Views on torture

Bugged by torture claims

Amy Goodman’s column “Torturers must be prosecuted” (April 23) misses the mark on several counts.

First, putting a person in a large box with a bug inside is not torture.  Putting a bamboo shoots under a person’s fingernails, or breaking his bones, is torture.

Second, from my limited discussions with “real” people, nobody (not even one) has had any problem at all with the Bush administration’s techniques.

Third, the media and Congress are like a dog on the bone about this so-called torture issue, but nobody’s publicizing  just what information was downloaded from the terrorists, and how many attacks were prevented and lives were saved.

Finally, in an unrelated article, Condaleeza  Rice has been  accused of verbally approving the so-called torture techniques.  Good for you, Ms. Rice, good for you!

Hal R. Dixon

Spokane

Well, well, well, Mr. Dixon in the letter published in the 26 April 2009 edition of the Spokesman-Review goes on record defining torture in accordance with bodily injury.  He doesn’t regard a man locked into a box with a bug as being torture.  Never mind that psychological torture can be defined as locking a man into a box with a bug—because the man is presumably afraid of bugs.  Psychological torture can in fact do as much damage to a human being as can torture that results in physical damage.  And just how reliable is such psychological torture in extracting useful information, IE attacks prevented and lives saved?  If Mr. Dixon doesn’t care to admit to psychological torture as effectively as real as any other type of torture to where it can be declared in opposition to the Geneva Conventions; then he has a much stricter definition of torture than the GW administration with whom and his buddies were never bothered by such techniques.  Considering that he must have talked to a very select few people whom he would have to know wouldn’t be bothered by the prior administration’s torture techniques.  Wonder what Mr. Dixon would say if he were a “terrorist suspect” locked in a box with an actual (but harmless) snake?  How many hours could he endure such a snake slithering all over him before he went crazy?  Esp. if he were told that it was deadly poisonous?  Only if you are not on the receiving end of torture would it be possible to never be bothered by it.  Hal Dixon, citizen of the land of the free and the home of the brave and totally opposed to human rights.

On the other side of the coin, two editorials appearing on the same day; one from Kathleen Parker and the other from David Broder.  Parker takes note of those released memos and would undoubtedly be appalled by Dixon’s position on the matter.  She has no delusions about what constitutes torture and for that, I applaud her.  On the other hand, Broder produces a problematic editorial when it comes President Obama”s not exactly being prepared to prosecute those who “interrogated” terrorist suspects.  Let us put it bluntly, that I would not regard it as vengeance to hold to account the last administration for voiding the constitution or circumventing international treaties or even acting against known laws ; I would call it justice.  No, we should not play political games with this issue.  But in the interests of cleaning up America’s image before the world; yes, we should hold the prior administration to account.  That is one profound disagreement that I do have with the Obama administration.

But what can you say about David Broder anyway?  He has spent a lot of time excusing and downplaying the GW administration’s less than savory characteristics, I’d never be surprised that Broder heaves a guarded sigh of relief if Obama would prefer to move this nation forward than continually look back to the past.  But if we did not address the last 8 years and the failure of policy of the last administration, it would surely come back to haunt us.

Broder in particular seems to think that we the people don’t recall the post 9/11/2001 mindset.  Uh, excuse me; but some of us still do.  And some of us also recall in the year before the 2002 off year election that “fear of new terrorist threats, vague but credible” hit the TV screens once a week.  How quickly GW was prepared to politically manipulate terrorism to reduce the Dems to a quivering minority and achieve an electoral victory in his run for the White House in  2004.  But for how long can anyone manipulate terrorism to achieve political aims?  Only as long as you aren’t dealing with Hurricane Katrina then home foreclosures, failing banks, the credit card bubble and etc.  I remember the mindset of 2001 very well.  The American populace being stampeded into buying duct tape and plastic sheeting to make their homes “WMD proof.”  Which would not have worked at all.  Just as I recall that Islam in particular and Muslims in general were becoming the new fad for haters.  America had entered a truly ugly period indeed.

But, should a war on terrorism become a war against American citizens?  GW seemed to think so.  And circumvented laws to implicitly accuse Americans in the thousands over a several year period of desiring to contact Osama bin Laden by wiretapping their phones without a warrant.  Of course, that wouldn’t seem to bother Michael Ramirez much when his latest anti-Obama tirade declares that terrorists are being released and those who interrogated them would be prosecuted.  Where the people engaging in the discussion are on board the plane, “Politics One.”  Really?  Never mind that the facts are probably otherwise.  But then, Ramirez hasn’t always loved basing his “cartoons” on the facts.  I wonder if his phone ever got tapped?

