Murdoch Is Teh Evil

Today's Murdoch Media Wanker Of The Day is Greg Sheridan:

Of course, the very use of the term neo-conservative normally indicates a commentator is about to speak dishonestly. Often enough the term neo-con has betrayed a kind of low-wattage anti-Semitism with, as one wag put it, con standing for conservative and neo standing for Jewish.

If we had an Australian version of Media Matters, somebody would go back and look at all the times Sheridan and his War Criminals friends have used the term "neo-conservative". And somebody might note the original dishonest commentators:

The term neoconservative was originally used as a criticism against liberals who had "moved to the right"... The first major neoconservative to embrace the term was Irving Kristol, in his 1979 article "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed 'Neoconservative.'"

I know, I am shooting fish in a barrel here. But why isn't anybody else doing it? Has criticising the Murdoch media become as taboo as criticising Israel?

I mean, here we have the top political editor of possibly Australia's most influential newspaper spouting totally preposterous nonsense, such as that the USA responded to the attacks of 9-11 by "by tripling its overseas aid budget" and keeping its military budget "at normal peacetime proportions of its national wealth". Oh really?

Even if your definition of "US military budget" does not include Star Wars, Veterans Affairs, maintenance of nukes, or payments to mercenaries like Blackwater, and even if you redefine US military and economic support for puppet governments as "overseas aid", you still cannot make such an argument with a straight face. The only way you can do it is if - like the Bush/Cheney administration - you exempt the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (funded through supplementary spending bills outside the Federal Budget). And even then, you still need to ignore things like the black budget and military-related spending by the CIA, the FBI and other agencies.

In short, it is totally misleading B.S. So why is the senior political editor of a major Australian newspaper peddling such propaganda?

More importantly, why is nobody calling him on it?

PS: You won't find any anti-Semites at News Ltd! Today's O.O even pimps the new advertising campaign by Frank Lowy's Westfield shopping centers, complete with helpful westfield.com.au website links. Did I mention that Frank Lowy is a "prominent Jewish Australian businessman"?

SIBEL!!!

From her latest radio chat, which includes some very interesting talk about the Swiss government destroying 30,000 pages of evidence as a favour to the Bush cabal:

"I just read the Senate Intelligence Report on Iraq, and within this report they are talking about certain individual's roles, and even people who investigated this case. They are referring to the inspector general within the Department of Defense. The chief inspector general who was in charge of these investigations, Joseph Schmitz, he resigned in 2005 and two months later he became the C.O.O. of Blackwater, and we still have these so-called investigations on Blackwater...

And this man was in charge of investigating my case, because my case also involved Major Douglas Dickerson, who happens to be right now Lt. Colonel Douglas Dickerson, and he's the person who shut down that investigation in 2003-2004. So now this man gets out of the Pentagon, doesn't even wait for a year or two – 2 months later he's hired by Blackwater.

So what I'm trying to say here is that you have this root problem in our country, you have this pattern, so when you say "Nothing happens to Marc Grossman," I'm telling you that these people are untouchable. They are the untouchables because you see this with many, many people, and it's not raising any flags, the mainstream media is not reporting on it, the congress is not doing anything about it, so what does Marc Grossman have to worry about? They have really thick skin, they are really, really bold about their moves, because they are saying "I'm doing all this despite all this stuff out there. Come and touch me. Catch me if you can." And there is no one out there for us to go and ask to catch these guys.

And anyone who really thinks Obama is going to make a big difference to this should hark Luke Ryland's words on the Democrats' failure to keep their pre-2006 promises:

"All the promises that they gave, none of them were fulfilled. And I am not a diplomatic person, and one of the things that I say today when I talk with people is "Well, listen, they might look like champions, but all we have gotten with people like Chairman Waxman, and Chairman Conyers is all barking, okay?" They come out whenever any case becomes sexy and grabs the headlines, and they just bark, and they say "We want to hold hearings, we want to subpoena people" As soon as the issue dies down in the media, and it dies down very quickly as you know, they just go away, they don't do anything."

HADITHA!!!!

And then there was one:

Folsom's decision means that, out of eight Marines originally charged in December 2006, six have won dismissals of their charges and one has been cleared at court martial.

The accused ringleader, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, still faces court martial. The proceedings against him, however, have been put on hold pending the appeal of a pretrial ruling.

