If you have followed the New York Times' coverage of the pro democracy protests in Wisconsin and Ohio, you can't help see how that once proud newspaper has become a Faux News style propaganda rag for the rich, for their corporations, for the GOP and against middle class and poor Americans.

I for one am sick and tired of that paper's content being comparable to that which one flushes down the toilet. If you don't like this, you should contact their circulation department, the one that is responsible for newspaper sales. As a customer, former customer, or someone who refuses to pay for their biased garbage, that's where you have the most leverage.

circulation@nytimes.com

Whenever you see a biased article, it also is a good idea to directly email the reporter(s) propagandist(s) who wrote it.

I'm sure you have a list of grievances against that rightist propaganda rag. Here are some of mine.

1) Refusing to acknowledge the fact that the Wisconsin and Ohio protests are pro democracy protests.

2) Failing to acknowledge the fact that the teabagger counter protests which the Times is promoting are tiny and completely staged by the Koch brothers.

3) Running public relations pieces glorifying Scott Walker instead of doing actual news coverage.

4) Censoring the fact that Wisconsin's deficits could easily be converted to surpluses by making Walker's rich campaign contributors pay their fair share in taxes.

5) Failing to acknowledge that the right to organize unions and the right to strike are universally recognized human rights.

6) Giving far more ink and pixels to the side of the rich and the Republicans than to the side of middle class Americans.

7) The general pattern of rightist propaganda at the NY Times.

8) The heavy news censorship at that paper which rivals that under Soviet Pravda.

You don't need to live in NY to take part in this action. This is a national propaganda rag, and they want circulation dollars from throughout the US. Please contact them now!

circulation@nytimes.com

Photos: Nemo's great uncle

qnr

 

Photo: Muffett

Chris Hedges used to be a corporate propagandist for the New York Times. Now, he writes books for the same corporate elites, pushing their agenda in snide and cynical ways.

Hedges found a novel minority group to scapegoat, a classic fascist technique, in his book I Don't Believe in Atheists. In that book, Hedges coopts the language of the peace movement to demonize everyone who abstains from participating in the single biggest cause of war, religion. Of course, the wars that Hedges promotes through his efforts to promote religion are highly profitable to his corporate overlords.

Now, Hedges' is attacking a favorite target of corporations and the extreme right, those of us who are liberal. He uses the same techniques that the right has used for far too long to try to enforce the political hegemony of corporations and the financial elites. The only significant difference between Hedges' and Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh is that he hijacks the language of the left to promote the same agenda.

What is one of Hedges' favorite techniques to demonize liberals? He parrots the right's claims of which institutions are "liberal," institutions that sometimes fail to remotely resemble anything liberal. Check out this passage from Hedges' latest propaganda tome, The Death of the Liberal Class.

The liberal class refuses to recognize the obvious because it does not want to lose its comfortable and often well-paid perch. Churches and universities—in elite schools such as Princeton, professors can earn $180,000 a year—enjoy tax-exempt status as long as they refrain from overt political critiques. Labor leaders make lavish salaries and are considered junior partners within corporate capitalism as long as they do not speak in the language of class struggle. Politicians, like generals, are loyal to the demands of the corporate state in power and retire to become millionaires as lobbyists or corporate managers. Artists who use their talents to foster the myths and illusions that bombard our society live comfortably in the Hollywood Hills.

The media, the church, the university, the Democratic Party, the arts, and labor unions—the pillars of the liberal class—have been bought off with corporate money and promises of scraps tossed to them by the narrow circles of power. Journalists, who prize access to the powerful more than they prize truth, report lies and propaganda to propel us into a war in Iraq. Many of these same journalists assured us it was prudent to entrust our life savings to a financial system run by speculators and thieves. Those life savings were gutted. The media, catering to corporate advertisers and sponsors, at the same time renders invisible whole sections of the population whose misery, poverty, and grievances should be the principal focus of journalism.

Hedges' attacks on universities remind me a lot of the attacks on universities by Pinochet and other murderous tools of the global elites. This dubious critique is rather sneaky, though. It's no big secret that university administrators are cautious and rightist in their approach. That led to the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. However, Hedges' claims about the faculty and staffs in academia are wildly broad. Faculty and staff in colleges and universities are still major centers of resistance to the corporate hegemony. Hedges often lionizes Noam Chomsky in order to try to bolster his leftist credentials. Yet, Chomsky is a professor at an elite university.

Hedges might have a point if his critiques of academia were limited to Business Administration and Economics departments. However, Hedges isn't interested in analysis. Demonization of liberals is the tired and childish game he prefers.

Now, let's look at the other institutions that Hedges labels as "liberal," including media, the church, the Democratic Party, the arts, and labor unions." The corporate media are rightist, largely due to media concentration that squelches the competition necessary for liberals to be heard. To blame liberals for a rightist media is the height of Palinesque political burlesque.

As for the church, is Hedges joking? Religion is, by its very nature, reactionary, backwards, elitist, and corrupt. When religious individuals do social good, they inevitably go against the tenets of their religions. Religion is no more "liberal" than Hedges is "progressive" or "leftist."

Hedges also shows tremendous ignorance about the Democratic Party and its history. Most Democratic voters are liberal or progressive, but the institution itself barely can be considered a real political party. It always has functioned as a networking society for politicians, special interests, and their employees. Claiming the Democratic Party as a liberal institution would be comical if Hedges wasn't using such claims to attack people who actually are liberal.

As for the arts and organized labor, both are liberal institutions. Both do offer resistance to the wealthy elites that Hedges criticizes while doing their dirty work. Both resist the power of those elites while under a state of siege that has gone on at least since 1980. If Hedges thinks those two liberal institutions have failed or dead, how does that offer any kind of resistance to anything? Why does Hedges go out of his way to weaken those institutions even further instead of calling for improved funding and laws to make them stronger forces for democracy? For instance, issuing a clarion call for the Employee Free Choice Act would have done a lot more good over the past two years than incessant whining about organized labor not doing enough. Hedges seems completely impervious to the concept of solidarity.