The harmonic convergence

Jim Camden writing in the Spokesman-Review 19 April 2009 concerning the Tax Day Protests was being fair and balanced enough to warn Democrats against being too dismissive of the protesters and the Republicans if they thought they could make too much of it.  I’ll have to disagree with Camden to an extent.  There are in fact reasons to be highly dismissive of the Tea Party goers.  Nor do you have to be a Democrat to do so.  Consider two letters found in the same paper same day:  Kathy Swehla of Spokane, Washington extolls the virtues of paying taxes.  Taxes, she loves them.  In fact she knows what she is getting for paying her taxes instead of protesting them.  She gets a variety of services that must surely include the city parks she walks in, the police in the event she became a victim, a fire dept if her house caught on fire, a National Guard to help during a time of emergencies and natural disasters, the roads and bridges she uses.  The list of things she loves paying taxes for can be considered long indeed.  Which brings to mind the “anti-taxers” among the Tea Party goers, they want all the same services.  Indeed, they wouldn’t mind the gvt handing them something in special interest money.  But, they don’t want to ultimately pay for what they get.  Anti-taxers, the other welfare recipients.  I don’t like to have to pay taxes, nor do I care to have my customers pay sales taxes on the merchandize they buy.  However, like Swehla, I know what I get for the money I send to the Governor and Uncle Sam.

Allan deLaubenfels of Spokane Valley had a decent account of the silliness of the tax protesters.    He saw it in these terms:  “What is mine is mine, what is yours is negotiable.”  Good point.  But to call the innate greed at the base of such protests as being “conservative,” is to render an immorality an aura of legitimacy.  Which lends itself to another argument:  at one time, the GOP called the Dems the party of immorality on the basis of abortion, being “soft on crime,” and other wedge issues.  But tolerance of and for immorality would seem to be a highly bipartisan problem.  The GOP—inclusive of Fox News Channel who wants to cheerlead what amounts to pure greed have a problem confusing a rational fear of what long term debt can do to this nation with the non desire to actually do something about it.  In short, what’s mine is mine, regardless of the consequences to everyone else.  He also goes on to describe the biblical golden rule as a moral code of a people who actually care about one another.  Greed demonstrates that you don’t care about your fellow human beings and greed was very much on display on 15 April 2009.

Rola Krause of Wilbur was certainly legitimately angry at what the Washington state gvt hqed in Olympia demanded yet more and more of from long suffering taxpayers in the state.  I hope that Krause had the occasion for reading Gary Crooks (a member of the Spokesman-Review’s editorial staff) “Smart Bombs.”  Seems Mr. Crooks made note of 68.4 million in taxpayers’ money was spread through what I’ll assume were farming communities.  A Republican member of the legislature by the name of Holmquist had no problem taking money out of Krause’s pockets to pay out special interest money to the counties of Whitman, Lincoln, Adams, Walla Walla and Grant.  Yes, Krause, that’s where a lot of your money went.  And further flies in the face of Senator Crapo who argued on tax protest day that we can’t just spend our way to prosperity.  Apparently, the Washington state farmers believe you can.  Crooks also delivered a deeply cynical coup de grace on Holmquist’s championing the deep dissatisfaction behind the tea party protests, he decries socialism.  But as Crooks pointed out, one man’s socialism becomes another man’s investment.  And Holmquist didn’t mind ignoring questions about socialism when he was investing in the collectivist interests of the state’s farmers.  Apparently, you have to be a Dem before “socialism” can have its intended effect.  It also reminds me of big gvt, of people being totally opposed to it before they want it to personally do something for them.

So what defines a “conservative?”  In the Coeur d’Alene Press is this political cartoon.  Tea party protesters are waving the following signs:  Let the banks fail, Lay off my kid’s teacher, Breadlines not bailouts, Crash baby crash, Where’s my pink slip?, No Medicare for Mom.  The fellow holding the latter sign tells the guy watching utter stupidity in action:  “Our tea party protest demands an alternative to all this government spending!”  No, the signs of actual tea party protests did not say that, but to put it bluntly, the cartoon was spelling out what frothing radicals would actually get if they were successful.

