This Week In the News
This week, the Media Research Center (MRC), a group dedicated to sniffing out the liberal bias in American journalism had its annual banquet and gave its "God, I Hate America Award" to .... Andy Rooney. That's Right. Andy "Cranky Old Man" Rooney. Not Katrina VandenHeuvel (Editor, of The Nation,), not Hillary Clinton, not Al Franken, not Bill Maher, but Andy Rooney, a guy who will tell anyone who will listen about his experiences in WWII and likes to think he put the "Greatest" in the Greatest Generation. The offending statement According to MRC, was the following opinion offered at the end of 60 Minutes:
This week, Republican Fred Thompson, most known for his role as a saavy District Attorney on TV's "Law and Order" announced that he would seek the GOP nomination for President. Thompson served a thoroughly unremarkable term as a Senator from Tennessee and is better known for playing authority figures (Generals, Admirals, and DAs) in the movies and on TV. While many questioned whether Thompson can actually convince Americans he can lead the country, Thompson's chief aide responded, "Our reading of the public mood in the last eight years is that the appearance of leadership is more important than actually exercising independent judgment in the public interest. What we want is someone who can mouth the words of the songs we want to hear and do so with the appearance of candor and integrity. As his acting credits attest, Fred is an awesome stand in for actual leadership. Whether its is hard boiled leadership, compassionate leadership, or even enlightened leadership, the man can create the illusion of leadership like nobody's business."
This week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bush Administration violated the Clean Air Act when the Environmental Protection Agency refused to issue standards regarding carbon emissions from vehicles. The Court rejected the Administration's argument that the Environmental Protection Agency was created to protect business from environmentalists, not the environment from business.
This week, the British medical journal Lancet, published a study which ranked commonly used drugs based upon their physical effects, costs to society, addiction rate, and harm caused to individuals. Heroin and cocaine topped the ranking. Filling out the top ten were ketomine (special K, (4)) alcohol (5) and tobacco (9). Marijuana, ecstasy and LSD were ranked 11, 14 and 18. The study undermines drug classification systems in both England and the US, both of which treat canabis and other recreational drugs as being much more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. Drug treatment advocates on both sides of the Atlantic have long argued for a reclassification of drugs more in line with their actual dangers. In response to the study the White House's Office of Drug Policy issued a statement: "Once again we are faced with a challenge to our policies from so called 'scientists' and all their ballyhooed 'evidence.' Well mister, for four decades we have been implementing a multibillion dollar policy that says all drugs are equally dangerous and will turn you into vegetable. Four decades of fighting a nation awash in drugs speaks for itself."
This week, the Wall Street Journal reported on the story of one Lt. Colonel Stuart Couch, a United States Marine, and lawyer, who volunteered to prosecute the case of Mohamedou Slahi, a suspected terrorist held at Guantanomo Bay, Slahi was accused of masterminding the hijacking of a United Airlines flight on September 11, 2001. That plan killed the co-pilot of the flight, a close personal friend of Lt. Col. Couch. After investigating the case, Couch refused to prosecute Slahi because he believed that Slahi's confessions had been procured through torture at the hands of US forces, specifically sexual humiliation, mock executions, beatings, and the threat of taking Slahi's mother into custody and allowing prisoners to rape her. No zinger line here because Lt. Col. Couch's actions are nothing but admiral. Even the most deranged of wars can produce heroes.
This week, they arrived in the night from the country's capitals of finance. They came on airplanes and high speed Amtrack shuttles. They took up space at the DC Hilton, The Capitol Marriott and the Watergate. They drank premium liquor and swaddled themselves in Prada, Gucci and Armani. They are lobbyists. Specifically, many of the 1,100 lobbyist hired by the pharmaceutical industry to stop passage of a bill winding its way through Congress. The bill allows the federal government to use its massive buying power to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid. This practice was expressly forbidden by the Bush Administration's Medicare Prescription Drug legislation (a/k/a the Pharmaceutical Executives Retirement Package act or "PERP") . Big Pharma, which last year spent $300 million lobbying Congress, defended its rent seeking behavior in high fashion: "What you see here is simply an exercise in the free market setting prices. No not the prices for drugs, stupid. But the price of congressman who can hand us the ability to unilaterally set prices whether we are selling you ten pills or ten million pills." Asked how the lobbying effort was going, the spokesperson noted: "As always we are seeing some price elasticity. Some of these guys roll for a T Bone at Mortons, some want discrete donations to their own PAC, and some want a six figure job for their spouse. We are negotiating on a case by case basis. "
Quote of the Week
"Cynicism opposite is not mindless optimism, but defiance." (This comes from a Spin magazine album review. I don't think it has much of anything to do with Arcade Fire's latest disk, but I like it. )
Contacted for comment, the MRC's Archibald "Arch" Fascisto commented, "Listen. We count on those Greatest Generations types to beat the war drums and lend the moral authority of the fight against Fascism in Europe to the fight against whatever enemy we have concocted in whatever backwater we say they live in. The last thing we need is one of these octegenarians exercising an independent streak."Americans are puzzled over why so many people in the world hate us... We're
trying to protect ourselves with more weapons. We have to do it, I guess, but it
might be better if we figured out how to behave as a nation in a way that
wouldn't make so many people in the world want to kill us.
