I don't care what Dana Milbank has to say about anything either.

-- susan sunflower

Perhaps you'll give some credit then to Countdown for telling Milbank he was not welcome back to the show after he wrote an absurd column where in he lied about an out of context quote by Obama.

Glenn,

I'm glad you have the propensity to take simple requests for awareness as do-or-die absolutisms. Otherwise, perhaps you could focus more of that brilliant energy on articles relevant to the entirety of your audience, not simply liberal vs. neoconservatice squabbles. I thought the Establishment media was shite anyway?

“So, do you mean that you should stay in the race ’cause someone might assassinate Barack Obama, or do you just use Bobby Kennedy’s assassination as a convenient placeholder to help you remember that sometimes the California primary is in June? Yeah. Wow.”

http://www.correntewire.com/less_than_tactful#comment-90827

"I think that it makes you think that it would be very awkward for a vice president to be on a ticket—for a vice presidential candidate to be on a presidential candidate’s ticket after she’s made repeated references to his potential death. Yes, that would be weird."

http://www.correntewire.com/fith_watch_rachel_maddow_edition

Maddow's done what it takes to qualify for the msnbc boy's club, so Tim Russert is resting quite comfortably.

Thanks very much Glenn for your thought-provoking piece. The muzzling of CNN's Christiane Amanpour and demise of MSNBC's Ashleigh Banfield fit this pattern as well. What a shame that Obama and the Democratic "leaders" don't use their prominent status to EDUCATE the public about the degradation of the national news media, a threat to our democracy since it removes a critical check/ balance to those in power. Similarly why didn't Obama EDUCATE the public about the dangers of the latest FISA "reform" bill, instead of simply acquiescing? Ross Perot sure knew how to EDUCATE with his brief time in the spotlight- why is this such a lost art?

Glenn did call him out on it. He asked him if he thought the five years of a Republican Congress did any oversight of the Republican administration.

-- Kitt

IMHO Glenn's question did not address his statement. The senator seems to think that the Democratic Congress is using "aggressive oversight" because of a Republican Administration. My question is simply to provide an example of such oversight. Glenn asks if the senator thinks the republican congress had any meaningful oversight. Not nearly the question that should have been asked.

Thank you Mr.Greenwald and company for your efforts to find a way out from under so many Manolo jackloafers thinly disguised as life preservers and security blankets; I wish I knew better how to help us. All I can offer is a tribute I forged together from reading your blog and its letters. Again, please accept my deepest appreciation for the time you've all spent thinking and writing...

It is obvious that many of us are living in countries with frightening similarities to the one described in Orwell's 1984. In America, the soundbites are slightly different (Obstruction is Justice!), the Extra! special worship of celebrity garbage is new, but sure as shit not only do a majority not know or deny they're failing in their civic responsibilities-- how could they know given the average person's conception of the poorly reported nebulous phantoms that form the economic, political and technological fabric of their lives? That ignorance is promoted as a virtue is of course no accident, and for an empire struggling mightily to keep the blood red lipstick off its teeth and TVs, it's to be expected. To American's credit, they report great disappointment with their leadership and huge numbers of citizens are well informed and active in supporting what they perceive to be progressive politics. But oddly enough, they also literally line up down the block to pay ever larger chunks of their stagnating incomes for higher definition TVs, cable and satellite services with which to better consume the national religion. Russians even chuckle and point.

What distinguishes us from other animals is language, and when we use language not to communicate truth as best we can, but to deceive, obfuscate and obscure the facts, we deny our gift of intelligence. Under these darkened conditions, at a time when the national news media, political parties and branches of government are colluding against the public's interest in jawdroppingly audacious ways, the country's collective sanity simply isn't and cannot be. Thus the liberty and dignity of nature's creations (where it hasn't already been trounced upon or exterminated previously) is in grave peril. Unless of course you believe in the end times and in that case there's probably still quite a few more really good years left, lucky for you bummer for the kids.

We've all told them why and how they are going to need to accommodate themselves to systems of power in which justice is inoperative and its perversions hidden with operatic, calculated clouds of rhetoric and obfuscation, right?

While many have been socialized by American culture to be and enjoy being unconsciously incompetent, an equally frightening number understand but simply will not look or don't pay attention anymore. For how vapid our national discourse is, you simply can't blame either of them. As a result, control is further consolidated, the exploitation it enables is covered up, and the resultant moral travesties, erosions of civil liberty, violations of law and privacy are either ignored in the press or simply declared a victory for the goddamn godliness of the American way. The laws and thou-shalt-not's violated were probably just quaint anyway.

Our national conversations are choreographed corporate cumshots gobbled by politicians shat out and swallowed by stenographer's who sell it through the network news media as jesus juice. It's that simple and it's that sick.

Never before in history have so many had such easy access to information, education and potential for so many diverse purposes yet choose to live enslaved by regimes promising nothing but another dark age of ignorance, fear and violence.

We are born to tread upon the heads of kings who in their dying worlds have nothing but the ambition to die with them.

Money shot at sig for all the visual learners out there.