"Wherever McCain goes, Lieberman is sure to show up ..."

Boy, this was good timing.

Nice to see Bill Moyers, unknowingly, endorse The Garlic's latest Garlictorial.

H/T to Nicole Belle, over on Crooks and Liars for her "Bill Moyers Journal: Bombing Iran: Everything Old Is New Again" (Editor's Note: We usually watch Moyers, but it was Game 6 of Celtics-Cleveland, in what turned out to be, as former Celtic great Tommy Heinsohn put it "like watching a root canal" ... Yeah, should have tuned into Moyers ...)

BILL MOYERS: Since then, the talk about bombing Iran has only increased. And the biggest talker of all is the Connecticut hawk, Senator Joe Lieberman. The Democratic candidate for vice president eight years ago has now endorsed Republican senator John McCain for president and become his alter ego on the Middle East. Wherever McCain goes, Lieberman is sure to show up. Earlier this week Lieberman called air strikes against Iran "a distinct possibility," and on Wednesday he and talk show host Bill Bennett coupled their banter about Hillary Clinton with some hopeful praise for her own hawkish policies toward Iran.

Are you listening Senator, and Majority Leader, Harry Reid?

Wright's Right ...

If you didn't have a chance to catch the full program (and not just the press previews, endlessly played yesterday by the cable news pundits), head on over to Bill Moyers Journal, where you will see, clearly, how the Reverand Wright controversyis such an over-hyped, partisan, prejudiced bag of you-know-what.

Much of what Moyers and Rev. Wright discussed could have easily been a handful of break-out sessions, had it taken place the day of Obama's Race Speech.

Here's two passages, the full context, of what has been so hideously displayed in the video loops aimed at bashing Obama.

1. The God Damn America Brouhaha

REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT: Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change. And I'm through now. But let me leave you with one more thing. Governments fail. The government in this text comprised of Caesar, Cornelius, Pontius Pilate - the Roman government failed. The British government used to rule from East to West. The British government had a Union Jack. She colonized Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the seven seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands, but the British government failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed. And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no, no. Not God bless America; God damn America! That's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!

2. The Chickens Come Home To Roost Brouhaha

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yes, I did. I was trying to show how people- how the anger- and we felt anger. I felt anger. I felt hurt. I felt pain. In fact, September 11th, I was in Newark. September 11th, I was trapped in Newark 'cause when they shut down the air system I couldn't get back to Chicago. September 11th, I looked out the window and saw the second plane hit from my hotel window. Alright, I had members who lost loved ones both at the Pentagon and at the World Trade Center. So, I know the pain. And I had to preach to them Sunday. I had to preach. They came to church wanting to know where is God in this. And so, I had to show them using that Psalm 137, how the people who were carried away into slavery were very angry, very bitter, moved and in their anger from wanting revenge against the armies that had carried them away to slavery, to the babies. That Psalm ends up sayin' "Let's kill the baby-let's bash their heads against the stone." So, now you move from revolt and revulsion as to what has happened to you, to you want revenge. You move from anger with the military to taking it out on the innocents. You wanna kill babies. That's what's going on in Psalm 137. And that's exactly where we are. We want revenge. They wanted revenge. God doesn't wanna leave you there, however. God wants redemption. God wants wholeness. And that's the context, the biblical context I used to try to get people sitting again, in that sanctuary on that Sunday following 9/11, who wanted to know where is God in this? What is God saying? What is God saying? Because I want revenge.

REVEREND WRIGHT: The people of faith have moved from the hatred of armed enemies, these soldiers who captured the king, those soldiers who slaughtered his son and put his eyes out, the soldiers who sacked the city, burned the towns, burned the temples, burned the towers, and moved from the hatred for armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents, the babies, the babies . "Blessed are they who dash your baby's brains against a rock." And that my beloved is a dangerous place to be. Yet, that is where the people of faith are in 551 BC and that is where far too many people of faith are in 2001 AD. We have moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents. We want revenge. We want paybacks and we don't care who gets hurt in the process.

I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see him or hear him? He was on Fox news. This is a white man and he was upsetting the Fox news commentators to no end. He pointed out. You see him John? A white man he pointed out -an Ambassador! He pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true. America's chickens are coming home to roost! We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism! We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism! We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard-working fathers. We bombed Gadafi's home and killed his child. "Blessed are they who bash your children's head against a rock!" We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy. Killed hundreds of hard-working people; mothers and fathers who left home to go that day, not knowing that they would never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima! We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye! Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school, civilians - not soldiers - people just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans, and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yards! America's chickens are coming home to roost! Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism. A White Ambassador said that y'all not a Black Militant. Not a Reverend who preaches about racism. An Ambassador whose eyes are wide open, and who's trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised--

Peck's Bad Boy

The Ambassador Peck Rev. Wright refers to?

From Counterpunch, Oct 11, 2001;

"Why it is that all of these people hate us. It's not because of freedom. It's not because Britney Spears has a belly button or because we export hamburgers. They hate us because of things they see us doing to their part of the world that they definitely do not like."