Of course, Hedges' love/fear affair with the teabaggers, which he espouses on nearly every interview I hear him on, is hugely beneficial to the corporate and wealthy interests behind that scam. There is nothing that is authentic to the teabagger scam. The gullible who are fooled by it often have legitimate rage, but they have allowed themselves to be misdirected by the oldest tool in the American elites' economic playbook: racism.

Racism kept poor whites siding with slaveowners who were screwing them over, though obviously nowhere near as badly as the slaves. Racism was used, even more often in the South, to divide and conquer labor organizing. Misogyny and heterosexism have been added to the corporatist playbook in the 20th Century. Has Hedges resisted these diversionary tactics that also oppress the majority of people in this country?

Nope.

Instead of attacking racism as the central organizing tactic behind the teabagger scam, Hedges has a history of a drooling fascination with white supremacy. Here's a passage from his "Liberals Are Useless" rant. (Yes, I know, it's really Chris Hedges who is worse than useless.)

I was also at the time a member of the Greater Boston YMCA boxing team. We fought on Saturday nights for $25 in arenas in working-class neighborhoods like Charlestown. My closest friends were construction workers and pot washers. They worked hard. They believed in unions. They wanted a better life, which few of them ever got. We used to run five miles after our nightly training, passing through the Mission Main and Mission Extension Housing Projects, and they would joke, “I hope we get mugged.” They knew precisely what to do with people who abused them. They may not have been liberal, they may not have finished high school, but they were far more grounded than most of those I studied with across the Charles River. They would have felt awkward, and would have been made to feel awkward, at the little gatherings of progressive and liberal intellectuals at Harvard, but you could trust and rely on them.

Why is it that the weakest and most sniveling of men always have the silliest macho fantasies? Why does Hedges go for the most ridiculous divide and conquer tactics and pretend that people of color, who also are often working class, and liberals are the ones abusing the working class? Hedges is doing the bidding of the corporate overlords who make life far too much of an abusive, awkward, and painful experience for everyone who isn't rich.

I've already written about how Hedges goes along with the agenda of his former employer, the New York Times, to wildly exaggerate the supposed power of the teabaggers in order to try to intimidate liberals into going along with the rightist takeover of American politics. Teabagging Inc. is the real life equivalent of the apocryphal Potemkin Villages in exaggerated accounts of Russian history. Teabagging Inc is a fake village filled with just enough real idiots to make the scam appear credible. Hedges' talks about proto fascist elements in America. They certainly do exist, but they are the corporate orchestrators of the teabagger scam, not the suckers who fall for it enough to participate in the staged and inauthentic protests.

For someone who pretends to be morally superior to liberals, Hedges nihilism and defeatism make his political involvement not merely useless, but counterproductive. Calls to action would be vastly superior to Hedges' incessant whining. Exposing the scams of the right would be a productive and worthwhile stance by Hedges. Yet, Hedges chooses to act as a cog in the same corporatist machine instead.

Chris Hedges and Jon Stewart play disturbingly similar roles, with equally tedious behavior. Hedges' is corporate America's reliable "leftist" who devotes all of his time to savaging the left, while Stewart is the same elites' reliable "liberal," who ridicules and attempts to marginalize liberals and liberal points of view. Both of them spew bigoted nonsense to further the corporatist divide and conquer plan.

Neither of them are fooling me in the slightest.

 

President Obama was incredibly stupid to renominate Bernanke to be in charge of the Federal Reserve Board. Senate Democrats were even dumber when they didn't block the nomination.

Bernanke certainly didn't deserve to keep his job. His negligence and his lobbying against reregulation of financial markets were major factors in causing the financial crisis. His misuse of the bailouts to exclusively help the banksters instead of bailing out the people is one of the reasons why the economy is so execrable.

Yet, those are not the only reasons why Darth Bernanke should not have gotten the job. He is a partisan, Republican hack. Check out this from the 11/3/10 New York Times:

The Federal Reserve, getting ahead of the battles that will dominate national politics over the next two years, moved Wednesday to jolt the economy into recovery with a bold but risky plan to pump $600 billion into the banking system.

A day earlier, Republicans swept to a majority in the House on an antideficit platform, virtually guaranteeing that they would clash with the Obama administration over the best way to nurture a fragile recovery.

The plan wasn't particularly "risky," but that's the typical rightist bias of the Times. What is so interesting is that Bernanke deliberately timed the stimulus to be the day after the election, so it wouldn't have the slightest chance of helping the Democrats. Middle class and poor Americans were used as cannon fodder in Bernanke's battles for the GOP.

It is also useful to note that the Times censored the role of partisan politics in Bernanke's decision to delay this stimulus.

Image: makelessnoise

 

Chris Hedges is not particularly well regarded among most atheists, and with good reason. His anti atheist bigotry and scapegoating have become legendary. I could discuss his fanatical bigotry at length, but there are other elements of his attitudes and ideology that deserve critique.

One of the things that I find so disturbing about Hedges is the ahistorical nature of his analysis. Let's look at his commentary on British Petroleum and the people that enable it. The opening sentence may be more literate than the rantings of Sarah Palin, but it is equally ill informed as the rankest Palin nonsense. (TruthDig 5/17/10)

Cultures that do not recognize that human life and the natural world have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, cannibalize themselves until they die.

This is even more amazing given the fact that Hedges' worked as a reporter in the former Yugoslavia. (The fact that he worked for a vapid, rightist publication like the New York Times does make it a bit less surprising, though.) In another commentary, he engages in a particularly ludicrous example of economic reductionism, claiming that the Balkan War was caused entirely by economic collapse, rather than ethnic hatreds. Hedges' conveniently neglects the fact that the most influential cause of the carnage in what once was Yugoslavia was religion. The brutal totalitarian regime under Tito was able to keep the lid on those religious hatreds, but they exploded when the Soviet Union fell and when the charismatic strongman was no longer there.

Hedges has written passionately about the death and suffering there, but he has neglected to even notice that the people inflicting the suffering did so out of their belief "that human life and the natural world have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value." Their notion of the sacred was as intense and meaningful to them as Hedges' view of the sacred is to him.

