Why ask hillary a serious question when you can ask her whether she prefers pearls or diamonds?
Because CNN scripted the debate!
Of course, the candidates would not have had anything to do with this….
And, would we have gotten a honest answer?
Via Alas, A blog.
If someone trespasses on your property and shoots your dog it seems you would be well within your rights to return the favor.
Also you would expect that the folks you pay to provide protection against the bad folks would step in, bust the perpetrator and throw the proverbial book at them.
But you would be wrong.
Via The Agitator.
fema, building on a long tradition of strong bush administration public relations efforts such as colin powell’s un security council presentation and the fine news reporting provided by embedded reporters in Iraq, had demonstrated new skills in government puffery:
The U.S. government’s main disaster-response agency apologized on Friday for having its employees pose as reporters in a hastily called news conference on California’s wildfires that no news organizations attended.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, still struggling to restore its image after the bungled handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, issued the apology after The Washington Post published details of the Tuesday briefing.
….
No actual reporter attended the news conference in person, agency spokesman Aaron Walker said.
……
The agency had called the briefing with about 15 minutes notice as federal officials headed for southern California to oversee and assist in firefighting and rescue efforts. Reporters were also given a telephone number to listen in on but could not ask questions.
But with no reporters on hand and an agency video camera providing a feed carried live by some television networks, FEMA press employees posed the questions for Johnson that included: “Are you happy with FEMA’s response so far?” (Ed: emphasis added)
A made up presss conference to provide made up answers to made up questions. Can it get any better?
Perhaps, but not for the citizenry. fema’s director of external affairs could have stopped the conference:
“It was absolutely a bad decision. I regret it happened. Certainly . . . I should have stopped it,” said John P. “Pat” Philbin, FEMA’s director of external affairs. “I hope readers understand we’re working very hard to establish credibility and integrity, and I would hope this does not undermine it.”(Ed: emphasis added)
Lucky for us philbin is leaving fema:
Philbin’s last scheduled day at FEMA was Thursday. He has been named as the new head of public affairs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI spokeswoman Vanee Vines said.
No, this is not from The Onion.
We are so looking forward to future information programs from the odni!
…to the totalitarian, something does not have to be ‘evil’ to warrant the use of force to discourage it, you merely have to have (a) coercive power (b) disapprove of another person’s choices regarding their own life. That is all the justification you need, simply the fact other people are not living the way you think they should, in your presumably infinite wisdom.
Do you recognize any in your community?
I’ve said it more than once and now the New York Times is catching on:
It was bad enough having a one-party government when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues.
At best the differences between the democrats and republicans are minor points of emphasis when it comes to protecting your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness…they are not really interested in this. The differences are a bit larger when it comes to the constituencies whose votes they try to buy.
Unfortunately for all of us none of these critters represent even a majority of the citizens in their states or districts. If they did it might be more appropriate to call the United States a representative democracy and its government a government of the people. Today, our congress critters represent themselves, their parties, lobbyists, state corporate interests and government power. Their only interest in the citizens of this country is how to get enough votes to stay in office.
Kudos to the NYT for this editorial.
Where were they, though, during the lead up to the Iraq invasion? When the patriot act was being passed?
They have a lot more work to do to re-establish their position as the paper of record for the people of this country rather than whoever is currently pulling the strings from the Washington, D.C.
NB: Will chris dodd be able to survive as the independent he is playing?
Via Hullaballoo.