And this;

Edward Peck, former US Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan's terrorism task force.
PECK: You have to understand now. Just like the colonel here, I'm a veteran of the armed forces. I have had two tours of active duty in the Army. And I don't take a back seat to anybody in terms of patriotism. This is the greatest nation that ever was and may be the greatest nation that ever will be. But that's my view, and it is not universally shared. So we have come out with 21 pages of proof that Osama bin Laden was involved. I have read that material. That's allegations. That's not proof. It's an entirely different thing. Proof of what it means to us. So, yes, he's not a nice guy, Saddam Hussein. But I think that the costs to our nation and its interests of taking him out are probably vastly exceeding anything we would gain by doing it.

You can also check out this: Meet The (White) Man Who Inspired Wright's Controversial Sermon

Hmmm ... I didn't see, in that Obama-bashing, Rev. Wright video loop, any footage of Ambassador Peck and his criticism ...Then again, as we know from the revelations last week, the Bush Grindhouse didn't put anyone on television that they didn't approve of, so, it's very likely Peck didn't make Rumsfeld's, and Torie Clarke's list, as to going out and selling the war.

And I chuckle when I think of the Right Wing Freakshow, and their flying monkeys (they're already up-in-arms over it, here and here), salivating at the prospects of a McCain-Obama final, so they can claw and bash Obama with Rev. Wright ... This from the people with Hagee, Robertson, Falwell, etc in their closets ...

Why let facts and context get in the way, when it's just as easy to make things up and smear people ... Play the Fear Card and you hook'em everytime ...

Oh, what a tangled web we weave ...

Links

Bill Moyers Journal

Transcript of Moyers-Wright Interview

Watch The Video

Bill Moyers Talks with MSNBC Host Keith Olbermann

In case you missed it, doing something like ... Oh ... Maybe shoveling 11-inches of snow! ... MSNBC 'Countdown' host Keith Olbermann was the guest of the esteemed Bill Moyers on his Bill Moyers Journal Friday evening.

It was a good chat, lasting close to 20-minutes, and clearly, Mr. Moyers has some respect (and appreciation) for Olbermann's work, particularly his Special Comments.

At one point in the interview, Olbermann explained how he resisted management, after delivering his first Special Comment;

"I didn't know if I was going to be gunned down as I came out of the building or put in a black car or, you know, or lauded or whatever. People, for the most part, were ecstatic about this. And our ratings went up immediately. And the reaction from management was-- "Can you do one every night?" And I said, "No, I can't do one every night. I don't want to turn into that either." I don't want to be silent here. But I don't want to turn this into a manufactured thing. And they said, "Well, how 'bout once a week?" And I said, "No, you're not following me. It has to be organic." When I get angry on the air, it's because I'm angry about that particular subject and because of the revision of this country that has been done under our noses for the last seven years against the will of the people."

Watch Bill Moyers interview with Keith Olbermann

Transcript of Bill Moyers interview with Keith Olbermann.

Moyers Mashes Magpie Murdoch

I don't have a particular emotional investment in the Wall Street Journal - Great reporting, lousy politics.

But its' fight with, or submission to, News Corps' Rupert Murdoch ... Well, it does have a George Bailey-Mr. Potter element to it.

"...You're the Board here. You do what you want with this thing. Just one thing more, though. This town needs this measly one-horse institution if only to have some place where people can come without crawling to Potter ..."

So tonight, on Bill Moyers Journal, the great Moyers offered a blistering smackdown.

So thorough, that if it had happened on the street, no doubt, Murdoch's rags would have had the bloody mess splashed on the front pages, screaming headline and a Weegee-imitating photo.

"...But Rupert Murdoch is no saint; he is to propriety what the Marquis de Sade was to chastity ..."

...But THE JOURNAL’s newsroom is another matter – there facts are sacred and independence revered. Rupert Murdoch has told the Bancrofts he’ll not meddle with the reporting. But he’s accustomed to using journalism as a personal spittoon. In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, he turned the dogs of war loose in the newsrooms of his empire and they howled for blood ...

Read "Moyers on Murdoch"

Watch The Video "Moyers on Murdoch"

Bonus Links

Rupert Murdoch: Bigger than Kane

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War On Journalism

Wall Street Journal reporters protest Murdoch bid for Dow Jones and contract proposals

Update

Keeping Rupert Murdoch at bay

Update II

Paul Krugman's "The Murdoch Factor"

Program Alert! - Bill Moyers "Buying The Media" Tonight!

Greg Mitchell, of Editor & Publisher, calls it "The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq..."

Bill Moyers returns to PBS this evening, with a new entry to the Bill Moyers Journal titled "Buying the War" (Bill Moyers Journal will resume its' regular Friday night slot this week, on 27 April)

Check your local listing and be sure to tune in to see all the dwarfs, finks, phonies, and frauds who were the cheerleaders and water-carriers for the Bush Grindhouse in their lead-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Links

Preview: BILL MOYERS JOURNAL: BUYING THE WAR

Bill Moyers on Why the Press Bought the Iraq War