A large part of the media's motivation for parroting and amplifying the Bush "administration"'s panicky rantings about Saddam was no doubt good old yellow journalism. In our over-communicated, nanosecond-attention-span media world, you have to grab the reader/viewer's attention quick or you've lost them.

Sober, reasoned reporting just doesn't have the same sizzle.

They didn't reshape our entire political discourse overnight; it was accomplished little by little, over a period of 40 years.

The Internet may speed up the process somewhat, but it's still going to take a long time to change it back. Think in terms of a generation.

and he can issue a Signing Statement to get what he wants.

Maybe something on Milk Price Supports?

Don't any of these neocons understand that the U.S. is fast going bankrupt? Our hollowed-out economy subsists on money borrowed from abroad and on the activity generated by building, outfitting, financing, and marketing suburban sprawl--activity that becomes increasingly unsustainable as oil prices rise.

The dollar will continue its slide, and with it, our influence in the world. Our bankrupt empire will collapse. Just like England's and France's did.

According to the new article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, the real goal is simply legalized profiteering by administration cronies:

Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam ­Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government.

In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up.

And just maybe, reviewing this appalling history of invoicing orgies and million-dollar boondoggles, it's not so far-fetched to think that this is the way someone up there would like things run all over -- not just in Iraq but in Iowa, too, with the state police working for Corrections Corporation of America, and DHL with the contract to deliver every Christmas card. And why not? What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureauc­racy.

This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profit­eering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure -- American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle

"You can get away with anything in Louisiana as long as you don't get caught with a live boy or a dead girl."

Maybe it works in Idaho, too.

In a country where Bob Dole can talk about his erectile dysfunction in a TV ad, we're still petrified to breathe a word about the unarguable fact that AIPAC has disproportionate influence on US policy. OMG, somebody might call you anti-Semitic!

As you have pointed out many times in other contexts, tyranny by character assassination is still tyranny.

Thank you for saying what badly needs to be said.

on negotiating strategy.

One of their big points is that people who show a strong and unwavering commitment to core principles command greater respect and power than those who appear wishy-washy. Duh.

People forget that some of Saint Reagan's policies were quite unpopular with mainstream Americans. But because he was steadfast, they respected him and largely went along.

Old white guy? Leader of a country that won't allow nonwhites to immigrate? Slamming Obama? Just saying.

I would have respected House leadership a lot more if they had decided to fight Bush's criminal steamroller back when there was some political risk to it (however slight). Now they've at long last realized that standing up to Bush is a political winner, and they've suddenly discovered their long-lost spines.

While I'm certainly grateful for any defense of civil liberties and the rule of law, I remain disgusted that it took them so long.

The George Washington quote was a master stroke!

Leaving aside his (many) other problems, it's instructive to recall how the media hooted when candidate Perot showed up at speaking appearances with charts and graphs containing, you know, actual data to make his case.

As I recall, the pundits were flabbergasted and temporarily thrown off balance by the news that the public generally approved of Mr. Perot's presentations.

(Irrelevant aside: who's laughing now about Perot's warning about NAFTA and the "giant sucking sound"?)

when he said "News is what they don't want you to know. Everything else is publicity."

Isn't that what you're always ranting at other reporters for using?

Just saying.