Monday, February 13, 2006
News
I have come to realize why I was so poorly misinformed in my life before: I read The Chicago Tribune.
Jesus Christ. Several articles were published in The New York Times over the past few days about Alberto Gonzales before the Judiciary Committee, including an op-ed. Was there an op-ed in the Tribune? Nope. But they did write an op-ed about Britney Spears.
Thank you, Chicago Tribune. Few mainstream papers pedal so furiously after The Wall Street Journal down the path to depravity than The Chicago Tribune. This is S.O.P. for the right-wing media: pound the United Nations and other favored conservative targets at any opportunity and simply ignore the raging headlines when they are about something embarrassing to your side.
The Chicago Tribune finally published a piece on the wiretapping scandal yesterday, and it is as bad as I had hoped. I am officially writing off The Chicago Tribune. You hear me, Tribune? You are dead to me!
You haven’t endorsed a democrat for president in a century. You were isolationist right before WWI. You were hostile to the New Deal. You said Dewey won. You idolized Joe McCarthy.
You were WRONG. You were always, always, wrong. You were an ugly reminder of the Chicago that inspired The Jungle, a Chicago of a wealthy few and a downtrodden mass.
Newspapers are for-profit businesses, and you remind us of that every day. You are not Chicago, Tribune: you are just another snake oil salesman pimping his poison to an ignorant public. You are a reminder that while people need news to function they can’t get it from companies with a profit motive and a president who inherited his job from his dad.
Your McCormick family dynasty left the president’s office in the fifties and the Tribune Company went public in 1983 but you were still conservative to the core. You still endorsed Reagan for president. You still endorsed George H.W. Bush for president, then Bob Dole, then George W. Bush twice.
And you’re still wrong. So now you defend illegal wiretaps because what the fuck? Why stop now?
The country has changed, Tribune, but you haven’t. You don’t represent Midwestern conservativism anymore. Your home state and your home city have been blue for years now. We came to love the New Deal you despised. We decided Joe McCarthy was a fucking alcoholic loser of a politician who destroyed people’s careers because he had no fucking political philosophy beyond red baiting and baseless slander. We decided Nixon was a crook long before you fucking figured it out, dragged kicking and screaming to the dinner table for a fresh helping of crow. We decided we didn’t want either Bush to be president of our country and we were right there too.
But you never stopped. You kept right on pumping lies and conservative apologias into the public discourse like a broken New Orleans sewage main spouting 1000 gallons a minute of soupy shit right into the streets of our city. You ran further to the right than any paper but The Wall Street Journal, a disservice to a city that you supposedly represented. You touted supply-side economics and other voodoo bullshit whenever your conservative masters ordered. You apologized for their worst excesses and ignored anything you could, even when all of this was hurting the people who bought your papers, ran your presses, and mopped your floors.
You are a pedophile living next to a school. You are the violently alcoholic uncle the family is ashamed of. You are hurting your community and your family and preying on their ignorance and trust.
I’m not going to respond to your editorials anymore. You’ve had a century to refute yourself and you’ve done nicely.
So let’s see what’s in the headlines that the trib doesn’t want to talk about, shall we?
Hmmm…cool article in the New York Times about how Preznit Stumbly has officially sunk our nation in more debt than Reagan ever did. Seriously, is this guy not the worst president ever? Are we not living in an age that will be forever remembered as the long, dark dominion of the bat shit crazy republicans?
Another New York Times article about how the reconstruction is an unmitigated disaster. I’ve said enough on this subject. I just don’t want to talk about it anymore.
More evidence the tide is turning against the W administration: republican congresspeople are fleeing the W agenda like rats off a sinking ship. I guess Rove’s threats aren’t too convincing, coming as they are from an administration that hasn’t seen the sunny side of a 50% JAR since 2004.
I love this story. Just read this stuff. We’ve got it ALL here: Libby admitting that the Vice President authorized him to leak classified information to journalists, piecemeal, to justify the administration’s claims; a rehash of the Iran-Contra Affair; a reminder that many of the central claims against Oliver North couldn’t be proved because Reagan wouldn’t declassify the necessary documents to help prosecute his former thrall and the darling of the neocon right.
Yes…it always comes back to Reagan, doesn’t it? Make that BitterHarvest’s Rule #1 when analyzing the malevolent and murderous plans of the new republicans: it always comes back to Reagan.
Tom DeLay is back! He may be politically radioactive, but why would that stop an entire party of criminals from putting him in a position of power? Tom is now the new Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. DeLay also received a seat on the subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department and the ongoing investigation of Jack Abramoff, an investigation in which he is a target.
Wheeee! It’s amazing the things you’ll do when you have no conscience!
Seriously, I have not seen so many comments posted on this story in my life. This story is so stunning I have no words. Aside from the wiretapping story I can’t remember one that so clearly demonstrates how degenerate the Republican Party has become.
Thinkprogress is, and always has been, an invaluable resource. Check out Cheney going off the reservation again. No comment here. Not even Reagan was like this. Cheney doesn’t ignore the truth: he simply has no idea what it is.
I can’t get off Thinkprogress today. Check out this story. Gonzales unambiguously lied under oath to Russ Feingold. Prosecution, anyone? Anyone? Law and order, anyone? Anyone want to enforce the law? No?
Although I already wrote about Coretta Scott King’s funeral, I was trying to be diplomatic about the whole politics-at-a-funeral thing. Check out this post over at Gilliard. Sweet, sweet Steve.
I have written before about the Bush presidency resurrecting John Poindexter from his political grave to run the Big Brother program Total Information Awareness, which congress rightly quashed (BTW, Republicans were supposed to be about small government, right? You might want to choose a name in the future that doesn’t sound like you are trying to spy on everyone all the time). Not only did Poindexter rise from his grave, but Total Information Awareness did, too. Bush just went around congress again. He moved the program and reconstituted it.
Few republicans are as vile as Bill Bennet. I get his lies piped, fresh and steaming, into my car every morning on my way to work. Bill got lambasted recently for pointing out that blacks have a higher crime rate than whites, a criticism that was especially sweet because he didn’t really deserve it. It’s kinda like busting Al Capone for tax evasion for twenty years. But today he just skipped the whole indirect prejudice of his past and jump ass-over-teakettle into blatant, blind bigotry.
The sad thing is this isn’t even remotely the worst thing Bill’s ever said. This guy defends torture, warrantless wiretapping, Voodoo Economics, and every other horrifying right-wing idea with bald-faced lies and more subtle mischaracterizations.
I have a new nickname. Bill Bennet will forever be known on this blog as Apartheid.
Which eliminates a prime nickname for Ann Coulter, who went all bat shit crazy bigot at the CPAC two days ago. A quote from our handy spies at Campus Progress:
These riots of Muslims remind us why we have to take seriously the threat that Iran has nukes. Maybe they do, maybe they don't--but they're certainly acting like they do. What if they start having one of these bipolar episodes with nuclear weapons? If you don't want to get shot by the police, don't point a gun at them--or as I think our motto should be, post-9/11, raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences
Hah! I love that bitch! Every time CNN or FOX has that bitch on they are providing a platform for an unapologetic racist and sexist, which is a wicked two-fer. Of course, every bigot on earth was at the CPAC and cheered her loudly. Some timid Muslim tried to object and they shut his shit up. Take that Raghead!
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 6:10 AM 
