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Surely you've heard Jon Stewart's explanation of the use of question marks? .wmv and .mov formats.

Now you are just coming out completely biased.

That's the problem you wingnuts in a nutshell: if you don't agree with the facts, you scream bias. For gawds sake, Fox just labeled McCain a Democrat, after doing the same to Alen Specter and Tom Foley. You're a Gooper and get in trouble or displease the wingnut base, you get labeled a Democrat by Fox News.

FOX was the only television news outlet to report on the Obama Madrassa scandal. Sure, it turned out they made it up, but still.

So the other networks are bad because they fail to report made up news? Hmm.

They have also recently hired Karl Rove as a commentator (I'm serious), further proving their alliance to objectivity.

Ah, I see. Good boy, now good back to your bridge.

Now you are just coming out completely biased.

That's the problem you wingnuts in a nutshell: if you don't agree with the facts, you scream bias. For gawds sake, Fox just labeled McCain a Democrat, after doing the same to Alen Specter and Tom Foley. You're a Gooper and get in trouble or displease the wingnut base, you get labeled a Democrat by Fox News.

FOX was the only television news outlet to report on the Obama Madrassa scandal. Sure, it turned out they made it up, but still.

So the other networks are bad because they fail to report made up news? Hmm.

They have also recently hired Karl Rove as a commentator (I'm serious), further proving their alliance to objectivity.

Ah, I see. Good boy, now good back to your bridge.

... there appears to have been massive voter disenfranchisement in California. Julia Rosen's Count Every Vote in Los Angeles on Crooks and Liars (also on Courage Campaign's site) and Double Bubble Trouble on Brad Friedman's voter rights blog are both following this.

As with McCain, while I disagree with him politically, I believe he's a decent, sincere person.

That's funny, I already thought they were doing this. Every Republican across the nation is under indictment for corruption or fraud, aren't they? And if not... they probably should be...

Seems to me the conservatives are just angling for more free campaign ads. I hear nobody is contributing anymore. Aside from Haliburton and Blackwater, that is.

Link

See how these lying bastards try to confuse?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/ is running a thread where you can post a letter to be read by Senator Dodd during his filibuster.

I must say I'm all for Leopard. I had to try it, so I backed up everything i had and went with it. I havent had a crash, and all my programs work even though I copied them from 10.4. Even stuff like Quicksilver (except for the plugins, since they've changed Mail, iTunes, Contacts, etc), iStat Menus.

As for the title: http://movies.crooksandliars.com/tds-question-mark.mov

I am sorry, but can't let this go by. 20/20 is trash and John Stossel is a fucktard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stossel

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=19&media_outlet_id=19

http://www.crooksandliars.com/category/abc/john-stossel/

The man comes off like he is working for the little guy, nothing gets him more sprung than private enterprise. Mo money! Mo money! Mo money!

A beginner's course in deceptive reporting, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2894

I don't know, this segment is a pretty valuable history lesson for all time.

I'll give Geraldo props for one thing: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/04/05/bill-oreillys-head-practically-explodes-as-he-screams-at-geraldo/

Might have been a fluke though. :|

If those sites are what you've been reading then it's no wonder you're worried about the U.S. declining. If find the anti-Bush site particularly interesting. There's a lot of good sound bites in there and there's a grain of truth in every one of them but the author is insinuating a number of cause-effect relationships where there is only correlation. Please, let's not forget about reason. Correlation does not prove causation. It's not just something you use when doing science, it's a foundation of any sound reasoning.

I'm not going to go through everything you posted and rebut each one but I can at least cherry pick a few as examples. For instance, "I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period." Or how about, "I set all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market. " The government does not control the stock market last I checked although they do regulate it. Let's also not forget that when Bush took office we had a highly inflated stock market due to several investors speculating on companies with no serious business plan. But I'm not going to turn around and blame Clinton for that even though that occurred on his watch. Anyone who puts his money into a company with no sound plan is taking a huge risk. Sometimes it pays off. I find it odd that anyone would hold the government responsible for this at all.

Sayers discussed this quite a bit in her excellent book The Mind of the Maker. Why is it that people look to politicians to solve their problems? That is simply not their job. Their job is to keep the government running as in protect the country from invasion and to allow the people in the country to live their lives with as little interference as possible. That's it. If you haven't read The Mind of the Maker you should. It unfortunately gets shoehorned into the theology category so you may find it over in that section of your local bookstore. You can also find various copies of it online since the copyright has long expired. The online copies all have varied levels of transcription errors.

