BakerMuckraker
Blogs in the Month of
December - 2005
- December 31, THIS
(ALMOST) JUST IN: NEW YEARS 2006
- December 29, DEAR
DIARY: CELL PHONE CONVERSATIONS WE’D RATHER NOT HEAR, VOLUME ONE
- December 27, NICE
SOMBRERO!
- December 23, TED
STEVENS MOURNS
- December 20, SNOOPY
DAWG!
- December 16, SPY
STUFF
- December 13, ALL
NEWS KRAP-AM
- December 08, FROM
MURROW TO....COURIC
- December 06, BURIED
TRENDS: GAY CARS
- December 01, AL
JAZEERA... WITH TED KOPPEL?
THIS (ALMOST) JUST IN: NEW YEARS 2006
We made it! Thanks for helping make this a year worth blogging. Your enthusiasm and your helpful comments have kept this blogger's spirits buoyant and his eye trained.
Baker Muckraker's resolution for 2006 is... to rake a little more muck, and make a little more ruckus. Hmm..'Baker Ruckusmaker'?
Anyway, all the best in body, mind and chi for the coming year, to everyone in your orbit from everyone here at Baker Muckraker. Clink!
DEAR DIARY: CELL PHONE CONVERSATIONS WE’D RATHER NOT HEAR, VOLUME ONE
Dear Diary,
Last night, I was using a bathroom at a pretty nice place, and this guy was on the phone. Ostentatiously on the phone. Loudly and ostentatiously on the phone. Hollywood guy on the phone on the phone.
“Hey, baby. What's up."
"Huh? Do I feel frisky tonight? Um, not really, honey.”
“That doesn’t bother you, does it baby?”
“So you got yourself a pizza, darlin? Fabulous. What kind? Save some for me?“
“You’re sure you don’t mind that I’m not feelin’ frisky, baby?”
He hung up, and turned to a friend. “I think she’s gonna go ‘tilt’ on me.”
Baby.
WASN’T THIS SOME KINDA BRIT IDEA ANYWAY?
As nice as it would certainly be if Iraqis thought of themselves as Iraqis and pulled together to create the country we would like them to have, it is looking increasingly improbable.
First, this report from Knight Ridder Newspapers, earlier this week:
>KIRKUK, Iraq - Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.
Five days of interviews with Kurdish leaders and troops in the region suggest that U.S. plans to bring unity to Iraq before withdrawing American troops by training and equipping a national army aren't gaining traction. Instead, some troops that are formally under U.S. and Iraqi national command are preparing to protect territory and ethnic and religious interests in the event of Iraq's fragmentation, which many of them think is inevitable.
The soldiers said that while they wore Iraqi army uniforms they still considered themselves members of the Peshmerga - the Kurdish militia - and were awaiting orders from Kurdish leaders to break ranks. Many said they wouldn't hesitate to kill their Iraqi army comrades, especially Arabs, if a fight for an independent Kurdistan erupted.<
And then this: (a Slate summary of news reports on the recent elections):
>Nine out of 10 Iraqis in the Shiite Muslim provinces of the south voted for religious Shiite parties, according to the early results from the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq. Nine out of 10 Iraqis in Sunni Muslim Arab areas of central and western Iraq voted for Sunni parties. Nine out of 10 Iraqis in the Kurdish provinces of the north voted for Kurdish candidates.<
And then this movie review from Buzzflash :
>We were watching that Hollywood epic "Lawrence of Arabia" last night and thinking how the Arab states are really an artificially imposed post-colonial era construct of the Western powers after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WW I. That, of course, includes Iraq.
In reality, Iraq is three ethnic/sectarian nations (at least): Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish. Right now, the Busheviks have delivered Iraq into the hands of the Shiites, and in particular, the faction aligned with Iran's hardline, whacko fundamentalists.
Now, isn't that emblematic of "Baby Doc" Bush's lifelong history of incompetence? He starts a war based on lies, gets rid of a secular (albeit ruthless) leader, has thousands of Americans and Iraqis wounded or injured, spends America into bankruptcy fighting an unnecessary conflict, and -- here's the coup de grace -- he ends up handing the nation that he invaded in the name of breaking the back of the axis of evil into the clutches of the axis of evil, the medieval Shiite rulers of Iran!
Now, we got ourselves a Colonel Klink in the White House to be sure! <
NEWS FROM THE COALITION OF THE WILLING…TO LEAVE
From USA Today:
>The international military coalition in Iraq is shrinking, as two countries finished pulling their troops out this month and three others announced plans to remove hundreds more.
Non-U.S. coalition forces in Iraq now number fewer than 23,000 from 24 countries, down from about 50,000 from 38 countries in 2003. The United States is reducing its troop levels in Iraq, as well, with plans to have about 130,000 troops there by spring 2006 instead of the 138,000 it had stationed there for much of 2005.
The troop reductions are signs that Iraq is stabilizing and Iraqi security forces are increasingly able to keep the peace on their own, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman.
“Our allies' adjustments are very akin to our adjustments, and it's all based on the conditions we're seeing in Iraq,” Carpenter said. “It would be wrong to interpret this negatively. This is an indication of progress in Iraq.”….. <
[Or, as my Scandinavian friend says, YaShoor!]
>The countries involved in pullouts or troop reductions include Ukraine and Bulgaria, which both withdrew the last of their troops Tuesday. The Netherlands, Poland, South Korea and Italy have reduced or plan to reduce their troop commitments.<
COURTING CONFUSION
Recently, I mentioned the administration’s apparently dwindling case against would-be terrorist Jose Padilla. Now, there are developments, but what they are I cannot explain in English.
Here’s why convoluted tv courtroom dramas are still better than the real thing….
[from Slate:]
>....the administration, in a brief to the Supreme Court, ripping into an appeals court's ruling that denied the government's attempt to move "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla from military to civilian custody. Calling it an "unwarranted attack on presidential discretion," the government argued that the lower court's decision "defies both law and logic." The court, which had found just a few months ago that Padilla can be held indefinitely, had suggested the White House was looking to move Padilla simply to avoid having his case reviewed by the Supreme Court.<
Ok, so let’s see: The administration wants Padilla out of the military system in good part because there is evidence he shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and it doesn’t want its use of the military courts to become an issue – precisely so that it can continue to use the military courts. The appeals court is supporting keeping Padilla in the military courts so that the administration has to justify its use of those courts – to the Supreme Court, where the administration itself has now gone to complain about the Appeals Court. And, uh, the Supreme Court is exactly where Padilla’s lawyers wanted to be, and where the administration did not.
Got it?
IS BOB NOVAK GETTING SOULFUL?
Hard to believe, but a useful, and non-mean, analysis from arch-everything columnist Robert Novak, the celebrated outer of CIA operative Valerie Plame. According to Bob, GOP Sen. Trent Lott is rebelling, and Mississippi may be moving out of of Red-State status.
> Trent Lott within the next week plans to decide between seeking a fourth term in the U.S. Senate from Mississippi or retiring from public life. That could determine whether Republicans keep control of the Senate in next year's elections. For the longer range, Lott's retirement and replacement could signal that Southern political realignment has peaked and now is receding.
Mississippi, one of the reddest of the red Republican states, has not even been on the game board of the Washington analysis forecasting the 2006 Senate outcome. But in Mississippi, prominent Republicans are worried sick. They believe Lott will probably retire. If so, they expect the new senator will be a Democrat, former State Attorney General Mike Moore. Republican politicians in Mississippi believe Rep. Chip Pickering, the likely Republican nominee if Lott does not run, cannot defeat Moore.
Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman pleaded with Lott last week to run again. The senator was as blunt with this emissary from President Bush as he was with me. "Where is our vision and our agenda?" he asked. The malaise afflicting the Bush administration not only threatens a Senate seat in Mississippi but impacts Lott's decision whether to retire.
A Bush entreaty now to Lott is ironic. Lott was driven out of the Senate majority leader's chair after the 2002 elections when the president refused to defend him from calumnies that a harmless jocular remark on the late Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday was racist in nature. Lott's recently published memoir ("Herding Cats") reveals he was deeply hurt by Bush's non-support.
Republicans pressing Lott to run say that if he retires, he will have to live the rest of his life under the burden of giving the Democrats a Senate seat and perhaps control of the Senate out of personal pique that he no longer was majority leader. But Lott has not been sulking in his tents for three years. He has been an active presence on the Senate floor and has made the most of his meager power base as Senate Rules Committee chairman.
….His personal financial condition has deteriorated since then with the loss of half his net worth when Hurricane Katrina swept away his home at Pascagoula, Miss.
"The hurricane is what has made this decision difficult for me," Lott told me. On the one hand, "the performance by the administration has been poor and the Congress has not been a lot better." On the other hand, "my people need all the help I can give them." ….
