Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Why people like Bush

as president, that is. I, as any reader of my blog or paper knows, find him a horrendous president. And I said so today in conversation with one of my office mates. I enjoy conversing with her, but we disagree strongly in several arenas, George's presidency being one. She said that she thought he was modest, and credited him with preventing further terrorist attacks on American soil. She believes that history will reveal him to be a great president. She also said that she knew of five dirty bombs that had been confiscated and attacks blocked (she's in a military family) since 9-11.

So I looked it up on the web. I found this site, a page on akdart.com, but the listing there seems to include a lot of minority-group individuals who went off the deep end all by their lonesomes, rather than organized terrorist groups. I also found this story on Accuracy in Media, which has a bunch of links to as-labeled conservative organizations and media, but not to liberal ones (thereby shooting their own supposed nonbias in the foot). The stories for this site seemed aimed at only the left's badness and inaccuracy.

The only stories about a "dirty bomb" that I can find are all on Jose Padilla, against whom this charge was dropped, and on the possibility of such a weapon being used. My co-worker suggested that the media or perhaps the government was squelching the story, viewing the American public as children who couldn't handle real news.

I'm suspecting that a lot of this is made up, or hinted at but not actually verified, and that the highly politicized environment is tugging government information and news stories into slanted presentations all over the place. It would be nice to know what the truth actually is. When a website or news organization blasts people for inaccuracy or bias, and disregards what their political or social stance is, THEN I'm more likely to believe them. For example:

FactCheck.org
SourceWatch.org
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

2 comments:

Kris said...

Dear Ms. Editor,
G.W. is da man. I am religious. I like to think between tornaders that the Almighty is watchin' out for us all. I can't fathom that you Alaskana types would be talkin' foul and all about the good man in Warshington doin' good deeds and all.

-K.

JQ said...

i am neither religious nor political. but i am alaskan, and i do think president bush has been unfairly portrayed the past several years. i am inclined to believe that future folk will be less damning of his presidency and that future pop-media will not sufficiently value this disconnect.

keep rocking your blog!