In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
An excellent one this week:
The Top Ten Conservative Idiots, No. 136
4. The Weekly Standard (and others)
Oh my, it's true after all! Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein really were in bed with one another, so therefore the invasion of Iraq was completely justified! That's what you would have heard if you'd listened to, watched, or read the news from any of the right-wing media outlets last week. Why? Because the Weekly Standard recently published an article claiming that al Qaeda and Iraq "had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda." Phew, hot stuff. Shame it's all complete crap. The Standard based its article on a memo which came straight from the desk of one of Bush's propaganda ministers, Douglas Feith, head of the Pentagon's Office for Special Plans. The Standard's article was then immediately picked up by several Rupert Murdoch-owned outlets such as the New York Post and Fox News. But it wasn't long before the Pentagon had to distribute a press release stating that the "news reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq... are inaccurate." Whoops. So did this stop the right-wing media in its tracks? Hardly. The Washington Times, New York Post, and the always-fair-and-balanced Fox News continued to rant about the memo all week, despite its official debunking. Still, since most Fox News viewers have probably already been suckered into believing that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are gay lovers, no big deal I guess.
...
7. Clear Channel
Speaking of bribery and corruption, Clear Channel, the media empire which owns a majority of the country's radio stations and proudly calls itself the home of drug-addled hypocrite Rush Limbaugh, found itself in a spot of bother last week. It seems that the company has been giving expensive gifts to employees who earn $100,000 a year or more - if they agree to contribute to Clear Channel's right-wing political action fund. Is it illegal? Well, Clear Channel seems to think that the gifts-for-donations program "complies with a rule that says a company can spend up to one third of what it collects for employee incentives," although the Center for Responsive Politics calls it "a grey area." Whichever way you look at it, when one of the country's most powerful media organizations is literally bribing employees for donations to its right-wing PAC, you know that the idea of fair and balanced reporting has gone completely out the window. So can we finally bury the "liberal media" myth yet? Its rotting carcass is starting to stink the place up.
...
9. Thomas Dorr
So, you know how Republicans are always going on about pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, and how evil it is to give government handouts to those who won't pull their weight? Funny how so many of them turn out to be welfare queens themselves. Take Thomas Dorr for example, who was rejected by Senate Democrats as Bush's Agriculture Undersecretary last week. Turns out that back in 1999 Dorr made a speech at Iowa State University, where he claimed that the "most successful rural areas in Iowa were 'not particularly diverse' in their ethnic and religious backgrounds," according to the Omaha World-Herald. But it's not particularly unusual for Republicans to go on about how successful whites are compared to those lazy, shiftless minorities. What's more unusual, however, is to find them sucking the government teat while doing it. Apparently in 1996 Thomas Dorr had to repay $17,000 to the Agriculture Department - yup, the same Agriculture Department to which Bush wanted to appoint him - because two separate investigations revealed he had "misrepresented the nature of the farm's operations in papers filed the three previous years." Dorr was cleared of any criminal charges, but apparently "told a Senate committee two years ago that his family had done nothing out of the ordinary in structuring the farm to get the most government money possible." Damn those lazy, shiftless, welfare-grabbing, um... potential Agriculture Undersecretaries.
- rob 12:59 PM - [PermaLink] -
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