….Mississippi Republicans are so anxious about a Lott-less election next year partly because Democrat Moore is a better known, more appealing figure in the state than Republican Pickering. The state's big African-American minority continues to increase, and politically potent trial lawyers will be unrestrained on behalf of Moore. Finally, the performance by the Republican-controlled national government in coping with Katrina is no asset for Republican candidates in Mississippi.
When George W. stood aside while Trent Lott was tossed out, I wrote on December 23, 2002, that the secret liberal theme behind his defenestration was that "the GOP's Southern base, the bedrock of its national election victories, is an illegitimate legacy from racist Dixiecrats." Now, three years later, that bedrock may be eroding. <
ROAD RAGE AND HIGHWAY MADNESS GOT YOU DOWN? WELL, HOP ABOARD THE PEACE TRAIN!
How many times do I have to tell you out-of-towners that the subways are incredibly safe? For years, you’ve had to beg people down there to get them to assault you. Now things are even more hunky-dory: just nine serious crimes a day in a system carrying millions through several hundred stations. A phenomenon.
>Serious crime in the subways has plunged to half what it was in 1997 — transforming a violence-ravaged system into a safe place for millions of riders.
The number of felonies fell this year to 3,062 through Christmas Day, an average of 8.52 crimes each day. That's a 5.5 percent drop from the same period in 2004, when there were 3,286 serious crimes reported, or an average of 8.98 crimes per day. But these comparisons tell only part of the story.
Crime across the subway's 710 miles of rails has been cut in half since 1997, when there were 6,218 serious felonies reported, an average of 17 serious crimes a day. And crime has fallen 75 percent since the frightening days of the 1980s, when thieves often working in marauding wolf packs victimized an average of 40 straphangers every day, stealing jewelry, wallets and purses, experts recalled.
"The subways were scary," recalled Thomas Reppetto, executive director of the Citizens Crime Commission. "They were covered with graffiti, teaming with marauding kids and wolf packs snatching chains, and aggressive panhandlers.
"People perceived that the subways were very, very dangerous until well into the 1990s." But focused police strategies and increased manpower — partly to support a post 9/11 anti-terrorism effort — have contributed to the overall drop to record lows that include 1,088 reported robberies so far this year, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
Part of the decline appears to be related to counter-terrorism efforts and bag searches, which police began in July after the London subway bombings, Kelly said.<
DID SOMEONE MENTION SUBWAYS AND PENSIONS?
Speaking of which, the transit strike I mentioned some days ago is now resolved, and, despite all the bellyaching, management gave the workers a pretty good deal. Pensions are preserved, as are cost-of-living adjustments. Workers just have to pay in a bit for their medical coverage.
Meantime, I detect a sudden switch in the tone of the New York media, which was pretty stridently anti-union throughout the negotiations and strike. Now, they've decided the union leadership aren’t such bad folks, and the demise of the pension is suddenly a topic worth discussing.
As it was in a frontpager today in the New York Times, where the reporter I criticized the other day for his ingenuousness toward the feed-the-rich Manhattan Institute is now making amends.
And in the Village Voice, my former colleague Jim Ridgeway has good perspective on the ‘slow death of the American pension system.
>The fight over transit union pensions in New York is likely to end up as yet another step in the slow death of the American pension system. Killing off the pension is the linchpin to assuring additional profitability—paid for by the worker.
Of course, the Enron debacle was supposed to end all that. Every politician from George W. Bush on down offered condolences to the employees who got screwed and promised to reform the 401(k) pension system so as to protect them. Nothing happened. There are no reforms. The 401(k) remains not a pension but a sales pitch for the mutual fund business. The worker makes a contribution, which along with differing amounts put up by the employer then goes straight to the mutual fund to gamble in the market. Instead of being guaranteed a steady pension income to death, the owner of a 401(k) is told to face the bracing winds of the free market. Nothing is guaranteed. The trading in these funds is meant to be regulated by the federal government through the Securities and Exchange Commission. In fact, there is little or no regulation and never has been.
While the old-time fixed pension is disappearing from the private sector, it still clings to life in the public sector. (Currently, more than 40 percent of employees who work for private companies are not covered by pensions, according to a new report by the Center for American Progress.) So, the trick in places like New York is to shift the financial burden from rich taxpayers onto the workers. And the most appealing way to achieve this goal is to gut the pension system. The contract proposal that led to the transit workers' strike is a step along that road.
The 401(k) system is a can of worms with the worker seeking a steady retirement income, but getting ripped off in a maze of fees. When an employee actually quits the workforce, he or she will usually buy an annuity from an insurance company, which will then pay out a steady amount of cash throughout the year. But purchase of an annuity can cost 5 percent of the total 401(k), a big hunk of the investment—yet another benefit to another unregulated arm of the finance industry.
For workers forced to switch to a 401(k), the economic atmosphere is one of great uncertainty.
"The needs to save for retirement are rising sharply, while the ability to save for retirement is declining," notes Christian Weller, the pension expert at the Center for American Progress. "Social Security benefits are already cut and employers are reducing access to retiree health care benefits at a time when health care prices are rising sharply. At the same time, pension coverage is declining, employers are cutting back on their contributions to 401(k)'s, and the risk exposure in 401(k)'s is growing. That is, the ability of people to save for retirement is going down, exactly when they need to save more for retirement.
"It is unlikely that this will be reversed any time soon since public policy is moving in the wrong direction in all aspects. Tax policy is skewed in favor of those who already save the most.<
AND NOW, BAKER HEALTHMAKER PRESENTS: BUSTING EAR-PODS
Do you kids a favor and yank whatever is in their ears…..
(From Scripps Howard News Service):
>All those ears ringing from newly given iPods and MP3 players may not be able to hear next year's Christmas bells so well, hearing specialists are warning.
"We're seeing the kind of hearing loss in younger people that's typically found in aging adults," said Dean Garstecki, an audiologist and professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
"Unfortunately, the ear buds are even more likely to cause hearing loss than the muff-type earphones that were used on Walkman and portable CD players," Garstecki said.
In a study published last year in the journal Ear and Hearing, researchers at Harvard Medical School found that the smaller the earphones were, the higher their output levels. <
THIS JUST IN FROM OUR BAKER SCIENCE DIVISION….
WASPS COMBAT TERROR
When I heard that WASPS were helping fight the war on terror, I thought, ‘Well, it’s about time – I mean Bush, Cheney et al never even suited up for the wars they supported in their youth. But now I find out we’re using insects, instead. According to USA Today.
>Scientists at a Georgia laboratory have developed what could be a low-tech, low-cost weapon in the war on terrorism: trained wasps.
The tiny, non-stinging wasps can check for hidden explosives at airports and monitor for toxins in subway tunnels.
"You can rear them by the thousands, and you can train them within a matter of minutes," says Joe Lewis, a U.S. Agriculture Department entomologist. "This is just the very tip of the iceberg of a very new resource."
Lewis and others at the University of Georgia-Tifton Campus developed a handheld "Wasp Hound" to contain the wasps while they sniff out chemicals and other substances.
Lewis and his partner, University of Georgia biological engineer Glen Rains, say their device is ready for pilot tests and could be available for commercial use in five to 10 years.
Rains says the wasps could one day be used instead of dogs to check for explosives in cargo containers coming in to the nation's seaports, in vehicles crossing at border checkpoints, at airports and anywhere else where security should be tight.
"It's real easy to learn how to work with them," he says about the wasps. "You could show somebody what to do in 30 to 40 minutes. And they're very specific in what they learn."
This new method comes as the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on high-tech equipment and training since 9/11 to secure the nation from another terrorist attack.
…..Lewis says the wasps, when exposed to some chemicals, "can detect as low as four parts per billion, which is an incredibly small amount."
He says the "ability to capture nature and its marvels is ... revolutionary."<
Ze nature, she rocks, yes?
and finally: ATTENTION LINGERERS
Are you one of the growing ranks of discerning readers of Baker Muckraker? If so, why not sign up for e-mail alerts whenever new blogs get posted? You will rarely get more than two e-mails a week, and no salesman will call. Sign-up right at the top of this page.
And, while you’re at it, tell a friend. Or a wasp.
Dear Diary: I know you like these slices of life in the Big Apple, so here’s a mini-morsel:
NICE SOMBRERO!
The other day, I was having breakfast in a diner.
I looked up from my newspaper when I heard one of the Mexican waiters exclaim, ‘Nice sombrero!’
Outside was a stylish woman, of European heritage, some sort of high society type perhaps, passing in an ornate headdress that clearly was a fashionista’s unique manifestation of the traditional Mexican sun spread, a really neat, kind of half-sombrero dba a crown, maybe the kind Grace Kelly might have donned to good effect.
The senorita stopped and examined the menu in the window. We all waited with anticipation for her arrival – and some answers.
Then she continued on her way.
