No matter how big his media empire, or how staunch his devotion to conservatism, Rupert Murdoch's enduring legacy is, from this day forward, that he brought to the world Glenn Beck boiling a handful of rubber frogs as a metaphor for "The American People."
Open Thread below....
I'm not as optimistic as this reporter, but then, I don't live on Planet Beltway, either. George Bush's legacy lives on - we still have a commercial real estate crash to get through, and the banks have only postponed their day of reckoning. (Although the Onion has a slightly brighter forecast):
Despite an emerging economic expansion, businesses were sufficiently skittish about the future that the job market continued its long, steep decline in August, according to a new government report Friday. The unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent, from 9.4 percent, as employers shed jobs for the 20th straight month, the Labor Department said.
The increase was greater than many analysts had forecast, and it undermined hopes that the corporate sector will rapidly rebuild its workforce following the economic trauma of the last year. That in turn could keep a self-sustaining recovery from taking hold, as Americans have less money to spend and less confidence about their own job prospects.
"Our clients tell us they will not hire in anticipation of a recovery, but will wait until they see it," said Jonas Prising, an executive vice president at Manpower, the giant employment services firm. "In a normal recession, people would now start to feel more comfortable and start hiring, but nobody is doing that today. They'll do it when they see real orders and real business."
The new numbers included some silver linings: The 216,000 jobs that employers shed in August was the slowest rate of job loss in a year, which drove the stock market up 1.3 percent, as measured by the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index.
Companies are not laying people off at the same furious pace they were a few months ago -- the number of people to lose their jobs in mass layoffs fell 26 percent in July. But neither are they willing to take the risk of bringing on new workers, despite signs that there could be better times ahead.
As I've been following the health care reform debate, the media frame the three House bills as basically phony documents. It's like that branch of the government is a front group that pays for an apartment that nobody occupies and only lives to be bossed around by the House of Lords. And when it comes to the Senate, the media only bow down to the mighty Baucus Dogs. All I keep hearing is politicians wishing that Ted Kennedy was able to be involved in the health care reform process. Republicans are actually saying that -- guys like John McCain.
Well then, he should honor Kennedy's legacy and negotiate in good faith, but that will never happen:
Speaking to George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, John McCain argued that the real hindrance to health-care reform is the absence of Sen. Ted Kennedy. "It's huge that he's absent," McCain said, "not only because of my personal affection for him, but because I think the health-care reform might be in a very different place today."
This stuff just isn't plausible. Kennedy was around in 1994 and there was no deal. More to the point, Kennedy's committee, the HELP Committee, has passed health-care reform. Kennedy's staff, as you might expect, led their effort. But neither Kennedy nor his staff can make the deals for another committee. If Kennedy were in the Senate now, health care would be exactly where it is: Through Ted Kennedy's Committee and stuck in the morass of Max Baucus's Gang of Six.
Meanwhile, if John McCain wants to honor Ted Kennedy, he shouldn't just talk the guy up. He should play a constructive role in passing the legislation that Kennedy considered the cause of his life. McCain says that Kennedy "had a unique way of sitting down with the parties at a table and making the right concessions," but surely McCain can decide what concessions those should be and present them to Max Baucus — or the New York Times — in exchange for his vote.
McCain and the Republicans would be playing the same games with or without Ted having an active role right now, but his power would be in dealing with the American people. He'd be pounding the talk shows, town halls and radio airwaves with solid reasoning behind his health care reforms. And President Obama needs good surrogates to go out there and explain to Americans why we need health care reform.
I think we all miss Ted and wish he were knocking heads in Congress and in the media, but Chris Dodd has taken over his committee and they released a bill that was crafted by Kennedy's staff which I assume is one that he's in favor of. So we have four bills done and a fifth one that's in limbo but should be done soon. Why is it that the only bill that matters to the Villagers is the Baucus/Senate Finance Committee bill? Why is that the Holy Grail? Would some talking head at least explain to America what is contained in the HELP bill? Is that too frakkon' much to ask?
August 13, 2009 PBS News Hour
Outta the Cornfield: Last year's Memorial Day post will be next year's as well
The Seminal: War and the reasons
Leftist Grandpa: The 'Terror Plot' that wasn't
AverageBro: Well, at least you've got Lebron...
The Existentialist Cowboy: When you die in America, it will be because you are NOT RICH
Words of Power: Of Yeats, Genocide, and the Blogosphere - Looming deadlines that frame our future and determine our legacy
January 22, 2009 C-SPAN
January 16, 2009 C-SPAN
Jane Hamsher talked about the presidency of George W. Bush. She responded to telephone calls and electronic mail. Ms. Hamsher is a long-time critic of the administration. Clips of President Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech and January 15, 2009, farewell address were shown. See more CSPANJunkie Videos here.
