New online community created for young voters

From the website:

OurVoice2008.com empowers voters ages 18-30 to join the political process, learn about issues that impact us and actively engage with presidential candidates.

As a community, we will state our opinions and choose specific questions for the candidates.

Vote for the issues you care about so they will climb our list. Results will be updated weekly starting in October.

Make your voice heard!

Bush administration relies on fear and lies

STATESBORO, Ga. -- The gay-marriage theme became a staple in Bush's political remarks last Thursday, the day after the New Jersey ruling on a touchstone issue for religious conservatives who are crucial to Republican electoral calculations.

White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said it was added merely to respond to the ruling - not because his other messages were failing to connect. - Bush Hits Hard at Gay Marriage

Which do you fear most?

a) The next-door lesbian couple with the dream of protecting their family with a legal document?

b) George Bush and Dick Cheney with the dream of ruling the world?

c) The Republican Congress with the dream of continuing their loyal support of a failed presidency?

d) A federal judiciary envisioned by James Dobson and Jerry Falwell?

Update, Nov. 7 -- Voters reject Republican fear tactics


Meet Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense and Supreme Minister for War Propaganda

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is beefing up its public relations staff and starting an operation akin to a political campaign's war room as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld faces intensifying criticism over the Iraq war and the public is increasingly disenchanted with the conflict.

In a memo obtained by the Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said new teams of people will "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and "correct the record." - Pentagon to wage public relations war

Republicans have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for several years. The Bush administration wields power over the FCC, public broadcasting and, through their corporate sponsors, much of the national media.

They also have a history of using taxpayer money to elicit political support from religious groups, to reward dishonest and unethical journalists in the US, and to buy "good news" from fake reporters in Iraq.

Despite their massive public relations machine, they have been unable to fool all the people all the time. Now they are adding one last weapon to their propaganda arsenal -- the complete politicisation of the military.

NBC and the CW refuse to run Dixie Chicks ad

NBC and the CW* consider an advertisement for the Shut Up and Sing documentary "disparaging of President Bush."

They won't show this -- but this is OK. You decide.

_______________

*The CW is owned by CBS (50%) and Warner Bros (50%).

Ain't he sweet?

Tony Snow: Apr 21, 2006, "We need a pause button for the insult industry."

Not so long ago, Mr. Snow's i-Pod was booming with FAUXy me-Tunes -- dismissing Democrats as "reduced to a state of unshakable hysteria" and faulting their "righteous ignorance." Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were the "wheezy prophets of the Defeatocrat Party."

But that was then; this is now. No hard feelings. Look to the future. What's your plan?

So, I ask, kindly of course, and with all due apologies to Milton Ager, Jack Yellen, and The Beatles . . .

Ain't He Sweet?
Oh ain't he sweet
Well Tony's walking down that street
For a Snow job on Pennsylvania Avenue
Ain't he sweet?

Now ain't he nice
Put your criticism on the ice
Tony's full-time job is to save the president's
Ain't he sweet?

Just cast an eye
In his direction
And hit the pause
On his connection.

Oh name that tune
A happy song to fight the gloom
He's a show man changing hats for the president
Ain't he sweet?

Oh ain't he sweet
Well don't you think it's kind of neat
To divert reality checks from Republicans
Ain't he sweet?

Oh ain't he sweet
Can the Snow man take the heat
And if all we want is more hypocrisy
Ain't he sweet?

Corporate media quick to excuse 'leaker-in-chief'

This week we learned that "Scooter" Libby's leaks were approved by none other than the president himself. Has anyone noticed how quickly the press brushed off any suggestion of George Bush's legal culpability?

We expect hard-core Republicans and self-appointed religious leaders (and John McCain) to rush to the president's defense -- but we can hope for a higher standard from the professional, unbiased press corps, right?

Maybe not.

After all, corporate bosses pay the salaries of our blow-dried practitioners of a "free press" -- those lusty voices who cheered the loudest for war in 2002 and 2003; who tussled for resume-enhancing positions of imbededness with the invading American troops; who peed their pants in hilarity at the wit and wisdom of Rummy's every rumination; and who gushed at every "shock and awe" explosion over Iraq -- all while thousands of innocents died at the hands of George Bush.

Now, no big surprise, we see the so-called liberal press proclaim, ad nauseum, that Bush has broken no laws, and that "no one is even accusing him" of ignoring the law. They describe the president's involvement in the CIA-gate scandal as nothing more than a really, really, big ol' political misstep that makes the president look oh-so bad because of his "perceived hypocrisy" (but mainly because the Iraq war is so going poorly, they deduce in their collective wisdom).