AMNESTY vs DUNLEAVY: WHOM DO YOU TRUST?
Whom do you trust on what it’s really like at Guantanamo Bay? Amnesty International or Steve Dunleavy? For me, there’s no question that the famous Australian carouser and former tabloid television host is just the perfect person to get to the bottom of things in the matter of torture. That’s why Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post was righter than right to send him over to check things out -- presumably at the invitation of the White House, where they are surely tired of being reamed by those with no objectivity. Here’s his report – and by gosh, it’s great how terrific things are for our Muslim guests. Can’t wait to get over there myself.
(I guarantee that this is a real article)
>LOOKING AT GITMO FROM THE INSIDE
By STEVE DUNLEAVY, reporting from Guantanamo Bay
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WELCOME TO GUANTANAMO : Post columnist Steve Dunleavy plays detainee for a day while locked in a cell at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
December 26, 2005 -- GUANTANAMO BAY —
A delicious cooling breeze from the azure Caribbean made it feel like vacation time . . . but this was no holiday. Photojournalist Matt McDermott and I had come to look at serious allegations about the treatment of detainees captured in the war on terror.
Allegations by the usual suspects: liberal politicians and the crazed left-wing media saying that 500 bad guys swept up in Afghanistan and Iraq were the subject of torture and depravation. Things were so bad, they said, Camp Gitmo should be shut down.
After my visit here, I've made up my mind about such tales: unmitigated rubbish. But that's getting ahead of the story.
There are five detention centers here, the southern perimeter of four of them are about 35 yards from the Caribbean. The centers are graded like prisons in the United States — maximum security, medium security, minimum security.
"All the [U.S.] troops live here in identical housing to the detainees," Sgt. Sheila Tunney said. "The only difference is that there are four to six troops in a unit. I live in one with three other female officers. It is identical to where 10 detainees would reside."
Naval Commander Cati Hanft, who hails from Middle Village, Queens, is nicknamed "Hanft the Hammer" for her rigid discipline over the troops. "Allegations of torture are ludicrous," she was telling me.
As we talked, I looked at a compound that contained a soccer field, a concrete basketball court complete with padded uprights to prevent injury, a volleyball court, a pingpong table, special prayer rooms and an outdoor but covered communal center where detainees played backgammon, chess and checkers.
"The detainees are very keen soccer enthusiasts, and we tape the televised games leading up to the World Cup and make them available on a big television screen to the detainees," Hanft said.
"We have, on order, high-top sneakers for the basketball, volleyball and soccer players. We hope they use the sports facilities, and we have on order a treadmill, a simple exercise machine and a stationary bicycle because if the detainees choose, they can consume up to 4,200 calories a day with the food available to them.
"And then their lawyers will say their clients are complaining that we are trying to turn them into obese Americans," she quipped.
Amnesty International, a group of know-nothing nitwits out of London who once excoriated the New York City Police Department, has described Guantanamo Bay as "the gulag of our time" — a reference to the Soviet labor camps where millions were sent to work, starve or die. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Capt. John Adams, who fought in the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan and was wounded in Iraq with the 101st Infantry, said: "The meals are prescribed strictly under what is known as Halal, rigid dietary rules laid down by the Koran and which we observe to the letter."
In the mess hall, I waived my right to the Christmas turkey and requested the meal being eaten by the detainees. I was served immediately with a loaf of fresh-baked bread, a banana, a main-course mix of meat and vegetables, stewed tomatoes, salad, two cartons of orange juice and Yoplait yogurt.
Mrs. Sam Scott, who oversees the food operations for Camp Delta, said: "I get angry when anybody talks bad about our food. Detainees eat better than you do."
But where do all these torture stories come from?
Col. Jeremy Martin said that to a large degree, they emanate from the lawyers who listen to the complaints of their clients. "They go back to Washington, talk to a reporter who's never been here and suddenly the horror stories pour out," Martin said.
Remember that cockamamie story in Newsweek claiming that a Koran was flushed down a toilet by a guard? What a joke.
Newsweek, of course, had to retract it. It came from some overly zealous lawyer who wanted to paint horror picture after horror picture.
The people who often get closest to the detainees are the medical staff headed by Capt. John Edmondson. Edmondson's is probably the only medical facility in the country whose staff has to have obligatory lessons in unarmed combat. Some of his nurses have been beaten by the detainees.
Recently, the fanatical Islamic mouthpiece network al-Jazeera said doctors at Capt. Edmondson's hospital were practicing torture. There are 37 detainees on a hunger strike, but 29 of them have opted to be force-fed.
Al-Jazeera claimed that a tube the width of a man's finger was forced down the nose of one of the detainees and then yanked out and without washing was forced up another detainee's nose, causing horrific pain.
Capt. Edmondson said: "It's a very narrow tube the size of the thinnest of straws which can deliver up to 4,200 calories to the patient. We are not, not going to let anyone die here."
Sens. Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy and Carl Levin, ex-President Jimmy Carter and all the others can rattle on like empty cans about Gitmo. But can we believe that the above so-called intelligent human beings are wringing their hands over the kind of Islamothugs who killed almost 3,000 in the World Trade Center?
How soon we forget. <
Expect to hear from Amnesty soon on this, and then we can sort out this thing. Meantime, nice reporting job, Steve.
SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDANE
As long as we’re scrutinizing New York-based newspapers, here’s another one, though perhaps not as entertaining as the Post.
On Saturday, a New York Times article headlined “Transit Strike Reflects Nationwide Pension Woes” – clearly a response to Baker Muckraker’s blog item of the day before on the subject.
While the strike, as advertised, did indeed reflect pension woes, by the third paragraph, the spin was on, and readers were none the wiser. Read the excerpt, then I will explain:
>Fast-rising pension costs for government employees - the issue that helped set off this week's transit strike in New York City - are a problem confronting cities, counties and states nationwide, causing many budgetary experts to predict a wave of painful fights over efforts to scale back government retirement programs.
Many officials and fiscal experts assert that across the nation government pension plans face a shortfall of hundreds of billions of dollars. From New Jersey to California, government officials say that attempts - either through contract fights, legislation or public referendums - to limit the amount of money that states and cities contribute to pensions are inevitable and overdue. Labor unions, for their part, say that the worries are overblown.
"Every level of government in New York City, New York State and in states across the country face large and growing pension obligations," said E. J. McMahon, a budget expert at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group. "If nothing is done to bring pensions under control, all the other headaches that state governments will be facing in the next 20 years on needs like education and health will be enormously worse."<
Thus far, from this article, we have learned that “many officials and fiscal experts” are worried about pensions being an intolerable burden for government, followed by a very brief dissent from unions. And then we hear the first “expert” voice – McMahon, from the Manhattan Institute. But while the reporter does let us know that the M.I. is conservative, his choice of McMahon to lead off gives the man's view added credibility. It’s a marvelous platform – the front page of the New York Times – to express what amounts to an opinion.
Readers would benefit far more if the reporter himself tried to figure out who was right in this matter rather than going right away to the lazy “he-said-she-said”, and, worse, not letting on to exactly what the Manhattan Institute is.
M.I. was founded by very rich people whose agenda was largely to advocate for the shrinkage of government and of their own tax burdens. M.I. has since become one of the nation’s preeminent propaganda organs of the Right, and continues to gain legitimacy through coverage like this.
Nothing wrong with that – unions do the same thing (on the rare occasion when they get asked their opinion on how things actually affect workers). But readers need to know right away whose interests the speaker is serving. Because his analysis begs a key element: if the richest in society, such as McMahon’s funders, actually contributed in proportion to what they get from society, we wouldn’t even be talking about pension shortfalls or tight governmental budgets.
HOLY NEOCON, BATMAN!
Ever wonder about those alliances between the Israeli Right and the American Right, and whether the American Christian fundamentalists rooting for the Biblical Original Team were getting more than an early shot at front row seats for Armageddon? Check out this AP item:
>December 26, 2005 -- JERUSALEM — Israel is offering evangelical Christians a chunk of the Holy Land.
Thirty-five acres on the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, surrounded by key sites of Jesus' ministry, would be leased to an association of evangelists led by the Rev. Pat Robertson, Israeli tourism officials say.
Israel says evangelical leaders have agreed to raise $50 million to build a Heritage Center on the site, hoping to attract tens of thousands of religious pilgrims a year.<
Such a mitzvah! And just in time for Hanukkah. Copies of the Da Vinci Code will not, however, be on sale in the gift shop.
INCENTIVES REQUIRED
Here's another short item off the wire that just might warrant some larger examination.
> December 26, 2005 -- WASHINGTON — In an unusually candid admission, the federal chief of AIDS research says he believes drug companies don't have an incentive to find an HIV vaccine and are likely to wait to profit from it after the government develops one.
