The Jackboots in the Hall

The 2nd Affirmative Rebuttal in the Chelsea debate tomorrow. Other fish to fry today.

So was a CNN producer fired for defending suspended MSNBC reporter David Schuster?

We begin with a little peek into the mentality of those who BRING us the news. CNN (which I found myself not even watching last night. MSNBC, for all the lunacy of the past several years, beginning with the canning of Phil Donahue, through hiring Michael Savage and all the way to the “indefinite suspension” of David Schuster, was by far the most professional of the three cable news outlets vis a vis the primaries last night) fired a producer today for having had the temerity to write a blog.

Deus Ex Malcontent, a two-time Emmy winner, writes:

Yesterday afternoon, I was fired from my job at CNN.

I was hired as a Senior Producer for the network four years ago, and had spent the past three years as a member of the American Morning staff.

What was the reason for my abrupt and untimely dismissal?

You’re reading it.

More to come soon.

That’s enough to pique interest. According to “Terry’s PoMo Blog” — which seems to be an in-house blog for TV industry company “Audience Research and Development, LLC” — CNN didn’t like what the CNN producer was reporting about the industry:

Blogger loses day job with CNN over blogging

Chez PazienzaLet’s file this one under unreal.

Chez Pazienza, a producer at CNN assigned to American Morning, was unceremoniously fired from his job today — without severance — over the content of his popular and edgy blog, Deus Ex Malcontent (warning: adult language). He had worked for CNN for four years, beginning as a Senior Producer in Atlanta. Chez is a member of my tribe and a friend, and I’m not happy about this turn of events.

According to Chez, he was terminated for violating network policy by not running what he was writing through their vetting system. So he was fired not for blogging but for the content of his blog. “It’s not that I’ve been writing,” he wrote in an email. “It’s WHAT I’ve been writing.” That may be the official decision, but the truth is he was fired because he had the balls to write about the industry without telling CNN. I would add that there is no mention of his connection to the network on his site, and as a producer, it’s hard to justify the notion that he’s in any way a public figure or publicly connected with the company.

What Chez Pazienza is is a damned fine writer and an even better observer and commentator on life. So spot on is the guy that he’s been “discovered” by sites like Fark, Pajiba and the Huffington Post, where he was recently brought on as a guest commentator….

Which is, I’ll bet WHY he was fired. Someone at CNN noticed his Huffington Post guest blog, checked it out, said Holeeeeee Shite! and swiftly fell the ax.

It is ALWAYS hilarious to me that the slimeballs of American Media are extremely squeamish about any of THEIR dirty laundry ending up on the line. For a group of professional Peeping Toms, any hint of their skid-marked underwear (and OH, is it skid-marked!) has them squealing like Victorian grannies suddenly exposed by their Beach cabanas’ walls falling down, frantically covering up their bloomers.

Over and over, I’ve found the media to hold themselves to a level of secrecy and cover-up of scandal that they’d scream for the HEAD of any politician or corporate officer who tried to hide.

Here’s a couple fun stories: When Nancy Reagan launched the cynical “divide and conquer” non-issue for the 1986 off-year elections “The War On Drugs” (you know, the one where drug abuse in all categories had been declining straight line for a decade, but which then SPIKED when it became the political football of ‘86, and billions were poured into it, for no sensible policy reason?), the Los Angeles newsies fell right into lock step. Newspapers, TV and radio.

And several of the most notorious stoners in LA (including one whose giant bong was legendary in certain circles) immediately began cranking out the most vitriolic anti-drug editorials this side of Torquemada. It was snickered about in news circles, but was never written about OUTSIDE of the media fraternity.

Or, here’s another one: I was peripherally connected with a western newspaper, whose Executive Editor married the boss’ daughter. Mr. EE got caught with his pants around his ankles (with, I think, one of the employees of said paper). The Boss went ballistic; the EE was demoted as low as possible — obituaries must have already been taken by a penitent reporter — so that he could be punished without the boss’ daughter being punished by their having to take a cut in pay.

I knew one of the managing editors, and I asked him several “off the record” questions about it, and had great fun for about a year or so, as he came up with ever more unbelievable “explanations” as to how the Executive Editor had gone from being the literal figurehead of the masthead to running the bilge pumps in the darkness of the hold.

The explanations were never the same twice, and were hilariously strained. I wouldn’t press the point, but it was sure as hell fun watching him squirm, as I thought: You self-righteous bastard. You write editorials about open process and “transparency” and you’d thunder for a month of Sundays if any politico gave you the runaround like this.

So, I understand why those moral, ethical bastards of TIME/CNN would dance like a cat on a hot tin roof at finding that one of their own had actually been telling the TRUTH about the operation.

Seig heil. No wonder they carry water for our own home-grown fascists in the secretive, surveilling, torturing, looting Bush Administration.

Oh. The posting that probably got Chez fired? From The Huffington Post:

Chez Pazienza
Pimp My Riot: In Defense of David Shuster
Posted February 10, 2008 | 04:04 PM (EST)

So, was Pazienza fired for defending Shuster? Sure as hell is interesting timing, isn’t it?

Maybe Hillary’s attempt to suppress the media is working better than anticipated.

Attempt to suppress the media?

Yup.

