History is a wave and we surf it beautifully

* Pravda on the Potomac. excerpt:

"The evidence of the media's bias in the 2000 election is clear and incontrovertible, as Paul Begala demonstrated in a November, 2002 Nexis-Lexis search:

"There were exactly 704 stories in the campaign about this flap of Gore inventing the Internet. There were only 13 stories about Bush failing to show up for his National Guard duty for a year. There were well over 1,000 stories - Nexis stopped at 1,000 - about Gore and the Buddhist temple. Only 12 about Bush being accused of insider trading at Harken Energy. There were 347 about Al Gore wearing earth tones, but only 10 about the fact that Dick Cheney did business with Iran and Iraq and Libya…

"And now, George W. Bush's administration, arguably the most incompetent and corrupt in US history, is given a free pass by the media.

"Had the current management of the Washington Post been in charge during the Watergate burglary, Woodward and Bernstein would no doubt have been ordered to get back to covering freeway smash-ups, and Richard Nixon would have finished his term, unexposed and unpunished.

"There are precious few indicators of change in this dismal situation. The New York Times and the Washington Post, flagships of American journalism, have both published tepid apologies for their failure to serve as responsible watch-dogs of the government, in the run-up to the Iraq war. But now, having apologized for their misbehavior, they are repeating it. There is an abundance of opportunity for critical, objective and balanced reporting of the current election campaign. Once again, it is an opportunity not taken.

"In the face of all this evidence, it is difficult to understand how anyone with more than a casual acquaintance with the corporate media persist in the belief that the media have a liberal bias."

* Top 25 Censored Stories from 2003-2004.

* Bob Mould has posted a mp3 of Pere Ubu's 30 Seconds over Tokyo. A great song, give it a listen.