Next time anyone says anything to you about US military justice, spit on the ground in front of them and say "Haditha."

Soldiers are nothing but taxpayer-funded murderers. Here's further proof, as if it was needed.

UPDATE: Here's a scathing April 2007 report from a US Army Major General.

Here's a lengthy Vanity Fair article on the Haditha massacre.

Here's a comparison with My Lai.

Here's Chris Floyd's take: the fish has rotted from the head.

Here's what I said at the time:

After Haditha, How Can You Believe The US Military Or The Pentagon? After Haditha, How Can You Blame Iraqis For Supporting The "Insurgency"? And if you cannot blame Iraqis for supporting the removal of these brutal, uncaring foreign soldiers, how can you possibly support the ongoing occupation of their country? If the resistance is justified, then the occupation is not.

Here's how Newsweek brushed the massacre off.

Predictably, Bush's media stooges are today salivating with joy at this latest news about the "so-called Haditha massacre". Michelle Malkin, for example:

Haditha prosecution goes 0-7. But you won't see that headline in the same Armageddon-sized font The New York Times used repeatedly when the story first broke.

The Times, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa, and the rest of the anti-war drum-pounders who fueled the smear campaign against the troops two years ago should hang their hands in shame. They won't, of course. Perpetuating the "cold-blooded Marines" narrative means never having to say you're sorry...

Relatives of the Haditha Marines have called for Congress to censure Murtha, who cuts and runs to the nearest elevator when questioned about the Haditha dismissals.

He and the Haditha smear merchants have skated while the men and their families suffered global whippings on the airwaves and eternal demonization in print.

Whose "culture of impunity"?

But here's what Malkin conveniently fails to mention:

The charges against Mr Chessani were thrown out after the judge ruled that a four-star general who oversaw the investigation was improperly influenced by an investigator who later became his adviser. The judge has indicated that prosecutors can refile the case, but they did not immediately announce an intention to do so.

In other words, this particular case collapsed and was dismissed "without prejudice". Now, that is probably just another clever trick the US Army is using to ensure the cover-up continues. But it would be nice to imagine we might one day see a US media "without prejudice".

That day, like justice for the victims of Haditha, still seems a very long way off.

A Product Of Society

This is the world we live in.

On the one hand, insane killers who do things like that to children. On the other, militant governments who execute them to appease the bloodlust of the sick fools who go out and buy the comics and movies and games which inspire such madness.

Meanwhile, when given the chance, we express our distrust of our leaders and they tell us we are wrong.

Taking The Piss

OK, now I get it. Janet A. Hole is just a clever parody of a rightwing psycho bitch. Read as satire, it's quite brilliant.

I mean, sure, a paid rightwing media propagandist might dare to equate Mark Steyn's legal difficulties over racist remarks with the continued detention of Gitmo inmates. That's pretty out there, but we are used to it by now. Only a true satirical genius, however, would dare suggest that Steyn's suffering EXCEEDS that of the cursed Islamofascists taking free extended holidays on the beach in Cuba.

"You could not make this stuff up if you tried."

Oh yes you could.

"The balance sheet on the West's commitment to free speech could do with a positive entry. But don't count on it. Unless, that is, those who so vocally defend the rights of suspected terrorists start defending, with equal enthusiasm, the rights of those with whom they disagree."

Translation for Orwellian gobbledy-gook:

"BWWWAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Why won't the public keep eating the crap that comes out of my stoopid a***hole forever? I want my Johnny back! BWWWWAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"

If only Rupert would put the poor lady out of her misery. But what would Ms. J do for an honest living? Click on my new poll or leave your own comments here.

UPDATE: More on this at Public Polity.

When Was Your Last Pay Rise, Daddy?

Mike Whitney says the big investment banks are now playing the global commodities markets, creating new "bubbles" with horrific consequences:

Supply and demand don't explain the sudden doubling and sometimes tripling of grain and oil prices on the futures market. The flagging dollar and lack of oversight have unleashed speculative forces which are out of control leading to food riots, massive protests and starvation. The market cannot self-correct as long as interest rates on the world's reserve currency are kept artificially low. The global financial crisis radiates from Washington, which is where the solution lies.

