Comments on the election, C-SPAN, and CNN-HN/Student News

First I must say "Good job America", it's about time you woke up!

Better late than never of course, but the families of the dead and wounded (and many other Americans) wish that the alarm would have gone off 4/6 years ago!

I know, many (including myself), weren't vigilant enough and believed enough of the administration's propaganda (aka LIES) at first. By the time we found out we'd been deceived, it was too late to do anything about it.

Unlike [so many] others though, I saw what kind of special idiot Bush was right off the bat (friends and family should remember that I said after his "election"/appointment, "This clowns going to get us into a WAR, mark my words!").

Why the heck couldn't I have been wrong THAT TIME?**

I voted for Gore, then Kerry, and if the people who voted in Bush (both times) voted differently, how different the world would be now...

9/11 probably would have happened anyway, but all the international goodwill generated afterwards would NOT have been wasted, and we wouldn't have invaded Iraq.

If we (President Gore) ordered the invasion of Afghanistan to evict the Taliban we wouldn't have effectively abandoned it to correct one of Bush Sr's. Perceived errors and start the neocons new/foolish policy of proactive "defense" and "spreading Democracy" to countries (whether they want it or not).

**Now I don't claim to be a psychic, in fact I seem to have what's called "negative ESP" (if I *try* to predict something I'm almost always WRONG), but there was something about Bush that I saw immediately.
He's dumb in a scary sort of way.
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3:17 AM 11/9/2006

CNN HN (Student News): I'm watching their coverage of the Bush fires Rumsfield story.

Apparently neither Jamie McIntyre (nor the CNN-HN/Student News anchor) thought it was important to include the fact that Bush admitted LYING to reporters (for political purposes) when he stated last
week that Rumsfield and Cheney would keep their jobs until the Bush term ends and that they both had the full confidence of the president (even though he knew otherwise at the time).

Of course the funny thing about it was that if he had fired Rumsfield BEFORE the election (INSTEAD of publicly stating his confidence in him) the election results *might have* been VERY different...

I never thought I'd ever say this but, (in this case) thank goodness for Bush's stupidity!
Did his *brain* (bubble boy Rove) 'fumble the ball' with that one?

Note: Did anyone check and see if hell actually froze over when Bush admitted to a (this) lie?

I hope teachers who use the CNN-HN/Student News to discuss current events in their classrooms preview the *news* beforehand, and are informed enough to 'fill-in the blanks' (such as Bush admitting that he LIED for political purposes!).

On that same line of thinking, I'd hope that teachers (dealing with politics and current events) use the mediamatters.org (Media Matters for America and other similar sites) web site to show
students how much of the news story the MSM leaves out of their reports and how often so many of them get the whole story WRONG!

It should be interesting to see how the 'Bush lapdogs' in the press corps act now.

I've already seen and heard some contrition on the part of conservative pundits like the Marlboro/Scarboro Man (Joe Scarboro) and Pat Buchanan about the fact that they "carried water" for the President/GOP and weren't happy about 'having to do it'...

Really?

No, I'm afraid that you're LYING guys, and so is Rush Limbaugh when he claimed to be 'so happy' that he doesn't have to "carry water" anymore for Bush.

You see, when you lie/deceive for a living for as long as Rush (and the rest) have, it's probably not like turning off a lightswitch.
And it's not like they've been just itching to get the truth out
there all this time.

In Limbaugh's case he's a naturally mean-spirited person who makes his
living lying about his perceived *enemies* and in the process dosn't care who he hurts or how low he has to sink to get his *message* out.
(Latest evidence: His disgusting parody of Michael J. Fox's symptoms.)

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Another thought on C-SPAN [4:28 AM 11/9/2006]:

After watching C-SPAN (specifically the call-in shows) I have to ask, why do you challenge some callers and not others?

On election day I heard the C-SPAN anchor* challenge (*and I noticed a bit of 'attitude' in his tone) a Democratic caller (who I thought had a good point), yet he said NOTHING when a right-wing nut-job called and was spouting off all the disproven GOP talking points.

(He (the caller) was obviously "shocked and awed" by the election results... heh-heh)

The caller also stated that he thinks that the GOP should "do the same thing the Democrats did" and "block everything that the Dems bring up for vote".
He sounded like he was in his thirties, but his *idea* was straight out of kindergarden.

At that point the C-SPAN anchor should have challenged/informed him that the Dems didn't control either branch of Congress at that time and were shut out of everything! The only thing they could do is use the remaining rules (the ones that haven't been re-written to consolidate the GOP's power) to try to effect some form of OVERSIGHT that the Constitution calls for.
Not to mention that this 'tit-for-tat' business is childish and counterproductive!

Of course it's not the anchor's *job* to correct caller's comments/thoughts, but if you do it once with a liberal caller, shouldn't you be fair and challenge the far-right caller equally?
Especially when they're spouting such old and disproven rhetoric!

I was amazed. The anchor just let this BS just slide by like it was actually true!

That is NOT serving the American public who watch C-SPAN for ACCURATE and UNBIASED news and current events!

And it's not the first time I've noticed this happen on C-SPAN.
It was something I'd half-expect to see on most of the MSM TV news/opinion/propoganda shows, but NOT from C-SPAN.

Please, either challenge ALL callers who mis-state the facts/reality, or challenge NONE.