Media Failure CLXXIII – Moon of Alabama

February 27, 2006

Media Failure CLXXIII

From the headlines one should think that the UAE/US port managing deal will get an additional review:

Via Google News

Dubai lets US panel examine port deal
San Diego Union Tribune, United States – 34 minutes ago
Ports buyer requests 45-day review of deal
CNN – 2 hours ago
UPDATE 1-White House welcomes review of Dubai ports deal
Reuters – 3 hours ago
Second Ports Review Aims to Avoid Showdown
ABC News – 3 hours ago
DP World goes along with probe
Australian, Australia – 3 hours ago

But check Friday’s (!) press briefing with National Security Advisor Steve Hadley:

Q You realize that lawmakers have suggested that the time should be spent with an additional extra review. Is that what it is not for?

MR. HADLEY: Well, in terms of the administration and executive branch process, that process has been completed. There was a lot of work that was done before the company filed its notice through — it was then a review conducted in the 30-day period. And at the end of the day, no agency indicated that they had a national security problem, and therefore, the company was informed that the administration’s process would go no further. So that process is over. But, of course, there are questions raised in the Congress, and what this delay allows is for those questions to be addressed on the Hill.

Q They can discuss it, but you’re not going to reopen it?

MR. HADLEY: There’s nothing to reopen. In terms of the CFIUS process, it’s been completed.

The 45 days, required by law to investigate the security sensivity of such a deal, will not be used to do so. Now it is just an adiitional lobbying and cooling off period.

But see how the media again fall over themself to avoid the facts.

Are these journalists lazy or complicit? I never can make my mind up about that.

Posted by b on February 27, 2006 at 19:12 UTC | Permalink

Comments

press the meat
fox news tries to spin the company has to ask for its own review, and then warner has a copy. still it’s all windowdressing
salon has a piece up, barley touches on the graft

. With its sole Middle East office headquartered in Dubai, Carlyle has managed to attract substantial funding from the UAE government, which controls most of the tiny nation’s oil wealth and channels that money into foreign investments.
Last year, to cite only the most recent example, Carlyle’s newest buyout fund won an infusion of at least $100 million from the Dubai Investment Corp. — another state-owned outfit created by the ruling families to reinvest the enormous inflows of capital from rising oil prices and oil consumption. If that individual deal with Carlyle represented only a small fraction of the Emirates’ investments, the upside potential of the relationship could be far greater in the future. The directors of Dubai Investment expect to invest as much as $5 billion every year for a long time to come.
But to deprive Dubai of its $6.8 billion ports acquisition might well have the opposite effect. For a company that trades on its political influence as well as its business acumen, such incidents can be pivotal.
The ports controversy could cause similar problems for Neil Mallon Bush, the president’s most troublesome brother, who has become a familiar face in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Neil Bush seems to be in constant pursuit of investors and government contracts in the Emirates, and is treated there with a respect and deference that have always eluded him in his own country. For reasons that must be painfully obvious, UAE royals have been quite eager to engage the former Silverado Savings and Loan director ever since his eldest brother entered the Oval Office. That embrace only intensified after 9/11.

Posted by: annie | Feb 27 2006 19:32 utc | 1

off topic, had a few drinks in the dark bar
—-
Plangent piano notes play (not Schubert)
Dusk has fallen.
The bushes rustle.
The survivors are determined to attack.
The moon is at half.
A dog barks in the distance.
The castle looms. Empty. Hollowed out. Imposing and decrepit.
A violin kicks in. Slow and low. Like a cello, almost.
The survirors grasp hands, their slitted, lowered eyes gather in the faint light.
They move carefully. The time has come.
Ana flexes her legs, moves in preparation.
Ready.
Now or never. Audacious. Determined.
Comes to mind. Where are the witnesses?
Hush says Guillaume. Its for all the others.
For everyone.
For all of us.
We are the witnesses. Us. (hiss)
Faint lightning over a far off hill.
Light rumble of thunder. Leaves no longer silver.
And then the trumpets sound out. Glory to the skies.
The castle explodes.
Rubble rains down, animals hinny, howl, screech.
Off they go. Off. Quick now.
—

Posted by: Noisette | Feb 27 2006 21:09 utc | 2

I like it, Noisette.
So it’s all about enriching the House of Bush, after all. Why am I not surprised? The hollowness of it all is deafening.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 27 2006 21:27 utc | 3

Are they lazy or complicit?
Judging by the journalism majors I went to college with, lazy.
But their media conglomerate employers are complicit. The lazy “journalists” don’t realize this. The ones who do realize it have long gone to indie news groups.
The Dubai port thing IS a done deal and the congressional shuffle/delay IS all for show. Because the truth is there is no real danger to national security in the deal. Bushco pushed the fear factor too well in order to sell their bogus war and now it is coming back to haunt their arrangements with UAE.