"The private side isn't picking it up," Dr. Edmund Tramont testified in a recent deposition.
Tramont, head of the AIDS-research division of the National Institutes of Health, predicted in his July testimony that the government will create a vaccine.
"We're going to have an HIV vaccine. It's not going to be made by a company," Tramont said. "They're dropping out like flies because there's no real incentive for them to do it."
"If it works, they won't have to make that big investment. And they can make it and sell it and make a profit," he said.
Ken Johnson, senior vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said, "That is simply not true." AP <
Hmm. I saw this one in the aforementioned New York Post, which is the only reason I'm a bit suspicious about a "recent deposition" which Tramont gave in "July."
Still, if this IS what Tramont actually believes, it is of some rather massive concern that it is being left up to the government to create an AIDS vaccine. First, because the drug companies should be doing the right thing occasionally -- especially with their billion-dollar ad campaigns promoting their singular dedication to the public good over profits. Second, because... well, if this administration boldly takes the lead on AIDS, and spends whatever it takes, you can call me Reverend Billy Bob FocusOnTheFamily.
SOLVING THE ENERGY CRISIS
: (from a Scripps Howard wire item, again, thanks to the New York Post)
>December 26, 2005 -- Miguel Horta, a graduate student at Penn State, listens to flatulent bacteria. He developed a sonic device that can analyze how much gas is being emitted by bacteria by checking changes in pitch that occur as sound passes through it.
Horta's technique is being used by Penn State researchers who are developing microbial fuel cells in which bacteria digest organic matter and convert it into hydrogen that can be used as power. <
Maybe we start this test in Congress? Or get the Post's Steve Dunleavy to do further research with his buddies at Guantanamo? Send in your ideas on this.
TED STEVENS MOURNS
You gotta wonder about that guy. The 82-year-old senator from Alaska called the Senate’s failure the other day to approve oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge “the saddest day of my life.” Stevens had fought for drilling for 25 years.
Wonder how he felt about WW2, 9/11, the death of loved ones? Maybe even the loss of some pristine wilderness?
He’s most upset by the loss of an opportunity to despoil precious lands for the short-term interests of gas-guzzling? That’s his biggest regret? Get me Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
BELLYACHING OVER STRIKING WORKERS
If you don’t live in New York, you really missed out during the transit strike that tied up the city for several days, and which seems, at this writing, to be over – at least while negotiations continue. Millions who rely on the subway or buses were forced to carpool, walk, or share cabs.
Yesterday, on a $40 roundtrip cab ride within Manhattan – which took more than an hour in each direction to go only 70 blocks in crawling traffic – I got an earful from my fellow citizens. You see, the mayor had mandated that cabbies pick up multiple fares going in the same general direction – and so we all got to learn a little bit more about each other.
I learned how little solidarity exists among working people. One young woman, a Russian immigrant who works for an airline, complained about the lack of concern for others. I thought she meant the fact that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was forcing transit workers to accept a series of economy moves at a time when the richest Americans -- whose employees ride the NYC transit system to their offices -- are getting major tax cuts. MTA wants the workers to pay for more of their medical care, wants to provide wage increases that don’t keep pace with inflation, and doesn’t want to provide pensions to new hires.
No, my fellow cab-rider was not mad at management. She was irked at the striking workers for inconveniencing others. But what about the difficult jobs they do, and the difficulties they have making it in an increasingly dog-eat-dog economic environment? Well, she said, if they don’t like it they should get another job. (That's an easy thing for a bus driver, isn't it!)
The MTA has spent a lot of money on ads designed to turn the public against the union, and the mayor has accused the union of being ‘selfish.’
Certainly there are bad things about public employees striking, and obvious inconveniences caused by transit workers walking off the job. But we’re in bad times when working class and middle class people don’t even try to sympathize with the problems of their fellow citizens. And when the pension cutters and the medical care slashers get around to them, no one will be there to speak up.
Seems Martin Niemoller had something to say about this phenomenon, a while back. Ah yes:
“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”
BOYCOTT STARBUCKS
Speaking of strikes, the other day, picketers outside a Starbucks in Manhattan’s East Village protested the firing of an employee who was participating in a union organizing effort. And why not? Why shouldn’t workers in this behemoth get basic rights?
Meanwhile, I’d like to set up my own protest line against overpriced demi-soy-latte-cinos in paper cups with a burn taste to them. Feh!
WATCH PADILLA
Early this week, a conservative judge who supports Intelligent Design ruled that it couldn’t be taught in science classes. Then, yesterday, a conservative judge who President Bush considered for the Supreme Court rejected a ploy by the administration to unload a terrorism suspect.
The conservative judges are a-revoltin’, by jove! Enough is enough, for these folks, too.
The latest case, involving the American converted Muslim, Jose Padilla, could be extremely interesting. Originally, they said he was planning on exploding a radioactive “dirty bomb” in the US, and held him in military custody as an enemy combatant. Then they downgraded their claim to his having fought alongside Al Qaeda soldiers in Afghanistan. Now, they want him out of military custody altogether, and to put him into the regular criminal justice system where he probably belonged in the first case. But an appeals court, suspicious about the whole thing, won’t go along with it.
Here’s Slate on this:
>The White House had tried to move Padilla out of the brig just days before the Supreme Court had been set to hear his case, which would have been—and still may be—a constitutional showdown in which the administration does not appear likely to come out ahead. Yesterday the court—the same one that had concluded the government has the power to hold Padilla indefinitely—wrote that the White House's attempt to move him gives "rise to at least an appearance that the purpose of these actions may be to avoid consideration of our decision by the Supreme Court."<
The larger issue here, ploys or no ploys, is the credibility of the incredibly vast and expensive apparatus that ostensibly has been protecting us since 9/11.
The government is playing Secret Agent Maxwell Smart – who famously used to make ridiculous claims to get attention and then backpedal under pressure. If it turns out that Padilla was no threat at all, then we’ll have yet another astonishing failure of the vaunted safety net. And will leave us wondering: just how many plots has the government foiled? Any?
C-SPAN FOR THE TRUTH
Why watch crime scene dramas when you can see the real thing on C-SPAN? The other day, while sweating it out on a treadmill, I watched with fascination as Senate Republican leaders stood at a microphone in a Capitol hallway and growled and jowled and warned that Democrats were endangering our lives by refusing to extend regressive aspects of the Patriot Act indefinitely. Democrats followed, and said they were offering to extend the act temporarily while proposed changes get hashed out. They accused the Republicans of playing games, and while I think they all play games, I think the Republican games look much gamier.
I don’t know too much about the science or art of physiognomy, but the faces of the Republicans looked really, really bad – they looked like hacks, and they looked like they were highly practiced in the art of saying things they don’t really believe, but were really pretty tired about the whole thing. They wanted to go home and rest up. So they can come back after New Years and start the nonsense all over again.
Well, sure, why not. Everybody get home and have a happy happy. See you all soon back at the game.
SNOOPY DAWG!
With the SnoopGate story exploding, I will restrict myself to just a few comments.
First of all, as I noted last week before the affair had gone full juggernaut, there could potentially be legitimate reasons for Bush and Company to have done what it did in taking a run-around on the law with regard to domestic surveillance.
But count on this administration to have none of those reasons. You get an inkling just from reading the shifting explanations the White House is airing. First, we heard that the administration couldn’t afford to wait for the special court (that must, by law, authorize domestic surveillance) to act. Then we learned that the court acts incredibly fast, and sometimes simply approves operations after they have already begun. Then we heard that the administration felt that the judges wouldn’t approve these particular eavesdropping operations because of a paucity of evidence. Then we learned that the spy court has almost never said no to a request from the White House (actually four times out of tens of thousands of filings).
So one can’t help but wonder if there was another motive entirely in skirting proper procedures. And one can’t help wondering who is on the list. Were they really watching high-risk suspects, based on credible intelligence? Were they scattershotting huge numbers of non-violent Muslims whose sympathies nevertheless were with extreme groups abroad? After all, plenty of Americans of all kinds of persuasions, from Jews to Irish, support fairly hard-core outfits in their respective spiritual homelands.
Or was the administration using the excuse of 9/11 to spy on domestic critics and opponents who in no way constituted a violent threat? Were they simply spying on the likes of Richard Clarke and Joseph Wilson? Baker Muckraker perhaps?
Bush’s excuse that he acted based on a congressional resolution authorizing ‘all necessary force’ in response to 9/11 is totally disingenuous. The res meant force in pursuing military operations abroad – not spying on people in this country. “All necessary force” certainly cannot be construed as “all necessary measures of any sort at all, anywhere, regardless of law and precedent.”
And of course they are trying to focus attention on whoever leaked the story in the first place – claiming without any obvious basis that the revelation of this illegal operation threatens national security. It threatens only political security – the political security of those who will be held accountable.
