NewsTrust - Media and Politics - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Yes, Sarah, There is a Media Conspiracy

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

True/Slant - By Matt Taibbi - Nov. 23 (Opinion) - Is the media out to get Sarah Palin? It seems like most of the letters I get are insisting that I admit it. “Surely you can’t deny,” writes one woman from Florida, “that no political figure in American history has had to put up with what Sarah Palin has had to put up with from the mainstream media.” Now, this is the part of this red-blue schtick where I’m supposed to strike back without thinking and re-hash the history of, say, the Monica Lewinsky scandal in rebuttal and then, as the argument progresses, do the whole “I know you are but what am I?” thing until the end of time. I’ve decided from now on that I’m just not going to go there with any of this culture-war bullshit. It’s exhausting. I mean, hell, if you want to argue over who’s more justified in wallowing in media victimhood, that’s not a fight I mind losing. Mazel tov!

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If It Were Me, I'd Be Embarrassed

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By David Vines - Nov. 21 (Opinion) - Last Wednesday, a media firestorm erupted after a seventeen-year-old girl named Jackie was interviewed by MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell while standing in line during Sarah Palin's Michigan book signing.

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Sarah Palin, WWE Star

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TrueSlant - By Matt Taibbi - Nov. 21 (Opinion) - Obama knows the long odds against a right-wing populist winning the presidency, no matter how good she looks in a skirt or running clothes, brandishing a gun. He shouldn’t be too cocky, however, because the death of the center is ultimately a problem

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TALIBAN = 9/11?? Afghanistan by Hypnosis

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Greg Palast - By Greg Palast - Nov. 15 (Opinion) - On September 11, 2001, my office building, the World Trade Center, was attacked by al Qaeda, a murder cult of Saudi Arabians, funded by Saudi Arabians. And so, in response to the Saudis' attack, America invaded ... Afghanistan. Like, HUH? And here we go again. New York Times headline last Friday: "Pakistani Army, In Its Campaign In Taliban Stronghold, Finds A Hint Of 9/11."

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The Stupid Virus (VIDEO)

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - Nov. 14 (Comedy News) - "SuperNews!"--aka the guys that brought you the Twouble with Twitters, Larry King interviewing the Large Hadron Collider and Emoticon Wars--have returned this week to bring you the answer to this question: Why are people so stupid? Turns out it's a virus spread by an Obama-hating monkey. He's responsible for birthers, the people who equate health care reform to the Holocaust, and Rush Limbaugh.

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Josh Silver: Too Big to Block? Why Obama Must Stop the Comcast-NBC Merger

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Josh Silver - Nov. 13 (Opinion) - This train wreck of a deal will hurt all over. It will mean increased costs for cable television service; currently free online NBC content locked behind a pay wall; less opportunity for the distribution of independent media; even fewer choices and less programming diversity.

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Fear, Psychology, and American Voting Behavior

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Dan Agin - Nov. 09 (Comment) - Predicting American voting behavior is a game played by pollsters, politicians, and professional gamblers, and between now and the Congressional elections in 2010 you can bet your bippy that our biannual circus will be in full swing again.

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Iraq & Afghan Wars: Just Give Me Some Truth

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - When it came to the war in Iraq, “I should have been the canary in the coal mine,” Alissa Rubin wrote this week in the New York Times. “But like so many others around me, I did not want to believe what I saw.”

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22 Things Dick Cheney Can't Recall About the Plame Case

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Nick Baumann - Oct. 31 (Opinion) - Notes from former Vice President Dick Cheney's interview with the FBI about the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity were finally released on Friday afternoon after a lengthy legal battle. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued the Justice Department last year to obtain the interview notes; a judge finally ordered their release on October 1. In the interview, Cheney demonstrated a behavior common among Bush administration officials under investigation: he couldn't remember much of anything. Here's a non-comprehensive list of 22 things Dick Cheney claimed he couldn't recall about the Plame case, in the order they appear in the FBI's notes:

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Lieberman Twists the Knife

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Robert Scheer - Oct. 28 (Opinion) - Is there a more hypocritical figure in American politics than Joe Lieberman? The Connecticut senator declared Tuesday that he would support a filibuster of any health care reform bill that has a public option -- even the version with the "trigger" compromise accepted by Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe -- because it might cost money Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/lieberman-twists-the-knif_b_336457.html

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Derailing unprecedented health reform would be unprecedented

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

bestoftheleftpodcast.com - By Jay - Oct. 28 (Opinion) - Edition #309 Act 1: Kid is denied healthcare for being too skinny – The Young Turks Act 2: Max Baucus and Senate health reform – Bill Moyers Journal Act 3: Medicare Part E – Thom Hartmann Act 4: Healthcare, now what – This American Life Act 5: Dems stopping healthcare would be unprecedented – Rachel Maddow Act 6: The history of our healthcare system – This American Life Act 7: Insurance company calls sick people dogs – The Young Turks Act 8: Further reporting on anti-healthcare campaign – Rachel Maddow

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In recent polls, GOP limited to Southern comfort

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

OregonLive.com - By David Sarasohn - Oct. 24 (Opinion) - For months, Barack Obama’s national approval rating has been hovering in the low to mid-50s. The level is respectable — his predecessor hadn’t been there for his last three years — but not exactly intimidating, not exactly a number to make congressmen think they’d better get in line

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Cenk Uygur: Democrats Should Stay Off Fox Until They Confess

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Cenk Uygur - Oct. 23 (Opinion) - Is there really any doubt in anyone's mind that Fox has been attacking Obama from day one? Can anyone really be that misinformed or disingenous?...