Posted by: gylangirl | Feb 27 2006 22:31 utc | 4

@ Noisette. Bravo.

Posted by: beq | Feb 27 2006 22:47 utc | 5

Also, Bush told a group of legionares in a speech Friday, that he wanted 75 million to “promote democracy” in Iran.
Rice Asks Congress For $75 Million To Promote “Democracy” In Iran…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 27 2006 22:57 utc | 6

opps, sorry that last comment should have gone to another post…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 27 2006 23:01 utc | 7

b
evidently, they are both – complicit & clowns – often at the same time

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 28 2006 1:03 utc | 8

They are both complicit and inept at the same time. Tweety Matthews tried getting Sen Lott to back down on this issue. Even the GOP faithfull are falling off the wagon. Two things are driving this, and Lott made it clear on the one. Bushie and company have driven public oppinion by scaring the shit out of the public.
The second thing thats driving the Rethug flight from Bushie is approval rating. A new CBS poll has Bushie at 34% approval. The Rethugs want distance, much distance from Bushie.

Posted by: jdp | Feb 28 2006 1:22 utc | 9

The Dubai deal is also highlighting the way the administration works: Bush’s job is the mouthpiece – he gets up and announces the decisions made by the real powers-that-be. He cannot back down on the Dubai deal because it is not his job to make decisions.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Feb 28 2006 7:16 utc | 10

Senator Feinstein’s War Profiteering
by Joshua Frank
It happens all the time. If the antiwar movement takes on the Democrats for their bitter shortcomings, a few liberals are bound to criticize us for not hounding Bush instead. It doesn’t even have to be an election year to get the progressives fired up. They just don’t seem to get it. “How can you attack the Democrats when we have such a bulletproof administration ruling the roost in Washington?” somebody recently e-mailed me. “Don’t you have something better to do than write this trash?!”
Well, not really. It’s too cold in upstate New York right now to do anything other than fume over the liberal villains in Washington. “Why do I write about the putrid Democratic Party?” I responded, “I’ll tell you, there’s a reason this Republican administration is so damn bulletproof – nobody from the opposition party is taking aim and pulling the trigger.”
And that’s why the Dems are just as culpable in all that has transpired since Bush took office in 2000. They aren’t just a part of the problem – the Democrats are the problem.
I mean, who is really all that surprised Bush and his boys wanted to conquer the Middle East? Not me. That’s just what unreasonable neocons do: they stomp out the little guy, kill off the weak, and suffocate the voiceless. They only care about the girth of their wallets and the number of scalps they can tack above their mantles.
The Democrats aren’t just letting the Republicans get away with murder, however: some of them are also reaping the benefits of the Bush wars. We constantly hear about Dick Cheney’s ties to Halliburton and how his ex-company is making bundles off U.S. contracts in Iraq. But what we don’t hear about is how Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband are also making tons of money off the “war on terror.”
The wishy-washy senator now claims Bush misled her prior to the invasion of Iraq. I don’t think she’s being honest with us, though. There may have been other reasons she helped sell Bush’s lies. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum has racked in millions of dollars from Perini, a civil infrastructure construction company, of which the billionaire investor wields a 75 percent voting share.
In April 2003, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave $500 million to Perini to provide services for Iraq’s Central Command. A month earlier in March 2003, Perini was awarded $25 million to design and construct a facility to support the Afghan National Army near Kabul. And in March 2004, Perini was awarded a hefty contract worth up to $500 million for “electrical power distribution and transmission” in southern Iraq.
Feinstein, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee as well as the Select Committee on Intelligence, is reaping the benefits of her husband’s investments. The Democratic royal family recently purchased a $16.5 million mansion in the flush Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. It’s a disgusting display of war profiteering, and just like Cheney, the leading Democrat should be called out for her offense.
And that’s exactly why the Bush administration is so darn bulletproof. The Democratic leadership in Washington is just as crooked and just as callous.
—————
My Emphasis.
Democracy? What a fucking joke!

Posted by: DM | Feb 28 2006 9:31 utc | 11

And that’s exactly why the Bush administration is so darn bulletproof. The Democratic leadership in Washington is just as crooked and just as callous.

