Tom's Thoughts

Name:
Location: Granite Falls, North Carolina, United States

I'm an ordained United Methodist minister no longer pastoring churches, a former media producer with skills ten years out of date, a writer trying to sell my first novel, and a sales associate keeping body and soul together working for the People's Republic of Corporate America. I'm married to the most wonderful woman in the world, who was my best friend for 17 years before we married.

Friday, May 16, 2008

WTF

John McCain has eight houses. Barack Obama pulled himself up by his bootstraps. McCain calls Obama "elitist"?

The media hounded and hounded Theresa Heinz Kerry until she disclosed her income tax records in 2004. They are giving Cindy McCain a pass on that.

Jeremiah Wright says unpopular things about the U. S. government and a big uproar follows. John Hagee says outrageous things about Catholics and Jews and McCain is proud to have his endorsement.

The New York Times reveals that the "Military Experts" that the major media have had on over and over to "comment" on the war were sent out by the Pentagon to tout the company line, and many, if not most, were also on the payroll of defense contractors. Yet not one word, for the most part, has been said about it on any of these media. Of course, GE is one of the biggest defense contractors, as well as the parent company of all the NBC iterations. Go figure.

Cindy McCain is the heiress of a $100 million beer distributorship, yet all the Southern Baptist tee-totalers will get behind her husband.

Anybody want to add any examples?

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Glenn Greenwald Nails It

Glenn Greenwald, author of the new book, Great American Hypoctrites, tells the truth in his blog. He especially gets it right with this, from the other day:

Why the Jeremiah Wright story deserves more attention

I think the most important thing to note about the Jeremiah Wright Story is that we're a Nation plagued by exceedingly few significant problems; blessed with a quite healthy political culture and very trusted political and media institutions; composed of a citizenry that is peacefully content with its Government and secure and confident about their future; endowed with a supremely sturdy economic foundation free of debt and other grave economic afflictions; vested with the ability to command great respect and admiration from the other nations of the world; emancipated from the burdens of war and intractable conflicts which have toppled and destroyed so many other great nations of the past; and, most of all, we're becoming freer and more prosperous by the minute.

Not only that, but we have an extremely impressive, serious and honor-bound ruling imperial class devoted to the preservation of all of these blessings.

So it isn't as though we really have anything else to talk about besides Jeremiah Wright. There are some countries in the world -- probably most -- which have so many big problems that they could ill-afford to devote much time and energy to a matter of this sort. Thankfully, the United States isn't one of them. I believe it's critical that we keep that in mind as we discuss him for the next seven months.



Yeah. Go Glenn.