That Liberal Media

Al Franken reiterates what we've been saying for years, about the callow and lazy nature of the media puds either misinforming us, disinforming us (on the government per diem, of course), or just flat out not doing their fucking jobs because they're too busy Being Seen at all the right parties, sniffing each others' asses.

Right now Coleman is looking into the Oil-for-Food program, which was administered by the Security Council in the U.N., mostly by the U.S. and Britain. That didn’t stop Coleman from demanding Kofi Annan’s resignation without any proof of any wrongdoing on his part. There appears to be anywhere from one to two billion dollars stolen through the program – with most of that going to Saddam. Primarily the U.S. and Britain took it upon themselves to make sure that none of this money went toward making W.M.D.s. They seemed to have done a pretty good job.

Meanwhile, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which we ran, has lost 8.8 billion dollars. By lost, I mean it’s totally unaccounted for. Not only has Congress not "looked into" this $8.8 billion and who might have it now, but it seems that some members are completely unaware that this staggering sum, which was supposed to go toward rebuilding Iraq, is missing. The Sunday morning after the White House Correspondents dinner, I ran into Senator George Allen at a brunch thrown by John McLaughlin and his wife. Allen had never heard of the missing $8.8 billion, or at least that's what he told me. And he's on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Stunned, I went up to Susan Page of USA Today and her husband Carl Lubsdorf of the Dallas Morning News, two veteran Washington political reporters, and told them about Allen’s ignorance of this huge scandal, which has no doubt contributed to hatred for America and the deaths of our troops. There’s less electricity in Iraq now than there was before we invaded Iraq.

Turns out that Page and Lubsdorf had also never heard of the unaccounted-for $8.8 billion. For a moment I thought that maybe I had been imagining things.

Then I spotted my friend Norm Ornstein, scholar from the American Enterprise Institute. "Would you believe it if Norm Ornstein told you about the $8.8 billion?" I asked Susan and Carl.

"Sure."

I brought Norm over, and indeed I had not been imagining things. "It was a huge story," Norm told them.

"Was it in the New York Times?" Carl asked Norm.

"Yes," Norm assured him.

Pathetic. Would it be mean of me to stipulate that useless twits like Carl Lubsdorf are a disgrace to their profession, and need to leave now? This is not a small thing; this is almost $9 billion in taxpayer money, completely disappeared, the biggest heist in history. This story has been circulating the internets for months, and this is the first this useless asshole has heard of it?

Carl, you're so fired, you're fuckin' fired. Clean out your desk, and consider a career where it doesn't matter if you don't show up and do your fucking job.

Christ, with idiots like this supplying Americans with "facts" and "news", it's no wonder we're in the midst of the Third World simmer. Too bad we won't know it's hot until it's too late.