Now Cough

Various Thoughts on the eve of Winter

2011-10-17T21:05:00.003-04:00

Here is one reason I love the 21st century:

Doing more than dreaming about going to the stars

And...

Assessing risk, and doing it anyway. Comment after the death of Dan Wheldon at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway:

“We all had a bad feeling about this place in particular just because of the high banking and how easy it was to go flat,” said Oriol Servia, the Newman/Haas driver, in a statement. “We knew it could happen, but it’s just really sad.”

Amid all clucking about the Occupy Wall Street movement or mob or confab, there is this today form the NYTimes Dealbook:

...Citigroup on Monday squeezed out its seventh consecutive quarterly profit, but it faces significant challenges to growth.

Citigroup announced a third-quarter profit of $3.8 billion, or $1.23 a share, beating analyst consensus estimates of 81 cents a share. That represented a 74 percent increase from a year ago, when the bank announced a quarterly profit of $2.2 billion, or 72 cents a share.

...Citigroup benefited from a paper gain of $1.9 billion, reflecting a sharp increase in the perceived riskiness of its debt — an accounting adjustment that gave JPMorgan Chase a similar earnings increase last week. Citigroup also delivered another $1.4 billion to its bottom line from money it had previously set aside to cover losses on credit cards and other loans. Together, those items accounted for more than 85 percent of the company’s earnings.

So, Citigroup made money by protecting itself from credit card losses, presumably losses that will continue. But as unemployment orbits 10%, Citi and JPMorgan are profiting and would not have done so without taxpayer help.

And this from the smart Jim Fallows on The Atlantic blog; the role of the media in distorting the true destruction of the political process, because of its quaint, trembling adherence to the fiction of 'balance' even when there is none to be found :

'Enabler' problem: The reluctance of the mainstream media to call this what it is, and instead to talk about "partisanship" and "logjam" and "dysfunction." Yes, those are the results. But the cause is intentional, and it comes overwhelmingly from one side.

AOL and HuffPo

2011-02-07T22:07:00.004-05:00

[First, a disclosure: I used to be in charge of AOL News for four years. Looking back, folks might say it was an old school, main stream approach to news. We cared about accuracy and speed, credible information, the best news brands but also being fast and responsive and driving discussions. Did it work? You bet: our numbers showed AOL had a larger readership than the top 5 newspapers in the world; all with a staff of 10. We broke stories. We did a lot of firsts that people now claim to have done. ]

WHO BOUGHT WHOM?

HuffPo just got a deal that gets them 10 times their value and Arianna gets total control over all content on AOL. It looks to me as if AOL paid her to take over most of what makes AOL, AOL.

STRATEGY?

Somewhat brilliant..if they can keep the wheels on. Within 18 months we will be fully into another presidential election cycle, and if Arianna and her happy band of bloggers and such can keep it together, they SHOULD benefit from what we knew at AOL in years past: all news traffic peaks early and stays long during and immediately after a presidential election. AOL will be able to crow about pageviews and more til the votes come in.

BRAND MATTERS

No secret here and it is one AOL has followed for years: branded content is valued above everything else. AOL is a company with a marketing midset and that says, in short, that consumer behavior is largely predictable. Brands might change (I worked with the NYTimes, ABC News, Bloomberg and others...) but consumer's appeal TO brands and brands desire FOR consumers never ends. HuffPo is a huge new media brand that carries with it a name and an audience. It fits AOL.

EXECUTION

First, if you work in Patch, Seed or any AOL-created properties beware. Ask anyone who worked at AOL's Digital Cities, AOL Hometown, AOL Journal what happens to AOL-created brands. In the battle for brands, AOL tosses over its own for brands it acquires or partners with. And even then the HuffPo folks should keep a light on: ask the people at CompuServe, Bebo and Netscape, among many others. HuffPo could become the exception except consider the challenge of...

number Two; these mergers and strategic plans take incredible managerial talent and discipline to recover their costs and fulfill promises. Mismatched cultures (AOL's walled garden, the open web and bloggers?) helped derail the AOL and Time Warner marriage. But so did poor management and confused leadership. Are things better now? Others know more than me about the managerial skill and focus of AOL and HuffPo.

QUALITY

HuffPo is a candy site for me: you're curious about a weird headline or scandal and you get your fix. Latest on John Edwards? Sure, why not.
But you want some real depth and perspective? The flight to quality does not take me to HuffPo, even though it has SOME good reporters.
HuffPo is not a news habit; it is the candy at the check out lane. The quality is 'eh.'

NEW?

AOL News was a powerful aggregator when I worked there. We parsed thousands of news stories a day through the servers and you could find the latest story on Boilivia or Lichtenstein with a simple search. But we spent the man-hours on headlines, selecting photos and certain stories to bubble to the top. And, worked with news partners days ahead on the stories they would publish on newsstands at the same time we would. Over time, audiences didn't have to go to the newsstand; they came to AOL.

So, aggregation is in AOL's blood and they can do it well. And, when they do it well, content and convenience win. Add in HuffPo's SEO mania and you could make the case this merger has nowhere to go but up.

Is this just an updated aggregation strategy? Is the current AOL audience of older dial-up customers going to come to HuffPo? Will HuffPo readers feel a bit strange about seeing AOL on their browsers and iPhones? Will HuffPo's presence force some brands and partners to leave, concerned for an association with Arianna?

Let's see how this all looks in 18 months. I think the numbers will take care of themselves, but will the content and the buzz hit new heights too? It comes down to content, not just navigation

IS THERE A LOSER?

I'll go out on a limb and suggest...yes, the NYTImes.com. With a pay wall looming that means more barriers to linkage (not completely, but let's say hurdles - real and perceived), sharing, contextual value and browsing.

Reuters has some analysis that makes sense to me:

One of the paradoxes of news media is that most of the time, the more you’re paying to use it, the harder it is to navigate. Sites like HuffPo make navigation effortless, while it can take weeks or months to learn how to properly use a Bloomberg or Westlaw terminal. Once the NYT implements its paywall, it’s locking itself into that broken system: it will be providing an expensive service to a self-selecting rich elite who are willing to put in the time to learn how to use it. Meanwhile, most Americans will happily get their news from friendlier and much more approachable free services like HuffPo.

So, Arianna goes to AOL and leverages her brand to, perhaps,...a marketing and advertising conglomerate that built a business on convenience. She does this in the same quarter as one of the most recognized news brands decides to go behind a pay wall (second time for the NYTimes). Let's see who comes out on top in a race to the next presidential election.

WHAT ARE THE STAKES?

For Arianna, she needs page views, new eyeballs and AOL needs to completely turn around a diving advertising trend because it can sell new high brand inventory.
For the NYTimes, it will be a race to see if subscription dollars more than offset the losses in site traffic and, presumably, ad sales.
And then there is the reason anyone would click in the first place: who has the best stuff that the most people want, or want most often?
Will HuffPo be able to link to NYTimes.com stories? Could HuffPo be a key driver to NYTimes.com? Or, will an army of HuffPo bloggers unleashed for the campaign swamp the field and overwhelm traditional reporting.
Or...does the NYTimes have something up its sleeves that turns the audience into contributors?

Many years ago I suggested to NYTimes.com editors that they focus on continually updated news, a focus on people and citizen contributions to the NYTimes.com pages matched with depth and context. And photos -- many more photos. At the time, they looked at me like I was from Mars.

Since then they have done most of these things (NOT because of my suggestions, of course)...but the reader role (forget About.com) is still missing.

Times 'a Changin' in CWE

2010-08-01T12:17:00.003-04:00

The best Starbucks in the country---certainly the friendliest --- is being rebuilt: all new windows, wall treatments, lighting and what looks like insulation. In the meantime the diligent crew is working out of a large tent.

If you have not been to Audi-K you have missed perhaps the next big trend: three years ago it was cupcake stores, now we have a hot dog shop. Not a stand but a hot dog emporium. This is a no frills place but the staff is always happy to see me and the choices are sort of mind boggling.

BCE, the Vietnamese place, two doors from Audi-K, now is offering hookahs. This place always looks empty; not sure why it would be because their food is really good.

Companion Bakery used to be on Maryland next to the parking lot. It vacated suddenly one day and rumor has it that Lester's is going in there. Doesn't say much for fine dining in the 'hood. The Coffee Cartel, though, is now advertising Companion breads at their place. A bit of an irony because I have heard of bad blood between the Cartel and Companion when it had a location one block away. I guess all is forgiven.

25 Years Later

2010-05-09T20:25:00.006-04:00

Today is my birthday and it is also Mother's Day.

I had forgotten this week marks another anniversary: the 25th anniversary (not by date, but by day) of the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia in 1985.

I was there, for some of it. Hundreds of people were and many more so much closer to the tragedy than me: not the least of which the MOVE members who I had met during a long trial in 1982, many of whom died in the subsequent fire.

For me that muggy morning began with the phone call that woke me from a deep sleep. And then sound: an anxious Morning Edition host telling me of the police confrontation; the sound of helicopters in the vicinity. And the instant wakefulness of realizing instantly how dangerous the day would be.

But I was completely unprepared for what was to come.

I had to decide in those first few moments who on my small staff would join me going into the story. My choice was selfish and quick: I would select someone who was not in a relationship, in case things turned very bad. I called Bob, a single African American member of my staff and I asked him to pick me up right away.

We parked blocks from the police barricades.

To this day I remember the last normal thing I saw, the last images before my life changed forever: an old black man sweeping his walk, a morning routine for him, and the patient swish-swish of the broom as Bob and I ran past, our tape recorder bags thumping on our hips.

It was humid. There were green trees.

And then we turned a corner and there were hundreds of people outside much too early in the day, talking and pushing and trying to see beyond the police lines. Over all the row homes and one block beyond was 6221 Osage Avenue where the police had tried to compel members of MOVE to leave their barricaded, rotten house.

It had all gone to hell: a botched police raid that would, in the hours ahead, go from bungled operation to a horrible cauldron of destruction.

I banged on the door of a house and pushed my way in, begging to use the phone to file a story. There was a threadbare living room, a worn sofa, a deep freezer in the living room, and a small child watching TV with a live broadcast of the scene just outside. I grabbed the phone and tried to file a story, but the engineer at the station had no idea how to get me on live. It was incredibly frustrating: the noise of the crowd outside; the TV images; the child toddling around; and a woman upstairs yelling at me and asking what I was doing. I recorded a story and left.

On the street, hundreds of police, police vans, weapons, walkie talkies, hundreds of people on stoops yelling and pointing. I found Bob and a reporter from one of the urban format stations. Barbara and I often saw each other at City Hall; we made chit chat and then the loudest machine gun I have ever heard went off. It spat violence, its echo reverberating -- was it shooting at us? At others? Without even thinking Barbara and I dropped and I remember hugging the tire of a car. I was holding it so tightly I got tire filth on my hands and my shirt. I looked around: people in the neighborhood were just standing there as if nothing had happened. Those sorts of sounds must have been part of their familiar; it was not mine.

Bob and I walked half a block and I tried to get into a phone booth to file another story, but the phone was dead. I walk to another booth and a plain clothes officer with a shiny, round security button on his lapel waved me away. He wore aviator sunglasses and had a curly wire from his ear. I realized then that the police had cut the phone service.

As Bob and I were taking, watching the scene police surged and pushed us and others back and police cruiser raced into a side street, its trunk lid popping open before the vehicle came to a halt. The trunk was packed full of boxes of ammunition.

For 25 years that image comes back again and again: the moving the car, the popping trunk, the open boxes of ammo and large arms reaching in and pulling them out. Portending death. The scene plays in a loop: car, trunk lid, opening, ammo...car, trunk lid, opening, ammo...

I looked at Bob and said 'Follow me and stay low...' and we ran for two blocks, ducking down at the sound of gunfire. We headed directly west to Cobbs Creek Parkway, the western edge of this scene: a wider boulevard that bordered a park by the same name. We then walked south, by houses and such until I saw a number of people including a reporter I knew - Mike -- crouched behind a hedge. Police vehicles were everywhere. Mike had reported from Lebanon and he whispered to me "This is much more dangerous than Beirut."

As he spoke, we watched a tall, young man with dredlocks slowly walking toward us, down the middle of the street. He had on a grimy long trenchcoat like a duster; it was fully buttoned, despite the morning heat and humidity. Everything went quiet: we all stopped talking and watched his every step. Police officers stopped talking. All eyes were on this guy and we all thought the same thing: there is a gun under that coat. How long til he shoots or one of these cops gets trigger happy?

Step, step, step. Slowly, slowly. I really thought this is where it could end.

He passed us without incident and we exhaled and looked at each other: 'Was that guy NUTS?'

The rest of what happened is a blur: I gave Bob some instructions, my tape recorder, some batteries, made sure he was as safe as could be and just told him to gather tape, keep his head and witness everything he could and take good notes. I also told him to find a way to check in.

I don't know how I got back to the radio station. I remember thinking how chaotic everything felt; how this was far from over and how the hell to structure the story with so many possible angles and so many hours left before our broadcast at 6:30PM.

All of what I had seen might be worth nothing by then: the whole story could change in an instant. And I was faced with trying to arrange to keep stories flowing to NPR. Plus, deciding who next on my staff would have to go into that terrible mess.

____________________________________________

The day was insane. Everyday producing a news show has that element, but this was unusual. Mentally, I felt very fragile: I had at least one reporter our there, and a story rolling and changing every hour. How, how, how to make this coherent?

The phone rang: it was an FBI agent. He wanted some information from the scene and oddly---expected we would help. To this day I don't recall what, but I remember thinking it was so peculiar and out of line. But it worried me then; why were the feds involved in a local police action? Was there a role they were playing that no one else knew?

____________________________________________

One hour to air: I am typing and editing and racing back and forth as the production engineer is taking in audio from the field. The small TV is on in my office: and at 5:30, the CBS affiliate shows a bomb being dropped on the top of the MOVE house: a helicopter, a sack with a fuse and then a sharp BANG. And then, slowly, faintly...smoke starts swirling from the roof of the house.

The phone rings: Dave calls from City Hall. "Did you see that?"

Somehow, the show is coming together. And with 30 minutes to air, the fire has begun: the fire that started on the top of the MOVE house is now spreading.

Dave does a masterful job of rolling with audio from a just-concluded press conference; the entire staff pulls off a miracle. After I get off the air from hosting this monster, I walk to office and collapse for a moment in my chair. My head is spinning. " Now, what?" We have another disaster on our hands. And an exhausted and anxious staff. I get up and turn to Pat; she and I will go back out there. For as long as it takes.

Pat and I jump in a car and head west. The sun will be setting soon. We get as close as we can, park and start to walk. It is an echo of the morning, but now the area blocks away from the shooting and now the blazing fire of packed with thousands of people, sweating, pushing, yelling.

It is the Lord of the Flies with white, angry kids from this racially-divided city now chanting 'Burn Baby Burn' and laughing and yelling. Will this mess erupt now into a race war? The police are outnumbered and occupied with the fire, not this crowd.

This is dangerous. I look at Pat who is next to me and she looks stunned into a trance: her eyes are glazed. I start yelling at her "Pat, PAT! Snap out of it.' It is like a scene from Nathaniel West: civilization fraying in a frenzy.

I push through the crowd to get closer to the origin of the fire. The heat, even two blocks or so away, is blistering. It is like walking toward an open furnace. My face feels sunburnt looking in the direction of the flames. The police and firemen hold us all back. I move west again, parallel to Osage, toward Cobbs Creek Parkway again.

It is now night. There are dozens of fire trucks. Some idle. And working ones. Thick, serpent like hoses run for entire blocks, water is everywhere. Red lights throbbing, the noise of pumpers and the roar of the flames. Smoke and ash float down. Futility.