Another absurdity is to claim that the leak about this covert operation is like a press account in 1998, reporting that Osama bin Laden used a satellite phone to communicate. Bush says this caused Osama to switch from that technology. But what Bush doesn’t say, first of all, is that the article in question was published by the Washington Times, the Moonie-owned paper, during the Clinton Administration. At the time, nobody on his side of the aisle was troubled by the revelation, which, after all, was a very brief mention of the likelihood that Osama relied on computers and satellite phones. How surprising is it, that a man in rural locations communicating with a far flung network would use satellite phones? What was he supposed to be using, a cell phone where there were no towers? Pay phones? Carrier pigeons? Even the New York Times falls for this in today’s paper, essentially saying that Bush was correct in using the satellite phone analogy. Not!
LIBERAL CHRISTIANS? DELETE!
Liberal Christians recently held a big protest at the Capitol against Bush administration domestic policies – budget and tax cuts – and many were arrested.
Bet you didn’t hear about it.
Ordinarily, this occurrence should meet all the requirements for a great news story: (1) Arrests at the Capitol (2) Christians arrested at the Capitol (3) Liberal Christians arrested at the Capitol.
But hardly any media thought this was interesting.
According to the advocacy group Media Matters,
>A search* of major newspapers and broadcast and cable TV news from December 13-15 found only a handful of newspapers that carried news of the protest and a single broadcast mention on NBC.<
Maybe if they’d been thrown to lions….
The coalition behind the protests includes Jim Wallis, head of Sojourners, a remarkable group of progressive Christian activists that are making a big difference in reclaiming the moral ground for believers who actually seem to care about other people.
I met Jim some years back (2000) and had a sandwich with him at a downtown LA deli, and have followed his activities closely since then. Very impressive. The sandwich was great, too.
JUDGING EVOLVES
Perhaps you have heard: a federal judge ruled today that a Pennsylvania school district (Dover) cannot teach in science classes a concept that says some aspects of science were created by a supernatural being. U.S. District Judge John Jones ruled that teaching "intelligent design" would violate the Constitutional separation of church and state.
Per CNN:
"We have concluded that it is not [science], and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents," Jones writes in his 139-page opinion posted on the court's Web site.
"To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions," Jones writes…….
….Jones -- an appointee of President Bush, who backs the teaching of Intelligent Design -- defended his decision in personal terms.
"Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist court," Jones writes.
"Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on intelligent design, who in combination drove the board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy," he said. <
Yow! An "appointee of President Bush who backs the teaching of Intelligent Design." Just not in science classes. That’s enough to send the Religious Right into a Rumpelstiltskin act. I mean, what’s the point of terrorizing the judiciary if even your own guys refuse to cave on principle?
FOX-Y LADIES!
Being of an academic mindset, I checked out Media Matters’s careful study of licentiousness at – of all places, that guardian of Red State values – Fox News!
Apparently, the channel has been in overdrive jamming nudity and near-nudity into every possible segment --- from a pole-dancing Pamela Anderson to Victoria’s Secret and Playboy models. Now that’s what I’d call Intelligent Design of a newscast – albeit on a network that shouldn’t then be constantly bewailing the lowering of moral standards in this country.
>Fox News Channel has, as part of several recent segments, aired a series of photographs and videos of scantily-clad women, and blurred images of nude women. A Media Matters for America review of Fox News Channel from December 5 through December 15 found at least eight different segments featuring photographs or video footage of nude or nearly nude women, as well as discussions on news programs of "hot" videos, and an item on provocative attire in the workplace. One program, Your World with Neil Cavuto, a weekday business program that airs at 4 p.m. EST, featured six of the eight segments. While host Neil Cavuto offered little in the way of explicit justification for the use of the material, the segments listed below were all cast as business stories.<
What a crazy world. Next thing you know, the lefty Pacifica Radio is going to start airing unedited homilies from the Vatican.
SPY STUFF
Perhaps you have seen the big story in today's New York Times about the Bush Administration's secret National Security Agency domestic eavesdropping. Apparently the agency, which has always monitored foreign communications, has been monitoring domestic ones -- and without a court warrant -- since 2002.
This is, on its face, highly alarming. Best as we know, the NSA already downloads huge amounts of international traffic, and probably knows what your Hungarian mother sent you for your birthday. We've always assumed NSA left the domestic snooping to the FBI and such, so any appearance of them around the 'hood is pretty shocking.
And yet, if you consider the claimed reason for using the best of electronic spies, and foregoing legal safeguards, it makes some sense. When you're dealing with the threat of an imminent attack in a post-9/11 world, every minute could count. That's the reason supporters of the policy give: They sometimes can't afford the delay involved in seeking permission from special judges who ordinarily are asked to approve domestic surveillance.
And yet, one can't help wondering: How long a delay are we talking about? If the government has enough of an inkling that someone (or even a large number of people) may be party to a brewing, high-risk plot, why can't it simply inform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court immediately, provide evidence, and get a quick turn-around?
The article doesn't say. Which is pretty disappointing, considering that the Times says it knew about the secret operation for a year, but held off publishing about it both to do additional reporting and because the government asked it to. It doesn't provide any information on how those courts work, what the evaluation process is like, or much of anything.
When you've had a year to sort this out, you owe your readers much better clarity on the bottom line. Or am I just in a bad mood? Or both?
BAKER MUCKRAKER GETS RESULTS!
As longtime readers of this blog (and the clamoring advertisers we reject) well know, it gets results. Now, we've cowed a major automotive firm.
First, the background: Scroll down to Tuesday Dec. 6 and read "Gay Cars" -- my broadside at Ford Motor Company for canceling ads in gay-oriented publications at the behest of fundamentalist groups.
Well, according to Thursday’s New York Times, Ford has decided to back down. Though the paper mentions “a wave of criticism from gay rights groups,” informed 'Deep Auto' sources tell me that Baker Muckraker’s unique sense of the absurd was what really moved Ford officials.
Onward and upward as other companies do the right thing for the wrong reason: Next, Wal-Mart screws its critics by unionizing!
TRUE CONSERVATIVES AREN'T BAD
If you can find a better conservative, buy one!
Look at what’s happening in Congress. A growing number of conservative Republicans are joining the revolt against the curtailment of liberties in this country. They’re challenging the administration on torture, and they’re objecting to extension of the Patriot Act without revisions to better protect the freedoms of Americans.
True conservatives look like other Republicans except that they're consistently suspicious of government -- they know an encroachment when they see one, and they start getting that Clint Eastwood look in their eyes. They don't like librarians reporting on our borrowing habits, and they don't like busybodies informing on their neighbors watching The Family Guy -- with that suspiciously foreign-accented baby.
They know that spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to covertly publish Al-Wali Street Journal Basra to promote pro-US news coverage abroad won't mean bupkis to someone who got tortured for something they probably didn't do or even plan on doing. If those victims weren't sympathetic to the insurgency before, they sure will be when we get through with them.
With change in the air, alliances are crucial. So find a conservative -- and give her or him a hug.
WE SPY --- ON US
Hoo haw! A network news organization actually breaks a story! And NBC News no less. Dare I speculate that they read my Friday Dec. 8 blog advice on how neo-newshound Katie Couric could build street cred?
Perhaps, perhaps not. Anyway, NBC News reported earlier this week on a Pentagon database of potential terror threats, that shows the military tracking ...... lots of anti-war meetings and protests, some aimed at military recruiting.
Now, anti-war sentiments might strike terror in the hearts of some, but a bunch of protesters chanting over their hot chocolates just doesn't pass the 'real terrorism' smell test.
Anyway, again, some positive action results from journalistic initiative. According to Thursday’s Washington Post
>Pentagon officials said yesterday they had ordered a review of a program aimed at countering terrorist attacks that had compiled information about U.S. citizens, after reports that the database included information on peace protesters and others whose activities posed no threat and should not have been kept on file….
Although officials defended the Pentagon's interest in gathering information about possible threats to military bases and troops, one senior official acknowledged that a preliminary review of the database indicated that it had not been correctly maintained.
"On the surface, it looks like things in the database that were determined not to be viable threats were never deleted but should have been," the official said. "You can also make the argument that these things should never have been put in the database in the first place until they were confirmed as threats."…. <
Um, yeah….. But, Mr. Official, doesn’t this government consider a “threat” someone who would come to a Dick Cheney town meeting in Bezzlebub, Utah, in a hybrid with a "Question Authority" bumper sticker?
NUTS ON PARADE
So Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a contentious guy with the rare talent of making prior Iranian leaders seem positively rational -- has now labeled the Holocaust a "myth."
Ahmadinejad’s profundity: "If someone were to deny the myth of the Jews' massacre, all the Zionist mouthpieces and the governments subservient to the Zionists tear their larynxes and scream against the person as much as they can."
