Is the filter on?
As I planned a menu, this morning, involving Turkey and white bean chili with white corn spoon bread courtesy of recipes in Martha Stewart’s fantastic new Everyday Food magazine, I was drawn to a familiar voice leaking from the toob.
The President.

Dwarfed under a gigantic Mussolini-esque flag and flattened by the cheesy one camera live shot that’s become standard fare for the on-the-cheap media conglomerates, the Blaminator met the Governator by trading gay quips about biceps and the inability to speak English before proving himself with a lackluster repetition of Carl’s shopworn Trifecta catchphrases.
Is the dreaded filter in place as the President’s unimpeded words flow, as they do most every weekday afternoon, from his lips through mics, cameras and cable systems to my ideologically obstructed ears?
If this filter is filtering I can’t hear the skimmer.
If the filter is filtering maybe it kicks subtly in during the endless daily replays of the President’s remarks or in the overabundant commentary of his surrogates or pet pundits?
Perhaps, like the boy who failed to see the Emperor’s new clothes, it is this evil filter that forces my mind to remember this President’s words and to compare them over time?
Quick, before I go all THX-1138, the soothing balm of happy talk from a sexualized array of young surgically prothagnatious cable news anchors!
Take careful notes, my dear Governator grasshopper, and study the Upsidedownist Master who spearheaded the Hollywood concept of multiple takes in the public arena.
Up is up only when appropriate to the situation, if live on television and until fixers can spin the opposite.
Print doesn’t matter.

And speaking of that, the Washington Post, this morning, reports, or filters as the President might say, the findings of a Stars and Stripes survey:

A broad survey of U.S. troops in Iraq by a Pentagon-funded newspaper found that half of those questioned described their unit's morale as low and their training as insufficient, and said they do not plan to reenlist…Fully 40 percent said the jobs they were doing had little or nothing to do with their training…The findings, drawn from 1,935 questionnaires presented to U.S. service members throughout Iraq, conflict with statements by military commanders and Bush administration officials that portray the deployed troops as high-spirited and generally well-prepared…Stars and Stripes said yesterday that it undertook the survey in August after receiving scores of letters from troops who were upset with one aspect or another of the Iraq operation.


Filtered completely off the front pages and Kobie'd from cable is news of the 911 Commission’s first subpoena to the FAA following the Commission’s discovery that a wide range of tape and documents highly material to our inquiry were withheld by the agency.
As the New York Times reports:

In a statement, the 10-member commission said…"It is clear that the F.A.A.'s delay has significantly impeded the progress of our investigation”… the panel and its staff were particularly alarmed by the discovery that they had not been provided with detailed transcripts and other information about communications on Sept. 11 between the F.A.A. and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, the unit of the Pentagon that is responsible for defending American air space…"I am deeply concerned to learn that the F.A.A. has apparently both misled and failed to adequately respond to the 9/11 commission's request for documents," said Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was a primary sponsor of the bill creating the commission last year.

Photos: AFP, Reuters
- posted by Sean @ 3:04 PM