Compared to TIME Magazine, Bill O'Reilly is Walter Cronkite

UPDATE BELOW

If you haven't been following Glenn Greenwald's blanket coverage of the Joe Klein/TIME Magazine debacle, TIME has finally jumped the shark.

Short version:

TIME Magazine is a mouthpiece for the war-mongering, Constitution-burning, Smirky-worshipping wingnut GOP, more blatant than the Washington Times, more shameless than Ann Coulter.

Long version:

Joe Klein posted on TIME's Swampbland blog obvious lies to support his thesis that Congressional Democrats are clueless about terrorism, then refused to retract them when the lies were exposed.

TIME's editor Richard Stengel not only refused to retract Klein's lies, he refused to allow the libeled members of Congress themselves to respond online or in print.

Instead, Stengel authorized three separate "corrections" that not only did not retract Klein's lies, they actually reinforced Klein's false accusations about the Democrats by avoiding the real issues and allowing the original lies to stand.

I've been reading TIME for more than 40 years, and subscribing for a quarter-century. But last week I cancelled my subscription, and I urge everyone who is still subscribing (admit it - mostly out of habit) to do so, too.

Newsweek is no improvement, having hired Karl Rove and given him prime pundit real estate to peddle his - we need a new word for what Rove spews, because "lies" just doesn't even come close.

I've switched to The Nation, a newsweekly with a much longer and far more honorable pedigree than TIME's. As the TV ad says, The Nation has "that liberal media bias you can't get anywhere else."

UPDATE, 7 p.m.: Via Blue Girl, you can get half-price gift subscriptions to The Nation here.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

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I suppose I have to blog about that speech...

...or risk getting a "Bad Blogger! No Biscuit!" citation.

But really...what is to say? It was the Diet Coke of Presidential Speeches. There was no substance and the flavor wasn't quite right, but nonetheless, it was pretty much what was expected; rancid aftertaste and all.

But like Diet Coke is calorie free, the Resident's speech was fact free:

• "Iraq's national leaders are getting some things done," such as "sharing oil revenues with the provinces" [The oil law fell by the wayside, was doused in gasoline and set alight a full day before the bullshit banquet was served up this evening.]

• Bush made the proclamation that Baqubah, capital of Diyala province, (once, (impossibly) simultaneously considered both restive and the al Qaeda - Iraq mothership) is now pacified. "[t]oday, Baqubah is cleared." stated the President. [The pResident makes this claim, yet on 27 August the head of the Foreign Service Office in Diyala said the security situation was far from stable and impeded access to both sustenance and energy needs.]
  

• Further separating himself from reality, he thanked "the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq." [He was only off by a dozen or so. Give a dry drunk moron credit for not fucking this up worse...]
  

• He referenced a panel report assembled by Marine Gen. James Jones, and presented to congress last week, but he misrepresented it, saying that "the Iraqi army is becoming more capable..." [The report actually says that the Iraqi Army "cannot yet meaningfully contribute to denying terrorists safe haven." It also described the 25,000 member national police force as being infiltrated to the core by sectarian militias, and at best of specious loyalty. The Jones report recommended that it be disbanded.]

• He pointed to the relatively restive Baghdad of today, as compared to the Baghdad of a year ago, and pointed to lessened violence in the capital as evidence that his Surge™ strategy is showing success. [When the ethnic cleansing is complete, the supply of people fleeing and being murdered naturally dries up.]

At least in Japan miserable failures like the fool currently occupying the oval office have the decency to go sideways. But not this Dionysian fuckwit. He will go to his grave, at far too distant a date, and after enjoying too much health for too many years, convinced that we lost Iraq because I personally didn't clap loud enough.

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