Those rattling the saber against Iran will see this as further justification for US alarm and perhaps even intervention. But this guy is less threat than treat. The “tear their larynxes” stuff is pretty good theater, and I’d say if he doesn’t get onto his meds pretty quickly, he may spontaneously combust. If not, the Iranian people, who are actually a pretty educated bunch, may just tire of having someone who sounds like a cross between David Duke and Jackie Mason on a bad day -- and get rid of him. That's how change is supposed to happen.
ALL NEWS KRAP-AM
I’ve long been obsessed with the issue of “naming rights.” That’s where some entity allows another entity to buy the right to affix its name to something. This began with rich people needing their name on some hospital wing as part of a scheme for immortality. And it’s part of the larger matter of public (and quasi-public) spaces and creeping commercialism.
In recent years, we’ve seen one encroachment after another. It’s hard to find a beloved sports venue that hasn’t converted from Windy City Park to Extra Strength Tylenol Stadium or Twice-Used Pampers Arena. All manner of property, from lampposts to bathroom walls to taxi roofs to the dreaded endless movie preview space, is for sale. I actually read somewhere that even some cheerleader midriffs were available to sponsors.
And now, we have newsrooms up for grabs. WIBA radio station, in Madison, Wisconsin, has sold naming rights to its newsroom, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
>Beginning Jan. 1, the WIBA newsroom will be called the Amcore Bank News Center.
"This simply means they get 'name branding' with the description of the news center on air," confirmed Jeff Tyler, vice president of Clear Channel Radio-Madison, which owns WIBA-AM 1310 and FM 101.5. "What listeners will hear on air is something like, 'Now from the Amcore Bank News Center, here's WIBA's Jennifer Miller.'• "
Tyler and Amcore would not divulge what was paid for naming rights. But Tyler said "there are many examples of this in broadcasting and in other industries, from stadiums to business schools." Clear Channel Milwaukee's WISN-AM 1130 sold its newsroom naming rights to Pyramax Bank last year.
"WIBA-AM 1310 is a market- leading radio station, and having the Amcore name associated with a station that has significant listeners helps us in building brand awareness," said Amcore Bank regional president Jim Hartlieb.
Tyler said the deal will not affect news content.<
It will be interesting what happens if WIBA has a news story that is not favorable to Amcore Bank. Imagine that “state banking regulators are conducting a probe of improper practices at Amcore Bank. Now, back to our anchor in the Amcore Bank News Center.”
Obviously, news organizations that accept this kind of arrangement are looking for non-controversial sponsors. But where’s the guarantee? Remember Enron Field? Once it looks like the CEOs might end up doing hard time, the whole thing becomes an embarrassment.
The new investigative outfit I’m putting together, the Real News Project, needs to raise funds. I just can’t decide between several sponsors offering big bucks. Should we be the AK-47 Newsroom or the Wal-Mart Investigative Fund? You decide—we’ll report.
DIGITAL DUMPS
Ever wonder where your old computer ended up? Quite possibly, in an open dump near a residential neighborhood in some Nigerian city – or even in some wetlands. That’s the word from a Seattle-based nonprofit that sent a team to Nigeria to see what happens to obsolete equipment shipped from abroad, as recounted in the Washington Post:
>The Basel Action Network (BAN) found that much of the junked equipment is adding to the considerable hazardous waste problems of a country that lacks facilities to properly handle it.
"There's an amazing expertise in repair, but so much of what's coming in is worthless that it is just dumped," said BAN's executive director, Jim Puckett. Photos taken by the group show enormous piles of junked electronics in wetlands, along roadsides, and burning in uncontained landfills that are routinely set ablaze to reduce bulk. These open dumps are often in cities and in residential neighborhoods. The pictures show children wandering near smoldering piles of computer and television parts.
The United Nations Environment Program estimates that 20 million to 50 million tons of electronics are discarded each year. Less than 10 percent of the discards get recycled, and half or more end up overseas, much exported for inexpensive, often unsafe and environmentally unsound recycling, primarily in China and India.
What is different about the exports to Africa, said Puckett, is that unusable equipment sent under the guise of recycling is also being trashed.
"We saw some kids taking copper off equipment in the dumps, and we were told some people were collecting circuit boards, but we saw no organized materials recovery at all," he said. Most major electronics manufacturers have take-back and recycling programs, but those efforts have yet to extend in a meaningful way to developing markets such as Nigeria, which has no electronics-recycling facilities.
Intact computer equipment is not hazardous, but when computer and television screens, circuit boards, batteries, and other high-tech electronics are broken up or burned or degrade, they release toxic materials that include lead, cadmium, barium, mercury and chromium. Plastic components contain brominated flame retardants that accumulate in human blood and fat tissue and can disrupt the body's hormonal balance. When burned, some of these plastics release dioxins and furans, persistent pollutants linked to a host of health problems, including cancer.<
You will of course be astonished to learn that the good ole USA is the only major developed country that has no government-mandated system for recycling used electronics -- and no regulations to prevent the export of high-tech equipment for environmentally unsound recycling.
And, since the US hasn’t ratified treaties on, oh, greenhouse gases and other piffle, and is busy ignoring treaties on torture, it is no surprise to learn that it also remains the only developed country that has not ratified the Basel Convention, a treaty designed to control international trade in hazardous waste. And that the home of the free is also headquarters for sleazy junk tech dumpers.
So add that to your list of other things you thought you didn’t have to worry about and where you assumed (or prayed) you could count on your officials to do the right thing.
Now, that doesn’t mean we all need to personally squire our ancient hard drives and eight-track players to some accountable fate. But it does mean that some more-influential tech folks, of the likes of Bill Gates and Michael Dell, should be asked to lean on their army of highly-paid DC corporate lobbyists to download a few complaints on our behalf to the public’s representatives.
And while we’re at it, lets be a little more sympathetic to the senders of all those phony Nigerian bank e-mail solicitations – they’re just dumping a bit back on us. Fair is fair.
JUST CURIOUS
Yesterday, the Associated Press had a small item about the resignation of Walden O’Dell, the friend of Bush’s who headed the controversial maker of automatic voting machines, Diebold. O’Dell is infamous for having once declared that he would do everything he could to ensure Bush’s reelection, probably one of the most-ill-advised and inappropriate remarks in recent times. It spawned a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists, even though it suggested that O’Dell was more dumb than wily.
In any case, whenever I hear that someone a bit dodgy resigned for “personal reasons,” my reportorial antennae pop up just a bit straighter. But I’m guessing that the only sin this fellow committed was an inability to make enough money. As AP notes, “On Sept. 22, Diebold shares dropped sharply when the company lowered its outlook for the third quarter and analysts panned the stock, saying the company was executing poorly in a positive market.”
When someone accused of helping steal the election on behalf of Bush can’t make money in the year following that victory, you have to wonder just how competent he is – at anything, including rigging a vote.
Over to you, conspiracy theorists.
HEALTH NOTICE JUST IN (origin unknown)
The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning
about a new virulent strain of Sexually Transmitted Disease. This
disease is contracted through dangerous and high risk behavior. The
disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim (pronounced "gonna re-elect him").
Many victims contracted it in 2004, after having been screwed for the
past 4 years, in spite of having taken measures to protect themselves
from this especially troublesome problem.
Symptoms of Gonorrhea Lectim may include, but are not limited to:
Anti-social personality disorder traits;
Delusions of grandeur with a distinct messianic flavor; chronic mangling
of the English language;
Extreme cognitive dissonance;
Inability to incorporate new information; (xenophobia) inability to
accept responsibility for actions;
Exceptional cowardice masked by acts of misplaced bravado;
Uncontrolled facial smirking; ignorance of geography and history;
Tendencies toward creating evangelical theocracies:
Strong propensity for categorical, all-or-nothing behavior.
The disease is sweeping Washington, DC. Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed and baffled that this malignant disease originated only a few years ago from a bush in Texas.
FROM MURROW TO....COURIC
So I see in the New York Observer that Katie Couric is likely to be offered, ahem, $20 million a year to be the anchor of CBS News. I don't personally know about Ms. Couric's hard-news chops, but never mind. No matter what they say about tv anchors really being like newspaper reporters, only better looking, the reality is that it's less important than ever that an anchor know how to write a paragraph or recognize a story when it's coming right at them. Like so many things these days, its not about substance. It's about finding the perfect tv spouse for the target viewer -- someone the dwindling evening news audience wouldn't mind coming home to day after day.
Anyway, I was just sort of kind of thinking what her putative $20 million salary might buy, were it to be spent otherwise, or if, imagine, she just said "hey, I'm already loaded after years of making almost that much on the Today Show, so why not use the money for something worthwhile? I'll donate it for good journalism."
