EP-RANTS!

An Interesting Comparison Dan Rather, CBS News Anchor: 1) given documents he thought were true 2) failed to thoroughly investigate the facts 3) reported documents to the American people as true to make his case 4) when confronted with the facts, apologized and launched an immediate investigation 5) retracted the story 6) number of Americans dead: 0 7) Republicans believe he should be fired as CBS News Anchor George W. Bush, President of the United States 1) given documents he thought were true 2) failed to thoroughly investigate the facts 3) reported documents to the American people as true to make his case 4) when confronted with the facts, continued to report untruth and stonewalled an investigation for nearly a year. 5) has never apologized or accepted responsibility 6) number of Americans dead: 1100 and rising; Number wounded: 7000 and rising 7) Republicans believe he should be given four more years as President of the United States (anonymous internet posti

Catastrophic Success The worse Iraq gets, the more we must be winning. By William Saletan, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2004 In 1999, George W. Bush said we needed to cut taxes because the economy was doing so well that the U.S. Treasury was taking in too much money, and we could afford to give some back to the people who earned it. In 2001, Bush said we needed the same tax cuts because the economy was doing poorly, and we had to return the money so that people would spend and invest it. Bush's arguments made the wisdom of cutting taxes unfalsifiable. In good times, tax cuts were affordable. In bad times, they were necessary. Whatever happened proved that tax cuts were good policy. When Congress approved the tax cuts, Bush said they would revive the economy. You'd know that the tax cuts had worked, because more people would be working. Three years later, more people aren't working. But in Bush's view, that, too, proves he was right. If more people aren't working, we

Myth of Daily Show viewers vs O'Reilly Factor viewers The folks at Comedy Central were annoyed when Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly kept referring to "The Daily Show" audience as "stoned slackers." So they did a little research. And guess whose audience is more educated? Viewers of Jon Stewart's show are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch "The O'Reilly Factor," according to Nielsen Media Research. O'Reilly's teasing came when Stewart appeared on his show earlier this month. "You know what's really frightening?" O'Reilly said. "You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary, but it's true. You've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night and they can vote." Comedy Central executives realized, and O'Reilly acknowledged, that he was poking fun. But they said they didn't want a misconce

Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power I'm sure that some of my comrades will be offended by an article that dares to connect President Bush with Adolph Hitler. The same people that may be offended, are also dealing with a lot of denial. Let the facts speak for themselves. Here's an excerpt from a recent article from the U.K. Guardian: How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power by Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington The Guardian, Saturday September 25, 2004 George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. His business dealings, which continued until his company's ass

The Top 25 Censored Media Stories EP-RANTS is not intended to be a comprehensive alternative news blog like Daily Kos, Wonkette, MyDD, or any of those other uber-bloggers. EP-RANTS is a merely a labor of love from one man that wants to provide some news and tidbits that you wouldn't normally read about in mainstream media. For those that are interested in reading about the most important under-reported news stories covered in the United States of America, I would like to recommend Project Censored . To quote their mission statement, "The Mission of Project Censored is to educate people about the role of independent journalism in a democratic society and to tell The News That Didn't Make the News and why. Project Censored is a media research group out of Sonoma State University which tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been ov

The George W Bush Public Domain Audio Archive Here’s a cool website I found, thanks to PoliticalWire.com/ . The George W Bush Public Domain Audio Archive is a public domain database of the speeches of George W. Bush. Every phrase from each major speech has been made into an individual audio file, where the filename is, in most cases, the exact text content of the sample. This allows you to search the entire database for individual keywords. In the list of links below, "Individual files" links allow you to download a zip file containing the individual phrases. "Linear recording" links are an mp3 of the entire speech, which may be downloaded or streamed. In some cases,either the linear recording or the individual phrases are not available. The Bots have used this database to create the parody song Fuzzy Math. What you do with the database is up to you. Musicians, linguists, historians, media professionals, students and activists may all find this database

Dishonoring the Veterans My friend Richard Hoefer of GTVO.com just created a web-ad that he wants to share with others. It’s his response to the shameful disrespect shown by delegates to the Republican Convention toward our military men and women. Download the full image at: http://www.on101.com/dishonor2

Arnold’s True Lies At the Republican Convention, Arnold Schwarzenegger made a big speech where he described a childhood in Austria in the prescence of Soviet tanks, and how a debate between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey convinced him that he should be a Republican. “True Lies” indeed. There were no Soviet tanks in the region of Austria that Arnold grew up in. There were no Presidental debates between 1960 and 1976. Read all about it: Historians criticize Schwarzenegger for Austrian history gaffes AP, September 3, 2004 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/09/03/state1046EDT0051.DTL What were Soviet tanks doing in Austria's British-occupied sector? By Timothy Noah, Slate, September 3, 2004 http://slate.msn.com/id/2106283/ Commission on Presidential Debates Official History Page http://www.debates.org/pages/history.html

The Sutton Impact RNC Blog In my mind, one of the best blogs to cover the Republican Party Convention was actually the Sutton Impact comic strip by Ward Sutton in the Village Voice. The Sutton Impact is usually a weekly comic strip, but the convention provided four days of solid material. Check it out: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0435/rncsutton1.php

Bush’s Speech at RNC Convention It looks like George Bush is geting a bit of a bounce from the speech at the Republican Convention. If one wasn’t paying actually attention to what Bush was actually doing in office, then it might be easy to believe that he was doing a decent job. It was a well-written speech, and he touched on many topics that Americans care about. Of course, anyone that hasn’t been sleeping under a rock for the past three years should be able to see that there’s a signficant difference between what George W. Bush says, and what he actually delivers. Mark Evanier, writer of many TV shows and comic books, provided an interesting commentary on the speech at his News-from-Me blog : I thought George W. Bush's acceptance speech was okay but about 48 months late. At times, he sounded like he was pledging to improve on the failed policies of the guy who's been in office the last four years. There was a lot of talk about being resolute, and I've alw

Yet Another Swift Boat Alternative Moe's Swift Tavern Patrons For Truth http://www.nationallampoon.com/nl/08_features/MoesTavern/MoesTavern.asp In other news, it appears that 60 Minutes will run a story about former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes, who is now admitting that he did indeed do some favors for the Bush family by allowing George W. Bush to enter the Texas National Guard, rather than get drafted into Vietnam. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/01/barnes60minutes/index_np.html

Republicans Trivialize Purple Heart Medals At the Republican Convention, one of the hottest accessories at this event is the “Purple Heart band-aid.” These things are designed to trivialize the three Purple Hearts that John Kerry fighting the enemy in Vietnam 30 years ago with some supposedly “self-inflected wounds. Former Senator Bob Dole, who’s been critical of John Kerry in TV talk shows, described how he received his first Purple Heart in his 1988 campaign-trail autobiography: "As we approached the enemy, there was a brief exchange of gunfire. I took a grenade in hand, pulled the pin, and tossed it in the direction of the farmhouse. It wasn't a very good pitch (remember, I was used to catching passes, not throwing them). In the darkness, the grenade must have struck a tree and bounced off. It exploded nearby, sending a sliver of metal into my leg--the sort of injury the Army patched up with Mercurochrome and a Purple Heart." So Bob Dole is another