This week, Republican Fred Thompson, most known for his role as a saavy District Attorney on TV's "Law and Order" announced that he would seek the GOP nomination for President. Thompson served a thoroughly unremarkable term as a Senator from Tennessee and is better known for playing authority figures (Generals, Admirals, and DAs) in the movies and on TV. While many questioned whether Thompson can actually convince Americans he can lead the country, Thompson's chief aide responded, "Our reading of the public mood in the last eight years is that the appearance of leadership is more important than actually exercising independent judgment in the public interest. What we want is someone who can mouth the words of the songs we want to hear and do so with the appearance of candor and integrity. As his acting credits attest, Fred is an awesome stand in for actual leadership. Whether its is hard boiled leadership, compassionate leadership, or even enlightened leadership, the man can create the illusion of leadership like nobody's business."
This week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bush Administration violated the Clean Air Act when the Environmental Protection Agency refused to issue standards regarding carbon emissions from vehicles. The Court rejected the Administration's argument that the Environmental Protection Agency was created to protect business from environmentalists, not the environment from business.
This week, the British medical journal Lancet, published a study which ranked commonly used drugs based upon their physical effects, costs to society, addiction rate, and harm caused to individuals. Heroin and cocaine topped the ranking. Filling out the top ten were ketomine (special K, (4)) alcohol (5) and tobacco (9). Marijuana, ecstasy and LSD were ranked 11, 14 and 18. The study undermines drug classification systems in both England and the US, both of which treat canabis and other recreational drugs as being much more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. Drug treatment advocates on both sides of the Atlantic have long argued for a reclassification of drugs more in line with their actual dangers. In response to the study the White House's Office of Drug Policy issued a statement: "Once again we are faced with a challenge to our policies from so called 'scientists' and all their ballyhooed 'evidence.' Well mister, for four decades we have been implementing a multibillion dollar policy that says all drugs are equally dangerous and will turn you into vegetable. Four decades of fighting a nation awash in drugs speaks for itself."
This week, the Wall Street Journal reported on the story of one Lt. Colonel Stuart Couch, a United States Marine, and lawyer, who volunteered to prosecute the case of Mohamedou Slahi, a suspected terrorist held at Guantanomo Bay, Slahi was accused of masterminding the hijacking of a United Airlines flight on September 11, 2001. That plan killed the co-pilot of the flight, a close personal friend of Lt. Col. Couch. After investigating the case, Couch refused to prosecute Slahi because he believed that Slahi's confessions had been procured through torture at the hands of US forces, specifically sexual humiliation, mock executions, beatings, and the threat of taking Slahi's mother into custody and allowing prisoners to rape her. No zinger line here because Lt. Col. Couch's actions are nothing but admiral. Even the most deranged of wars can produce heroes.
This week, they arrived in the night from the country's capitals of finance. They came on airplanes and high speed Amtrack shuttles. They took up space at the DC Hilton, The Capitol Marriott and the Watergate. They drank premium liquor and swaddled themselves in Prada, Gucci and Armani. They are lobbyists. Specifically, many of the 1,100 lobbyist hired by the pharmaceutical industry to stop passage of a bill winding its way through Congress. The bill allows the federal government to use its massive buying power to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid. This practice was expressly forbidden by the Bush Administration's Medicare Prescription Drug legislation (a/k/a the Pharmaceutical Executives Retirement Package act or "PERP") . Big Pharma, which last year spent $300 million lobbying Congress, defended its rent seeking behavior in high fashion: "What you see here is simply an exercise in the free market setting prices. No not the prices for drugs, stupid. But the price of congressman who can hand us the ability to unilaterally set prices whether we are selling you ten pills or ten million pills." Asked how the lobbying effort was going, the spokesperson noted: "As always we are seeing some price elasticity. Some of these guys roll for a T Bone at Mortons, some want discrete donations to their own PAC, and some want a six figure job for their spouse. We are negotiating on a case by case basis. "
Quote of the Week
"Cynicism opposite is not mindless optimism, but defiance." (This comes from a Spin magazine album review. I don't think it has much of anything to do with Arcade Fire's latest disk, but I like it. )
posted by Jack Reed at 10:14 AM
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