Thursday, September 15, 2005

Fox Freeloaders: Today's Lies


Today we have lies from Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson.

GIBSON: In part of their campaign to shift Katrina (non)response blame from Bush, Gibson weirdly pushed FOX's hackneyed blame-the-French misdirection, stating, "... After all, when the French President presided over the deaths of 15,000 elderly in Paris in a heat wave, he took the international derision, not the mayor of Paris."

Well, this is wildly inaccurate. It wasn't 15,000 in Paris, a city of 2.5 million, it was 15,000 in France, a country of 60 million. Slight difference - entire country or one city.

And a big lie.

To say Chirac "presided" over the deaths from a heat wave means you have to say Bush also "presided" over the deaths of Katrina, and an awful lot of other deaths as well, including 9/11, Iraq, and so on, for all of which he bears responsibility.

But, as it was a problem well beyond the scope of one municipality, a national problem, the French President and his government were much to blame.

And it happened because the right-wing French government (right-wing to most of the world, though, since even they believe in basic societal well-being, I guess they would "extreme left" for FOX) had cut the services that used to regularly check on isolated elders.

(The government at first tried to blame it on people not returning from their vacations, a myth Gibson, ever wanting to vilify all things French, repeated.)

There's also, we might add, the question of how well the US does in dealing with elders during heat waves. (This isn't a stupid Democrat-Republican thing: The toll from Chicago's '95 heat wave was, proportionately, far worse than in France's heatwave.)

And FEMA was (and is) still a basket case, whatever the problems of local and state authorities.



O'REILLY: Then we have O'Reilly, who tried to paint Bush America as better than Clinton America for people in poverty.

He said in 1996, in the middle of Clinton's reign, the poverty rate was 13.7 percent; at the midpoint of the Bush reign the poverty rate is 12.7 percent.

OK, but... as usual, they grab a couple things out of context to lie, because here's the background:

Clinton came into office at the end of one of the only two times the poverty rate had increased since they started tracking it. It has, in that time, twice climbed, both times to over 15 percent - first under Reagan, then under Bush I.

Bush I left office with it having become a runaway train.

In 1996, the Clinton administration had it under control and it was steadily declining, which it did until... Bush II took over, and it's been growing ever since.

So, with Bush, we're seeing the numbers on their way up, after he'd inherited a huge surplus, low unemployment, and a declining poverty rate.

With Clinton at the same point we saw the numbers going down, having inherited massive debt, high unemployment and peak poverty rate.

Simple facts: Poverty went down every year Clinton was in office; poverty has gone up every year Bush II has been in office.

The only increases in the poverty rate since they started keeping track in 1959 have been under Reagan (starting in the tail end of Carter, but most of it was during Reagan, until he borrowed a trillion dollars from Japan), Bush I, and Bush II.


Brit Hume was also doing his usual nonsense, but I won't bother.

I guess I just never see this stuff because I never watch FOX, only watched a bit on the Net recently because there'd been that Geraldo/Smith freakout, when they both suddenly dropped the FOX everything-is-peachy, go-make-money nonsense and started (horror) actually reporting. (Very weird, were so unaccustomed to it.)      

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Friedman Visits Death-Penalty Disneyland


Though many feel Thomas Friedman lost his credibility long ago with his goofy, nonsensical columns about Iraq (You should support the Iraq war 'cause I say so, dammit, and because people who oppose it are a bunch of ninnies!), you don't need to keep going back to that, just look at his current column.

He reacts to the Katrina aftermath by lauding the government of Singapore (Singapore? Fascism with a Friendly Face? Disneyland with the Death Penalty? Mmmmm... maybe try Sweden) for knowing how to "extract the maximum from each citizen" (hmmm, is the Matrix or something?).

Then Friedman laments that the Cold War has gone away because it gave us discipline (like, say, the Reagan-Bush years, when the economy was built on borrowing and the government, including FEMA, was so rife with cronyism that Clinton is widely credited with having had to completely rebuild FEMA... although Clinton came after the Cold War... hmmmm... what exactly is Friedman trying to say here? Not even he knows).