One could provide plenty of other examples of the brutal and murderous nature of belief in the sacred. Many histories of slavery in the US have conveniently failed to mention the sacred component of supporting slavery in a society that believed in a Christian Bible the endorses the monstrous practice. In every place where slavery was abolished, the vast majority of the clergy opposed abolition, and quoted the Bible to support their notion of the sacred. This was just as true during the campaigns for abolition in Northern states as it was during the treasonous Confederacy. The genocide of the vast majority of the indigenous people of this country was as sacred to the most of the killers as anything Hedges' holds sacred.

Ultimately, the word "sacred" has no basis in fact, reason, or observation. It can mean anything to anyone, and once asserted, justifies an absolutist pursuit in whatever direction it is assigned. That is incredibly dangerous.

However, Hedges' assertion of the sacred, also has another counterproductive element to it. It allows him to project a sense of superiority over the people who don't have his particular sense of the sacred. This is by no means Hedges' only effort to establish how much better he is than everyone else.

Aside from atheists, Hedges seems to assert the greatest sense of superiority over liberals, of all people. In his sermon Liberals Are useless, Hedges has this to say about liberals.

Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.

Anyone who doesn't see the irony in the last sentence hasn't read much of Hedges' work. Anyone who has actually worked with liberals who are challenging the permanent war economy can easily grasp how ludicrous this caricature is.

Even when liberals do make the mistakes Hedges criticizes us for, they do so in a system that Hedges is very much a part of. Most liberals are dissatisfied with the Democrats, but the Republicans always manage to be a little worse in their deeds and truly terrifying in their words. The corporate media that Hedges used to be very much a part of, try to narrow the possible choices down to such a narrow range that the conservative Democrats who deserve Hedges' wrath often seem to be the only reasonable alternative.

One of the most useful tools of frightening liberals into staying in line has been the largely Astroturf teabagger "movement." The National Equality March, which was hastily organized and which had a very low budget and little if any corporate support, turned out 200,000 people in DC, ten to one hundred times the turnout for the teabagger rallies in our nation's capital. Those teabagger rallies were much better funded, and an army of rightist media elites promoted the shit out of them. Yet, the corporate media has wildly exaggerated the strength of the teabagger scam, focusing on the most scary sounding fringe elements to try to make liberals witless with fear.

It certainly scared Hedges senseless. In his commentary, "Is America ‘Yearning for Fascism’?," Hedges engages in sensationalistic fear mongering that puts his former corporate media colleagues to shame. If you took what he wrote seriously, you would think that brownshirts were coming for us all within the next few months.

Hedges is quite correct that there is a lot of perfectly legitimate anger in this country, and he also is correct in noting that liberals have been too frightened to effectively speak to that anger. But, he fails to see that the Palin's and Beck's of this country have been wildly ineffective at getting their followers to do more than watch their shows and buy their products. The teabaggers are a paper tiger, one with a paper trail to corporate lobbyists and PR people. Yet, Hedges would have us believe that they are an enormous army poised to take over the country.

Hedges perpetuates so much disinformation that permeates the corporate media. Then, he sets himself up as morally superior to liberals and others who base their decisions on that very same bogus information. Hedges is worse than useless. He is a major part of the problem. Chris Hedges has unwittingly played a function surprisingly similar to that of Judith Miller, though his intent is different. Hedges functions as a cog in the same machine that keeps many liberals doing exactly what Hedges condemns them for. Sigh.

Hedges' rhetoric about liberals not being willing to step "out of the mainstream" is bizarre and counterproductive as well. On the vast majority of issues, liberal views are the mainstream. Most people are against the Iraq War, and the healthcare plan that consistently polled the highest was Medicare for All. On queer issues, which the readers of this blog are usually the most familiar, the only issue where the nation is deeply divided is same sex marriage recognition. On the rest of queer civil rights disputes, the overwhelming majority of Americans are on the liberal side of the issue.

Tricking liberals into thinking that we are isolated and marginal is one of things that corporate media do best. Yet, Hedges seems incapable of stepping out of the mindset promoted by his former employers to see this.

The aspect of Hedges' discourse that pisses me off the most is its passivity, resulting from its sterile, faux moral superiority. Instead of working to point out the actual facts and proposing useful actions that people can take, Hedges isolates himself in his little bubble and pontificates downward at the rest of us. Telling people they are useless doesn't motivate them to take action or even look for alternative points of view. Hedges really, really needs to read some Howard Zinn.

"TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

Sometimes I wonder if liberals should all bow in the direction of Hedges just once, say "we are in awe of your superiority," and feed his ego in the hopes that he would try to write or do something productive for a change.

 

Photo: Takver

The New York Times has been a corrupt, unreliable, and batshit crazy rightist paper for decades. This recent item from the blog of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) is a discusses a rather blatant example of this.

Do you want to know what environmentalists think of the "compromise" climate bill unveiled by senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman yesterday? If so, don't read the New York Times today. Times reporter John M. Broder (5/13/10) quotes Kerry, Barack Obama (a supporter of the bill) and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (formerly a somewhat iffy supporter).

He also references the feelings of two main industry groups--the Edison Electric Institute and the American Petroleum Institute--as well as BP, ConocoPhillips and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Then, in the second-to-last graph:

Some environmental advocates were involved in drafting the bill and were highly supportive. But other environmentalists said the bill did not go far enough and offered too many concessions to win industry support.

Well, that tells you...nothing.

Assessments from environmental groups aren't hard to come by. The headline of the Public Citizen press release conveys their view: "It's a Nuclear Energy-Promoting, Oil Drilling-Championing, Coal Mining-Boosting Gift." The Institute for Public Accuracy's release refers to a " Bonanza of Corporate Giveaways." Such views would have been helpful for readers interested in assessing the bill's actual contents.

The Public Citizen press release tells you what the bill actually does on Global Warming.

Oil
Apparently oblivious to the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the legislation expands offshore drilling. In fact, all new offshore drilling, leasing and permitting should be halted.

