We're handing the election to Bush!

[Charlls]

The silence of the public is unbelievable. The stories that would have brought any other president down - long before any election - are NO WHERE in the media. For starters, - what happened to investigations into:
- the Wilson leak - the worst scandal in American history
- the Cheney energy meetings - still secret after 3 law suits
- the 9/11 missing papers - not a word about what he knew and when
- the WMD lies - that has died and gone to hell
- the Halliburton no bid contracts in Iraq - getting millions for what Iraqi contractors bid a fraction to do even better
- the number of dead soldiers - INCLUDING those who died from wounds
- the number of wounded
- the number of non combat deaths
- the number of Iraqi civilians we killed and continue to kill
- the failure of the Afghan war - with the heroin trade at an all time high
- Neil Bush getting 400 thou a year to promote China imports
...I could list dozens more. The media has betrayed us all. They are infomercials for the PNAC thugs who run this government.

Uh... you didn't know that???? Geez. - how could you. No one in the media ever MENTIONS PNAC. Here are the PNAC folk in charge in Washington. Scroll down. Link to the evidence. This is NOT a theory. PNAC has a web page. Know the real enemy: If you want to know what's going on... get your news from the Internet. Tvnewslies.org has a super news link....updted all the time. So does Buzzflash. What Really Happened. A number of good sites.


http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/pnac...on_artists.html


An informed electorate will defeat Bush. An uninformed electorate will defeat democracy.

[auburnblu]

1. Worst scandal in American history

Yikes, oh Watergate comes to mind. This is just like saying worst economy since Harry Truman and middle of the road voters say, uh really, worse than the Carter/early Reagan years. Statements like this make middle of the road voters wonder.

[MrSoundAndVision]

2. an actual Lieberman (Loverman) supporter...

wow, never run into one before.

[veracity]

4. But the media broke Watergate...

Remember that it was the WP that investigated and broke the story. This is the first time I can remember that the media has intentionally refused to pring anything detrimental to Bush. They'll dig up everything about every dem candidate - going back years, - but not a word about any of the Bush scandals. Fascims reigns supreme.

[aquart]

7. Seriously.

Mark Twain said "There is no native criminal class, except Congress."

Corruption and influence peddling.......war profiteering...oh, honey, my mom says it's all happened before.

War veterans were once FIRED UPON when they marched into DC.

And I was around for Watergate. A large part of the nation didn't buy it until the last split second. When my upright totally honest Republican stepfather admitted that Nixon MIGHT have done something wrong, I knew it was over. Nixon resigned in less than 48 hours.

Drip, drip, drip. Please remember how many of the sainted Reagan's administration did time. Drip, drip, drip.

Oh, and where is the Third Reich? Mussolini? The bad guys go down. They don't go away.

[baby_bear]

10. Good memory, aquart

Remember? Nixon was re-elected AFTER the Watergate break-in had been made public. It was obvious to most thinking Dems (at least) that he was deep in political scandal and illegalities. But he was re-elected by the ignorant masses, called a landslide by the media.

If it weren't for just a very few people, viz., Woodward, Bernstein, Deep Throat, Katherine Graham and William Bradley, Nixon would never have been exposed relentlessly to the public, to the point where other media folks could no longer ignore it.

There is nothing like it now, in the mainstream media.

s_m

[spooky3]

39. did you mean Ben Bradlee?

but I agree with you. The key point was that the powers (Graham) wanted the investigation pursued. That's one of the things that's missing today.

[no_hypocrisy]

45. McArthur and Eisenhower headed the troops that fired on the vets

from WWI, known as Bonus Marchers. They camped out in DC after the war because Congress promised them compensation for their military service and then reneged when it was time to pay.

[are_we_united_yet]

37. I say worse than Watergate.

[MrSoundAndVision]

3. Ever heard...

don't preach to the choir? Spend that engery better elsewhere.

