A discussion of how
this century has gotten off to such a bad start.
In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
- Tuesday, October 12, 2004 -
Q: What kind of company insults our democracy and abuses licenses granted by our government to serve in our interest just because the like Bush better?
Why is it important that Sinclair Broadcasting be urged in all lawful ways that can be imagined to reconsider its decision to broadcast on its television stations the anti-Kerry "documentary"?
Because in a large, pluralistic information society democracy will not work unless electronic media distribute reasonably accurate information and also competing opinions about political candidates to the entire population. Certainly, for the overwhelming number of voters this year, controlling impressions of the candidates for President are obtained from television.
...
Part of this tradition is that broadcasters do not show propaganda for any candidate, no matter how much a station owner may personally favor one or dislike the other. Broadcasters understand that they have a special and conditional role in public discourse. They received their licenses from the public -- licenses to use airwaves that, for instance, cellular companies bought in auctions -- for free, and one condition is the obligation to help us hold a fair and free election. The Supreme Court has routinely upheld this "public interest" obligation. Virtually all broadcasters understand and honor it.
A: A company that compares people unwilling to air fradulent charges to people who deny the slaughter of 6 million Jews and 10 million Russians by the Nazis.
Sinclair, based in the Baltimore suburb of Hunt Valley, decided to air the film after it was rejected for airing by the major broadcast networks, vice president Mark Hyman said. "This is a powerful story," Hyman said. "The networks are acting like Holocaust deniers and pretending [the POWs] don't exist. It would be irresponsible to ignore them."
Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade yesterday called the film "lies" and "a smear" and characterized Sinclair as "another one of President Bush's powerful corporate friends trying to help him."
This is a "team" blog. We are a bunch of
Americans, whose rising distress
in our leader's decisions brought us together to make this site.
As Bush said, he's a "uniter." Many of us have never even met.
That's the internet for you.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the
president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is
not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American people."
- Teddy Roosevelt
"Government has a final responsibility for the well-being of
its citizenship. If private cooperative endeavor fails to provide work
for willing hands and relief for the unfortunate, those suffering
hardship from no fault of their own have a right to call upon the
Government for aid; and a government worthy of its name must make
fitting response."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions, but laws must and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
- Thomas Jefferson
"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain
degree."
- James Madison
"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves." - John F. Kennedy
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
More Sites we often
like:
more coming...
"There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America." - Bill Clinton.
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