Agreed, in a free market world, the bank, the mortgage lending company and etc. that engaged in practices that were certainly immoral up the anus and ultimately staggered onto the brink of collapse should not be rewarded for fraudulent practices and actually should be allowed to fail.  But as Mr. Crooks pointed out with the Washington state farmers as an example; there is no such thing as a free market world.  The gvt that invests in these various special interests, whether by direct payola to legislation, has intervened one way or another into this “market economy.”  And let’s put it bluntly, once the gvt has invested, why would it necessarily care to see its investment fail?

So, what defines a “conservative?”  I think the answer here is a very simple one:  a conservative doesn’t replace reality with ideology.  Just because there can be a utopianism behind an unfettered market, a limited gvt, taxes that head toward the non-existent, constitutional constraints according to how [I] define them; doesn’t mean that such a fantasy world has any basis in the facts.  Even Holmquist can easily prove that he doesn’t believe in the unfettered marketplace when he called on state gvt to create mandates for farmers when biofuels were all the rage.  Nor did he believe in a limited gvt if he could use it to assist the farmers.  A conservative then does not subscribe to substanceless ideology but rather on the basis of a rational political world view:  If he wants constitutional constraints and a limited gvt, simply don’t ask of gvt to move outside its self-imposed parameters.  If he truly desires self-government, demand nothing of gvt that he can’t do for himself.  If he truly believes in a free market, then he should not send lobbyists to any state gvt or even the federal gvt demanding special favors and legislation paid for in tons of cash.  A conservative should act on principle.  To date, I have seen more frothing radicals operating on emotion and impulse than acting on reason.  And certainly, there is nothing of principle behind their protests.

8 years before whining about deficit

Cal Thomas’ latest republished column to the Spokesman-Review. He is actually encouraging people to become tax cheats out of protest of massive deficits. Now that is one laugh a minute column if I ever saw one.  Before the people consent to pay their taxes, gvt needs to get its house in order.  Oh, wow! What I find most passing strange is that Mr. Thomas never whined about deficits, nor encouraged cheating on one’s tax form 1040, or holding tea parties in protest of massive gvt bailouts.  But then, the massive gvt bailouts were going to such companies as Haliburton that used the taxpaid out billions it received for the purposes of an Iraq war reconstruction as a slush fund to abuse however it chose.  The country of Iraq got untold millions of dollars in taxpayer funded bailouts, money received post invasion, that is not accounted for today.  But then, Thomas wasn’t about to whine during the 8 years of deficit spending of a need for a gvt to get its act together before the people should send in their tax forms because he is no doubt comfortably well to do to the point where he benefited from that bailout called tax cuts that primarily assisted those who could well afford to pay a higher tax rate.  Given the outlay of a redistribution of wealth over the last 8 years, benefiting the rich and powerful and Iraq, going from there to Congressional pork barrel spending; gvt had been out of control for a long time.  But, no one in the last 8 years suggested tea parties for deficit spending under GW Bush.  Nor insisted on becoming tax cheats until gvt got its house in order.  And Thomas could only come up with one Democrat who critiqued GW’s deficit spending, a Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D. NY) as some kind of hypocrite for failing to do the same thing about deficit spending under a Dem administration.  But if Thomas is so concerned about deficit spending today, why wasn’t he concerned about it when it spiraled out of control over the last 8 years?  Tea parties and the encouragement of tax cheating become partisan feel good activities.  But they are worse than useless when it comes to the perilous times this nation is facing today.

I can fully understand New York raising taxes on the successful.  Washington State slashing public funding to state universities and other public education.  Unemployment means that there isn’t enough tax revenue coming in to help the states keep their budgets in balance.  And the borrowing and spending spree that the gvt is currently on, to not only help keep the states above water but also to turn the employment situation around; probably isn’t enough to keep the states going by itself.  Which is why states are looking for more ways to garner more income.  But, it now stands to affect fewer people with any kind of money in their pockets.  the 8.5% unemployed, won’t have that money to provide to the states.  Foreclosed properties generate no tax revenue.  So if Rush Limbaugh threatens to leave the state of New York rather than accepting a tax hike on his annual millions of dollars in income, so be it.  He could actually afford thos taxes.  But he prefers to be a tax cheat.  Well now, has it occurred to Limbaugh that he could use his money, invest in a business and hire on X number of employees?  By doing so, he would actually get tax credits and even a small business loan.  Yeah, some of that out of control spending that has Thomas frothing so much, would be Limbaugh’s for the taking.  Oh, but he can’t do that, can he?  He’d prefer getting his millions into his hot greedy hands by being a blowhard.  Rather than becoming the success that also puts people back to work.  As for Donald Trump being a “success,” seems he has his own money management woes.  Which Thomas, incidentally couldn’t be bothered with recalling.

