Recently in Legacy Media Category
Star TribuneABOARD AIR FORCE ONE - White House officials waged an extraordinary campaign during an 11-hour Air Force One flight to put a positive spin on the outcome of Sunday's summit talks between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Four times on the long flight back to Washington from Sochi, Russia, Bush aides trooped back to the press cabin to make the case that the summit had turned out well, particularly on missile defenses.
It was the heaviest lobbying campaign veteran reporters could recall ever occurring on the president's plane. Press accounts of the summit had been sent to Bush's plane and administration officials thought they were too negative. Clearly, Bush's aides were disappointed.
Oh, for crying out loud. Just how desperate are these bozos willing to act? At this point, it is becoming obvious that Bush has developed webbed feet and is quacking loudly. All the spin in the world is not going to keep that fact from reaching an already apathetic Republican electorate.
Do you think Fox will make mention of this little fact? Okay, okay. It really is rhetorical.
Star TribuneSAN FRANCISCO - They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece -- not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
A growing workforce of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
Of course, the bloggers profess a love of the nonstop action. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.
Once again, it's blame everything except the personal choices made by people. I usually don't speak ill of the dead, but in this case I have to speak out. It is not that a blogger's lifestyle kills, it is that people choose to work the hours they do, and live the life they live.
What is it with people? Something new comes along that makes a major impact on society, and those not benefiting from, or participating in, the new trend, decide it is evil and dangerous.
Cue Shatner; Get a life, people.
Actually, stop being so fraking scared. Your way of life is not going to disappear in a flash of bright light, leaving you destitute and hopeless. So some people lived life as they chose, and possibly burned themselves out to the point of death. It was their choice of lifestyle, not a diabolical new industry, that killed them.USA TodayFive years ago this week, as bombs began to rain down on Baghdad, this newspaper's front-page news story said President Bush's order "signaled the beginning of a preventive war unique in American history and one on which he has staked his presidency."
Subsequent events have shown the pre-emptive attack on Iraq to have been one of the great foreign policy blunders in American history, one that has driven Bush's approval rating down to 32%. Saddam Hussein, it turned out, had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, possessed no weapons of mass destruction and posed no imminent threat to U.S. security.
While the U.S. deposed a brutal dictator, in the process it destabilized Iraq, emboldened its archenemy Iran and opened the door for al-Qaeda terrorists to establish a foothold in a place they hadn't been. Efforts to defeat the insurgency and salvage a semblance of stability in Iraq have cost nearly 4,000 American lives and more than $500 billion.
Normally, I do not post opinion pieces from newspapers. However, this one is from USA Today. When America's Cheerleader newspaper states that the pre-emptive attack was a foreign policy blunder, that is saying something.
Oh, and they call the invasion "Bush's Blunder." That's going to stick.
TVNewserYou know, I am trying like hell to work up some sympathy for ol' Tucker. But, try as I might, it is bone dry in that particular department today.
Insiders tell TVNewser Tucker Carlson's 6pmET show Tucker is getting the axe, but Carlson stays on as a political contributor to all MSNBC shows at least through the 2008 election. The official announcement, expected tomorrow, will include details about who will replace Tucker at 6pmET as well as other political programming additions. Sources say the network is going to beef up its schedule with more NBC News talent.
Seriously, that boy got his chops handed to him by John Stewart and he never recovered. He was never a good newsman. The fact he tried to nail John as not asking hard hitting questions on The Daily Show was the clincher. This cancellation is a foot note to a lack luster career.
He really was nothing more than a tag-a-long of the Mighty Wurlitzer. He collected the crumbs from the big boys, attempting to mimic their blow hard bellows to only produce an effeminate lisp.
Oh, and that segment with John Stewart is still great to watch, even if it is close to 4 years old.
New York TimesWhat, so ordinary people are not usually poor? Seriously, what idiot wrote this incredibly stupid sentence? So ordinary people are not normally poor. Ordinary people are middle class or upper class. So, I guess that makes poor people not ordinary. Maybe they are just lucky ducks.