But the real problem goes beyond Wall Street's exotic debt-instruments or the Federal Reserves low interest funny-money. Overcapacity is the result of slacking demand which naturally arises when workers wages stagnate as they have for the last 30 years. When that happens, the only way the economy can grow is by easing lending standards and expanding credit. That's why Greenspan and his fellows were so enthusiastic about all the complex derivatives and shaky subprime mortgages; it all fit with their class-based view that wages must remain low (to fight inflation) while debt is expanded ad infinitum. This is the blueprint for the New Economy that Maestro touted...

There is no way to escape the day of reckoning now facing the financial system; the hundreds of bank failures, the corporate defaults, the meltdown in real estate, the massive loss of jobs, the dreary contraction of credit, the tumbling stock market, and the blow to our national confidence. But there is a way to rebuild, to reassert control over our own currency; to "even the playing field" and recommit to a strong middle class; to smash the system that diverts the greatest portion of the nation's wealth to a handful of unelected oligarchs whose main objectives are to expand their own personal power and subvert the democratic process. The existing system cannot meet the challenges of the new century. It's gotta go.

PBS journalist Bill Moyers summed it up like this at a recent Media conference in Chicago:

"Capitalism breeds great inequality that is destructive, unless tempered by an intuition for equality, which is the heart of democracy. When the state becomes the guardian of power and privilege to the neglect of justice for the people who have neither power nor privilege, you can no longer claim to have a representative government."

You tell 'em, Bill.

You tell 'em, Mike. They are not listening, of course, but tell 'em anyway.

The C Word

Foul language. Just imagine if Bill Clinton or Obama had said it instead of McCain.

Look Who's Coming To Dinner At No. 10

When George Bush has dinner in London with Gordon Brown, why does Rupert Murdoch get invited?

Don't ask about the "mini-faculty of historians" either.

We Are All Going To Die

The earth is hurtling towards a cliff at full speed and nobody has any confidence in the drivers.

Even More Pilger

If you don't heart unchecked corporate globalisation, does that mean you love Robert Mugabe? A hero of the anti-apartheid movement asks Pilger:

“How are we going to stop this seemingly irrevocable ‘progress’ of South Africa to a totalitarian one-party state?”

Pilger cites the ANC's purchase of 24 Hawk fighter jets at £17m each, “by far the most expensive option”, according to a House of Commons report. Then he looks at Britain’s Department for International Development:

Although required by law not to spend money other than on poverty reduction, DfID is, in reality, a privatising agency that greases the way for multinationals to take over public services. In 2004, the department paid the Adam Smith Institute, an extreme right-wing think tank, £6.3m for plans to “reform” the “public sector” in South Africa, promoting “business-to-business” links between British and South African companies whose singular interest is profit.

Once the wretched Robert Mugabe is gone, Zimbabwe will get the same treatment. Offering a billion pounds’ worth of “aid”, the British government will lead the return of capital, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to restore what was, long before Mugabe’s wrecking, one of the most exploited and unequal societies in Africa.

Western hypocrisy explains why Mugabe can still get a standing ovation from impoverished black Africans.

This was not so much an endorsement of his despotism as a reminder that most South Africans had not forgotten one of the ANC’s “unbreakable promises” – that almost a third of arable land would be redistributed by 2000. Today the figure is less than 4 per cent.

More Pilger

From Australia's Hidden Empire:

Throughout Aboriginal Australia, epidemics of gastroenteritis and rheumatic fever are as common as they were in the slums of 19th-century England. Aboriginal health, says the World Health Organisation, lags almost a hundred years behind that of white Australia. This is the only developed nation on a United Nations “shame list” of countries that have not eradicated trachoma, an entirely preventable disease that blinds Aboriginal children. Sri Lanka has beaten the disease, but not rich Australia. On 25 February, a coroner’s inquiry into the deaths in outback towns of 22 Aboriginal people, some of whom had hanged themselves, found they were trying to escape their “appalling lives”.

Most white Australians rarely see this third world in their own country. What they call here “public intellectuals” prefer to argue over whether the past happened, and to blame its horrors on the present-day victims. Their mantra that Aboriginal infrastructure and welfare spending provide “a black hole for public money” is racist, false and craven. Hundreds of millions of dollars that Australian governments claim they spend are never spent, or end up in projects for white people. It is estimated that the legal action mounted by white interests, including federal and state governments, contesting Aboriginal native title claims alone covers several billion dollars.

