Banned?

In an addendum to one of my comments at Al-Arianna about the McCain campaign, I sarcastically noted that I had reached a milestone, 400 censored posts out of approximately 2200.

I snarked a few other times over the last couple of days about the heavy handed and arbitrary nature of their moderation and now I have noticed that my archived approved comments started disappearing as well as the ones that were blocked. I believe that is leading up to a ban for not meekly taking my soma and putting up with something that is anathema to progressives, snuffing free speech in the name of a moderator's personal predilections even when those posts don't violate their stated guidelines.

In fact, often what gets wiped are long and thoughtful posts about an issue. Then when I answer a conservative troll with a pretty vicious pithy and ad hominem shot, that is permitted to survive scrutiny. What the fuck is up with that?

HuffPo's moderators have their heads up their asses and it is eventually going to drive people away because nobody can figure out where the line is. The only reason I am there so much right now is because I am obsessed with the presidential campaign. Once that is resolved, I am mulling just staying away. I can only put up with so much frustration.

McCain Using Same Robocall Firm That Helped Smear Him In 2000

Story is here.

Note: This was a reply to the following ridiculous assertion:

"Tim Russert would have gone insane this election season with so many lies going around. I imagine him with anybody of the McCain campaign with the videos and the quotes to prove their contradictions in his very elegant and respectful way to cross examine. I believe that this election would have been a landslide by today if we would have somebody like him pressuring for interviews and confronting the politicians. I still miss him on sunday mornings!!!"

My reply:

Are you serious?

Russert would have kept every freaking GOP talking point roiling right up to election day. As Arianna said, he was a captive of conventional wisdom, a lazy thinker and largely AWOL in the runup to the Iraq War.

Please, he was weaker than a Shirley Temple.

Censored

Note: Though shalt not criticize St. Timmeh.

BusinessWeek: Disney Is The Media Industry's Best Bet For Stability During Financial Crisis

Story is here.

Yet another laudatory Disney related article in Huffington Post.

Again, what is Disney's relationship with Huffington Post to keep getting so much favorable coverage here when that company is anti-labor, uses sweatshops to manufacture its clothing and toys and interferes with the electoral process in Anaheim? Not to mention that its ABC division broadcast that libelous movie blaming 9/11 on Bill Clinton.

You owe us an explanation.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/18/news/international/disney_china/index.htm
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/15/local/me-disney15
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/08/abc.movie/index.html

Censored

Note: Disney is the holy of holies at Al-Arianna (my new nickname for HuffPo), so my protest against their whoring for the mouse was crushed yet again.

Federal Immigration Policy is Destabilizing Main Street USA

Story is here.

On the ground, where real America lives, illegal immigration is damaging K-12 education by filling schools with children who can't read even in their own language, more and more scarce resources have to be diverted to get them up to speed on english, they have high dropout rates and they bring increased gang activity to local schools.

Just so that you know, I voted AGAINST Proposition 187 in California because it was bad policy. It would have made the fallout from illegal immigration WORSE.

Communities I have lived in as well as those nearby have been turned into crime infested havens thanks to hispanic gangs. Illegal immigrants are swelling our prisons, driving up law enforcement costs and the houses and apartments where you have 10-20 illegals living in a single unit do little for local living conditions and home values.

This is exacerbated by illegals driving down wages in the construction industry and the meat packing industry you mentioned, among others.

The financial health of hospitals is also threatened by streams of illegals using emergency rooms as their health care when they can't pay.

Dealing with any of this (mass deportations are a needed good start) has become an electoral third rail and thus neither side of the immigration debate is likely to get anywhere, which only increases frustration among community members

There are practical matters of statecraft here. You can't slove anything on mere good wishes and idealism.

Censored

Note: Can't inject any reality into HuffPo about this question, now can we. Especially if you are Anglo, as I am. What a crock of shit that it.

Vicki Iseman Denies McCain Affair

Story is here.

So she waits until three weeks before the election to say, "I did not have sex with that man"?

Plus the National Journals has a well established rightwing bias, though not quite as outright cuckoo as National Review.

If the NY Times was so off base here---and that story they ran does seem to have damaged her career as a Capitol Hill lobbyist, why isn't she suing? She wasn't a public figure, so there would be no Sullivan Test for any possible libel action she might want to file, making it easier for her to win a favorable judgment.