I see a church and a open door and go down into the basement. I think 'This looks like a scene from a world war.' Inside, there are a few cots and people crying as they sit on metal folding chairs. Family members try to comfort each other. I hear people talk about losing everything. I am embarrassed to even be there. The whole neighborhood is burning down.

The fire is consuming everything. Unstoppable.

It hits me then: it is all out of control. The whole day has been out of control. Almost everyone inside the MOVE house: dead. All but two: the boy Birdie Africa and Ramona Africa -- a threatening, manipulative, bright, polemicist cult member, who I have known for years -- escape.

Out of control. The mayor, the police, the fire department...everyone you thought might have an ounce of responsibility and ability have lost control.

Somehow I get back to the station. I lose Pat in the night. I sit in my office and realize we need to file for NPR, and we need to get ready for more...tomorrow.

An NPR editor and I get into a yelling argument during an edit.

Pat returns. We sit in my office and we try to chat. I lose the ability to speak and then I just weep and weep.

That night I assign another reporter to what I know is a crime scene. My instructions are simple: get to the alley behind the MOVE house or what is left of it. And watch for bodies, count the bodies and see what the cops do.

At least for me this is one day that has never ended.

All sorts of triggers: foggy days, muggy summer days, helicopters overhead, any reference to the MOVE shootout. It all comes back. Smells, sounds, sensations, the images. The trunk pops, the boxes of ammunition, the fire, the heat, the smelly car tire, the old man, the broom going swish, swish: snapshots of memory.

Unstoppable.

My last piece for public radio

2009-08-07T15:53:00.003-04:00

This is a story I did which turned out to be prophetic about Iraq.

It was for one of the pilots of the late Weekend America. David Brown, now of KUT in Austin, was testing out the anchor chair. Tim Owens was a good editor.

I feel privileged to have spoken with the late David Halberstam in his small kitchen in his lovely home on the Upper West Side. And with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria who was incredibly gracious:

Listen here

RIP RMN

2009-03-04T18:28:00.000-05:00

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

This is so grim.

Bush's Law

2009-03-02T22:08:00.001-05:00

March 3, 2009
In Legal Memos, Clearer View of Power Bush Sought

By NEIL A. LEWIS/ NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON — The secret legal opinions issued by Bush administration lawyers after the Sept. 11 attacks included assertions that the president could use the nation’s military within the United States to combat terrorism suspects and to conduct raids without obtaining search warrants.

That opinion was among nine that were disclosed publicly for the first time Monday by the Justice Department, in what the Obama administration portrayed as a step toward greater transparency.

The opinions reflected a broad interpretation of presidential authority, asserting as well that the president could unilaterally abrogate foreign treaties, ignore any guidance from Congress in dealing with detainees suspected of terrorism, and conduct a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants.

Layoffs

2008-12-06T16:12:00.004-05:00

Here are the heads of the Big Three automakers: Wagoner from GM, Mulally at Ford and Nardelli from Chrysler.

Why, as a condition of getting a federal bailout, should they NOT be forced to resign? Plenty of regular Joes and Janes are going to see their lives sent into a tailspin because of their (and their boards') incompetence.

Why do these guys get to keep their jobs? Clearly they are not indispensable.

UPDATE: As I was saying...

Fi Fo Fo Frum

2008-10-26T22:03:00.003-04:00

David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, told The Sunday Telegraph that Republicans should now concentrate all their fire on "the need for balanced government".
"It's hard to see a turnaround in the White House race," he said. "This could look like an ideological as well as a party victory if we're not careful. It could be 1980 in reverse.
"With this huge new role for federal government in the economy, the possibility for mischief making is very, very great. One man should not have a monopoly of political and financial power. That's very dangerous."

Oh really, Mr Frum? And where have YOU been for the last 8 years?

Full article

Madding Crowds

2008-10-05T13:23:00.004-04:00

My financial advisor wrote an urgent email this week and for the first time used the word 'disaster' in a communication. He said, the so-called bailout is not the end, not by a long shot, and the impact of the mortgage mess combined with consumer credit card debt has yet to be realized.

When I produced Marketplace we covered many real estate stories and the growing push toward home ownership..and the move by banks to lend to less-than-qualified lenders. You didn't need to be Alan Greenspan to wonder about a) the exposure of banks and mortgage lenders b) the under-education of first time mortgage holders (did they really know what they were getting into?) and c) the shaky house of cards this was built on IF the economy stumbled. Greed covers up a lot of common sense. What struck me then is that the movement toward shaky mortgages came within a few short years of the S&L collapse. The so-called ownership society means assuming more debt.

Remember when the term Master of Universe was equated with genius? I have worked with people who thought they could defy the laws of supply and demand, who really believed they had crossed over into a new reality where unending growth was possible. These same people saw gravity reassert itself when the first Internet Crash occurred. There is no perpetual motion machine. Laws of nature cannot be defied. Things run in cycles, not hockey-stick lines on a graph.

The bailout is not communism. I have heard some well-educated people in the last two weeks who think it is. They betray a lack of history and an ignorance of what is happening here. The US government has always been the banker/lender of last resort -- to raise the money for wars, for the bailout of a depression (John Keynes anyone?), for subsidies for uncompetitive enterprises, even for the mortgage tax deduction. The government is a co-investor (owner) in all parts of the economy. There is no pure market.
Communism is an ideology about state control and ownership by the broadest of working classes. As an ideology, communism is to be applied across the board on all government actions. The bailout is an extension of government borrowing...but a last resort. If we're lucky, it'll be short-lived. I wonder if in four years when the market has turned around the federal government will auction off its portfolio of holdings to the highest bidder, like what was done with the auction of the broadcast spectrum. If time were no matter, there would be no need for the bailout. But the credit crisis is real, and the bailout is one step toward slowing the bleeding. But it won't be the last as long as we have the mortgage crisis still playing out.

Out of Her Depth

2008-09-11T19:52:00.004-04:00

Well, this is what cramming for a test usually looks like when you get to the exam.

If you are reasonably adept you might, might, be able to pull off a C-. I'll be generous, Sarah Palin didn't bolt from the chair in abject embarrassment. But she should have.

ABC News' Charlie Gibson asked some very basic and very pertinent questions. The answers to two were predictable, and I am sure the questions were designed to elicit some nuance about the complexity of events: whether she would send troops into Pakistan to hit terrorists without Pakistani approval; and, whether she would support Israel if it decided to attack an Iranian nuclear site in the name of self defense.

Palin pretty much blubbered through those and spouted "a blizzard of words" but in the end delivered boilerplate stuff.

Gibson asked her about the Bush Doctrine and it soon became clear she had absolutely no idea what it is.

And, when discussing the situation in Georgia and Russia, she let the discussion drift to war... and was backed into a corner on that topic. An experienced person would have been able to parry and finesse this sensitive topic. Palin could not. I am sure in Moscow this interview is being dissected nicely. Note: Josh Marshall agrees with me

What we have here now on the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is another example of the double down on minimal talent and wisdom that passes for political leadership in this country. At a time when we absolutely need more qualified people.

The decline was certainly evident with Dan Quayle, slipped lower with George W. Bush and now has dropped to the bottom with this hockey-mom governor. Sarah Palin. Please. Wake up. This nomination is a pitiful fraud that puts the country and the world at risk.

Time for the "Amateurs"?

2008-09-10T23:18:00.004-04:00

Senator John McCain went on a rant today, declaiming to a crowd of supporters how Barack Obama was "Wrong on Iraq, wrong on Iran.." But, Obama might be right on Pakistan. In fact, he called for a policy of attacks inside Pakistan if it meant attacking Al Qaeda and Taliban forces the Pakistanis would not attack.

Now, the New York Time is reporting that is exactly Bush administration policy. The president signed secret orders in July permitting special ops attacks inside Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government.

This is yet another foreign policy development that Barack Obama called for and anticipated as the GOP attacked him for being naive and inexperienced. The other? The withdrawal of troops from Iraq to press attacks in Afghanistan. Which is what the Bush administration is now doing.

It's Biden!

2008-08-23T10:09:00.006-04:00

Even though Joe Biden said this earlier this week:

"Hey guys, I'm not the guy." It turns out he IS the guy.

Barack Obama made a good choice, and I'm not saying that just because I am a son of Delaware.

I first met Biden as an incoming freshman. Thousands of us were lined up at the University of Delaware fieldhouse and stadium, waiting to sign up for coveted classes. In the blazing sun, this guy in shirtsleeves and a tie comes down the line quickly shaking hands. I shook his and he moved on and thought "That guy sure looks young."

He was -- only 29, a former elected county official. And his wife, Neilia, so very attractive.

Within weeks he was elected as the youngest US Senator from Delaware. I cast my vote for him, certainly.

And, within weeks she was dead along with his daughter, Naomi. They were killed in a horrible car accident less than a mile from my parent's house (View Larger Map) at a dangerous intersection where a winding, two-lane country road joined a busy four-lane highway. Police at the scene said they knew the victims were members of the Biden family because of all the strewn campaign material found at the scene. His two sons, Beau and Hunter, survived the crash.

If you want a clear picture of Biden as a candidate and senator and flawed person, you won't get a better account than the chapters about him in the masterful What It Takes.

I next saw Biden a couple years later. He was speaking one night on campus at Mitchell Hall, a beautiful theatre. This was when it was still exciting and somewhat cool to go see a US senator speak. I went there with my friend Greg Leute; we sat in the balcony and Biden walked out onto the bare stage alone. And, without notes, he spoke---about the Vietnam War (what we were concerned about), and poverty and Nixon and trust and most importantly, public service. He was about 10 years older than us and that night he owned the venue. At precisely one hour into his talk as he finished, the alarm went off on his watch and everyone laughed. He had timed the talk perfectly.

Greg and I left the speech so inspired and moved. It was really something.

Power Vacuum

2008-08-14T23:23:00.003-04:00

The Russians move into Georgia. The bear takes a strong swipe. There are lots of reasons this happened, but one of them is because of Bush's total foreign policy failure.

Troops over-extended in Iraq, not even enough to quell Afghanistan. Global world opinion aligned against the US and this president. Fractured NATO. Weak dollar.

Years of a wayward global strategy has reduced the US to an ineffectual superpower. So, Condi Rice can talk tough (with a quavering voice) and the president can try to sound like he's got his war on, but Putin knows better.

He has Georgia and probably as much of what else he might want and there is nothing the US can do.

Russia has decided to fill a power vacuum. And China and North Korea are watching.

UPDATE 8/24/08 from the LATimes:

...With the U.S. floundering economically and bogged down in two costly wars, Russian officials were confident that it could not and would not come rushing to Georgia's defense with a military intervention, analysts here say. Europe, meanwhile, depends upon Russian oil and gas exports, and was leery of a conflict with Moscow that could further raise fuel prices, they said.

"There is no West anymore. It's eroding and weakening," said Sergei Karaganov of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a Moscow think tank. "We are feeling very strong, and we don't trust anybody. Especially the United States."

Three or four years ago, he said, Russia would have been nervous to hear threats of expulsion from the Group of 8 industrial nations, as Republican presidential candidate John McCain suggested. Now, Karaganov said, many Russians laugh at the notion.

"I mean, who are these nations? Russia is probably stronger than any country in the G-8 except for the United States, and it has more credibility because it hasn't killed hundreds of thousands of people recently," he said. "It has won wars, and the other countries are losing them."

He paused. "There is arrogance in my statements," he said, "but that's the way people see things."

Muscle Mania

2008-08-09T11:31:00.003-04:00

I had a trainer early on who told me all she ate for breakfast and it was intimidating---eggs, fruit, yogurt, milk, cereal, orange juice, water--the list went on and on.

But now that I have been training for about 9 months I understand. This is only a partial display of the foods I eat on the days when I see my personal trainer. Not shown: the water or iced tea I drink, the Advil before the exercise...and the amount of time it takes to make and consume this stuff.

On a typical Saturday I get up and start eating almost immediately: coffee, cereal with fruit, a protein shake (about 2 large glasses) and if there is time, an egg or two with ham and cheese.

When I get home, a special muscle-building protein shake with two bananas and strawberries.

Better than The West Wing

2008-06-03T23:33:00.002-04:00

China's Katrina

2008-05-19T18:10:00.003-04:00

One week ago the quake hit rural China. The NPR stories have been fantastic.

How many dead?

A force of Nature. But unlike Katrina, no warning and then the hillsides and homes, shaken like being on the back of a dragon awakening. A science fiction scene of complete devastation.

How do people clean up? Where do they go to live. Where is the food and water?

What does recovery mean? Do people leave and move away forever?

Missing in Action

2008-05-05T19:23:00.005-04:00

Where oh where is John Edwards?

[UPDATED]

The populist, the guy who talked to the working man is now...well, I guess at home in North Carolina. And if he wanted to exert some influence you would think as the campaign swings to who is fighting for the little guy, he would make an appearance for either Obama or Clinton.

But...no.

So as the two remaining Democrats try to wrap themselves in the more-working-class-than-thou mantle, the guy who said he would never give up fighting for the middle class is missing in action.

After the North Carolina primary tomorrow night, how would his endorsement be at all relevant?

UPDATE

Muti to Chicago

2008-05-05T19:15:00.002-04:00

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is getting a new music director and it is Ricardo Muti. Now, I am a cultural zero when it comes to classical music. But Muti matters.

I saw him a few times when he conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in the 80s. He defines 'maestro' with a commanding and dramatic presence.

When he conducts, he chops the air with his arms and his baton. He walks with a bearing that is intimidating (some would say charismatic). Tight, controlled, passionate, forceful. Chicago is lucky.

LAT.com Homepage. Oops

2008-04-26T10:06:00.004-04:00

Whatever It Takes

2008-04-22T22:43:00.004-04:00

Many years ago I was covering an election night and volunteered to stake out a conservative Democratic candidate's party at The Baltic Club. This club was really an ethnic men's watering hole in the so-called River Wards: a stretch of sad row homes and warehouses stretching up from center city Philadelphia along the Delaware River.

This is very blue collar. The streets are narrow. No trees anywhere. More industrial England than anything else.

Inside, The Baltic Club was dark. Some of the older men were hunched over, speaking foreign tongues, and the hall was a grim room with bad lighting, long folding tables and metal chairs. Wheeze-filled balloons and dingy paper decorations were hung around. Two pimply teenagers were setting up a cassette deck, speakers, a mic and a makeshift mixer.

In a back room, more like a large closet, sat a very fat man smoking cigarettes. He had on a vest and people were crowded around him. He had a phone, a legal pad and a calculator. He was talking constantly to people who were calling in from various precincts. Numbers were his game. He was determining in a very street-politics way how the vote was going. The people calling him knew who had voted and who had not. And, they had a very good idea which WAY they had voted. He smoked, scribbling numbers in long columns and swatting away the men who crammed in asking "Howze it lookin'?"

Late in the evening, as "New York, New York" was cranking from the speakers to get the drinking crowd up, I ran into a very drunk, bleary-eyed former South Philadelphia congressman. He had been out of office after a lot of miserable missteps, not the least of which was an allegation that he had punched and bloodied a woman in a DC elevator after a night of heavy boozing.

This guy was swaying and swaggering and he looked like a worn out tough, a punk. I gamely brought out my mic, and asked him how the heck his candidate would pull things out in a district that was clearly going to go for the other Democrat.

"What ever it takes!" he shouted. I asked him what that meant. "WHATEVER it takes!" he yelled again with emphasis.

He wasn't talking democracy or gumption. He was talking about the elbow-in-the-ribs, eye-jabbing form of street politics that gets results No Matter What.

