Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Journalism, a Definition, via Richard Viguerie, Right-wing ideologue [on Moyers’ final program]:
[Sean] HANNITY [10/29/04]: Why would Osama bin Laden, who's been quiet for so long, come out and virtually try and influence the election today in favor of John Kerry by attacking the president the way he did?
MOYERS: Do you think what Sean Hannity said is fair?
VIGUERIE: Oh, absolutely.
MOYERS: But there's no fact to back that up. There's no effort to substantiate that with documentation.
[Richard] VIGUERIE: That's what journalism is. It's just all opinion. Just opinion. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript351_full_print.html
Speaking of journalism, a bad week: Moyers’ exiting and now Jack Newfield dies, a terrific, blunt writer / journalist long associated with the Village Voice. Two notable losses.
What’s Happening, Iraq: 19 Americans killed:
Embedded Reporter {Richmond Times-Dispatch}: I don’t usually print the details, but…
The force of the explosions knocked soldiers off their feet and out of their seats. A fireball enveloped the top of the tent, and pellet-sized shrapnel sprayed into the men.
Amid the screaming and thick smoke that followed, quick-thinking soldiers turned their lunch tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot.
"Medic! Medic!" soldiers shouted.
Medics rushed into the tent and hustled the rest of the wounded out on stretchers.
Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters outside. Others wobbled around the tent and collapsed, dazed by the blast.
“I can't hear! I can't hear!" one female soldier cried as a friend hugged her.
Near the front entrance to the chow hall, troops tended a soldier with a gaping head wound. Within minutes, they zipped him into a black body bag. Three more bodies were in the parking lot then.
Soldiers scrambled back into the hall to check for more wounded. The explosions blew out a huge hole in the roof of the tent. Lunch trays and overturned tables and chairs covered the floor.
Grim-faced soldiers growled angrily about the attack and swore as they stomped away.
Sgt. Evan Byler, of the 276th, steadied himself on one of the concrete bomb shelters. He was eating chicken tenders and macaroni when the bomb hit. The blast knocked him out of his chair. When the smoke cleared, Byler took off his shirt and wrapped it around a seriously wounded soldier.
Byler held the bloody shirt in his hand, not quite sure what to do with it.
"It's not the first close call I have had here," said Byler, a Fauquier County, Va., resident who survived a blast from an improvised explosive device while riding in a vehicle earlier this year.
Byler started walking back to his base when he saw a soldier collapse from shock on the side of the road. Byler and 1st Lt. Shawn Otto of Williamsburg, Va., also of the 276th, put the grieving soldier on a passing pickup truck. http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Common%2FMGArticle%2FPrintVersion&c=MGArticle&cid=1031779796661&image=timesdispatch80x60.gif&oasDN=timesdispatch.com
The Great “Victory” in Fallujah: Time for Indiana Jones?
Hollywood has joined the war. Universal Pictures announced on Thursday that it is to make The Battle for Fallujah. To prove it is serious, it has enlisted Indiana Jones himself, actor Harrison Ford, to help defeat the insurgency.
The film -- Hollywood's first foray into the second Iraq conflict -- is due to go into production next year and will be based on a yet-to-be-finished book, No True Glory: The Battle for Fallujah by Bing West, a former marine, politician and now war correspondent. http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4831
That Question to Rumsfeld: Follow-up / Clarification
Despite efforts by Right media, it WAS National Guard Specialist Thomas "Jerry" Wilson who thought up the embarrassing question to Rummy about the lack of armor. Wilson noted that he “came up with the pointed question himself”, that the Chattanooga Times Free Press embedded reporter Edward Lee Pitts merely urged him to ask Rumsfeld "intelligent questions," that he refused to soften the language after Pitts "suggested a less brash way of asking the [armor] question."
Washington Post highlights Torture. Page 1 today. Credit where credit…
Bush administration is facing a wave of new allegations that the abuse of foreign detainees in U.S. military custody was more widespread, varied and grave in the past three years than the Defense Department has long maintained.
