As someone who tries to be fair, even when the other party isn't, I can only say that I hope Jerry Falwell's god shows his immortal soul more mercy than Falwell ever showed to to his fellow man.

But in as far as the earthly realm goes, I can only think, "Good riddance to bad rubbish."

[Note: Links to the The Carpet Bagger Report detailing Falwell's greatest hits of hatred.]

I know that there are a few people on my FList who are interested in the subject matter, so this is me giving the heads up.

PBS's FRONTLINE and The American Experience have teamed up to co-produce a four-hour, two-part documentary on The Mormons.

Check your local PBS station for the schedule.

For people outside the U.S., or people who won't get to record the documentary, given that this is PBS, I suspect that after broadcast you'll probably be able to watching streaming video of both episodes online.

Interestingly enough, both FRONTLINE and The American Experience are produced by WGBH in Boston, which makes me suspect that the unstated impetuous for the blow-out of a documentary may have been sparked by our ex-governor Mitt Romney's run for president.

ETA: Also, for those people who want to see Bill Moyers's Friday interview with John Stewart, the online streaming video can be viewed here.

I remember when NOW with Bill Moyers was a staple on PBS.

And now, it's b-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ck! And Moyers once again proves why he's the God of Journalism on earth.

I missed the Friday broadcast of NOW, so I had to catch it on repeats on the Rhode Island PBS affiliate last night.

Of course, my blood pressure went right through the roof.

Buying the War, about the follow-the-heard mentality of the press that greased the skids into the U.S. invading and occupying Iraq, made me shake with rage.

Wanna know what's really sick? None of the information is new, nor is it a surprise at this point. Or, it shouldn't be if you've been paying even the smallest bit of attention.

It's seeing it laid out from one end to the other. It's seeing all the whining from the journalists about how "no one called them." (Fuck you, dude! You're supposed to call them, you idiots! — It's called Journalism 101! I had to do it back in the day. Do reporters not pick up the phones any more?) It's seeing the truth being reported in other countries, while pure propaganda was being spoon fed to the populace in ours. It's seeing those self-satisfied smirky talking heads not fucking getting it. They as "journalists" dropped the ball, and we managed to kill an entire country. Fantastic. Good job guys. I won't be forgiving you assholes any time soon.

I have herewith decided to pretend that my Journalism degree is a degree in Mid-19th Century American Literature. I don't want people to assume that I'm incompetent.

How is it possible that the last real reporters in the United States work for Knight Ridder/McClatchy Newspapers? As it turns out, this is the news organization that got it right all along and was calling shenanigans from the start.

But guess who's still got the big television contracts, still on the weenie cocktail circuit, and still making oodles of money for being wrong?

Here's a hint: It's not the ink-stained wretches at Knight Ridder/McClatchy who actually did their fucking jobs.

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In other news, Riverbend of Baghdad Burning has finally thrown in the towel. She announced that she and her family were fleeing Baghdad for either Jordan or Syria (the only countries where Iraqis don't need passports to cross the border). From there, they're going to try to find a country that will take them in.

As conditions have deteriorated in Iraq, Riverbend's posting schedule has gotten increasingly erratic, with sometimes months going by between posts.

Another bright light goes out in Iraq, but at least Riverbend will live on.

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I admit that I thought the Congressional hearings on the lies told around the fratricide death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan was over-the-top and conducted only because Tillman was famous. However, the House Hearing on Accuracy of Battlefield Information turned out to yield lots and lots of interesting information.

Like how U.S. troops were being used as propaganda parts by the Bush Administration to keep public opinion in line the Iraqi invasion and occupation. To be honest, again, this is not at all news, considering how King George so does love prancing in front of uniformed officers for political purposes. ("Mission Accomplished" anyone?)

By the way, this hearing included testimony from Jessica Lynch, in which she also accused the administration of lying about her situation. For the record, Lynch is accusing the administration of turning her into a hero for propaganda purposes — she denies that she's any kind of hero at all. IMHO, however, anyone who fights to set the record straight — as Lynch has tried to do for years — despite the pressure to keep her mouth shut and accept the hero accolade really is a hero. I'm just sayin'.

In either case, if you want to break your heart, this article on Pat Tillman from Sports Illustrated shows why so many people are fighting to get the truth out about Tillman, and to draw attention to the propaganda games around the Iraqi invasion and occupation.

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More bits and pieces of flotsam:

George Tenet, who's not exactly one of the "good guys" when it comes to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, has released his tell-all book in which he's confirmed that the Iraqi invasion was based on a hill of lies. Again, not new news here at all, but notable for the "who" that's saying it.

Knight Ridder/McClatchy continue to prove how invaluable they are to journalism by reporting that in order to "prove" that violence in Iraq is decreasing, the administration has stopped counting car bombs as acts of violence. So next time your wingnut relatives tell you that Iraq is getting better, you might want to point out that the numbers are improving only because the Bush administration is congenitally incapable of telling the truth...or realizing that the American people actually have brains.

