Yesterday, in this post, I promised to take a look at; "Alterman, the reality of the threat posed by Jose Padilla by someone who really knows, and give you the latest on the indigenous terrorism front. Plus a look at Iraqi violence over the X-mas holiday".

Okay, two out of three done, going for it all now. I was going to give Alterman his own space, as I think what he had to say about Bush, the SCLM(So Called Liberal Media) and the way The Hill is bashing Dean is all very important stuff. Alterman is almost always a good read. Then this morning, I read Krugman. The two pieces seem to complement each other so much so, that I'm going to cover them both here.

Alterman Sets 'em Up

First Alterman's piece in The Nation :

column | Posted December 24, 2003

STOP THE PRESSES by Eric Alterman
Washington Goes to War (with Howard Dean)

Saddam Hussein may be out of his spider hole, but Washington's real enemy is still at large. His name: "Howard Dean"--and nobody in America poses a bigger threat to the city's sense of its own importance. New Republic writer Michelle Cottle returned from maternity leave to find Washington fit for a "Tarantino-style blood bath," with the Democratic front-runner cast as a "paleoliberal...a heartless conservative...too na?ve to beat Bush...too politically cynical to trust...a Stalinist...[and] a neofascist [who] kills babies and drinks their blood."

In its self-appointed role as semiofficial punditocracy politburo, the Washington Post editorial board issued what ABC News's The Note properly termed "a button-popping, eye-bugging anti-Dean editorial" that it undoubtedly hoped would serve as Dean's political death sentence. Expressing editorial shock and awe over Dean's unarguably accurate observation that Saddam Hussein's capture left the United States no safer than before, Post editors termed the candidate's views to be "not just unfounded but ludicrous" and complained of his "departure from the Democratic mainstream."......

Yes, hard to believe, but it's all true. I found the pertinent text and transcripts. EA continues:

..........While the Post editors and Brooks speak for hard-line neocons, Dean receives no less abuse at the hands of many genuine liberals. My colleague at the Center for American Progress, Matthew Miller, attended the speech and found it lacking, not in substance, which he thought properly Clintonian, but in presentation. "When Dean barked it out, it felt smaller and shabbier, as if he were lecturing us on simple facts we ought to have known." Miller worries at length about what it means that Dean accidentally thanked US soldiers for their "services" rather than "service." Jonathan Chait, so obsessed he now operates an anti-Dean blog at The New Republic, also admits that the position that so exercised the Post pooh-bahs is "narrowly true." Chait's problem with Dean, and I quote, is that the Vermont governor "gives off the vibe that he likes to equivocate about the bad guys rather than recognize them for what they are" (what a bummer that Dean dude is...).

ABC's Sam Donaldson made the same silly point, admitting that "in context, you know what he's saying," but when normally perspicacious pundits like Miller and Chait talk in terms of "feelings" and "vibes," something more than policy disputes are at work. Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's walking conflict of interest and barometer of conventional wisdom-- named by the American Conservative Union as one of the most reliable reporters--offers up a clue to the journalistic zeitgeist when he complains of Dean, "Reporters who have spent hours with Dean express surprise that he never asks a single question about them." (Would Kurtz feel better if Dean said, "So, Howie, does CNN pay you more to report on the Post or does the Post pay you more to report on CNN?")

Ha ha. The Beltway Brats™ are 'dissed' because Dean never asks questions about them? How dare he! You can see that the press has already circled the wagons, and Dean is going to get a 'Goring™.'

I don't know who at The Post is the worse partisan hack, Kurtz or the good doctor, Stammer Krauthammer. Alterman again:

Dean has some problems, no doubt, but the pundits hardly seem to notice that George W. ("You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror") Bush cannot pretend to defend deceiving the nation into war anymore. When ABC's Diane Sawyer pressed him in an interview about whether Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction or merely would have liked to have them, Bush replied contemptuously, "What's the difference?" (Try this, Mr. President: "I shot that man, Your Honor, because he pointed a gun at me and was about to pull the trigger," or "I shot that man, Your Honor, because he looked like he was thinking about getting a gun.")