Section 1202 allows states to keep 37.5 percent of oil and gas royalty money. That’s like saying because more rich people live in California and New York compared to Mississippi and New Mexico, those higher-income states should be able to keep more federal dollars raised from income taxes. Royalty revenue sharing is patently unfair – especially because the disaster in Gulf shows that an oil spill does not respect state boundaries.

Coal
Section 1412 establishes a carbon tax paid by ratepayers and collected by utilities to fund carbon capture and storage (CCS) – with no money allocated to rooftop solar or energy efficiency investments. Section 1431 will provide valuable emissions allowances for free to coal utilities pursuing CCS – an untested, risky strategy that benefits the coal industry and is gobbling up a lion’s share of subsidies that otherwise could go to renewable energy development.

Merchant coal power plants (whose rates are not regulated) will get roughly 5 percent of the free allowances, which will provide opportunities for them to gouge consumers.

And while the nuclear and coal industries will receive a lot of taxpayer money and loan guarantees, Section 1604 states that “voluntary” renewable energy markets are “efficient and effective programs” and states that “the policy of the United States is to continue to support the growth of these markets.” This is backward: Renewable energy should be getting the guarantees, rather than the coal and nuclear industries.

So much for it being a "climate bill," unless you consider hastening the pace of Global Warming a "climate bill." Just like the wealthcare bill, we will see Republicans voting against extreme right legislation that falls completely within their political agenda in a display of opposition as fake as anything that has ever appeared on pro wrestling. Even a klutz like Hulk Hogan was better at faking things.

Friends of the Earth is urging people to contact Congress and get a real climate bill. Please go to their Action Alert.

 

Contrary to far right propaganda, the New York Times is a very conservative, Republican paper with a strong pro-Roman Catholic bias. They have been downplaying the long running story of rampant child molestation in that church's clergy for years. If the Times and other papers were more honest and less biased, the far greater coverage of the story would have prevented a lot of rapes and gotten a lot of priests thrown in prison where they belong. Yet, on those rare occasions when that paper actually does cover the clerical rape of children, Roman Catholic supremacists throw the most vile of tantrums.

If you aren't familiar with them, the "Catholic League" is a tiny racist, sexist, heterosexist, and Roman Catholic supremacist hate group run by the reprehensible Bill Donohue. In a 3/26/10 press release, they actually said the following.

Let's say Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope, did in fact learn of the transfer. So what? Wasn't that what he expected to happen? After all, we know from a March 16 Times story that when Ratzinger's subordinates recommended therapy for Hullermann, he approved it. That was the drill of the day: after being treated, the patient (I prefer the term offender) returns to work. It's still the drill of the day in many secular quarters today, particularly in the public schools. A more hard-line approach, obviously, makes more sense, but the therapeutic industry is very powerful.

In other words, there is no real news in today's news story. So why print it? To keep the flame alive. Look for the Times to run another story saying they have proof Ratzinger knew of the transfer. Did they think that after he approved the therapy that Hullermann would be sent to the Gulag?

Yesterday's Times story on the half-century old case concerning Father Lawrence Murphy will be the subject of an op-ed page ad in Tuesday's New York Times. Meanwhile, I am taking advantage of every TV opportunity to set the record straight. The pope is a great man, and the Catholic League is proud to stand by him.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I'm seldom at a loss of words for anything. However, in this case, I cannot find words strong enough to describe my revulsion at this statement. Sickening doesn't even begin to cover it.

One thing is for sure. No decent, moral human being would stand by Ratzi at this point.

Photo: eürodäna

 

The New York Times doesn't want you to know who this man is.



Jonathan Tasini is running a primary challenge against the de facto Republican incumbent, Kirstin Gillibrand. I'm supporting Tasini. Tasini is a Real Democrat, supporting the party's positions on most issues, which is a refreshing change from both Ms. Gillibrand and Chuck "Loves Torture" Schumer.

The New York Times has been censoring coverage of his campaign, just as they did when he ran a primary challenge against Hillary Clinton. It's difficult to tell whether the far right bias of the Times or the fact that Tasini sued the paper years ago is playing a bigger role in the Times' censorship of his campaign.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR at www.fair.org) has been calling attention to this act of media censorship. Here are two articles on their website addressing the issue.

'Considering' a Campaign More Newsworthy Than Conducting One? (1/12/10)

Corporate Media Love a Horserace--but They Love Gatekeeping Even More (1/13/10)

The first article points out that the Times is covering Harold Ford's possible run against Gillibrand, while pointedly excluding Tasini's actual campaign. The second article makes an important point on how the Times is keeping its readers from knowing even how Tasini's campaign might effect the race.

The Times has lately run two extensive stories (1/11/11, 1/13/10) on whether Harold Ford, a former representative from Tennessee, would also run against Gillibrand--both of which ignored the fact that it was already a two-person race. Tasini, a writer and labor organizer, ran once before for the same seat, and got 17 percent of the vote against Hillary Clinton--a politician with greater name recognition than either Gillibrand or Ford.

You don't have to be Nate Silver to realize that a candidate who has the possibility to get 17 percent of the vote could have a major impact in a three-person race; even if you have a crystal ball that tells you that Tasini won't get more than that this time, it's impossible to handicap the primary without having some sense of who those voters are and what they are likely to do faced with three choices.

It is so important to have media watchdogs like FAIR to remind us just how censored and unreliable corporate media outlets are. The New York Times resembles the Soviet Pravda more with each passing day, with corporations replacing commissars as the totalitarians who control people's access to information.

 

Photo: Mat Honan

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) is a fabulous organization that challenges one of my blog's biggest pet peeves, rightist bias in the corporate media. They do wonderful work, and I encourage you to follow their work and support it.

It's the end of the year, and people are giving out awards, so FAIR is giving out the 2009 P.U.-Litzer Awards, acknowledging the crappy reporting that discourages intelligent people from buying newspapers and news magazines and causes people to avoid cable "news" networks. Here's the contents of their 12/22/09 press release announcing these not prestigious awards.

For 17 years our colleagues Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have worked with FAIR to present the P.U.-Litzers, a year-end review of some of the stinkiest examples of corporate media malfeasance, spin and just plain outrageousness.