The inflation has many causes, from rising global demand for commodities to the monetary constraints of currencies pegged to the weakening American dollar. But one cause is the skyrocketing price of oil itself, which has quadrupled since 2002. It is helping push many ordinary people toward poverty even as it stimulates a new surge of economic growth in the gulf.[highlighted by Rook]
If ever there was an example of a Freudian slip, this is it.
Arrogance, thy name is New York Times.
Ex-news anchor found dead - Crime & courts- msnbc.com
ROYAL OAK, Mich. - A former TV news anchor in Michigan who was accused of embezzling from a man she dated and advised financially has been found dead in her home.
Police tell The Detroit News that a relative found Suzanne Wangler unresponsive Saturday afternoon in her home in suburban Royal Oak. Detective Dan Swiatkowski isn't confirming how she died but says an autopsy is planned.
Technorati Tags: Suzanne Wrangler, Suzanne Page, Murder, Suicide,
Commercial AppealMemphis blogger Thaddeus Matthews is nobody's idea of an objective reporter. But local authorities should follow the same set of rules in dealing with bloggers as they would follow with established media.
Like him or not, Matthews is among a growing cadre of Internet savvy communicators who are using the Internet to democratize journalism. When he obtained and gave his readers a draft statement from the suspect in the murder of police officer Edward Vidulich, he was using a common journalistic tool. Snatching that tool from the hands of journalists of any stripe ultimately damages the public's ability to hold the government accountable.
Offered without comment.
I love it when I get edified.The Daily Brew
February 10, 2008
As I was watching the returns come in from Maine, where Senator Obama won his forth straight contest since Super Tuesday, I was getting irritated by the fact that the corporate news continues to include the so-called Super Delegates in the reported delegate totals. As we know, the Super Delegates can change their minds, and there is good reason to suspect they might. Many senior party members are already cautioning the Super Delegates that they should think twice before changing the results, should they eventually show a decisive preference among the voters.
Reporting the Super Delegates as though their votes were cast in stone has the effect of showing Senator Clinton as "leading" the race, when in fact, Senator Obama has actually won more delegates in the state contests. This is just one of the myriad of small ways the corporate press use to try to control the outcome of our political process.
Since it is clear that the media is using the Super Delegates to skew the race, I was curious to see how much effect the Super Delegates are having in undermining the voters from their own states. So I did a quick check to see how many of the Super Delegates were committed to a candidate that lost in their home states.
What I learned is that there are 42 Super Delegates committed to Senator Clinton from states Senator Obama won, and there are 32 Super Delegates committed to Senator Obama from states Senator Clinton won. This discrepancy accounts for more than a third of the 27 delegate "lead" that CNN is reporting for Senator Clinton.
Here, for your edification, are the names of those Super Delegates:
Just for kicks, I thought
Super Delegates Committed to Senator Clinton from States Senator Obama
Won:
(42 total so far)
DNC Patti Higgins (AK)
DNC Joe Reed (AL)
Rep. Diane DeGette (CO)
DNC Manny Rodriguez (CO)
DNC Maria Handley (CO)
DNC Ramona Martinez (CO)
DNC Ellen Camhi (CT)
Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (DE)
DNC Rhett Ruggerio (DE)
DNC Karen Valentine (DE)
Rep. David Scott (GA)
Rep. John Lewis (GA)
Michael Thurmond (GA)
Carole Dabbs (GA)
Lonnie Plott (GA)
DNC John Rednour (IL)
Rep. Leonard Boswell (IA)
DNC Sandy Opstvedt (IA)
DNC Sarah Swisher (IA)
DNC Mike Gronstal (IA)
DNC Teresa Krusor (KS)
Gov. John Baldacci (ME)
DNC Ken Curtis (ME)
VP Walter Mondale (MN)
DNC Jackie Stevenson (MN)
DNC Rick Stafford (MN)
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (MO)
Fmr. Rep. Dick Gephardt (MO)
DNC Doug Brooks (MO)
DNC Sandy Querry (MO)
DNC Don Fowler (SC)
DNC Marva Smalls (SC)
DNC Hon. Karen Hale (UT)
DNC Helen Langan (UT)
Sen. Maria Cantwell (WA)
Sen. Patty Murray (WA)
Rep. Jay Inslee (WA)
Former Speaker Tom Foley (WA)
DNC Ron Sims (WA)
Rep. Norm Dicks (WA)