DM, I couldn’t agree more. Same dog, different head.

Posted by: Feelgood | Feb 28 2006 15:23 utc | 12

dems

At a Democratic Party fundraiser hosted by Arianna Huffington in Los Angeles recently, Howard Dean and Barbara Boxer laid out strategy for the upcoming Congressional races, with lots of strong talk about retaking the House next fall — and, on Dean’s part, one stunning silence: Iraq.
clip
“Here’s our strategy for 2006,” he said. “We need to argue that Bush has failed to get bin Laden; after five years in power, he’s failed to stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons program; he’s failed to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program; and he’s failed to provide adequate security for our ports. We need to argue that the Democrats will do a better job protecting the nation than Bush has. We promise that we will kill or capture bin Laden; with the help of China and Russia, we will shut down the North Korean nuclear program; we will prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power; and we will protect our ports.”
Notably missing from the list: “we will end the war in Iraq.”

we’re screwed

Posted by: annie | Feb 28 2006 16:14 utc | 13

@ dean/dems:
It should now be obvious to all that this is an elitist strategy, vetted by both sides, hewing to the bounds of ‘acceptable’ debate, designed to be completely irrelevant to the needs and desires of ordinary Americans, while crafted to pull the emotional strings of every sheepling out there. Bravo Howard! We knew the scion of Dean-Witter had it in him.
Not one word about healthcare, jobs, cuts in services, the looming economic crash, cronyism, the growing police state, loss of our privacy, impeachable crimes committed by Bush, sustainability, privatization of the commons, encroaching fascism, GMO food, etc., etc.
But, by the time he’s done, the sheeple will be shivering in their hoofs about NORTH KOREA, and the threat it poses to the American way of life.
I feel safer already. But wait, he forgot about Zarqawi! (Sounds like a new Braodway hit.) A losing strategy. The Repubs will push the spectre Zarqawi and win.
If this is Howard’s End, he might as well just stand up on stage and give us his scream, it will be just as effective, and the media will give it more coverage.
Well, it might be advantageous to vote for an isolated dem here or there locally, but if anyone thinks this is a winning strategy, you are on the wrong blog.
If you want empty political speech and slogans, the dems could do far better by simply reviving the great Reagan mantra: “Dawn in America.” It would get more votes than Dean’s version of ‘Kerry lite.”

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 28 2006 16:53 utc | 14

Lazy or complicit?
Both, as said above, or neither.
They are hired by a corporation, they do the job they are asked to do. Simple as that. They know they are supposed to write (speak) empty folderol, mixing everything up, and just be conduits for info that comes from ..where? They don’t even really know. And much of the time they know nothing, absolutely nothing, about what they report.
They are like insane -schizophrenic- secretaries who just send along the boss’ opinions or decisions. They are paid well, and have plenty of time to party and drug. (Otherwise some of them wouldn’t do it.) Some are cynical of course, and don’t quit because they have a family to feed (etc.) Still, I think the turnover must be quite high.
It’s a job. They say selling pills that are ineffective and more (may actually kill) is even worse. Selling vaccum cleaners or cleaning fluids is not paid as well, and very down-scale. (Two journos I know here.) Hah!
Camera men (photographers..) know instinctively what kind of images they are to film. Nothing is ever said openly. They are sent at the drop of a hat to locations with no knowledge at all of the issue, the events, what is going on. Their footage gets cut for the evening news more than a few times, they get, so to speak, the picture.

Posted by: Noisette | Feb 28 2006 18:32 utc | 15

noisette – ahh, ‘it’s the water’. everywhere the same bright fascade, but hollow inside, vacant for years. was invited to a club today where the lunch menu was more in dollars than i make a year in thousands. the service staff was gnoshingly polite and sophisticated and all, but had an odd habit of looking at your forehead while you spoke, and twitching abruptly like those dog collars for invisible fence, yelp! which, when i mentioned to my spouse later, found that tips are always higher for rude service staff than for smiling ones, although we tip our waitress jenny at denny’s plenny. (smile) the secret wisdom is to study the bell-curve, and realize that the belly will soon be hollowed out of it so do you want to be stranded on the left side of the curve, or the right side, eating at the club?
fewer words? wa dc is a microcosm of all of US.

Posted by: Larry Ellison | Mar 1 2006 5:03 utc | 16

where the lunch menu was more in dollars than i make a year in thousands
Ah! So your not that Larry Ellison of Oracle.

Posted by: Anonymous | Mar 1 2006 6:06 utc | 17

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