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Anyway, I'll be posting some Bad Art Appreciation Day links up tonight. I got hung up doing a bunch of stuff yesterday and never got to my computer.

Via Crooks and Liars:

For those of you who haven't been paying attention...or for those of you who have but needed a nice little primer to help you keep track of what's what, Mother Jones has put up a well-researched and well-sourced primer called Iraq 101.

While not a lot of the information in there is news to me, I tend to get the political parties and who represents whom mixed up. For example, I tend to assign Sunnis to Shiite political parties and Shiites to Sunni political parties, which...yeah...very, very stupid and very, very bad. At least I tend to correctly match the Kurds to their correct political parties.

Even if you think you know all the Playas and all the facts, guaranteed that you'll be learnin' something new in this handy online primer.

The sources section is an especially nice collection of links.

Fellow U.S. citizens, it's been 4 years since we launched an illegal war on Iraq — a country that we not only armed back in the day, but never attacked us and also posed zero threat to our national security.

If you haven't educated yourself on the key facts, it's time to start.

I have finally read the transcript of His Lordship's Speech to the Nation. I know I should've watched it, but I was busy being amused by a discussion about dirty words.

I definitely got the better end of the deal, from all accounts.

I also read the fact sheet on the 'new way forward' in Iraq (If I had a vote, I'd vote, "Go back in time and not invade Iraq in the first place.") as well as the PDF of the Iraq Strategy Review PowerPoint for Dummies (Again, I vote: "Not go in the first place, nitwit.").

In reading over the speech, I started wondering if he had just declared war on Iran and Syria. Now, to be fair, news organizations on both the left and right picked up on this before I settled down to read it for myself this ayem, but I thought they were overstating the case. Even in reading the speech, I still wasn't entirely sure if it was pure rhetoric from His Lordship or if the commentators were right on the money.



Update: It appears that the Senate may also be gearing up for a Constitutional Crisis as Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), chair of the Foreign Relations Committee threatened a Constitutional confrontation between Congress and the White House if Bush attempts to push a war on Iran without the consent of the legislative branch. (via No Quarter, as this was just aired on CSPAN-3 and a transcript isn't available yet nor has the comment hit the wires.)

*blinks*

Y HALLO THAR NU UPD473 1N73RF4C3!

I actually don't have strong feelings about the change one way or the other, which puts me in the quiet non-majority. My one big problem is that it looks just a leeeeeetle too much like the Vox update interface.

Dear 6Apart: This makes me unhappy and suspicious. At least on LJ we can do our own HTML, unlike Vox, which keeps us in rich text mode for everything.

[Note: I signed up for Vox mostly to make sure I got the liz_marcs name, and as an "archive" for my music reviews. You can upload MP3s and stream them through the site, which is a nice feature. Other than that, Vox has zero ability to customize, even in individual posts. Haaaaaate.]

( Anyone else nervous about these DHS raids? )

In any case, the DHS raids pretty much had my attention yesterday, in large part because the way they were conducted was...worrisome on more than one level, especially given the legal and political atmosphere in the U.S. these days. There is, I think, an undercurrent of paranoia among people of all political stripes (although the cause of it is for different reasons). Usually, the more you know, the less likely you are to be paranoid. For the first time in my memory, this has been reversed. The more you know, the more paranoid you become.

I need a new layer for my tinfoil hat, I think.

In the course of my DHS raid-watching, I, of course, stumbled across the hilarious story of Michael Crichton fictionalizing a political reporter as a pencil-dicked child rapist. Apparently one Michael Crowley pissed off Crichton when Crowley wrote a less-than-complimentary article on Crichton's global warming denialism in The New Republic.

Even so, imagine my joy when entrenous88 posted a wonderful overview of the wank that has resulted from Crichton's act of asshole. Heeeee!

As a result of the wank, I now have an awesome icon (you have to read the wank to get the joke). More icons here.

MSNBC's Olbermann has even gotten in on the act, by naming Crichton Worst Person in the World.

Man, I needed that laugh, especially after reading about the DHS raids.

So, glasses up to entrenous88! Thanks for the laugh!

"Politics is the Art of Controlling Your Environment"

That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that "it doesn't matter who's President" has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid War on the other side of the World — or been beaten and gassed by Police for tresspassing on public property — or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons — or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.
— Hunter S. Thompson, from Hey Rube, 2004

Why you need to vote:

( It's a New Reality )

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( Exciting New Military Commissions )

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( Fantasy Author Runs Into Reality Buzzsaw )

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( All Your No Fly Lists Belong to Us )

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( Proposed U.S. Reg Could Prevent Citizens from Leaving the U.S. Starting January 15, 2007 )

It appears that Nicholas Scratch has been busy just like I predicted. Even so, I know I'm biting my nails for tomorrow's mid-term Congressional election.