Which brings me to Hillary's primary victory in Pennsylvania. She won by an impressive 10% over Barack Obama.

As the The New York Times put it:

On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.

If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: “We would be able to totally obliterate them.”

By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues like terrorism, the economy and how to organize an orderly exit from Iraq, Mrs. Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don’t like negative campaigning. She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama.

Whatever it takes. Well, that's one way to win.

Ignorant Media

2008-01-14T21:13:00.000-05:00

How long has the post New Hampshire mea-culpa been going on now?

Did you really think anyone has learned anything?

Polls, polls, polls... well the Beltway media types still can't stop thinking about all this like a horse race. They can't get off the conventional wisdom, poll watch. Voters? Oh yeah, them. I bring you Cokie Roberts from Morning Edition.

Or take the ridiculous kerfluffle over the 'race' issue between Obama and Hillary. A reading of the media since she said what she said about Martin Luther King, Jr (a little over a week before his national holiday) and LBJ and civil rights shows that Obama has said nothing to inflame the situation.

And today in Reno, Obama took steps to defuse the whole situation:

“I don’t want the campaign at this stage to degenerate into so much tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, that we lose sight of why all of us are doing this,” Mr. Obama told reporters at a news conference here. “We’ve got too much at stake at this time in our history to be engaging in this kind of silliness. I expect that other campaigns feel the same way.”

Now, Obama could have responded to the demeaning remarks by Robert Johnson this weekend. The founder of BET dropped strong hints before a Hillary crowd in South Carolina that a young Obama's use of drugs somehow played into the street culture of the Black community. The last Hillary supporter who said something like this had to resign. But Hillary was at the rally and said nothing.

Which, I think, is the reason Obama said this at a hastily-called and rare press conference in Reno:

“If I hear my own supporters engaging in talk that I think is ungenerous or misleading or in some way is unfair, I will speak out forcefully against it,” he said. “I hope the other campaigns take the same approach... We’re all Democrats,” Mr. Obama said. “We all believe in civil rights. We all believe in equal rights. We all believe that regardless of race or gender that people should have equal opportunities.””

And so how did The New York Times play this?

...It was not immediately clear why he called one today, except to be seen as taking the high road heading into a key debate in Nevada on Tuesday with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards.

See, it only has to do with positioning in the HORSE RACE. Nothing more, nothing less.

The Non Blog Blog

2007-11-05T19:42:00.001-05:00

Here is an example of why NPR, at least certain parts of NPR, don't seem to get it.

The NPR News Blog gives itself a cut line of "Looking for news in unexpected places."

But, if the last few posts are any indication -- on the TV and film writers strike, Pakistan, biking, the London police's response to terrorism -- almost all of the news it links to is in expected places: NPR itself, the New York Times, The LA Times, The Guardian, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Times, the White House (!)..the list goes on.

This is a non blog blog. Mainstream media. Stories you can find anywhere and everywhere. Alas.

For my money, this is a powerful news blog. I always learn something I didn't know or had not heard about til I saw it here. This blog reaches out to its readers to break stories, confirm them, learn more...

Why can't NPR's blog do that?

Heck, even the Gray Lady has taken bold steps in this regard.

Third Coast 2007

2007-11-03T15:59:00.001-04:00

The annual gathering of audio producers is something like a film festival for the ear. You sit in packed sessions and listen to a lot of creative radio and sound designed pieces, some good some truly great.

We live in a largely visual culture, so Third Coast is an exercise in pushing one sense over others: listening.

So, this morning I sat in a room and heard the noted food critic Anthony Bourdain profiled in a radio story, where he talked a lot about his teenage experiments with hard drugs. And the tawdry, depressing story of how he lost his virginity. But what made this amazing profile so groundbreaking was the creative use of sound to ILLUSTRATE the stories. Kara Oehler and Ann Heppermann were the audio graphic designers who made this tale an experience of memory in sound.

My favorite term so far: 'evocative crap.' What is it?

You should be here.

Update

Big congrats to Emily Botein and the great people at Studio 360 and Lu Olkowski, two of the winners last night at the Third Coast Festival awards ceremonies.

Sisyphus.com

2007-10-27T18:18:00.000-04:00

Is this success?

The founder of Pay Pal, a now very wealthy ($100-million+) 32-year old named Max Levchin, is profiled in the New York Times. (reg required)

One of the many hair raising items in the profle is about how Mr. Levchin views success...you know, making it. Right now he is working on start-up #2; Slide.com:

...he said he would not consider Slide.com, the photo and video sharing site he founded in 2005 that is still in its start-up phase, a success unless it is ultimately worth, in real dollars, “at least $1.54 billion”— the price eBay paid for PayPal.

“Otherwise,” he asked rhetorically, “what have I learned?”

Exactly.

What have you learned?

His girlfriend shares the house she picked out. A $5-million+ San Francisco mansion where almost none of the boxes have been unpacked. In the associated videocast, you can see her looking into the camera after shutting off her cell phone, lamenting she never knows when Levchin will be returning home.

Anyone want to take a bet on the churn rate of this relationship?

In the same video Mr. Levchin says he wants to have an impact. But if one of the biggest Internet successes is not big enough for him, I suspect the one after that won't be either.

Is this success? Is it addiction?

What has he done with the money from Pay Pal. By all accounts, he hasn't spent it in any way that makes him feel happier. He is pushing a rock up a hill.

“I enjoy sitting on nice beaches and hanging out with my girlfriend and playing with my dog, but that’s three hours a day,” Mr. Levchin said. “What about the remaining 18 hours I’m awake?”

Anyone want to give him any suggestions?

Pot Calling Kettle Black

2007-10-20T17:33:00.000-04:00

"Burmese authorities claim they desire reconciliation. Well, they need to match those words with actions. A good way to start would be to provide the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations access to political prisoners; to allow Aung San Suu Kyi and other detained leaders to communicate with one another; and to permit U.N. Special Envoy Gambari to enter their country immediately. And ultimately, reconciliation requires that Burmese authorities release all political prisoners -- and begin negotiations with the democratic opposition under the auspices of the United Nations."
-- President Bush Oct 2007

Open Sesame

2007-10-20T17:25:00.001-04:00

Finally, after about five months of construction, set backs, backed up drains, accidental painting of pipes, poorly installed ceiling lights, leaks..the garage at Lindell Terrace is open.

Are there visitor spots? Oh sure, for $10 a day.

Tortured Arguments

2007-10-04T19:49:00.000-04:00

Maybe it's me, but usually when you need an army of lawyers (Ok, White House lawyers and a bunch at the Department of Justice) to keep writing and stating opinions secretly about how much pain you can cause a captive human being held in secret, you are probably doing something wrong. Maybe illegal. Certainly something you really don't want to ever be made public.

Now, the ugly, secret, 'legal' rulings are emerging that provide cover for the president and those who act in his name: those who conduct the horror of Abu Ghraib. The black CIA prisons in countries that permit authorities to do anything they want with captives. The anonymous imprisonment and extralegal proceedings that keep hundreds of suspects in Guantanamo.

__________________

"Robust Interrogation"

Q Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President "for torture." We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that.

And thanks to the leadership of the President now, and the action of the Congress, we have that authority, and we are able to continue to program.

-- Office of the Vice President , October 24, 2006 Interview of the Vice President by Scott Hennen, WDAY at Radio Day at the White House

__________

Civilians were systematically subjected to tortures of all kinds, with the object of obtaining information.

Civilians of occupied countries were subjected systematically to "protective arrests" whereby they were arrested and imprisoned without any trial and any of the ordinary protections of the law, and they were imprisoned under the most unhealthy and inhumane conditions.

In the concentration camps were many prisoners who were classified "Nacht und Nebel". These were entirely cut off from the world and were allowed neither to receive nor to send letters. They disappeared without trace and no announcement of their fate was ever made by the German authorities.

Such murders and ill-treatment were contrary to international conventions, in particular to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

-- Nuremberg Trial Proceedings - Indictment: Count Three: War Crimes

Beep Beep

2007-10-04T19:39:00.001-04:00

Happy Anniversary Sputnik!

Where were you? I was taken as a 3 and a half year old to a parking lot of an Acme grocery store on Kirkwood Highway in Wilmington, DE. It was very dark and a bit spooky because the parking lot was packed, but all the lights were out. People were laying on their car hoods and craning their necks upward to the star filled sky---all looking for Sputnik. My little eyes only saw stars and I remember the frustration of not knowing exactly what we should be looking for. Like the old newsreels, you could see people with their arms extended pointing, looking for a moving little dot crossing north to south across the starfield. Did i ever see it? I can't remember THAT, but the evening and the gathering of hundreds of people in a suburban parking lot is what sticks with me!

Much Ado...

2007-09-23T23:11:00.001-04:00

Two-hours tonight, and all that hype...I hate to say it but Ken Burns' opening program for The War was a bit of a dud. And dull, too.

It's possible we have just been inundated with footage and tales of 'The Greatest Generation" (a term that irks...) for years and that's why this opening primer is all stuff we know and have, in some cases, seen before.

Maybe if the opening program had actually spent a lot more time with the families and people shown in the promos this series opener would have been a lot more special. I hope the series improves in subsequent nights.

Oh, and the music in places was just terribly inappropriate and odd. Hearing what sounded like banjo or strings over images of the invasion of Poland and the Battle of Britain was just plain weird.

Ain't Fergettin'

2007-08-28T23:27:00.000-04:00

"I'd like to come back down here in about two years and walk your streets and see how vital this part of the world is going to be." -- President Bush, Sept. 5, 2005, Poplarville, MS

Take a look at some of those streets in the Lower Ninth Ward on my Flickr site.

[photo: AP]

New Kid on the Bloch

2007-08-27T18:50:00.000-04:00

If you have ever been puzzled about the 'art' in architecture, go to Kansas City. There, the new addition to the Nelson Atkins Museum -- the Bloch Building -- shows what can be done with light and space, in new ways. This isn't a cartoonish Bilbao from Frank Gehry (always seemed appropriate he did the Disney Hall in LA).

The Bloch works with dramatic white panes and panels, hidden and filtered light that creeps, illuminates, bends and surprises (yes, even in the men's room in the image above!) and creates quiet spaces to show off some incredible collections.

Want to begin understanding this amazing art museum/gallery/sanctuary? Check out the new, comprehensive work by designer/architect Jack Rees called The Sixth Surface: Steven Holl Lights the Nelson-Atkins Museum. (Holl is the brilliant architect behind the Bloch.)

Just as the museum offers multiple points of entry for visitors, the book offers multiple interpretations of the combined structures.
The Sixth Surface features a collection of poems, essays and artworks that helps translate the expanded Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
The Sixth Surface is named for the innermost surface of the innermost panel of glass that constitutes Steven Holl’s structure.

You can order The Sixth Surface online, too!

Not to be Missed!

2007-08-25T11:59:00.000-04:00

Why Al Yankovic is a genius!

1, 2, 3, 4...

2007-08-22T19:35:00.000-04:00

Internet vs. Radio

2007-08-21T18:56:00.001-04:00

One measure of influence and impact...

Share of ad spending by medium.

Noir

2007-08-19T23:28:00.001-04:00

You know, I have often thought that gangsters and artists are the same in the eyes of the masses.

The word 'heist' feels so 1950s. And it is. Stanley Kubrick's The Killing captures what it felt like to live in that decade: black and white, a bit raw and uncivilized, unpaved roads, unshaven men, a world on the brink of modern but not yet there.

And this movie depicts a certain kind of man's world: raw with ambition, greedy, violent, a land of double crosses, right crosses to the jaw, betrayal, dames and booze, robbery and the open-air desperation of horse races.

This is a dark, cynical and methodical film noir. Kubrick joined forces with the crime novelist Jim Thompson on the script (ever read him? He is absolutely chilling: "The typical Jim Thompson anti-hero is a troubled, perhaps even schizophrenic, misogynist who drinks a lot and kills people when he feels like it," Meredith Brody has written...). Kubrick made The Killing just before Paths of Glory, perhaps the best anti-war film ever made.

Grab a bottle of Scotch and fire up the tube and watch The Killing.

The Deception of Narrative

2007-08-16T18:55:00.000-04:00

I struggle everyday with the false reality created by story archs: the push to make events and news and life understandable (a method of coping with chaos) in the context of telling tales.

Newscasts are one filter for this false structure. They start with hard news and end with the kicker. On almost any newscast today the natural tragedy of Peru's horrible earthquake is paired with the man-made murder of the bombings in Iraq(yesterday, or any day) and then we end, all tucked in, with the engagement of Jenna Bush.

This arch -- bad, hard news, but we end with a smile or an 'Awwww...' -- brings a structure to the world that it doesn't deserve.

Two years after Katrina, a new hurricane is forming in the Atlantic. The statement from the White House today is not about that, but about a wedding. A bombing in Iraq kills about as many people as nature did last night in Peru. Man cannot grasp the devastation or respond to stop either, apparently. In the end, those in New Orleans, those in Iraq, those in Peru and even Jenna Bush---you're on your own.

That's the way it is.

Is there a story that captures this? No. Is this too dark? I don't think so. I think the siutation is one of chaos and uncertainty. No order at all. In fact, no narrative that can accurately capture the real randomness.

Maybe this is why myths and religion are comforting. They offer tales and structure to help explain the chaos. And, perhaps, news is as much myth as information. Order, where there is none. But an order to help us grasp the craziness of it all.

The mind can only take too much reality.

Benito Giuliani

2007-08-10T22:26:00.000-04:00

"Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.” -- Rudy Giuliani

"The truth is that men are tired of liberty...Today’s youth are moved by other slogans…Order, Hierarchy, Discipline." -- Benito Mussolini

Future of 'Radio'

2007-08-05T23:22:00.000-04:00

I was at a Trader Joe's late tonight in Cambridge, and what would have been a simple transaction became a glimmer into the future of radio.

The woman at the checkout, with an orange gardenia in her hair, was in her 20s..and curious. After I explained what PRX does, she told me about her listening habits:

"I listened to KCLU today..."

Now, KCLU is a public radio station in Ventura County, CA. We were talking here in Cambridge, MA.

" In fact I was listening to Garrison Keillor..."

Why not listen on WGBH? A shrug...

"I just grabbed it on iTunes in the radio area, and I just kept it on. Streaming is what it's all about.'

She didn't say radio. She did say listening. Oh sure she knows WGBH, WBUR and even WFCR are out there. But if she is going to listen she is doing it online.

You Shoulda Been There

2007-02-25T22:16:00.000-05:00

Like a lot of other people in public radio and TV I spent this Sunday recovering from two back-to-back conferences:

The Integrated Media Association and the Beyond Broadcast 2007 gatherings.

The IMA confab covered a lot of ground in five days: disturbing reports from the newspaper side about how it withered and failed to compete as digital moved faster than publishers did; examples of how the BBC is doing a lot of things public radio in the states is not; some excellent technical sessions and calls to action masked in 'do-it-our-way' marketing.

The really powerful moments, at least for me, happened over dinner and drinks. I wish everyone in public radio could have joined some of my colleagues from the Public Radio Program Directors (PRPD) board for a fascinating discussion about music, music programming and the forthcoming South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin. Bruce Warren of WXPN in Philadelphia, Hawk Mendenhall of Austin's KUT and Todd Mundt of Iowa Public Radio were among those who talked most about the challenges, thrill and satisfaction of music programming. And what you missed was the passion combined with experience and taste offered in a remarkable atmosphere of sharing.

No deals. No quid pro quo. No politics. No strategy. No budgets and five year plans. Just a table full of public radio veterans talking about what we love most and offering to share the wealth.

That open source spirit is what's missing from a lot of public broadcasting, but it sure was there that night. And, if you listen to those stations you can hear the open passion that comes from such a spirit.

