Thursday, August 31, 2006

Fictional UK DocuDrama Depicts Bush Assassination (11:11 am)

Death of a President, shot in the style of a retrospective documentary, looks at the effect the assassination of Bush has on America in light of its ‘War on Terror’.

via HuffPo

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Some Thursday Stuff (8:33 am)

Fristed
Paul Kiel and Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker report:

“Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will probably be fined and have to make up for failing to do continuing medical education that Tennessee requires of doctors with active licenses.

Webb and Murtha for Lamont
Atrios.

You Just Can’t Make Up Stuff Like This
John at AMERICAblog reports that “Yesterday, Bush told reporters that his upcoming speeches on terrorism weren’t political.”

“I seriously hope people wouldn’t politicize these issues that I’m going to talk about.”

Tasini v Clinton
Matt Stoller at MyDD reports that MoveOn is polling on the Jonathan Tasini Democratic Senate primary challenge to Hillary Clinton.

Rocky
Outspoken liberal Democrat Mayor Rocky Anderson was the main speaker at Salt Lake City’s anti-war and anti-Bush rally that greeted Bush’s visit yesterday.
Norm at onegoodmove has the video.

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

Stopping the Genocide: Darfur Scorecard (8:16 am)

The Genocide Intervention Network’s Darfur scorecard provides a quick summary of important anti-genocide measures, and which elected officials have provided support, in both the Senate and House.

Here’s the organization’s FAQ page.

via Tracy Van Slyke

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Olbermann and the Spirit of Edward R. Murrow (8:48 pm)

Much like Murrow confronting the witch hunter McCarthy, Olbermann delivers an eloquent commentary which devastates Rumsfeld and BushCo’s inverse projected allegations of “fascism.”
Crooks and Liars has the video.

via Atrios

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Stevens Is The Secret Holder (Anonymous Staffer Reveals) (3:23 pm)

Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker says “a spokesman” for Stevens has confirmed that Senator Internet Tubes has a hold placed on the government contract database bill:

“Sen. Stevens does have a hold on the bill,” said the spokesman, who would only speak on the condition he not be named.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Iranoia (9:58 am)

Matthew Yglesias, guesting at TPM, writes an excellent post on the Iran fearmongering “panic and paranoia” bullshit.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Senator George Felix Macaca Allen Has Some Friends (9:46 am)

The Council of Conservative Citizens (the successor organization to the segregationist White Citizens Council).

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

CBS Busted for Doctoring Photo (8:18 pm)

How is a publicity photo of a journalist substantively different from a photo-journalist’s document of an event, if news organizations expect the public to trust “accuracy in news reporting”? Faking a photo is a willful perpetration of a hoax. One might quibble about the degree of significance attending a given photo fraud, but a fake photo published by a news organization is a fake photo published by a news organization regardless.

And if they’ll lie about something like this, how is anyone ever supposed to have confidence they aren’t lying about more important matters? CBS has some explaining to do.

HuffPo passes along the exposé at TVNewser, and refers to this recent highly publicized foto-fakery.

It’s not the first time CBS News has been caught faking what it shows to the public. There was the video insertion of CBS logos into a broadcast of New Year’s 2000 events in Times Square.

And then at ABC News there was the infamous incident in 1994, wherein Cokie Roberts pretended to be reporting from Capitol Hill while in fact she was actually in the ABC studio, wearing a coat, and standing in front of a screen with a rear-projected image of the Capitol behind her.

And, of course, it’s not that news organizations don’t lie routinely (insert your own Blitzer/Koppel/Brokaw/FOX anecdote here - or pick from the many choices available here). But after awhile, it’s not the lies that are so distressing anymore, it’s their insulting obviousness, and especially in conjunction with the cavalier arrogance of the deceiving organization, which infuriates.