Day: 3/21/2008

Karl Rove’s Blogger Smackdown

Posted by on March 21, 2008 at 4:12 pm. NO Comments :

Karl Rove may have been Bush’s Brain, but the nimrods at NewsBlusters are the ones who seem to be in need of gray matter reinforcements. NB’s Matthew Sheffield did an interview with Rove that is downright hilarious.

The first question dealt with why wealthy conservatives do not invest in media, whereas wealthy liberals do. [Pause for laughter] Sheffield didn’t bother to cite a single example of a wealthy liberal media investor, and Rove answered the question as if the premise wasn’t nonsense.

“I think wealthy conservatives are busy investing in profit and job creation and enterprise and wealthy liberals, many of them either from the media industry themselves or from – recognize the value of communications and are more ready to put money into a less profitable enterprise, namely the media.”

Rove ignores the fact that his new boss, Rupert Murdoch, deficit-financed Fox News for five years, and it is still less profitable than CNN despite having more viewers; his New York Post has never made a profit as long as he’s owned it; the newly hatched Fox Business Network is struggling to stay afloat; and he purchased MySpace for over half a billion dollars though it had never, and still has not, made a profit.

As for conservative investors in the media, Sheffield and Rove might want to familiarize themselves with former GE chief Jack Welch; or the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Washington Times; or former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer of Freedom’s Watch, a $200 million propaganda factory; or the Heritage Foundation; or the American Enterprise Institute; or Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal al Saud (of the Saudi Sauds) who is a significant shareholder in both Time Warner in News Corp.

When asked about the Internet, Rove came out swinging at liberal blogs saying that…

“…most of them are hate-filled, obscenity-clogged rants of anger and hatred.”

[Pause for laughter] But that’s not the funniest part. When asked why there are more liberals in the Blogosphere, he said…

“I hate to sound sort of diffident about it but it strikes me that a lot of people on the right have got active lives and are doing other things and the idea of spending a lot of time on the internet and taking their talents and displaying them there is not something they really do.”

[Still laughing] Bear in mind that he was speaking to a blogger. Did Rove intend to insult him as a loser who had no life? Or is it only liberals who blog because they have nothing else to do? Another reason that people on the right are not “taking their talents” to the Internet may be because they haven’t got any – witness Sheffield.

Rove returns often to the theme of blogging as something conservatives haven’t the time for. He says they have more “active lives;” or they are “busy investing in profit;” or they are “not completely absorbed in politics;” or that they “have other enterprises and charitable efforts.”

If all of that were true, then what does it say about the conservatives who do stoop to blogging? And why does he want them to do it more? Does he want their lives to be more shallow and vacant as he imagines the lives of liberal bloggers to be? I also wonder how Rove reconciles the claim that conservatives have more profitable endeavors to pursue with the claim that conservatives tend to engage more in philanthropic activities. Which is it – are they helping themselves or helping others? It hardly matters because, according to Rove, being charitable is a compliment to conservatives but an attack on liberals. And the same is true for being wealthy.

What’s really funny is that NewsBlusters published this incoherent, contradictory spew as if it were somehow newsworthy. Sheffield didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by Rove’s insults. Nor did he pick up on any of the obvious contradictions. I can’t say that I expected much more from the NewsBlusters team, but I do appreciate a good laugh.

Passport-Gate: Secrets In The House Of Bush

Posted by on March 21, 2008 at 12:09 pm. NO Comments :

In less than 24 hours, a story that began with the disclosure that State Department employees were peeking into the passport records of Barack Obama, it has come to light that the snooping also extended to Hillary Clinton and John McCain. While there is still much that is unknown, these revelations are being treated by the victims as a serious breach of privacy and security.

The Bush administration has developed a reputation as the most secrecy obsessed administration in history. Over the past seven years they have:

  • sought to withhold public records like those of Dick Cheney’s meetings with lobbyists
  • reclassified thousands of documents that were previously available
  • banned photos of military caskets being returned from Iraq
  • thrown roadblocks in front of legislation to enhance the Freedom of Information Act
  • opposed investigations into Iraq, 9/11, Katrina, wiretapping, intelligence failures, U.S. attorney firings, etc.
  • instructed aides to defy Congressional subpoenas

In addition, Bush signed Executive Order 13233 which allows presidents, and former presidents, to restrict historians’ access to presidential records. And they have been pushing relentlessly for the right to access private records of American citizens without warrants.

Yet it is the Bush administration that has been leaking like a sieve when it comes to prejudicial (and often false) data about Iraq and terrorism. It is BushCo that outed Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative. And now it is the Bush State Department that has opened confidential files of presidential candidates to unauthorized persons and, at this time, has no idea whether the stolen data has been disseminated to others. How can we possibly trust them with any personal data or permit them to bypass legal requirements for access to it?

These are the actions of a corrupt enterprise that puts information for which there is a legitimate public interest behind lock and key, while surreptitiously publishing information for which it can realize a propaganda benefit. It is shameful behavior that must be investigated, punished, and prohibited in the future.