The other meal I had was again with Todd (his excellent blog hits the high and low points of the IMA very well) and Graham Griffith, a producer working on a new national program. Graham has a superb record running NPR's and WBUR's On Point. We talked deeply and in detail about news, news on public radio, the challenges of launching new programs, and how to broaden the reach, the sound and the immediacy of what we SHOULD hear at the left end of the dial but too often don't. This was a valuable, memorable lunch full of laughter and wrinkled brows. It made me hopeful. But we all agreed public broadcasting is not changing quickly enough, not picking up the pace while the audience races forward. Or away.

And finally, I had enough extended coffee breaks and white wines with people from the big three...NPR, APM and PRI...and stations to remain convinced of a few observations:

Bigger is not better

Organizations more often than not kill creativity by burying it in process and 'being responsible'

No one owns 'good' or 'quality'

Paranoia, fear of change and internal competition are going to kill public broadcasting

Talk is cheap

It's clear that as a business we don't trust the audience enough...its tastes, its passions, and its quirkiness. We ask the audience to listen to US (and pledge dollars), but we don't listen to our listeners nearly enough. Nor are we paying attention to what they are doing.

Over the next year, I hope we sit down with a lot of listeners and just listen to them. They're the experts.

Social Media

2007-02-22T17:14:00.000-05:00

If you are not in Boston at a hotel in Copley Plaza, you are missing an intense couple of days picking up the latest buzz on social media.

Here's a funny test link created in a session.

And the BBC was here live.

Astronut!

2007-02-05T21:22:00.000-05:00

Oh my. Mother of 3. NASA Mission Specialist. Space shuttle veteran. Diapers. Do you really want to know?

Scooter!

2007-02-01T18:56:00.000-05:00

The modified limited hangout of the Bush administration is now turning into a case of indecent public exposure.

Or disclosure.

And Scooter Libby, who was willing to do all sorts of law-skirting things for the Bushies is now being hung out to dry in the perjury case he faces in federal court of l'affaire Plame.

Until now. Not one of the witnesses who has testified so far, all newsies, has backed up Libby's statements to the grand jury about when he claims to have first learned that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent.

Libby was leaking like crazy to anyone with a pen and notebook. Who told him to? Wellll...there's lots to suggest the Vice President did, or suggested as such. Did the President? Mr. Deniability?

Hmmm.. some tasty new bits hint that maybe he did. Who would rat out the Prez? How about Mr. Shoot-Him-In-The-Face Cheney?

It sounds like the battle of the aides. After all, the VP has been supporting Scooter. But the Prez didn't want Karl the Architect caught up in this mess, and to some it looks like Scooter is taking the cow pie in the face.

Now, when does Cheney testify? Under oath?

Post Christmas Sales (Job)

2006-12-12T18:45:00.000-05:00

The image the White House is painting these days is of a chastened president reaching out to all comers about what to do to get out of the mess that is Iraq.

This famously arrogant and closed-minded commander in chief is now like a Talmudic student, eargerly seeking counsel for his urgent questions from wise men and women (many of whom he and his lackies dismissed when they were certain Iraq held weapons of mass destruction).

What a difference a few thousand dead, the loss of one branch of government and record-low approval ratings can have.

Tends to focus the mind.

But not too much. You see this president, despite some valuable advice from the Iraq Study Group, has decided to keep looking for answers he can live with. This 'Where's Waldo?' approach to a foreign policy disaster amounts to him seeking a response he can sell.

And that, sadly, will now have to wait til after the holiday. Really, what's the rush? A few more market bombings, a handful of IEDs killing US troops. It isn't like there is a war on.

A Thumpin'

2006-11-08T22:57:00.000-05:00

...I thought we were going to do fine yesterday. Shows what I know. But I thought we were going to be fine in the election. -- President Bush Nov. 8.

Not one House Democrat up for re-election lost on Nov. 7.

Bush accepts Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation.

Webb takes the Va Senate race.

Democrats take the Senate.

Dems Take House

2006-11-08T00:56:00.000-05:00

It's called payback, Karl.

Goodbye Darkness

2006-11-03T18:20:00.000-05:00

William Styron died this week. Incredible writer. Overcame the grip of depression.

From The New York Times:

All his novels, Mr. Styron once observed, focused on one recurrent theme: “the catastrophic propensity on the part of human beings to attempt to dominate one another.” He speculated in a 1982 interview that this theme found him, as a result of being a young soldier in World War II, contemplating “the forces in history that simply wipe you out”:

“You’re suddenly a cipher — you find yourself on some hideous atoll in the Pacific, and if you’re unlucky you get a bullet through your head.” He added that “within the microcosm of the Marine Corps itself, you’re just a mound of dust in terms of free will, and I think this fact of being helpless enlarges one’s sensitivity to the idea of evil.”

Hope

2006-10-29T22:25:00.000-05:00

I'm just back from the Third Coast festival, an annual gathering of radio producers who do some incredible work. The festival is pulled together by Chicago Public Radio and it is always inspirational and exciting.

For those not familiar, the festival highlights original voices and producers at the top of their craft..a craft that more and more seems obscure and nacent as commercial radio homogenizes and consolidates sound.

Do yourself a favor and listen to some of the winners. We have them on the Public Radio Exchange:

My Lobotomy This is the incredible story of Howard Dully, one of the many thousands of people who were lobotomized. He and producers Piya Kochhar and David Isay spent more than a year tracing what happened to him (and many like him) and why. He finally confronts his father in one of the most moving and loving moments ever captured. A powerful story of brutality, power, justice and finally reconciliation.

Goat and Cow This is a strange and complex story about watching a goat climb on top of a cow, which leads to the discovery of hundreds of scattered letters on a California rural road, which leads to a mystery and a woman and a very involved detective story. Goat and Cow is one of the segments in a program called Radio Lab. If you have never heard this show we have a ton of them on PRX. Jad Abumrad, Ellen Horne and Robert Krulwich produce the show. It is like no other radio program ever.

Thembi's Diary You can listen to hundreds of stories about AIDS, read huncdreds more and still not get a better picture of the disease and its threat than this. Joe Richman gave a young woman named Thembi a recorder in her native South Africa and she chronicles what it is like to be young and living with AIDS. This story is poweful because you can hear how this disease spreads..in her case it spreads because she is simply human. Hear how she copes and, most movingly, thrives with love and care and an utter appreciation for each day. Unforgettable.

Between Friends A secret among 10 year olds comes back in adulthood. Crime, abuse, ignorance, confrontation and survival from the fantastic CBC first-person series Outfront.

Kyenkyen Bi Adi Mawu Ann Heppermann, Rick Moody and Kara Oehler produced a series called Sound and Memory about the power of music and connection. This award-winning segment is based on a Ghanian song translated as "Someone Has Done Me Wrong." A young Muslim man says it reminds him of his father, a former ruler in Ghana, and his survival from an assassination attempt.

Join the Club

2006-10-09T18:31:00.000-04:00

Well, whether the North Korean nuke was bigger than some say (Russians suggest 15 kilotons) or an embarrassing dud (Jane's Defense suggests perhaps a "pre-or-post-detonation event"), Kim's boys did something underground that rocked the world and a few earthquake detectors.

Regardless, if this one wasn't the big pop we were all expecting the next one certainly will be.

And George Bush will have seen another country enter the Nuclear Club on his watch. He has utterly failed to prevent North Korea from going 'nuculer.'

It wasn't Saddam who had WMDs, it has been North Korea -- with the means, intent, technology and support facilities. This White House has refused direct talks with the crazies in North Korea. Thus, a voice of rationality and moderation has been especially absent from dealing with the Pyongyang megalomaniacs.

Has Bush made the world a safer place? No. The best he can do now is wag a finger at Mr. Kim, as he did in this excerpt from his statement today:

The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable of the consequences of such action.

Yeah, yeah. And this sort of 'will not stand' talk got us this nuke or almost-nuke blast. What does 'fully accountable' mean? We aren't going to attack North Korea because that would result in Seoul being leveled in about 30 seconds. Sanctions, along the lines of the pressure we are pushing for at the UN, have one result..as the president noted:

...Threats will not lead to a brighter future for the North Korean people.

Axis of Evil. Sounds good until you have to do something about it.

Now what?

Weak Signal

2006-09-18T21:23:00.000-04:00

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was rightly pilloried for the lame explanation for going to war in Iraq with not enough troops and not the right equipment:

You go to war with the Army you have.

The same sort of explanation can be applied to the much lower stakes world of public radio: the sound of it is in the hands of the producers and creators we have.

Depending how you look at the latest audience numbers, the trend is either flat or falling. In any case, radio is not a growth medium and neither is public radio.

Yet this last weekend in Philadelphia a few hundred station program directors -- people who decide what gets on the air on public radio stations -- clapped and seemed to approve of a variety of programming ideas that go in one direction, when all the demographic research goes the other.

Take Sound Opinions produced at the gutsy Chicago Public Radio and distributed by American Public Media. This is an ok show, passionate and smart. But it follows the rest of a public radio pattern: hosted and produced by a white staff and largely focused on things of interest only to that audience. As a podcast, it certainly has a devoted listenership. But of all the programs to launch this year, is this where money and attention should go?

Core listeners to public radio are declining. Boomers still have life..in fact as all listeners get older there is some age-appeal to public radio. But as so much data show, listeners are listening in places other than radio. And that is a trend across all racial groups.

Jacobs Media cites many lessons learned in its consulting practice, but this one stands out:

Listen to the audience

As Mark Ramsey wrote recently, people want choice:

While very few folks have tuned out radio altogether, time for more choices must come from somewhere. And it's going to come first from the industry that consumes most of it: Radio.
The NYT [includes] a very telling graphic which will come as no surprise to you.
And it's worth noting that the age groups with the biggest declines are NOT the groups with the most satellite radios. But they ARE the groups with the most iPods and the most Internet savvy.
Think about that when you next hear the industry obsess on satellite radio. Then ask yourself who this obsession is for: The industry, the consumers - or the "Street."

...and maybe that's why a show like Second Opinions does better as a podcast, because as a mass appeal broadcast it'll have a struggle.

As Spanish becomes increasingly the dominant language in LA and the Southwest...as iPod and all portable listening grows, what will be radio's appeal?

Local

Variety and risk--lots of it

Stars

Uniqueness. Not repurposing, not the same voices and songs and patterns

Audience creation

Originality

It was hard to hear any of this in Philadelphia.

Photo by Unhindered by Talent

Five Years Later

2006-09-10T22:23:00.000-04:00

The Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan.

The reputation of the United States is lower than it has been since Viet Nam, even among our allies.

This past week, the number of US troops killed in Iraq surpassed the number of civilians who died on Sept 11.

Support for the Iraqi constitution is fraying among Iraq political factions.

The president admits there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The British disabled an apparent terrorist plan to blow up more than one US airliner in flight over the Atlantic.

FBI, CIA and immigration watch lists are not yet coordinated at airports and points of entry.

First responders are still not prepared for biological and nuclear attacks in major cities.

Federal homeland defense funds are not primarily directed at NYC and Washington, DC.

The FBI does not have adequate computer systems.

The president and the vice president have never spoken under oath about what they knew leading up to 9/11.

No one in the US government has ever been held responsible for the failure to connect the dots on 9/11.

Osama bin Laden is still free.

There is a constant atmosphere of fear and foreboding when the war on terror has no end.

Arron Dack died on 9/11 and left behind his wife Abby and two children, Olivia and Carter.

Responsibility. What's That Mean?

2006-08-29T23:03:00.000-04:00

Katrina, one year later.

"Unfortunately, the hurricane also brought terrible scenes that we never thought we would see in America: Citizens drowned in their attics; desperate mothers crying out on national TV for food and water; a breakdown of law and order; and a government at all levels that fell short of its responsibilities.

When the rain stopped and this wounded city was laid bare, our television screens showed faces worn down by poverty and despair. For most of you, the storms were only the beginning of your difficulties. Katrina exposed the big things that need repairing; yet it's most devastating impact has been on the rhythms of everyday life.

Some of you still don't know whether you have a neighborhood to come back to. Others of you who made the decision to return are living in trailers. Many are separated from their loved ones, and simply long just go to church on a Sunday afternoon with somebody you care about. Many of you find yourself without jobs, and struggling to make do without the convenience of a supermarket nearby. Many fear for your safety because of violent criminals. The challenge is not only to help rebuild, but the challenge is to help restore the soul. [it is amazing to compare this rhetoric with what President Bush said a year ago in the photo op at Jackson Square (above)]

I take full responsibility for the federal government's response, and a year ago I made a pledge that we will learn the lessons of Katrina and that we will do what it takes to help you recover. (Applause.) I've come back to New Orleans to tell you the words that I spoke on Jackson Square are just as true today as they were then."

Well, he might feel like he has taken responsibility but there is no accountability. You can tell that because the White House keeps spinning New Orleans and Katrina and not addressing the crap response by this administration:

The One Year Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

President Bush Is Fulfilling His Long-Term Commitment To Helping The People Of The Gulf Coast Recover From Unprecedented Devastation. One year after Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Coast is rebuilding and the Nation is better prepared for future natural disasters. Commerce is returning to the region, and as rebuilding plans are firmed up, growth and progress will follow, and New Orleans will once again be a vibrant American city.

Hurricane Katrina Was The Most Destructive Natural Disaster In U.S. History, And Rebuilding Will Take Time - The One-Year Anniversary Is Not A Finish Line. Challenges still remain, including crime and housing needs.

We Have Learned From Last Year's Inadequate Response And Today Are Better Prepared For Future Disasters.

The Federal Government Has Provided More Than $110 Billion In Resources – $118 Billion Including Tax Relief – To The Gulf Region. This funding is helping fulfill vital needs, including relocation, rental assistance, infrastructure repair, flood insurance payments, education, and debris removal.

You'll notice the one item that has no detail at all is the line about 'we have learned...' Lessons learned? Spin baby spin.

"Straining the psyche of our country..."

2006-08-21T21:04:00.000-04:00

Five years after 9/11.
Almost 3,000 US troops dead.
More than 3,400 Iraqi civilians dead in July.

Q: What did Iraq have to do with that?

THE PRESIDENT: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Q: The attack on the World Trade Center?

THE PRESIDENT: Nothing, except for it's part of -- and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a -- the lesson of September the 11th is, take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.

Without Fear or Favor

2006-08-13T16:00:00.000-04:00

Adolph Ochs once owned The New York Times and coined one of the best mission statements ever for a publication: "Without Fear or Favor." Cynics might claim that as an embarrassingly macho rallying cry for journalistic independence, but it works for me.

So, the confirmation today(registration required) that NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller held the story about the warrantless eavesdropping by the Bush administration before the November 2004 election (contradicting his earlier statements) raises a boat load of serious questions about the NYT and its sense of mission.

Keller had said in a message to readers on Dec 16, 2005 that the wiretapping article (that eventually won a Pulitzer and sparked intense criticism from President Bush and VP Cheney) had been held for "a year." But he tells NYT public editor Byron Calame that actually an article was being prepared before the presidential election and that the Bush administration had been part of the discussions about whether to publish or not. The decision to hold the article was made before the election.

Keller tells Calame, in effect, that the sourcing wasn't good enough to publish the article before election day. But new, more credible sources became available after November 2, 2004.

This still doesn't explain why Keller made an earlier misleading statement about how long the article had been held (He tells Calame "It was probably inelegant wording.") Nor does it explain why it was still held until 2005. And we have no detail into the veracity of the editorial debates that preceded the run up to the pre-election day decision. Calame's column says the debates about whether to publish involved the editorial heavyweights of the NYT, from publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. to reporter James Risen himself. But the decision was Keller's alone.

