caix wrote:Olbermann explains whey we don't need the Bill of Rights, thanks to Dear Leader.

whatreallyhappened.com on october 20 wrote:Earlier today MSNBC ran an online poll asking, "Do you think the Bush administration should abandon its open-ended commitment to Iraq?"

The response was 84% agreed it was time to get out of Iraq and let the Iraqis handle their own country.

Then the poll vanished.

Imagine that!

El Protoolio wrote:I am afraid Andrew L. is right. The media, like the whores that they are, now see the dollar signs in dissent. This kind of speech that Olberman gave is exactly the kind of thing Americans needed to hear.......in February of 2003! Where were all these fucking people in the media back then? I knew it was a big fucking lie back then, I knew it was a big fucking mistake. Why didn't they?

I think it was Chomskey that said the media are like birds on a wire. As one or two fly off chasing a prey, eventually they will all fly off and follow. To me that means they're all still just dumb birds.

Fuck MSNBC. Fuck CNN. Fuck FNN. Fuck em all. It's garbage.

warmowski wrote:Andrew, I think your tut-tutting is misplaced. You probably don't complain about interpellation when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation addresses you with its own ridiculous ideology.

(I refer to the premise that Canadians belong on television, which is a policy enforced as you are aware by that network.)

It certainly complicates the Chomskyan thesis that a corporate controlled media by definition prevents alternative, counter voices from emerging that might threaten the powers that be... But then Marxist superstructure-type analyses, like Chomsky's, are notorious for not leaving much room for individuals having any real effect on much of anything at all.

caix wrote:"You sir, need to get out and ask for directions."

olbermann's comment from 11/1/06 wrote:There is no line this President has not crossed — nor will not cross — to keep one political party, in power.

He has spread any and every fear among us, in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.

And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him, whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people, is subtle and nuanced — or laughably transparent.

Senator John Kerry called him out Monday.

He did it two years too late.

He had been too cordial — just as Vice President Gore had been too cordial in 2000 — just as millions of us, have been too cordial ever since.

Senator Kerry, as you well know, spoke at a college in Southern California. With bitter humor, he told the students that he had been in Texas the day before, that President Bush used to live in that state, but that now he lives in the state of denial.

He said the trip had reminded him about the value of education — that quote "if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you can get stuck in Iraq."

The Senator, in essence, called Mr. Bush stupid.

The context was unmistakable: Texas;the state of denial;stuck in Iraq. No interpretation required.

And Mr. Bush and his minions responded, by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid.

They demanded Kerry apologize — to the troops in Iraq.

And so he now has.

That phrase "appearing to be too stupid" is used deliberately, Mr. Bush.

Because there are only three possibilities here:

One, sir, is that you are far more stupid than the worst of your critics have suggested; that you could not follow the construction of a simple sentence; that you could not recognize your own life story when it was deftly summarized; that you could not perceive it was the sad ledger of your presidency that was being recounted.

This, of course, compliments you, Mr. Bush, because even those who do not "make the most of it," who do not "study hard," who do not "do their homework," and who do not "make an effort to be smart" might still just be stupid — but honest.

No; the first option, sir, is, at best, improbable. You are not honest.

The second option is that you and those who work for you deliberately twisted what Senator Kerry said to fit your political template. That you decided to take advantage of it, to once again pretend that the attacks, solely about your own incompetence, were in fact attacks on the troops — or even on the nation itself.

The third possibility is, obviously, the nightmare scenario; that the first two options are in some way conflated.

That it is both politically convenient for you, and personally satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which, sir, you work.

A brief reminder, Mr. Bush: You are not the United States of America.

You are merely a politician whose entire legacy will have been a willingness to make anything political — to have, in this case, refused to acknowledge that the insult wasn't about the troops, and that the insult was not even truly about you either — that the insult, in fact, is you.