Starting this year, FAIR has the somewhat dubious honor of reviewing the nominees and selecting the winners. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. So, without further ado, we present the 2009 P.U.-Litzers.

--The Remembering Reagan Award
WINNER: Joe Klein, Time

Time columnist Joe Klein (12/3/09), not altogether impressed by Obama's announcement of a troop escalation in Afghanistan, wrote that a president "must lead the charge--passionately and, yes, with a touch of anger."

He described the better way to do this:

Ronald Reagan would have done it differently. He would have told a story. It might not have been a true story, but it would have had resonance. He might have found, or created, a grieving spouse--a young investment banker whose wife had died in the World Trade Center--who enlisted immediately after the attacks...and then gave his life, heroically, defending a school for girls in Kandahar. Reagan would have inspired tears, outrage, passion, a rush to recruiting centers across the nation.

Ah, Reagan--now there was a president who could inspire people to fight and die based on lies.

--The Cheney 2012 Award
WINNER: Jon Meacham, Newsweek

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham declared (12/7/09) that Dick Cheney running for president in 2012 would be "good for the Republicans and good for the country." He explained that "Cheney is a man of conviction, has a record on which he can be judged, and whatever the result, there could be no ambiguity about the will of the people.... A campaign would also give us an occasion that history denied us in 2008: an opportunity to adjudicate the George W. Bush years in a direct way."

While the 2008 election might have seemed a sufficient judgment of the Bush years, it's worth pointing out that at beginning of the year (1/19/09), Meacham was adamantly opposed to re-hashing Cheney's record, calling it "the rough equivalent of pornography--briefly engaging, perhaps, but utterly predictable and finally repetitive." The difference? That was in response to the idea that Cheney should be held accountable for lawbreaking. Apparently a few months later, the same record is grounds for a White House run.

--The Them Not Us Award
WINNER: Martin Fackler, New York Times

The New York Times (11/21/09) describes the severe problems with Japan's elite media--a horror show where "reporters from major news media outlets are stationed inside government offices and enjoy close, constant access to officials. The system has long been criticized as antidemocratic by both foreign and Japanese analysts, who charge that it has produced a relatively spineless press that feels more accountable to its official sources than to the public. In their apparent reluctance to criticize the government, the critics say, the news media fail to serve as an effective check on authority."

The mind reels.

--Thin-Skinned Pundits Award
WINNER: Dana Milbank, Washington Post

Washington Post reporters Dana Milbank and Chris Cilizza got into trouble when, in an episode of their "Mouthpiece Theater" web video series, they suggested brands of beer that would be appropriate for various politicians. What would Hillary Clinton drink? Apparently something called "Mad Bitch." The video, unsurprisingly, was roundly criticized, and was pulled from the Post site. So what lesson was learned? Milbank complained (8/6/09) that "it's a brutal world out there in the blogosphere.... I'm often surprised by the ferocity out there, but I probably shouldn't be."

Yes, the problem with calling someone a "bitch" is the "ferocity" of your critics.

--The Sheer O'Reillyness Award
WINNER: Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Channel--TWICE!

1) Asked by a Canadian viewer, "Has anyone noticed that life expectancy in Canada under our health system is higher than the USA?," Fox's O'Reilly (7/27/09) responded: "Well, that's to be expected, Peter, because we have 10 times as many people as you do. That translates to 10 times as many accidents, crimes, down the line."

2) Drumming up fear of Democrats' tax plans: "Nancy Pelosi and her far-left crew want to raise the top federal tax rate to 45 percent. That's not capitalism. That's Fidel Castro stuff, confiscating wages that people honestly earn."

Perhaps Castro was president of the United States in 1982-86, when the top rate was 50 percent. Or maybe all of the 1970s, when it was 70 percent. Or from 1950-63, when it was 91 percent.

--The Less Talk, More Bombs Award
WINNER: David Broder, Washington Post

Post columnist Broder expressed the conventional wisdom on Barack Obama's deliberations on the Afghanistan War, writing under the headline "Enough Afghan Debate" (11/15/09):

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision--whether or not it is right.

--The Racism Is Dead Award
WINNER: Richard Cohen, Washington Post

Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote (5/5/09): "The justification for affirmative action gets weaker and weaker. Maybe once it was possible to argue that some innocent people had to suffer in the name of progress, but a glance at the White House strongly suggests that things have changed. For most Americans, race has become supremely irrelevant. Everyone knows this. Every poll shows this."

For the record, "every poll" does not actually show this; the vast majority of Americans continues to recognize that racism is still a problem. Cohen went on to write months later--still presumably living in his racism-free world--that he did not believe Iran's claims about its nuclear program, because "these Persians lie like a rug."

--The When in Doubt, Talk to the Boss Award
WINNER: Matt Lauer, NBC News

Today show host Lauer announced a special guest on April 15: "If you really want to know how the economy is affecting the average American, he's the guy to talk to." Who was Lauer talking about? Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke. The ensuing interview touched on the Employee Free Choice Act, which Lauer noted was supported by many unions but opposed by some large corporations--leading him to ask Duke, "What's the truth?" Yes, look for "the truth" about a proposed pro-labor bill from the new CEO of an adamantly anti-labor corporation.

--The Socialist Menace Award
WINNER: Michael Freedman, Newsweek

Newsweek's "We Are All Socialists Now" cover (2/16/09) certainly turned heads, but one of the stories inside explained in more detail the real threat. As senior editor Michael Freedman asked: "Have you noticed that Barack Obama sounds more like the president of France every day?"

The real problem, though, is what that's going to do to us Americans, says Freedman: "If job numbers continue to look dismal, or get even worse, an ever-greater number of people will start looking to the government for support.... It's very easy to imagine a chorus of former American individualists demanding cushy French-style pensions and free British-style healthcare if their private stock funds fail to recover and unemployment inches upward toward 10 percent and remains there."

Pensions and healthcare for all--this is worse than we thought!