It just may be that Thomas couldn’t be bothered with inciting tax rebellions over the last 8 years because the last administration was all about feeding the greed.  Now when it comes time to dig this nation out of the financial mess it is in as a consequence and a result of feeding the greed, Thomas doesn’t believe in pitching in and sacrificing.

In other news, CBS Evening News with Katie Couric revealed an interesting item concerning those financial institutions that got TARP money.  No doubt to include Capital One that has demanded more and more money out of my wallet in the hundreds of dollars more, even though they were already recipients of thousands of dollars in payments over the last 2 years.  Where bank cards had originally not called for an annual fee to include Aspen Card Services, suddenly certain card distributing companies began demanding a hundred dollar or better annual fee, to include Aspen card services.  I had no idea that Aspen might have gotten TARP because it was never in the news.  But having seen this late in the day revelation, looks like Aspen might just have, at that.  And as for ATM fees, suddenly those same banks to include Bank of America want to squeeze even harder those customers who do not happen to hold accounts at that particular bank.  Really?

Those banks and other financial institutions engaged in bad business practices=fraud.  And I shall certainly include Capital One among the financial institutions that engaged in fraud.  Now that they got all that money from the U.S. Taxpayers, now they are going to insist on making the taxpayers pay again for the bailouts those financial institutions received.  Seems to me that tea party goers and Thomas’ proposed tax cheats misdirect their wrath.  They should hold their tea parties in full sight of bank tellers and leave shreds of form 1040s on the floor.  Or populate the front lawns of bank executives who still seem to believe that the age of greed hasn’t yet come to an end.  After all, these same financial institutions demanded taxpayer’ assistance in the first place to keep from failing.  Then again, why didn’t they stick to the sort of practices both cautious and moderate that would have kept their institutions relatively healthy?  Too bad that Thomas wasn’t prepared to task the financial institutions for double dipping.

It’s Good Friday, do you know where your bible is?

The Coeur d’Alene Press can be considered good for something, publishing the most extreme stances and the most virulent hate mail to be found anywhere in the news media world.

Take for example an anti-abortion letter from Evelyn Montreuil, she first starts of with the Judas Iscariot betrayal of Jesus Christ.  Only this is a bait and switch letter.  The segueway now is that Good Friday, the day of Christ’s death on the cross can somehow be equated with those poor defenseless “unborn children” whom those nasty politicians simply won’t protect…

When you think about it, there is something laughably ironic about this letter juxtaposed with that of Patrick Bonner.  He foams at the mouth over the idea that this could well be a “commie nation” just because President Obama literally fired GM’s CEO.  I’ll bet Mr. Bonner just like Ms. Montreuil wouldn’t have regarded it as “commie” for Congress and the president to regulate and dictate to the individual.  Hands off the business interest.  To legislate the collectivism of fetal interests as opposed to say the collectivism of unions who come into some degree of bashing from both Bonner and Antone Ornellas.  Seems Mr. Bonner wouldn’t have minded the Auto Workers Union President getting fired.  But wouldn’t that be just as “commie” as firing the CEO of GM?  While Mr. Ornellas is absolutely correct that airline employees being federal employees were forbidden by law to strike, did so, and were told by Ronald Reagan that they had 48 hours to get back to work or lose their jobs.  Neither he nor Bonner seem to understand that it isn’t the unions that set auto standards.  It isn’t the unions who create auto design obsolescence—the car that immediately starts breaking down the moment you drive it off the lot.  The unions don’t have high priced private jets.  The unions don’t get bonuses and stocks worth millions per year.  The unions don’t get paid 100 times what other employees might make.  No, but CEOs do.