What was he weighing? What beyond the journalism? What sources suddenly became available after election day?

Should an article critical of a president up for re-election run close to election day? Mr. Keller, in the interest of fairness, says any good editor would want to give that person time to respond. But the fact that the administration was already aware the story was under discussion tells me the Bush White House had ample warning. Given the 12 to 24 hour news cycle, this administration is no slouch in responding to 'bad' news.

Keller's 'fairness' reasoning, if that is all that was at stake, is really weak. How aggressive is the NYT, really? Is there a political calculus to what stories are printed and when? If a newspaper won't publish a story in wartime about potentially illegal acts by a sitting president who mislead the nation into war, when can it? I mean, what's the point in having a paper reporting this stuff?

First Judy Miller. Now this. Keller should go. Period. Readers, and voters, can make their own decisions when they have all the news that's fit to print.

Swiftboat This

2006-08-06T16:23:00.000-04:00

More than MyLai

It shouldn't be a suprise that US military servicemen committed abuses against civilians in Vietnam. The sad part is that the history, the documented history by military investigators, took until now to come out. The LA Times story, "Civilian Killings Went Unpunished" (not entirely accurate; the story documents some courts martial and other discipline), has the details. If the story and the burial of fact weren't bad enough, I can't help but wonder where these dishonorable military men who knew of these killings were when political hacks denigrated decorated veteran John Kerry in the last presidential campaign because he had raised these same allegations as a young man. So much for duty.

Retired Brig. Gen. John H. Johns, a Vietnam veteran who served on the task force, says he once supported keeping the records secret but now believes they deserve wide attention in light of alleged attacks on civilians and abuse of prisoners in Iraq.

"We can't change current practices unless we acknowledge the past," says Johns, 78.

Among the substantiated cases in the archive:

• Seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians died.

• Seventy-eight other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted.

• One hundred forty-one instances in which U.S. soldiers tortured civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock.

As if to compound the horror, the government took steps to further hide the historical record:

The records were declassified in 1994, after 20 years as required by law, and moved to the National Archives in College Park, Md., where they went largely unnoticed.

The Times examined most of the files and obtained copies of about 3,000 pages — about a third of the total — before government officials removed them from the public shelves, saying they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Let's hope it doesn't take over 30 years to learn what the US is doing in Iraq.

photo: Umberto Gillio

Well, EXCUUUSE ME!

2006-08-06T10:58:00.000-04:00

“In North America, I only fly privately,” [Gavin Polone, a former Hollywood agent and now a producer whose credits include the cable television show “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “My Super Ex-Girlfriend.”] explained. “For me what’s important is excluding myself from people who might bum me out.”

-- My Other Vehicle Is a Gulfstream NYTimes Sunday August 6, 2006 (registration required)

"That's what you get when you bring your crackpot up from Texas."

2006-08-03T22:46:00.000-04:00

George Bush is condemned to repeat history. He didn't learn much to begin with -- about Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, the Middle East -- so we are stuck in a deadly remedial class with him.

Bush is also in the odd position of vigorously repeating his ignorance as the fallacy, lies and incomptence of Iraq bubble up between Lebanon and Israel, and between the Islamic and non-Islamic world.

It is a nightmare of his own making. The Neocons he listens to found a willing ignorant ally in Bush, and 5 years after 9/11, almost as many US troops have died in Iraq as the number of civilians killed at the World Trade Center. Bush touts the simplistic notion of democracy in the Middle East like some sort of naive Johnny Appleseed.

Now, of course, the eruption of war and cascading violence threatens to engulf the rest of the region. Former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal claims the Neocons and Bush actually welcome this conflict. Remember when Bush claimed that the war between Israel and Hezbollah was an "opportunity"? Blumenthal claims his sources really believe that escalating bloodshed and tension is a good thing:

Inside the administration, neoconservatives on Vice President Dick Cheney's national security staff and Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council, are prime movers behind sharing NSA intelligence with Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries, the source privy to conversations about the program says. (Intelligence, including that gathered by the NSA, has been provided to Israel in the past for various purposes.) The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.

[Go to Salon]

Blumenthal says his sources claim "the neocon scenario extends far beyond [tactical advantages for Israel] to pushing Israel into a "cleansing war" with Syria and Iran."

The president and his pals think the result of the Mother of All Battles will lead to ridding the Middle East of, well, angry Islamic people. People who use terms like 'cleansing' also believe in 'surgical strikes.' War is a lot like surgery...and if you have ever been in an operating room you know what a bloody, messy, and invasive world that is. Our policy makers, though, never get their hands dirty.

The secretary of state is lost in all this. Poor Condi Rice. She's been in over her head from Day One: a Cold War-drenched historian who cannot adjust to a post Cold War world. Plus, she displays a disturbing lack of confidence and uncertainty. Condi is a fraud in an administration of cynical sharpies.

She has now become Colin Powell II. Set on the world stage as a diplomatic moderate, her credibility is ruined (if it ever had any impact). One day she talks conciliatory, then obfuscating, cryptically, (hang) tough, and after the massacre of enough civilians in Lebanon, she talks cease fire. Twisting in the wind.

And while she does, the other ignorant and darker forces with the president work to make Orwellian logic actual US policy: war=peace.

Slice o'Fascism

2006-07-29T08:55:00.000-04:00

From the AP --

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as ''pizzas'' which will now be known as ''elastic loaves,'' state media reported Saturday.

The presidential decree, issued earlier this week, orders all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications to use words deemed more appropriate by the official language watchdog, the Farhangestan Zaban e Farsi, or Persian Academy, the Irna official news agency reported.

The academy has introduced more than 2,000 words as alternatives for some of the foreign words that have become commonly used in Iran, mostly from Western languages. The government is less sensitive about Arabic words, because the Quran is written in Arabic.

Among other changes, a ''chat'' will become a ''short talk'' and a ''cabin'' will be renamed a ''small room,'' according to official Web site of the academy.

On and Off the Road

2006-07-26T21:41:00.000-04:00

A blur.

That's the nature of day-on-day travel. My sister in law called me one morning, she on the East Coast and me in LA. To be honest I had no idea what day it was and what city it was. No wonder she laughed.

Bizarre Getting ready for landing in Denver this morning, I caught a glimpse of a bullfight on the in-flight television. What could be more odd? A man slowly butchering a wild animal, the audience not sitting in a Hemingway-esque bull ring but in a metal tube 20,000 feet above the earth, air conditioned, banking over the Western plains where Native Americans had done the exact same thing with buffalo.

Anger In Denver, the most disorganized, chaotic McDonalds in the universe. Five or six lines with 10 people deep. Teenagers overwhlemed. An up-ended, broken cash register sharing space with Happy Meals. An old man finally loses it -- "I wanna talk to the manager!!!" -- in a dispute over a $5 bill. Time stops.

Shooting Stars

2006-07-23T20:38:00.000-04:00

'I Love LA Part 2"....

My good friend Pat Ford and I were having lunch on a miserably hot Saturday in downtown LA at this ultra hip eatery/hotel/party place (more later) and who walks in..

Jessica Alba

She of very dubious acting talent but no matter. Cameras were made for her looks. She was not dressed like an LA slut, and she actually kept her shirt on. Looked to me like she was 'doing a meeting' with two guys who were very carefully dressed in casual stylin' duds. I thought her face looked a bit pudgy; she did, after all, bite into the big, honking BURGER. She was wearing some black slacks and form fitting jacket that cost as much as my first car.

Lovely girl.

I Love LA

2006-07-21T17:03:00.000-04:00

I was driving down Wilshire Boulevard the other day and passed an abandoned lot ringed by chain link fences. It was the remains of the Ambassador Hotel...THE hangout for the Hollywood crowd in the 30s through the 70s. And it is where Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 after winning the California presidential primary.

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

2006-07-12T09:29:00.000-04:00

Congressman Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committe, is a bone head. After years of an Iraq War, multiple inspections by neutral parties, he seriously thinks there are WMDs in Iraq. Seriously.

And now he uses the most irresponsible of allegations, and verbal bank shots to link the press with Al Qaeda. Most of us have a chip in our brain that stops us from saying things we know sound stupid or half-baked. Pete opens his mouth and, for all intents, de-pants himself. Proudly:

More frequently than what we would like, we find out that the intelligence community has been penetrated, not necessarily by al Qaeda, but by other nations or organizations," he said.

I don't have any evidence. But from my perspective, when you have information that is leaked that is clearly helpful to our enemy, you cannot discount that possibility," he added.

Worked for Joe McCarthy...

Sour Grapes

2006-07-11T19:53:00.000-04:00

I just spilled my Merlot.

Areas suitable for growing premium wine grapes could be reduced by 50 percent -- and possibly as much as 81 percent -- by the end of this century, according to a study Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Maybe the US needs more than Al Gore's excellent An Inconvenient Truth to put down their latest vintage and confront global warming. This study might be it:

Grapes used in premium wines need a consistent climate. When temperatures top about 95 degrees they have problems maintaining photosynthesis and the sugars in the grapes can break down, said [Noah Diffenbaugh of the department of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University] in a telephone interview.

All from AP.
Photo from Ryan Greenberg

Harmonic Convergence?

2006-07-09T00:03:00.000-04:00

I have a theory, a weak one, that has to do with fundamental design: when people work on the look and feel of one thing long enough, diverse ideas tend to coalesce over time until the design of any one thing tends to look only one way. I think part of the reason this happens is because function is so critical to good design, and while dramatic and unique design has its place, form and function balance toward an 'acceptable' look. Ease of use is so critical to what 'looks right' that mass design tends to look pretty much the same.

Latest case in point: the homepage screens of AOL and the redesigned page from Yahoo!

As White as (Tony) Snow

2006-07-07T12:23:00.000-04:00

From the Washington Post:

Cincinnati Gentlemen, a year-old publication that says it's "Cincinnati's Lifestyle Magazine for Men." A caricature of Snow is on the cover, which says: "From Cincinnati to '1600.' " The headline goes on to say, "He Speaks For The White House; He Talks With Us."

On National Public Radio, which Snow has worked for: "One of the problems with NPR is that there is so much political correctness that if you've got a name that looks like it was made up by Rudyard Kipling , you've got a better chance of getting hired. I'm a white guy named Tony Snow for heaven's sake. That's as white as it goes."

Impeachment Anyone?

2006-06-28T00:27:00.000-04:00

Item from the New York Times (registration required):

Bush's Use of Authority Riles Senator

By KATE ZERNIKE
WASHINGTON, June 27 — Senators on the Judiciary Committee accused President Bush of an "unprecedented" and "astonishing" power grab on Tuesday for making use of a device that gave him the authority to revise or ignore more than 750 laws enacted since he became president.

By using what are known as signing statements, memorandums issued with legislation as he signs it, the president has reserved the right to not enforce any laws he thinks violate the Constitution or national security, or that impair foreign relations.

A lawyer for the White House said that Mr. Bush was only doing his duty to uphold the Constitution. But Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, characterized the president's actions as a declaration that he "will do as he pleases," without regard to the laws passed by Congress.

"There's a real issue here as to whether the president may, in effect, cherry-pick the provisions he likes and exclude the ones he doesn't like," Mr. Specter said at a hearing.

Wait a Cherry Pickin' Minute! The president can decide what laws he will support and what ones he won't? Wow.

The timid Democrats and the lockstep Republicans are so polarized and filled with greed they don't have a scintilla of courage or statesmanship to say what we have here: a president acting in violation of the Constitution and the federal checks and balances.

The 'blow in the wind' Senator Arlen Specter is correct: the president does whatever he likes.

Who will have the courage to call for impeachment? Impeachment is not a trial. It is the allegation of charges by the US House; the presentation of facts and a sort of indictment. If those facts warrant, then a president is called to trial before the Senate.

The eloquent Barbara Jordan from Texas sat on the House Watergate committee and in her remarks, delivered this powerful piece of history and perspective:

We know the nature of impeachment. We've been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to "bridle" the executive if he engages in excesses. "It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men."² The framers confined in the Congress the power if need be, to remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the executive....

James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution." The Constitution charges the President with the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the President has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregard the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, conceal surreptitious entry, attempt to compromise a federal judge, while publicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of criminal justice. "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution."

There isn't one Barbara Jordan left. God help us. Bush and his cronies are shredding the democracy piece by piece.

Read the articles of impeachment against Nixon.

Worst Movie of the Year

2006-06-25T18:56:00.000-04:00

A Prairie Home Companion, the new Robert Altman movie about the American Public Media hit radio program is an utterly unfunny, ponderous, flat, smug, self-reverential disaster.

I'm not in the majority. I think PHC on the radio is long, long past its prime. It is a sad, polished up attempt to recreate an era of radio that never existed. It is nostalgia without accuracy. Real 'old' radio is obituaries, announcements about quilting bees and lunches in private homes, church messages, totally white, preachy and insular. A mix of the best and very worst aspects of small town life. Communities that don't welcome you unless you have lived there for 30 years.

The variety show of PHC style was always a radio network creation. Not small town but big, new broadcast business. Ted Mack and Groucho Marx. Lurching from cornball to acceptably suggestive. Better in the original.

But this film is beyond awful.

Hearing Garrison Keillor is one thing. Seeeing him is something else. And his on screen aloofness, almost underbreath coldness, reveals (for me, at least) a creepiness that infects the radio show each week. I don't think Keillor would want to spend one private moment with anyone in his audience, certainly not his film audience.

Alert to all PHC fans: there is NO story. None. There are musical 'performances' (no more than unfunny shtick), cloying, rambling duets with Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin, the forgettable Lindsay Lohan, and a wasted Kevin Klein. Tommy Lee Jones walks on and then walks off. With a paycheck.

And for Robert Altman, PHC ranks right up there with his other pointless films:

Yup, A Prairie Home Companion is worse than Popeye.

Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon/Noir Productions, Inc.

The Amateur Presidency

2006-06-18T00:05:00.000-04:00

Is it just me, or did we all think the 9/11 attacks were our generation's Pearl Harbor? The awful day galvanized us, right? Pearl Harbor? Pretty soon there was the 'no-expenses spared' Manhattan Project.

9/11? We attack a country that had NO connection to the attacks. And, despite a quick war in Afghanistan, US forces actually pulled back just as they were closing in on Osama bin Laden.

But, let's skip forward 5 years. Congress and the White House create the Department of Homeland Security. Ok, so they wasted a lot of time on color terror alerts. And, oookay, DHS completely screwed up the one national disaster they did have experience with, hurricanes.

Still, didn't we think, nay hope, even BELIEVE, that of all federal agencies DHS 'got religion' about the lessons from 9/11?

Huh---guess not:

U.S. Report Faults Nation's Preparedness for Disaster

By ERIC LIPTON/ New York Times
WASHINGTON, June 16 — States and cities in hurricane zones generally have better plans to deal with disaster than do other regions, but the nation's overall level of preparedness is still far from sufficient, a new report by the Department of Homeland Security says.

For the nation as a whole, the report rates only a quarter of state emergency operations plans and 10 percent of municipal plans as "sufficient" to cope with a natural disaster or a terrorist attack... (See the DHS report)

How bad is it? Well, this White House likes to berate Democrats for their "pre-9/11 mindset." But a glance at this study shows the Bush administration has a "post-9/11 play set" at best:

While most areas of the country are well prepared to handle standard disaster situations, the National Plan Review findings demonstrate the need for all levels of government across the country to improve emergency operations plans for catastrophic events such as a major terrorist attack or category-five hurricane strike. Several areas, including evacuation, attention to populations with special needs, command structure, and resource management, were areas needing significant attention.