This is an interesting article from Pilger, covering a swathe of recent Australian history. He notes that child malnutrition in resource-rich East Timor corresponds to that of Aboriginal children in “failed” communities, where mining companies are (coincidentally?) also making billions in profits.

Grow Up

What if an Obama presidency changes nothing? Here's John Pilger:

It is time the wishful-thinkers grew up politically and debated the world of great power as it is, not as they hope it will be. Like all serious presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and an expansionist... The "truly exciting and historic moment in US history" will only occur when the game itself is challenged.

Speaking of Pilger, this article about his return to his childhood roots in Bondi rings all kinds of bells for me, because I grew up in the same area about 20 years later.

I found a stretch of the tramline and stared at it as you do at an archaeological dig. I lost it in the climb up to Denham Street and the Royal, where the trams had disgorged drinkers for the Six O’Clock Swill (the pubs closed at six). As a newspaper-boy, I was allowed into pubs. My mother, being a woman, was barred, apart from the ladies-only room in the back. On Saturdays, my father would bring her out a shandy or, if they had things to discuss, a DA (dinner ale).

I climbed that same hill, up past Denham Street to Waverley Oval, many a time. I even had a paper run for a while (just a week, actually: I never could get out of bed that early as a kid). And Pilger's old home on Moore Street would have been only a few hundred meters from the big red flats on Birrell Street where my family lived.

Past where the art-deco picture house used to be, there was Moore Street. It was silent now, a former trench of domestic warfare, with bodies and bottles thudding against thin walls, and opaque-eyed men back from the war against the Japanese, their ribcages protruding, and sorrowful women in aprons. The dazzling green of the South Pacific was unchanged, though no longer framed between smoking chimneys and sturdy dunnies.

I stood outside the tiny, dark house in Moore Street where I grew up. The corrugated-iron roof had gone, otherwise little had changed; even the old wooden box containing the gas meter, where I liked to sit waiting for people to come home, was there. I stared at it, and at the same window frames, and the same peeling window ledges, and at the front door; and I failed to find the courage to knock on it.

Pariah Status

Here's what happened to me at Larvatus Prodeo today. An LP member called Phil launched "a fun but serious weekly feature" where the LP readership would be able to "crowdsource helpful unasked questions on the issues of the day". Phil said:

"I’m interested in seeing where everyone takes this."

I thought it was a great idea, and posted a few comments. I was fully embracing the concept and thought my comments might get things moving. For example:

Why does Miranda Devine have a column in the Fairfax media? Has it got anything to do with the fact that her father Frank Devine was a journalist who knew a lot about corrupt police officers and politicians?

Why does Gerard Henderson have a column in the Fairfax media? Has it got anything to do with his position at a prominent Australian rightwing thinktank? Who funds that thinktank anyway?

Why is Greg Sheridan still the political editor of Rupert Murdoch’s flagship newspaper in Australia? Has it got anything to do with his close contacts with rightwing politicians around the globe, or vice versa?

But then I stepped into a taboo zone. Or maybe two taboo zones. The comment I wrote has been deleted in its entirety, unfortunately, but it was something like this:

Given that the attacks of 9-11 "changed everything" and ushered in huge changes in civil rights, social, military, espionage, legislative and judicial spheres, why did the Bush administration strongly oppose the setting up of an independent enquiry into the attacks? Why did Bush refuse to appear in front of the commission without VP Dick Cheney beside him? Why did Condoleeza Rice hide and then repeatedly deny her own culpability in not foreseeing the attacks? Given that professional engineers have raised serious doubts about the way the towers collapsed, why has the US government not launched further enquiries? Has there ever been any official investigation into the reported decision to "pull" Building 7?

John Howard was in the USA on the day before the attacks, meeting with Rupert Murdoch and George W. Bush. It is a coincidence that his words to the press on the day after the attack were almost perfectly in synch with the US neocon agenda:

"In many respects, yesterday marked the end of an era of a degree of innocence following the end of the Cold War and a decade in which it seemed as though things which posed a continuous threat were behind us. But regrettably we now face a possibility of a period in which the threat of terrorism will be with us in the way the threat of a nuclear war was around for so long before the end of the Cold War. I think it is as bad as that and I don’t think any of us should pretend otherwise.“

Etcetera, etcetera. But here's the bit that got me into trouble:

Is it just a coincidence that prominent Jewish Australian businessman Frank Lowy took out commercial leases on the WTC retail area shortly before the attacks? Is it a coincidence that Frank Lowy, now the head of Soccer Australia, has signed over to Rupert Murdoch's FOX TV exclusive broadcast rights to The Beautiful Game?

