as disappointing as some of obama’s recent moves to the middle have been, none is as galling as the decision to support the FISA bill currently in the senate. i understand the political expedience of shoring up against that faux "he’s not tough on national security" argument the idiots across the aisle are determined to gin up should obama vote against the bill. i get it.. i really do.
but i just wish that the one candidate we have who represents even a modicum of honesty and integrity (and obama clearly has more than that) would just stand up and tell it like it is. bush broke the law and has been spying on us. with the help of the telecom companies. who have, in turn, given lots of money to elected representatives to keep their mouths shut. and the american people deserve to find out exactly what has transpired over the past seven years. period. paragraph.
no bill gets passed until bush is out of office and the facts can be brought into the sunlight. that’s it. no compromise. skip the speeches on patriotism and the mild smackdowns of truthtellers like wes clark. save the discussion of faith-based initiatives for another day. stand up (and bring russ feingold with you) and tell us that truth and honesty still mean something. anything. even in a quixotic situation that, may they burn in hell for it, democrats have enabled.
barring the unlikely scenario of the above unfolding, olbermann seems to have taken in at least some of glenn greenwald’s points and internalized them into a pretty compelling if/then/else statement. you can see it here:
if you haven’t seen steve doocy—one of fox news’ talking douchebags (or is that doochebags?)—in action before, this should serve as a wonderful introduction. i enjoy dashing a letter off now and then and felt inspired to write after seeing the clip below. enamored as i am with my own deliciousness, i have decided to share said letter with my loyal big micro readers. (the original keith ‘worst person’ clip that doocy finds so offensive—oh my!—follows the letter text below. happy wednesday.
dearest fox friends:
i’ve seen the clip of little peter doocy and his sad, smirk-laden attempt at ‘reporting.’ apparently peter is an apt pupil when it comes to aping his father’s dubious ‘journalistic’ style. the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree when it comes to regurgitating GOP talking points and framing questions in that oh-so-familiar faux news manner.
doocy senior should be less concerned with what olbermann thinks and says about his son and pay a bit more attention to his own parenting responsibilities. after all, it was daddy that set up his kid for ridicule and then had the subsequent effrontery to get his panties in a bunch when the inevitable ridicule occurred. peter is certainly entitled to act like an idiot; it’s de rigeur for many college-aged kids. but dressing up that idiocy as “youth-oriented commentary” under the guise of objectivity deserves to be called out for what it is: a transparent act of nepotistic parroting. and papa doocy’s outrage would be merely laughable if it weren’t so pathetic in its tin-ear shrillness.
here’s a fact (and i realize that facts don’t have much currency over there): olbermann’s comments were far more fair and balanced than peter’s ‘broadcasting’ debut or steve’s ongoing parade of blowhard punditry. as long as nepotism and/or cronyism remain the guiding principles for both faux news and the bush administration, doocy shouldn’t be surprised when incompetence and spin are identified as such. if steve doesn’t want someone to “pick on his kid,” then he shouldn’t be putting that kid on the airwaves.
certainly there’s an element of schadenfreude for those of us out here in the reality-based community in watching the murdoch lemmings get apoplectic as the propaganda machine becomes more and more exposed for what it is. but protestations like doocy’s are what generate the real belly laughs and guffaws.
keep it up. you’ve helped to create the dire situation in which this country finds itself; you owe us a few laughs at the very least.
and here’s keith’s ‘worst person in the world’ segment honoring smirky pete.
most of us know, instinctively, that these three statements are absurd. yet these are all things republicans believe. how else can one explain the past five years of war in iraq? the bush administration would like you to believe that through war, we can achieve peace and ‘democracy’ in the middle east. they’d like you to think that freedom in this country will be protected by making us all slaves to the watchful eyes and ears of data-devouring, privacy-eviscerating government ‘security’ programs. and they want you to put those goddamn stubborn facts aside and just trust them to ensure america stays strong in the face of grave threats ‘out there’. truth be damned; dogma be praised.
eric blair was more than eerily prescient when he wrote 1984 back in 1949—he was keenly observant. blair had just lived through world war II and had seen the ugly face of totalitarianism up close. and though ‘democracy’ carried the day to defeat hitler and those who had rallied around him, it wasn’t too hard to extrapolate a future in which a more insidious form of fascism could take root underneath the fertile ground of post-war prosperity.
fast-forward to 2008. today marks the fifth anniversary of the iraq invasion and occupation. as many others have written, this military disaster has gone on longer than world war I, world war II and the civil war. it has cost us dearly in human life, dollars, reputation and our ability to make sound judgments as a nation. it has been, arguably, the single greatest foreign policy disaster in our history. and we’re nowhere near close to ending it. that pathetic shell of a man, mccain, wants to keep us there for another 100 years. he claims it’s inevitable. the only thing that’s inevitable about iraq is that it will take us decades to recover from our blunders there.
it didn’t have to be this way. and it better not be this way in the future. because if we can’t learn from this colossal mistake, then we are truly ignorant. truly slaves to immoral so-called leaders. and truly locked in a never-ending war—with ourselves.
how does it feel to be told “fuck you” by your president? because that’s exactly what’s happening in this incredible affront to decency:
of course, this is no surprise to those of us who have been paying attention for the past seven years. but i’m curious if any of those “hey, bush isn’t so bad” head-in-the-sand-ers feel any differently about the worstpresident in american history after watching this clip. somehow i doubt it.
here are just a few of the things bush finds uproariously funny:
i find the entire bush presidency—and anyone who still thinks the man is anything more than a lying, cynical, arrogant, useless sack of shit—devastatingly sad. and the above little snapshot of our media laughing and fawning over the emperor with no clothes is sadder still, as it demonstrates not only how much we’ve lost during the bush years, but how hard it will be to claw our way back.