I'm sorry, but after we give 'special attention' to those areas...what's left?? Isn't that the whole ball of wax? "Command structure" makes me laugh---wasn't that what the creation of DHS and all this talk about 'coordination' supposed to FIX?

On the list of to-dos, here's a corker:

The Federal Government should provide the leadership, doctrine, policies, guidance, standards, and resources necessary to build a shared national homeland security planning system.

Duuuhhhhhhh! Maybe after the next disaster.

Or as The New York Times put it:

...Despite the billions of dollars in federal grants disbursed to cities and states since the 2001 terrorist attacks to improve preparations for catastrophe, officials at the Homeland Security Department said they were not surprised by the results.

"It is a natural evolution towards working together as a nation to implement the lessons from seminal events such as the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina," said George W. Foresman, the department's under secretary for preparedness.

(See full article registration required)

Of course Mr. Foreman doesn't even hint at when it is reasonable to expect those lessons to be implemented. One musn't be hasty, I guess.

Florida and South Carolina came out with the best preparedness scores, but they have been clobbered so often by hurricanes that's to be expected.

How did the two cities clobbered by the 9/11 attacks do?

...New York City and Washington, the two targets of the 2001 attacks, each received mixed reviews, with New York still needing to work on preparations for mass care, communications[if this is about those police and fire radios again, well, someone is in big trouble...], basic direction and control. The Washington area has to work on some of the same, the report said, and its medical and health plans are clearly not sufficient. Over all, New York City was rated partially sufficient, and the Washington area not sufficient.

Ok, five years after 9/11 New York City gets a "C" and Washington, DC gets an "F." And DC is the home of the federal government where you would think enlightened self interest is an art form.

I'm sure the White House gives this all a big shrug. "Hey, it's the states and the cities who have to get their act together," Roveristas would say. Too cynical? Check what they were saying in the middle of the New Orleans disaster about Louisiana, New Orleans and Mississippi.

Comes Around, Goes Around

2006-06-17T23:49:00.000-04:00

Two US soldiers are missing in Iraq after, according to reports, they were captured in an ambush south of Baghdad.

Now, let's say you were one of those troops. A combatant in the 'war on terror.' And your commander in chief has decreed that all captured 'combatants' lose their rights under the Geneva Convention---to communication with families, access to the Red Cross, humanitarian treatment, freedom from torture. Decent requirements of a civilized society like the ones we are now trying to impose on the country we invaded on false pretenses.

I bet those soldiers are having a bad time of things. I hope they live. I hope they are released.

And I hope Vice President 'Deferment,' Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld are forced to meet them in private to hear what happens to Americans in war when the greatest democracy decides to ignore the Geneva Convention.

(photo by Bikeracer)

Fresh Hell

2006-06-17T00:42:00.000-04:00

The dirt under my fingernails is more sincere and intelligent than Maury Povich and Connie Chung. The worst part of going to the gym on the weekends is running across their dreadful show on the TVs. That's why I have to take a shower as soon as I am done.

Please join me in a heartfelt Bronx cheer for the greasy pair...their show has been canned and this weekend cable TV takes a baby step back from the vast wasteland it occupies.

Leave it to Connie to redefine obnoxious (what a video!). Don't let the closing credits hit your ass on the way out, 'Conn.'

(photo by Auntie P)

"Truth with Edge"

2006-06-14T22:48:00.000-04:00

NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dworkin is a very thoughtful guy who has the unenviable position of calling them as he sees them inside of public radio's temple of news. It is the sort of job that does not make him popular in the NPR newsroom, with management or with listeners.

So, his column today really caught my eye. For those of us who value hard hitting journalism but scream at reporting that hides in the petticoats of mushy balance, Dworkin at last opened the door to another way of speaking truth to power:

...if my e-mail box is any indication, more and more listeners are finding NPR's traditional approach to reporting both sides of an issue to be increasingly unsatisfactory and frustrating.

I sense a rising anxiety and impatience among large numbers of NPR listeners who urge that the network take a more activist -- or at least a more openly skeptical -- role in the media landscape of the United States.

Here's one example from listener Andrew Pearson:

"When you're sitting around next with NPR managers, remind them of this: give your listeners some truth with edge ... if you can't do that, if your managers are always reminding reporters that they have to be balanced, NPR ends up giving us junk food for the ears. On the one hand this and on the other hand that -- that is the evasion of journalistic responsibility."

Whenever I mention this idea of "truth with edge" around NPR, many of my colleagues dismiss it as more blather from the blogosphere.

This is too simplistic a response, dear colleagues.

My good friends at the fantastic public radio program Open Source kindly followed my tip on Dworkin's column. OS host extraordinaire Chris Lydon and the OS crew crafted a fascinating and thoughtful hour.

Go ahead, listen. And post your thoughts on the blog at Open Source.

The National Journal's William Powers makes a great point in the program about the shoeleather work of reporting that many people do perform in Washington, DC---and how hard it is to get excellent, nailed-to-the-wall stories.

But NYU's Jay Rosen also makes the point that journalism doesn't set out to identify clearly 'who's responsible?' (thank you, Firesign Theatre). Brent Cunningham from the Columbia Journalism Review argues that "The country doesn't know why we went to war" and he suggests that aggressive reporting on this be 'balanced' by coming out with conclusions and then have a rebuttal. He calls it 'serial balance.'

Perhaps. But Lydon uses the term 'relentless' and that is an attitude that is too frequently missing. Instead of copying what The New York Times identifies as the story, NPR needs to stake out stories and go after them like dogs gnawing raw meat.

(photo from Jim Sines)

The Play's the Thing

2006-06-13T00:24:00.000-04:00

David Hare's Stuff Happens is a must see at the Public Theatre. Infuriating, sickly satiric, accurate, fictional, imaginative. You're left with a feeling of hopelessness.

"A friend of mine said that, ultimately, the play is about the sadness of power," Hare says. "It's really the story of how a supposedly stupid man, George (W.) Bush, got everything he wanted out of an operation, and Blair, a supposedly clever man, was destroyed by it. Blair is an intelligent, sensitive and very gifted man; he knows he'll never recover. And there is something desolating about having the thing you do never turn out to be the thing you so wanted to do. That's a great theme — it's a Shakespearean theme."

Advertising Update

2006-05-28T09:48:00.000-04:00

Marketing Finds It's Place

Wizmark "...the interactive urinal communicator..."

This Just In...

2006-05-15T23:43:00.000-04:00

Five years after the 9/11 attacks:

"We do not yet have full control of the border, and I am determined to change that..." -- George Bush immigration speech 5/15/06

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

2006-05-15T19:30:00.000-04:00

So now the federal government is tracking not only which government employees are talking to journalists, the government is tracking the calls made by journalists to government employees. ABC News has the story and their source warns calls by ABC News aren't the only ones being tracked...The New York Times and Washington Post are also targets. Late today, the FBI did not dispute the story.

And, if the juicy bits coming out before a Senate hearing this week are accurate, we'll learn more about how US spy satellites are used to track Americans, which Internet ISPs are permitting the NSA and others to see who we email, what web sites we visit and what we do on wireless connections.

Do Americans care? It doesn't seem we care all that much. Opinion polls are divided, hard to get a read on what the average netizen is thinking.

Should they worry? Oh yes. If these sorts of things were being conducted not through the help of computers, bugs, tapes, tracers and satellites, you would be seeing tens of thousands of people being rounded up for questions. "Bring you phone bills for the last 5 years," authorities would insist.

Of course that would be against the law unless there was probably cause. But without us knowing about this sort of tracing, tracking and I'm presuming the "occasional" spot-listening going on, who would know?

Now we do. Thanks to a free press. No thanks to Congress which has been, let's be honest, in recess for years. In fact there are only two branches of government now: the US Supreme Court is bending like an earnest twig these days, and the Executive Branch is a redwood club. Rotten at the core, but still brutally threatening.

If only we had a real question time on Capitol Hill, like the Brits have of their PM. Then again it might look and sound like a game of softball on the Potomac.

What's next?

Who gets to see the raw information of phone call 'matches?' Dollars to doughnuts that Cheney and Rumsfeld are on that list. Maybe Rove (Tubby Mc Treason as one wag put it today) as well.

How long are records kept?

Is there a follow up of some sort presuming 'probable cause?' Wiretapping, physical surveillance, break-ins perhaps? Is there such a thing as domestic rendition?

If this sort of tracking took place post 9/11, does that mean intelligence agencies could have identified every call made by the Kerry campaign about foreign policy, calls made to people abroad, funders, etc? If so, who saw all of that?

Is there a plan for martial law in the United States? Many private prison contractors were big supporters of the Bush re-election. Are they involved?

The census bureau was asked by the Justice Department more than 2 years ago to provide zip code locations for the highest concentration of people of Middle Eastern origin. Why did the Justice Dept want that information easily accessible?

I think if you can imagine the worst, take it one step further.

We have a president who has no regard for the Bill of Rights.

No regard for the limited role of government and the delicate balance required even in war time.

He has no sense or understanding of law and history: the illegal internment of aliens and citizens, antiquated sedition laws, the Red Scare and Palmer Raids of the 20s and 30s, Watergate, Nixon, lying, waging war without consent, a respect for checks and balances.

President Bush is a dangerous, reckless bumbler. He is not a guy you would trust to drive your kids home from camp. He doesn't have a firm grip on the wheel, ignores traffic laws, speeds when he should go slow, and doesn't hear a damn thing anyone says.

His advisors are worse than Yes men. They tell him what to do. He isn't a patsy, he is easily influenced and afraid to confront the incompetent, greedy, cynical, anti-democratic neanderthals who equate shredding the Constitution with protecting the Republic. He agrees with them.

Will anyone in Congress have the guts to call for impeachment? No. There are no leaders there, or not enough leaders to reassert true statesmanship over partisanship.

We'll have to endure many more revelations of how our rights have been lost before anything happens. Will he invade Iran? Probably. Troops are undermanned and exhausted in Iraq. He plans to send 5,000 US troops to patrol the border with Mexico.

There is a drunk at the wheel, being egged on by his high school yahoos in the front seat. The rest of us are in the back holding on for dear life hoping that a highway patrolmen stops these goons before more people get hurt.

From the Beyond Broadcast Conference

2006-05-12T10:49:00.000-04:00

Beyond Broadcast Conference -- Listen and Post!

May 12 afternoon:

Investors like what they see in web 2.0:

growth

attractive models

-- "if they build it they will come..."

user value proposition

-- simple, effective, dynamic, entertaining and participatory

old biz models at risk/cash needs a home...

-- new, new media!

Evaluating opportunities:

Start up

team

idea

competition

time and cost to market

biz model not that important

valuation tight range

Later stage:

team

revenue

margins

growth

sustainability

visibility

.........................................

Where else but at an Internet conference would you hear presenters refer to Karl Marx and to John Locke!

This current panel is weighing:

how open to be: what content to let in, what content to aggregate and curate, what is the balance?

what is the effect on a brand of being open?

people rely on 'proxies' (Thanks Skip Pizzi, Microsoft) to filter their world. Can filters be open? How open?

May 12 morning:

Observations and quotes...

an embarrassment of niches... Jake Shapiro, PRX, talking about the potential of the participatory culture.

there is not junk... Bill Buzenberg of Minnesota Public Radio/APM talking about the content they get from listeners through their Public Insight Journalism project

global consciousness... David Liroff of WGBH, Boston, quoting Chardin

Live from the Brattle Theater

2006-03-06T22:27:00.000-05:00

Academy Awards 2006!,
originally uploaded by barthjg.

When you don't have a TV on Oscar night, the fortunate in Cambridge head to the Brattle Theater. It really DOES define an independent movie house. But on this evening, lucky ticket holders got to watch the proceedings on the big screen---with some wine, beer and snacks to make the whole thing festive.

Of course people were there in tuxes and gowns, glitter and high heels. There was booing (at Keanu and Sandra), heckling (at the Hummer TV ad) and laughter (at the awful musical/dance segment for the film Crash).

Mostly, though, the crowd was attentive, passionate, happy, enthusiastic about films. Not movies. FILMS. Cin-eh-mah.

Crash? Best film?

Holy Shirt!

2006-03-05T17:03:00.000-05:00

David Gergen,
originally uploaded by barthjg.

Presidential advisor. Editor. Speaker. Professor. 'Public servant.' Author. Cambridge resident.

Light starch. Shirts in boxes not on hangers.

Me and David. We share the same dry cleaner.

"You see him on CNN? That's his shirts!" says the excited Vietnamese owner, pointing to Gergen's dry cleaning awaiting pickup.

Small town.

"Not Inhumane"

2006-02-21T23:03:00.000-05:00

Restraint,
originally uploaded by barthjg.

From The New York Times (reg required)

... soldiers at Guantánamo began strapping some of the detainees into "restraint chairs" to force-feed them and isolate them from one another after finding that some were deliberately vomiting or siphoning out the liquid they had been fed.

"It was causing problems because some of these hard-core guys were getting worse," General Craddock said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. Explaining the use of the restraint chairs, he added, "The way around that is you have to make sure that purging doesn't happen."

After The New York Times reported Feb. 9 that the military had begun using restraint chairs and other harsh methods, military spokesmen insisted that the procedures for dealing with the hunger strikes at Guantánamo had not changed. They also said they could not confirm that the chairs had been used.

On Tuesday [Feb. 21,2006], General Craddock said he had reviewed the use of the restraint chairs, as had senior officials at the Department of Defense, and they concluded that the practice was 'not inhumane."

The good old 1500s

2006-02-20T07:54:00.000-05:00

Yeah, this is America

The AAAS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is meeting in St. Louis. And the gathering, no doubt, will be viewed as a terrorist-sympathizer cell by the Bush administration.

Dr. David Baltimore, Nobel Prize winner and one of the leaders of biotechnology and ethics in the 70s (and a guy who was accused of severe ethical lapses himself) keynoted a talk sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

It's no accident that we are seeing such an extensive suppression of scientific freedom," he said. "It's part of the theory of government now, and it's a theory we need to vociferously oppose." Far from twisting science to suit its own goals, he said, the government should be "the guardian of intellectual freedom."

But the real courage award goes to a government lawyer named Leslie Sussan who said, speaking for herself, that she saw Bush's science polices

an attack on the rule of law as a basis for self-government and democracy.

Let's see how long she is employed at HHS.

Privacy. Oh. THAT

The Los Angeles Times has an eye opening report on the privacy panel that was supposed to be in place by now at the White House. But, you know, these things take awhile Privacy Guardian Is Still a Paper Tiger (reg. required)

The members of the panel? I can't make this up:

* "The board chairwoman is Carol E. Dinkins, a Houston lawyer who was a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. A longtime friend of the Bush family, she was the treasurer of George W. Bush's first campaign for governor of Texas, in 1994, and co-chair of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney, which recruited Republican lawyers to handle legal battles after the November 2004 election. Dinkins, a longtime partner in the Houston law firm of Vinson & Elkins, where Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales once was a partner, has specialized in defending oil and gas companies in environmental lawsuits."

* "The board vice chairman is Alan Charles Raul, a Washington lawyer who first suggested the concept of a civil liberties panel in an opinion article in the Los Angeles Times in December 2001. Raul, a former Agriculture Department general counsel currently in private practice, has published a book on privacy and the digital age and is the only panel member with apparent expertise in civil liberties issues."

* "The panel's lone Democrat, Lanny J. Davis, has known Bush since the two were undergraduates at Yale. Civil liberties gr(oups regard the Washington lawyer, who worked in the Clinton White House, as likely to be a progressive voice on the panel." (NOTE: I have always found Davis an oily creep.)

* "The board also includes a conservative Republican legal icon, Washington lawyer and former Bush Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, whose wife, Barbara, died in the Sept. 11 attacks."

