In what seems like another lifetime ago, our old pal and brilliant colleague Cliff Schecter used to write a Friday “Cliff’s Corner” post at AMERICAblog that always started out with, “Another week. More preposterousness to report.”
As I said in a previous post, I am tempted to take it from there on a weekly basis: Another Sunday. More outrage to report. I can’t and won’t watch all the Sunday talk shows, and sometimes I refuse to watch any of them. However, today I caught some of “This Week” and a few minutes of the”Meet the Press” panel.
Big mistake on my part.
I listened as the commentators praised George W. Bush for (paraphrasing) being a terrible president but a (not paraphrasing) “good man.” A good man? Really? To repeat, a “good” man would not have:
I left out a few items from the other post because some of his policies were not due to his being an unethical guy, but because he is a Republican and disagrees with Democratic positions. I can’t hold that against him personally; that doesn’t necessarily make him a “good” or “bad” man. Torture, on the other hand…
Moving on. I then wasted minutes of my day that I’ll never get back watching as most members of the panels lit into President Obama and their criticisms were virtually unchallenged. That despite the inaccuracies and misinformation being thrown around. And their TV audience was, again, being fed propaganda and opinion as if it were fact.
The most positive– come to think of it, the only positive– thing that was said about the president was that he killed it last night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and should think about a career in stand-up comedy.
To recap, Bush is a “good man,” President Obama is a good comic.
Nearly every week I post about media bias and how Sunday after Sunday, Republican talk show guests (often conservative) outnumber Democratic ones, and how real Progressives are rarely represented at all. Today the split was more even, but there were still very, very few authentically liberal liberals. Maybe one.
And week after week, propaganda and lies are disseminated, and Americans who rely on these shows receive a limited, and often biased, view of current events.
As usual, Karl Rove has no concept of reality, truth, or common decency:
“George W. Bush’s flaws are greatly overshadowed by his virtues, starting with his moral clarity.”
- Karl Rove, writing in the Wall Street Journal, via Taegan
Hey Turdblossom, if Bush had any moral clarity whatsoever, he wouldn’t have hired you, relied on you, or befriended you.
He also wouldn’t have:
And that’s just for starters.
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As I wrote yesterday, and as you can see in the video above, even Republican, 89-year-old disabled vet Bob Dole couldn’t sway 13 GOP senators to ratify U.N. disabilities treaty. And it was utterly shameful, a genuinely disgraceful episode. In fact, the outcome was so painful that it brought Lawrence O’Donnell to tears:
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Now it’s becoming clearer than ever that Republicans don’t value life at all, unless of course, they think they can squeeze votes from uninformed and gullible voters by saying they do. It’s becoming clearer than ever that Republicans say one thing and do another. It’s becoming clearer than ever that heartless far right hypocrites need to go.
As Josh Rogin reports, the disability community was shocked and hurt:
David Morrissey, the executive director of the United State International Council on Disabilities, told The Cable in an interview that his group and many others had been assured by numerous GOP senators that they would vote in favor of ratification, but then disabilities groups were given no warning when those senators reversed themselves and voted “no.” [...]
The scene both inside and just outside the Senate chamber Tuesday before and during the vote was heart-wrenching, several observers said. Wounded war veterans and other disabled people filled the gallery above the floor and the hallways outside the chamber, expecting to celebrate months of effort, only to have those hopes shattered as the roll call vote was read aloud.
“That was one of most shameful moments I’ve witnessed during my time in Washington,” one longtime senior Senate aide said. “I thought it was utterly appalling.”
“The reaction was one of emotional hurt. There was weeping in the gallery,” said Morrissey, who added that disability groups will remember the GOP senators who torpedoed the treaty ratification effort and groups have labeled the 38 the “wall of shame.“
As Morrissey went on to say, this is what happens when right wing crazies try to agitate home schoolers, “pro-lifers” [sic], and parents with disabled children.
Be proud, GOP. Have yourselves a merry little Christmas.
Garry Trudeau’s wickedly “over the top,” slutty story arc wraps up with this final installment. The strip has been barred by some papers all week, or, as the L.A. Times is doing, being moved to the Op-Ed section, which is fine with me. It’s larger, more prominent, and a good fit:
“We felt the story line was a little over the top for a comics page,” said Alice Short, a Times assistant managing editor.
They’ve run a different series of Doonesbury strips in the Comics section instead:
A number of U.S. newspapers have indicated that they also will move the series to their opinion pages or run them online only. Several plan not to run the series at all.
Of course, conservatives will be all over this, right? because “freedom of speech” is everything to them.
For Rachel Maddow’s take, please go here.
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV): “I’m ashamed. I have to go back and apologize…”
With good reason. A lot of us are not only ashamed, we’re fed up. See: Wall Street, Occupy.
H/t: Taegan
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