His analysis is as goofy as his solutions, such as paying all the top officials lots more. Now, that may or may not have it's merits (it also massively separates them from the general citizenry), but it's very hard to see how that would get rid of cronyism.

How would paying the head of FEMA a million dollars a year ensure that he wasn't just somebody's roommate or that she wasn't just the daughter of a big campaign contributor?

I never read Friedman. I only read this because there was the link from Crooks and Liars.

There were two good lines here, one about the head of civil defense not being somebody's college roommate and the other about all the government attention to Schiavo while so many millions go without medical care entirely, and the national public health system falls apart.

But the rest is such nonsense as to only remind me why I never read this guy.

"There is something troublingly self-indulgent and slothful about America today..."

Yeah, and that's evident in a certain columnist for the New York Times who's long since lost his grip.      

GET ME REWRITE!: Bush takes... uh... responsiblity... sorta... for... uh... well... uh... you know...



Did you see this "taking responsibility"? He looked everywhere but at the people asking the questions, he shrugged... he was a little kid forced to say something he didn't want to.

What's weird, though, is that all the headlines ran BUSH TAKES RESPONSIBILITY. He didn't at all.

Bush: "Katrina, uh, exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government, and to the extent that the government, uh, didn't fully do it's job right, I take responsibility."


This is absurd, especially when you combine it with the shrugging body language as he delivers it: It's not really my fault, but if you insist, I'll give you this.

This is the apology your little brother gives you because your parents make him.

Bush doesn't take responsibility; he never apologizes. He says Katrina exposed problems (nobody at fault here, really, the hurricane just exposed these problems - I didn't create them by bringing in cronies and hacks) in response capability (huh?) at all levels of government (not his fault; all levels are at fault) and to the extent that the federal government didn't do it's job, I take responsibility.

So, by the end of this, what exactly is Bush saying he's responsible for? Katrina exposed... problems in... all levels... to the extent that... didn't do it's...

It took just eighteen seconds to totally shift out of any responsibility, before he says he takes it. That thing called the government didn't its job, and I'm magnanimous enough to take the responsibility.

This is about the least responsible taking of responsibility I've ever seen. "To the extent that..." ???

That's a weasle.

How 'bout this:

"People died because we did nothing, and I'm to blame. I've appointed cronies and hacks to key positions, and, again, I'm to blame. If I hadn't done that, many who died would have lived. For their deaths, I'm to blame. I'm sorry, I'm truly sorry, to all those who lost loved ones because of our, my, incompetence. Ultimately I, and only I, am to blame. I take full responsibility.

"Some have wrongly accused local authorities. This disaster wasn't confined to one municipality, and it wasn't confined to one state. That makes it a federal issue. That makes it my job, and I failed. I didn't understand how to deal with this, didn't understand my role, and when it was getting worse and worse, I just went to sleep, for which I will never forgive myself, and never ask you to, either.

"Even if there had been problems on a local level, which I'm not saying there were, one can look back to the example of President Eisenhower, who in 1957 he sent the 101st Airborne to ensure the desegregation of Little Rock Central High.

"If he had met with difficulties, opposition or bureaucratic inertia when American lives were in danger, you can bet he would have parachuted the rescuers in. Life is too important, too precious, to let these things get in the way. I failed in my duty to uphold that, and I'm sorry.

"I have no doubt I should resign, especially when I combine this with the many previous failures of this administration, including 9/11, for which I also today accept full responsibility. It happened on my watch, and we now know it could have been prevented.

"The only thing that keeps me from resigning is that it would mean turning over this office to someone I believe to be both truly evil and utterly without conscience.

"I will, therefore, spend the rest of my term, and the rest of my life, doing my best to undone the massive damage I have done to this country and the world, and do my best - and more - to make things better instead of worse."