I have seen precious little about Georgie's Excellent PrimeTime Adventure™. Your millionaire pundits aren't going to grill him -- if his handler's would let them -- for fear of upsetting their corporate masters or jeopardizing their ability to get at the front of the class.(ask Helen Thomas about this)

Lots more Alterman at link.

Note: Much of what Alterman says has previously appeared on these very pages.. you don't think that?.....Nah!!!

Krugman Nails a Strike

(replete with unordered list)

New Year's Resolutions

By PAUL KRUGMAN

During the 2000 election, many journalists deluded themselves and their audience into believing that there weren't many policy differences between the major candidates, and focused on personalities (or, rather, perceptions of personalities) instead. This time there can be no illusions: President Bush has turned this country sharply to the right, and this election will determine whether the right's takeover is complete.

But will the coverage of the election reflect its seriousness? Toward that end, I hereby propose some rules for 2004 political reporting.

? Don't talk about clothes. Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean was a momentous event: the man who won the popular vote in 2000 threw his support to a candidate who accuses the president of wrongfully taking the nation to war. So what did some prominent commentators write about? Why, the fact that both men wore blue suits.

This was not, alas, unusual. I don't know why some journalists seem so concerned about politicians' clothes as opposed to, say, their policy proposals. But unless you're a fashion reporter, obsessing about clothes is an insult to your readers' intelligence.

? Actually look at the candidates' policy proposals. One key proposal in the State of the Union address will, we hear, be the creation of new types of tax-exempt savings accounts. The proposal will come wrapped in fine phrases about an "ownership society." But serious journalists should tell us how the plan would work, who would benefit and who would lose.

An early version of the plan was floated almost a year ago, and carefully analyzed in the journal Tax Notes. So there's no excuse for failing to report that the plan would probably reduce, not increase, national savings; that it would have large long-run budget costs; and that its benefits would go mainly to the wealthiest few percent of the population.

? Beware of personal anecdotes. Anecdotes that supposedly reveal a candidate's character are a staple of political reporting, but they should carry warning labels.

For one thing, there are lots of anecdotes, and it's much too easy to report only those that reinforce the reporter's prejudices. The approved story line about Mr. Bush is that he's a bluff, honest, plain-spoken guy, and anecdotes that fit that story get reported. But if the conventional wisdom were instead that he's a phony, a silver-spoon baby who pretends to be a cowboy, journalists would have plenty of material to work with.

If a reporter must use anecdotes, they'd better be true. After the Dean endorsement, innumerable reporters cracked jokes about Al Gore's inventing the Internet. Guys, he never said that: it's a malicious distortion of a true statement, and no self-respecting journalist would repeat it.

? Look at the candidates' records. A close look at Mr. Bush's record as governor would have revealed that, the approved story line notwithstanding, he was no moderate. A close look at Mr. Dean's record in Vermont reveals that, the emerging story line notwithstanding, he is no radical: he was a fiscally conservative leader whose biggest policy achievement ? nearly universal health insurance for children ? was the result of incremental steps.

? Don't fall for political histrionics. I couldn't believe how much ink was spilled after the Gore-Dean event over Joe Lieberman's hurt feelings. Folks, we're talking about war, peace and the future of U.S. democracy ? not about who takes whom to the prom.

Political operatives have become experts at manufacturing the appearance of outrage. In the last few weeks the usual suspects have been trying to paint Howard Dean's obviously heartfelt comments about his brother's death in Laos as some sort of insult to the military. We owe it to our readers not to fall for these tricks.

? It's not about you. We learn from The Washington Post that reporters covering Mr. Dean are surprised ? and, it's implied, miffed ? that "he never asks a single question about them." The mind reels.

I don't really expect my journalistic colleagues to follow these rules. No doubt I myself, in moments of weakness, will break one or more of them. But history will not forgive us if we allow laziness and personal pettiness to shape this crucial election.

There you have it. Campaign 2K4 may turn out to be something very different than what these two men see. There are a lot of things that could cause Bush to go down eith that sinking ship that is Iraq. There is also the 9/11 commission, Cheney's Energy Policy debacle and Valerie Plame. You knw whay our liberal media hasn't pressed Bush on these issues. It is beacause the SCLM is history........A creature that once lived and was never the evil force that its many detractors have made it out to be.