This is just part of a Republican campaign to look like they were victimized by the media they claim is in the tank for Obama. But my suspicion is that McCain had his fundamental was in a tank of a different sort and now they are trying to sing and dance their way around it. And that phone call to Lanny Davis? That was an act.

Look, if her and McCain's relationship was so on the up and up, his aides wouldn't have been concerned about keeping them apart. So there was indeed some kind of smoke there, but we just haven't seen a definitive fire out of it yet.

Approved

Joe The Plumber: Obama Tap Dances Like "Sammy Davis Jr."

Story is here.

Joe the Plumber appears to be Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.

According to Lucas County, Ohio court records, there is a Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher who has a state income tax lien of $1,182.98. According to the court record he lives on a street that is part of the Lincoln Green subdivision.

And Joe the Plumber's Father appears to be Robert Wurzelbacher right wing fanatic and contributor who is the son in law of..... you're not going to believe this. Charles Keating.

This just gets better and better.

Oh there's also a Joe the Twice Divorced Wife Beater.

And The Joe I Haven't Had a Plumbing License Since 2002.

I wonder which of these will turn out to be the guy doing all the talk shows?

I'm sure we'll know by the end of the day.

****Update: Joe the "undecided voter" appears to be a registered Republican. He voted for McCain in the primary.

*** Update 2: There's another Wurzelbacher. Doug Wurzelbacher. Doug is active in competitive dog sled racing. Guess where he lives? Wasilla, Alaska. What are the odds? I wonder if he's related to "Plumber Joe"?

These questions need answers.

# posted by The Punisher @ Thursday, October 16, 2008
Comments:
An FYI--

A search on ancestry dot com turns up a Samuel J. Wurzelbacher at some point in the last twenty years living at - get this - 1960 W. KEATING Dr., Mesa, AZ!!!!

http://theobfuscationreport.blogspot.com/2008/10/joe-plumber-nope-joe-tax-dodger.html

Censored

Note: I don't know why this was censored, though HuffPo has been censoring a lot of longer posts lately. Later on, I did put in a post with a short blurb about this and a link to the story, so this time around was a mixed bag. However, that only further exoses the arbitrary nature of the HuffPo censors.

An Old Boxer Who Has Been in One Too Many Fights

Story is here.

McCain's performance was not worse than that of Stockdale nor was it as horrendous as Cruz Bustamante's debate performance trying to replace Gray Davis as California Governor, but the fact remains that his fly by the seat of his pants style makes McCain perpetually ill prepared to take on sharper operators such as Obama.

He can blame his dad and wife for that since McCain has never had to pay a consequence, until now, for his laziness, impulsiveness, gutlessness and sense of entitlement because dad or his millionaire wife was there to bail his butt out or buy him what he wanted.

The McCain campaign was just a pathetic spectacle of privileged mediocrity that had never had to work for anything in his life. So he never developed the toughness and cunning that one learns from the experience of having to fight and claw for what one has.

McCain thought of himself as a downmarket aristocrat (just like Bush) and he reached the end of that rope Wednesday just as the Navy wouldn't make him an Admiral. His life is now a complete failure. I hope he is man enough to admit it and maybe he, like Jimmy Carter, can now do something constructive to save his reputation before he passes from this life. Don't count on it, though. He has always been an inertia kind of guy.

Censored

Note: ??? Maybe they didn't like the shot I took at Bustamante?

The Conservative Purge Has Begun

Story is here.

While we're on the subject of conservative purges, Virgil Goode has some 'splainin' to do to conservatives about earmarking $150,000 in federal funds for a film involving his closeted gay press secretary called Eden's Curve. That piece of cinema features drug use and bisexuality. Yes you conservatives out there, your tax dollars are funding a non-family fare film thanks to ol' Virgil:
http://airamerica.com/blog/2008/oct/15/virgil-be-goode-bad

Of course, you're going to punish him for it, right? I mean, you wouldn't be moral relativists, now would you?

Censored

Note: I took an earlier shot at a conservative using this fact, but then they censor it in a different article? Now can you understand why people are frustrated by Arianna's little fiefdom?

Colin Powell Is Ready To Endorse

Story is here.

Bradley was the black Gerald Ford, a slow witted tool of the L.A. westside political machine (which whored itself out to local developers). A nice enough guy to be sure, but just not exactly what I would call a leader. L.A. had already started deteriorating under Mayor Yorty, so I don't totally blame Bradley for the frightening level of homicides in L.A. at the time, but he sure didn't do much to ameliorate it.

