Mayor Coleman and Chief Harrington held a press conference, which Greenwald attended.

He mentions that the independent media people asked the tough, skeptical questions, while the MSM types sucked the officials' asses.

Any doubt about what kind of "press" we have in this country?

http://www.slate.com/id/2199060

that's what protesters do. They aren't polite. They don't say excuse me but your in my space. The bush regime is crap and we are the only ones that can do anything about it. The msm won't talk about it until the majority are affected. The vietnam war didn't end until the majority's kids were being drafted. My number was 8. This crap won't end until the majority is affected. No, it's not a lie. No, it is true. Yes, your govenment sucks. Yes, if you don't wake up you'll be in hitlers germany. A bit strong? The radicals only got away with it because the regular folk couldn't believe it until it was way too late. Are you willing to die for your neighbor?......

Read the book "For those I Loved". Are you willing to do that or in the end does your opinion not matter?

"oh, my government wouldn't do that". You idiot. Get out of your house and look at reality.

Geez, people get get me excited and pissed off. Why do I care?.....

Dirty tricks campaigns. Rumsfeld and Cheney worked in the Nixon White House, right?

http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/images/ford-cheney-rummy-.jpg

None of this exactly explains why Democracy Now! gave extensive coverage of the Democratic Convention, and utterly ignored the Republican Convention, over the past year.

Let's take a look at the recent history of convention coverage at Democracy Now - there is a certain bias here:

* April 21, 2008: Recreate ’68: Democrats to Face Protests in Denver at Democratic National Convention

* June 18, 2008: Ralph Nader on Barack Obama: ‘It is Quite Clear He is a Corporate Candidate from A to Z’

* June 18, 2008: Denver Police Stock up on Pepper Spray Guns Ahead of DNC

* June 30, 2008: ACLU Sues Denver for Security Equipment Details Ahead of DNC

* August 01, 2008: Colorado “Fusion Center” to Step Up Intelligence Gathering During DNC; US Northern Command to Play Role

* August 25, 2008: Massive Security Operation Mobilized for DNC,

* August 25, 2008: Antiwar Activists Take to the Streets to “Defend Denver”

Okay, so that is Amy Goodman and Democracy Now's coverage of the Democratic National Convention in the leadup to the vote. There was almost zero coverage of the RNC during the leadup. It was a rather targeted attack on the Democratic convention, wasn't it?

Let's note here that in 1968, the party that had been in power for the past eight years, and which had been in charge of the Vietnam "military action", was the Democratic Party. Today, it is the Republican Party that has led the modern version of Vietnam, and so any "Recreate 68 campaign" should have targeted the Republican Party, right?

Not a topic of discussion on Democracy Now. You can see Amy's promotional piece for Recreate 68 here:

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/21/recreate_68_democrats_to_face_protests

It's a very odd interview, if you ask me, as it neglects that rather obvious point.

Now, before Glenn accuses me of accusing Amy Goodman of being behind the anthrax attacks again, let me say that I don't think that's true.

What I would like to know is first, why a show called democracy now! doesn't have a online comments section, for example. That seems like a democratic thing to do, right? Even the "MSM media" like the Washington Post has a comments section.

Furthermore, I would like to know how an "independent news organization" that sells no subscriptions manages to pull down $4 million a year in funding, and why, despite all that funding, their coverage is usually slanted, unscientific, and one-sided - to the point of being ridiculous, as the whole promotion of the recreate 68 campaign shows.

Here's the funding record for democracy now, 2006. Let's just say that if DN! was a political campaign, it would not look like a grassroots effort. For example, in 2004, DN! took in a $150,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, according to Ford 2005 annual report. Why did that raise my eyebrows?

In October of 2004, the ACLU turned down $1.15 million in funding from two of it’s most generous and loyal contributors, the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, saying new anti-terrorism restrictions demanded by the institutions make it unable to accept their funds.

For more, look here:

http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2006/010/708/2006-010708733-038875f7-9.pdf

Keep this in mind, as well: the FBI, during the COINTELPRO days, often staged public arrests and raids on "dissident organizations" - in order to give their undercover "special operations" credibility with the public.

Don't believe it?

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/specialops.htm

I'm really tired of the Nader crowd screaming about how Democratic and Republican policies are identical, especially when the only purpose it serves is to help get Republicans elected (as well as being untrue).

As to Amy Goodman's arrest: The most remarkable thing to me is that those around her appear to be genuinely shocked and outraged ("What the f*** are you doing??!!"). That's great. It really is amazing that anybody — particularly avowed critics of the GOP — would still have the capacity to be shocked and outraged.

But it's almost just as depressing as it is heartening. I mean, truly, the GOP (and its politically sympathetic functionaries in the military and law enforcement) pound on dissenters without regard for law or reason for one very simple reason: Dissenters are threatening their political power. It's so strange that they are apparently the only ones who think so. Seriously, a young woman stands in front of a line of riot police with a flower as though she's standing up, standing strong, representing, being a symbol ... and she gets a face full of tear gas. The only thing this vignette tells me is that the other side is way, way, way, way more serious about keeping their power than we are about taking it away.

Obviously, this gang isn't above police state tactics, secret prisons, corruption, illegal spying, torture, disappearing critics, election tampering, you name it. And as long as they are the only side committed to doing whatever it takes, we ought to get used to crying about how much tear gas we're sucking in, and how unfair it is, how wrong it is, how we just can't believe anybody would ever do such a thing. Beyond, that is, the simple fact that it is effective. Absolutely effective.