And the high priced lobbyists don’t represent “the unions” when it comes to demanding that Congress should not legislate stricter emissions controls or greater fuel efficiency.  That exposés  of cars bursting into flames when collided with on say “60 Minutes,” it isn’t the unions who start wringing their hands over the lack of auto reliability and safety and the public demands that Congress should “do something about it. “  No, the auto industry isn’t made up of unions, the work force, but rather guys like Wagoner.  One could only wish that unions were the sole problem that the Big 3 Auto Companies happen to have.

Ornellas took pains to note that the airlines at the time that Reagan fired the striking employees hadn’t received bail out money.  What Bonner forgot to recall in his particularly extremist vitriol, was that GM had.  14 billion in bailouts got handed to the Big 3 Auto Companies.  Exactly what did Wagoner do with his share?  The question not asked by the news media nor dudes like Bonner.  You get 14 billion in taxpayers’ moolah, I would certainly think that you should be held accountable for it.  Reminds me of years ago when a so called “conservative columnist” started crying that a woman on the dole put some of her welfare money in the bank and got into trouble because of it.  The law apparently suggested that she could only have so much money in a bank account, her putting some of her welfare check into a savings account each month meant that she was accruing more money than she had a “legal right to.”  You get public financing (welfare or bailouts) you can be sure that the feds will have something to say to you about how you use the money.  Or you can be in big trouble.  Apparently, Bonner seems to think that handing mega wads of taxpayers’ moolah to corporations like GM should come with no accountability what so ever.  Now that’s what I call liberalism.

Back to Montreuil; had she looked a bit closer to her own bible, Christ had some dire things to say about pregnant women and nursing mothers.  Only barren women would be happy.  Because apparently they never had a child to lose in the terrible times to come.  Would Montreuil have used Iscariot’s betrayal of Christ in her anti-abortion letter if she in fact saw Christ as a “baby killer?”  A man who prophesied the deaths of children both born and unborn?  To put it bluntly, her letter was utterly grotesque.  And that was why it was published.

Now for the lighter side…

In the you have to be kidding dept; no this isn’t an April Fool Joke, the Coeur d’Alene Press had as an above the fold front page article a clothes stealing cat burglar.  What’s odd about that?  The owners of Jack a one year old cat featured in the article, should probably be happy that Jack isn’t a jewel thief.  Yeah, a cat burglar.

KREM 2 News and CNN have featured animals who have slammed into restaurants, schools, grocery stores; dogs stealing chew toys from pet stores.  Huckleberries online also featured deer showing up at a business selling booze that also has a drive through window.  And bears have wandered around schools.  But this is the first time a one year old cat has been featured locally in the Coeur d’Alene, Idaho area known for stealing clothes.

Jack makes his home in the Tubbs Hill area neighborhood.  Apparently, he has the run of the neighborhood, manages to somehow get into people’s homes around the neighborhood and brings back to his owner’s home assorted gloves, swimwear, underwear and etc.  Ultimately, the owners of Jack hung the stolen clothes on a clothesline in their front yard with a sign inviting neighbors to come and retrieve the “cat burglared” items.  Major league gut busting LOL!

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Watching snippets of news before settling on Idaho Public TV in HD; the country’s happiest place in all of the U.S. is the state of Nebraska.  The lowest possible unemployment, the lowest index of home foreclosures, because people there are “conservative” (read thrifty) with their money and who’s business development is very diversied.  People who lose a job, can quickly find another in Nebraska.  I find that to be very interesting.  Compare to the state of Idaho with a growing unemployment rate…  Exactly what does the state of Idaho have going for it?  Mining?  Not so much anymore.  Farms? With the agribusiness down south that prefers to hire illegal aliens even in an economic downturn.  Tourism?  If real unemployment afflicts some many millions of people, just how much tourism is going to flock to this part of the country?  That would suggest right there that something is definitely missing in the state; we don’t have a truly diversified economy and no incentive from the state gvt to create one.  Oh yeah, retail businesses can move into the area; they can produce a few hundred jobs.  But manufacturing has moved out.  Construction mostly now consists building new businesses for retail and restaurant chains.  And at most, those businesses provide a fraction of a percent in new hires.  The more limited the types of businesses that exist in a state, the time when any one of them closes its doors, the more severe the effect of such a job loss.  In a time of economic downturn, states should reach down deep and offer incentives for individuals starting businesses that create jobs and proceed to rehire the currently unemployed.  But, the state of Idaho happens to be heavily populated by GOP dudes who “spurned” a Dem run federal gvt’s attempts to give them money that would offer business creating, jobs producing ventures in the state.  Exactly what “principle” beyond partisanship is at play here? You can’t fully rely on tourism if those millions of would be tourists can’t afford to come here due to unemployment.  You can’t fully rely on agribusiness if the agribusiness can’t distribute foods that can’t be sold at retail owing to people who can’t afford to buy it because of unemployment.  And just how much more construction is possible if businesses see no reason to enter the state based on a high unemployment figure…  Effectively, no matter what one thinks of Obama’s domestic policies, he is at least trying to invest in the U.S.  Now what are the GOP prepared to do?  We should start following Nebraska’s example.

