The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Alberto Gonzales, Presidential Conscience?

Steve Benen at Talking Points Memo nicely sums it up:

The AP had an interesting item today, highlighting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' perspective on being close friends with the president. As the embattled Gonzales sees it, his close relationship with Bush, which spans decades, is inherently "a good thing" for everyone.
"Being able to go and having a very candid conversation and telling the president: 'Mr. President, this cannot be done. You can't do this,'—I think you want that," Gonzales told reporters this week. "And I think having a personal relationship makes that, quite frankly, much easier always to deliver bad news."
"Do you recall a time when you (were) in there and said, 'Mr. President, we can't do this'?" Gonzales was asked.
"Oh, yeah," the attorney general responded.
"Can you share it with us?" a reporter asked.
"No," Gonzales said.
Now, I think there are two ways to look at this.
1. Gonzales is lying about this little story, and there's never been a time in which he's had to keep the president from going too far. He's the quintessential "yes man," who does as he's told.
2. Gonzales is telling the truth, and the Attorney General/WH Counsel—the one who's approved of abandoning the Geneva Conventions and the rule of law—believes some of the president's other requests are beyond the pale. I'm struggling to decide which is worse.

Only 611 days and 4 hours (or fewer) remain in the most corrupt presidency in history.

Requiem in nilhi, Jerry

Schadenfreude embarrasses me a little. I never want to wish death on anyone. But sometimes, someone dies who spent his life in opposition to everything one holds dear, and one cannot help to feel just the tiniest bit pleased at his passing. Of course I mean Jerry Falwell, one of the most reprehensible characters in American politics this century. In conversations with friends since yesterday, a couple of things came out: First, it's too bad there's no "him" left to contemplate the fact that he's not actually where he thought he'd be; and second, it's always sad when a clown—even a delusional, evil, paranoid clown—dies.

I wonder which fundie will step into the vacuum Falwell's passing leaves?

A learning experience in how not to teach

Oh. My. God. Via Talking Points Memo:

Staff members of an elementary school [in Murfeesboro, Tenn.,] staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.
...
During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on a locked door.

More here.

When outsourcing goes too far

I don't know whether this is sad or funny:

The new frontrunner for "worst idea in modern journalism" has to go James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the two-year-old site pasadenanow.com, who recently ran this job posting: "We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA."

O'Reilly worse than Fr. Coughlin: Indiana U.

(Via Romanesko.)

Indiana University's Journalism School has released a paper demonstrating that Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly uses significantly more propaganda than the infamous 1930s radio commentator Fr. Charles Coughlin:

O’Reilly is a heavier and less nuanced user of the seven devices developed by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in the late 1930s than the notorious radio commentator of that time, Father Charles Coughlin. O’Reilly also employs other propaganda techniques, identified by Lasswell, Berelson and Janowitz. This includes ample use of fear appeals and the construction of the battle between good and evil. The most evil villains in O’Reilly’s world are illegal aliens, terrorists, and foreigners because they are apparently a physical and moral threat to the United States. Slightly less evil—but unambiguously bad—are groups (media, organizations, politicians) who share a political leaning to the left. On the other side, the virtuous flank emerged as an all-American crew made up of the military, criminal justice system, Bush administration, and ordinary US citizens.

In other words, as all patriotic Americans know, O'Reilly is a reactionary, imbicilic blowhard, who beats up on the innocent in his ongoing campaign to take away your freedoms. Of course, we on the left are usually too polite to point this out.

Link roundup

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And also from reader MB, some bumper stickers we'd like to see:

  • Even Nixon Resigned
  • We Need a President Who's Fluent In At Least One Language
  • The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century