Freyne Land

First woke for a morning pee at 5:49. Rang a bell.

“549“ was the number of one of my regular cabs in Chicago back in the 1970s.[Hey, is this the aging process?]  Actually it was “2549.” One of Chicago’s 5000 “licensed” taxi cabs. Most were either Yellows or Checkers. Mine was one of the few hundred “Independents.” A red-white-and-blue Ford LTD. No shield. Twenty-five bucks, plus gas for a 12-hour shift. Sometimes I miss it. You met everybody. 

A great classroom. And a great office. Made up for the street-smarts one isn't exposed to in a college classroom. Expect the unexpected.  Still carry the backpack and the notebooks and pens. Tools of the trade. Guess it’s worked, eh?

Anyway, I didn't cover this earlier in the week - busy week - but, Vermont's Independent U. S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is blowing the whistle on the Bush-Cheney propaganda machine, aka Fox News, for beating their 24/7 drums for a new war against another country that is not a threat - this time against Iran.

And the ludicrous, dishonest editorial page of the Caledonian-Record in St. Johnsbury, Vermont once again abandons any and all pretense of credibility in smearing Ol' Bernardo, our popular and well-respected U.S. senator, for having the courage to stand up and tell the truth about Fox News, which apparently, is the right-wing "Cal-Wreck's"  TV News bible!

Sen. Bernie Sanders and a notoriously liberal filmmaker haveteamed up to produce a three-minute documentary that viciously attacksthe Fox News Network as a collection of warmongers leading us into warwith Iran. Their documentary is a pastiche of bits and pieces from adozen sources that add up to a virulently anti-Bush, anti-Republicanpiece of propaganda.

It is sad to see Sen. Bernie Sanders prostituting his election to themost prestigious body in the world by flacking for the rabble. Heplainly doesn't understand that there is a dignity that goes with theoffice of senator that precludes hawking snake oil. When Bernie was asimple congressman, one of several hundred, making speeches to an emptyHouse at 2 in the morning in order to get himself into theCongressional Record, it was easy to dismiss him, as virtuallyeverybody in Washington and Vermont did. But as Senator Bernie Sanders,joining his raucous voice to a radical propagandist's and attacking anational news network that millions and millions of Americans payattention to every day, cheapens his high office and is undignified andunworthy.

I'd say the St. Johnsbury daily gets an "A" for propaganda!

The nerve of Landslide Bernie Sanders to be "flacking for the rabble," eh?

Doesn't he know he should be flacking for the banks, the profiteering war-machine, the insurance industry, the polluting oil & coal industries and the richest of our rich?

You know, the folks the Caledonian-Record editorial page has championed for decades?

Writes Sen. Sanders:

Every American should watch Robert Greenwald’s short video, for itshows us that the current Fox drumbeat for war is almost exactly thesame as what Fox did, and most of the American media did, in the daysbefore we invaded Iraq.

We know that most of what we were told then in that very loud anddetermined campaign about the dangers of Iraq turned out to be false.We need to be very, very careful that we don’t follow another loud anddetermined campaign into another disastrous war.