[Leilani]

5. Maybe things are changing

The new NY Times poll has Shrub's numbers going down to pre 9/11.
Majority of people think Iraq was not worth cost, lives. Majority say they are worse off than 5 yrs ago, majority feel tax cuts didn't help them.

Maybe people are finally waking up.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

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[baby_bear]

14. McNabb, if you believe what you posted...

that scares the hell out of me. You must not get around much, at least not on DU.

Nothing personal of course, but if you do hang around DU for a couple of days or so, you'll find a lot of facts that contradict your post. Things that unfortunately are largely ignored by the corporate media, which was the main point of this thread. On the other hand, some are not ignored, such as the Cheney/Energy law suit, which you say there are no new details on. This case will soon be heard by the Supreme Court. This is very big news because Cheney is one of the litigants. There were all sorts of stories about it today (the hunting trip with Scalia, for one).

So, do stay around.

s_m


On edit: Elizabeth Drew, a respected and experienced journalist, wrote this piece in the NY Review of Books, on the neocon influence on the current Bush administration. Well worth the read:http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16378

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[...Alltogethernow]

15. As sad as it is, this is correct

... these "issues" just don't seem to wiggle the needle of Joe average American.

... Even many folks in and around in San Francisco, seem content with the way the current administration is going.

... I'm not completely satisfied

[RandomKoolzip]

16. Funny....

It sure seemed like the media thought its job during the Clinton Administration was to beat the Right Wing drum day after day. Or do you not remember every single molehill (Whiteawater, Monicagate, Travelgate, Inhaling or not, etc.) being turned into a mountain by the national press?

I'm sorry, but there is an OBVIOUS rightwing bias in the corporate media.

Oh, and the PNAC IS a small think tank...that just happens to include a lot of cabinet/administration members.

The average joe doesn't KNOW about this stuff...it's not that they don't care, it's just that these issues are not thrust under the noses of the average American the way Monica Lewinsky's oral skills were by the media. Why did the media think it as their job to report any and all reported sexual dalliance in which Clinton partook? Could it be that there was conservative pressure to do so?


Nice try with the McNabb handle, though....

[i_am_not_john_galt]

20. If you could dig up a story on Dick Cheney

getting a bj it would play just as well as Clinton's did.

[RandomKoolzip]

22. Hmmm. I guess so...

Except who in the KNOWN UNIVERSE would, willingly and for free, give Cheney a blowjob? Besides Ann Coulter, I mean.....



Whitewater was a very convoluted story, and yet it had traction. Republicans wanted SO BADLY to have something, anything to pin on Clinton, so they spent millions and wasted much time forming investigative committees, ferretting out obscure witnesses, and so on to find that little incriminating crumb, and the US public was interested then. Why not now?

[i_am_not_john_galt]

24. Thanks for the image

I'm off to throw up now...

You're right on WW. I never did understand how that took off since most people pretty much liked Bill Clinton. The only thing there that I thought would catch was the $100k cattle future thing. To this day I couldn't explain what the WW scandal actually was about, and I'm a news junkie.

[RandomKoolzip]

27. Plus the Clintons LOST money on Whitewater.

It's not like Cheney, Baker, et. al. lining their pockets with Bechtel and Halliburton dough - they're set to rake in billions on the Iraq reconstruction - it's on a completely smaller scale and the ultimate irony is that the Clintons took a bath on the land deal...Whitewater was not just small potatoes, it was stuffing. And yet, the public ate it up and the image of Bill and Hill as corrupt lying amoral crooks was set permanently in the public brainpan. Why? Probably because the story kept getting pushed into the spotlight day after day, until even though the facts didn't bear this out, the viewers at home were convinced The First Family were worse than The Corleones..... and when the blowjob eventually happened, well...those suspicions were confirmed for many people. It was as if Caligula himself had been resurrected.


Now we have much more dangerous, REAL crooks running things, and the media is diffident at best. Could it be that reporters' paychecks are riding on keeping the lid on things while projecting the illusion of impartiality?

