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Thom Hartmann takes our corporate media and the cheerleaders for war with Iraq to task and ten years after our invasion, asks 'Where are the apologies?'

Via Truthout: How the Media Fueled the War in Iraq:

Yesterday, the U.S. marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. And, over the course of the past ten years, we've learned more and more about how the war with Iraq actually started.

It's incredibly easy to blame the Bush administration for its lies that led us into Iraq. But Cheney, Rumsfeld and company weren't the only ones who played an integral role in convincing this nation that Saddam Hussein was a threat, and that WMD's were a forgone conclusion.

In the days and weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq, corporate media – and even NPR and PBS - were abuzz with the talking points of the Bush Administration, echoing claims that Iraq had its hands on "yellow cake uranium" and that it had a massive arsenal of "weapons of mass destruction."

Thanks to the media's repeated claims that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were immediate threats to our nation, in the weeks leading up to the invasion, nearly three-quarters of Americans believed the lie promoted by Donald Rumsfeld that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the attacks of 9/11.

One of the biggest proponents of the Iraq War was Bill O'Reilly.

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Never mind the flip-flopping on his stance on immigration or whether he's hoping his family and their supporters will be doing their part to give Americans a big heaping helping of revisionist history when it comes to his brother's time in office, as Ring of Fire's Mike Papantonio and guest Sam Seder reminded their listeners this week, there is a whole host of other issues that the public should know about if Jeb Bush does actually throw his hat into the ring and runs for president in 2016.

As Pap noted, it's time to stop this campaign before it starts, because we sure as hell can't count on our "mainstream media" to do their part and tell their viewers that Jeb Bush has every bit as much baggage as his brother.

It seems Florida's current Gov. Rick Scott isn't the only one with problems involving Medicare fraud: Jeb Bush Lobbied On Behalf Of Infamous Medicare Swindler, Says Former HHS Secretary.

He was right there with the rest of the PNAC neocons who brought us the invasion of Iraq.

Mother Jones has more on some of the Bush family corruption problems mentioned here along with a host of others in this post: Bush Family Value$.

And as Sam discussed during the interview, eight years is probably not long enough to erase the nation's collective memory about just what a disaster George W. Bush was and for Jebbie to be out there trying to revive the family name. Sadly if the Villagers in the corporate media who care more about a horse race than issues have their way, no one will ever discuss any of Bush's past or he and his family's corruption.

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This "access" whinefest by the media, which has been going on for the better part of the week, isn't legitimate and isn't about their ability to practice journalism.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. Howard Kurtz and his panel this Sunday, which included David Zurawik, Julie Mason and Bill Plante come across as still being pissed off that none of them had a chance to snap a picture of President Obama playing golf with Tiger Woods.

As Kevin Drum said, it would be easier to sympathize with these national reporters if they really did ask tough, unpredictable questions of the President, but they don't. And Drum's observations on the Politico article and their complaints about the White House using social media and going around the press, can be applied to the conversation here as well:

At the same time, the reporters interviewed for this piece seem to be weirdly upset over the fact that the Obama White House uses Twitter and Facebook and releases lots of its own photos. Why is this a problem? It's 2013, guys. Why shouldn't a president communicate with the public using whatever mediums the public happens to consume? Over the past century, that's evolved from whistle-stop tours to radio to TV to Facebook, but so what? Why should reporters be unhappy about this?

Given the sorry state of our corporate media these days, I don't think they're going to get much sympathy from most of the public.

Transcript below the fold.

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Fresh off of the heels of the media complaining about their lack of access to President Obama and his golf outing with Tiger Woods and with Chris Wallace complaining that his was the only Sunday show where the new White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough refused to make an appearance last week, the panel on their Saturday joke of a media watchdog show, Fox News Watch, decided to continue on with the carping with a good portion of the jeering done by one of their faux Democrats, Kirsten Powers.

It appears that this is just a rerun of the what the viewers were treated to on the same show last week, where, as News Corpse took note of, we were hearing some very similar complaints out of the same culprits:

Fox earned a ninth place showing by having been called on for questions fourteen times. That is only two fewer nods than CNN and the New York Times received. And if Fox can be described as having been shunned, then the Washington Post, USA Today, and NPR were victims of blatant and deliberate neglect since they came in even lower than Fox at tenth, eleventh, and thirteenth.