The public is expected to believe that Mr. Bush, out of necessity, leaked only to inform us of everything we ever needed to know to support his grand adventure. Anyone who questions his motives was, and is, according to mouthpiece Scottie, "playing crass politics."

To Bush supporters (and much of the press, evidently) it's not illegal -- it's not even "crass politics" -- that the president cherrypicked the intelligence he used to mislead the country into war, then secretly dispensed even more "selected" intelligence in a plot calculated to discredit and destroy anyone who questioned his previous misuse of intelligence.

Excuse me. What could possibly be more crass -- even illegal -- than that?

To say the leaked material was no longer classified at the time of its leaking -- because the president had given his boys permission to do, in secret, whatever was necessary to discredit his critics -- is a distinction without a difference. By that logic, leaking classified information is, in itself, the act of declassification. The public release, several days later, of a token amount of previously classified material ("laundered" for political effect, as usual) was nothing more than a smokescreen to provide legal cover, retroactively, to the leaker-in-chief and his team of tricksters.

Let's face it: Mr. Libby was not flying solo when he dribbled the president's leakage all over Washington. An expert on intelligence matters and government secrecy, Mr. Libby would not have taken lightly the prospect of losing his reputation and being dragged off to prison. He would not have committed perjury simply to cover up the leaking of insignificant amounts of supposedly harmless data that the president had already declassified.

Libby's behavior, and that of his bosses in feigning outrage at their own leaks, in allowing a reporter to spend months in jail, and in leaving Libby exposed to criminal charges, suggests that our current knowledge of improper conduct and its coverup hardly scratches the surface of embarrassing, unethical, and illegal activities of the president and his inner circle.

If this scandal was an isolated event for the Bush administration, perhaps people could be fooled one more time. It is not.

Three questions:

1. Where are the heads of the 35% of Americans still giving George Bush high marks for job performance?
2. Does that blind support include the heads of corporate media?
3. Does anyone need help answering questions 1 and 2?

Blogger issues

My apologies to readers who have been unable to access this blog for the past few days. Google has had major problems with servers, filers, or whatever. Blogs were affected to various degrees. Many had only minor problems, if any at all. A few were like mine -- a blank page and no response from Google other than the occasional online claim that everything was just hunky-dory again.

Check this out: Google's plans include online backup services for your hard drive. Yeah. Like you're going to voluntarily entrust your personal computer files to
Google security, government snoops, and every halfwit hacker with internet access.

Google's plans probably played into the company's refusal to acknowledge the severity of the past week's problems, even on their own "support" boards or in written responses to individual emails. But, hey, why admit anything? That strategy worked for the Bush administration. For five years. The laws of gravity stuck around, though. How's that 33% approval looking now, W.?

Interestingly, W.'s approval ratings bear a striking resemblance to Google's three-month stock chart (drop the zero and add a percent sign):

For those who may assume that because Google's services are free, no one has the right to complain about poor communication, check the company's current market value -- and keep in mind that every dime of that value is based upon the continued goodwill of the millions who use Google services.

So, this blog is finally back (at least for the minute; you'll know if you're reading it), but for the next few days I'll be hesitant to make changes or additions. Somehow, all the posts' paragraphing has already been lost. Today I made corrections to the opening page. Corrections to the archives can wait, possibly forever, while I look around for alternative services.

Google doesn't have to communicate with me, or with any of their Blogger users, for that matter. Fine. I'll be selling my handful of Google stocks while I'm still ahead, and just so ya know: If I choose another blog service, I'll keep my (three) readers alerted by posting the new links here -- assuming there's still a here here.

Thanks, St. Petersburg Times

Blog spotlight

Aikane Leo
The buzz: Political news and views for Florida and the nation, along with a fantastic list of websites and other related web resources.

The St. Petersburg Times has long been my favorite newspaper. Home delivery is not available in Lakeland, but thanks to Al Gore's invention, I frequent the online publication.

Several days ago, I submitted this blog to the newspaper's "reader blogs" list. The publishers chose to feature Aikane Leo last week.

Thanks, guys -- one more reason you're a great newspaper!

• SPT front page
• SPT blogs

Conservatives trust Bush, not the Constitution

David Brooks, NY Times columnist and PBS political analyst, asked readers this week to play a little game of "You're the president." He believes that "FISA shortcomings," in his words, practically forced the Bush administration to evade legal and legislative oversights when it designed its secret program of spying on Americans.

