Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
There are many in the mainstream media who don’t take writers and journalists outside the mainstream, and corporately controlled, media seriously. In fact, they consider us presumptuous to even have the audacity to offer a considered opinion. A few years back, Chris Matthews made the remark on his show, Hardball, that "I don't consider them [progressive bloggers] Democrats. I consider them Netroots. And if I see they vote in every election, or most elections, then I'll be worried. But I'm not sure they're regular, grown-up Democrats. I think a lot of these people are troublemakers who love to sit in the back seat and complain. They're not interested in governing this country. They never ran for office, they're not interested in working for someone in public office. They get their giggles out of sitting in the back seat and bitching."
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In response, Markos Moulitsas, founder and spiritual leader of the very popular website, Daily Kos, set that loudmouth gasbag straight, very effectively, and in no uncertain terms. He pointed out the following:
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"In 2003, when Bush landed his plane in the aircraft carrier, and spoke in front of the banner that said, 'Mission Accomplished,' Chris Matthews had an entire show based on that event, and he said everybody knows that we won the war, except a few critics. Well, I was one of those few critics. People like me in the Netroots were some of those critics. And it turns out that we were right and the Beltway conventional wisdom was wrong. And once again, we're in a situation where people like Chris Matthews don't learn from these mistakes. They're trapped in this bubble and they think that they know better."
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And he handled Tom Tancredo several weeks earlier with the very same finesse. He literally ran Tancredo off the Ed Show, and again, without busting so much as a sweat bubble. The reason he doesn't have to raise his voice, is because he's confronting Washington hypocrisy with facts and courage - something that the mainstream media seems to have lost. The mainstream media has degenerated into cheerleaders with an unspoken agreement not to step outside the approved parameters of the status quo. Then Moulitsas is that guy who shows up at the dinner party with a crude but unyielding truth: "No, that's not a bad egg - somebody farted." That's who bloggers are, and that's exactly what America needs.
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When I started writing over two decades ago, a serious journalist could pick and choose what publications he or she wanted to contribute to, but many of those resources have dried up as the corporate media has consumed and sucked all of the air out of the free press in order to dumb down America and propagate their conservative, self-serving, and narrow point of view. That’s why you’ll find some of the oldest and most prestigious publications in America begging for donations over the internet just to stay afloat.
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So serious, objective, and conscientious bloggers represent the new face of the American press. We’re what mainstream reporters and columnists USED to be - remember those old-school reporters of the 30's and 40's in the rumpled suits, a crumpled hat, and a pencil behind their ear? Those are who serious bloggers are today. Those bigshots who sit on plush sets in flawlessly tailored suits, and who never ask the hard questions or follow up, they're not journalists, they're corporate hacks.
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So we’ve got to learn to listen to one another, do our own research for the facts, and most important of all, learn to think for ourselves. We've got to redefine journalism in this country. So seek out those bloggers that you find to be trustworthy and credible, and then support their blogs. That way, YOU choose who you want to place your trust in, not some executive directed by Wall Street.
Now that we've reached the anniversary of 9-11, I am consumed by one thought - in light of what I've seen over the past year I find myself much more afraid of Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft than I am the Al Qaeda. While I understand that terrorists strike without warning to destroy life and property to promote their own agenda, it has become increasingly clear that Bush and his cohorts threaten to be even more destructive by attacking life, liberty, and the very foundation of this nation in the promotion of theirs.
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Over the past year these conservative war mongers have been playing the American people like a fiddle. Now they want to sacrifice American lives for nothing more than their own political advantage. Just ask yourself, what does Saddam Hussain have to do with 9-11? Absolutely nothing. Evidence of that can be found in the fact that if Saddam had been involved in 9-11 the administration would have gone after him initially. So why is it suddenly so imperative that we invade Iraq now? I'll tell you why. Since Bush was unable to produce the head of Osama Bin Laden, he now needs another villain to take Bin Laden's place in order to keep his numbers up in the polls - and if that means having to sacrifice a few American lives and ignite even more terrorist activity on American soil in the process, so be it.
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It is a well known political fact that the American people tend to rally around the president when the country's at war. That's why the Bush Administration fell all over themselves after 9-11 to declare "a war against terrorism." And the American people reacted just as planed - Bush's numbers immediately went up in the polls. But now with the mystery surrounding the fate of Osama Bin Laden, the administration has found itself without a war to sustain those numbers, so now they have to create one.
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While I'm not prepared to say that the Bush Administration allowed 9-11 to take place, it is clear that the timing of the 9-11 tragedy was without a doubt the best thing that could ever happened to Bush's presidency. Bush was a lame duck the minute he was sworn in. It seems that as soon as Bush entered The Oval Office the stock market began to falter and the economy started to weaken. And whenever he spoke, the next day's news was not so much what he said, but whether or not he got through the speech without falling on his face. In addition, his big tax cut that was touted as the key to boosting the economy turned out to be a bust, and he was so inept in dealing with congress that a Republican senator changed parties costing Bush control of the senate. As a result, when 9-11 took place, it was embraced by conservatives more like it was a football rally than the sober occasion that it was - thus, all the flag waving, ceremonies, and strutting about.
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But where was all that bluster prior to 9-11? ABC News reported on May 16th of this year that the Bush Administration acknowledged that U.S. Intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before 9-11 that Osama Bin Laden's terrorists might try to hijack a plane. It was also reported that Bush privately alerted transportation officials and security agencies, but other than that, he simply sat on the information. The administration claims that the information they received was non-specific, but one would think that even if they couldn't determine exactly when and where the attack was going to take place, at the very least they could have warned the American people. If they had, maybe some of the people who died would have chosen not to fly - or possibly, chosen to leave their children behind. But no, this president who now claims to be so concerned with protecting our welfare that he feels compelled to launch an unprovoked attack against Iraq, was at that time more interested in the impact that warning us would have on the airline industry.