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[spooky3]

41. but I think you're missing his/her point

which is not about the public's approval ratings, but rather, how much time and effort and space the media devoted to certain matters, while Clinton was in office, relative to how they treat matters of greater concern now.

Much of what you originally posted raises questions of empirical fact. Can you cite any studies that were carefully done that actually demonstrated what you said is true? In the absence of those many of us will be more convinced by our own observations and awareness of other studies.

[i_am_not_john_galt]

33. "Could it be that reporters' paychecks are riding on keeping the lid"?

Nah, I don't much go for that one. Any enterprising journalist could make a name for themselves and plenty of dough if the stories had legs - if people were interested.

I think GWB is a benefactor of living in Big Times. 9/11 put the presidency in an epic light, a battle of good vs. evil. Clinton's was a presidency of small times, small issues, what can your government do for you. Kennedy had plenty of juicy scandals but he seemed bigger than life, guiding us through Big Times. LBJ and Reagan also. But Clinton - "it's the economy, stupid." So the story of a tawdry little scandal about the hicks from Arkansas played well.

[spooky3]

42. I disagree. Woodward and Bernstein had a lot of support

from their bosses, and they took risks. Without that support, there would have been no Watergate story. Maybe in some papers reporters are not expressly told "keep a lid on it" but they are likely encouraged and promoted when they pursue certain types of stories and not others. And, breaking a big story will not necessarily guarantee you a great job at a new place of employment, any more than being a completely correct and courageous whistle-blower will.

Times have very definitely changed; the power in who owns the media has shifted.

[buycitgo]

40. you mean like the ones Gingrich and Livingstone got?

the press KNEW about them for YEARS, and didn't report it.

it took Larry fricking Flynt to get the story out?

please take that sort of disingenuous twaddle elsewhere

the complete lack of media response to Bushco's lies, going back to the first Bush regime, is the reason things have gotten to the awful state in which we find ourselves today

it you think for one moment that if the press had spent one TENTH (make that one hundredth) the amount of energy pursuing the almost unCOUNTable depredations of this junta as they did chasing down the likes of Genifer, Monica, Juanita, Miss Universe, Paula, his black love mistress, Vince Foster, Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Rose Law, etc., that Bush's poll numbers would be below Hoovers, ca 1932, you're clearly (choose your own adjective)

there is no mainstream media, other than the government-sanctioned, corporate pipeline that feeds us a constant stream of Rove-generated propaganda

please

[Name removed]

31. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ParanoidPat]

23. BWAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Great impression of a freeper! You really had me going there for a moment! The media rarely talks about think tanks unless it's the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) See this Google News search

Arabs should mount a public relations campaign in the US
... role played by “hawkish” or “pro-Israel” Washington think tanks in ... was, among
others, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), one of ...

Arabs should mount a public relations campaign in the US
Daily Star, Lebanon - Jan 13, 2004
... role played by “hawkish” or “pro-Israel” Washington think tanks in ... was, among
others, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), one of ...

Neocons' Manual for Global Warmongering
Antiwar.com, CA - Jan 12, 2004
... the two authors, both resident fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI),
describe an ... We can feel the will to win ebbing in Washington; we sense the ...

Room for One More Rulemaking Think Tank?
Washington Post, DC - Jan 12, 2004
There is the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, the AEI-Brookings Joint ... from think
tanks, colleges and universities, federal agencies, Washington offices of ...

Perle-Frum book updates neocon ME agenda
Daily Star, Lebanon - Jan 11, 2004
The two fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), known to some as “Neocon
Central” in Washington, describe their new book, An End to Evil, as a ...

Neo-Conservatism, Hard Core
Inter Press Service (subscription), World - Jan 11, 2004
WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (IPS) - If hard-core neo-conservatives Richard Perle and David ... both
resident fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), describe an ...

Bush advisors defend Iraq weapons claims
ABC Online, Australia - Jan 9, 2004
... Pentagon advisor Richard Perle said at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). ... On
Thursday, a Washington think-tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International ...