Nevertheless, Fox seems to be the only news outlet that is complaining about their treatment by the President. They devoted a segment of their Fox News Watch program to whining that they aren’t getting enough attention, poor things. Host Jon Scott started the bitch session by crying “Why does the president not like to call on us?” Jumping in without being recognized was Fox’s fake Democrat Kirsten Powers who shot back “Because he doesn’t want to be embarrassed. When Ed Henry asks questions to Jay Carney, inevitably Jay Carney ends up looking stupid because he doesn’t know how to answer the question. He’s used to pushing people around.” And she’s supposed to be the voice of the left on Fox’s fair and balanced roster.

With friends like Kirsten Powers who needs enemas? And that is a perfect illustration of why Obama ought to start shunning Fox News. It has never been a credible journalistic operation. It is an unabashed agent of the Republican Party whose only purpose is to bash the President and support the right-wing agenda.

Meanwhile, over at Dan Abrams' rag, Mediaite, Fox and Politico, or as Charlie Pierce calls Politico, The Tiger Beat on the Potomac, were being treated as though they actually have any legitimate complaints about lack of access to the White House and that somehow preventing them from acting like journalists, if that's what either of those organizations actually decided to do one of these days.

Fox’s Kirsten Powers To Panel: Chris Wallace ‘Should Be Proud’ Obama Won’t Go On His Show:

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Looks like Grandpa McCranky-Pants McCain is still irritated over the exchange between Hillary Clinton and Sen. Rob Johnson at her hearing this Wednesday. And as we've come to expect, the man's hypocrisy meter is completely broken: The pot accuses the kettle of having an 'adoring media':

At yesterday's Senate hearing on September's Benghazi attack, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a series of questions, all of which seemed rather familiar. Indeed, the odd thing about McCain's inquiries is that he would already know the answers to all of his questions if he'd familiarized himself with the publicly available information, including the findings (pdf) of the independent investigation.

And while I was willing to let that go, McCain's appearance on Fox News this morning was even more difficult to endure. [...]

Clinton never said it "didn't matter" how the four Americans were killed. She said the opposite.

As was obvious to anyone paying attention, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) was preoccupied with preliminary intelligence reports about a possible protest in Benghazi and Clinton said that was irrelevant as compared to the death of four Americans -- and she was correct.

If McCain found this too confusing to understand, perhaps the Senate Foreign Relations Committee isn't the best place for him to serve.

What's more, Clinton has "an adoring media"? This from a man who spends so much time on the Sunday shows that he has his mail forwarded to green rooms? This from a senator who's so adored by the D.C. political establishment that he's considered reporters his base?

Yep. Heaven forbid McCain ever turns down a chance to get his mug in front of the camera, just like his BFF Lindsey Graham. If there's ever a day where I don't have to see either of them on the television again, it can't come soon enough.

Transcript below the fold.

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From this Tuesday's The Daily Rundown on MSNBC, Chuck Todd brought in authors Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann to discuss the thesis of their new book and how the media has completely failed to cover the fact that we've got one party in this country that has gone completely off the rails and that all sides are not equal with who is at fault with our dysfunctional political system right now and in the process, managed to prove their point for them by doing the very thing they were writing about.

Egberto Willies at Addicting Info summed up the interview nicely here: Chuck Todd Argues Relevancy Of Mainstream Media With Authors, Mann and Ornstein (VIDEOS):

The mainstream press is starting to listen. Its fear of irrelevancy was evident in a nine minute segment on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown where Chuck Todd interviewed Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein on media reaction to their book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism and subsequent Washington Post essay, “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”

The segment demanded a post mortem. It shows that the mainstream press is actively engaged with what is occurring in the alternate media, but seems unwilling or unable to correct their modus operandi. The introduction to the segment is fascinating. Chuck Todd relays the premise of Mann and Ornstein’s argument with a sarcastic caveat where he implies that their ostracism from the mainstream media was imagined. Their appearance on The Daily Rundown is likely the outcome of the impact the virality of their piece had on the Internet. [...]

