Okay, so you're a guy from the United Arab Emirates with some experience managing ports and you apply for a job running one of America's largest, let's say up in New Yawk City.
So far, your resume looks good, except the FBI, in a routine background check, turns up a few unsavory details:
-- Prior to 9/11, you financially supported Al-Qaeda and even hung out socially with Osama bin Laden on occasion. You also endorsed what the Taliban was doing in Afghanistan.
-- A couple of the 9/11 hijackers were members of your family, and you refuse to reveal how some of the money paid to the 9/11 attackers came from your bank account.
-- You refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist and teach your kids virulent anti-Semitism.
-- Although you now claim to be friendly to the U.S., you have yet to renounce the past terrorist activities of organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, which you helped fund.
Considering that a college professor in Florida was fired a few years ago for supporting militant anti-Israeli causes, other Arab-Americans have been questioned merely for unwittingly contributing to charities that may have been fronts for terrorists, and you wouldn't have a chance of qualifying for a security clearance from the U.S. government, do you really think, in your wildest dreams, that, with this background, you should be hired to run a major American port?
Well, President Bumbles and his sycophants in CFIUS and Homeland Security do. Put simply, this is how crazy Bush's UAE ports deal really is.
As Paul "Kill the Injuns, and They're All Injuns" Harvey would say, "Page Two":
Just a Note on Friend-of-the-Left Bill O'Reilly:
February 24th on Keith Olbermann's MSNBC "Countdown" show, Kayo mentioned that Ol' Fox Snoozer Bill O'Reilly had started a petition to get Keith replaced by the semi-retired Phil Donahue, who once had the highest-rated show on the NBC cable network. Olbermann had the grace to thank Bill for the left-handed plug (the pouty O'Reilly boy never uttered Keith's name in the petition, referring to him only as the program at "8:00pm EST").
Just to review: Every time the thin-skinned Republican Reptile opens his yap to dump on the opposition for the crime of replaying his crazier quotes or comparing his hothouse logic to events in the real world, Dild-O'Reilly has an on-air gastric fit that pumps up the ratings or sales of the target of his pique.
When he went to war with Al Franken, the sales of Franken's bestseller, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" shot up; when he ridiculed Air America Radio, AAR ended up beating his radio show in most major markets; he put the drub on MoveOn.org, and contributions increased; he continues to defame David Brock's Media Matters, without allowing them on his show to answer his pernicious charges that they 'lie' about him (which they haven't), and MM gets more hits on its website.
Now he's after the funny and informative Olbermann, who has the best news show on cable, because Kayo has included B.O. in his Worst Person in the World category on several occasions, for good reason.
Smart move, Keith -- your ratings should shoot up after this.
The question: How much did you pay that miserable old Fox News fraud under the table to start this phony-baloney petition?
And you really need to run this segment: Bill O'Reilly -- Worst Person of the Decade!
By the way, if you want to thank MSNBC for running Olbermann's excellent oasis of sanity in a sea of cable dross, email MSNBC/Microsoft-NBC President Erik Sorenson here: erik.sorenson@msnbc.com and keep it clean and polite.
BTW #2: Note to Mr. 'No-Spin Zone': The firefighters in San Francisco are still waiting for you to pay them a visit after you announced on your radio show that it's okay by you if terrorists take out the Coit Tower, because Frisco is just too liberal for your taste. The Coit Tower is a memorial to volunteer firefighters, you dumbass. Let's say it again: Bill O'Reilly -- Worst Person of the Decade.
Okay, he hasn't killed anybody yet (that we know of), but there's always time to take up quail hunting, Bill.
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But the Monster is Crumbling
The air is going out of the Whoopee Cushion of right-wing radio, as competition fills the airwaves. It's easy to be popular when you're the only game in town, as the corporately-controlled media neocons have been for more than a decade, but their nasty attempts at humor and 'tailoring' of the news, along with the manifest failures of the Bush Republicans to live up to their claims, have led to withering ratings in the face of opposition.
As Mr. Anonymous, the world's most quoted source, has said: "I listened to Limbaugh for ten years and never heard him admit a mistake, even when the proof was on the cover of the morning paper. The first time I heard Randi Rhodes, she admitted she had made some little mistake in something she'd said a day or two before. She had me right then. Besides, she's funnier than Rush."
As the polls show, a majority of America is fed up with a steady diet of the right-wing agenda; if they don't want to buy the main course, they certainly don't want to sniff its passing wind.
One thing: The MSM perpetually assumes that anyone who listens to right-wing radio must agree with what's being said. Often, nothing could be further from the truth. I've known several people who listen to the O'Reilly's and Hannity's on the AM dial, but only to laugh at them. I wonder how many are laughing now?
"[O]n it drones, this electronic flatulence. Call it the great distraction. It makes little distinction between Muslim extremists and loyal but liberal Americans. When Al Gore recently criticized the Bush administration for trampling on civil rights, right-wing radio accused him of treason. One can only hope that they didn't sentence him to a hunting trip with Dick Cheney.
"The message on a daily basis seems to be that it's OK to hate, to shout other people down, to go about one's life in an angry mood.
"Perhaps more frightening is this: If this brand of thinking is now mainstream, what is next? What supplants the right at the far end of the spectrum? What will feed the monster in coming years?"
-- Bill Berry, "Flatulent Right Wing Fills Radio with Hate," Capital Times (WI), Feb. 22, 2006.
Also read "The Gasbag Gap" by Eric Alterman here.
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