--The Iraq All Over Again Award
WINNER: Too Many to Name

After the invasion of Iraq, countless journalists who had treated allegations about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as facts were embarrassed when there were no such weapons to be found. So you'd think they'd be more careful about thinly sourced claims that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. But in 2009, many journalists are still willing to treat such allegations as facts.
-NBC's Chris Matthews (10/4/09): "As if Afghanistan were not enough, now there's Iran's move to get nuclear weapons."
-NBC's David Gregory (10/4/09). "Iran--will talks push that country to give up its nuclear weapons program?"


-Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (9/25/09): "All hell breaking loose as a new nuclear weapons facility is discovered in Iran, proving the mullahs have been lying for years.... Iran's nuclear weapons program has now reached critical mass. And worldwide conflict is very possible. Friday, President Obama, British Prime Minister Brown and French President Sarkozy revealed a secret nuclear weapons facility located inside Iran."

Some even went further, turning allegations of a nuclear weapons program into the discovery of actual nuclear weapons:

-ABC's Good Morning America host Bill Weir (9/26/09): "President Obama and a united front of world leaders charge Iran with secretly building nuclear weapons."

--The Talking Like a Terrorist Award
WINNER: Thomas Friedman, New York Times

In a January 14 column, New York Times superstar pundit Tom Friedman explained Israel's war on Lebanon as an attempt to "educate" the enemy by killing civilians: The Israeli strategy was to "inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical." Friedman added, "The only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians--the families and employers of the militants--to restrain Hezbollah in the future." That strategy of targeting civilians to advance a political agenda is usually known as terrorism; Osama bin Laden couldn't have explained it much better.

--The It Only Bothers Us Now Award
WINNER: Wall Street Journal editorial page

When Barack Obama only called on journalists from a list during a press conference, the Wall Street Journal did not like the new protocol (2/12/09):"We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors."

Actually, Bush was famous for calling only on reporters on an approved list; as he joked at a press conference on the eve of the Iraq War (3/6/03), "This is scripted."

--The No Comment Award
WINNERS: MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski and Rush Limbaugh

When asked by Politico (10/16/09) to name her favorite guest, MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski named arch-conservative Pat Buchanan "because he says what we are all thinking."

Rush Limbaugh on Obama (Fox News Channel, 1/21/09): "We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles...because his father was black."

The last award strongly suggests that Limbaugh really, really needs to get laid. I don't volunteer to help him.

 

The New York Times has a truly shameful history of Iraq war propaganda without even remotely adequate fact checking. Remember Judith Miller?

Sadly, little has changed at the NY Times. Check out this monstrosity from them on 11/20/09 (Hat Tip: Progressive Eruptions)

U.S. Fears Iraqis Will Not Keep Up Rebuilt Projects

BAGHDAD — In its largest reconstruction effort since the Marshall Plan, the United States government has spent $53 billion for relief and reconstruction in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, building tens of thousands of hospitals, water treatment plants, electricity substations, schools and bridges.

But there are growing concerns among American officials that Iraq will not be able to adequately maintain the facilities once the Americans have left, potentially wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and jeopardizing Iraq’s ability to provide basic services to its people.

There are lots of problems with this article that could be discussed at length. However, one just leaps out at you if you have been following the war on Iraq closely.

The vast majority of the "projects" that our government spent $53 billion for simply do not exist.

How do I know this? Most of the corporate media's coverage from Iraq has either been from the Green Zone or from Washington, DC. Yet, there is an obvious source of eye witness info on Iraq: vets.

Iraq Veterans Against the War did a huge public service in its Winter Soldier project, which included a conference, videos, and testimony before Congress. One of the most consistently reported items from their testimony in all the forums was the fact that they saw no rebuilding of Iraq actually being done. The construction they did see was for military bases, not rebuilding the country. If you want to know more about the Winter Soldier testimony and what really is going on in Iraq, I would refer you to the following YouTube playlists.

Winter Soldier 2008

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan

Also, check out IVAW's YouTube Channel.

As for the NY Times propaganda piece, one paragraph from the article is particularly ironic, given the actual facts on the ground in Iraq.

Despite the $53 billion spent by the United States, many Iraqis have criticized the rebuilding effort as wasteful. Ali Ghalib Baban, Iraq’s minister of planning, said it had not had a discernible impact. “Maybe they spent it,” he said, “but Iraq doesn’t feel it.”

How can he feel something that is completely imaginary?

I bet the corporate media will try to use this new angle to justify an eternal occupation of Iraq. The whole thing is sick and wrong.

 

The New York Times isn't exactly a bastion of journalism. They are corporate media shills just one step above Faux News and Lou Dobbs. So, their endorsements are not exactly representative of the interests of the majority of the people who live here.

Even worse, this paper is financially beholden to Michael Bloomberg. Some of Bloomberg's tens of millions of dollars spent to buy the election go to ads on the NY Times website. They also are desperate, since they are losing money. So, it isn't shocking that they gave middle class readers the finger by endorsing would be Mayor for Life Bloomberg.

What is surprising is the way they endorsed the Little Mayor That Couldn't. They practically drooled over the worst NYC Mayor since Jimmy Walker. Here's a paragraph so divorced from the reality we experience here in NYC that one can not help but think that writing the editorial was outsourced abroad.

NY Times 10/23/09:

What makes the mayor stand out is not his political skill, although he has come a long way since his first clumsy days in office. He has run the $60 billion government with a keen attention to accountability and efficiency. He has chosen some of the best people in the country to work for him, and he has mostly let them do their jobs. As a result, many city services operate better than they have for years. The garbage mostly disappears on time. The police and fire departments respond quickly. Mr. Bloomberg’s 311 phone line allows New Yorkers to complain to a live human being. Often, they even see tangible results.

Let's compare this to the facts:

1) Outside of Manhattan, trash delivery is still spotty. Most people in NYC don't live in Manhattan.

2) It is generally difficult to impossible to get the NYPD to file a crime report, much less solve the crime.

3) The NYPD takes forever to show up when you call them, if they show up at all.