That therefore made that gubernatorial election a Hobson's choice because George Deukmejian hated anyone who didn't make into seven figures. Not exactly swift upstairs himself, but his staid conservatism apparently made him more palatable to the electorate. I held my nose and voted for Bradley.

Willie Brown is a no good hustler. There is an analogy I have always made of Brown, but it would probably be censored even though it is extremely appropriate. He was a big water carrier for the insurance industry and should have been locked up for it.

Again, I am a Democrat, but I calls 'em as I sees 'em.

Approved

Note: There was another post I wrote parodying the "Obama is too exotic" cant of McCain by applying it to Colin Powell, whose parents are Jamaican. I even put an emoticon with it to let everyone know I was joking. That one got censored. Again, the HuffPo moderators are humor challenged.

Christopher Buckley Resigns From National Review After Obama Endorsement

Story is here.

Republicans complain about political correctness, but there is such a thing as "conservative correctness" and it is enforced by righties similar to how Mao and his henchmen ensured that the Communist Party line was adhered to. What Kathleen Parker and Chris Buckley endured was akin to the struggle meetings of the Cultural Revolution.

And you know the old saying that he who is most loathed his he who is most like oneself. That is why Newt Gingrich hated Bill Clinton so much and why Rich Lowry hates the Tom Hayden types: they are both ideologically driven control freaks who hate being told that their utopian fairy lands aren't possible given the peculiarities of human nature.

Whatever side of the spectrum this happens on, it is thought control and should be abhorred by all thinking people.

Approved

Global Economic Crisis Likely To Have Profound Consequences For US Politics, World Relations

Story is here.

The Bush Administration had failed to heed history and mired us in a three front war of terror (that in Afghanistan, Iraq and against the American people with increased surveillance, eroded civil rights and at times overweening increases in public security), piled up debt that made us vulnerable to the machinations of Japan, China, the Saudis and even Mexico, as well as a crippling of defense mechanisms geared to protecting the public from corporate swindlers.

The Katrina disaster was a result of that, exposing the conservative penchant for an "I'm alright jack, too bad for you" mindset. Too the rest of the world, that is when the wheels really seemed to begin falling off of the American cadillac.

Our infrastructure was already deteriorating and we needed substantial reinvestment in it anyway. That will happen under Obama even with the onerous bailouts the financial mismanagement has engendered.

What is further required is raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour, making bonuses given to executives available to regular employees on the shop floor, and caps on the ratio of executive pay vis a vis what the lower rung workers receive.

So it just isn't a structural problem, it is a cultural one and the mentality of wilfull rapine has to be curbed in favor of encouraging more of an esprit d' corps between workers and bosses rather than the state of war we have now.

Censored

Note: Did I use too many big words and the moderator didn't understand them? So to be safe he/she deleted my post? Or they think "machination" is an obscenity?

Should Obama Have Picked Hillary As His Running Mate?

Story is here.

George .H.W Bush won with Quayle as his VP nominee. What killed his chances for a second term was a combination of Bill Clinton's smarts and charisma and a sense by the American public that Bush was out of touch when that recession hit, something that was exemplified by the supermarket scanner incident.

You don't mention Geraldine Ferraro, whose pick by Walter Mondale was seen as a desperation move by the press and the public. It later turned out that her husband had some unsavory baggage that didn't do their campaign any favors.

But Mondale was going to lose anyway. Palin is the first VP nominee in my lifetime that I can remember where people were passionately citing a running mate as a compulsion to vote for the opponent. This move will be remembered as an indication of McCain's colosally craven submission to the GOP business as usual crowd when he really wanted to pick Joe Lieberman.

Approved

Women Should Beware the Male Spinster

Story is here.

First, minding one's own business is a virtue.

Secondly, different people have different definitions of happiness and snearing, petty and overweening articles such as this one are no doubt born out of envy of the free man by those who are stuck in marriages whose expiration date has long passed and where the only exit is through a courtroom. It is like the old joke you hear from comedians: he should be miserable like the rest of us [by getting married]. No thanks.

After breaking up a three year relationship, I have dropped out of the dating market because I want to be selfish with my time. I have a lot of different interests, a web site to tend to and I don't have to worry about pleasing anyone other then myself. And I cannot be happier.

Now maybe somewhere down the road I might want to start dating again, but then again, maybe not. My life is mine and I don't owe it to anyone else to live it a certain way in order to submit to their absurdly outsized control freak tendencies.

