Thursday, June 29th, 2006
Right Wingers are the ideologial bretheren of the ChiComs. Who knew?
From the Sydney Morning Herald: "Fines to further curb Chinese media"
CHINA’S censors have moved to strengthen their already considerable powers by proposing that media outlets be fined up to 100,000 yuan ($17,000) every time they report on "sudden events" without clearance from government officials.
Under the draft law, officials will be given discretion to handle emergencies or "sudden events", including the right to ban reporting on developing events.
The bill does not define "sudden events", but previously the phrase has included natural disasters, major accidents, social unrest and public health issues.
So why is a clampdown on the media in China apropos to right-wing reaction to the BankSnoop story? The primary right-wing "argument" is that al-Qaeda is too stupid to realize that their financial transactions are being monitored without the aid of the "treasonous librul media" (which apparently includes the Wall Street Journal - no friend of the Democrats). Never mind that Keith Olbermann effectively demolished this "argument" both by playing a montage of Bush declaring that the U.S. government was going after terrorist finances (Crooks and Liars video here), and by pointing out that SWIFT itself was highlighting it’s anti-terrorist finance measures both on its website and in its own magazine - Dialogue.
But does this devastating revelation that in order to call the NYT traitors, they’d have to call The Most Holy George W. Christ a traitor, too, have any effect at all on the Rethuglican Noise Machine? HELL NO!
The National Review has called for the revocation of the Times’ press credentials.
The House is expected to bring to the floor today a resolution condemning the papers that published the story (minus the Wall Street Journal, of course).
And then there’s the self-proclaimed arbiter of unhingedness, Michelle Malkin. In a blog post pimping her op-ed, "OMG T3h NYT is t3h fscking 3vil!!!!!!!!1!!1!!!!!!!!1!!!!", Malkin calls for a boycott of the Times’ sponsors. Color me confused, but doesn’t that sound suspiciously like the law being proposed in China back up at the top of this post? (Mind you, this is the same Michelle Malkin who equates goofballs prancing around in ridiculous outfits with saboteurs.)
I guess that just answered the question of whether or not the righties want all newspapers in the U.S. to become like the Pravda (and in many ways, they already are).