Later in the interview Chuck Todd tries to defend the ineptitude of the mainstream media implying that balanced coverage was based on the party really believing the tenets it was espousing. [...]

His defense is a factually inaccurate characterization of how the press has been covering Republicans. One need only revisit the Healthcare debate. Much of the bill, (mandates, private insurance, etc.) was a product of the conservative think tankm “The Heritage Foundation,” yet Republicans opposed the bill on grounds they once stood for. [...]

Immediately after Ornstein talks about false equivalences, Chuck Todd shows that he still does not get why the mainstream press is held in disrepute. He immediately tries to link the past Democratic intransigence with the debt ceiling debate, with the economically damaging scenario perpetrated by the Republicans in 2011.

He just can't stop himself. More there so go read the rest. It was very frustrating to see Todd called out to his face for his terrible reporting and making the false equivalencies and watching it just fall on deaf ears and seeing him continue to do the very same thing they were talking about all throughout the interview.

And as far as Todd pretending he's doing them some big favor by finally having them on his show months and months late, and that they haven't been shunned, as Nicole pointed out back in June when Chris Hayes had them on his show, even though they were regular guests in the past, they weren't getting any phone calls for the Sunday shows shortly after they published their article.

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After taking his turn going after Joe Scarborough and his juvenile sneering at Nate Silver and that damned liberal math of his, predicting a big win for President Obama and being exactly right again, The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur reminded us of how the media treated George W. Bush and his "mandate" after the slimmest of wins back in 2004.

As Cenk rightfully pointed out, if Bush supposedly had a mandate back then, President Obama has a giant mandate now, and he discussed the fact, as John Amato did here, that America also elected a progressive agenda this Tuesday.

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David Brooks was apparently very enamored with Mitt Romney's flip flopping during the first presidential debate and believes that he is somehow not beholden to the right wing of his party because he shifted a bunch of his positions back to the so-called "center."

The reason Mitt Romney has gotten away from having one of the most lie-filled presidential campaigns and with being on every side of every issue without being punished in the court of public opinion for his mendacity, is exactly because of the likes of David Brooks and his ilk in the media who continually either excuse or praise his behavior, as Brooks did here.

Here's how he ended the segment above:

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Obama folks are saying it is a different Mitt Romney.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Well, they had a big decision to make six, eight months ago, which was, do we attack him as a right-wing ideologue or as a flip-flopper? They went ideologue. Now they're trying to switch to flip-flopper.

But I think he will have to continue that. It's working for him.

Yes folks, all that lying is working out splendidly. As I've heard a few people -- one being Randi Rhodes on her radio show -- point out after listening to Romney again 'pivot" on a number of his positions, if you're on a debate team at your high school or college, there are actually penalties for lying. You lie like a rug and reverse yourself and tell easily disprovable lies like we've been hearing from Romney for ages now, and you lose the debate just for that. Sadly, we don't have anything close to those standards in the corporate media or for presidential debates. There, the opposite is true and the lying is rewarded.

And if anyone actually believes that Romney won't be beholden to the right wing of his party if we're unfortunate enough to find him as our next president just because he's shifting some of his stances again to appease some low information voters who watched the debate, I'd say they're deluding themselves. All you have to do is look at how he's responded to them during this campaign and the fact that what moves he did make during that debate were empty rhetoric which either he or his staff started to immediately reverse course on as soon as he left the stage.

And speaking of Romney lying, here's more from Joe Conason, who did not excuse President Obama's performance, but expressed some of the same frustration I had while watching the debate -- Highly Debatable: The Big Liar’s Biggest Lies:

“It’s not easy to debate a liar,” complained an email from one observer of the first presidential debate – and there was no question about which candidate he meant. Prevarication, falsification, fabrication are all familiar tactics that have been employed by Mitt Romney without much consequence to him ever since he entered public life, thanks to the inviolable taboo in the mainstream media against calling out a liar (unless, of course, he lies about sex).

Yes, President Obama ought to have been better prepared for Romney’s barrage of blather and bull. The Republican’s own chief advisor, Eric Fehrnstrom, had glibly described the “Etch-a-Sketch” strategy they would deploy in the general election, to make swing voters forget the “severe conservative” of the primaries. Romney executed that pivot on Wednesday night, but he could do so only by spouting literally dozens of provably fraudulent assertions — which various diligent fact-checkers proceeded to debunk. Read on...

