sunday morning. The gunman shot him to death in front of his wife and friends before fleeing and being captured later in the day.

While the police deal with suspect Scott Roeder, there is a movement afoot to show Bill O'Reilly's complicity in the murder for repeatedly reporting on Tiller's so-called "baby killing" on his show. O'Reilly demonized Tiller nearly 30 times in the past four years, according to Salon's Gabriel Winant, even going so far as to call him "Tiller the Baby Killer." He said Tiller was "executing babies" and operating "a death mill."

This is part of an ongoing pattern with O'Reilly and others in the rightwing echo chamber. O'Reilly was a chief source of inspiration for Jim David Adkisson, the Knoxville man who gunned down two people and wounded several others at a Unitarian-Universalist church service. Adkisson attacked the church because he wanted to kill liberals "who are ruining the country." Sean Hannity and Michael Savage were among the few authors on his reading list.

The Oklahoma City federal building bombing, the murders of doctors who provide abortions, and the killing of innocents by people who have been told it's their patriotic duty to off liberals all have something in common: They are acts of domestic Christian fundamentalist terrorism, and one of the reasons these terrorists do what they do is because they feel empowered and inspired by O'Reilly and his cohorts.

                                                 

Catholic Archbishop: Report Documenting Systemic Child Abuse Will "Overshadow" Abusers' Good Work

Which is worse: The Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Scientology, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?  Every time I get them prioritized, a bit of news comes along to up-end my mental apple cart.  It's easiest to hate the Scientologists because, face it, they're total loons. (Also, I love good science fiction, and that certainly leaves out the stories that L. Ron Hubbard pulled out of his con-man backside.) 

The Mormons are kooky, too, what with thinking Jesus and Satan are brothers, that Christ hung out in pre-United States of America, and I'm not even going to get into their weird underwearing habits.

But today, the worst religion award goes to the Catholic Church, which we now know aided and abetted hundreds of child abusers and rapists in Ireland over a period lasting for more than 60 years. 

A nine-year, 2600-page report compiled by Ireland's Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse concluded that systemic physical, psychological, and sexual abuse were common in state-sponsored but church-run "reform" schools throughout the country from the 1930s through the 1990s.  The children were captive victims, sent to the schools for truancy, misbehavior, or for having the misfortune to be born in a dysfunctional family, which was defined to include children of single mothers.

You can read all about the report and everything that led to its release via the links above, but the detail that sparked this post was something said by Catholic Archbishop Vincent Nichols, who was just recently installed to preside over England and Wales.

It’s very distressing and very disturbing. And my heart goes out today, first of all to those people who will find that their stories are now told in public…. Secondly, I think of those in religious orders and some of the clergy in Dublin who have to face these facts from their past, which instinctively and quite naturally they’d rather not look at. That takes courage. And also we shouldn’t forget that this account today will also overshadow all of the good that they also did.

Did you get that?  The abusive religious orders and clergy are courageous! (Yes, and how courageously they fought against this report being released.) And not only that, the archbishop fears that all this pesky nonsense about child rape and systemic abuse occurring for decades might take away from all the good that they did. (Yeah, how 'bout that. And I hear that when he wasn't killing and eating people, Jeffrey Dahmer collected donations for the March of Friggin' Dimes. Why have we allowed proof of his homicidal cannibalism to make us forget that?)

So, take cheer, you self-righteous Mormons and freaky-deaky Scientologists. As long as the RCC is around, you'll always have an institution to look down on.

    

                

NYT Columnist Maureen Dowd Plagiarizes TPM's Josh Marshall

If you think that all the relevant, salient insights are coming from the blogosphere as opposed to the traditional mainstream media, here's some more confirmation.

New York Times columnist/gossip-girl Maureen Dowd stole a significant piece of her latest column from a blog post Josh Marshall wrote on Talking Points Memo last week.

She's apologized, of course, now that everybody knows about it and she has no choice in the matter. 

                                                     

Here's some more on Dowd from Politico's Michael Calderone who emailed her about it.

Will the Rule of Law Finally Be Applied to the Bush/Cheney Administration?

I've never been fully convinced that the whole truth about Bush-Cheney crimes will ever come to light. It's quite possible they never will. But a newly published article in GQ by Robert Draper is providing new hope with a revealing look into the delusional world created and inhabited by Bush, Cheney, and, in particular, Donald Rumsfeld. 

Draper reports on Rumsfeld's practice of providing daily updates to the president and a handful of other administration officials in the form of colorful, Bible-verse quoting, propaganda-like memos.

This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine. On March 31, a U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” On April 7, Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.” (To see these and more Bush-administration intelligence cover sheets, visit GQ.com’s exclusive slideshow).

And should you think this piece is the work of some lefty, Bush-hating DFH, think again. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich points out, Robert Draper wrote the authorized 2007 biography of George W. Bush, "Dead Certain" for which he had access to all of Bush's top loyalists. Rich goes on to say these bits of light we're starting to see break through can't be stopped.

The Beltway punditocracy keeps repeating the cliché that only the A.C.L.U. and the president’s “left-wing base” want accountability, but that’s not the case. Americans know that the Iraq war is not over. A key revelation in last month’s Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees — that torture was used to try to coerce prisoners into “confirming” a bogus Al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein link to sell that war — is finally attracting attention. The more we learn piecemeal of this history, the more bipartisan and voluble the call for full transparency has become.

The nature of our democratic republic demands transparency and accountability, no matter how much it hurts or pains us. Closing our eyes and pretending it never happened only ensures it will happen again.