(For the record, I am not the only soccer fan who sees that deal in a very negative light - check the comments here).

It wasn't long before Phil and regular LP administrator Kim were on my case. Then someone called Klaus K stepped in:

"I’m scanning through the thread, and suddenly there are references to the ‘international Jewish conspiracy’. What is going on here?"

It took Kim a few minutes to even work out what Klaus K was talking about, but eventually she got it.

"If you want to do conspiracy theory by insinuation based on someone being Jewish, then I suggest you take it elsewhere Gandhi."

Now, I can understand LP's caution here. And not just because Frank Lowy is Australia's second richest man. But I am just asking an honest question here, something that's been on my mind for some time, and I don't think the question itself deserves to be so quickly dismissed.

Lowy owns Westfield, the shopping mall giants. This is from his Wikipedia entry:

"In May 2001, Westfield paid $US127 million for a 99-year lease on the retail area beneath the New York World Trade Center. In September 2003 it received $US17.3 million as a party in the insurance claim following the terrorist attack on the twin towers."

Actually, the Herald article from which that info comes suggests that the $US17.3 million may not be the entire insurance payout, and that Westfield was getting out of the WTC site thereafter.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey handed over control of the World Trade Center to Lowy and another Jewish businessman, Larry Silverstein, less than two months before the attacks.

Silverstein and Lowy are good friends, and Silverstein has been a director of Lowy's Westfield America since May 1997. Silverstein is connected to the Zionist elite in Israel in numerous ways, most notably via his close association and friendship with no less than three former Israeli prime ministers, namely Benjamin Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak. Silverstein is especially close to Benjamin Netanyahu who was in New York on the morning of 9/11...

Now maybe that would not all be so suspicious except for the fact that so many of the US neoconservatives just happen to be Jewish, the neoconservative agenda just happens to massively favour Israel, there are huge links between the neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby in Washington, and the FBI has even convicted several known Israeli spies for their work in this space. Google the name Larry Franklin for more info.

Phil opened the thread to questions and I am just asking the question. It's not like Lowy has never been associated with a major scandal:

"In May 2007 it was reported that Lowy faced Israeli police investigation over a corruption scandal involving Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, however, he was relieved of all charges following an investigation and all charges were dropped."

But that's just the top of the story when it comes to Frank Lowy and 9-11. Anyone who thinks I am being anti-Semitic should read this and this, then get back to me with any further comments.

For the record, LP deleted my further comments seeking to explain myself on this issue. The irony is that this LP thread was supposedly a discussion of the mainstream media's failure to focus on the important but ignored angles of major stories. I have asked Mark Bahnisch to respond.

UPDATE: In retrospect, I should not have called Lowy a "prominent Jewish Australian businessman". I should have just said "prominent Australian businessman". Of course, being Jewish is not the real issue here - it is being a Zionist.

I was being lazy. But if I had said "prominent elderly Australian businessman", would readers jump to the conclusion that Lowy's age was important to the story? If I had been talking about a "prominent Catholic Australian businessman" in the context of a story where terrorists attacked the Vatican, would my comments still have been deleted? Isn't it weird how you cannot even mention the word "Jewish" (unless, of course, you are known to be a Jew yourself).

In fact, I cannot remember but it's quite possible that I just cut-and-pasted the entire text "prominent Jewish Australian businessman" from some story about Lowy. Whenever you read a positive story about him, the fact that he is Jewish is always prominently displayed. Funny that.

Movers And Shakers

Ross Gittins predicts a protracted recession in Australia. That's why they pay him the big bucks, you know.

Meanwhile a NYT story becomes the trigger for dismissal of Yahoo's CEO, who dared to defy Microsoft. Wapo puts in another bullet.

From what we hear from multiple sources close to Yahoo, this article may be the final straw - whether the board backs Yang or not, this is just too much negative press for the company to overcome. A fresh start is now a necessity for moving forward.

Yang will step down, our sources say. It may be next week or it may be next month, but it's going to happen.