New documents released yesterday detail a series of probes by Army criminal investigators into multiple cases of threatened executions of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers, as well as of thefts of currency and other private property, physical assaults, and deadly shootings of detainees at detention camps in Iraq. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17883-2004Dec21.html
Torture: NY Times and Knight Ridder Reports:
F.B.I memorandums portray abuse of prisoners by American military personnel in Iraq that included detainees' being beaten and choked and having lit cigarettes placed in their ears, according to newly released government documents. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/politics/21abuse.html?ei=5006&en=5c03bc4bced03ea3&ex=1104210000&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&position=
While the memo doesn't directly say who authorized the practices, two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the methods were approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10462815.htm
Bush, TIME Magazine's Man Of the Year, apparently signed off on the torture. Instead of Jon Stewart, this time the ACLU is doing the media’s job.
"Documents released for the first time today by the ACLU suggest that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Other documents include an "Urgent Report" to the Director of the FBI raising concerns that detainee abuse is being covered up. "Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero." www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=17216&c=206
If you were freshly nauseated by Bush being named by TIME, remember that it’s for making a splash, not for being a good guy. Hitler was so honored in ’39.
Social Security: The public supports ‘private accounts’…or does it?
Washington Post (William Branigan)
1st paragraph:
Most Americans support reforming Social Security so that contributions can be invested in the stock market, but many do not like having to raise the national debt by as much as $2 trillion to pay for the new system, and a solid majority would not put their own Social Security money into stocks, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
6th paragraph:
But when supporters were asked a new question -- whether they still would support a stock-market option if the government had to borrow as much as $2 trillion to set it up -- 47 percent said they would not, 46 percent said they would, and 7 percent had no opinion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17151-2004Dec21.html
Time to Re-Frame: How about:
1) There is no Social Security Crisis
2) There is a looming Medicare crisis.
3) There is a very current ‘General Fund’ crisis. [Talking “Deficits” is 20+ years old, and got Mondale absolutely no where.
Krugman on The Dollar. Nothing special, but as he’s away from the Times…
...the United States is running huge twin deficits. The federal government is borrowing $1 billion a day or so for the operations. The United States as a whole is borrowing $1.5 billion to pay for imports. Those can't go on forever. It's a law that says that things that cannot go on forever don't, and it appears that the world is finally looking at it and saying, “Gee, we don't see this changing,” and so, the money flows are starting to dry up. The dollar is falling. We don't know how it plays out. If this was a Third World country, and you had the numbers we have, you would say, “Oh, my God, start stocking up on canned goods,” because we look by many of the numbers worse than places like Argentina or Indonesia. But it is the United States. We get a lot of the benefit of the doubt. The debts are in dollars, which is some protection, having the debts in our own currency. But it's going to be -- it just adds to the difficulties. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/21/1535228
Bush Popularity (CNN) Paragraph #7 in a report on Rummy:
As for Bush, 49 percent of respondents said they approved of the job the president is doing. That number is down from his November approval rating of 55 percent. Bush is the first incumbent president to have an approval rating below 50 percent one month after winning re-election. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/12/20/poll/index.html
Brain Drain
"Foreign students contribute $13 billion to the American economy annually. But this year brought clear signs that the United States' overwhelming dominance of international higher education may be ending. Foreign applications to American graduate schools declined 28 percent this year. Actual foreign graduate student enrollments dropped 6 percent. Enrollments of all foreign students, in undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral programs, fell for the first time in three decades in an annual census released this fall…
One expert quoted in the Times points out that it remains unclear whether the sudden decline in foreign enrollments is a one-time drop or the beginning of a long slide. Europe is a rising player in the global education market, as are India and China. A sharp drop in enrollment in U.S. schools from the latter two could work as a double whammy, given that India and China currently supply the top two pools of foreign brainpower for U.S. campuses. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/national/21global.html?ei=5090&en=3ee2e6351e33d817&ex=1261285200&partner=rssuserland&pagewanted=all&position=
Polls! It’s never too early. Fox News wants to ‘stir the beast,’ so Hillary is front and center:
Clinton 40, Frist 33
Clinton 41, Pataki 35
Clinton 46, Jeb Bush 35
Kerry 45, Jeb Bush 37
It actually is way too early. Sorry.