Approved

One Reason Race May Not Derail Obama: The 'Do the Right Thing' Effect

Story is here.

"It's different," John Turturro's Pino Frangione insists. "Magic, Eddie, Prince are not niggers...They're not really black. They're black but they're not really black. They're more than black. To me, it's different."

Spike kinda blew that, actually. It's not that Magic, et al are "more than black," for some people, it is that they are ENTERTAINMENT, which gives a certain kind of white person permission to either laugh at blacks or to vicariously have blacks work for them while being free to slam them without social reprobation if they don't deliver on the court, etc.

The problem for some white people about Obama is that he has stepped outside the socially and culturally approved envelope they cubbyhole blacks into (there's a badly formed metaphor for you). Since many whites don't know black folks socially, it is scary for them to see one in a position of authority when they have never had a black boss or perhaps even coworkers.

And the GOP has been playing up the fear angle non-stop since 9/11, supplying the American public with more ready made terror than Osama Bin Laden. So anyone who doesn't see the McCain campaign as a racist carnival is in denial. No matter how much of a victory Obama wins, the GOP will see him as a glorified burglar breaking into "their" White House.

Censored

Note: what did I write that was wrong? Or aren't white people allowed to address these questions?

McCain Co-chair Calls Obama "A Guy Of The Street," Raises Drug Use

Story is here.

This just in from the home office in Phoenix Arizona:

The Top Ten Reasons to Vote for McCain:

10. McCain has a kung-fu arm flap!
9. A Republican voter will be chosen at random for an all expenses paid party with the board of AIG!
8. Will make "Those Were the Days (The All in the Family Theme)" the national anthem!
7. Depressions mean big dividends for owners of Big Pharma and cardboard manufacturer stocks!
6. Free tickets to the Ron Silver Film Festival for all Republican voters!
5. But we still hate Hollywood!
4. Get back at those ungrateful grandchildren by shouldering them with the debt you created!
3. McCain gaurenteed not to shout "BooYa!" when he signs a bill!
2. Freepers and N R A members don't s h o o t old white Republicans!
1. Secretary of Defense Dick Armey!

Censored

Bill Maher's Fundamentalism

Story is here.

Sorry, you would be wrong.

Your statement about Maher's "black and white" religious beliefs inherently justifies the existence of all purported religions, be it Christianity, Zoroastrianism, the Rev. Moon as a new improved version of Jesus and even a religion that I want to start using Harold Robbins novels as our holy text. Hey, if a bad science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard, can do it, I can too.

How about you give me some seed money? The more religions the better, right?

Look, religion provides comfort to people who are afraid of death because we all want to believe that after we use up our corporeal shells (is that redundant?) we will somehow carry on anyway. And it has also mostly been used as an instrument of governmental control (go to Wikipedia and look up "the Verdict of Verdun," to see one such atrocity early in Christianity that illustrates my point). Our Constitution is partly a reaction to what occurred in the English Civil War brought about by Cromwell and his buddies.

To not look at religion in this way is pure delusion. And Maher is thus much more on the right side of reality than you are.

Approvedl

Ouch! McCain's Housing Solution Is a Gift from Taxpayers to Banks

Story is here.

That's all well and good, except if you read the Village Voice article on the mortgage crisis and Freddie and Fannie, HUD was one of the catalysts that ultimately necessitated the bailout of those two public-private entities.

I would also like to see a time limit put on this new layer of government bureaucracy so that it doesn't become a permanent burden on the taxpayer. I was also against the creation of the Department of Homeland Security not just on taxpayer grounds, but for fear that it would become an American oppression palace. I have been proven right on both counts.

We need a top to bottom reorganization of the DC bureaucracy anyway to put it on a 21st century footing and not the WWII one it is currently on.

Approved

Biden: Palin Must Condemn Supporters' Hateful Obama Attacks

Story is here.

I saw that McCain had his wife out today attacking the Democratic ticket. However, there was something wrong with her and, at least to me, it was pretty obvious.

You see, because of the neighborhood I grew up in, I learned to tell when somebody had an undercover buzz on (that is, they were high and trying to not look like it).

And Cindy, I can say with some certainty, was definitely furtively freakin'. She is back on the meds and in dosages not recommended by any competent and ethical physician.

This McCain just gets sadder and sadder.

Approved

My Name Is Bill Swadley, And I Work For Fox

Story is here.