Brooks' game defines four choices, none of them perfect, from which the president chose the only acceptable option, according to Brooks. After long and hard thought, intensive research, and consultation with "conservative" legal advisors, the following options were the only ones that Brooks -- and apparently the entire Bush administration -- could imagine:

1. "Ask Congress to rewrite the FISA law...." Bad idea, says Brooks. The president cannot trust Congress to rewrite the law in a way that would give him the unfettered power he needs to keep us safe in the brave new world of the 21st Century.
   


2. "... Avoid Congress and set up a self-policing mechanism using the Justice Department and the NSA Inspector general," (whatever "self-policing" means). The problems there, according to Mr. Brooks? That would be "legally dubious"; some intelligence bureaucrat might leak the secret spy program in hopes of throwing a presidential election; and again, the president can't trust Congress to keep a secret spy program secret.
   


3. "... Informal congressional oversight." Another terrible idea, says Mr. Brooks. The president does not trust Congress. Why risk having some congressman (liberal traitor, in all likelihood) blab that the executive branch is spying on the public? Someone might question who is being monitored and how that information is being used.
   


4. That left the president one last, dreadful option, in Brooks' opinion: "Face the fact that we will not be using our best technology to monitor the communications of known terrorists. Face the fact that the odds of an attack on America just went up."
   

Wow! Thanks, David. You certainly simplified things for anyone unable to think of alternatives to one-man rule: Trust the president to operate in secret. Or die.

To steadfast Bush supporters, the job of keeping America safe is complicated because the president can trust no one outside his inner circle -- not the courts, not the bureaucratic spies themselves, not the Congress, and least of all, the people. The thought never occurs to them that putting blind faith in any president -- especially this one -- is not an option for the ones of us who value both liberty and security.

Don't you find it curious, Mr. Brooks, even hypocritical, that the so-called conservative wing of American politics places great faith in George W. Bush the man, but little trust in the people and the rule of law? You do remember, do you not, the cry for "the rule of law" that still echoes from Republican gamers who struggled mightly to bring down another president? You do understand the significance of that little piece of paper, the U. S. Constitution?

Because "You're the president" is a game designed for the simple-minded, I'll keep my play calling simple as well. You failed to include the one option which is not optional at all, but a mandatory rule the president -- any president, even one you trust -- must respect if the country is to remain secure against threats, both foreign and domestic: Obey the law.

• New York Times column (subscription required) ...Big Brother is you
• Article excerpts ... Cracks in the facade

Et tu, C-SPAN?

'Fair and balanced,' or tilting?

"Balance is our No. 1 goal," Peter Slen, Washington Journal's executive producer and part-time host, once said, adding: "We keep official stats on the Washington Journal, OK? Republicans, Democrats, conservative, liberal, moderates—we try to stay within the week nearly perfect as far as the balance goes."

Extra! studied Washington Journal's guestlist, tabulating all 663 guests who appeared on the show in the six-month period from November 1, 2004 to April 30, 2005. Guests were classified by gender, ethnicity, party affiliation (if any) and occupation. The study also looked at the think tanks most prominently represented on the show.

Among the most striking findings:

• Of the partisan guests, Republicans outnumbered Democrats nearly two to one (134 to 70). Not a single representative of a third party appeared during the study period.

Read the rest: C-SPAN slanting right

Orwellian quote of the day

"You can always turn the television off and ... block the channels you don't want. But why should you have to?"
- Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin, testifying at Open Forum on Decency, held by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

Before being appointed to a seat on the FCC in 2001, Martin paid his dues as Deputy General Counsel of the 2000 Bush campaign, then served on the Bush-Cheney Transition Team.

Senator Stevens is the longest serving Republican in the U.S. Senate, current president pro tempore and the prince of pork.

Isn't it wonderful we're in safe hands with a self-described "conservative" administration and Congress, the crowd who refer to themselves as proponents of personal responsibility and rugged individualism?

They -- who know best on everything -- don't want us worrying our little minds with big ole complicated things like television remote controls or the misappropriation of taxpayer money to build bridges to nowhere.

Surely, in saving us from ourselves, they will move quickly to ban indecencies like Rev. Robertson's call for the assassination of a foreign leader, or the Bush administration's lies that led the country into war.

Hey, isn't banning stuff fun? Will we all get to ban something? They would ban Janet Jackson's breast: I would ban hypocrisy.

Decency is in the eye of the beholder, after all.

Can we please change the channel now?

Polish newspapers protest press censorship in Belarus

Two leading Polish newspapers have published censored front pages to protest against curbs on freedom of speech in neighbouring Belarus.

The papers have teamed up with Amnesty International for the campaign being carried out in Poland and Brussels. Organisers say they want to raise awareness in the European Union of the civil rights abuses committed by Alexander Lukashenko's regime.