Anyway, getting back to the point, some of the criticisms of Bush are valid. For instance, "I have created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States, called the "Bureau of Homeland Security " Yeah, he did do that, and I'm not particularly happy about it although I'm not sure that what existed before with various government agencies fulfilling overlapping niches was necessarily better.

Then there's the Olbermann piece. Frankly, I find Olbermann to be as much of a journalist as Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. He's an opinion maker and there's not necessarily anything wrong with that except for that he tries to pass off his opinion pieces as hard news which in my book makes him a hack.

NBC regularly puts Olbermann on the Nightly News identifying him as a reporter. Every segment he does is absolutely loaded with opinion. Again, there's nothing wrong with being an opinionated journalist but please don't pass it off as hard news reporting. It would be like FNC putting O'Reilly or Hannity on the Fox Report. Not that the Fox Report is unbiased but it is intended to be a hard news pure reporting program, not an opinion/entertainment program. I'm very wary of anyone claiming to do a hard news program. It's impossible for any normal human not to have some level of bias. Better to disclose your bias than to try to keep it in the closet. Sooner or later anyone with half a brain can clearly see what's going on.

I'll start by saying that I don't *want* the US to be in decline. I much prefer a US hegemony to a Chinese hegemony.

I'm just a bit worried about your economy, your human rights and your leader. Oh, and your economy. Oh, and your economy.

By the way, ad hominem attacks are fun, but if a hippy says something true, it's still true no matter what kind of hair they have.

Peter

And who is aiding and comforting him?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/08/23/daily-sho w-three-generations-of-america-to-the-rescue/

Ahhh, nerd naivety.

This is politics. The Republicans are opposing ALL Democrat sponsored legislation in the Senate. They need something to distract people from this. Like a pointless morality campaign.

McClatchy: Senate Republicans On Track For Record Setting Obstruction
Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes -- 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office.

(cloture votes are required to end debate, part of filibustering)

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/21/mcclatchy -senate-republicans-on-track-for-record-setting-ob struction/
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/v-print/story/ 18218.html

You have to give George one thing, he got a lot of people interested in politics.

The best thing, for those in power, is to have a populace that thinks there is nothing they can do. A people who are so tired dealing with their problems they won't deal with the world's. To condition people to be so self absorbed, that they can't even see the actions of others.

When you have Tony Snow lying on tape and the only person who calls them on it is John Stewart, there's a problem.

When you have Dick putting hundreds of people in every sector of government, and it's only been in the last few that people have finally started to note what he has been doing(i.e. why these people in those places), you have a problem.

We need more people working to make changes and speaking out and fewer just pissed off that other's haven't done enough.

Also, if people don't know what lead up to Cap's death, please, at least read Wikipedia. We just have to hope that more people can get others interested enough to pay attention.

Chavez is just following the policy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Sound familiar?

I don't like either case, but Chavez has less power and fewer options than the USA.

As for central planning, it will never be as efficient as free markets. But consider how the USSR's central planning would have gone if it had Walmart's computing power, data analysis, demand prediction programs, and supplier controls and communication. Walmart does a tremendous job of centrally planning its stores. It has to forecast what people need and will consume, just like Stalin needed to.

So someone who is a drunk isn't a good choice to be allowed to vote but someone who advocates that it's a good thing when few people vote is?

To be honest, I'd rather someone vote who is drunk than someone who wants low voter turnout so they can manipulate the system.

Well, I'm wary of any editor that takes the commands through the colon. Add on a Brokeback reference, and my homometer is going haywire!

I kid, I kid... I personally use both Emacs and Vim

Just one moment?

Here, this video shows many examples.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/15/fox-attac ks-black-america/

Now we've got something for Cheney to do after we've impeached him: dole out the tape while they reassemble all the evidence he's shredded the past 7 years.

Then we can hang him for treason.

On the converse i've had the displeasure of a tenured professor whose lectures sounded like Senator Stevens on the internet

Details from VT gunman's suicide note revealed, blames actions on "rich kids" and "debauchery" but makes no mention of Anna Nicole Smith, Don Imus or violent video games

Turned into a whole string of "I blame..." responses.

Usually art imitates life, but sometimes life imitates art. A few threads later After Columbine, Tom Delay blamed the shootings on science classes teaching evolution. Surely, we've learned from past idiots, right? Well... a day after the VT massacre, it appears not showed up, with a link pointing to a Crooks and Liars article in which Tom Delay blamed the Columbine attack on the teaching of evolution, and some other contemptible ghoul of a fundie whackjob blamed the VT shooting on the teaching of evolution.

