grumpyduck
grumpyduck's JournalEdward R. Murrow on Sen. Joseph McCarthy
Just ran across this quote from Murrow's TV series See It Now, on March 9, 1954. The issue then was Communism, but otherwise it all rings so true even today.
And please read it all the way through before you flame me or hit the "broke a rule" button. 
No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successfully. Cassius was right: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
Finding and deporting illegal space aliens?
Is there any truth to the rumor that ICE and the NSA have set up a top-secret program to identify and arrest space aliens?
Well, let's see if CNN has any guts
I hope I'm jumping the gun here -- really hope I'm jumping the gun -- but I'm really interested to see what CNN's response to DJT refusing to take a question from one of its reporters will be. Will they have the GUTS to follow up on this?
For a guy who's been credited with over... what's the latest count. thousands? of lies to call a seasoned professional reporter a liar on international television goes beyond belief. If I were the head of CNN News (or NBC) I'd be all over this like blowflies on a corpse. I'd get my legal staff to dig up anything even remotely related to the First Amendment, put one hell of a response together, and publicly submit it to Congress, demanding a reprimand or a censure or whatever the appropriate term is.
And if I were Jim Acosta, I'd start writing. And I hope he already has.
Okay, a serious question re: people insulting admin staffers
I don't want to derail the other threads on this topic, so here's a serious question for those of you who have followed politics or the news for a number of years.
Are there any documented cases of previous presidents resorting to the same type and volume of verbal or written attacks or insults on people they didn't agree with, as with the current president? We know LBJ, Nixon, and others occasionally blasted someone, but it was mostly in WH meetings or private settings. They all probably did that. But I'm asking specifically about things they said or wrote in public, to a similar degree.
No opinions here, please. There are lots of other threads for that. As Sgt. Friday used to say, "Just the facts, ma'am."
Finally out of AT&T (I thought)
We switched our cell phones out of AT&T on June 24. The next day I checked on their web site to make sure it was closed. Yesterday I received a bill covering the period June 24 thru July 23. I called them. Turns out there's a clause in the agreement that requires a 30-day notice for closing out an account, even after the initial 2-year, or whatever it was, period is over. Without that 30-day notice, they can charge you for the month you never used.
I'm going to cool down for a couple of days before I decide what to do, but, in the meantime, just wanted to alert you folks that AT&T has that little clause, buried in the fine print, that basically allows them to RIP YOU OFF.
Good riddance, AT&T.
Why are we burying history?
About a year ago I discovered Atlas Obscura, a web site that features articles, written by users, about interesting places around the world. Sometimes, after plowing through several news sites, I find it to be a breath of fresh air. This morning they had a piece (which they moved out of the front page) about the Little Prairie books and how inaccurate the food descriptions were.
It also pointed out that the author's name had been removed from the American Library Association's awards list because some people considered the books racist.
So here we go.
First, the article was informative about the food the pioneers ate. No arguments there. But I have to wonder why some people feel it's a public service to point out that children's storybooks (over 150 years old in this case) are often not historically accurate. What's next, bash the cartoons? "The old Roadrunner cartoons weren't accurate. No way Wiley could have ordered stuff in the middle of the desert because cell phones and drones hadn't been invented yet."
But what really got to me was the bit about the awards. It brought back stories about books being removed from shelves because some people feel they're "insensitive" or something similar. Burying literature and history does not make it go away. And heaven forbid someone should get the quaint old-fashioned arrogantly naive (and probably divisive) idea that we can learn something from it.
Makes me wonder if the real reason some people want books removed from shelves is because they have no clue how to talk to their kids about them.
Emails from a Republican friend
Okay, folks... before you flame me, please read to the end.
I have a friend from forty-odd years ago who's a Rep and occasionally forwards emails to me that he gets from somebody else. Most of them are jokes (non-political and often hilarious), but now and then he sends a political commentary. I'm about to ask him to stop these, but, in reality, I'm fascinated by the content and the arguments put forward. I posted one of them here a week or two ago and asked for your opinion, and my post was deleted and later re-instated.
A couple of days ago he sent one with snippets from a former Secret Service agent's book basically praising the Reps and bashing the Dems. By the time I got to the bottom, it was obvious that the email's content was very selectively edited. I even considered getting the book, reading it through, and sending my friend an email back, pointing out things the author said against the Rep presidents.
