Jon Stewart: Our Last 100 Days

I loved this segment! Jon's initial reaction to the news of the flu -- exactly how I felt. Pretty sure this is the first time in my life that I've ever been pissed off over a flu outbreak... or maybe its the media coverage. And nobody exposes the ghouls in the corporate media quite like Jon Stewart.

Lincoln, I believe, would have loved this show. Humor, politics... and surgical satirizing of the more ridiculous elements in our society, especially our media. I didn't get around to posting this after I saw it because I was out of town... but its never too late to remedy that!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Snoutbreak '09 - The Last 100 Days
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

Seymour Hersh: Cheney's 'Executive Assassin Ring'

Pulitzer prize winner Seymour Hersh is one of the last and perhaps best investigative journalists of our time.

When I was growing up during the Watergate Era, I idolized Woodward and Bernstein: I hoped to one day become an investigative journalist myself -- one of the journalists that serve our democratic process by shedding much needed light into the dark places in our government.

A free and independent media was always considered by our forefathers to be one of the safeguards of our democracy - the unofficial 'forth branch of government' that kept the populace informed so that they could exercise citizen oversight and keep our nation free from the ruling corruption that devoured democracies in the past.

Today, independent media is hard to find. Most of it is now corporate media, pushing a corporate, elitist agenda. To say that our canned media is slanted towards the interests of the corporate power-brokers would be a laughable understatement. It is completely owned by the corporate power-brokers, and serves their purposes quite nicely. Our own voices are seldom heard in this big market, monopolized media; thus government oversight by the media is a dying art, practiced by only a few rare, brave journalists (and working for dedicated papers and magazines.)

My hat is off to the New Yorker for their continued support of Mr. Hersh and his much-needed service to our democracy. And kudos to Amy Goodman for her 'take no prisoners' independent journalism. Her success, and the success of Democracy Now! demonstrates our citizen determination to get the news - the real news - and to keep an eye on Washington. As recent economic (not to mention two wars) have shown... our oversight is necessary.

Government-sponsored hit-squads are so banana republic... they debase our nation, our standing in the world, and our very morality as Americans. They are also unconstitutional and illegal.

Speaking of Carlin...

"They'll get it all from you sooner or later." (Apparently it will be sooner.)

Rate the Debates yourself

Don't forget - tonight - sign up to rate the debates!

Change the Debate!

The question I absolutely must have answered, in detail, before I vote:

1) Will you roll back the unprecedented 'Unitary Executive' powers that have been claimed by President Bush and Vice President Cheney; restoring both our constitutional rights as citizens, and the pre-existing balance of power between the three branches of our Federal Government?

Yes or No.

Thought for today: Kipling was right

I was nosing around in my daily reading spots and found that someone had blogged "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" by Kipling (written in 1919.)

As with the blogger, I was struck by how timeless and timely it is today.

Nothing changes... at least not here in the good ol US of A. Same mistakes, over and over and over.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Rudyard Kipling

AS I PASS through my incarnations
in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations
to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers
I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings,
I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us.
They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us,
as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift,
Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas
while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed.
They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne
like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress,
and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield,
or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on
they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton;
they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses;
they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market
Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming,
They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons,
that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us
and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings
said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones
we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour
and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children
and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings
said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch
we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter
to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money,
there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings
said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled,
and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled
and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters,
and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings
limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future,
it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain
since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit
and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger
goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished,
and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing
and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us,
as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
with terror and slaughter return.

Michael Moore responds to Joe Lieberman

And now if I may, I'd like to respond to Michael.

If you haven't noticed already, I don't watch the conventions. I didn't watch the DNC and I'm certainly not going to poison my spirit by watching the RNC. The Democrats may have mostly forgotten their ideology (think Roosevelt,) but the GOP is now tilting wildly in the direction of fascism. And their product stinks.

My response to Michael Moore? The reason Joe Lieberman and McCain, and every other Republican bash you in public is because you have the nerve to uncover holes in the 'product.' You are successful when you comment on the fact that their product doesn't deliver. They've spent millions in advertising to promote their product and conceal its true crappiness, and they aren't going to let you walk in off the street with a movie camera and reveal the truth without a strong counter-attack.

