I found the Stretch/Livni interview much more confrontational than the Pre-Iraq War American media interviews.

Atleast Gregory didn't conclude his interview with "Good Luck and God Bless" or "Mossad Rocks!"

To me, this represents "progress" from our multi-million dollar Beltway press corps.

My goodness, what a crabby bunch. I was extending someone's observation that the Meet the Press type programs have an inherent problem - that to get people on, you have to softball them. I'm not particularly defending anything, just mulling over what might be a solution to this problem.

I was suggesting that interviewing these people, however softly, had some value, and that the critique of what they had to say could be done by other people on another program.

The only way to have a hardball press would be if they all conspired to be no other way (so that government people either had to put up with it or not appear), and I can't see that happening.

Fly back to Hollywood.

Scott Horton ("Justice After Bush" December, 2008 Harper's) reports in footnote 2:

"I was twice warned by PBS producers, in advance of appearances on The Newshour with Jim Leher, that I could use the word 'torture' in the abstract but that I was to refrain from applying it to the administration's policies."

Sadly, neither the PBS ombudsman nor the Newhour is much concerned.

Why are you defending liars and Courtesans. Watch how it is done. It can be done and you should be calling for it, not enabling it disguised as pretending to be 'reasonable' towards it. This is the only world we have. Let's demand that the truth be told rather than play in the sand box of the propagandists.

http://vodpod.com/watch/374454-irish-tv-interviews-bush-banned-in-u-s-wake-up-from-your-slumber

I recall that in big stateside high schools (I graduated in London), there was always a popular clique of the in-crowd--jocks, prom queens, class officers, etc. Watching national politics is the same thing with the same crowd doing the same stuff, while the journalism junkies, eager to please, report only complimentary fluff. They got invited to the parties where everybody who was somebody went. Most all human beings are nobodies in this ethos.

Mark my words and put this in your calender, boys and girls. The time is soon coming when the world, including the United States, will turn on Israel. The oil crisis is part of the reason. The US will abandon anyone at the drop of a hat when it suits American interests. Just ask the Iraqi Shiites and Kurds, the South Vietnamese and Montagnards, inter alia.

The Jews as a race of people are among the most brilliant on earth. How did they fail to learn the lessons of the holocaust? Why have they become brutish? Why don't they see the suffering of the downtrodden? Why do they loot the land of the subjugated? Why do they intern people just because they are Palestinian Arabs? They endured all these atrocities, so why do they perpetuate them?

The time is coming when Israel will stand alone, with nothing but nukes to stop the second holocaust, and like blind Samson toppling the supporting pillars, they will bring the Middle East down on their own heads.

I agree with Jane and you about Klein. I believe that Klein listened to GG’s criticism of him and is not the same Klein as we used to know, either that or the real Joe Klein has emerged. If my observation is accurate, that alone shows the potential power of the Blogoshpere and one of the giants in that sphere, Glenn.

Sir Thomas Browne-URNE BURIAL.

What songs the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons

of these OSSUARIES entered the-

FAMOUS NATIONS OF THE DEAD.

And slept with Princes, Counsellors,

might admit a wide solution.

But who were proprieties,

OF THESE BONES,

or what bodies,

these ashes

made up.

Not to be resolved by man/women, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the

PROVINCIAL GUARDIAN, or tutelary Observations. Had they made as good provision for their names, as they had done for their Reliquiae (Fossil remains), they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation.

But to subsist in bones, and be but Pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. VAIN ASHES,

which in the oblivion of names, person, times, and sexes, have found themselves a FRUITLESS CONTINUATION, and only rises into late posterity, as EMBLEMS,

MOTAL VANITIES:

Antidotes against pride,

vainglory, and madding

VICES. (apologies for CAPS)

Shooter, sorry. Wychwood beat you to the "stupidest person" award today. But I'm sure you'll be coming back strong any minute now.

Whychwood. You assume that the point is having high powered political personages interviewed. That's not the goal. The goal is to give people the clearest and least filtered--or at least honestly filtered--information possible. What good is it to have Axelrod on, and indeed, he is one of the lowest people in the Obama inner circle--a person almost anyone could ask hard questions of without having to offend the sensibilities of Barack himself--if all he does is use the moment as a PR exercise. Let them use their own resources for PR. In the meantime, there is no shortage of knowledgeable and experienced people to interview. They don't have to be Bush or Cheney or Axelrod or Obama. I don't actually see any value in an interview of someone like that.

As for interviewing Tzipi Livni--do you honestly believe that giving Livni such a free podium, one that is edited to remove any data that may be off message, does anyone any good? Do you believe taht's the best we can do?

Where have you been for the past eight years?

We wouldn't we wouldn't wanna be "critical"

Not me

Not you.

There's the rub. When you live in fantasy land one doesn't have to consider the limitations of reality. Feasible is a dirty word, and self-absorption rules.

-- shooter242

There you go again scooter. Projecting again. You wouldnt know reality if it bit you in the ass. And we all wish it would.

As for a better host of MTP, how about Helen Thomas or Keith Olbermann?