Dan Froomkin and Glenn Greenwald

I want to use this space today to promote two of the best commentators on the internet news scene. Both of these guys should by daily reading for anyone interested in what is going on in this country today, particularly with reference to the mainstream media's complicity in what I call the Bush Catastrophe.

First is Dan Froomkin, the author of a five-day-a-week (Monday thru Friday) piece on the Washington Post website entitled White House Watch. What Froomkin does is piece together, from a multitude of media sources, a daily diary of what Bush & Co. are up to and the reaction thereto both domestically and abroad. He brings his own strong point of view to this. In all honesty, that point of view has to be called left of center. That's one reason, but not the only one, why I make Dan Froomkin a part of my daily routine. The main reason I feel compelled to read him every day is simple: nowhere else can you get so much information about what's going on, so quickly, and without any corporate right-wing spin. For fun, he even includes URL references to the best political cartoons of the day. He has a huge following of readers. Every other Wednesday, he takes questions from those readers live on line. Their questions, and his answers thereto, are sometimes even more interesting than his regular blog/column, which is saying a lot. Dan is absolutely indispensable for the left of center political junkie.

You can check him our here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/04/07/BL2008040701344.html

The other person I want to highlight is Glenn Greenwald. Dan Froomkin regularly cites to Greenwald, so you can find him that way. But he's worth checking out every day himself in his regular Salon.com feature, because there's a lot more to his commentary than can be included in a brief reference in the Froomkin blog/column. Often Greenwald is the first to note a significant fact or trend otherwise overlooked by the establishment media (mainstream media or MSM for short).

For instance, today Greenwald cites the number of times in the past 30 days the MSM has referred to highly significant topics such as the Bush Administration's misuse of trumped up legal arguments to justify its use of torture and illegal wiretapping, versus how much attention the media has given such irrelevant distractions as Obama's bowling skills, Obama's non-wearing of an american flag lapel pin, and (believe it or not) Hillary's attitude about Monica Lewinski. As Greenwald reports, the results are shocking. For instance, in the past 30 days, there have been 102 references to the John Yoo memos on torture, and only 16 (!) references to the Yoo memos on violation of Fourth Amendment rights with respect to wiretapping. By contrast, there have been 1,043 references to "Obama and bowling," 1,607 references to "Obama and patriotism," over 3,000 references (or "too many to be counted") to "Obama and [Rev.] Wright," and an astounding 1,079 references to "Clinton and Lewinsky."

Thank God there are people like Glenn Greenwald to keep us apprised of this. It's bad enough with the Bush Administration trampling on the constitution and feeding the country a diet of lies and propaganda, without having to deal with the drastic effect on the american body politic of the global corporate media's funnelling of that diet of disinformation directly to our homes.

You can check Glenn Greenwald out here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/05/media/index.html