Kremlin committing genocide against Chechens …
Kavkaz Center, Turkey - Jan 4, 2004
... was held in Washington , DC dedicated to the situation in Chechnya . The conference
was sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the American ...

Network of US neocons
Korea Herald, South Korea - Jan 4, 2004
... AEI researchers like Michael A. Ledeen, Thomas Donnelly, Reuel Marc Gerecht and ... headed
by Bill Kristol, released a report charting Washington's foreign strategy ...

Picks For The New Year
The Ledger, FL - Jan 4, 2004
... extremely attractive stock. James K. Glassman writes this column for
The Washington Post. His e-mail address is [e-mail].

And everyone knows that the media NEVER mentions PNAC, well except Google News and a bunch of the media! :)

Mission to Mars for Military Benefit, not Just
Vive Le Canada, Canada - 10 hours ago
... Feeney's comments echo PNAC's September 2000 report Rebuilding America's Defenses,
which said, "Much as control of the high seas - and the protection of ...

They're Lying to Us About Space
BuzzFlash - Jan 16, 2004
... Ted Kennedy's speech about Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the Project for a
New American Century, would someone in the media please click on to PNAC's ...

Political appeals to bigotry grow
Decatur Daily Democrat, IN - Jan 16, 2004
... To hear these people describe it, PNAC is sort of a Yiddish Trilateral
Commission, the nexus of the sprawling neocon tentacles.". ...

Washington Post defends Bush, Iraq war against Paul O'Neill's ...
World Socialist - Jan 15, 2004
... Secretary of State), pro-war hawk Richard Perle and others, lobbied the Clinton
administration, in the name of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC ...

America, too, will grow old one day
Straits Times, Singapore - Jan 15, 2004
... Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategy, Forces And Resources For A New Century,
a report which the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) published in ...

O’Neill’s Claims Against Bush Supported By 1998 "War" Letters ...
Dissident Voice, United States - Jan 15, 2004
... Other familiar names on PNAC’s roster of supporters include Richard Armitage,
currently Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Perle, one of the architects of ...

If Bush's Motives in Iraq Were Pure, Why The Deception?
BuzzFlash - Jan 14, 2004
... He is, of course, talking about the PNAC mission. This harkens back
to PNAC's letter to Bill Clinton in 1998 demanding that the ...

O'Neill's Claims Supported by 1998 Memo
CounterPunch, CA - Jan 14, 2004
... Other familiar names on PNAC's roster of supporters include Richard Armitage, currently
Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Perle, one of the architects of the ...

PNAC holds seminar on awareness to ISO 9001, 2000
PakTribune.com, Pakistan - Jan 13, 2004
KARACHI: Pakistan National Accreditation Council (PNAC) arranged a seminar on awareness
to ISO 9001; 2000 at Department of Plant Protection, Ministry of Food ...

Neocon policy has familiar ring
Arizona Republic, AZ - Jan 12, 2004
... (Sound familiar?). PNAC supporter and Deputy Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz has been urging the invasion of Iraq since 1998. ...

I can type in any of the things you mention to prove my point but I think you get the picture. ;-)

[ElsewheresDaughter]

38. you're a funny guy "Neocons are NOT in charge of this Admin......

....There is only one neocon left in this Administration: Wolfowitz"

omfg ROFLMAO...YOU ARE A RIOT!

thanks for your "fair and balanced" assessment and the huge belly laugh!

[TankLV]

46. Me thinks you are grossly mistaken.

The "fair and balanced" media whores never for a second failed to loudly and continuously repeat every false, undocumented, un-detailed accusation regarding the Honorable PRESIDENT Clinton - every single one of them - even had snappy graphics and a jingle for every single one of them.

This proven CRIMINAL occupying Our White House gets a pass every single time. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Even when there are countless hours of video and pages of statements that prove every single lie.

[Dookus]

8. actually

I knew all those things...

and I read them in the (gasp) MEDIA!