-R
[Sean] HANNITY [10/29/04]: Why would Osama bin Laden, who's been quiet for so long, come out and virtually try and influence the election today in favor of John Kerry by attacking the president the way he did?
MOYERS: Do you think what Sean Hannity said is fair?
VIGUERIE: Oh, absolutely.
MOYERS: But there's no fact to back that up. There's no effort to substantiate that with documentation.
[Richard] VIGUERIE: That's what journalism is. It's just all opinion. Just opinion. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript351_full_print.html
Speaking of journalism, a bad week: Moyers’ exiting and now Jack Newfield dies, a terrific, blunt writer / journalist long associated with the Village Voice. Two notable losses.
What’s Happening, Iraq: 19 Americans killed:
Embedded Reporter {Richmond Times-Dispatch}: I don’t usually print the details, but…
The force of the explosions knocked soldiers off their feet and out of their seats. A fireball enveloped the top of the tent, and pellet-sized shrapnel sprayed into the men.
Amid the screaming and thick smoke that followed, quick-thinking soldiers turned their lunch tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot.
"Medic! Medic!" soldiers shouted.
Medics rushed into the tent and hustled the rest of the wounded out on stretchers.
Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters outside. Others wobbled around the tent and collapsed, dazed by the blast.
“I can't hear! I can't hear!" one female soldier cried as a friend hugged her.
Near the front entrance to the chow hall, troops tended a soldier with a gaping head wound. Within minutes, they zipped him into a black body bag. Three more bodies were in the parking lot then.
Soldiers scrambled back into the hall to check for more wounded. The explosions blew out a huge hole in the roof of the tent. Lunch trays and overturned tables and chairs covered the floor.
Grim-faced soldiers growled angrily about the attack and swore as they stomped away.
Sgt. Evan Byler, of the 276th, steadied himself on one of the concrete bomb shelters. He was eating chicken tenders and macaroni when the bomb hit. The blast knocked him out of his chair. When the smoke cleared, Byler took off his shirt and wrapped it around a seriously wounded soldier.
Byler held the bloody shirt in his hand, not quite sure what to do with it.
"It's not the first close call I have had here," said Byler, a Fauquier County, Va., resident who survived a blast from an improvised explosive device while riding in a vehicle earlier this year.
Byler started walking back to his base when he saw a soldier collapse from shock on the side of the road. Byler and 1st Lt. Shawn Otto of Williamsburg, Va., also of the 276th, put the grieving soldier on a passing pickup truck. http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Common%2FMGArticle%2FPrintVersion&c=MGArticle&cid=1031779796661&image=timesdispatch80x60.gif&oasDN=timesdispatch.com
The Great “Victory” in Fallujah: Time for Indiana Jones?
Hollywood has joined the war. Universal Pictures announced on Thursday that it is to make The Battle for Fallujah. To prove it is serious, it has enlisted Indiana Jones himself, actor Harrison Ford, to help defeat the insurgency.
The film -- Hollywood's first foray into the second Iraq conflict -- is due to go into production next year and will be based on a yet-to-be-finished book, No True Glory: The Battle for Fallujah by Bing West, a former marine, politician and now war correspondent. http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4831
That Question to Rumsfeld: Follow-up / Clarification
Despite efforts by Right media, it WAS National Guard Specialist Thomas "Jerry" Wilson who thought up the embarrassing question to Rummy about the lack of armor. Wilson noted that he “came up with the pointed question himself”, that the Chattanooga Times Free Press embedded reporter Edward Lee Pitts merely urged him to ask Rumsfeld "intelligent questions," that he refused to soften the language after Pitts "suggested a less brash way of asking the [armor] question."
Washington Post highlights Torture. Page 1 today. Credit where credit…
Bush administration is facing a wave of new allegations that the abuse of foreign detainees in U.S. military custody was more widespread, varied and grave in the past three years than the Defense Department has long maintained.
