bodhi tree swaying

Rachel Maddow’s piece is very sobering and shows how right-wing lobbying firms set on derailing health insurance reform are attempting to use thuggish behavior to intimidate legislators.

For some reason the Maddow video doesn’t display unless you visit the post — click on the title above if you can’t see it.

Stewart’s piece is lighter, but does a good job of showing how Fox News helps by endlessly recycling its own talking points (which themselves come from the Republican Party).

Glenn Greenwald keeps up the good fight, expecting journalists to pursue factual truth (and to call authorities on their BS) rather than merely pass on both "sides" of a debate as is both were mere opinions, even when one side is factually correct and the other is bogus.

This failure to takes sides with the truth, in an attempt to maintain a faux "objectivity" leads to the media passing on government (and opposition) propaganda, lending it the appearance of truth. This applies especially with the media’s refusal to call actions taken by Americans "torture," even when Americans have prosecuted others (as torturers) for committing those identical acts (such as waterboarding) and even as those same media describe as torture those same, or essentially identical, acts carried out by other nations.

In one of his many articles on this topic, Greenwald quotes this juicily hilarious extract from

…

Jon Stewart is concerned that Obama’s rhetoric so closely parallels that of George W. Bush, but Jason Jones says, “I guess when Obama says this stuff I don’t think he really means it. And that gives me hope.”

I’d have thought it was the other way around myself, but Jones’ version is funnier.

Brilliant clip from Stewart:

“Fox News: Really scared about what might happen; oblivious to what already has.”