Note: I posted this late yesterday, but I felt the need to post it again because this is that serious to me and hopefully to you. Thank you for any rec's and reading, and have a good day.

"The Best Political Team on Television", huh?

"The Most Trusted Name in News", huh?

"CNN= Politics", huh?

"More News than Other News in the Morning", huh?

Having a show that is "smart and independent", huh?

And finally, the kicker of all kickers: "We’re Keeping Them Honest," HUH?!

Cable News Network, correction, the neo-Cable News Network,  instead of saying you’re keeping someone else honest, I have a simple request for you:

Why DON’T YOU KEEP YOUR DAMN SELF HONEST!

Newspaper owners are upset tghey're not getting 20-40% profits. And, they agonize over fewer readers and advertisers. The solution--continue to cut the news product to preserve profits.

I caught 10-15 minutes of the FOX program, "Presidential Character: Obama," and those minutes may have changed my life.  The program uses clips from the audiobook of Dreams to highlight each time period of Obama's life, and also includes interviews with journalists who have covered Obama, and interviews with people from his past.

I found this program very inspiring.  The way FOX chose Obama's words to support its hints that Obama is a radical, race-obsessed guy with a very un-American background -- it was spectacular!  This innovative journalism speaks to me, and has moved me to become a FOX journalist.

Here is my first piece as a FOX reporter, using Obama's other published book, The Audacity of Hope, in that innovative FOX style.

I spent most of my adult life – from the age of 19 to the year 2000 – working in professional newsrooms. Not at NBC or ABC, not at the NYT or the WaPo, but in far more proletarian surroundings: the kind of workingman’s newsrooms populated by overworked, underpaid grunts with a soft core of idealism buried beneath many inches of crispy crust, accumulated over many years of near-constant exposure to political and corporate lies – lies propagated by official sources, and their own employers.

I hear and read a lot of criticism of Traditional Media journalists, here and in many other places – on the Web, in print, in person. I won’t deny that some of it is valid; when applied to the ego-besotted careerists preening in New York and inside the Beltway, very valid indeed.

But neither will I deny the essential truth that I wrote to my colleagues as I walked out of the newsroom of The Kansas City Star   for the last time as a professional journalist, eight years ago. I said I was leaving behind a room full of heroes. And I was.

And today, that species of hero is facing extinction. That’s my fucking problem tonight.

Of late there has been much chat here about the inequities and inadequacies of MSM. I tend to think the critiques are written largely by unhappy consumers of media, and not by those of us who sometimes work in that world. And I am reminded of the wisdom [sic] of a sports talk radio host, who, exasperated, told a listener that if he didn't like the way the national TV crew covered the local team, he should turn off the sound and listen to the homers on the radio, who are compensated by the local team.

That's not my point. My point is simply to draw attention to a fine series of articles unfolding in the Everett Herald, which are to be found here: http://www.heraldnet.com/...

Though I think no further explanation necessary, if you'll jump across our metaphorical fold, I'll provide a little context.

I was reading an article on the Time Magazine website about the Georgia conflict and I came to the obligatory section on the relevance to the campaign. Within that section is the conclusion that the Obama campaign made two early missteps. They were, according to Time, urging restraint and pointing out the McCain campaign's ties to Georgia. So I looked for the analysis that led to Time's conclusion that these were missteps. The analysis consisted of two quotes from the McCain campaign, one of which was anonymous because they they realized that President Bush had also urged restraint. Apparently McCain is not only running for President, he is doing unbiased analysis of the Obama campaign for Time.

The New York Times published a strong editorial,  Energy Fictions, that borders on fantasy itself.  Reading (and rereading it) makes one wonder whether the NYTimes editorial board simply need new glasses as they seem not to understand some basic facts.

What are we do when the nation's great "paper of record" misrepresents and misleads in its editorials as what is expected, day in and day out, from the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times?

The blogosphere has been questioning the "sources" of ABC New/Ross reporting of the anthrax scare back in 2001. ABC News/Ross reported falsely that (1) the anthrax contained Bentonite and (2) this showed it came from Iraq.

But the issue is much bigger than that. Glenn Greenwald, the Salon magazine blogger, has taken the lead on this issue. But he became rather vehement when I challenged the basis for his main concern: there is NO evidence that ABC News/Ross ever had any sources.