In my fantasy, CBS would announce that it was conducting a talent search for the best producers -- of hard news and investigations -- and was using Katie's rumored salary instead to hire....200 additional people. Two hundred great producers (the unsung ones who do much of the real "reporting" in tv), each delighted to work for the Tiffany Network, each delighted to earn $100,000 a year.
Any idea what 200 new producers, good, hungry, motivated producers, could do for journalism, and for truth in this country? Well, a whole lot.
Other thoughts on what $20 million might buy? Let's hear yours.
WHO NEEDS PENSIONS?
The Couric Possibility struck me because I had just read about a new iteration of the march to national penury. Verizon is going to get rid of pensions for 50,000 managers. Yes, indeed. Verizon employees will now be free from the burden of having their company actually set aside funds for their retirement and from having to rely on professional money managers to keep those funds growing. They will now be able to buy books on investing, take courses on investing, and experience the exciting world of risking their futures!
Apparently, the company figures that it can save a whole lot of money -- who knows, maybe it needs to save a whole lot of money. And such cutbacks make perfect sense, because other big companies have been getting away with it, and now, of course, the other telecom companies will have to do it to stay competitive.
You don't suppose some courageous politician (c'mon you remember courage, and soon, you'll be able to say you remember pensions) will speak out and say, 'enough is enough'? To be sure, in a Wal-Mart world, everyone but the Katie Courics must be expected to sacrifice for the company good, but there's obviously some extremely damaging destabilization going on which can lead not only to economic catastrophe for the majority of Americans but also form a nice recruiting basis for some fascist.
I'm no economic expert, but I do know that the US is moving rapidly away from the other 'industrial democracies' at warp speed. Not that we're really very industrial anymore. Not that we're so much of a great democracy anymore.
Wha' 9/11?
Editor & Publisher has a pretty sharp criticism of media organizations failing to cover an important new report issued Monday by the independent 9/11 Commission. What report? you might ask.
>September 11 is unquestionably the major American event in recent decades and the terrorist threat to our homeland is the issue of our time. So you would think that when the official and much-respected commissioners charged with studying the tragedy and offering advice on preventing another such attack released a report card on whether the government, four years later, is fully doing its job to keep us safe, it would deserve banner headlines and massive and continuing television coverage -- especially if the grades were poor, with five “Fs” and a dozen “Ds” out of 41 categories.
Well, such a report card was released on Monday -- this may be news to some of you -- and the media response was ... underwhelming.
Yes it made the front pages in some papers, got some favored spots on network news and provoked the usual cable news chitchat for a few hours or so. But Saddam Hussein's courtroom tantrums, the latest twist in the Tom DeLay case, and the first human face transplant, of all things, got just as much, or more, attention.
Does anyone know, for example, that the bi-partisan commission, led by Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean, gave the Bush administration -- which launched a war on Iraq largely in the name of reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction -- a "D" on its efforts to secure WMD worldwide, calling this "the greatest threat" to America's security?
"If my children were to receive this report card they would have to repeat a year. We cannot afford to repeat this mistake," said Timothy J. Roemer, one of the commission members. His colleague on the panel, James Thompson, the former Illinois governor, asked: "Are we crazy? Why aren't our tax dollars being spent to protect our lives?"
Yet an E&P survey of 40 major U.S. newspapers found that on Tuesday only six in this cross-section featured the story on their front pages. The San Francisco Chronicle had the most lavish treatment, with a huge replica of a school report card included. The others were: San Jose's Mercury-News, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Houston Chronicle, on the other hand, carried the headline: “Concerns Over Face Transplant Grow.”
It's true that the unhappiness of the commissioners started to leak out Sunday, and some papers, such as the Boston Globe, carried front-page dispatches on Monday. But most didn't put it on the front page either day, including The New York Times.<
Over to Katie Couric, now, for some perspective on the WMD problem....
Bob Woodward, We Hardly Know Ye
Speaking of well-paid 'journalists' and good journalism not done, the New York Observer has a must-read with more information on how much money "investigative reporter" Bob Woodward [he who thought the Valerie Plame leak was a 'non-story'] makes on the side while he's also the Assistant Managing Editor for the Washington Post who, as I noted in a TomPaine piece, doesn't assist, manage, or edit. He also doesn't investigate. Turns out he almost never shows up at work, either, while making millions each year. Perfect model for these times.
Here are choice excerpts:
>[Washington Post Editor Len] Downie said that he and his famed assistant managing editor needed to increase their communication.
“I’m not satisfied on my own part,” Mr. Downie said.
Asked to explain why he’d been out of touch, Mr. Downie replied, “Because he’s a rich man, who has an entire floor of his house as his office, and he has a staff of his own working for him. He doesn’t come into the office so much. We have to take the initiative to talk to each other.”
...... Mr. Woodward’s more successful books can sell upward of 300,000 to 600,000 copies (one rough estimate, from Nielsen Bookscan, has 2004’s Plan of Attack in hardcover selling 471,000 copies, and 2002’s Bush at War at 512,000); at $25 to $28 a copy, Mr. Woodward might make $3 to $4 in royalties on each sale, putting his take squarely in the millions. In between hardcover releases, a quick peek at Amazon reveals that a handful of paperbacks of the older books have been reissued, yielding further, endless royalties. <
With the kind of money that guy makes simply for hanging out with powerful people, it's no wonder he and George W. Bush feel so comfortable in each other's company. Go look back at W's biography and his own story of wealth accumulation. Peas in a pod.
The Unauthorized Presidential Addresses
I just discovered that the White House releases unauthorized versions of presidential addresses. You can listen to them here . When you get to the website, just scroll down, choose your favorite subject, and when the tuner opens, click Download -- and hear what the president really thinks. Personally, I was surprised to hear his views on fortune cookies.
BURIED TRENDS: GAY CARS
Today’s New York Times business section, page 10: Headline “Under Pressure, Ford Will Cut Its Ads in Gay Publications”.
>After a threatened boycott from a conservative religious organization, the Ford Motor Company has said it will cut back on advertising in gay-oriented publications.
The group, the American Family Association, called for the boycott in May because of what it said was the company’s “track record for supporting the homosexual agenda.”
After a meeting last week between Ford executives and members of the group, the company said that its Jaguar and Land Rover brands would no longer be advertised in gay publications. It said it had no plans to change the advertising strategy for Volvo, another Ford unit.”<
Okay, a few questions occur to this perhaps-naïve blogger:
-Why does the American Family Association think it is pro-family to restrict the ability of an American company to sell as many cars as possible (and hence keep as many people employed as possible) in the American market?
-Is Ford really that desperate? What about other American auto firms? (I think there still at least one other) Do they not target various subsets of the public as well, and don't they face similar pressures? Personally, I don't want to see anymore Jaguar ads in MAD magazine, because it demeans elegance, so I intend to let Ford know of my intentions not to buy a station wagon. (Do they actually make station wagons anymore?)
-Do many American Family Association members buy Jaguar or Land Rover? Just a guess, but I’d say not. In essence, AFA is fostering the destruction of these brands in return for continuing to buy more family-oriented vehicles -- like dangerous, gas-guzzling SUVs.
-What is the American Family Association doing reading gay publications anyway? I'm guessing that if you deducted censorship groups from the mailing list, these pubs would be rather under-subscribed.
-Why doesn’t the AFA boycott foreign auto makers who advertise in objectionable publications? I think I recently saw a Honda ad in Hookers and Johns magazine -- which I saw strictly by accident.
NEIL BUSH MOONS
So I see (from an article on AlterNet that Neil Bush, a First Brother, is endorsing a wacky new project from the Messiah, aka Reverend Sun Myung Moon. I’ve always gotten more enjoyment from reading about the financial adventures of presidential siblings, parents, and children, than about the private lives of movie stars – far more exciting.
'N', who’s always sort of outdone his big brother W in the private ne-er-do-well sweepstakes (no small feat), what with failed banks, failed companies, adventures with Asian hookers, and so forth, is apparently lending his good name to Moon’s latest commercial venture in redemption. (Poppy Bush, too, has affixed his seal of approval to Moon endeavors, for vast sums of money. Presumably, Neil, too isn’t doing it on principle.)
>This "heavenly way," the Rev. Sun Myung Moon explained, demands a 51-mile underwater highway spanning Alaska and Russia. Sitting in the front row: Neil Bush, the brother of the president of the United States.
Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the South Korean giant of the religious right who owns the Washington Times, is on a 100-city speaking tour to promote his $200 billion "Peace King Tunnel" dream. As he describes it, the tunnel would be both a monument to his magnificence, and a totem to his prophecy of a unified Planet Earth. In this vision, the United Nations would be reinvented as an instrument of God's plan, and democracy and sexual freedom would crumble in the face of this faith-based glory.<
I frankly don’t understand anything Sun Moon gets in his starry eyes, and don’t really have the time to read for nuance on this project. But I know this: I’ve interviewed people who were essentially kidnapped by members of Moon’s Unification Church, taken to safe houses, and forced to undergo brainwashing and disassociation from family members. One person got out through a bathroom window. Whew! Being brainwashed by Moonies is harmful stuff – even worse than being made to listen to a Neil Bush motivational lecture on business opportunities.