Hey, Tom Brokaw is fine with Fox News (apparently anyway; he never criticizes it, saving his barbs for his own network instead) so you should be, too. After all, if news colossus Brokaw sees them as being on the up and up then they must be, right?

I call Rupert Murdoch's outfit News Corpse for what it has done to electronic journalism.

Approved

Nuclear Power's Opponents Accused Of Being Stuck In The 80's

Story is here.

Sorry HuffPo, but Tierney is just another version of John Stossel:
http://www.motherjones.com/blue_marble_blog/archives/2008/08/9200_fact_checking_j.html

Also, up in my neck of the woods, the Trojan Nuclear Plant might provide a good object lesson in why nuclear is too expensive (not to mention the security risks of producing radioactive waste, among which is plutonium, an A-bomb fuel) for ratepayers to tolerate: http://www.trojandown.com/history.htm

Approved

Where Was Tim?

Story is here.

What is up with this continuing lionization of Tim Russert, someone Arianna herself called "a conventional wisdom monkey"? Why does there seem to be this need by HuffPo writers to rehabilitate a man that was Dick Cheney's favorite echo conduit?

Come on you guys, this is absurd.

Censored

Why Blogs Trample on Leftist Traditions

Story is here.

Don't you see an inherent contradiction here?

"Leftist traditions"? As progressives, we seek to break tradition to keep the human race moving forward, not get bogged down in the quicksand of easy sentiment and misguided atavistic echoes. So that term I just put in quotes strikes me as an oxymoron.

"They make it more difficult for new narratives to take hold."

And that is a bad thing because, well, why exactly? Communism has a nice little narrative. The cant of the neocons leading up to the Iraq War was an interesting tale. The Columbus story about sailing west to prove the world wasn't flat that was taught to those of us of a certain age as gospel truth, all three of those things are demonstrably delusional. What seeking to poke holes in seemingly neat narratives does is keep people from riding a misguided wave to their possible destruction or at least obtaining a clearer vision of the truth.

That you miss the tv show aspects of history is just inane. This was the same complaint I heard from certain segments of sports fans when Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" came out: TMI, they whined. So now we are going to sink to the level of sports fandom, in which we need heroes to the point of ignoring details of social and other history? There's a word for that and it's myopic.

Approved

Rolling Stone: McCain The "Make-Believe Maverick"

Story is here.

Everyone is rightfully focused on McCain's behavior, but what is getting lost amid the backwash of nepotism and narcissism is how easy it is to co-opt the media. While some may not want to see politics covered in the hagiographic way that sports commonly is, you still have too many reporters who are overwhelmed by the power and import of what occurs in Washington to the point that they become emotionally invested in the fates of those they cover/use as sources and the tendency, just as human beings, is to not scrutinize them as intently as a good reporter should.

There is also a kind of reflective narcissism going on, as reporters write for a living and thus are always looking for an angle for a possible book. They hope the people they cover will be significant just so they can say they regularly covered that pol (Chris Matthews, for example, who is a notorious name dropper) during some significant juncture in history. In other words, the prominence of a pol also reflects, for a reporter, on their own importance in the media pecking order. That makes reporters, as in sports, part of the star maker machinery behind the wannabe popular pol, to twist a Joni Mitchell lyric.

Any pol who realizes this psychological dynamic can easily own those who cover them, especially if the pol is from a political dynasty (Kennedys, Bushes, etc).


Approved

McCain Angry With Himself?

Story is here.

You're giving McCain waaayyyy too much credit.

Through his life, McCain has been able to get what he wanted because he had some kind of enabler to make things happen, whether it was his granddaddy, his father, Senator Warner or his wife Cindy. He has never been one to brook any criticism, a narcissistic characteristic that is the hallmark of all spoiled little boys. That was encouraged by the deference and enabling the media displayed for him.

However, this time, Cindy can't buy him a presidency. It is for that he is angry. Just like Hitler at the end of WWII, who blamed the German people for failing him, McCain's sense of entitlement is now being buffeted by an uncooperative electorate and a VP running mate who has not only become a national joke, but who has emasculated him by being more popular with his party's regulars.

The media, now having their legitimacy seriously questioned by the leftwing blogosphere, has turned on him and his pathology of lies has only made reporters more determined to not be suckered AGAIN by his stories and general line of bs.

