|
Can America be a Truly Great Modern Nation?
...to be a truly great a modern nation [we] must grapple with the
greater good.... Quality education, meaningful health
care, a cleaner environment, constructive world engagement, and
cultural advancement require an active, responsible federal
government and a committed civil service. All that costs
money, which means that we have to pay taxes. Our focus
should be on improving government, not eliminating it.
— from a letter to the editor of
The New Yorker by Michael Lahr of
Arlington, VA, published September 12, 2005.
Lobbying for Armageddon
Some influential evangelical leaders are lobbying
for an attack on Iran. But it's not about
geopolitics -- it's about bringing about the End
Times.
Click
here for the full article.
Banking on war
Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft
from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold
and are not clothed.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Only the dead, said Plato, have seen the end of war. As
true as this may be, it does beg the question: why? Why is there
so much conflict in the world? Why are there so many wars?" asks
William Rivers Pitt in
Truthout.
"Because war is a profitable enterprise," he continues.
"George W. Bush and his people can hold forth about the wonders
of democracy and peace.... Until the United States stops being
the world's largest arms dealer, these words from our government
absolutely reek of hypocrisy."
|
Meet the Press? They're
mostly awful!
"Folks, this is serious.
If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media
habits that helped install the worst president ever in
the White House haven’t changed a bit," says Paul
Krugman in his July 6, 2007 Op-Ed piece for The New
York Times.
Krugman cites the presidential debate of Oct. 3, 2000,
and how it was covered.
"It was one of the worst moments in an election marked
by news media failure as serious, in its way, as the
later failure to question Bush administration claims
about Iraq. Throughout that debate, George W. Bush made
blatantly misleading statements, including some outright
lies - for example, when he declared of his tax cut that
“the vast majority of the help goes to the people at the
bottom end of the economic ladder.” That should have
told us, right then and there, that he was not a man to
be trusted.
But few news reports pointed out the lie. Instead, many
news analysts chose to critique the candidates’ acting
skills. Al Gore was declared the loser because he sighed
and rolled his eyes - failing to conceal his justified
disgust at Mr. Bush’s dishonesty. And that’s how Mr.
Bush got within chad-and-butterfly range of the
presidency."
He goes on to cite recent media coverage of the most
recent debates of presidential candidates.and how the
candidates misrepresented the facts, were not
forthcoming about their policies, made statements that
were totally unreasonable -- all without a blink from
the debate moderators or the later press coverage.
"As far as I can tell, no major news organization did
any fact-checking of either debate," said Krugman. "And
post-debate analyses tended to be horse-race stuff
mingled with theater criticism: assessments not of what
the candidates said, but of how they 'came across.' ”
The moral to the story? Don't necessarily believe
what you read or what you hear on the tube.
Jon Stewart has been pointing out for ages how the press
merely parrots whatever copy the White House or any
other "authority" gives them,
without question.
Tony Snow was shown saying, when the firing of the
district attorneys took place that, they were fired
based on their performance. Now that it turns out
their performance was fine, he says he never said that.
Stewart has clip after clip of the news media reporting
about a given subject in the exact same words.
All, it seems, taken from the same Cliff notes.
So let the reader — and the viewer — beware.
— Marilyn Dainoff
The care of human life and happiness, and not the
destruction of it, is the first and only object of
good government.
– Thomas Jefferson
The biggest protection racket
It’s time to burst the
bubble, says Eric Lotke, in the
"GOP Protection Racket." Republicans say they are the
party of security and that they are the only ones who can keep
us safe...
Nothing could be further from the
truth, says Lotke. Republicans are not the party of security. They are the
party of fear. From their colorized terrorism alerts to their
exaggerated threats of Iraqi WMDs, the Republican party wants us
to feel afraid. Their policies are designed to sound tough and
transfer funds among friends—not necessarily to keep us safe. If
they don’t keep us safe, it’s even better. People will be more
scared, pay more money, and vote even redder in the next
election. It’s a protection racket.
Pro-Life Nation: Is this what we want?
What is it like to live in a country that takes the
criminalization of abortion to its logical extreme? Read "Pro-Life
Nation," a truly shocking article by Jack Hitt, which
was published April 9 in the NYTimes Magazine. El Salvador
is that nation, and the situation is unbelievable.
If Tyranny
and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
– James
Madison |