* "The fifth member is Francis X. Taylor, a retired Air Force general and former State Department counter-terrorism coordinator, who is chief security officer at General Electric Co."

You can't make up this stuff.

Lift off

2006-02-19T23:25:00.000-05:00

Being there

It has been 44 years Monday (Feb 20, 1962) since John Glenn took three trips around the Earth and became the first American to orbit the planet.

You cannot imagine the tension and attention paid to the event. It was one of the few times, outside of a presidential speech, that i can recall live television coverage in glorious black and white.

Sister James Bernard rolled the TV on a stand to the front of the packed 2nd grade classroom. And as the countdown headed toward the inevitable we were commanded to stand at our desks, hands folded and recite the Our Father. Talk about a clash of religion and science!

I was so excited I barely mouthed the words. What was racing through my mind was "Go!Go!"

The rocket was so crude looking, and now does appear so much smaller and fragile and risky than what we see today. Cape Canaveral (JFK would be murdered the next year) looked as desolate as a strip of scrubby beach crammed with roads and concrete.

It took hours to learn about the fears that Glenn's heatshield might be loose. All I know is how thrilling this was and how I looked forward to space launches for years afterward.

Go!

Bang

2006-02-15T22:40:00.000-05:00

Running for Covey

Brit Hume of Fox News did a good quick first interview with Vice President Dick 'they shoot friends, don't they?' Cheney. You'll recall the announcment of the Saturday afternoon shooting didn't get revealed to 'the press' until Sunday morning. And it came not from Cheney but from the woman who owns the ranch where he and the boys were quail shooting, Mrs. Katherine Armstrong.

Relevant bits:

HUME: Now, the suspicion grows in some quarters that you -- that this was an attempt to minimize it, by having it first appear in a little paper and appear like a little hunting incident down in a remote corner of Texas.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: There wasn't any way this was going to be minimized, Brit; but it was important that it be accurate. I do think what I've experienced over the years here in Washington is as the media outlets have proliferated, speed has become sort of a driving force, lots of time at the expense of accuracy. And I wanted to make sure we got it as accurate as possible, and I think Katherine was an excellent choice. I don't know who you could get better as the basic source for the story than the witness who saw the whole thing.

Charming, isn't it, that Cheney is now lecturing the press on the importance of accuracy when he and his office were leaking stories, knowingly false stories, about weapons of mass desctruction in Iraq. Churlish? Forgive moi.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: The decision about how it got out, basically, was my responsibility.

HUME: That was your call.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That was my call.

O-kay...

HUME: ...when, if ever, have you discussed [the shooting] with the President?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I talked to him about it yesterday, or Monday -- first on Monday, and then on Tuesday, too.

Hmm...so the vice president shoots someone. He talks with either Andy Card or Karl Rove on the night of the shooting, visits the guy he shot on Sunday. And doesn't talk to the president about it til...Monday.

I think I am beginning to understand the chain of command now.

Dumb De Dumb Dumb

2006-02-09T23:08:00.000-05:00

Flooding the Zone

The New York Times investigation of the 800,000 documents that Congressional investigators sifted through to determine who bungled what in response to Hurricane Katrina contains this choice quote:

Representative Thomas M. Davis, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the special House committee investigating the hurricane response, said the only level of government that performed well was the National Weather Service, which correctly predicted the force of the storm. But no one heeded the message, he said.

"The president is still at his ranch, the vice president is still fly-fishing in Wyoming, the president's chief of staff is in Maine," Mr. Davis said. "In retrospect, don't you think it would have been better to pull together? They should have had better leadership. It is disengagement."

Stasi Styling

Now, I don't want to say I actually foreshadowed what is now being revealed about the domestic surveillance stuff (see These Boots are Made for Goosesteppin' below) but the Christian Science Monitor has some mighty inneresting stuff today:

The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity.
The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens' privacy.

Read it all

These Boots are Made for Goosesteppin'

2006-01-05T21:45:00.000-05:00

Listen up

No kidding, the Bushies really don't care about the law at all.

First came the verbal attacks on the judiciary, you know, the third branch of government. To hear the president and his allies, you would think American judges were wooly-headed, dope smoking fiends who got their jollies by making up out of whole cloth LAWS! Laws, mind you, that CHANGE SOCIETY.

Uh, hello, laws DO change society. Interpreting law is what some judges get paid to do.

Like the phony arguments against evolution, these attacks on laws and the courts were part of a smokescreen to actually pack the courts to get them to CHANGE SOCIETY in ways that the fascist, theocratic right would like to see it formed.

Agreeing with Congress (mostly Senator John McCain) not to torture people in US custody, the Financial Times reports that Bush -- of course -- is weasling out of that promise already:

President George W. Bush has asserted that he retains the right to authorise abuse of detainees under extreme circumstances, despite agreeing to legislation last month that explicitly prohibited such treatment.

In a statement attached to Mr Bush’s signing of a defence spending bill last week, the White House said it would construe the bill’s ban on “cruel, inhumane and degrading” treatment of detainees “in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president” and his powers as commander-in-chief.

A senior administration official told the Boston Globe this week that while the administration intended to abide by the law, there might be extreme circumstances under which the president would have to waive the law to protect national security.

The language attached to the bill marks the latest attempt by the White House to assert that under the US constitution, Congress has no authority to tie the president’s hands in the “war on terror”. The administration is defending on the same grounds Mr Bush’s secret decision to authorise the National Security Agency to monitor communications inside the US, ignoring the legal requirements set by Congress nearly 30 years ago.

The “signing statement” of December 30 is an even bolder claim, however, because it appears to contradict directly the agreement between the White House and Senator John McCain, Republican sponsor of the anti-torture legislation. In an Oval Office meeting with Mr McCain last month, the president stated that the agreement had achieved “a common objective, and that is to make it clear to the world that this government does not torture”.

Laws, they get in the way. Pesky.

Thanks to two reporters at the New York Times, but not their editors who held the story for a year(NYT registration required), we now know that the president himself broke the law with an executive order that gave the National Security Agency the ability to hoover up all telephone and internet communication between US citizens and suspected, alleged, maybe just possible people overseas tied to Al Qaeda.

Sure there is a pesky secret FISA court tasked with reviewing such cases, but the President knowingly went around that court and further tattered notions of privacy. Such legalties are as disposable as Dixie cups in time of undeclared wars of choice.

He lied to the public about this (it is worth pointing out even the patterns of chronic behavior) with a smirking paternalism that rivals Nixon.

So how can anyone not be cynical when Bush talks about bringing law and order to Iraqis when here at home he fails to respect the law at all.

War on terror? Almost 5 years into this so-called war, anti-terrorism funds are only now being distributed based on RISK. The Department of Homeland Security is on the verge of getting two new highly 'qualified' employees -- the wife of DHS head Michael Chertoff and the wife of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Under Nixon, the horrible Huston Plan(and you should read this for a sense of where Herr Bush is headed...) that pushed for breakins and other illegal attacks on alleged subversives was vilified once it became public. This hack of a leader and his band of robber baron anti-democratic weasles is doing more, much more, than has yet been made public. Imagine the most egregious excesses of powermad fascists and I'm certain it is being done, is ready to be done or will be done.

Unless we stop them all.

9/11 911

2005-12-08T22:58:00.000-05:00

If it weren't so serious, I'd laugh...

Jon Stewart nails Bush and the ludicrous inactivity since 9/11...

Watch

My Bad

2005-12-08T08:12:00.000-05:00

Pinter's Pique

Playwright Harold Pinter claimed his Nobel today and besides picking up the medal and the check, he delivered a blistering broadside at US foreign policy. ( See the video of his speech)

The US role in the world is now the fashionable pincushion and you can certainly make the case it should be. Pinter's fury is aimed at the whole post-war foreign policy of the US. Those who have read such revisionist texts as Free World Colossus and works by William Appleman Williams will hear echoes in Pinter's remarks:

"Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognized as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

"The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it."

And, Pinter accurately skewered President Bush's highly scripted, unimaginative political rhetoric:

"It's a scintillating stratagem...Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable."

Pinter at the end of his talk called on citizens to act:

"I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory."

Full speech here.

NYT: Astronomers Say They Are on the Verge of Seeing a Black Hole

2005-11-02T22:25:00.000-05:00

Black Hole,
originally uploaded by barthjg.

Astronomers shouldn't have to try all that hard...

Full article (Registration required)

Winter

2005-10-29T14:06:00.000-04:00

I Don't Care What the Calendar Says

It is snowing. It is cold. That to me is the start of Winter. Damn.

Scooter Pie

Scooter Libby, described in today's NYT as 'Cheney's Cheney" has been charged with lying, obstructing justice and other things you should never do in the course of a criminal investigation.

Vice president Cheney has not been charged with playing any role in what sounds like---but the grand jury did not charge---a plan to seek revenge against an administration critic by outing his wife as a CIA agent.

But how can we believe otherwise? Libby lives and breathes life with Dick Cheney. And I am hoping that someone at Justice is looking at the Iraq Working Group (or White House Information Group -- WHIG), a small but key team in the White House that was charged with, for all practical purposes, selling the war to Congress and the American people.

WHIG Members * = appeared before Grand Jury
Andy Card -- President's Chief of Staff *
Karl Rove -- promoted, role expanded after election *
Karen Hughes -- promoted to State Department after election *
Mary Matalin -- communications advisor to Cheney *
James R. Wilkinson -- deputy director of communications for Cheney *
Nicholas E. Calio -- assistant to the President and legislative liaison
Condoleezza Rice -- made Secretary of State *
Stephen Hadley -- the guy who admitted to slipping the 'yellowcake' reference into the president's State of the Union speech. Promoted to National Security Advisor after the election *
I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby -- indicted *

WHIG Response to Yellowcake Forgery Issue

In response to the Yellowcake forgery issue, the White House Iraq Group devised this strategy to combat critics:

"There is a strategy now, devised by White House communications director Dan Bartlett, Mary Matalin, a former aide to Vice President Cheney, and former Bush aide Karen Hughes. Both advise the White House as a consultants to the Republican National Committee.

Feb, 2003 (NYT/USA Today): The plan: Release all relevant information. Try to shift attention back to Bush's leadership in the war on terrorism. Diminish the significance of that single piece of iffy intelligence by making the case that Saddam was a threat for many other reasons. Put Republican lawmakers and other Bush allies on TV to defend him.

Most important: Question the motives of Democrats who supported the war but now are criticizing the president."

From the DNC web site:

Rove Takes the Lead "There were grounds to challenge the former diplomat on the substance of his uranium findings...but it appears Rove was more focused on Wilson's background, politics and claims he ostensibly had made that his mission was initiated at the request of the vice president. Rove mentioned to reporters that Wilson's wife had suggested or arranged the trip. The idea apparently was to undermine its import by suggesting that the mission was really "a boondoggle set up by his wife," as an administration official described the trip to a reporter.This approach depended largely on a falsehood: that Wilson had claimed Cheney sent him to Niger. Wilson never made such a claim.In one White House conversation, investigators have learned, Rove was asked why he was focused so intently on discrediting the former diplomat. "He's a Democrat,' Rove said, citing Wilson's campaign contributions." [Los Angeles Times, 8/25/05]

And, what about the mysterious John Bolton, now the US ambassador to the UN who used to head up the State Department division overseeing nuclear profileration? He visited Judy Miller in jail. Why?

Again from the DNC web site:

Bolton Testified In Front of Grand Jury Investigating LeakPlame'sme's Name On June 10, 2003 the State Department's Office of Intelligence and Research compiled a memo for Marc Grossman, then the Under Secretary of State for political affairs, on Wilson's mission to Niger. The memo included the fact that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative working on WMD issues. According to lawyers, former Undersecretary of State John Bolton, gave testimony to the grand jury about the State Department memo. [MSNBC, 7/21/05]

When John Bolton replied to a questionairre before his Senate confirmation hearing he did not acknowledge ever appearing before a grand jury, so that clouds whether or not he actually did or not. The Democrats think he lied, but there is no independent confirmation whether he appeared before the grand jury examining the Plame leak.

Don't Let the Door Hit You

2005-10-27T08:57:00.000-04:00

Hapless Harriet

Harriet Meirs has withdrawn her nomination to the Supreme Court.

The president 'reluctantly' accepts her decision. He just doesn't get 'it.'

It is only 9AM here; at this rate it'll be a good day for those tired of this reckless WH.

Black Wednesday?

2005-10-25T23:16:00.000-04:00

Oh Please, oh please, oh please...

Indictments on Wednesday? Rove, Libby, others? Mr. X? Perjury, obstruction of justice...more?

Death of a thousand cuts

It must be hard to be Harriet Meirs. Good bowler. Presidential lawyer. Loves the Bushes. Embarrassment. How goes that Supreme Court nomination?

"I am uneasy about where we are," said Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican in the political middle of his party, said he needed "to get a better feel for her intellectual capacity and judicial philosophy, core competence issues."

Judiciary committee chairman, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, has said Ms. Miers could benefit from a "crash course in constitutional law."

"She needs to step it up a notch," said South Carolina Senator Graham.

She needs to withdraw.

HEU for You?

2005-10-24T20:22:00.000-04:00

Nuke 'em

Just came from a Kennedy School Forum on nuclear terrorism. How did you spend your evening? I'll be drinking for quite some time.

The panel--the respected Graham Allison--along with Congress members Jane Harman and Curt Weldon, plus former Florida Senator Bon Graham played off some ham-handed clips from an anti-proliferation movie called Last Best Chance. The film should be retitled 'Almost No Chance.'

Yes, all the panelists agreed, the US and its allies can prevent terrorists from using nuclear weapons. But everything the panelists said made it clear not much is being done to stop it.

The number of loose nukes in Russia alone--Congressman Weldon batted around a figure of over 100--makes the appeal of entrepreneurial nuke sales very high.

And the news from Asia was hardly reassuring.

"I predict North Korea will have an operational nuclear weapon within two years." -- Curt Weldon

As my Canadian friend Abby Carter would say, "Peachy."

There was very little confidence that the Bush administration is making the issue of nuclear proliferation or loose nukes much of a priority at all. Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania, painted a grim portrait of a small nuclear weapon detonating over the US and frying everything in the country that relies on electricity:

"If I am an adversary of the US and I want to take out the US, I won't use a smuggled nuclear weapon. We want to bring the US to its knees...I will fire a low yield missile over the US, and detonate it in the atmosphere. The magnetic pulse fries all the electronics. It shuts down the grid: communications, all vehicles, all power, everything. An EMP like that sends us back to the Dark Ages."

The panel that issued this sort of dire warning is called The Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. Many critics also make a strong argument that this commission is actually manufacturing a threat in order to bolster support for missile shield defense.

Ugh.

Fit to Print

2005-10-16T13:18:00.000-04:00

The Miller Morass

New York Times reporter Judith Miller is out of jail and talking about why she spent months in jail to protect vice presidential aide Scooter Libby, her confidential source.

There is a lot to the story and despite lengthy coverage, finally, in the paper (registration required), many questions remain.

Was her lengthy jail term the result of miscommunication between her lawyers and Scooter Libby? It sure seems that way. Libby and his attorney say they granted her a waiver from confidentiality as long as a year ago. For many reasons, Miller said how that was communicated and their words lead her to believe the waiver was coerced or, at the least, not genuine. She was there, I wasn't, but based on how this has been reported that conclusion seems strained.

Judy Miller's notes make two references to 'Valerie Flame" and "Victoria Wilson," clearly referring incorrectly to Valerie Plame, nee Wilson. Did those names come from Libby? Miller is fuzzy on this and she believes she first heard her name from another unnamed source. But it seems definite that she and Libby discussed Valerie Plame, he identified her as a CIA employee but not, apparently, as an undercover CIA agent which she was. Columnist Robert Novak is the one who blew Plame's cover and that's what has set off this whole imbroglio.