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What the American people needs to understand is that the power elite in this country doesn't view the United States in the same way as its citizens. They see the United States as a huge corporation, with its various industries as its subsidiaries. They see American citizens, particularly the lower and middle class, as simply pawns to be cajoled and manipulated in whatever way is necessary to meet the goals of the corporation. Therefore, they didn't view the tragedy of 9-11 in the same patriotic way as the average American citizen. After the initial shock, they saw 9-11 in terms of dollars and cents. Ultimately, it was viewed as an assault on their corporate superstructure. Later they recognized that the incident could be used as a distraction for the American people, and still later, an opportunity to move on Middle Eastern oil interests.
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So let there be no doubt, all of the flag waving, ceremonies, and patriotic speeches have nothing to do with 9-11; they are designed to whip the American people into such a frenzy that they're blinded to Bush's actual agenda. And that agenda includes the following.
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1).Committing America (and American lives) to a war in order to get himself reelected.
2).Taking control of Iraqi oil fields to benefit his friends in big business.
3).Keeping the American voter distracted from considering the ramifications of the recent corporate scandals.
4).Keeping the American people from recognizing how inept he is as president.
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The rest of the world sees Bush's agenda for what it is, and the American people would too if they'd stop waving their flags long enough to consider the flag's true meaning. The American flag represents freedom and justice, not trying to dictate who should lead other countries. It represents the open debate of issues, not intolerance to any and everyone who disagrees with your point of view. It represents the guarantee of personal freedom, not the suspension of the Bill of Rights. If the American people would just stop to consider these facts, it would become clear that even while Bush and his conservative cohorts are frantically waving our flag, they are simultaneously waging war against the very values that the flag and this great country represents.
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These issues can, and will, be debated ad nauseam, but the American people need only ask themselves two questions to put all of the administration's nonsense into perspective. First, would the administration be so anxious to go to war if we were talking about China as opposed to Iraq? And secondly, do we think that invading Iraq will make us more, or less safe from terrorist attacks? If we answer those questions honestly, it becomes clear that the administration is being disingenuous at best.
So what I'd like to know is this - if a shade tree journalist sitting up in his den in the heart of a Los Angeles ghetto could see what was going on in these instances, why couldn't the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, CNN and all of the other media networks; why couldn't Harvard, Yale, and all of the various and sundry Ph.D.s from America's great institutions of learning; and why couldn't the nation's so called "think tanks," all of the nation's political scientists, and the United States Congress figure it out?
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The answer is, they had, but they simply turned their backs and allowed young patriotic Americans to march off to their deaths, because that was more profitable. The most irrefutable evidence of that? None of their children died.
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Now, the Mainstream Media - and the New Democratic Party, of all things - is doing the EXACT same thing to this nation, and on behalf of the EXACT same people (the 1%ers) by turning their backs once again on the law, democracy, and common sense:
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The Clintons acted with great enthusiasm when it came to the mass incarceration of Black people, but what about when they break the law? Massachusetts law is clear and unequivocal:
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"Within 150 feet of a polling place…no person shall solicit votes for or against, or otherwise promote or oppose, any person or political party or position on a ballot question, to be voted on at the current election. No campaign material intended to influence the vote of a voter in the ongoing election, including campaign literature, buttons, signs, and ballot stickers, may be posted, exhibited, circulated, or distributed in the polling place, in the building where it is located, on the building walls, on the premises where the building stands, or within 150 feet of an entrance door to the building. ( 950 CMR 53.03(18); 54.04.22),)"
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But in spite of that law - THE PEOPLE'S LAW - Bill Clinton feels so entitled and thinks the people are so stupid, that we can't recognize that he constitutes a walking 'Bill'-board for Hillary Clinton. He also retards the vote by creating a distraction, his presidential entourage prevents people from getting into the polls, and it extends the time that voters have to wait in line - time that many voters don't have. Didn't Bill Clinton know this,? If he didn't, he has very poor judgment, If he did, what was his motive? He wasn't voting, so why did he have to enter the polling site in the first place? The answer is clear - to cheat, to circumvent the law, and to do whatever he had to do to get what he wanted. Haven't we had enough to these dishonest slicksters in office? Aren't these exactly the kind of people we're trying to get OUT of office? Can you even imagine Barack Obama doing something like that? Could you imagine Bernie Sanders doing something like that? Absolutely not! And that's exactly why this nation can't be trusted in the hands of people like the Clintons. They lack character, they feel entitled, and they think that their interests - and the interests of their rich Wall St. cronies - should be given priority over the interest of the average American.
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The DailyKos reported, ". . . the most serious charge leveled at Clinton’s March 1st Super-Tuesday antics is that he was blocking poor people from voting, in one of Massachusetts most distressed communities, where the median family income is $49,000, [which is] $110,000 less than the Massachusetts town where presidential candidate Hillary Clinton went to college, Wellesley. Although electioneering within a polling place is a misdemeanor, interfering with voting rights is a state and federal civil rights violation and felony."
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Americans are currently living under the illusion of a democracy. In a REAL democracy, Bill and Hillary wouldn't be celebrating a victory in the primaries, and in a REAL democracy, the people wouldn't be cheering them on and the Mainstream Media would be as silent as a church mouse. In a REAL democracy both Bill, and Hillary, would be out on bail and facing felony charges. So at the rate we're sliding downhill, this nation - at least as we've known it - can't possibly last.
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God help us.
Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
[email protected]
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.