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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (274137)	7/12/2002 1:40:59 PM
From: Charles Tutt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Isn't it amazing that a "conservative" group would go after Cheney? That gives you some idea of the magnitude of the problem. JMHO. Charles Tutt (SM)

To: jlallen who wrote (274137)	7/12/2002 1:49:22 PM
From: HighTech	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

jallen: I think the commercials MSNBC runs are hilarious about "we don't tell you what to think," and that they aren't on either side. If that's not enough to keep you from bustin' a gut laughing I don't know what is. In some strange way, I think the other networks who are not viewed as much as Fox are starting to wake up and "get it". Was it CNN that tried to do a token conservative spot using Alan Keyes? He's not the voice of conservatism in general. I think he's getting the boot and being replaced by ultr-conservative Phil Donahue. LOL(Excuse me for laughing so hard, I'm back now) MSNBC is actually more blatant than CNN used to be. Listen to that idiot Sanchez sometime or some of those other arrogant panty waste liberals on there. It's absolutely funny. I like it when they ask a guest about something a conservative is doing and say something like "do you really think that is a good idea?", and in a voice that is so loaded that if any guest would answer yes, he would fear for his life. And those reporters REALLY believe they are fair. LOL Oh boy! But, it's great to hear FOX news guys and gals(most of them - there are a few snot-nosed libs over there) interview the Dems and pull the same stuff the other networks do except this time those Dems have to really answer some tough questions with follow-ups, not the softball stuff of CNN and MSNBC. You know, this stuff just has to be viewed with total amusement. When I was younger, it used to infuriate me that I never heard what I considered balanced and fair reporting, which when you think about it, is an oxymoron. Reporting should be reporting, and that's it. But so much of what we have now in the media is massive doses of opinion walking around pretending to be serious reporting and sensationalism driving the stories(and I say stories, not news intentionally.) And these nitwits are so full of themselves that they actually don't know how stupid and laughable they are to viewers. Did you hear about this CNN guy with glasses got in a hissy fit when his boss told him to break into his planned presentation? He made a comment about management indirectly implying that what they are now doing, that is interrupting MY news reporting, is less important than what he wanted to talk about. Now he said this on the air - can you believe that? Ah, just remembered his name - Aaron Brown. Anyway, later on, off-air this fool starts to argue with management that he didn't appreciate them breaking to what in his opinion wasn't serious enough to interrupt his own reporting, he actually told those guys, "I AM the face of CNN." LOL, gut's a bustin' You can't let this stuff bother you anymore because America is wising up to the blatant hypocrisy and bias on those channels. That's why Fox News Channel is kicking their butts in viewership. It's great fun to watch now. They just bust me up. HT

To: jlallen who wrote (274137)	7/12/2002 1:55:17 PM
From: Bill Grant	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

>>When Judicial Watch was suing Clinton administration officials the networks, on the rare occasions when they deigned to even mention the group, made sure viewers realized it was “conservative.” But when the organization run by Larry Klayman filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Vice President Dick Cheney, it suddenly became a non-ideological “watchdog group,” “Washington watchdog group,” “legal group,” “legal activist group” or “legal advocacy group.” << Don't you just love the hypocrisy of it all?

To: jlallen who wrote (274137)	7/12/2002 1:57:24 PM
From: bonnuss_in_austin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Krugman ain't lettin' go of it. -g- The Insider Game By Paul Krugman New York Times \| Opinion Friday, 12 July, 2002 The current crisis in American capitalism isn't just about the specific details -- about tricky accounting, stock options, loans to executives, and so on. It's about the way the game has been rigged on behalf of insiders. And the Bush administration is full of such insiders. That's why President Bush cannot get away with merely rhetorical opposition to executive wrongdoers. To give the most extreme example (so far), how can we take his moralizing seriously when Thomas White -- whose division of Enron generated $500 million in phony profits, and who sold $12 million in stock just before the company collapsed -- is still secretary of the Army? Yet everything Mr. Bush has said and done lately shows that he doesn't get it. Asked about the Aloha Petroleum deal at his former company Harken Energy -- in which big profits were recorded on a sale that was paid for by the company itself, a transaction that obviously had no meaning except as a way to inflate reported earnings -- he responded, "There was an honest difference of opinion. . . . sometimes things aren't exactly black-and-white when it comes to accounting procedures." And he still opposes both reforms that would reduce the incentives for corporate scams, such as requiring companies to count executive stock options against profits, and reforms that would make it harder to carry out such scams, such as not allowing accountants to take consulting fees from the same firms they audit. The closest thing to a substantive proposal in Mr. Bush's tough-talking, nearly content-free speech on Tuesday was his call for extra punishment for executives convicted of fraud. But that's an empty threat. In reality, top executives rarely get charged with crimes; not a single indictment has yet been brought in the Enron affair, and even "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap, a serial book-cooker, faces only a civil suit. And they almost never get convicted. Accounting issues are technical enough to confuse many juries; expensive lawyers make the most of that confusion; and if all else fails, big-name executives have friends in high places who protect them. In this as in so much of the corporate governance issue, the current wave of scandal is prefigured by President Bush's own history. An aside: Some pundits have tried to dismiss questions about Mr. Bush's business career as unfair -- it was long ago, and hence irrelevant. Yet many of these same pundits thought it was perfectly appropriate to spend seven years and $70 million investigating a failed land deal that was even further in Bill Clinton's past. And if they want something more recent, how about reporting on the story of Mr. Bush's extraordinarily lucrative investment in the Texas Rangers, which became so profitable because of a highly incestuous web of public policy and private deals? As in the case of Harken, no hard work is necessary; Joe Conason laid it all out in Harper's almost two years ago. But the Harken story still has more to teach us, because the S.E.C. investigation into Mr. Bush's stock sale is a perfect illustration of why his tough talk won't scare well-connected malefactors. Mr. Bush claims that he was "vetted" by the S.E.C. In fact, the agency's investigation was peculiarly perfunctory. It somehow decided that Mr. Bush's perfectly timed stock sale did not reflect inside information without interviewing him, or any other members of Harken's board. Maybe top officials at the S.E.C. felt they already knew enough about Mr. Bush: his father, the president, had appointed a good friend as S.E.C. chairman. And the general counsel, who would normally make decisions about legal action, had previously been George W. Bush's personal lawyer -- he negotiated the purchase of the Texas Rangers. I am not making this up. Most corporate wrongdoers won't be quite as well connected as the young Mr. Bush; but like him, they will expect, and probably receive, kid-glove treatment. In an interesting parallel, today's S.E.C., which claims to be investigating the highly questionable accounting at Halliburton that turned a loss into a reported profit, has yet to interview the C.E.O. at the time -- Dick Cheney. The bottom line is that in the last week any hopes you might have had that Mr. Bush would make a break from his past and champion desperately needed corporate reform have been dashed. Mr. Bush is not a real reformer; he just plays one on TV. (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.) Print This Story E-mail This Story © : t r u t h o u t 2002 \| t r u t h o u t \| forum \| issues \| editorial \| letters \| donate \| contact \| \| voting rights \| environment \| budget \| children \| politics \| indigenous survival \| energy \| \| defense \| health \| economy \| human rights \| labor \| trade \| women \| reform \| global \|