Super Delegates Committed to Senator Obama from States Senator Clinton
Won:
(32 total so far)
Gov. Janet Napolitano (AZ)
Rep. Raul Grijalva (AZ)
Rep. Anna Eshoo (CA)
Rep. Xavier Becerra (CA)
Rep. Barbara Lee (CA)
Rep. Adam Schiff (CA)
Rep. George Miller (CA)
Rep Zoe Lofgren (CA)
Rep. Linda Sanchez (CA)
DNC Hon. Eric Garcetti (CA)
DNC Norma Torres (CA)
Rep. Robert Wexler (FL)
DNC Allan Katz (FL)
Gov. Deval Patrick (MA)
Sen. John Kerry (MA)
Sen. Ted Kennedy (MA)
Rep. William Delahunt (MA)
Rep. Michael Capuano (MA)
DNC Alan Solomont (MA)
Rep. John Conyers (MI)
Rep. Steve Rothman (NJ)
DNC Steven Horsford (NV)
Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (NH)
Rep. Paul Hodes (NH)
DNC Hon. Martha Fuller Clark (NH)
Fmr DNC Chair Fred Harris (NM)
DNC Kitti Asbury - (OK)
Rep. Jim Cooper (TN)
Rep. Steve Cohen (TN)
DNC Lois DeBerry (TN)
__________________________________________________________________
The Daily Brew is an editorial/opinion column delivered to a select
group of political junkies who occasionally forward them along to their
colleagues.
If someone sent you this, you should consider it an invitation to join,
and sign up to receive future editions by entering your email address
here:
http://brew.notifylist.com/thedailybrew.html
I will never use your email for any purpose except to send more
columns.
Huffington PostWhat in God's name is Rush smelling? You don't start calling people who've been in combat in one of the hottest places in the world "phony soldiers." He's got to be popping oxycontin again. And, if he's going to support the troops, then he needs to support their right as American citizens to exercise freedom of speech. Up to, and including, calling for the troops to come home.
As Media Matters reported today, Rush Limbaugh, on his show said that those troops who come home and want to get America out of the middle of the religious civil war in Iraq are "phony soldiers." I'd love for you, Rush, to have me on your show and tell that to me to my face.
Anyway, Jon Soltz has more to say:
Okay, it's official. He's back to using. Otherwise, he'd understand that pissing off a member of the Armed Forces is a really, really bad idea.First, in what universe is a guy who never served even close to being qualified to judge those who have worn the uniform? Rush Limbaugh has never worn a uniform in his life -- not even one at Mickey D's -- and somehow he's got the moral standing to pass judgment on the men and women who risked their lives for this nation, and his right to blather smears on the airwaves?
Second, maybe Rush doesn't much care, but the majority of troops on the ground in Iraq, and those who have returned, do not back the President's failed policy. If you go to our "Did You Get the Memo" page at VoteVets.org, there's a good collection of stories, polls, and surveys, which all show American's troops believe we are on the wrong track, not the right one, in Iraq.
Washington PostEven the Washington Post notes it's nothing more than a diversion from the war itself.MoveOn, saying it had no reason to believe it was paying "anything other than the normal and usual charge," said yesterday that it would send the Times $77,000 to make up the difference.
The Times also violated its own advertising policy, which bars "attacks of a personal nature," Hoyt reported. He wrote that the episode "gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the 'liberal media.' "
Many Republicans have seemed to prefer talking about MoveOn's ad rather than the war itself.
Pathetic.
New York Daily NewsI swear, if there was ever a case of hitting your head against the brick wall because it feels good when you stop, the orcosphere and it's legacy media cohorts are prime examples. This well was dry from the beginning and yet they continue to go back to it time and again.The old gray lady has some explaining to do.
Officials at the New York Times have admitted a liberal activist group was permitted to pay half the rate it should have for a provocative ad condemning U.S. Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus.
The MoveOn ad, which cast Petraeus as "General Betray Us" and attacked his truthfulness, ran on the same day the commander made a highly anticipated appearance before Congress.
But since the liberal group paid the standby rate of $64,575 for the full-page ad, it should not have been guaranteed to run on Sept. 10, the day Petraeus warned Congress against a rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Times personnel said.