In the interests of saving money

If you plan on being an Obama critic, take ideas under consideration out of context and proceed to foam at the mouth over them.  Take for example J.R. Labbe’s rants about President Obama wanting to put on the private insurer’s tab the cost of a military service member’s treatment for war related injuries.  No news report chose to address it at length but did a cut and paste job.  Only saying as much as need be to “do damage.”  As a military veteran, as one who had been in active service, there was an insurance policy that you signed onto provided by the military itself.  But, it was not necessarily an insurance that continued to be available to reservists and National Guardsmen.  If you did get it, you had to begin to pay for it, if I am not mistaken.  Having been out of the military myself since 1991, I wouldn’t know what might have been changed about the policy; but I do recall that when GW got in to office, he wanted faith based institutions not V.A. hospitals to take care of any wounded vets.  When that policy decision came out, did Ms. Labbe wax hot and wounded over the matter?  Did members of Congress declare that such a policy change was “dead on arrival?”  Apparently not.  As military veterans wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan complained mightily about such a policy change coming from the then Bush administration in such pages as Time magazine.  Which is probably why the Washington Post could finally report about the deplorable conditions of Walter Reed Medical Hospital that confronted military veterans arriving there for secondary medical care.  GW wasn’t interested in maintaining the facilities that was slated for closure as it was.  And why should he have been if “faith based institutions” could do the job instead?  You didn’t hear a whole lot about it.  But I can see where we are going to hear all about Obama wanting to save millions of dollars by encouraging veterans to rely on private insurance.  And presumably, if they have private insurance they are already reservists and guardsmen.  They got that insurance through other sources, at their regular jobs for example.  I can understand Obama wanting to save money.  Why should the military pay an insurance premium if the reservist already has insurance?  But, the news report Labbe cites apparently made no distinction between a reservist and an active member of the U.S. Military.  And therefore, neither shall Labbe.  Yes, it can stick in the craw, but no more so than GW wanting to farm out to “faith based institutions” any final care of war injured veterans.  It would help if the news media would provide more in depth reporting and not simply fulminate over a bare minimum of coverage.

But, Labbe goes on to discuss why the U.S. Military forces “not trusting” their new Commander in Chief based on what, the resale of fired brass?  Labbe discusses certain types of rounds that are more effective against feral hogs but are hard to find and outrageous in price.  Now, the policy being that military fired brass being sold to private companies for recycling purposes, why is it that the round sizes Labbe mentions in her editorial (republished 2 April 2009, Spokesman-Review) aren’t readily available and at a reasonable price?  Would that be because the manufaturers don’t only sell the recycled brass in the open American gun market?  But that such repackaged brass can be and is sold world-wide?  And because such repackaged brass is sold world-wide, such rounds might just get locked and loaded into the weapons carried by terrorists themselves.  While Labbe is screaming her fool head off about this, I can see why we don’t want to arm the enemy, given the fact that we have already armed very well narco traffickers/terrorists with black market gun sales.  No brass recycling company is “going to promise” to sell such products solely to Americans wanting to chase feral hogs off their farms and property.  Nor solely to Montanans who like their elk hunting.  And get this, from whom does the Pentagon get the rounds in the first place?  Well, I believe it is from private manufacturers?  Not only can manufacturers create specific sized rounds for the types of weapons used by the Military, but they could also manufacture the same size rounds for private use.  Labbe so busy foaming, that she doesn’t bother considering the implications.  Just because military used brass doesn’t get recycled back into private usage doesn’t mean that world-wide ammo sales would get much of a dent and the crushed metals might just get re-used anyway for the manufacture of new bullets.  When self-interest becomes more dominant over the issue being reported on, or screamed about.