4) 311 is a terrible mess. It's as if it is run by the Deptartment Of Wrong Answers. Even worse, city agencies won't answer their direct numbers unless you are from a wealthy interest. Instead they insist you call 311, which gives incorrect information and misdirects calls.

5) Seldom do any people who are middle class or poor see any tangible results from the city government. The rich do get tons of taxpayer money shoveled at them, though.

The article goes on to say that Blomberg's efforts to spending millions of dollars to buy the election and his refusal to tolerate dissent are "small blemishes." That speaks volumes about the corporate media's hatred and contempt for democracy and civil liberties.

Whenever anybody says the Times is a liberal newspaper, I giggle.

If you like that funky, offbeat idea called democracy, you may be looking for someone else to vote for than Bloomberg. If you want something done about the execrable morass of NYC city government, you should definitely pick someone who won't run the city like a failed bank or brokerage firm. It's time for a decent mayor and a decent human being.

It's time for Bill Thompson for Mayor.



Photo (of Bloomberg at top): Edwin Martinez1

Gail Collins, in her latest New York Times Op-Ed piece, decided to trash Levi Johnston for daring to stand up to Sarah Palin by telling the truth about the former GOP Vice Presidential candidate after the abusive behavior he has experienced from Palin for some time now.

I won't dignify the trashy, snarky, tone of Ms. Collins' rant by repeating what she said. You can follow the link above if you want to read her reprehensible and unprofessional nonsense. Instead, I'll focus on the social implications. Siding with a wealthy and powerful Republican like Sarah Palin against a middle class teenager without power or connections should raise alarm bells. Considering how terrible Sarah Palin has been to Johnston and to her own daughter, using them as props for her doomed and bizarre political ambitions and acting like they have no minds or rights of their own, Collins' defense of Palin is even more disturbing.

To the Palins and the Collins of the world, middle class Americans should just happily go along with whatever the rich want, however badly they treat us. We are little more than peasants in this world view.

Sadly, Collins editorial equivalent of a middle finger to the middle class is nothing terrible shocking or unusual coming from the New York Times. That paper wages class warfare against the middle class and the poor every day. I find it ironic when the far right complains about "class warfare," as if the only people practicing it are populist liberals. The overwhelming majority of class warfare is by the rich people the far right is shilling for.

Gail Collins may not be to the extreme right, but she shares their agenda of defending wealth, privilege, and power. In that, she is the epitome of the mainstream conservative New York Times. Liberal media bias my ass.

 

There is so much sickening crap going on it's difficult to keep up. Here are some brief summaries of why we need to change a lot more than which bought politician is in the White House.

Barack Bush (1):
From the Guardian 5/14/09

The release of more photos of prisoner abuse by US soldiers is "of no benefit" and may inflame opinion against the US, President Barack Obama has said.

The pictures were not "sensational" and every case of abuse had been dealt with by the military, with action taken where appropriate, he said.

President Obama is lying as blatantly as Karl Rove did while he is continuing the Bush Agenda. Obama also is displaying a Bush style contempt for the rule of law.

And, people wonder why so many Americans don't even bother to vote.

Ratzi Serves Up Still More Hypocrisy on His Mideast Trip
This from The Guardian 5/14/09:

Benedict's message contained little of the fraught Middle East politics that have taken a high profile on his trip so far. Instead, he spoke of the importance of the family in the Christian community and encouraged all his listeners to "reject the destructive power of hatred and prejudice, which kills men's souls before it kills their bodies".

Setting aside the fact that souls don't even exist, Ratzinger has an enormous nerve lecturing anyone else about "the destructive power of hatred and prejudice." That monster was the architect of the previous pontiff's viciously heterosexist and misogynistic policies. Ratzi continues to push those policies today. Ratzi criticizing prejudice would be like me criticizing somebody for too long of blog postings.

Bloomberg to Tenants: Drop Dead!
From the New York Times 5/5/09: (Hat Tip Rent Stabilization Association)

The board that oversees rents for New York City’s one million rent-stabilized apartments proposed a range of rent increases on Tuesday, disappointing tenants and their supporters, who say the recession warrants a rent freeze.

In a preliminary vote, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board proposed increases of 2 percent to 4.5 percent for one-year leases and 4 percent to 7.5 percent for two-year leases. Last year, the board approved its highest set of rent increases since 1989 — 4.5 percent on one-year leases and 8.5 percent on two-year leases. The board will hold two public hearings, on June 15 and June 17; it is to take a final vote at a meeting June 23.

The NY Times is a strongly anti-tenant paper which conveniently neglects to mention that the Rent Guidelines Board is made up of Bloomberg appointees who take their marching orders from city hall. These rent increases during a deep recession represent yet another attack by Michael Bloomberg on middle class and poor people in NYC. He really hates anyone who isn't rich.

Barack Bush (2):
This has to be one of the most sickening trial balloons by the Obama Administration so far. (AFP 5/14/09)

Obama mulls 'indefinite detention' of terror suspects

WASHINGTON (AFP) — As part of its plans to close Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration is considering holding some of the detainees indefinitely and without trial on US soil, US media reported Thursday.

President Barack Obama's "administration is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on US soil -- indefinitely and without trial -- as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay," The Wall Street Journal said.

I would like to think that the Wall Street Journal is lying, but I doubt it in this case. Indefinite detentions are the practices of totalitarian states like the former Soviet Union, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Bush regime. Truly free and democratic societies never do this. I had hoped that President Obama would at least reject the Bush regime's contempt for the rule of law, but even that appears to be too much to ask for from this Clintonian Phonycrat.

 

The New York Times just gets more and more rightist and dishonest with each passing day. Check out this lead paragraph on an internal Justice Department investigation on the people responsible for the torture memos.

An internal Justice Department inquiry into the conduct of Bush administration lawyers who wrote secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations has concluded that the authors committed serious lapses of judgment but should not be criminally prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on a draft of the findings.

This is doubly dishonest.

First, the use of the spin term "brutal interrogations" is a deliberate distortion intended to avoid using the factually and legally accurate term "torture." Second, there is a consensus among credible law enforcement and intelligence professionals (Internet trolls aside) that torture is not an even remotely effective interrogation technique. Pretending that torture is a useful method of interrogation is as deliberately dishonest as pretending it is not torture.