New documents released yesterday detail a series of probes by Army criminal investigators into multiple cases of threatened executions of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers, as well as of thefts of currency and other private property, physical assaults, and deadly shootings of detainees at detention camps in Iraq. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17883-2004Dec21.html
Torture: NY Times and Knight Ridder Reports:
F.B.I memorandums portray abuse of prisoners by American military personnel in Iraq that included detainees' being beaten and choked and having lit cigarettes placed in their ears, according to newly released government documents. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/politics/21abuse.html?ei=5006&en=5c03bc4bced03ea3&ex=1104210000&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&position=
While the memo doesn't directly say who authorized the practices, two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the methods were approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10462815.htm
Bush, TIME Magazine's Man Of the Year, apparently signed off on the torture. Instead of Jon Stewart, this time the ACLU is doing the media’s job.
"Documents released for the first time today by the ACLU suggest that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Other documents include an "Urgent Report" to the Director of the FBI raising concerns that detainee abuse is being covered up. "Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero." www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=17216&c=206
If you were freshly nauseated by Bush being named by TIME, remember that it’s for making a splash, not for being a good guy. Hitler was so honored in ’39.
Social Security: The public supports ‘private accounts’…or does it?
Washington Post (William Branigan)
1st paragraph:
Most Americans support reforming Social Security so that contributions can be invested in the stock market, but many do not like having to raise the national debt by as much as $2 trillion to pay for the new system, and a solid majority would not put their own Social Security money into stocks, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
6th paragraph:
But when supporters were asked a new question -- whether they still would support a stock-market option if the government had to borrow as much as $2 trillion to set it up -- 47 percent said they would not, 46 percent said they would, and 7 percent had no opinion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17151-2004Dec21.html
Time to Re-Frame: How about:
1) There is no Social Security Crisis
2) There is a looming Medicare crisis.
3) There is a very current ‘General Fund’ crisis. [Talking “Deficits” is 20+ years old, and got Mondale absolutely no where.
Krugman on The Dollar. Nothing special, but as he’s away from the Times…
...the United States is running huge twin deficits. The federal government is borrowing $1 billion a day or so for the operations. The United States as a whole is borrowing $1.5 billion to pay for imports. Those can't go on forever. It's a law that says that things that cannot go on forever don't, and it appears that the world is finally looking at it and saying, “Gee, we don't see this changing,” and so, the money flows are starting to dry up. The dollar is falling. We don't know how it plays out. If this was a Third World country, and you had the numbers we have, you would say, “Oh, my God, start stocking up on canned goods,” because we look by many of the numbers worse than places like Argentina or Indonesia. But it is the United States. We get a lot of the benefit of the doubt. The debts are in dollars, which is some protection, having the debts in our own currency. But it's going to be -- it just adds to the difficulties. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/21/1535228
Bush Popularity (CNN) Paragraph #7 in a report on Rummy:
As for Bush, 49 percent of respondents said they approved of the job the president is doing. That number is down from his November approval rating of 55 percent. Bush is the first incumbent president to have an approval rating below 50 percent one month after winning re-election. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/12/20/poll/index.html
Brain Drain
"Foreign students contribute $13 billion to the American economy annually. But this year brought clear signs that the United States' overwhelming dominance of international higher education may be ending. Foreign applications to American graduate schools declined 28 percent this year. Actual foreign graduate student enrollments dropped 6 percent. Enrollments of all foreign students, in undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral programs, fell for the first time in three decades in an annual census released this fall…
One expert quoted in the Times points out that it remains unclear whether the sudden decline in foreign enrollments is a one-time drop or the beginning of a long slide. Europe is a rising player in the global education market, as are India and China. A sharp drop in enrollment in U.S. schools from the latter two could work as a double whammy, given that India and China currently supply the top two pools of foreign brainpower for U.S. campuses. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/national/21global.html?ei=5090&en=3ee2e6351e33d817&ex=1261285200&partner=rssuserland&pagewanted=all&position=
Polls! It’s never too early. Fox News wants to ‘stir the beast,’ so Hillary is front and center:
Clinton 40, Frist 33
Clinton 41, Pataki 35
Clinton 46, Jeb Bush 35
Kerry 45, Jeb Bush 37
It actually is way too early. Sorry.
-R