[veracity]

9. link correction

This seems to work...

http://tvnewslies.org/html/pnac_neo-con_artists.html

[emanymton]

11. Never Under Estimate The Stupidity Of The Public

The masses will follow and act against their own best interests. But never lie to them.

They will surprise you. The people may see through all the lies stated by the government and respond against them.

Just because you show the GOP to have lied to the public, does not mean the people will automatically turn to the Democrats. For the people to be willing to follow the Democratic Nominee (DN), the DN will have to earn the trust of the people.

No one wants to replace one liar with another. Given a choice between the Shrub and a Shrub-lite, the masses will stay home.

The DN needs peal the truth, not peel the onion.

[ParanoidPat]

12. Try checking the Latest Breaking News forum......

.....you seem to be missing a LOT of news on those 'other' sites! :evilgrin:

DU'ers doesn't just read the news, we make the news! ;-)

[alcuno]

13. We need a nominee.

When there is a Democratic nominee in the spring, they ought to be making a whole lot of noise. It's hard to hear just one message right now.

[Cleita]

17. I think there are too many candidates right now and they are

obscuring the message with infighting. I have the greatest respect for Carol Mosley Braun for dropping out. Four more should drop out so we can consolidate our Democratic platform. They need to do it now.

[0007]

18. The U.S. folks are a little slow, but things are starting to happen

junior's poll numbers are going down.

[i_am_not_john_galt]

19. My theories

- the Wilson leak - the worst scandal in American history
- It'll be back if there's progress in the investigation, but don't hold your breath as leaks very rarely get solved. If this is the worst scandal in American History then I've been told wrong about Teapot Dome, the Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin, Harper's Ferry, bla bla bla

- the Cheney energy meetings - still secret after 3 law suits
- Too complicated for most folks, can't be succinctly explained between features on Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant. A non-starter.

- the 9/11 missing papers - not a word about what he knew and when
- People have accepted that a certain amount of incompetence is evident in the failure of the FBI to miss the plot, but will not put on the tinfoil for LIHOP/MIHOP. So there is no urgency for missing papers.

- the WMD lies - that has died and gone to hell
- Consensus is that there were none, that pretty much everyone was fooled into thinking that they did exist (including Clinton, most of the candidates, and maybe even Sadaam himself), and are willing to let it go at that.

- the Halliburton no bid contracts in Iraq - getting millions for what Iraqi contractors bid a fraction to do even better
- This could have legs but needs some spicy details - $800 toilet seats, that kind of thing.

- the number of dead soldiers - INCLUDING those who died from wounds
- I think people have become deaf to the trickle of stories, and have started to contextualize the number with other wars. I think people generally understand that you can't go off invading other countries without the potential of not just hundreds, but thousands of casualties. Some even consider that this "shows our ability to take losses" and mitigates tail-tucking in Beirut and Somalia.

- the number of wounded
- see above

- the number of non combat deaths
- The story has actually been about how careful the US has been to avoid civilian casualties, even at risk to ourselves.

- the number of Iraqi civilians we killed and continue to kill
- They are brown, poor, don't speak english, and look suspiciously like the same people blowing up our soldiers. Story doesn't play unless it is My Lai Massacre caliber.

- the failure of the Afghan war - with the heroin trade at an all time high
- Afghanistan? Didn't we fight a war there once?

- Neil Bush getting 400 thou a year to promote China imports
- This could play. First I've heard of it.

[pretzel4gore]

25. maybe the american people need geebush to

completely destroy it's raison d'etre and give humanity a fighting chance (that video of the iraqi farmers being murdered by hi tech goofs pissed me off to no end...lol)
the idea is that USA= fascism, thus a deadly drain on global resources and energy, to no good purpose but fattening up buncha gluttons (?)

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

26. Rope-a-dope

The administration has decided in many cases that total secrecy leaves less tail exposed to be investigated. (Like with 9/11 investigation, Energy policy meetings). Seems to have largely worked.

