as others have noted, all the items on the list you made, glenn, could come under the umbrella of war-related issues.

i don't think reid gets a pass here, and i do agree it suggests a mindset that is insulated from the true horrors of our time. BUT i also think that reid continues to do a soft-shoe for lieberman in the belief, mistaken or otherwise, that gi joe must be placated for as long as possible -- that is, until the next senate is seated and the dems have a majority that makes the "independent" irrelevant.

ah well, a false hope is better than no hope at all.

...and i'm not saying there was a lot -- though he had moments of lucidity in this age of republican unreason -- has long since been tossed overboard as he buys into the idea that the only way to have a chance to win in november is to rally a base and expect his surrogates in the media and elsewhere to frag the democrat relentlessly.

to be fair, mccain has always been a mix of boilerplate conservatism and just natural dumbness. what he didn't get the memo on-- how these days it's ok for repubs to support deficits, and torture, and preemptive war -- he came around to.

there's no there there. that's why his g.o.p. handlers are so furiously trying to present him as a likable hero. policies don't matter when character is king. (never mind he can't pass that sniff test, either.)

the neocons like to regard themselves as tough and intellectually rigorous, but they are marked by nothing so much as the sheer dishonesty of their warmongering.

and even if there is a democrat in the white house for years to come, they will not go away, they will not be silenced. witness PNAC and the 1998 Iraq resolution stewarded through Congress with the help of the likes of lieberman that set the stage for the 2003 invasion.

it's almost irrelevant to them who's in power, because they will get paid handsomely regardless. what's unfathomable is why they have anyone's ear, either of elected officials or of the media. unfathomable, that is, unless the truth of these bush years becomes self-evident: that the levers of power are exerted on behalf of a military industrial complex that is the nation's true permanent establishment.

...is that the networks, from the execs to the producers to the on-camera readers, don't even think what they've been doing is wrong. they literally do not have an understanding that what they are providing is not independent analysis, but governement propaganda.

and they'd be shocked to learn that such dissemination of propaganda is not their role, that it is professional negligence and that it has an unhealthy effect on policy and the national discourse.

indeed, unless they are puffing up their own importance, media folks reflexively step away from the idea that what they report has any consequence or affects their audience at all.

...in how they have failed to mount even the most fleeting of defenses.

they simply don't care. it's business as they are doing it, with an administration they feel very comfortable with.

it's revealing that the last time the nets opposed a republican presidential candidate was 1996, when bob dole was running. he had had the temerity of reminding the country in the run-up to the disastrous telecommunications bill that the broadcast airwaves were still the public's, and that the leases to use them could be revoked if the nets failed to live up to their public interest requirements.

it is to the shame of the clinton administration, actually, that the telecom bill was not less of a giveaway to the media cartel. but that's part of the reality of domestic politics in this country now. give the media giants what they want. and don't EVER call them on their negligence or criminal activity.

you are, of course, correct. journalism's strength in this country used to be its openness to people from all walks of life. these days, with the credentialism fetish that j schools have stoked, not so much.

there are still exceptions of course. here's background on chris chivers, one of the truly indispensible foreign correspondents of the nytimes. among other high points in his coverage, he was in a unique position to report from ground zero, and then afghanistan.

http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a4766.asp

by the way, we see this need for diverse backgrounds in other areas of public service. sheldon whitehouse, the senator from rhode island, was such a breath of fresh air in that millionaire club's precisely because he had been a u.s. attorney and thus could rip away the curtain of lies and denials at the gonzales doj.