BUSH READS PAPERS? NO! YES!
The website for the group Media Matters has an item about a dispute over whether the president reads newspapers. Yes, you probably already knew that he claimed he doesn’t read them, but the very fact that such a possibility even exists, and, moreover, has long been accepted wisdom (and hence license for other good citizens to stop reading), tells us something about the distinctly anti-intellectual tenor of the times.
Anyway, here’s MM’s excerpt from the Chris Matthews show on MSNBC, with comments from BBC News host Katty Kay, and vehement disagreement from White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times:
Kay refers to Bush’s own admission in a long-ago interview that he doesn’t really read papers, and that he feels the only way to get good accurate information is from his aides, who are apparently more objective than journalists (what's the likelihood someone like Cheney would present biased information?). Bumiller, who really, really knows Bush, can't allow this insult to the chief to stand:
>BUMILLER: Katty -- he reads the papers. Please, you know, I -- this is crazy. Whenever I say this people don't believe me. He reads the newspapers. I am here to tell you he reads the newspapers.
MATTHEWS: He reads you?
BUMILLER: I can tell he reads the papers from the complaints that I get.
MATTHEWS: So can you tell his mood based upon his reaction to the things that you've written, other people have written?
BUMILLER: Well I mean, he reads the papers like a very busy person reads the papers -- you read the headlines, you read the first three [para]graphs. He reads the papers like a well-informed person, and I can tell you what he complains about and what his staff complains about and his -- or, his wife reads the papers -- that I can tell you.
MATTHEWS: So the lights are on, and somebody's home. That's your message.
BUMILLER: Yes.<
Hmm. What’s kind of amazing is that Bumiller, in perhaps the most important reporting position for the most important newspaper, is naïve enough to believe that complaints about her coverage come from Bush’s reading of newspapers. Uh, Liz, isn’t it possible that there’s a media operation in the White House that scrutinizes and criticizes coverage it dislikes? That it does so in the hopes that some powerful White House correspondents will then compensate by being overly kind in other coverage – say, in appearances on tv shows – which it is FAR more likely that Bush is watching?
Then again, maybe Bumiller is not so naive, just doing a good turn for NYT marketing: "dahling, everyone who is everyone reads the New York Times!"
JUSTICE NOT DELAYED
USA Today's new poll of voters in the legally-troubled Tom DeLay's Texas congressional district reveals that he would lose a race against an unnamed Democrat, 36 percent to 49 percent.
But that's probably giving the Democrats too much credit. Given time, can't we count on them to find someone who can lose? Plenty of expensive consultants will have ideas on that.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
(from public 'holiday' displays in San Jose, California, personally inspected by your blogger-in-chief as part of research into the 'War on Christmas' alleged by various Fox News personalities:)
(that's not for a synagogue, by the way...)
and finally......
FUN FOR THE KIDS (thanks, Bregje):
Bush Nose The Truth, Blair Nose The Truth, But Do You No?
[click below (or, CTRL-click)]
http://www.andyfoulds.co.uk/amusement/bushv2.htm
AL JAZEERA... WITH TED KOPPEL?
You’ve probably heard the British tabloid The Mirror claiming leaked documents show Bush telling Blair last year that he favored bombing the offices of the tv network Al Jazeera.
It’s not yet clear whether this report is accurate, though the British government has taken steps to suppress the story, citing national security laws – giving the claim some added credibility.
In any case, though the Bush Administration seeks to demonize Al Jazeera as a propaganda organ, it’s no more of one than some major US news organizations – and certainly more diverse in the information it presents than the White House favorite, Fox News Channel. It has great amounts of free-wheeling debate, and that alone is a major contribution from a news organization based in the Arab world.
Now, comes the intriguing word that a raft of western media figures are signing on with Al Jazeera’s English language international service. Earlier this year, the British talk host David Frost joined, and now, a number of figures associated with ABC’s Nightline are jumping onto the ship. Interestingly, some of the surnames appear to be Jewish. This suggests an interestingly ecumenical approach by the growing network. Rebecca Lipkin, a former London-based Nightline producer, started there earlier this year as the London-based executive producer for programming, and Nightline correspondent Dave Marash is described as in discussions. Even Nightline now-departed host, Ted Koppel, has had discussions with Al Jazeera, according to the New York Observer, but reportedly, nothing came of them.
Lipkin said that she relished the opportunity to produce long tv pieces about parts of the world other networks barely bother with.
This is an intriguing development. If Al Jazeera is willing to let folks like this determine news content, then, paradoxically, we may find greater freedom there than with the increasingly compromised American conglomerate-owned news operations.
SPEAKING OF WHICH...
Remember the “Journal Editorial Report,” the program produced by the Wall Street Journal editorial page that was supposed to bring balance to the Public Broadcasting System?
So many local PBS affiliates either declined to run it or put it on in the middle of the night that the show has finally left PBS altogether – for the Fox News Channel! Finally a suitable home.
The show had come to PBS under the auspices of now-disgraced former Public Broadcasting chair Kenneth Tomlinson, a hard-line ideologue brought in by President Bush. Tomlinson started messing with a sober, responsible, pretty fair operation, and tried to make it fairer to his mindset by bringing in massively-skewed perspectives from the WSJ edit page. (I often have to remind people that the Journal’s news reporting is terrific, and has nothing to do with the editorial page, which is the paper’s sop to big money, and tosses them highly-biased and scarcely accurate editorials and essays that make them feel better about a lifetime of selfishness and mean-spiritedness.
BEWARE FALSE EQUIVALENCY
Brace yourself for a growing effort to turn the massive evidence of widespread graft, deceit and fraud by the GOP leadership into a bipartisan affair. The public frequently gets tricked into believing that any wrong is a case of “everybody does it.” And certainly, some Democrats have been involved in serious wrongdoing. But the false equivalency doesn’t wash.
That hasn’t stopped the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page (see above item) from comparing the guilty plea of Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Ca.) on multi-million-dollar bribery charges involving large defense contracts with the doings of former Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright, whose malfeasance was not only many years ago, but involved a $55,000 favor from a book publisher, and a job for his wife. They couldn't find any good examples involving recent or current Dems, so they took what they could.
The latest attempt appears to be articles about Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), who received a donation from Tom DeLay’s good friend, the scandal-bloated lobbyist Jack Abramoff, around the time Dorgan wrote a letter in support of a tribal school program benefiting the American Indian tribes Abramoff represented. Apparently, Dorgan had a long track record of genuinely supporting tribes – and a super-clean record. Abramoff’s giving him money after the fact, some suspect, may have been primarily an attempt by Abramoff to claim to his Indian clients that he had sway with Dorgan.
We’ll see how all this comes out. But truth-seekers shouldn’t for a second lower their guard. Karl Rove is the master of washing out controversies by spreading the blame where it little belongs.
POPE ASKED TO REWRITE CHRISTIAN AFTERLIFE
[Per Progressive Review: ]
[You've got to admire this Pope Benedict. He not only has the power to
send gays to hell but now he's being asked to use his omnipotence to
redesign the afterlife, with God not even being invited to a town
meeting to say what he thinks about it. It's something not even
George Bush has thought about. . . a kind of extraterrestrial version
of the Kelo decision. But then if an eminence can't exercise eminent
domain, who can?] -- comments from Sam Smith, Progressive Review
REUTERS - According to Italian media reports on Tuesday, an
international theological commission will advise Pope Benedict to
eliminate the teaching about limbo from the Catholic catechism. The
Catholic Church teaches that babies who die before they can be
baptized go to limbo, whose name comes from the Latin for "border" or
"edge," because they deserve neither heaven nor hell.
Last October, seven months before he died, Pope John Paul asked the
commission to come up with "a more coherent and enlightened way" of
describing the fate of such innocents. It was then headed by Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected Pope in April. It is now headed by
his successor at the Vatican's doctrinal department, Archbishop
William Levada, an American from San Francisco. The commission, which
has been meeting behind closed doors, may make its recommendation soon.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&st
oryid=2005-11-30T143158Z_01_DIT052305_RTRUKOC_0_US-POPE-LIMBO.xml
---------
With all the discussion of changing school curriculum, it's worth actually looking at what the fundamentalist schools teach kids.....
WHAT EVANGELICAL HISTORY READS LIKE
[via ProRev.com]
[From United States History for Christian Schools written by Timothy
Keesee and Mark Sidwell]
American believers can appreciate Jefferson's rich contribution to the
development of their nation, but they must beware of his view of
Christ as a good teacher but not the incarnate son of God. As the