It gets even worse.

The opinions permitted the C.I.A. to use a number of interrogation methods that human rights groups have condemned as torture, including waterboarding, wall-slamming, head-slapping and other techniques. The opinions allowed many of these practices to be used repeatedly and in combination.

Excuse me, the fact that these criminal actions are torture is not merely a view of human rights groups or any kind of faction. Facts don't stop being facts merely because they are politically inconvenient or worse for former Bush regime officials and far right ideologues at the New York Times.

Diminishing facts that cannot honestly be disputed merely as views of certain groups is downright dishonest. What's next? Is the Times going to say that 2 + 2 = 4 is something that math teachers have insisted is correct?

Newspapers are supposed to be accurate with the facts. Yet, the Timesis going out of its way to distort and spin facts for a partisan, far right political agenda. Tell me again why liberal and moderates should waste money on this garbage during a deep recession?

 

I found Marc Crispin Miller's excellent blog. I also was impressed when I saw him at a live speaking engagement a while back. He has been a tireless advocate on behalf of people disenfranchised by GOP election fraud and for restoring democracy to America.

"What's Wrong with the New York Times?" is a provocative title for one of his vlog entries. Of course, a 5:48 video cannot begin to discuss everything wrong with the Times and its rightist/pro-GOP bias. However, he does provide an excellent and disturbing example.

Crispin Miller also does an excellent job explaining robocalling and the difference between voter fraud and election fraud.

The New York Times is gloating over the political class' lack of concern about genocide.

House Speaker Now Unsure if Armenian Genocide Motion Will Reach a Vote

Disturbing title, no?

Pelosi's main quote is so typical of what happens these days when Democrats get any pushback from war profiteers and the Bush regime.

“Whether it will come up or not and what the action will be remains to be seen.”

First, the Democrats pretend to have spines; then, there is the pushback; the Democrats start to hedge (see quote); and then, the Democrats do whatever Bush and the Iraq war machine dictate.

Is it any wonder that the congressional Democrats are even or lower in the polls than Bush? (The numbers for the entire Congress are even worse.)

The irony is that the Armenian genocide resolution is such an obvious "yes" vote that opposing it or even refusing to bring it up is inexcusable. Turkey is going to invade Iraq regardless of what the House does. And, the main motive for opposing the resolution is reprehensible: trying to keep military access to Turkey in order to prolong the illegal war in Iraq.

The pro-genocide (and pro-war) tone of the New York Times article was found throughout, though one paragraph showed the complete lack of professionalism so commonly displayed at the Times and throughout the corporate noise machine.

The comments by the speaker, a key supporter of the measure, added to growing evidence that modern-day pragmatism was overwhelming supporters’ demands that the House render a historical verdict on the killings of the Armenians by Ottoman Turks.

Ignoring a genocide in order to prolong a senseless war is hardly "pragmatism." Also, the "historical verdict" of genocide already has been made by historians, though not by propagandists.

Given that queers were targeted and killed in the Holocaust, it is especially important that the queer community support this resolution and oppose any attempts to deny or spin genocide.

Rightist bias in these two publications gets more rabid with each passing day. A really twisted example of this occurred in the Washington Post's ironically named "fact-checker" column. The column consisted of highly deceptive spin and factual errors intended to falsely claim that MoveOn.org's "Betray Us" ad was inaccurate. The Post was propagandizing for the GOP and the corporate interests that profit from the Iraq War in the guise of "fact-checking."

True income for middle class and poor Americans has been declining for years. Many Americans are up to their earlobes in debt. Why should any of us pay to get a bunch of corporate propaganda when we can get actual news over the Internet for free? How much longer will so many people be willing to pay to have their intelligence insulted?

People should stop buying these corporate propaganda rags on the newsstand. Subscriptions should be canceled with explanations as to why those two papers are not worth paying for. We the people have power over corporate interests. We just need to educate ourselves to that fact.

This quote was from one of the interviews that the New York Times did for its article, "Doubts Grow as G.I.’s in Iraq Find Allies in Enemy Ranks.” One question immediately came to my mind when I read this quote:

Only half?

So many in our media and our political elite act as if it is so shocking that so many of the Iraqis our troops are being forced to train in Iraq are fighting against the occupation. Yet, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense.

Just imagine that some foreign government toppled the Bush regime, and then occupied our country, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and stealing our resources. You can bet there would be a huge American insurgency, regardless of how unpopular Bush is. If that foreign power was idiotic enough to train Americans to act as a puppet “American Security Force,” you bet most of those Americans being trained would be using their training to fight off the foreign invaders.

One of the biggest flaws in the mentality of the pro-war ideologues is the inability to put themselves in the place of Iraqis. The refusal of war supporters to acknowledge the humanity of Iraqis because they are (overwhelmingly) Muslims and (mostly) Arabs is not only immoral, it makes them incapable of analyzing the military situation effectively.

Not satisfied with damaging its reputation through its continued employment of faux journalist Judith Miller, the Times continues its relentless propagandizing for the Bush regime.

An article entitled “Foreign Fighters Captured in Iraq Come From 27, Mostly Arab, Lands,” must be terribly embarrassing to it’s author, Dexter Filkins. In it, he goes on about “foreign fighters” captured by the US military, diligently acting as stenographer for Bush regime.

One problem with his article which should be obvious. The author neglects to mention that the vast majority of foreign fighters in Iraq are US troops, forced to fight there due to the Bush regime. This twisted propaganda line is being used to perform the following functions:

1) To make it sound as if any country EXCEPT the US whose citizens are involved in Iraq is meddling with that country’s affairs.

2) To make it sound as if US troops have a legitimate reason to be in Iraq.

3) To lay the political groundwork for potential invasions of Iraq’s neighbors and other Middle Eastern countries.

This is so typical of how “journalists” at the New York Times and so many other corporate media outlets parrot Orwellian Bush regime propaganda rather than reporting in a balanced, reasonable fashion.