"We made a mistake," Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications for The Times, told the newspaper's public editor.
General Petraeus' testimony had zero affect on the opinion of the American populous. Yet, here they go again, attempting to score some kind of political resurrection by attacking the New York Times' selling of ad space. In truth, all they are doing is making their voices become background noise to be filtered out with the rest.
But what the hell. Go ahead fellas and fillies, keep beating that particular wall. However, I recommend some Ibuprofen, a strong cup of coffee, and maybe a few minute break in between bashes. Oh, and I suggest you don't add cream and sugar to the coffee, it ruins the ability of caffeine to reduce the pain.
Yea, I know, I'm surprised too.
The New Republic
Of course, the Democrats have not threatened to take many incremental steps that would pose any real political risks to themselves. One, for example, would be to hold real hearings on whether there is any way to avoid reinstatement of the draft and maintain our national security if we continue an indefinite presence in Iraq, so that the American people begin to connect voting Republican with realistic anxiety about the lives and well-being of their teenage children. (The question Democrats have never asked Republicans since the war began is the only one that really matters: Would you send your own child to die in Iraq? And if so, have you done everything you can to convince your children that, if this is truly the war you say it is--for our freedom, for our very way of life, to keep the terrorists "over there" so that we don't fight them "over here"--they should drop their lucrative investment banking careers and be all they can be in Baghdad? Surely, with American freedom at stake, Jenna Bush could wait a few months to don her wedding gown and spend some time in army fatigues.) And while we're on our children, as Congress considers yet another supplemental appropriations bill for the war, the least Democrats can do this time around for our children, grandchildren, and generations yet unborn is to stop taxing them for this war (which is what deficit-spending for a war is), and to require that Bush and the Republicans put their money where their mouth is: Tell us whose taxes they're going to raise to pay not only for the next hundred billion dollars but for the half a trillion they have already spent from the piggy-banks of the innocent.
Washington PostYesterday, an organization so small its 17 employees don't even have a central office, found itself under attack by not only President Bush, who said the ad was "disgusting," but also by the Democratic-controlled Senate, which passed a resolution 72 to 25 expressing its own outrage. Many Democrats blamed the group for giving moderate Republicans a ready excuse for staying with Bush and for giving Bush and his supporters a way to divert attention away from the war.
In an e-mail to its members last night, the group acknowledged that the content of the ad might have angered its allies but argued that a larger issue is at stake. "Maybe you liked our General Petraeus ad. Maybe you thought the language went too far," they wrote. "But make no mistake: this is much bigger than one ad."
And it turned its criticism squarely back on the Senate, accusing it of "spending time cracking down on a newspaper ad" after failing on Wednesday to pass a bill lengthening the home leaves of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq, a bipartisan measure that some regarded as pressuring Bush into limiting the redeployment of U.S. forces.
Quite frankly, the whole brouhaha over the ad is just giving MoveOn that much more free publicity. It was a stroke of genius. And the more the Republican's rail against it, the more awareness it gains throughout the country. Indeed, a claim could be made it fits into the old adage The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend.
For MoveOn's supporters, the special notice from Bush may only serve to validate its confrontational style. "I think he just raised MoveOn several million more dollars," said Erik Smith, a Democratic media consultant.I think the Republican's have forgotten their own play book.
David Brooks is off today.
And this is different from any other day...., how?
Paul KrugmanOh, it looks like Paul is going to take to blogging just fine.
What I found striking about the whole thing was the contempt the pundit consensus showed for the public - it was, more or less, "Oh, people just can't resist a man in uniform." But it turns out that they can; it's the punditocracy that can't.
Paul KrugmanThe New York Times stops charging for their Op-Ed columnists, and Paul Krugman starts writing a blog. Two miracles in one day.
On the political side, you might have expected rising inequality to produce a populist backlash. Instead, however, the era of rising inequality has also been the era of "movement conservatism," the term both supporters and opponents use for the highly cohesive set of interlocking institutions that brought Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich to power, and reached its culmination, taking control of all three branches of the federal government, under George W. Bush. (Yes, Virginia, there is a vast right-wing conspiracy.)
Buy Me Something, Please