And here's Steve Benen's latest with his update on the staggering number of lies told by Willard over the last thirty seven weeks -- Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXVII.

Full transcript below the fold.

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After we saw Harold Ford Jr. (D-Wall Street) step all over the Obama campaign's criticism of Bain Capital along with some of his fellow surrogates like Cory Booker last month, it's not surprising to see Ford continuing to give bad advice to the Obama administration on economic policy whenever we're unfortunate enough for someone in the media to allow a microphone to be put in front of his mouth.

After the Wall Street Journal's Kim Strassel went after the Obama campaign for daring to attack Mitt Romney, his time at Bain Capital and what his policies might mean for the country and claiming that they've laid out no plan for the future, never mind that he has put forth a jobs bill that Republicans rejected, and her ignoring the obstruction he's had to deal with, we got treated to Harold Ford telling the Obama administration they should be running on austerity and "entitlement reform."

Ford is repeating the lines we've heard out of Republicans time and again and that's fearmongering over this "debt bomb" and using that as an excuse to slash our social safety nets and claiming they want "tax reform" that I will be shocked if it ends up being anything other than going after tax breaks for the poor and middle class and ending up lowering rates on the richest among us. We also had Ford touting "entitlement reform" which is code for privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

I think the only advice the Obama administration needs to take from the likes of Ford is to ignore him completely or ask him to please STFU. Austerity is killing European economies right now and we need more stimulus and not a retraction of government spending in the U.S. right now. I'll be happy when I no longer see Ford's face on the air again to give anyone bad advice on how to lose an election as he did here, or how to protect his buddies on Wall Street, but Joe Scarborough and David Gregory insist on having him on as a fixture on their programs. Sadly we'll never see any former progressive members of the Congress given the same amount of air time.

Apparently no amount of failure ever goes unrewarded if the Villagers in our mainstream media want to get your message out. If Ford actually believes that "reforming" Social Security is a good idea for Democrats to run on, which we all know means privatizing it, maybe he should ask George W. Bush how that worked out for him when he went out there and tried to sell that to the electorate.

Transcript below the fold.

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At this year's Right Online conference, Sarah Palin was more than happy to prop up Matt Drudge and Andrew Breitbart's Big Government sites as bastions of new media that's cutting through the traditional media outlets... like say... her employer at Fox. Somehow that was missing from her speech to the right wingers that attended this weekend.

Sarah Palin gives a pep talk to conservative bloggers at the Right Online conference:

It was a rousing pep talk for a ballroom full of conservative bloggers, and a tribute to a fallen compadre Friday evening, as Sarah Palin honored the memory of the late Internet entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart and told an annual gathering of conservative new media that they fill a vital role in the nation’s political discourse.

In some ways, Palin’s 35-minute speech was also a vintage performance, her sing-song voice rising and falling as she also castigated and mocked the “lamestream media,” accusing it of failing to vet then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008 and of promulgating rumors about her personal life, which still seem to get under her skin.

“You do what the old media can’t or won’t do, and that’s tell the truth,” said Palin, who remains a hero of the tea-party right despite her withdrawal from the arena of electoral office. “I have learned in the last four years or so, it doesn’t do any good to personally complain about the untruths told by the old media. I might as well save my breath…. Shoot, by now I should have been divorced how many times? Under FBI investigation. Living in the Hamptons. It still is a great mystery who really is Trig Paxon Van Palin’s real mother.”

Speaking in a ballroom of the Venetian Hotel, owned by heavyweight Republican contributor Sheldon Adelson, Palin did not mention this morning’s announcement by President Obama that he would stop deporting young adults brought to the United States as children. In a brief conversation with Politico after her speech, she accused Obama of “pandering to a specific demographic.”

You've gotta' love it when this woman can be both part of and what she's complaining about with that "lamestream" media. Someone should have reminded her after this speech that Uncle Rupert is still signing her paychecks and that if there's some hole that needs to be filled with the lack of real or honest media coverage about anything, she can thank her boss for not filling that hole, or for allowing Palin ilk to fill their airtime with lies, propaganda and nonsense.