Alterman: What kind of society kills all these people and doesn't care?

[BurtWorm]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-alterman/655000-dead-reporting-t_b_32041.html

I recall seeing on The Daily Show that when Bush got done playing around with Suzanne Malveaux and her fashion statement that day, she asked him about the <Lancet> study. He replied that "their methodology has been pretty well discredited." This is a bald-faced lie, of course. But here's my question. Were there any follow-ups? Or was the purpose of the question merely to get the president on the record without holding him responsible for anything at all, even the unnecessary murder of hundreds of thousands of people? What the hell kind of society kills all these people and cannot be bothered to care? Cannot be bothered to count them and when someone does, risking their lives in the process, lies to discredit them -- and no one cares about that either?

...

[Drum]

1. Indeed!

Our answers to that, and the answers of our leadership, have never been more important!

[rodeodance]

2. the public debate shifted to how many died (killing off the caring bit)

[shance]

3. Sorry Eric - its not our society that's killing them its YOUR media and

the Bush Administration that has exploited Americans and censored us from truthful information.

[BurtWorm]

12. And yet, how deeply has it registered that "our" war has killed that many

Iraqis? Several states have populations in the range of 400,000 to 900,000. Do Americans understand that a population possibly equal to North Dakota's or Vermont's has been killed since the US invaded Iraq? I don't think so. The government and media are working together to suppress that information.

[EFerrari]

25. That reporter invited Bush to dismiss the study.

She said, "And do you find it credible?"

Whores.

[BurtWorm]

26. As if Bush has the credibility to judge anyone else's credibility!

:eyes:

[babylonsister]

4. Recommend. Point well taken. nt

[spanone]

5. Since he dismissed it with a wave of his presidential hand, the media..

backed off. That's our uninquisitive media. God forbid they research the research. Makes me ILL.

[BootinUp]

6. Good stuff. Wish he was still on MSNBC

[indepat]

7. A RW fascist society

[ShortnFiery]

8. They Certainly Can't Identify with those of us FREAKS ...

who ADORE The "Long-Haired Radical Socialist Jew," Our Lord (my context), Jesus Christ? :shrug:



Long-haired Radical Socialist Jew

by Hugh Blumenthal
http://home.earthlink.net/~h2jukebox/home.html

Well Jesus was a homeless lad
With an unwed mother and an absent dad
And I really don't think he would have gotten that far
If Newt, Pat and Jesse had followed that star

Refrain: So let's all sing out praises to
That long-haired radical socialist Jew

When Jesus taught the people he
Would never charge a tuition fee
He just took some fishes and some bread
And made up free school lunches instead
So let's all sing out praises to....

He healed the blind and made them see
He brought the lame folks to their feet
Rich and poor, any time, anywhere
Just pioneering that free health care

So let's all sing out praises to....

Jesus hung with a low-life crowd
But those working stiffs sure did him proud
Some were murderers, thieves and whores
But at least they didn't do it as legislators :thumbsup:
So let's all sing out praises to....

Jesus lived in troubled times
the religious right was on the rise
Oh what could have saved him from his terrible fate?
Separation of church and state.:applause:

So let's all sing out praises to....

Sometimes I fall into deep despair
When I hear those hypocrites on the air
But every Sunday
gives me hope
When pastor, deacon, priest, and pope
Are all singing out their praises to
Some long-haired radical socialist Jew.
They're singing out their praises to..oooo..oooo..Some long-haired radical socialist Jew.

[Junkdrawer]

9. Deny, Deny, Deny….

I wrote this the day the study was announced:

In the 60’s, there was a vignette comedy called “A Guide for the Married Man”. In one of the funniest scenes, Joey Bishop is caught in bed with another woman by his wife -- whereupon he calmly puts on his clothes, straightens up the room, and quietly responds to his wife's outrage by saying "What bed? What girl?" In the end, his defeated wife simply asks, “What would you like for dinner, dear?”

And so today we learn that the best medical/statistical minds available put the Iraqi death toll at between 400,000 and 700,000. Bush’s response? "Ridiculous"

And as long as that kind of non-answer is respected by the media, there is no scandal, no smoking gun that will ever bring this obscenity to an end. They will simply lie and the media will dutifully report it as one side of a partisan debate.

So, what would you like for dinner, dear?

[malaise]

10. Great read

Kick to expose the war criminals.

[leftofthedial]

11. the conservative movement over the last generation

has systematically eliminated morality (except as it applies to money and property rights) and caring out of our culture.

we are supposed to "win" and we "win" by making someone else "lose," no matter how. We vote each other off the island. Once someone "loses," they don't even register anymore.

besides, we're all busy playing our parts in the "big game" farce that is American politics.

[WinkyDink]

13. She should have then asked, "What methodology do YOU use, Sir?"

Yeah, Chimpy would have flipped out over that one.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Greeby]

15. When the media act as a propaganda arm for the psychopaths

who ordered the killing, how are the American people supposed to know about it? Let alone care :shrug:

[Tom Joad]

16. We kill over half a million people in the ME, and then the main issue

of the congressional campaign is who did what to teenage pages?

[Az_lefty]

17. a society led by madmen...

[girl gone mad]

18. And then calls itself the "culture of life"...

puts more value on cells in a petri dish than living, breathing human beings and pretends to have superior moral values because of it..

[sweetheart]

19. an evil empire...

..and we all know what happens to those.

[cassiepriam]

20. We are a society of monsters, a nation of sociopaths.

We look like normal human beings, eating a burger,
taking our kids to soccer. But as a nation we have no soul.

The fact we are killing, raping, torturing hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children means nothing to us. Nothing at all.

The price of gas is our most pressing issue.

We have lost our way. Karma time will not be kind to us,
nor should it be.

[tblue]

21. ONE death would've been too many, IMHO

[LibDemAlways]

27. A couple of years ago Lancet released a similar study

indicating a hundred thousand Iraqis had died. I cited that statistic to a repuke acquaintance who promptly dismissed it as "propaganda" and said the death total was probably closer to "a few thousand." My reponse to that was "Isn't that a few thousand too many? Why are any deaths acceptable over there?" He had no comeback. Just sat there looking like a dumbass.

[Octafish]

22. Outstanding article!

Thank you, BurtWorm, for these mighty words, indeed.

What the hell kind of society kills all these people and cannot be bothered to care? Cannot be bothered to count them and when someone does, risking their lives in the process, lies to discredit them -- and no one cares about that either?

Each human life has infinite value.

Alterman's is an excellent question: What kind of people have we become when the loss of hundreds of thousands of human beings is shrugged off as part of daily life?

[BurtWorm]

23. Thank you, Octafish.

:toast:

And you're welcome.

[NMMNG]

24. Us vs. Them

"WE" are superior for various reasons (Christian, White, American, Modern, etc.)

"THEY" are inferior for various reasons (Muslim, Non-White, Middle-Eastern, "Backward", etc.)

Because the powers that be and others in this nation deem "THEM" inferior and use mental sleight of hand to make them less-than-human, it's ok to kill them en-masse. 3000 of our deaths are an unforgivable tragedy perpetrated by terrorists. 600,000+ of theirs are "collateral damage".

[Hissyspit]

28. .