McCain has never been very competent at even being a human being. The intense scrutiny of a presidential campaign is now reminding him of something he has suppressed in his image of himself all of his life. The wave he rode for decades has crashed and left him high and dry on the rocks. And he has to live with that.

Censored

Note: What the fuck? What did I say here that was worth of being censored? Or was the author offended by my assertion that he was "giving McCain way too much credit"? Or maybe it was because I called McCain a failed human being? I'm truly gobsmacked here.

Obama Forced To Return Suspicious Donations

Story is here.

If Obama is going to be forced to return those donations, then something needs to be said about this, too:

"From 2000 through mid-2005 [GOP Rep Dana] Rohrabacher racked up an awe-inspiring $145,463 in trips, paid for by such organizations as the Islamic Free Market Institute Foundation, the Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association, the Taiwan Association for Industry and Commerce and even the Government of Qatar. On all but one of his 13 trips (that one being to Boston), Rhonda Rohrabacher and "additional family members" came along for at least part of the ride." http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/main/it-pays-to-be-a-rohrabacher/

So not only does Rohrabacher love Muslims, but also the commie Chinese. And this is after you get to the fact that he was a pal of the Taliban before 9/11 because he saw them as a stabilizing force in the area.

Where's the outrage? And why won't the DNCC run ads against him detailing all this stuff? Please donate to his Democrat opponent, Debbie Cook: http://www.debbiecookforcongress.com/

Censored

Note: Apparently, the moderator was a friend of Rohrabacher's. Or something. Why is the left blogosphere, especially Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Americablog not helping Cook to try to get rid of this cancer on our national political scene? This guy is ripe for the picking and we are missing an opportunity to get rid of him. We could devastate him with ads about his fondness for the Taliban, this Muslim thing and his taking money from people connected to the Chinese government. Yet, the DNCC and the blogs aren't paying attention to Rohrabacher at all. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Bloggers Lead Media to Report McCain/Palin's Campaign "Lies"

Story is here.

"The MSM knows their failure to call this spade a spade enabled GW Bush to bootstrap two lying campaigns into a profoundly dishonest administration that has disgraced and weakened our great nation. They don't want to be patsies all over again."

Missed it by THAT much.

The fact is that the media, in its complacent elitist and royalist way, was more than willing to be McCain's stenographer much as it did for Boy George because McCain was kissing its behind. If you play ball with MSM reporters and feed them a few morsels of inside baseball now and again they are putty in your hands.

However, bloggers started slicing and dicing the conventional wisdom and tendency to sleepwalk through recent campaigns by media figures and, with young people increasingly turning off the tv and ignoring newspapers, the big four networks and the three big 24 hour news networks were on the hot rails to cultural oblivion unless the media gave consumers a reason to believe in it again.

They are still falling down badly on the job, but at least they are improving. However, as long as a Brokaw, a Hume, a Couric and a Charlie Gibson is around, their value is going to be questionable. These aren't media crusaders, they are softball hurling enablers.

Approved

Why Heidi Klum Should Moderate the Debate

Story is here.

It's a reflection of our dumbed down bourgeois American culture when someone is analogizing a lowbrow reality show with the gravity of choosing someone who will have his/her hand on the nuclear button with a straight face.

People make fun of people who vote for politicians based on whether you could have a beer with them, but stuff like this article is just as inane, if not more so.

Censored

VP Debate: McCain's Big Gamble Comes Up Snake Eyes

Story is here.

This was a reply to another poster's comment, which read in part:

"It is the elected representatives who come here from all over, and the preening appointees who arrive fresh from the campaign, plus their buddies in K Street lobby shops and other special interest groups, who breed "corruption" and even a little "greed (and it is only a little greed, compared with Wall Street)."

My response:

You forgot a media corps that becomes part of the DC socio-political scene, becoming so chummy with the folks they cover that a Dick Cheney can play them like Itzhak Perlman plays the violin. The get so caught up in the backwash of power like groupies following Def Leppard that they can't but help to protect their friends (and sources) in Congress and in the White House to the detriment of providing a clear view of what is happening in the centers of power to the public. They don't speak truth to power, they become stenographers for the "truths" that pols want dispensed to the electorate.

So the political coverage by the media, especially the electronic end of that, is a big dog and pony show. So a Tom Brokaw can be totally sucked in by the untrue McCain hype (see the Rolling Stone article on McCain, which is horrifying) and yet his brethren still hold him in high regard. He is little more than a Potemkin journalist and so are too many of his colleagues.

Approved