1. “It should be apparent that the right/left, red/blue divide is … well … not meaningless, but much less important than the real political divide, which is between people who care about liberty, and people who prefer control.
2. “911 WTC7 CBS Breakthrough
They actually presented it as news in a non-judgmental, journalistic manner. They also showed three views of the collapse of WTC 7. They get it! They showed it!”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/19483
3. “The Silence of the Liberals
The President’s budget requests for Iraq and Afghanistan total $75 billion through the fall, and $130 billion for next year. That means we’ll be spending nearly $11 billion per month for at least the next year and a half.
This bothers exactly no one in Washington, and especially not in the White House or the Democratic caucus chamber: after all, these people believe that government spending – any sort of spending – is what will fix our ailing economy right now. So why not increase the mis-named “defense” budget, anyway – don’t you want an economic recovery, or are you, like Rush Limbaugh, hoping the President will fail?
Yes, you know we’ve entered a new era when I start citing Limbaugh favorably, and yet that’s the sad part about all this: it is now left to Limbaugh and his talk radio confreres to point out the backsliding and howling hypocrisy in this administration’s policies, both foreign and domestic, because the liberals – with a few exceptions – have been struck dumb by their “victory.”
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=14319
4. Yet another horrible decision by Obama:
“The Obama Justice Department continues to stand behind a Bush era law meant to prevent lawsuits against telecommunications companies accused of illegally sharing private customer information with intelligence agencies.
In a brief filed late Wednesday obtained by Raw Story, the Department of Justice provided its views to Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, after the San Francisco federal judge questioned the constitutionality of the wide-sweeping law and whether it gives the U.S. Attorney General too much power in deciding whether a company is immune from lawsuits after it has shared information with federal agents.”
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_DOJ_backs_up_Bush_wiretapping_0226.html
5. “Citigroup: Nationalized or Internationalized?
The U.S. now owns about 36% of Citigroup.
The Government of Singapore owns around 11%.
The Kuwaiti government owns about 6%.
And a Saudi prince owns about 5%.
That totals some 58% owned by governments and foreign royalty.
Whether or not Citigroup has been nationalized or internationalized, one thing is for sure: it is no longer a private bank.“
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/02/citigroup-nationalized-or.html
6. Now we know the real reason our troops are in Afghanistan:
“Multi-billion Dollar Mining Boom: The economics of war and empire in Afghanistan.
In 2002, the US Geological Survey (USGS) published a list of more than 1000 deposits, mines, and occurrences in Afghanistan to confirm the country’s wealth of mineral and hydrocarbon resources. Among the minerals found in abundance are gold, copper, iron, mercury, lead, and rare metals such as cesium, lithium, niobium, and tantalum. Tantalum, which is also known as coltan, is a rare element essential in the manufacture of cell phones, computers, and digital cameras. Lithium is necessary for high-tech batteries, specialty glasses and ceramics, and for some high-performance metal alloys. Niobium is used in steel alloys. According to Afghan geology expert, John Shroder, writing in a 2007 GeoJournal article, oil and natural gas reserves identified by the USGS far surpass earlier Soviet estimates.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12486
7. “Our political discourse is so stratified that politicians and pundits can get all the exposure they want while confining themselves to hospitable venues and only speaking to sympathetic journalists. That, as but one example, is what fuels “access journalism” — the willingness of politicians to speak only to deferential reporters, who stay deferential in order to ensure that those politicians continue to speak with them, a process that perpetuates itself ad infnitum. That has created a virtually complete — and quite destructive — accountability-free zone where politicians and pundits alike can simply avoid any form of adversarial questioning or challenges to their claims [in fact, ironically enough, one of my criticisms of Ambinder during the recent State Secrets controversy was that, when defending the Obama administration's position as conveyed by anonymous DOJ officials (whose anonymity prevented them from being questioned or otherwise engaged), he failed to speak with or even cite anyone who had an opposing view].”
…
More importantly, it’s precisely the ability of politicians, journalists and pundits to avoid meaningful challenges to their views that, more than any other factor, degrades our political discourse. The reason the Wall St. Journal Editors (and others like them) disseminate blatant falsehoods and then never bother to correct or even acknowledge those errors — and the reason people like Karl Rove can spout the most intellecutally dishonest columns imaginable — is precisely because they know they can just avoid any venues where they will be questioned or challenged about what they say. Those who insulate themselves from critics and just ignore all criticisms, and who speak only to hospitable audiences, know that they can say anything without consequence or accountability (just compare the cowardly Bill Kristol’s humiliating history of deceit and error-plagued punditry to his endless promotions within our media establishment).
In fact, it is this exact dynamic that makes the absence of adversarial journalism — and the dominance of access journalism — so destructive. Bush officials were able to spend eight years spewing the most blatant falsehoods because they knew that most journalists wouldn’t challenge them or even point out the falsity of their claims. Bush spent eight years almost exclusively speaking to adoring, pre-screened audiences where he heard no challenges to what he asserted. And, in general, it’s hard to overstate how severely the cocooning process can distort reality (see here and here for a couple recent, typical examples).
Adversarial challenges to one’s statements are a vital check on errors and deceit. Clashes of ideas are an irreplaceable instrument for truth-finding. Shielding oneself from such challenges (or just ignoring them) is not only irresponsible and cowardly, but ensures that one can opine without accountability. That’s why bloggers who have an active, smart and critical comment section with which they interact have a major advantage over journalists who hide from critical scrutiny. In all of this, it’s reasonable to exercise some discretion — not all criticisms and/or critics merit attention — but those who avoid any real challenges to their statements (whether politicians, journalists, or pundits) ought to be stigmatized for doing so, and it ought to be viewed as a powerful indictment against their credibility (Ambinder’s post will prompt me to resume efforts to invite onto Salon Radio those who are
…
What Ambinder describes as this self-imposed cocooning process is now so pervasive that it has actually become the norm, at least in many precincts. During those few occasions when I have been able to interview those whose views I’ve criticized, my comment section and inbox were filled with warnings that aggressively adversarial interviews should be avoided because it will lead most potential interviewees to refuse future requests. Criticisms of TV journalists who conduct painfully sycophantic, unchallenging interviews with powerful political figures will inevitably prompt defenses that the journalist can’t be more adversarial because to do so will ensure that nobody will submit to future interviews. Just as people have been trained to believe that there is something inherently illegitimate about primary challenges to incumbent politicians (it’s an undemocratic purge! a circular firing-squad!), so, too, have many people been trained to believe that the ability of politicians and other opinion-makers to shield themselves from any real critical examination is both understandable and even necessary. And thus, there is no real price to pay for those who hide from it.
Until those who suffer a serious loss of credibility from speaking only in hospitable venues and to access-eager journalists — and until there is a real price to pay for simply ignoring criticisms and even documentation of factual errors — these practices will almost certainly continue. Ambinder raised an important point here. It’s a good suggestion. But it’s likely to fall on deaf ears without there being some real incentive for people to change this cocooning behavior.“