Just when we'd thought we'd blamed it on everything, some fucking fundie freak has to play a game of one-upmanship.

From Crooks And Liars:

This one's a no-brainer.

The NSA has been monitoring and logging all US domestic phone and email traffic for a few years now, thanks to Bush and Cheney.

So subpoena the "lost" WH emails from the NSA. Put the domestic spying operation to some practical use.

If they don't have the emails, they aren't doing their job, and it will be time to get rid of the NSA.
Annoyed Canuck | 04.12.07 - 3:57 pm | #

I hope this helps the Federal criminal prosecution of the world's largest crime syndicate.

Patriotically as always,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.

At one time we had this. Then, it went away and Clinton's Penis became the #1 news item of all time ever. Now, the nation's most popular news channel is brashly biased and continuously deceives, quantifiably damaging the electorate's understanding of their government and the world around them.

Excuse me, but I'd rather see the last 9 years of TV media "improvement" reversed. You imply that the leading political party would have complete control over the application of the fairness doctrine - this is in fact not the case. If this new doctrine were enforced by the FCC, under a clear and concise rubric, it would allow little room for the quashing of certain points of view - seeing as how it stipulates that conflicting points of view must necessarily be presented.

Seguing to Kennedy's speech to the National Press Club, Carlson said, "You talk about the hostile enemy, obviously being Iraq, but hostile enemies right here on the home front. Yesterday Senator Ted Kennedy, proposing that any kind of a troop surge should mean that there should be congressional approval of that...."Bartlett responded that the administration considered Kennedy a long-time critic of the war, but not a hostile enemy.

The biggest problem is that we have two generations of reporters that believe their job is to undermine the government, and that that is an example of freedom of the press.

Well, it may cost me my karma, but I am simply not going to allow you to get away with saying this. It is complete nonsense.

It is not the press's responsibility to glad-hand or enable the government. It is the press's responsibility to ask questions and report the facts of the situation. Inevitiably, there will be bias. A story can consist of many facts, and which ones you choose to omit or include and on what basis of relevance can be considered bias. If, by some miracle, you can include all the facts, then the order in which you state them becomes the bias. There is ALWAYS bias. That is why it is so important to have a free speach, where all voices and all sides of the issue can be heard.

After 9/11, the press completely failed in these duties and, for all intents and purposes, gave a free pass to this government. In hindsight, our reasons for getting into Iraq have all been proven to be specious and false; at the time however the press was willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt. In hindsight, we have learned about the HUGE gaps and red flags in the intelligence and fact-presentation of the rational in going to war with Iraq that were present at the time and went unreported because the press didn't want to seem unpatriotic. We have an American citizen being tortured and reduced to a "piece of furniture" in direct violation of our sacred Constitution. We have a President that is UNCONSTITUTIONALLY and ILLEGALLY spying on Americans and has gutted 1,000 years of legal process with his Military Commision Act and only a small handful in the media are seriously questioning it. We are in a huge mess, with our troops being killed and our treasury being drained, because the media didn't have the balls to question this President and his illegal administration. Even now, the media are still aiding this government by burying horrendous stories of Department of Homeland Security negligence.

So you'll forgive me if I don't believe your ridiculous assertion that we have two generations of reporters who believe that undermining the government is a part of their job. As a matter of fact, that is such a ludicrous outlook that I am simply apalled that you can write it in seriousness. Not only is it factually false, it's an excercise in intellectual dishonesty. A just and effective government would have NOTHING to fear from questioning. A government that governed by logic (as opposed to "faith" or "from the gut") would have NOTHING to fear from self-examination. Your statement does not reflect a conservative or liberal viewpoint (conservatives believe in limited government and appreciate a free press to keep it in check; liberals believe in personal freedoms and thus welcome freedom of the press.) Rather, your viewpoint is a fascist one and not supported by the Constitution. Your right to speak your views, however, are.

Maybe he is joining Newt Gingrich on his assault on free speech in a effort at being Newt's running mate.

How about... legally?

The problem that Democrats and other patriot have is not with the wiretapping. Listening in on phone calls between Americans and suspected terrorists abroad is, everyone agrees, a good thing, and entirely legal if it is done according to the law of the land. That means getting a warrant from the FISA court.

