Sumner Redstone of Viacom (owner of CBS) agreed to promote the administration's war on terror after 9/11. Not long after that the FCC ruled in favor of media deregulation that Viacom had been pushing for.

All these noise machine pundits who like to consider themselves populists like Laura Ingraham and blue blood Connecticut Ann Coulter are always talking about the liberal "elite" and they mean by that journalists like Bill Moyers who actually are journalists.

That's part of the Newspeak strategy of the movement. To change elite to mean the people that question the actual elite.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Book_Excerpts/PowerElite.html

That's excerpts from C. Wright Mills Power Elite. You know, the type of elite that Communist pinko Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=13&articleID=E7327616-E7F2-99DF-38F214BFD77FE010

Shermer is talking about Bush, but the same might be said to apply to the press. Instead of owning up to their mistakes they've let the "engine of self-justification" go so far down the tracks that they're not going to look back anymore.

Here's what a real leader said when he made a mistake

"This administration intends to be candid about its errors. For as a wise man once said, "An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it." We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors.... We're not going to have any search for scapegoats ... the final responsibilities of any failure are mine, and mine alone."

That was JFK after the Bay of Pigs. Good luck waiting for a similar proclamation from Bush. Any mistakes he made will be hidden in some presidential library from now until the end of eternity if he and the anti-democracy cult of power get their way. The Versailles press won't be doing much to stop them, either.

My apologies if anyone already made this point.

1. Ledeen is a fascist/fanatic. I'm convinced of this.

2. Ledeen's clandestine meetings with Ghorbinafur are also mentioned in Woodward's State of Denial.

I would add that I think that we are seeing a tide turn on this administration. But these people will be back. Ledeen did the same thing during Iran-contra and look how long it took for America to forget it and let it happen again.

The problem was that Bush et all got into power in the first place. There are some very deep flaws in our democracy now (both Kevin Phillips and Chalmers Johnson address these very well, as well as David Kay Johnson doing a definitive expose on the rigging of the tax system to transform America from a meritocracy to a plutocracy).

I'm saying this to be pessimistic. I just want everyone to realize that this is just a start.

I meant to say, "I'm not saying this to be pessimistic, but realistic"