BUSH UNMASKED, By Molly Ivins. FROM THE CLASSIC FILES OF ALLEN L ROLAND Dateline: Tuesday, September 18, 2007


“Out Bush murderer!” screams this billboard in Uruguay during Bush’s recent trip to Latin America. Apparently many foreigners see what “W” is all about better than many Americans.

It’s not that he’s mean. It’s just that when it comes to seeing how his policies affect people, George W. Bush doesn’t have a clue : —Molly Ivins

TO FULLY UNDERSTAND George W Bush ~ you must listen to fellow Texan and columnist Molly Ivins who interprets why George Bush ” is genuinely disconnected from the impact of his decisions on people .” Read the rest of this entry »

EDITORS’ PREAMBLE: Boyish and all-American-looking GOP language whore Frank Luntz has perverted further (a feat in itself!) the sordid and utterly immoral “art” of political p.r. The raves he receives by fellow establishment whores like Time Magazine are eloquent commentary on how “American civilization” operates in corporate terms. On his own website, he touts his horn thusly:

“Frank Luntz is one of the most honored communication professionals in America today. “Time Magazine” named him one of “50 of America’s most promising leaders aged 40 and under” and he is the “hottest pollster” in America according to the “Boston Globe.” Frank was named one of the four “Top Research Minds” by Business Week and was the winner of the coveted Washington Post “Crystal Ball” award for being the most accurate pundit in 1992. Public Television’s Bill Moyers had this to say about Frank: “He’s a magician with a gift for the politics of words and what words best connect with the hearts and minds of the public.” Said comedian Al Franken: ” Asking Frank Luntz if he understands public opinion is like asking Julia Childs if she knows how to make a soufflé.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Caudillo in winter, fading into history with all honors and total impunity. Certainly persona most grata in Washington.

BY VICENTE NAVARRO; September 15-16, 2007

According to conventional wisdom in Spain and in the U.S., in Spain’s transition from the Franco dictatorship to democracy, it was King Juan Carlos, with the assistance of the U.S. government (first the Ford administration, then the Carter administration), who brought democracy to Spain. In this interpretation of events taking place from 1975, when the dictator died, to 1978, when the first democratically elected government was installed, the U.S. government actively supported the development of democracy in Spain. Read the rest of this entry »

John McCain a militaristic plutocrat of unregulated fascistic temperament. Thank you, GOP for giving America another great politician…

BY JUSTIN RAIMONDO, Editorial Director, Antiwar.com (Libertarian)
Dateline: April 13, 2007 | Antiwar.com

He’s volatile – and, in the White House, he’d be dangerous

John McCain was really caught off guard not only by the reaction to his recent walk in the Iraqi marketplace – ringed by a veritable wall of security, while US army helicopters hovered overhead – but also by subsequent events on the ground. “I just returned from my fifth visit to Iraq,” he told the cadets in a speech at the Virginia Military Institute: Read the rest of this entry »

The beneath-contempt supreme turncoat and opportunist Zionist warmonger Lieberman. This kind of scum tipifies the DLC.
ANNALS OF SPINELESSNESS
A. Alexander, May 20th, 2007
By the \ Opinion Piece

By mid-2006 it looked like the DC Democrats had learned their lesson. It appeared they had finally realized that the Democratic Leadership Council’s (DLC’s) political playbook, was little more than the perfect recipe for becoming an irrelevant political party. During the last election cycle the once spine-challenged DLC smitten Republican wannabe DC Democrats, had actually embraced their base and began confronting the GOP’s failed anti-working class policies. The result was electoral victory. Read the rest of this entry »

Moore speaking on health issues before sympathetic congresspeople.
C O N T R O V E R S Y

Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko (2007) has attracted its fair share of critics among the liberaloid guardians of the status quo, and, naturally, rabidly negative and mendacious reviews from the right. But a film of this importance, that has managed to touch off a desperately needed debate about the nature of the “health care” system in the US, and the grasping values underscoring it, has also elicited criticism from the left. In this series of posts we cover the more compelling arguments.

EXHIBIT 1
IN PRAISE OF “SICKO” BUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE U.S. HEALTHCARE SYSTEM DIES?

By Carolyn Baker
Dateline: Sunday, 12 August 2007

It had to happen, but it took so long-indeed, too long, for a courageous filmmaker to rise up and put the abysmal U.S. healthcare system under a microscope in order to reveal how utterly pathological it has become. On one level, Moore repeated a blatant flaw in his craft so obvious in “Bowling For Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 911″ in that he almost always fails to fully connect the dots and take his work to the next level, and “Sicko” was no exception. Nevertheless, the film left me laughing, cheering, and crying and particularly gleeful regarding memos sent by management throughout the Blue Cross system warning employees of the possible side-effects of “Sicko” on their company’s image. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Moore and former Sen. Geo. McGovern

C O N T R O V E R S Y

BY DAVID WALSH \ Dateline 7 July 2007 | Originally at WSWS

Sicko, written and directed by Michael Moore (2007)

NOTE: Please search for other articles on this same subject on Cyrano’s Journal’s archives.

Sicko is documentary filmmaker Michael Moore’s critique of the American health care system. Despite the director’s undoubted sincerity and flair for showmanship, it’s a terribly limited work, weaker than Fahrenheit 9/11, his 2004 response to the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” Read the rest of this entry »

BY JOHN PILGER
DATELINE August 8, 2007

WITH A BONUS PIECE BY ERIC ALTERMAN (THE NATION)

The truth about most modern journalism: You first become a career media worker, you start climbing the ladder, and then you prostitute yourself. It’s as common as it’s straightforward.

The following is a transcript of a talk given by John Pilger at Socialism 2007 Conference in Chicago this past June:

The title of this talk is Freedom Next Time, which is the title of my book, and the book is meant as an antidote to the propaganda that is so often disguised as journalism. So I thought I would talk today about journalism, about war by journalism, propaganda, and silence, and how that silence might be broken. Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented. It is a history few journalist talk about or know about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called “professional journalism” was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment-objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as Robert McChesney put it so well, “entirely bogus”. Read the rest of this entry »

BY WILLIAM BLUM \ DATELINE: August 10, 2007
Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life
Simulpost at author’s site: www.killinghope.org

On several occasions I’ve been presented with the argument that contrary to widespread opinion in the anti-war movement and on the left, oil was not really a factor in the the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq. The argument’s key, perhaps sole, point is that the oil companies did not push for the war.

Responding to only this particular point: firstly, the executives of multinational corporations are not in the habit of making public statements concerning vital issues of American foreign policy, either for or against. And we don’t know what the oil company executives said in private to high Washington officials, although we do know that such executives have a lot more access to such officials than you or I, like at Cheney’s secret gatherings. More importantly, we have to distinguish between oil as a fuel and oil as a political weapon. Read the rest of this entry »

BY STEVE LENDMAN
Dateline: Thursday, August 09, 2007

Marjorie Cohn is a distinguished law professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego where she’s taught since 1991 and is the current president of the National Lawyers Guild. She’s also been a criminal defense attorney at the trial and appellate levels, is an author, and has written many articles for professional journals, other publications, and for noted web sites such as Global Research, ZNet, CounterPunch, AfterDowning Street, Common Dreams, AlterNet and others. Her long record of achievements, distinctions and awards is broad and varied for her teaching, writing and her work as a lawyer and activist for peace, social and economic justice. Read the rest of this entry »