Elsewhere, somebody finally calls bullshit on the Tim Russert was a patriot and a hero nonsense:

Even leaving aside the sharp contradiction between "free flow of information" and the Russert standard of "everything is presumed to be off the record," what sacrifice has Russert made? It's estimated that his annual salary was $5 million plus.

Divided We Fall

The end of the GOP is nigh:

The poll, conducted in the wake of Obama's clinching the nomination and including sampling dates from before Hillary Clinton's final concession, found that 68% of Democratic primary voters were satisfied with Obama as the nominee, with 30% preferring someone else.

By contrast, only 52% of Republican primary voters were satisfied with John McCain as their nominee, with 45% preferring someone else. And this is despite the fact that McCain sewed up his nomination months ago, while Democratic emotions were still raw when this poll was conducted.

It Depends What Your Definition Of "Permanent Military Bases" Is

Surprise:

Webb then observed, "It doesn't really mean anything," to which Long replied, "Yes, senator, you're right. It doesn't." She added that "most lawyers... would say that the word 'permanent' probably refers more to the state of mind contemplated by the use of the term."

... As Iraqi sources have now revealed to Western reporters, however, the US has proposed access to dozens of military bases without a time limit that would be technically Iraqi bases but which would actually be fully under US control.

The ploy of turning over legal control of US bases to a client regime is one that US administrations had used on at least two previous occasions to get around legal/political problems associated with continuation of US base rights.

In the 1973 Paris peace agreement that ended the Vietnam War, the US pledged to dismantle all of its military bases in South Vietnam within 60 days. But it had already secretly transferred the deeds to the bases and equipment to the South Vietnamese government and then had them "loaned back" to the United States. US officials then claimed that there were no US bases to dismantle.

THIS IS A WAR CRIME

From Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail:

Babies born in Fallujah are showing illnesses and deformities on a scale never seen before, doctors and residents say.

The new cases, and the number of deaths among children, have risen after "special weaponry" was used in the two massive bombing campaigns in Fallujah in 2004.

After denying it at first, the Pentagon admitted in November 2005 that white phosphorous, a restricted incendiary weapon, was used a year earlier in Fallujah.

In addition, depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were used heavily in Fallujah. The Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tons of DU in Iraq thus far.

Who's To Blame?

Guess who said this:

The global conscience is not asleep, but after the turbulence of recent years, it is profoundly confused. Some governments will oppose any exceptions to sovereignty because they fear criticism of their own policies. Others will defend the sanctity of sovereignty until they again have confidence in the judgment of those proposing exceptions.

At the heart of the debate is the question of what the international system is. Is it just a collection of legal nuts and bolts cobbled together by governments to protect governments? Or is it a living framework of rules intended to make the world a more humane place?

The author is Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State, who says the invasion of Iraq "generated a negative reaction that has weakened support for cross-border interventions even for worthy purposes".

Open For Comment

LP now has an open thread going and Possum has set up The Possum Box.

Obama's Run Will Show Up US Racists

One of the things you notice about racists is that they often preface their racist remarks with disclaimers like, "I'm not racist, but..."

I think part of the reason is that, deep in their hearts, they really don't think they are racists. They think they are just realistic, and that there are genuine differences among racial groups, and thus they let their ingrained stereotypes inform their world-view without further contemplation.

So it's interesting to see someone on FOX NEWS calling Michelle Obama her husband's "baby mama". That's after another commentator recently lost her job after talking about Barack and Michelle's "terrorist fist jab".

Crazy conspiracy theorists (not me!) will see this as part of a broader campaign to slander Obama with racial slurs. But I think these are just incidents where racists have inadvertently been exposed by their own comments, and I think we will see a lot more of it over the next five months. I don't think the overall effect is going to be good for McCain's campaign - he will still lose in an historic landslide. But perhaps exposing this mindset for what it is will be good for the USA.

NB: In this "babby momma" instance, of course, there was a whole studio of racists conspiring to come up with what they consider entertainment: the tag was plastered across the screen. The irony is that those responsible were probably all seeking to advance their careers at News Ltd by catching Rupert's attention with such racist drivel, but when stories like this generate massive negative feedback, Murdoch often weighs up the damage and steps in to terminate someone's career instead.

Maybe it's time he made a public statement denouncing racism in the upcoming campaign? Or at least an internal memo. Unless he's a racist Zionist warmongering son of a bitch himself.