The product is in fact, garbage. You reveal the fact that it doesn't work, has never worked (despite the advertising,) and that the money-back guarantee was always bogus. You are discrediting their product, and so they are now working hard to discredit, or marginalize or harrass you -- all tested corporate battle tactics.

The GOP is so obsessed with corporate business and the market, that they have literally become a corporation themselves, with a name brand and a product. Their product is terrible (for everyone but the top 1% of the economic pyramid,) but they keep selling it to the struggling masses through a carefully crafted advertisement plan. That, and a whole lot of intimidation.

The long term goal is to run their competition out of business; or simply buy them out - Joe Lieberman being an excellent example - so that their lousy product is the only one on the market.

They've already bought the media, so as to keep their advertising campaign on the air 24/7, while subtly bashing anything that threatens their product under the guise of 'covering the news.' If the actual news of the day shows their product in a negative light, they simply withhold this news or make up an alternate reality. Spin is in.

Its just business, Michael.

But Michael... you just won't play. You don't like their product, and you won't join their corporation. And so of course they see you as The Competition. The Competition must be hit and hit hard, at every opportunity.

You are actually advocating something that isn't even a product; a dangerous (to their product) mindset that they hope to eventually stamp out with their corporate world view. Democracy.

Dear media blockheads...

It's not 1968. It's 2008. The only thing the two years have in common is an '8'.

You don't need to go Hillary on us and remind us that it is June, that Bobby Kennedy died 40 years ago this month, because some of us actually do remember it. We remember the heartbreak.

If you want to compare this year with a period in history, you might want to look at the onset of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Sure there wasn't a war - yet - but our 'home front' is definitely shaping up into a stock market crashing, weather devastating mess. And yes, we even have a rich idiot in the White House who is absolutely clueless about the plight of 90% of the people out here (we had that at the onset of the Great Depression too.)

Now, cross your fingers that there is an FDR out there in our not-so-distant future, or we're in big trouble...

And stop comparing Obama to RFK. Ghouls. Did Hillary put you up to this?

Of media and money

Speaking of Katrina, as we near the TWO YEAR anniversary of the storm... where has all the money gone? (Long time passing?)

I'm just dying to know where all of that money raised by the two ex-presidents has gone. I just don't see the results. They raised MILLIONS. Where is the money?

The Federal government alone supposedly allocated $116 billion in recovery aid (a pittance to what is spent in Iraq every time we blink our eyes.) But for some reason, the languishing residents of the Gulf Coast just haven't seen it. And they're starting to wonder if that check was lost in the mail:

The fact that, two years later, most federal Katrina funds remain bottled up in bureaucracy is especially shocking considering that the amounts Washington allocated come nowhere near the anticipated costs of Gulf rebuilding.

For example, the $3.4 billion FEMA has available to recover local public infrastructure would only cover about one-eighth of the damage suffered in Louisiana alone. But this money is spread across five states - Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas - and covers damage from three 2005 hurricanes, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

Congress has acted on some of the money holdups, like changing a requirement in the Stafford Act that mandates local governments pay 10 percent of rebuilding projects up front before receiving federal aid. The Bush administration had refused to waive the rule - like it did for New York after 9/11 - grounding countless projects. The effect of the rule was particularly devastating in the hardest-hit places like Mississippi's Hancock County, where communities lost most of their tax base after the storms.

Oh yeah -- I remember that kind of 'help' after 9/11. The 'help' we received from the SBA cost us our house. Thank you by the way, Federal government... I don't believe I ever told you how happy I was with the way that turned out. Of course, we were lucky compared with the people of New Orleans. They obviously didn't have houses to put up as collateral, so you just blew them off -- worse even than the storm itself.

But back to the presidents. There is never any mention at all, ever, of where that money went. Ever.

And looking at the region, its obvious that money isn't being spent there by anyone, save the manpower invested by organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and others like them.

But money?

Federal contracts for rebuilding and recovery have also been marked by scandal, fraud and abuse. An August 2006 study by the office of Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., identified 19 contracts worth $8.75 billion that experienced "significant overcharges, wasteful spending or mismanagement."

Halliburton to the rescue! (Or not.)

"Where did it go?" says Tanya Harris of ACORN in New Orleans when asked about the $116 billion. "Tell me. Where did it go?"

Maybe it found a home with the money miraculously lost in the sands of Iraq...