Wednesday, May 04, 2005
For old timers: Kent State [and Jackson State] anniversary
What’s Happening, Iraq: Massive bombings.
And, a Knight Ridder dispatch re reporters being intimidated, beaten. "Tell me to cover anything except the police," said one journalist after recruits taunted him with death threats.
A photographer for a Baghdad newspaper says Iraqi police beat and detained him for snapping pictures of long lines at gas stations. A reporter for another local paper received an invitation from Iraqi police to cover their graduation ceremony and ended up receiving death threats from the recruits. A local TV reporter says she's lost count of how many times Iraqi authorities have confiscated her cameras and smashed her tapes.
All these cases are under investigation by the Iraqi Association to Defend Journalists, a union that formed amid a chilling new trend of alleged arrests, beatings and intimidation of Iraqi reporters at the hands of Iraqi security forces. Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog group for press freedom, tracked the arrests of five Iraqi journalists within a two-week period and issued a statement on April 26 asking authorities "to be more discerning and restrained and not carry out hasty and arbitrary arrests." http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11545887.htm
Times: Confirmed Tierney is a Rightie hack. The often maddening, but (sometimes) worthy of respect William Safire has been replaced by an ordinary partisan. Witness:
For the mainly Democratic audience - this was a crowd of Washington journalists and luminaries from Hollywood and Manhattan - it was an evening of cognitive dissonance. How to reconcile this charming image on stage with the Bush they love to bash?
Mrs. Bush's performance, and her husband's reaction, wasn't a shock to the reporters who cover the White House. For years they have tried to convince their friends outside Washington that Mr. Bush is actually not a close-minded dolt, and Mrs. Bush is no Stepford Wife or Church Lady. Yes, they're Texans who go to church and preach family values, but they're not yahoos or religious zealots.
The coverage of Mrs. Bush's comic debut may change some minds, but for devout Bush-bashers, it's much easier to stay the course. If you live in a blue-state stronghold, a coastal city where you can go 24 hours without meeting any Republicans, it's consoling to think of the red staters as an alien bunch of strait-laced Bible thumpers.
Otherwise, how do you explain why they're Republican? Or answer the question Democrats asked in astonishment when they saw Mr. Bush's vote totals: Who are these people?
The favorite Democratic explanation is that the red staters are hicks who have been blinded by righteousness, as Thomas Frank argues in "What's the Matter With Kansas?" He laments that middle-class Kansans are so bamboozled by moral issues like abortion and school prayer that they vote for Republicans even though the Republican tax-cutting policies are against their self-interest.
But middle-class Americans don't simply cast ballots for Republicans. They also vote with their feet, which is why blue states and old Democratic cities are losing population to red states and Republican exurbs. People are moving there precisely because of economic reasons - more jobs, affordable houses and the lower taxes offered by Republican politicians. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/opinion/03tierney.html?hp
The Soft-hearted: They’re tired of opposing. Richard Cohen of the WaPost is one.
It just so happens that I think George Bush is doing something interesting with Social Security. The program does need to be fixed or recalibrated or something, and he has had the guts to take it on. Moreover, I kind of like the idea of personal investment accounts if funding them does not weaken the overall program or add to the nation's incredible debt. After all, there is something to be said for expanding the number of American worker-capitalists and having a nest egg an heir could inherit, or one that would not be eliminated by death. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/02/AR2005050201261.html
Yes, Richard, and Bush wants to “save” Social Security, not fulfill the Heritage/Cato dream of converting/abolishing it. Yes, Richard, we can raise the cap AND add private accounts in a happy compromise without compromising the viability of the SS program. And, Bush’s idea to maintain expected payments to the poor, but cut benefits 15 – 40% for everyone else is because he cares about the poor, not because they want to make it a welfare program that people will not support. And, of course, they were victimized by bad intelligence and had been concerned about the Iraqi people’s yearning for democracy so they invaded. ETC!
Army Recruiting: Bending the Rules Deserves traction
Interviews with more than two dozen recruiters in 10 states hint at the extent of their concern, if not the exact scope of the transgressions. Several spoke of concealing mental-health histories and police records. They described falsified documents, wallet-size cheat sheets slipped to applicants before the military's aptitude test and commanding officers who look the other way. And they voiced doubts about the quality of some troops destined for the front lines…
Yesterday, the issue drew national attention as CBS News reported that a high-school student outside Denver recorded two recruiters as they advised him how to cheat. The student, David McSwane, said one recruiter had told him how to create a diploma from a nonexistent school, while the other had helped him buy a product to cleanse traces of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms from his body. The Army said the recruiters had been suspended while it investigated. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/national/03recruit.html .