Finding the news media that works

I have watched CNN over a good many years since its inception. And especially after cable then satellite TV got introduced to the house. In a good many ways, CNN was my introduction to Politics 101 after I left the U.S. Military. But it was also a news media organization.  However, in the last year, CNN has been less about news and more as a political attack team.  And I am seeing the sort of scream TV that I got a bellyfull of back in the CNBC and MSNBC years of a court of public opinion on the personal failures of one Bill Clinton.  Lou Dobbs is in fact at the forefront of pushing scream TV.  After braying for better than a year about the need for a government that works, for example, Dobbs should have been plenty shaken up that the American voter would put in place a gvt suffused with freshmen Dems, fewer GOP, reinstate career Dems to positions of power, and put a total unknown at the helm of power.  But instead of Dobbs coming out and ranting away at those silly voters for putting together a government that he now detests with abandon; he simply attacks the government that was put into office.  Excuse me, Dobbs, forget something?  Like this is a Democracy after all.

What continues to get me is that the news media best exemplified by CNN couldn’t do all the screaming and questioning of GW Bush until well into his second term and only after the catastrophe of Katrina.  They ceded being viable watchdogs of presidential doings to “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”  But you wouldn’t have heard about it, unless it was some guy on C-Span discussing exactly why the news media continually drops the ball on critical reporting.  That was two years ago or about.  The news media that would not ask hard questions about an inexperienced governor and it showed, who became president; they waste no time speculating, second guessing, becoming an echo chamber of the one who has now suceeded him.  8 years asleep at the switch, and now they make up for lost time?

Dobbs whips up fear about second amendment rights.  Gun rights wasn’t an issue on his show during the 8 years of GW.  It wasn’t an issue when the Dems became a bare majority in 2006.  But it becomes an issue when Obama beats out McCain in a fair presidential campaign.  And it is the NRA that beats the drum on Obama v the right to have as many deadly little toys as they can stash in their homes.  Collected, as someone else might collect stamps.  Last year, when Dobbs was on the air discussing the drug wars afflicting the border between the U.S. and Mexico; he whipped up alarm when it came to black market sales of weapons to narco traffickers.  This year, it is now a threat to gun rights if the federal gvt tries to ban the manufacture and sale of such weapons.  Can’t have it both ways, Dobbs.  Last year, Dobbs was pushing the pro-American workforce.  That was while GW was in office.  This year, he is suddenly Mr. Capitalist who wrings his hands over the gvt that works intervening in the marketplace to bring businesses back to operational capacity and a workforce that can be hired.  So today, waking up from a nap with CNN on some dude on Dobbs was yelping that most construction work these days was done by illegal aliens.  Who’s fault is that?  Try the construction businesses that preferred to hire cheap instead of investing in the people that might after all eventually buy the home they contrusted with their own hands.  And a Bush administration more than willing to look the other way.  A different dude who was willing to condemn the Dems, but more than willing to take taxpayers’ dollars to buy GM cars.  Didn’t see how nicely dressed the guy might be, if the suit he wore would be a nice down payment on a GM car.  But if he could appear on Dobbs, chances are he didn’t need taxpayers’ money to buy a car, but that he probably wouldn’t have bought one from GM.  In any case, the GOP have suddenly identified themselves (after 8 years) as a party not willing to spend money (now that they are a decided minority).   After the second guest dude has come on Dobbs with the intent to beat up on Dems, wouldn’t have gotten a handful of moolah from anyone other than the Dems themselves.  Which, as I recall, Dobbs was in no mood to challenge his guest on…

PBS however, provides news and commentary of a most reasoned discourse.  “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer” provides all sorts balanced opinions from across the political spectrum.  There is no screaming, no political lashing out.  There is no guy repeating a political attack ad.  There is no contributor whining about why GM CEO Waggoner could be “forced out,” but not say AIG’s own executives.  No, Gwen Ifil could ask the dude on the auto task force about that very thing, and get a comparison between apples and oranges.  CNN couldn’t be bothered, neither could CBS News.  But you could get a lot of whining about the current administration between the news staff and the “contributors” about the current administration, but until The News Hour, no one bothers to actually ask any member of the administration itself.  Which they were, incidentally more than happy to do when it was one run by the GOP.  CNN leads the way these days in particularly juvenile behavior.  You don’t get news, you get locker room behavior.