The issue with Bush's wiretapping is that it violates that law. Bush is engaging in warrantless wiretapping of those phone calls.

(And, incidentally, the administration has never given a plausible reason why it can't get warrants. The FISA court is notorious for rubber-stamping requests -- it rarely turns them down. And the request can be made retroactively, so it's not like a warrant would hold up a time-sensitive investigation.)

Please don't turn this into an issue of whether or not we should listen in on phone calls with a suspected terrorist on one end. Everyone agrees we should. The question is whether the law should apply to the president, and whether warrants should be required before listening in on Americans' phone calls.

The question which the Department of Justice will now, for a second time, investigate, is what role the Department of Justice had in this violation of the law. Whether it really makes sense for Bush's DoJ to investigate itself, I can't say. (The first investigation, long-delayed, was eventually cancelled when -- I am not making this up -- George W. Bush personally refused to grant security clearance to the investigators.)

You are absolutely, 100% wrong. Bush's Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in July confirmed that there's been no declaration of war and that this therefore does not affect the legality of this program.

...which is why I listen to PRI/NPR. I would be overwhelmed with shock to see hour blocks devoted to true discussion of important topics by leaders in their field on both sides of a story on FOX, or CNN (don't get me started on the utter slop that is nightly local news). In between these discussions they report news via BBC WorldWide, which is one of the most respected, public driven news outlets on the planet.

I watch FOX on occasion for pure enjoyment in exercise. I can talk about all the things flashing on the screen for hours. It's quite fun. I love John Stewart's take on it...

Being gay is a non-issue. Being a hypocrite should be huge issue in politics. Censorship is even a bigger issue.

Here's the clip. Note in the comment section of that post, they mention a few other hypocrites.

Here's the image that CNN showed on their censored rebroadcast of their 9/11 footage. I guess they didn't want people to wonder why their were reports of bombs in the building, and start doing research.

Fact is censorship is everywhere. We only get half the story, if that.

Voter fraud is already happening, and is extremely obvious, in Texas, according to a local news station: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/11/01/more-alle gations-of-voter-fraud-and-guess-which-party-it-fa vors/

Do you really think that the timing of the removal of all Daily Show and Colbert Report clips from YouTube isn't part of this effort? When some elected dork says "I never said that" on national television, Jon and Steven have a habit of showing the clip of them saying "I never said that" followed by the clip(s) of them saying it? We can't have misinformation like that running around on the Internet. Voters could see it and get the right idea.

"Olbermann: And lastly, as promised, a Special Comment tonight on the signing of the Military Commissions Act and the loss of Habeas Corpus...We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom..."

It was Paul Cameron, whose name you'll see tacked onto most faked-up research showing that gays eat babies and so forth. The clip you refer to is available here; look closely for the point at which Cameron agrees that he'd much rather get blown up by terrorists than have an uncomfortable shower moment.

For an overview, watch Robert Smigel's truly amazing 'Conspiracy Theory Rock', a very funny cartoon on this very topic which was shown once on Saturday Night Live and censored from subsequent reruns by NBC, because apparently media companies get a kick out of proving their critics right.

Windows Media
Quicktime

Kindly hosted by the fine folks at crooksandliars.com

For an overview, watch Robert Smigel's truly amazing 'Conspiracy Theory Rock', a very funny cartoon on this very topic which was shown once on Saturday Night Live and censored from subsequent reruns by NBC, because apparently media companies get a kick out of proving their critics right.

Windows Media
Quicktime

Kindly hosted by the fine folks at crooksandliars.com

For an overview, watch Robert Smigel's truly amazing 'Conspiracy Theory Rock', a very funny cartoon on this very topic which was shown once on Saturday Night Live and censored from subsequent reruns by NBC, because apparently media companies get a kick out of proving their critics right.

Windows Media
Quicktime

Kindly hosted by the fine folks at crooksandliars.com

I once saw CNN...

both events of which you describe were LIVE programs. Bill O'liely is a recorded show. This 'mistake' also appeared on the AP news wire... Not only describing Foley as (D), but also the now pressured Hastert as the (D) from Illinois. Im not really sure what kind of misleading information a almost imperceptible graphic of an 'x' during a live interview would give you, but obviously we have different thought processes.

Link that show the 'mistaken label' all over the place.

Keep smiling, it could never happen here. Just like you have always been told...