Why did The New York Times give Miller such hands-off treatment as a reporter? Could this explain what is at the root of her admittedly wrong reporting ("W.M.D. - I got it totally wrong," she said. "The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them - we were all wrong. If your sources are wrong, you are wrong. I did the best job that I could.") I'm left with the distinct impression that the NYT has learned nothing from the Jason Blair case. I have worked in newsrooms with very aggressive and intimidating reporters and they are precisely the people who need strong editors because they tend to lose perspective. Executive editor Bill Keller sounds in the NYT coverage of the Miller case like a weak top editor; not able to be really tough even with star performers.

Why didn't the NYT report on a) the Valerie Plame issues and the possible ties to Scooter Libby and b) allegations from the administration that they felt the CIA was trying to paint itself as the good guy as it became obvious pre-war intelligence was all wrong? Yes, it seems clear that getting into these stories could put Miller's case in a bad light. Miller says she had argued for such coverage by an editor told her the paper would not pursue such stories. No editors at the NYT have owned up to that allegation. I still think that Miller has ties with the CIA worth examining. The stories in the NYT this weekend begin to show the complex interweaving of sources, the news media and conflicting interests at the highest levels of publishing and government. In those murky waters, loyalties and trust and self interest get all mixed up. Who was Judy loyal to? Why did now-UN ambassador John Bolton visit her in jail?

I am glad Judy Miller is out and glad the grand jury is moving toward a decision. I am thrilled Karl Rove, the master manipulator of people and innuendo and practitioner of personal destruction, is feeling the heat. But the NYT needs to stay on the Miller story and do more to explain the relationship of sources to reporters. What is at stake here is not just the credibility of the badly damaged NYT...it is the credibility of all professional journalists. It is time to come clean about how Washington coverage works.

Nothing to Sneeze At

2005-10-08T00:57:00.000-04:00

Ready or Not. NOT

This is just ducky.

A soon-to-be-released Department of Health and Human Services report shows how ill prepared (no pun intended) we are for an outbreak of an avian flu-like pandemic on a global scale.

This is the sort of stuff that makes me feverish.

If such an outbreak occurred, hospitals would become overwhelmed; riots would engulf vaccination clinics; and even power and food would be in short supply, according to the plan, which was obtained by The New York Times.

This reminds me of Nawlins...how about you?

Except, disease makes no distinction regarding race and class as the world discovered in the 1918 pandemic (which this week scientists traced back to an avian flu like disease that jumped from birdies to people...). More from the NYTimes grimness:

The plan outlines a worst-case scenario in which more than 1.9 million Americans would die and 8.5 million would be hospitalized with costs exceeding $450 billion.

Get your head around that: almost 2-million dead.

Get your head around this: Bush is still in office.

I'm staying home next week. I'm feeling sickly.

Novel Approach

2005-10-07T08:47:00.000-04:00

Hack, Hack

Is there any doubt left that George Bush and his pals are hacks? How can anyone believe Bush knows what he is doing (I hate those B/W photo, 'insider' articles in Newsweek and Time that get rolled out every year where confidantes say 'The president hates people being late for meetings...' blah blah blah).

Iraq. WMD. Global warming. The hate mongering against the role of the judiciary. Tax cuts 4-ever. Terrorism and 9/11. Rove, Bolton, Rice, Hughes, Hadley, Cheney, Meirs. New Orleans and 'Brownie.'

The New York Times nails it today in an editorial about Bush's 'major speech' yesterday on terrorism, or whatever it was:

Ever since the terrorist attacks, the main thing Americans have wanted from Washington is a sense of safety. That takes more than hyperalertness to suicide bombing threats, important as that is. No matter what the terrorists are up to, it is not possible to feel safe if the federal government does not appear to know what it is doing on so many different levels.

Now, why did Bush want to give this non-speech so urgently? Again, from NYT:

A senior White House official said Thursday evening that the president's 40-minute speech arose from Mr. Bush's desire to remind Americans, after "a lot of distractions" in recent months...

Lot of distractions like New Orleans, falling poll numbers, etc.

Can we note the cruel hand of fate in this week's news, where Karl Rove has to head back to a grand jury to face more questions about l'affaire Plame and the man (from the UN!) who the administration denegrated (I know, we lose track of how many people were 'Roved') for playing it straight and accurate about WMDs in Iraq today got the Nobel Peace Prize.

That's gotta hurt.

Unless you are a 'war president.'

Bushie, you're doing a heck of a job...

Long Time No Post

2005-10-01T12:03:00.000-04:00

Moved

Those few of you who keep track might -- or might NOT -- know that my absence from the blog is due in part to my recent move from NJ to Cambridge, MA.

College Town on steroids. The conversations you overhear on the street or in stores can be laughably intellectual. The bestsellers that people browse on the discount shelves are the sort of tomes that were required reading in the advanced college classes.

But there is darn good free stuff here to occupy one's time. Great coffee. Nice, friendly people. Cambridge, some of it, is clean and appears fairly well run for a city. Lots of visible homelessness and poverty near the MIT campus, though. Harvard owns everything or so it seems. Certainly the older residents across the Charles near Harvard stadium hate the advance of the Harvard real estate moguls. In 20 years, goodbye homes, hello advanced gene spicling center for the performing arts.

Also, parking is impossible. Don't even think about it.

Free at Last

There is a fair amount of handwringing, fingerpointing and Judith Miller backlash now that a) she is out of jail and b) she has testified before the grand jury investigating the 'CIA leak case," as CNN has so adroitly summarized this character assassination plot.

Look, a journalist's ethics were on trial here. She stood up for what she believed her contract was with anonymous sources. The NYTimes backed her up. Now that she has cut her own deal, and Scooter Libby has admitted to being her source (for all intents and purposes) it was HER decision then to decide if there was a source here to be further protected by refusing the testify.

I for one am glad she is out. Not thrilled she has testified, but so be it. What I want is for this investigation to be over with and the leaker(s) to be identified and punished.

Let's not forget that a journalist who never published a story about this case was jailed for about 3-months. Who will answer to that violation of the First Amendment?

The other thing we are learning here is the close relationship between White House sources and top reporters. Given what sounds like pretty regular contact, why don't we know much, much more about what is going on and how this amateur WH operates?

Impeach?

It isn't a high crime or a misdemeanor to be incompetent, stupid, oblivious, out of touch and not in charge...but can't we find another way to get President Bush and his team of hacks, lackeys, cruel charlatans and anti-democratic thugs out of power?

Iraq is now more of a lost cause than ever: testimony this week reveals for all the bloodshed and investment in time and money, there are only 500 trained and ready Iraqi troops ready for duty. The NYC police force is much, much larger. Can't we all admit this Iraq adventure has been a failure built on a lie?

The dollar is a weakling being kicked with sand in the currency markets. Thank you very much Mr. Bush: no way can we afford that trip to Europe now.

Global warming is such a myth that the ice fields are shrinking to their lowest dimensions in years. Let's put Dick Cheney on an ice flow and see how long it takes to melt.

New Orleans, to stretch that metaphor, is only the tip of the iceberg. Not only does this administration not know how to run the machinery of government (or democracy) but they don't get that the poverty so explicit on the TV news from Nawlins is all around us -- as people collapse from lack of medical care, the crushing burden of debt, the inability to survive without two full time jobs, the ennui from the dull ache of hopelessness.

At least tax cuts for the rich are still in place.

Any fool--well, except one--can see we're driving this Cadillac straight into the ditch.

Getting to Know You (Know Who)

2005-08-10T00:11:00.000-04:00

The First of Many

An angry Republican has begun pulling on a string that, if true, could unravel all of the nonsense the Bush administration has fed us about the 911 attacks.

Congressman Curt Weldon, who was simple a chubby media hog county commissioner back in the 80s, now claims that a secret Army unit (Able Danger---you gotta love that one) had identified Mohammad Atta and three of the other 911 hijackers as Al Qaeda members already in the United States in mid-1999.

But the Army decided not to tell anyone. Not the FBI and not the CIA.

Let's pause to consider:

* The US Army had a secret unit that somehow learned of a domestic security threat. Does that mean the Army was conducting surveillance or 'data mining' on residents of the US?
* Why wasn't the FBI?
* What happened with this information--and what has happened with all the other information about Al Qaeda in the US? John Ashcroft wouldn't shut up about sleeper cells in the US---are there cells? Do we already have an idea of who is in them? Do we already know where these people are?
* Why didn't the Army alert everyone in the chain of command to a direct threat in the US to national security? Remember, this would have been on the even of the millennium when everyone was worried about a terrorist attack on New Year's Eve.
* What the heck has happened with this information in the years since?
* Who knew what when--and why was this not shared?
* Was this information intentionally buried after 911?

That last question is one that is now bugging the members of the 911 Commission, the one that spent millions getting to the bottom of what really happened leading up to the terrorist attacks. Former co-chairman Tom Kean wants to know if his staff missed this information somehow or were facts deliberately withheld from the Commission.

Heaven forbid. Facts withheld by this administration? Nahh...can't be.

Oh, and the man who was ultimately in charge of setting up Able Danger was General Hugh Shelton who was, up until a few months ago, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff answering directly to...Donald Rumsfeld.

Co-inky-dink?

Let's hope congress, the press and others have the guts to keep pulling on the string.

There is a lot more 911 information out there that has been hidden. My bet is that there is proof American taxpayer dollars made their way at some point to Osama bin Laden. And perhaps that is one reason the Bush administration does not want him captured...or captured alive.

Passing

2005-08-08T00:04:00.000-04:00

Peter Jennings

Peter Jennings from ABC News died of cancer on Sunday night. I admit to having gasped when I saw the story, though we all knew he would never return to the anchor chair.

Still, it is a blow. Many will disagree with me but he truly was, as the AP story put it, the best of the TV news anchors. The sensibility I got from him was worldly, cosmopolitan---not dragged into the ridiculous nationalist performance of American flag lapel pins, or slipping into a 'we' and 'them' look at the world.

His scripts, especially on documentaries, were full of nuance and care and complexity. In an age when broadcasters are pressured to make things dumb in order to make them accessible, he made them simpler to grasp without cheapening the facts.

I enjoyed his astounding performance--and let's admit, being on TV demands performance skills. He appeared genuinely smart, perhaps without a real common touch, but as an elitist I liked that. Peter Jennings would never be one to pander or clumsily trade in awkward homilies like Dan Rather or many of the people at NBC and Fox.

I'll miss him as a viewer who only knew him from this side of a TV screen. Others whom I've known who worked with him regarded Jennings as simply a great guy to work alongside.

Is there any better compliment?

For God's Sake...

2005-08-03T00:06:00.002-04:00

Proof of De-Evolution

In an interview at the White House on Monday with a group of Texas newspaper reporters, Mr. Bush appeared to endorse the push by many of his conservative Christian supporters to give intelligent design equal treatment with the theory of evolution.

Recalling his days as Texas governor, Mr. Bush said in the interview, according to a transcript, "I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught." Asked again by a reporter whether he believed that both sides in the debate between evolution and intelligent design should be taught in the schools, Mr. Bush replied that he did, "so people can understand what the debate is about."

Mr. Bush was pressed as to whether he accepted the view that intelligent design was an alternative to evolution, but he did not directly answer. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," he said, adding that "you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

On Tuesday, the president's conservative Christian supporters and the leading institute advancing intelligent design embraced Mr. Bush's comments while scientists and advocates of the separation of church and state disparaged them...

But Mr. Bush's conservative supporters said the president had indicated exactly that in his remarks.

"It's what I've been pushing, it's what a lot of us have been pushing," said Richard Land, the president of the ethics and religious liberties commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Land, who has close ties to the White House, said that evolution "is too often taught as fact," and that "if you're going to teach the Darwinian theory as evolution, teach it as theory. And then teach another theory that has the most support among scientists."...

At the White House, intelligent design was the subject of a weekly Bible study class several years ago when Charles W. Colson, the founder and chairman of Prison Fellowship Ministries, spoke to the group. Mr. Colson has also written a book, "The Good Life," in which a chapter on intelligent design features Michael Gerson, an evangelical Christian who is an assistant to the president for policy and strategic planning.

[NOTE: This is the same Charles Colson who worked for Nixon and was sent to prison.]

"It's part of the buzz of the city among Christians," Mr. Colson said in a telephone interview on Tuesday about intelligent design. "It wouldn't surprise me that it got to George Bush. He reads, he picks stuff up, he talks to people. And he's pretty serious about his own Christian beliefs."

-- excerpts from "Bush Remarks Roil Debate Over Teaching of Evolution" in The New York Times, August 2, 2005 (Reg. Required)

Out and About

2005-07-30T12:58:00.000-04:00

Mother Visits Every...

I guess we'll have to change the pneumonic for remembering the order of the planets from the Sun:

Mother visits every Monday just stays until noon period ... 2003 UB313. Yup, it appears there is a new planet beyond Pluto. A few things worth noting:

Is it just me, or has this been waaay underplayed? I mean, a NEW planet for goodness sake. That, from initial observations is larger than Pluto.

What is a planet anyway? This one was discovered in Kuiper Belt, a heavily populated area beyond what we normally think off as the solar system where minor planets, asteroids and such buzz around in big chunks like bees. This one seems different from the small fries: its orbit is clearly around the sun, it is a relatively large mass but it is not within the existing flat orbital plane of the other planets. This planet orbits at a reported 44-degree angle ABOVE the traditional orbital plane.

This is far out there. 2003 UB313 ranges from 97 AU (astronomical units) to 36 AU from the Sun. An AU is a standard measurement equal to how far Earth is from the Sun--about 93,000,000 miles. So, at its apogee it is 9017-million miles from the Sun; at perigee 3346-million miles.

2003 UB313 orbits the Sun every 560 years.

Is it Safe

I wouldn't want to be on the space shuttle now in orbit, even in good circumstances. But now with rising concerns about the safety of the launch because something fell off the big orange rocket booster, you have to wonder if NASA really knows what it is doing.

Last Tuesday morning, NASA's contention that it had produced the safest fuel tank in shuttle history was shattered two minutes into the flight of the Discovery. Two spacewalking astronauts tested repair techniques yesterday.

The 0.9-pound piece of foam that fell from the PAL ramp on liftoff, which could have led to another catastrophe if it had ripped away a minute sooner, forced the immediate suspension of future shuttle flights until the problem could be resolved.

-- Misjudgments Led to Latest Fuel Tank Woes for Space Shuttle The New York Times, Sat. July 30 (reg. required)

But are the astronauts are less safe than the rest of us on planet Earth? Maybe I would prefer to be in orbit now, rather than England. Frankly, the whole things scares the bejesus out of me. I am impressed with the police investigations, rounding up the bombers, etc.

George Bush and company have hit the bees nest of extremists in the Middle East and now all of us will get stung. Not smart.

Fog of Words

2005-07-26T21:12:00.000-04:00

Remember...

We don't know if [Judith Miller] will be the only one who suffers consequences from this investigation.

-- Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez on The Lehrer News Hour, July 26, 2005, commenting on the investigation into the CIA leaks.

Notice?

It took more than a year but the PRX web site has been redesigned, re-tooled, upgraded and sped up. Check it out at PRX.org

Quoting Now

The NYT cheapens itself by quoting me. But I am glad Open Source is getting some deserved attention.

From A Radio Program Turns to a Blog to Cull Ideas

"I think they're taking a really bold step," Mr. Barth said. Because of the program's interactive component, its benchmark of success might be less the number of stations that ultimately carry the program and more the online presence Open Source establishes."

Full NYT article (registration required)