The difference unlike in the 70's is there is no new Woodward and Bernstein creeping around finding out the facts. The new media covering Washington appear to be blowdried prettyboys and girls who will never uncover a new fact themselves, have to have it handed to them, preferrably spoonfed in easily digestible format by the official sources (at a fancy party or dinner is best), or a book released by someone like Suskind who actually did the legwork.

A lot of this information is out there, but the biggest most "reputable" sources are not pushing it. I grew up on the Washington Post but they have largely been apologists for Bush and this war and have not covered big negative stories on page 1. I read the online NY times and they totally let me down in the runup to the war, esp. with an idiot like T. Friedman, and now Maureen Dowd writing her infuriating fluff pieces on the candidates. Krugman is excellent though.

I learned about PNAC last year through Jay Bookman's reporting and editorials at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has had excellent and early (prewar) coverage of the subject. PNAC is also covered very well on the PBS Frontline program, which can still be viewed online via streaming video ("Truth, War, and Consequences") at:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/

Bookman can be read at the Op-Ed pages of

http://www.ajc.com/

I read multiple papers online: Wash Post, NYT, AJC, L.A. Times, and sometimes the Boston Globe and Dallas Morning News. I read letters to the editor to keep a pulse on things. I read a lot more negative against the administration than positive for these days, even in the Texas rags, and I find that a positive indicator.

I send relevant links and articles to interested friends. Keep getting the word out!

Hopefully enough is getting out that Lincoln's axiom about all of the people not being fooled all of the time is coming true in time for these bozos.

[RandomKoolzip]

28. Welcome to DU!

Sounds like you've done your homework...!

[ParanoidPat]

29. Welcome to DU Mayberry Machiavelli!

:hi: Don't forget to check out the Latest Breaking News forum and post any relevant articles you find that others haven't posted yet.

Keep getting the word out! :evilgrin:

[AndyTiedye]

34. They Fool 29% of the People All of the Time

That is the FundiBushBot base. Their church tells them to vote for Bush* so they will, come Hell or high water. Fortunately, a lot of them are
in the South, which is a write-off for the Democrats anyway.

Most of Bush*'s other votes come from people who are not Fundies, but
still believe whatever slime comes out of their TV set. As long as
the broadcast media is all-Bush*-all the time, we can't have those
votes either. The gropernatorial debacle here in CA is evidence of that.
Fortunately, a lot of these people don't vote.

We have to get everyone else to vote for the Democrat in November.

[H2O Man]

35. there are way more people who would vote against bush...

...but two-thirds of them are NOT REGISTERED! If we continue to make clever debater's points on d.u., Bush may win in November. If you take a couple hours per week, and register poor people and young people, (often an over-lapping segment) believe me, Bush moves back to Texas. Do you think that if the republican party knew that there was a huge reservoir of potential voters who supported them, that they would not be walking around trailor parks, etc, signing them up? The very idea of their party is TO BENEFIT THE FEW at the expense of the masses. Get it, folks? Now, don't be afraid of poor people. Go to their homes, talk to them. You will find they are interested in being included in a social movement. You teach them, and surprise, surprise, they will teach you. And then, together, we'll teach the republicans a lesson in November!

[Q]

36. You make a lot of assumptions...

...about what people would be interested in knowing. None of these stories are too 'complicated' and the people have a right to know what the government is doing in their name.

- You can't know what people have 'accepted' if they're not given enough information to make an 'informed' decision.

[papau]

43. wouldn't be interested in knowing, doesn't have legs, won't sell eyes- the

boss controlls - in this case editors and owners - and the size of the count of all the liberal reporters does not matter.

So it gets on the wire, on PBS, on niche columns, and if it must be in a national outlet media, its a bare fact paragraph on page A29 next to the Obits - and dead after one day.

We have GOP corporate controlled media -

and folks need the check, so there can not be a "writers/reporters/ TV readers strike"

The EU has union owned media - that may be what the US needs.

[cthrumatrix]

44. More people knwo than you think...this is why there is soo much

passion in the dem run-off...there IS enough amo to brign down shrub