If you have not yet seen this interview of Bill Clinton, do so:
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/fox_fns_clinton_p art1_060924a_320x240.wmv

GWB could never handle a hostile unscripted interview like this. Everything would have to be pre-approved and rehearsed. Clinton handles this with style. Too bad for neocons that the facts were not on their side...

You can skip from the start to the point where Chris Wallace tells about supposed "e-mails" he has received from viewers, that is where the lively part starts.

Consider encouraging Democratic (and Republican - though that's unlikely) senators to filibuster this.

Senator contact list

It looks like filibusteris the only realistic option on this one.

Oh, and vote however you prefer to end this destruction of personal and public liberties in November. I'd HIGHLY suggest Democratic in most cases this election.

Ryan Fenton

Merely taxcutting the rich to a rate that still pays their share, rather than preferentially over the rest, isn't supply-side. Government subsidies including taxes that favor corporations is supply-side.

When Reagan/Bush installed supply-side, they first quadrupled the size of government, and continued its expansion for 12 years, generating more debt than previously believed possible. They robbed the S&Ls of $1.5TRILLION. And funded "expansion" with junk bonds. All of which came home to roost by 1990, a collapse that lasted 4 years, corrected only by the unexpected Dotcom Bubble (managed by Clinton). Not to mention the 1982 recession, or the seeds of the one we've been in for the past 5 years: 10-11 years of documented recession out of 25, despite all the book juggling to cover it up.

Bush Jr's tax cuts haven't improved "the economy", just the sectors favored by Bush's base of rich bankers. The stock market's value has dropped compared to the value of global equity. Even Bush admits the economy is "in the tank" if you're just a regular American. Income has shrunk consistently under Reagan/Bush administrations, unless you're a bank.

If you ignore the $TRILLIONS in subsidies and crippling effects on those not already rich masked by the huge benefits to the rich, then supply-side is a success. If you're rich, it's a successful way to steal from everyone else.

Gonzo is not crap. Gonzo and New Journalism were a reaction to by a society under a lot of sress following the more staid 1950's. It was fuelled by the rising tide of drugs, rock, and pop culture, and the subject matter was often those sources of social tension, the war, and famously in Thompson's case, Nixon The Crook.

I think the reason "Gonzo" and New Journalism is so underappreciated today is two-fold. One, there is just no longer any capacity to be shocked by anything. Gonzo at it's best is shocking writing that jolts one out of a staid, or concrete mindset. But what is there left to be shocked about in 2006? I think one could argue pretty persuasively that Steven Colbert does Gonzo Journalism every night on Colbert Report. But Colbert Report is considered satire, not journalism and is largely dismissed by mainstream media. Ditto John Stewart, of course.

The second reason for the depreciation of Gonzo is simply dilution through imitation. There are/were so many HST wannabes (including yours truly) that the style has been run into the ground. Few people know or acknowledge that Wolfe, Thompson, Terry Southern, et. al. were serious writers who worked very dilligently at the craft of writing. It all looks thrown together, but that was artifice. For example, Thompson as a young writer used to spend evenings retyping Hemingway and Fitzgerald so that he could get a feel for the words as they were laid down on the page. Few so-called Gonzo writers today are that serious about their craft.

More's the pity. We could use some good Gonzo writing nowadays. With all the hair-pulling within and without the media and its close observers with regards to whether "objective" journalism and "journalism as usual" serves the purposes of an informed republic, how refreshing would it be to see a serious journal take the wraps off a new writer in the gonzo style willing to rip the status quo a new asshole. Giant bats are optional.

You are 100% incorrect. As admitted by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales recently, the AUMF is not the Congressional declaration of war described by the Constitution.

Gonzales: Of course there's been no declaration of war here...

Feinstein: ...you're saying, clearly, that the AUMF does not carry the full constitutional weight of a declaration of war?

Gonzales: (long pause) Yes...

And why shouldn't he? After all, the President is always right.

OMG, this is like the best remix ever...

http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/07/11/ted -stevens-remix-on-net-neutrality/

Hysterical Remix. http://movies.crooksandliars.com/DJ_teds_techno_tu bes.mp3

"I'm not going to defend the indefensible. ... I'm prepared to defend a very aggressive anti-terrorist campaign, and I'm prepared to defend the idea that the government ought to know who's making the calls, as long as that information is only used against terrorists, and as long as the Congress knows that it's underway. But I don't think the way they've handled this can be defended by reasonable people. It is sloppy." -- Newt Gingrich

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Hannity-Colmes-Ne wt-Phones.wmv

Why does Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, hate America...?