Clinton campaign kills negative story (Politico)

and

Inside the Clinton Shake-Up (Atlantic)

This is actually your homework assignment, but here’s a taste:

The campaign’s transaction with GQ opens a curtain on the Clinton campaign’s hard-nosed media strategy, which is far closer in its unromantic view of the press to the campaigns of George W. Bush than to that of Bill Clinton’s free-wheeling 1992 campaign.

There’s little left to chance. Hillary Clinton may have an unparalleled campaign “war room” — but there aren’t any documentary film-makers wandering around this one, and lovers of the D.A. Pennebaker film “The War Room” can rest assured they aren’t getting a sequel.
The Politics of Immigration

The spiked GQ story also shows how the Clinton campaign has been able to use its access to the most important commodity in media — celebrity, and in fact two bona fide celebrities — to shape not just what gets written about the candidate, but also what doesn’t.

Which brings us to this:

Here are the traitors that you need to print out and stick on your refrigerator door. Yesterday, ignored by that SELFSAME CNN (for John King’s magic flying pie charts) , the Senate voted down the amendment to the FISA law stripping out immunity from prosecution to the telecoms (phone companies) that handed over your phone records, illegally, to NSA, FBI and the other modern acronyms of our American Gestapo.

Not only have these criminals disobeyed the law, trampled the Constitution and wiped their pustulent asses with the Bill of Rights, but now, they intend to make sure that they GET AWAY WITH IT! (Watch all the pardons as Bush sneaks out of the White House, his suitcases bulging with silverware and towels.).

The New York Times (Editorial):

The FISA Follies, Redux
Published: January 26, 2008

The Senate (reportedly still under Democratic control) seems determined to help President Bush violate Americans’ civil liberties and undermine the constitutional separation of powers. Majority Leader Harry Reid is supporting White House-backed legislation that would expand the administration’s ability to spy on Americans without court supervision and ensure that the country never learns the full extent of Mr. Bush’s illegal wiretapping program.

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA — which Mr. Bush decided to ignore after 9/11 — requires a warrant to intercept telephone calls and e-mail messages between people in the United States and people abroad.

It needed updating to keep pace with technology, and the technical fixes were included in a bill that Congress passed last summer. The problem was that Mr. Bush managed to add measures that sharply undercut the court’s role in monitoring eavesdropping. Fortunately, lawmakers gave them an expiration date of Feb. 1.

The House has passed a reasonable new bill — fixing FISA without further endangering civil liberties. But Mr. Bush wants to weaken FISA as much as he can. And the Senate leadership has been only too happy to oblige.

With the help of Republican senators and the misguided chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, the White House got a bill that, once again, reduces court supervision of wiretapping. It also adds immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the illegal spying.

Mr. Bush says without amnesty, the government won’t get cooperation in the future. We don’t buy it. The real aim is to make sure the full story of the illegal wiretapping never comes out in court.

Well, read ‘em and weep. Literally, weep:

Senate Votes to Expand Spy Powers
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: February 13, 2008

WASHINGTON — After more than a year of wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory on Tuesday by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants.

One by one, the Senate rejected amendments that would have imposed greater civil liberties checks on the government’s surveillance powers. Finally, the Senate voted 68 to 29 to approve legislation that the White House had been pushing for months. Mr. Bush hailed the vote and urged the House to move quickly in following the Senate’s lead.

The outcome in the Senate amounted, in effect, to a broader proxy vote in support of Mr. Bush’s wiretapping program. The wide-ranging debate before the final vote presaged discussion that will play out this year in the presidential and Congressional elections on other issues testing the president’s wartime authority, including secret detentions, torture and Iraq war financing.

Republicans hailed the reworking of the surveillance law as essential to protecting national security, but some Democrats and many liberal advocacy groups saw the outcome as another example of the Democrats’ fears of being branded weak on terrorism.

“Some people around here get cold feet when threatened by the administration,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads the Judiciary Committee and who had unsuccessfully pushed a much more restrictive set of surveillance measures…. [Read the rest. Really.]

The outcome was foreordained after the Quisling Festivities had concluded, as all attempts to amend were voted down.

Here are the names of the traitors. Print them out. Attach them to your refrigerator. When the time comes, do whatever you can to have them arrested, imprisoned, humiliated, defeated, or use your imagination. The depths of my rage at these Benedict Arnolds is beyond words. It is a cold, hellish thing: these men and women deserve no quarter, no compassion, no tolerance. They have voted to protect the criminals who are, perhaps even now, tapping your phone.

If that doesn’t offend you, please never read my column again. And never speak to me in the street.

As usual, the Republicans proved that they care more for their party than their country. But they couldn’t have done it without the assistance of the treasonous Democrats … not all, and certainly not a majority. If you want to express your contempt, PLEASE start with the GOP, who voted in Lock-step — if not in Jack-boot.

NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN VOTED AGAINST THE MEASURE*. ONLY Democrats and Senator Bernie Sanders, (Independent, VT) voted against.

[* Just because they're no longer getting the headlines doesn't mean that they've stopped being evil. Indeed, with the lower media scrutiny, the GOP members of Congress have, arguably, UPPED the Evil Ante in the 110th Congress.]

FOR Expanded warrantless surveillance, and telecom immunity for crimes committed against American citizens all across the USA:

YEAs — 68

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McCaskill (D-MO)
McConnell (R-KY)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wicker (R-MS)

I see that our own Mormon asshole, Gordon Smith of Oregon, voted for treason.

He’s up for re-election this year.

My, my.

Courage.

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