Bush & Co wanted to move the country more towards a dictatorship. They felt that three branches of government shackled real leadership. And they saw "the rule of law" as a tool to control the masses. They viewed freedom and liberty (the Bill of Rights in general) to be a fundamental flaw.
I find it telling that the thing they feared most was that we might hear the truth.
But let's not forget how they were able to control us by keeping the truth chained down in the basement. When Bush tied Iraq to 9/11 and told us it would be a cake walk, the press sat on their hands. When they ignored both U.S. law and the Geneva Convention to torture people in secret prisons, the press focused on whether John Kerry was or was not a cowardly scumbag. When the administration said - on camera and under oath - that people who questioned the government were aiding the terrorists........ crickets. As Bush let the free market run wild, leading to a potential great depression, the press - failing to see a profit motive in explaining credit default swaps to America - applauded the strong economy.
Freedom of the press means little when the press is motivated mainly by ratings and ad revenue. Unless a business case can be made for the truth, the press doesn't care about the truth.
In the 21st century journalism died early. No one wants their commercial for weight loss products to run during a story on torture or a collapsing economy. Happy stories sell happy products to a couch-bound nation.
Bush and the neocons may have been idiots who hated freedom, but the press was the enabler. And as Bush tries to spin his legacy, and the press spins that into ratings magic, remember that the truth is bad for both of them.
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The FCC Blames WoW For College Dropouts - Dec 18th, '08
According to Federal Communications Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate World Of Warcraft is crippling our secondary education system.
"You might find it alarming that one of the top reasons for college drop-outs in the U.S. is online gaming addiction - such as World of Warcraft."
Of course no study is sited, no numbers are given, and we aren't told whether "top reasons" means top 10 or top 1000. But poking around a bit indicates it's certainly not one of the things experts are most worried about.
But, just so I don't get accused of not siting sources myself, here is my rebuttal to Ms Tate - You're wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong.
I could go on of course, as there are thousands of articles about this. But experts agree - While there is no one answer, lack of academic preparedness, in it's various forms, is the main reason students drop out. In fact I couldn't find anyone who claimed World of Warcraft was one of the main causes other than people making money on gaming addiction.
And when we look more broadly at Ms Tate's agenda we see all sorts of ickiness. She thinks an open and creative Internet is a dangerous, and she loves to talk about how it harms our children. Corporations will protect us, liberty will poison us, and won't someone think of the children. It's the typical blah blah blah from a puritanical government official.
Why do I care? Because I'm tired of WoW being the new evil. I'm tired of gamers being given as an example of what's wrong with America. I'm tired of people spouting off "facts" about video games which are completely made up.
So no Deborah Tate, what I find alarming is your eagerness to blame Warcraft so that you can advance your agenda while avoiding the real problem. It's not World of Warcraft that's the problem. The problem is policy makers like you.
3 Comments
Rain - Dec 15th, '08
1) A tip for people traveling to San Diego soon - It's pooring rain. Bring an umbrella.
2) So Bush has random Iraqis throwing shoes at him. He takes this as just some weird thing that doesn't reflect on him at all. He doesn't see this for what it is - A symbol of the hated the entire world feels for him. Not just contempt or disrespect, but actual hatred.
Someone attacks him and yells that it's payback for the women and children he has murdered. His response - A joke about the size of the shoe.
If I'm ever within shoe throwing range of Bush, I'm throwing it. I expect all right-thinking human beings to do the same.
5 Comments
Stop The Crazy Train, I Want To Get Off - Dec 10th, '08
1) Is it just me, or are the charges against Blagojevich completely devoid of illegal behavior? I've looked through it all, and he doesn't seem to have actually done anything. Sure, he ran his mouth a lot about extortion, but when you trace it all back to real people and events nothing actually happened and nothing seems to have been extorted.
So the indictment claims he extorted the Tribune by saying he'd block the sale of the Cubs unless they fired editorial staff. But the paper claims they never heard about that, the sale wasn't blocked, and no one got fired. Same for the senate seat. Same for the cabinet appointment. Same for the job for his wife. Etc etc.
It seems to me like he's both a moron, and very dirty. But what I see here is another case where the FBI goes national with a case so weak it might not even go to trial. And the way the press is trumpeting the naughty bits, while ignoring the facts, is another example of why news organizations deserve the contempt they get.
2) So we have the environmentalists running an ad on nearly every commercial break saying that there is no such thing as clean coal. This is stupid.
First of all, clean coal is a well understood option. It involves doing something other than spewing the carbon and byproducts into the air. Simple as that. It's not even hard. But it costs too much, so no one is going to do it.
Second, no one is doing it. No one. And no one plans to. Zip, nothing, notta. If coal plants get built they will be the old fashioned kind, and no one claims otherwise.
So why do we have to sit through this crap? And why are millions being spent on it? We have real environmental problems. Why not spend money on those? Stupid liberals piss me off.
3) Expect the next few years to be filled with kookery about how Obama can't be president because he's not a natural born citizen. Let's put it to rest right now.
- He was born in Hawaii, and has the legal documents to prove it. The people who are legally obligated to verify that have verified it. Done and legal.
- His mother was a U.S. citizen, and had the documents to prove it. This gives him U.S. citizenship automatically, as it says in the 14th Amendment and has been upheld by the courts many times. Done and legal.
- Since the Constitution doesn't define what it means by "natural born citizen" in Article Two, we must fall back on other case law. And the courts have repeatedly ruled that if you are born here and you are eligible for citizenship, you are a "natural born citizen". Done and legal.
So quibbles with the birth certificate don't matter. His potential duel citizenship doesn't matter. Any citizenship claims when he was six don't matter. According to the law, he's a natural born citizen.
7 Comments
The Good and the Bad - Dec 8th, '08
So....... Obviously no live blogging of the Thanksgiving meals. Mainly just because of my growing angst and anxiousness over the coming Troubles. But partly as well because the Warcraft expansion just launched. Both tend to make me into even more of a bubble boy. We're mostly settled in for the WoW expansion, so perhaps we can start dealing with the global disaster looming right around the corner.
First of all, to all the bigots who posted comments a few days ago - Thank you. You have no idea how gleeful it makes me to see you all so frantic and hysterical now that we have a black president. Your desperate racism is like a wonderful little toy. You are just so precious I want to pinch your cheeks and hug you. Pretty please continue with your tiny-brained bigotry. Same with you Bush dead-enders. It makes me all happy inside to see to nashing and twisting as you try to convince those of us with brains that Bush wasn't to blame for all of the things he did, and we wouldn't have been better off with Gore or Kerry. Your tears are delicious to me, so keep them coming.
Sadly, Bush screwed the world up so bad, and we let racism fester for so long, that the next few months will be likely be very nasty. The financial crisis shows no signs of going anywhere but down. So the current recession is likely to turn into a full capital D Depression. And after eight years of Bush empowering classism and bigotry, I think we have a rather deep well of denial to climb out of in terms of race relations. it turned out to be true - Bush doesn't care about black people. So now that we have a black president there is bound to be some justifiable rage spilling over.
So it's good that Bush & Co are finally being stripped of power, even if we aren't taking the obvious step of putting him in prison. But he has left the country and the world in such a disastrous state that things are likely to get much worse no matter who is president. He has gone out of his way to make sure the coming year will be an epic crisis.
I told you people years ago that Bush hated America, and his true goal was to ruin it. Now you are seeing how true that was.
5 Comments
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