DeLay update: Trouble at home for The Hammer
A new poll of voters in Tom DeLay’s district shows faltering support for the flailing House Majority Leader. A poll conducted by SurveyUSA for a local television station showed 51% disapprove of the way DeLay is handling his job as a congressman. What’s more 39% said he should resign his leadership post, while another 36% said he should resign from Congress altogether (that’s a combined 75% of DeLay’s constituents who believe he should resign from something). In response to the poll, DeLay spokesperson Shannon Flaherty said, “The people of his district know that Congressman DeLay is guided by principles, not by polls.” Keep telling yourself that, Shannon.
What I see is the people who have always been opposed to him, democrats and those that have been opposed to him, they are still opposed to him and they are more vocal," said Eric Thode, with the Fort Bend County Republican Party.
Thode said DeLay still has strong support from republicans in his district, but believes the Local 2 poll did not represent enough Republicans.
Democrats said the Local 2 poll showed DeLay is vulnerable at the ballot box.http://www.click2houston.com/politics/4441145/detail.html
Moonie Counterattack: The Right organ keeps trying
House Republicans called Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi a hypocrite yesterday for not demanding investigations into new ethics questions that have arisen about the travel of her fellow Democrats.
"She demanded an investigation into [Majority Leader] Tom DeLay, but hasn't said a word about these Democrats who have done the same thing," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, North Carolina Republican…
In an ABC interview Sunday, Mrs. Pelosi dismissed questions about travel by Democrats, telling interviewer George Stephanopoulos: "Do not fall into a Republican trap of equating technicalities on reporting, timing of reporting with not upholding an ethical standard of the House."
Republicans see a double standard. http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050504-122024-4420r
Plame Update: Hendrik Hertzberg. Well, more his thoughts than an update, as he notes that journalists, not Robert Novak, are threatened with jail.
Normally, the reporter is being told to testify about his or her knowledge of a crime; this time, the reporter’s conversation—the source’s half of it, anyway—is itself the crime, if a crime there was. Normally, in recent years, the threats to the Washington press corps’s ability to do its job have come from the Bush Administration, which is notoriously secretive, manipulative, and vindictive to journalists who fail to bend the knee. This time, though, the threat is coming from an investigation, a perfectly legitimate one, that targets the Administration, or persons within it, precisely for misusing the press—in this case, by ruining the career of a C.I.A. operative. Then, there is the role of Robert Novak. It was Novak who outed the agent, but it is not Novak who is in trouble. Was he subpoenaed? If not, why not? If he was, and he refused to name his source, why isn’t he in the same jail-bound boat as they are? If he did name names, why the relentless pursuit of Cooper and Miller? No one knows—except Novak and the prosecutors.
Cooper and Miller are not targets of the investigation. But they may yet be forced to a choice between breaking their promise and going to jail; and it is a near-certainty that, as a matter of personal and professional honor, they would choose the latter. There is, then, a strong possibility that (a) a serious abuse of power, possibly a crime, will have been committed by one or more White House officials, and (b), in consequence, two journalists will have been imprisoned. That would be a strange kind of justice, and a singularly grim parody of accountability. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050509ta_talk_hertzberg
Fake News Update: An attempt: The Lautenberg (NJ) – Kerry bill to deal with the use of public funds to create fake news segments, the Truth in Broadcasting Act.
The legislation would require that “prepackaged news stories” produced by the Administration contain a disclosure of the source of the material. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has ruled that the Administration’s use of “prepackaged news stories” was illegal “covert propaganda” because the government’s role was not disclosed to viewers. On March 11th 2005, the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Justice issued memos to all executive branch agencies ordering them to ignore the GAO ruling and gave the green light to further use of fake news stories that hide the government’s role in their production.
The Lautenberg-Kerry Truth in Broadcasting Act would follow the legal ruling of the GAO and establish permanent federal law that prepackaged news stories by the government must disclose the government’s role with a disclaimer. http://lautenberg.senate.gov/~lautenberg/press/2003/01/2005428B52.html
Bolton: Shouldn’t forget, though not currently at issue: "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team and I'm here to stop the count." -John Bolton, Florida, 2000
Bush Poll: CNN/USA Today/Gallup: Bush’s positions remain wildly unpopular. Maybe Laura’s scripted jokes will help.
Approval rating — Bush’s approval rating remains at 48%, which is exactly where it was a month ago. The percentage of poll respondents who disapprove is up to 49%, up slightly from the first week in April.