The larger issue is that ABC News/Ross sensationalized this concocted story in order to obtain money, and there is every evidence that they did so fraudulently.

I just watched this video at The Raw Story site.  It is a video that needs to be made available to as many people as possible, because we will never see it on any traditional media outlet.  (Notice the use of traditional media, kos, because I ain't no outsider, dammit.)

The walls that we are building in Iraq, and on our border with Mexico, are simply inhumane.  Have we just quit trying to communicate and solve our problems with diplomacy?  Have we asked the Iraqis' to do the same thing?  Is building a wall the only solution this administration can come up?  

This video certainly answers that last question.

Watch the video after the fold.  

Last week Fox News ran a story about how things were going so well in Fallujah that they've opened their first KFC franchise to keep the locals hooked up with quality Fried Chicken...

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

I am not a real blogger, of course, merely a weekend pinch-hitter, a lowly brunch cook of blogtopia, as it were, trusted enough to competently sling out some slop for the regulars who wander in with nothing better to do until the jefe shows up on Monday.  After enough time I settled into being an essayist, duty means a 750 word piece (play with a net, as the demigod Krugman intoned) every weekend morning, every month, all year, unless you absolutely can’t.

Blogging has very accurately been described as a Death March of Bataan activity, a very difficult daily grind of unpaid lonely advocacy for nothing but pittance.  One might think two essays a week—often three—would be no big deal, but after about a year one gets an inkling of just how hard daily political writing often is, an arena of very dirty, lousy political play in a world of hurt.

Courtesy of, qu'elle surprise, the Wall Street Journal, specifically Amy Chozick.

She is asking the burning question, "is Barack Obama too thin to be president?"

But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

First it makes me want to:

Then it makes me want to:

Then I want to:

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

Much has already been deservedly written about the utter piece of filth Dana Milbanks published at the Washington Post Wednesday, Milbanks so ably demonstrating himself to be a panting water boy for the Republican narrative of "presumptuous nominee."  Although this element of carrying the narrative is correct, my further take on this amazing arrogance and contempt for the reader was an implacability of judgment, a sickening declaration that Dana Milbanks and the Washington Post will decide the election, not voters.

Two weeks ago, some Kossacks helped me to raise $200. Last night I helped to facilitate a fund raising event. My friend, Dr. Wendy Johnson and I helped to raise $700 at a house party. Over the past month, we have worked with Peace groups in Seattle, the Department of Communications, Real Change, and other organizations  to try to reach our goal of $10,000. We have raised $4,000 to date for our cause.... the money we raised was not for Obama, nor for any Congressional candidates. I donated $100 already, plus some in kind donations of time and energy, and I am unemployed right now, a mere student going to school this fall. :-)

We are bringing an exhibit of 60 photographs to the University of Washington Odegaard Undergraduate Library in Seattle. These 60 photos are called UNEMBEDDED. WAR IS VIOLENT. These images will stir you.

More after the fold.

"War" on Terror

Today at TPMCafe Senator John Kerry discussed ways our response to extremism and terrorism should be changed.  As so many well informed people have been saying all along about the "War on Terror," everything about the way our government approaches the subject needs to be rethought from the bottom up.  The basic strategy of Communist guerrilla recruiters, which was highly successful in so many places, was always to swell the ranks by winning over the hearts and minds of the local population.  Terrorist organizations have adopted roughly the same strategy.  The militaristic approach our nation has employed during the Bush years plays right into the hands of the recruiters.

More after the flip.

There are currently two recommended diaries extremely excited over what they describe as a "smackdown" of McCain.  

Well I, for one, ain't buying that the Washington Post article is very good.  

The news business NEEDS a contest for president.  If it has to, it will CREATE a contest.

It isn't an issue of the mainstream news versus alternative news, or biased news versus unbiased news... it's an issue of people and money.  It's simple business, the business of eyeballs.

The NY Times busts the myth and opens the door that has kept the American public sheltered from the realities of War. The horrors of death and grievous wounds suffered by our combat troops and the civilian populace.

If the conflict in Vietnam was notable for open access given to journalists — too much, many critics said, as the war played out nightly in bloody newscasts — the Iraq war may mark an opposite extreme: after five years and more than 4,000 American combat deaths, searches and interviews turned up fewer than a half-dozen graphic photographs of dead American soldiers.