Looks like the Bush legacy tour has finally ended, thank goodness. Rachel reminds us that despite all of their spin over the last few weeks the P.R. blitz hasn't worked out so well for them. Bush's poll numbers are still in the tank despite their best efforts.
Matt Taibbi gives his views on how Bush will be remembered as well and they discuss his latest article published at Rolling Stone: Bush Apologizes: The Farewell Interview We Wish He'd Give.
Matt Taibbi is one of my favorite guests on Real Time with Bill Maher and he's an equal opportunity abuser at Rolling Stone and on Real Time which probably has a lot to do with why I like him so much. He doesn't pull any punches when it comes to pointing out the follies of our political class regardless of party.
His book The Great Derangement just came out in paperback.
Jon Stewart on George Bush's media blitz on his way out the door.
For the past eight years George W. Bush has done his level best to remain entirely unaccountable to the American people. A record number of signing statements, claims of blanket Executive privlidge for aides, forty seven press conferences vs seventy seven vacations. If ever you thought there was a guy who was just going to back out of the room quietly at the end of his term, this is the guy. But apparently, that's not our George.
[snip]
Apparently President Bush will continue to appear on as many television outlets as it takes to convince us that he does not care what we think.
Bob Woodward scoops another one, this time getting a top Pentagon official to admit, on record, that the United States did indeed torture Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who allegedly "hoped" to become part of the 9/11 attack.
THE official in charge of the military commission process at Guantanamo Bay has become the first senior Bush Administration figure to publicly admit that a detainee was tortured.
Judge Susan Crawford, who was in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees — beginning with Australian David Hicks — to trial, has concluded that the US military tortured a Saudi Arabian who allegedly planned to take part in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
She said Mohammed al-Qahtani was interrogated with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, public nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition".
"We tortured Qahtani," Judge Crawford said in her first interview since her appointment by Defence Secretary Robert Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case (for prosecution)."
Take special note of that last part. This is exactly why torture is counterproductive. Not only is it morally reprehensible and of dubious efficacy, it ends up prohibiting us from prosecuting these criminals the real American way.
The GWOT really is a "war of ideas." When we torture and imprison indefinitely those those seek to attack us, we drag ourselves down to their level, all the while showing the world that we don't really stand for what we say we do. This is George Bush's true legacy. He and his cronies may be running around trying to convince you otherwise. But I know you're all smart enough to know better.
Keith has a list of things that George Bush has actually liberated us from. Needless to say it's a little bit different than W's list.
Un-fricking-believable. Bush, talking to ABC's Martha Raddatz, does a Cheney on the lies leading up to the Iraq invasion and the messy misadventure of the occupation:
BUSH: One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take–
RADDATZ: But not until after the U.S. invaded.
BUSH: Yeah, that’s right. So what? The point is that al Qaeda said they’re going to take a stand. Well, first of all in the post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat. And then upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a stand.
Dubya and his whole administration are determined to spin the whole of the last eight years as "ancient history". Raddatz should have thrown out her script at that point and eaten him alive, but she didn't. Yet another failure of the tame media, who are too afraid of losing their precious access to ask the obvious questions even now. Ian Williams of The Guardian laments the paucity of journalistic backbone on display:
With a few notable exceptions like Helen Thomas, Bush's press conferences have not generated the indignation he so richly deserves from a largely quiescent White House press corps that needs government inspectors and Congressmen to tell it when it can be surprised and even occasionally indignant.
In a parochial way, one can understand why the press corps lacks indignation over Iraq's 100,000 civilian dead and over two million external refugees, plus untold more internally displaced.
But it is still surprising that so many reporters can be polite and deferential with someone who has turned the US Federal Reserve into a giant Ponzi scheme and broken the world's strongest economy. They defer humbly to someone who has contrived the deaths of 4,200 US servicemen and women in Iraq. It even failed to follow through on questions about the president's murky military record with the Texas Air National Guard while his peers were dying in Vietnam. This intrepid press
corps showed no compunction in following in minute detail Clinton's screwing
around, but kept silent as Bush screwed entire nations.Last week, a Senate report pointed the finger directly at Bush and his senior officials for authorising - indeed, ordering - torture and abuse of detainees. But no one threw any shoes.
It is that fawning quiescence that allowed Bush to tell Bob Woodward: "I'm the commander – see, I don't need to explain – I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
I'll give the Newshogger's Journalist of the Year Award to the first reporter to say to Dubya "You're the President, so what? You work for us, you're not the king."
Crossposted from Newshoggers