Black marker pen has been run through the headlines, photographs and text. Underneath a caption says this is "how freedom of speech looks in Belarus".

Postcards

Leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza writes that it is the first time since communism fell in 1989 it has published a censored front page. It invites its readers to send an enclosed Amnesty International postcard to Belarussian President Lukashenko expressing concern about his lack of tolerance for dissent.

The human rights group has also put up 30,000 posters in major Polish cities and Brussels. The posters are portraits of five Belarussian politicians and journalists. Each face has grey masking tape placed over the mouth.

Opposition leaders in the former Soviet republic say Mr Lukashenko has become increasingly authoritarian, suppressing freedom of speech and jailing dissenters.


Story and related links ....

• Belarus-Poland dispute escalates

Updates, 14 December 2005 ....

The parliament of Belarus has passed a law intended to stop mass protests - ahead of 2006 presidential elections.

The law will make it a criminal offence to "discredit" the Belarusian state both within Belarus and abroad - with a three year jail term for offenders.

• Belarus tightens up protest laws
• Belarus coverage by MosNews.com

Judith Miller upheld her own principles

"I'm sure I did many things that were not completely perfect in the eyes of either First Amendment absolutists or those who wrote every day saying 'Testify, testify, you're covering up for these people,'"....

"I am very, very proud to be able to say that I got things that no other journalist has ever gotten out of a process like this," Ms. Miller told the newsroom.

- New York Times

You bet your germy jailhouse tee, Ms Miller, you "got things no other journalist has ever gotten," like all that extra jail time -- in defense of slime peddlers. Can't wait for the book -- not.

Whatever the outcome of the Fitzgerald investigation, I won't be convinced that Judith Miller was not covering corruption. Her behavior over the past four years has a stench of insiderness that disgraces her profession.

In my book (based on more facts than Miller's WMD hype for invading Iraq), she's the opposite of a First Amendment hero. I've always suspected her as a CIA operative, but -- unlike Valerie Plame's outing -- we'll probably never know, will we?

And if I'm wrong I'll eat that shirt.

They Shoot News Anchors, Don't They?

Earlier this week I mentioned Jack Welch's interview on CNBC's Squawk Box. I'm still waiting to hear that he's been named the gulf coast czar. Stay tuned....

Welch was mentioned again today in an interesting article by Nikki Finke in LA Weekly:

If big media look like they're propping up W's presidency, they are.

Once upon a time, large corporations and their executives typically avoided any public discussion of their politics because partisan positions alienated customers and employees. But all of that changed after GE bought NBC in 1986. For seemingly eons, Immelt's predecessor, the legendary Jack Welch, was a rabid right-winger who boasted openly about helping turn former liberals Chris Matthews and Tim Russert into neocons. (And Los Angeles Representative Henry Waxman is still waiting for GE to turn over those in-house tapes that would prove once and for all whether Welch, in 2000, ordered his network and cable stations to reverse course and call the election for Bush instead of Gore.)

.... But the real test of pathos vs. profit is still before us: whether the TV newscasters will spend the fresh reservoir of trust earned with the public to not only rattle Bush's cage but also battle their own bosses. If not, it won't be long before TV truth telling will be muzzled permanently.

Read the entire column: Media moguls, not looters, killed Katrina's truth tellers

Jack Welch: Katrina's cost to the government not a problem

Jack Welch, GE's retired CEO who was known as "the king of shareholder value," was a guest of CNBC's "Squawk Box" this morning.

When asked about the damage the high cost of Katrina could do to the federal budget, Welch sanguinely predicted that the $200 billion, going into rebuilding projects and jobs, will flow through the economy, providing a stimulative effect, "just as the tax breaks did."

Wow. The heads of the military-industrial complex and their Republican subsidiary get it: federal spending. And it ain't such a bad thing -- not when it's flooded through the proper channels.

These are the "investor class" folks who mailed $300 checks with one hand while pouring unconscionable tax breaks on the filthy rich with the other. Middle class workers are now picking up the tab: over $1700 in additional state and local taxes and fees each year and a federal deficit spinning from a tropical depression into a full-flown hurricane.

Only ideology and blind greed (excuse the redundancy) keep those in the cradle of power from seeing that $200 billion spent on the country's infrastructure before a catastrophe like Katrina would have provided as much economic stimulation as it will after it's too late to help those who died and suffered because of government inaction, incompetence and willful ignorance.

Bushcorp Writhes in Its Own 'Last Throes'

After three long years of misleading Americans on the Iraq invasion and occupation, George Bush and his administration have destroyed whatever trust we had placed in them. No doubt as they writhe in their last bitter throes before combusting into ignominy, Bush and his loyalists will redouble their efforts to obstruct the tides of truth and bury the mountains of lies that have destroyed their administration's credibility. That's the nature of the Bush gang.