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Why Journalists Shouldn't Be Defending Fox News

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Dan Froomkin - Oct. 23 (Opinion) - The Obama administration's recent characterization of Fox News is a long overdue acknowledgment of the obvious: Fox News is not a legitimate news organization

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The Washington Post Creates Its Own Facts to Support Afghan Nation-Building

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Melvin A. Goodman - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - The Washington Post is creating its own facts in order to support its argument for US nation-building in Afghanistan. In its lead editorial on Saturday, the Post asserted that the United States is capable of building a strong government in Afghanistan at the national and local levels. The Post claimed that Afghanistan had had a "working national government through most of the 1970s and 1980s." This is simply not so.read more

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Will Mainstream Media Journalists Fail on Afghanistan War the Way They Did on Iraq?

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Oct. 21 (Opinion) - The “’forgotten war’ in Afghanistan, as news outlets once called it, is suddenly very visible. NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel – who made his name covering the war in Iraq – put it well when he spoke to the New York Times from Kabul this week: “It’s like the Baghdad class of 2003 is now the Kabul class of 2009.

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The Great One

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Talkers Magazine - By Mark Levin - Oct. 21 (Interview) - I’d been a professional talk radio listener since I was a kid in Philadelphia. I used to listen to folks like Dominic Quinn and Bernie Herman and Joel A. Spivak. Maybe people haven’t heard of them but they were big time when I was a teenager. I used to listen to Bob Grant, Jean Shepherd and so forth. I loved it. I never really intended to pursue it, and so here I am 40 years later. I would say really it was Rush and Sean. First of all, I subbed once for Rush, not knowing anything I was doing and he said just go with it, do the very best you can. And Sean had me sub for him fairly frequently during the Christmas holidays. I remember telling him, you know, I get the substance part of this, but I’m not sure about the breaks –– how to get in and get out. He sat me down at his house one day and we did our little blue cards. Forty-eight of them. Just to remind me of who I am…“Hi, I’m Mark Levin.” That sort of thing. I think they called them formatics cards.

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Obama and the Left's Old Schism

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Oct. 18 (Opinion) - However, another branch of progressives – let’s call them the “pragmatists” – recognize the daunting challenges that a liberal politician faces in the United States because the Right has built such a powerful propaganda apparatus, dominating the message reaching the American people through newspapers, magazines, books, cable TV, talk radio and the Internet. When a liberal politician also has to deal with careerist mainstream journalists who bend to the right for self-protection – think CNN – “pragmatic” progressives agree that it is unrealistic to expect perfection from someone trying to advance a reformist agenda and maybe win the next election.

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How Fox News Outsmarted the White House

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By John Batchelor - Oct. 14 (Opinion) - What’s worse than stupid about the conspiracy theory that Fox News is a pachyderm is that it is wrong. Fox News has nothing to do with the Republican Party or its dreary state. “We go to Fox because that’s the only place that will put us on TV,” a desultory Republican source admits. “But they don’t help us by telling everyone that we suck.”

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Whiner-in-Chief

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By John Nichols - Oct. 13 (Opinion) - Griping about Republicans on Fox and off-message bloggers in pajamas hurts Obama much more than the targets of the administration's wrath.

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Obama Vs. Rupert Murdoch: Fox News' Blatant Transition into GOP TV |

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Eric Boehlert - Oct. 13 (Opinion) - Fox News has transformed itself into the Opposition Party of the Obama White House, which, of course, is unprecedented for a media company in modern-day America. That partisan embrace means the news media have to expand beyond typing up Fox News-ratings-are-up and the White-House-is-angry stories, and it needs to start treating the cable channel for what it is: a partisan animal.

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Memo to the media: Fox News is now the Opposition Party

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media Matters - By Eric Boehlert - Oct. 13 (Opinion) - Fox News has changed the rules. Now the press needs to change the way it covers Fox News.

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Dems Health Care Bill Will Cost Families $1,700 More a Year

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Gateway Pundit - By Gateway Pundit - Oct. 12 (Opinion) - Dems Health Care Bill Will Cost Families $1,700 More a Year

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If I Were A Senator I'd Vote For Opt-Out Public Option

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Sam Stein - Oct. 08 (Interview) - Former DNC Chair Howard Dean told the Huffington Post that the "opt-out" compromise that is being discussed by Senate Democrats was not his ideal conception of what a health care overhaul should be. But he granted that the proposal would produce "real reform" and said that, if there were no other vehicle for getting a bill through the Senate, he would support it. "If I were a member of the U.S Senate I wouldn't vote for the [Senate Finance Committee] bill but I would vote for this," Dean said, "not because it is necessarily the right thing to do but because it gets us to a better conversation about what we need to do. Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/08/dean-if-i-were-a-senator_n_314118.html

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Glenn Beck Crying with a Little Help from His V...

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

allvoices.com - Oct. 02 (Opinion) - Fox News host Glenn Beck is captured on video during a photo shoot having Vick's vapor rub smeared under his eyes as he jokes that his eyes are getting used to it.

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