Washington Post Does Deck Chairs
I am always on the lookout for reliable news sources. Desperate, even. My standards are pretty high, given my increasing knowledge/cynicism about the general behavior of the folks who play at journalism these days. I want critical thinking, little or no unattributed rumor-spreading, and honesty. That seems a pretty good place to start, ehh?
More or less on that basis, I have a half-dozen or so web-sites that I consult routinely - multiple times per day, when circumstances permit. I have frequently linked and promoted these sites here - and I hope that may have led some of you to check out or even bookmark those sites. The pantheon includes Glenn Greenwald at Salon, Josh Marshall's TPM mega-site, the Firedoglake complex, Hullabaloo, and Dan Froomkin's White House Watch.
So it has been seriously gut-wrenching that the Washington Post, a major newspaper that has barely otherwise managed to stay above National Enquirer/Fox News/WSJ editorial page caliber for me has jettisoned Dan Froomkin. There are a lot of folks besides me who will no longer bother to consult the doomed Washington Post from here on, from what I understand. There are a few resources of interest there still, Dionne, for example. My only direct links to the paper in the last year+ involved Froomkin.
The last actual White House Watch post is here. It includes a wonderful wealth of links, e.g. to archive of posts, sympatico bloggers, and such. You would be well-advised to copy in full with links maintained if you are still an actual standing human with an interest in how the American form of democracy as conceived in the 18th century might survive. I have no idea how long the dastardly paper will maintain links to such an incriminating bunch of stuff. Dan has astutely archived a good deal on his own, and identified means of catching up with him in his next incarnation.
I have greatly appreciated that Dan has been willing to forego the Obama kool-ade, subjecting our vibrant new President, obviously leaps and bounds beyond his predecessor in ever-so-many ways, to serious criticism when it is called for. And it has indeed been called for on several fronts. It is appalling that Dan is in a very tiny minority in so acting. See short list above for others.
In short, to quote the Boss, sorry BHO, "No Retreat, No Surrender!"
Here are the first few paragraphs of Dan's last WHW post, hopefully with links intact:
Today's column is my last for The Washington Post. And the first thing I want to say is thank you. Thank you to all you readers, e-mailers, commenters, questioners, Facebook friends and Twitterers for spending your time with me and engaging with me over the years. And thank you for the recent outpouring of support. It was extraordinarily uplifting, and I'm deeply grateful. If I ever had any doubt, your words have further inspired me to continue doing accountability journalism. My plan is to take a few weeks off before embarking upon my next endeavor -- but when I do, I hope you'll join me.
It's hard to summarize the past five and a half years. But I'll try.
I started my column in January 2004, and one dominant theme quickly emerged: That George W. Bush was truly the proverbial emperor with no clothes. In the days and weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, the nation, including the media, vested him with abilities he didn't have and credibility he didn't deserve. As it happens, it was on the day of my very first column that we also got the first insider look at the Bush White House, via Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty. In it, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described a disengaged president "like a blind man in a room full of deaf people", encircled by "a Praetorian guard,” intently looking for a way to overthrow Saddam Hussein long before 9/11. The ensuing five years and 1,088 columns really just fleshed out that portrait, describing a president who was oblivious, embubbled and untrustworthy.
When I look back on the Bush years, I think of the lies. There were so many. Lies about the war and lies to cover up the lies about the war. Lies about torture and surveillance. Lies about Valerie Plame. Vice President Dick Cheney's lies, criminally prosecutable but for his chief of staff Scooter Libby's lies. I also think about the extraordinary and fundamentally cancerous expansion of executive power that led to violations of our laws and our principles.
And while this wasn't as readily apparent until President Obama took office, it's now very clear that the Bush years were all about kicking the can down the road – either ignoring problems or, even worse, creating them and not solving them. This was true of a huge range of issues including the economy, energy, health care, global warming – and of course Iraq and Afghanistan.
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More or less on that basis, I have a half-dozen or so web-sites that I consult routinely - multiple times per day, when circumstances permit. I have frequently linked and promoted these sites here - and I hope that may have led some of you to check out or even bookmark those sites. The pantheon includes Glenn Greenwald at Salon, Josh Marshall's TPM mega-site, the Firedoglake complex, Hullabaloo, and Dan Froomkin's White House Watch.
So it has been seriously gut-wrenching that the Washington Post, a major newspaper that has barely otherwise managed to stay above National Enquirer/Fox News/WSJ editorial page caliber for me has jettisoned Dan Froomkin. There are a lot of folks besides me who will no longer bother to consult the doomed Washington Post from here on, from what I understand. There are a few resources of interest there still, Dionne, for example. My only direct links to the paper in the last year+ involved Froomkin.
The last actual White House Watch post is here. It includes a wonderful wealth of links, e.g. to archive of posts, sympatico bloggers, and such. You would be well-advised to copy in full with links maintained if you are still an actual standing human with an interest in how the American form of democracy as conceived in the 18th century might survive. I have no idea how long the dastardly paper will maintain links to such an incriminating bunch of stuff. Dan has astutely archived a good deal on his own, and identified means of catching up with him in his next incarnation.
I have greatly appreciated that Dan has been willing to forego the Obama kool-ade, subjecting our vibrant new President, obviously leaps and bounds beyond his predecessor in ever-so-many ways, to serious criticism when it is called for. And it has indeed been called for on several fronts. It is appalling that Dan is in a very tiny minority in so acting. See short list above for others.
In short, to quote the Boss, sorry BHO, "No Retreat, No Surrender!"
Here are the first few paragraphs of Dan's last WHW post, hopefully with links intact:
Today's column is my last for The Washington Post. And the first thing I want to say is thank you. Thank you to all you readers, e-mailers, commenters, questioners, Facebook friends and Twitterers for spending your time with me and engaging with me over the years. And thank you for the recent outpouring of support. It was extraordinarily uplifting, and I'm deeply grateful. If I ever had any doubt, your words have further inspired me to continue doing accountability journalism. My plan is to take a few weeks off before embarking upon my next endeavor -- but when I do, I hope you'll join me.
It's hard to summarize the past five and a half years. But I'll try.
I started my column in January 2004, and one dominant theme quickly emerged: That George W. Bush was truly the proverbial emperor with no clothes. In the days and weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, the nation, including the media, vested him with abilities he didn't have and credibility he didn't deserve. As it happens, it was on the day of my very first column that we also got the first insider look at the Bush White House, via Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty. In it, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described a disengaged president "like a blind man in a room full of deaf people", encircled by "a Praetorian guard,” intently looking for a way to overthrow Saddam Hussein long before 9/11. The ensuing five years and 1,088 columns really just fleshed out that portrait, describing a president who was oblivious, embubbled and untrustworthy.
When I look back on the Bush years, I think of the lies. There were so many. Lies about the war and lies to cover up the lies about the war. Lies about torture and surveillance. Lies about Valerie Plame. Vice President Dick Cheney's lies, criminally prosecutable but for his chief of staff Scooter Libby's lies. I also think about the extraordinary and fundamentally cancerous expansion of executive power that led to violations of our laws and our principles.
And while this wasn't as readily apparent until President Obama took office, it's now very clear that the Bush years were all about kicking the can down the road – either ignoring problems or, even worse, creating them and not solving them. This was true of a huge range of issues including the economy, energy, health care, global warming – and of course Iraq and Afghanistan.
-clip-
posted by Sir Gumbo at 9:13 PM
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