Such cowardly strategies have long since lost their effectiveness, however. No one paying attention to the surrounding world retains a scintilla of trust in the words or the competence of George Bush. The long-sufferance of the American people has been exhausted. Bush and his gang of co-conspirators stand exposed and they must be held accountable. That's the nature of democracy.

In Iraq, the promised WMD's evaporated into the desert haze, the flowers that were supposed to greet our soldiers were obliterated by our bombs, and the barrels of purple ink failed to resurrect the tens of thousands of Iraqi lives "liberated" from earth's physical realm.

Granted, all those terrified Iraqi children were not "slaughtered by their own leader." So are we expected to applaud the war president who saved them with his own deadly brand of freedom? What a comfort to their families that must be! What an outrage to the rest of the world. And what a recruiting tool for terrorists.

Since Heirmann G. Dubya Bush pranced across the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln two years ago and declared "Mission Accomplished," his march to victory in Iraq has turned more corners than Air Force One's flight pattern of 9/11.

Dick Cheney, his VP and COO, rounding yet another corner to imminent glory, claimed recently that the Iraq insurgency is in its last throes. He offered no prediction as to how long a last throe lasts: maybe five years... ten years... generations? In an extended interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer Thursday, the Dick's body double rattled off a smug definition of "throes," but refused the opportunity to define "last."

Here's a hint, Mr. Smirkoff, for you to lug back to your hidden cave and gnaw on with the side or your lying mouth that still works -- we're building permanent military bases in Iraq. And Halliburton, with a $25 billion market cap, has seen its stock price quadruple since the summer of 2002. Does that help you get a handle on reality?

Later in the week, Dubya's right arm and bosom buddy Karl Rove sloshed an overflowing White House jar of slop onto a delighted crowd of New York scatologists:

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Karl the Pit Rover gushed full-throated onto the conservative throng.

Nasty try, Karl and Dick and all the other reverberators of the P-NAC "batty-whacked" club -- Project for the New American Century -- but Americans are no longer as confused as you may think. Every time you secretly sneak another dead American back into the country from Iraq, someone takes notice. The bodies are mounting. Their spirits cry out for justice.

The American people deserve leaders we can trust. George Bush and his administration have failed in honesty and integrity and competency. We must hold them accountable. Now. 2008 is several years too late.


Ex-GOP co-chairman will be new CPB president

Now we know for certain, the whole funding debate on public broadcasting was a sham. The new president and chief executive of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was announced Thursday. A real shocker, too -- the former Republican Party co-chairwoman from 1997-2001, Patricia S. Harrison.

Later the same day, the Republican-controlled House voted to restore $100 million that had been cut from the corporation's $400 million budget last week by the House Appropriations Committee. Double shock, huh.

Ms. Harrison has no experience in broadcasting, but since when does competence matter to this admimistration? She knows the party line.

Republicans appear determined to turn public broadcasting into another of their propaganda tools. Whatever happens in future elections, they'll have their own judiciary and, now, their own radio and television network, all paid for by the American taxpayers.

White House Briefing

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com

The Increasingly Unpopular President

When President Bush says "polls go up, and polls go down," he's about half right. Two new public-opinion surveys show Bush's poll numbers are dropping into solidly negative territory.

And a Reality Check

"We'll support Iraqis as they take the lead in providing their own security. Our strategy is clear: We're training Iraqi forces so they can take the fight to the enemy, so they can defend their country. And then our troops will come home with the honor they have earned."
- George Bush

"I know the party line. You know, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, five-star generals, four-star generals, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld: The Iraqis will be ready in whatever time period. . . . But from the ground, I can say with certainty they won't be ready before I leave. And I know I'll be back in Iraq, probably in three or four years. And I don't think they'll be ready then."
- Lt. Kenrick Cato, training officer in Iraq

Downing Street Memo Watch

"... the Downing Street memo accurately foresees the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the administration's attempts to link Saddam to al-Qaida and weapons of mass destruction -- links that were found after the invasion not to exist. The memo's observation that U.S. intelligence would be shaped to policy might be mistaken, but the administration did wind up using flawed analysis to justify its war policy to the American people...."
- Houston Chronicle editorial

Cavuto Redux

" 'Is it any wonder that the President will sit down for an interview with Fox News?' one reporter asked at the Atlantic event last night. '[The White House] couldn't come up with easier questions themselves.' "
- Garrett M. Graff

Read the complete column here.. White House Briefing