So here's the thing. I refuse to lump all Reps into one box. There have been threads here about why people vote Rep "in spite of," and some responses made perfect sense. But there are those, as has been noted here, who apparently only get their news from one or two sources: Fox, Breitbart, and the like. They don't go anywhere else and seem to only focus on the messages put forth there: Hillary is evil, they want to take away our guns, and so on.
So how do we (as in we) get through to those specific people and get them to see that there's another side to the coin? How do we get them to start questioning the material they've been getting fed? The MSM won't do it; it's not their style, and, besides, many conservatives won't go to other-than-RW media.
Please don't say "we can't." If Washington, Churchill, Eisenhower, MLK Jr, and many others had said "we can't," the world would be a whole different place today. This is a war for survival.
Are we talking brainwashing?
I'm sure I won't see it, but I believe that thirty or forty years from now, when the dust settles, somebody is going to do a study on what happened here over the past few years and write a book about it. "The Brainwashing of America," or something similar. And he or she is going to compare and contrast it to what happened in Germany and other countries.
The book will probably start with a study of all the negative comments made about Obama by Congress and the conservative media, and spend some pages on the controversy over his place of birth. Then it'll move on to Hillary and all the negativism piled on her even today. Then it'll probably come to the conclusion that it was all a very simple message right from the start: "These people are bad" -- a message that was repeated over and over until it grabbed a hold in the minds of many people.
A few things have already been written on this topic (check online), but I really think this book will focus on how simple that message was and how effective it was to repeat it so often.
Then the kicker: the book will examine how so many people were sucked into this message because that's all they were hearing -- because they weren't bothering to look elsewhere and learn about the issues facing the country. All they knew was the invective. Even today I see and hear conservatives bashing liberals because liberals are bad (DJT is still bashing Hillary et al whenever he gets a chance), but without actually mentioning the issues involved.
I first started to notice this approach back in my very early twenties when Ted Kennedy was running for President. and most of what came out of his mouth was about how awful his opponent was. I remember yelling at my TV one time, "Knock that shit off, asshole, just tell us what YOU'RE going to do for us!" or words to that effect. That was when I first began to detest politicians, but that's another story.
Party vs country?
I've been keeping mostly away from DU and politics for the past month or so. What's happening to our nation is just too depressing. But in light of several emails I've received from an old friend (who's a Republican) recently, and the content of those emails, I have to wonder about something.
And please read this all the way before you respond.
Just this morning I received an email from him with excerpts from a book written by a former Secret Service agent, In the President's Secret Service (2009). The clips were about the presidents themselves, and how -- of course -- the Democrats were awful people and the Republicans were mostly great people. It's like my friend (or his source) reduced the entire 285-page book to a few anecdotes for the explicit purpose of bashing Democrats.
It seems to me that a lot of the Republican rhetoric I've seen recently focuses around bashing Democrats, either individually or the party itself. But it's not about the issues: it's not about arguing for what the administration is doing or not doing, or about whether it's good for the nation or not. Which makes me wonder if it's all focused on "party over country."
Has anyone else noticed this, or am I just not reading enough?
Thank you to the administrators
Last week I posted an email a friend of mine (who's a Republican) sent me, which he probably got from someone else. Before block-quoting the email, I indicated that I had several issues with it, and that I wanted to scream at him on a couple of points. Then I asked for your take on it. His email had to do with immigration issues.
Out of 18 responses, most of them focused on the immigration issues, but a couple attacked me for spreading Republican messages. Later that day I received a PM indicating my post had been removed for breaking one of the rules.
I appealed it.
Yesterday I received another PM telling me that the admins had agreed I was not breaking a rule, and re-instated my post. To them I say thank you for taking the time to consider my appeal.
The reason I'm writing this, however, is just to point out that only one of the 18 responses picked up on the hypocrisy of the message in the email, and none picked up on the last paragraph, which read:
This one story illustrates how important it is for us to do our research regarding today’s headlines. The Corporate Media either refuses to do the research, is incapable of doing the research or has done the research and decided to lie to you about its findings. Either way, this would make the Corporate Media lazy, incompetent or just plain deceptive. Liars, if you will.
This was one of the points I wanted to scream at my friend about. The original writer appears to have forgotten that Fox, and several other conservative outlets, are part of "The Corporate Media," and that they are doing exactly what he is describing.
I wrote another post a few weeks ago about people nowadays, in so many cases, not bothering to read: they just glance at something, form an opinion, and proceed to defend that opinion. Several responses agreed and a couple went into some detail. I feel this is really a problem. We are at a point right now where it is critical to get our facts straight and to not get into fights with each other because we didn't bother to read or to listen.
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