Former Senator Bob Graham Agrees With Pelosi On CIA: Yup, They're Liars

After 9/11 when Bush's march to war against Iraq got underway, there were very few rational elected officials at the federal level willing to speak out against the madness that was going on around them. Florida Senator Bob Graham was the exception.

He begged his fellow Senators to read the entire 75-page National Intelligence Estimate on Weapons of Mass Destruction, but few did, his colleagues opting to go with the sanitized unclassified Cliffs Notes version. Graham knew they were being had, but he couldn't persuade them otherwise.

...Graham has said the "slick" 25-page document was "substantially different" from the classified document, and selectively put forth risks in favor of invading, while omitting other key information. A "livid" Sen. Graham had complained to George Tenet of the "wildly different impressions" created by the two documents. Sen. Graham's book "Intelligence Matters" recites the contemporaneous evidence available to Sen. Hutchison, had she read it as requested: Saddam Hussein was not going to attack us unless we attacked him. We know the far greater terror risks were known then and served as the focus for the Graham Amendment: war on Al-Qaeda, Abu Nidal, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Liberation Front, and Hezbollah. And, he explains the rational priorities known then: finishing the job in Afghanistan, with General Franks's honest assessment of where the war on terror needed to be fought, known in February of 2002 (Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen) at a time when General Franks disclosed that the intelligence on WMD in Iraq was 'weak.'

As a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he spoke from an informed and knowledgeable position. But he might as well have been some eccentric old kook as far as the media were concerned. But let's take a look at some of that crazy talk he was spouting:

"We are locking down on the principle that we have one evil, Saddam Hussein. He is an enormous, gargantuan force, and that's who we're going to go after," Graham said on the floor. "That, frankly, is an erroneous reading of the world. There are many evils out there, a number of which are substantially more competent, particularly in their ability to attack Americans here at home, than Iraq is likely to be in the foreseeable future."

He told his fellow senators that if they didn't recognize that going to war with Iraq without first taking out the actual terrorists would endanger Americans, "then, frankly, my friends — to use a blunt term — the blood's going to be on your hands."

The jingoistic lamestream media ignored him or insinuated he was some kind of loony-toon, realizing even then on some level that they were complicit in feeding the madness, and rather than face what that meant, they stuck their fingers in their ears and pretended not to notice that Bush-Cheney had cherry-picked intelligence, created the false impression that 9/11 and Saddam Hussein were somehow related, wiretapped American citizens without a warrant, authorized torture, participated in extraordinary rendition, and lied to pretty much the whole world. To confront that, they'd have to acknowledge their own role in it, and face up to the fact that they were journalistically incurious stenographers instead of the upright hard-nosed tough-questioning reporters they fantasized they were. Pathetic.

This time, let's give Graham the benefit of the doubt. He says the CIA lied, and there's no reason to doubt Speaker Pelosi...she'd have a lot to lose by making up an allegation like that. She wants a Truth Commission, and I hope we gets one. Every document should be released so we can all have a look.

Another reason to trust Graham is that he is a stickler for details, keeping a detailed account of his meetings and travels. And that's important because Graham lends even more credibility to Pelosi and reconfirms what she is saying about the CIA misleading Members of Congress.

If he says he didn't meet with the CIA when they're claiming he did, I'm going to go with Graham. Clearly, Graham is no kook. If his colleagues had listened to him in 2002, we'd be living in a much different world right now. He's given us a good reason to believe him.

When we finally know the truth about all this, who wants to bet we'll find that Senator Graham was correct once again?

Eugene Robinson Calls Out Darth Cheney

Washington Post columnist and MSNBC pundit Eugene Robinson keeps proving over and again how much he deserved his recent Pulitzer. In today's piece he takes on Darth Cheney's claim that torture somehow made us safe after 9/11.    

                                                     

This is the crux of Cheney's "argument," and I put the word in quotation marks because it isn't really a valid argument at all. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration approved programs and methods that previously would have been considered illegal or unacceptable: arbitrary and indefinite detention of terrorism suspects, waterboarding and other abusive interrogation methods, secret CIA prisons, unprecedented electronic surveillance. Since 2001, there have been no new attacks on what the Bush administration creepily called the "homeland." Therefore, everything that was done in the name of preventing new attacks was justified.

The fallacy lies in the fact that it is impossible for Cheney to prove that anti-terrorism methods within the bounds of U.S. law and tradition would have failed to prevent new attacks. Nor, for that matter, can Cheney demonstrate that torture and other abuses were particularly effective.

I can't say it enough, keep talking Cheney. Every word you utter just makes you creepier.                                                                                                

                                                              

Media Complicity in Torture Cases Is Unforgiveable

One of the reasons I felt compelled to blog is because of the growing disconnect between the so-called mainstream media and basic tenets of journalism. In the past couple of decades, honest-to-God objective journalism, especially in broadcast media, has been in decline.

Nothing makes me scream at the teevee more than some newstwit telling me what I should think about the news. They just need to tell me the news, and I'll decide myself what to think about it.  That's bad enough, but deliberately and consciously defending and rationalizing the illegal use of torture is almost unthinkable. We must address media complicity in the torture of prisoners by American authorities.

                                        

*UPDATE*  More media insanity.  The familiar double standard is in play. If you're a common Joe, the Rule of Law always applies. If you're important, famous, or rich, the Rule of Law is suddenly ambiguous. Talk about un-American.