The issues — Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of just about everything, including foreign affairs (45-49), the economy (43-53), Iraq (42-55), Social Security (35-58), and energy policy (34-52).
And: 53% of Americans feel that Republicans are trying to abuse their majority power while 47% feel Democrats are trying to abuse the filibuster procedure.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/polls/tables/live/2005-05-02-poll-results.htm
Arnold: Letter-to-the Editor, LA Times:
I think it is time that California closes it border with Austria. Those Austrians come here and take jobs away from others, get California driver's licenses and drive fuel-inefficient cars, harass our women and then want to tell the rest of us how to run the state … and all those things.
Jeff Robbins, Los Angeles http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-immig3may03,0,3478297.story?coll=la-news-comment-letters
Lighter/Brighter Side: For those who find this digest-blog too dark / depressing:
(1) Republican Values: Gossip / Trouble
According to the Wilkes Barre Times-Leader, Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) had a "domestic incident" recently made public concerning a 29-year-old woman "who told operators that Sherwood 'choked her for no apparent reason' while giving her a backrub."
The woman also said that she and Sherwood, "who is married, have had an ongoing relationship since 1999, when the two met at a Young Republicans meeting."
Republicans are circling the wagons around U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood, R-Tunkhannock, in the wake of an incident involving a 29-year-old woman in his Washington, D.C., apartment last September.
“The only thing you have in life is your reputation,” said Marge Matisko, an activist with the Luzerne County Republican Party. “Don Sherwood has always been very well-respected, and he always valued that. This has hurt him personally and professionally, and that’s a shame.”
No one was charged in what police termed a domestic incident.
Despite an absence of charges, Sherwood may have suffered severe political damage, one pundit says. http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/11549677.htm
(2) Starbucks; No fan, but must acknowledge that Howard Schultz, their “Global Strategist”, is participating in “Cover the Uninsured Week”…along with Orrin Hatch, others.
Cover the Uninsured Week 2005 Launched April 27
View our webcast to see Senators Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden, Starbucks Chief Global Strategist Howard Schultz and Americans facing life without health coverage discuss why we must work together to get America covered. Available in Windows and Real Player formats http://covertheuninsuredweek.org/
3) Media: Colbert exits to own show. Plus-minus- Potential plus, though leads to rare appearances on Daily Show.
Stephen Colbert, who plays a phony correspondent on the fake-news program "The Daily Show," is getting a real promotion.
Comedy Central said yesterday that it was giving Mr. Colbert his own show: a half-hour that is expected to follow "The Daily Show" on weeknights and will lampoon those cable-news shows that are dominated by the personality and sensibility of a single host. Think, he said, of Bill O'Reilly and Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity.
… when asked if he planned to be a guest on the program, Mr. Stewart snapped, "I don't stoop to start-ups." A moment later, suspecting that he had been too harsh toward his mentee, Mr. Stewart softened, saying he would consider an appearance "if the show gets its footing."
When told of Mr. Stewart's resistance, Mr. Colbert said his boss should consider himself unwelcome.
"His shadow is dark enough," Mr. Colbert said. "I don't want to ask the source of darkness for help. I'm not interested in that same liberal claptrap. That meow, meow, meow, ironic detachment." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/arts/television/04come.html
(4) Rock Star Accountability: Dave Matthews Not exactly Exxon-Mobil
The Dave Matthews Band has agreed to pay $200,000 and keep a log of when and where its buses empty their septic tanks to settle a lawsuit filed after one of its buses dumped 800 pounds of human waste through the grates of a bridge onto a sightseeing boat carrying 100 passengers on the Chicago River last summer, The Associated Press reported.
The settlement, announced by the Illinois attorney general's office last week, followed a guilty plea last month by the driver, Stefan Wohl, to charges of reckless conduct and discharging contaminants to cause water pollution. He has since been fired by the band, said its spokesman, John Vlautin, who added, "Although the band members were not on the bus when the incident took place, we have always said that if it was our bus we would take responsibility for what happened." The band had already donated $50,000 to Friends of the Chicago River and $50,000 to the Chicago Park District. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/arts/04arts.html?pagewanted=all
-R
What’s Happening, Iraq: Massive bombings.
And, a Knight Ridder dispatch re reporters being intimidated, beaten. "Tell me to cover anything except the police," said one journalist after recruits taunted him with death threats.
A photographer for a Baghdad newspaper says Iraqi police beat and detained him for snapping pictures of long lines at gas stations. A reporter for another local paper received an invitation from Iraqi police to cover their graduation ceremony and ended up receiving death threats from the recruits. A local TV reporter says she's lost count of how many times Iraqi authorities have confiscated her cameras and smashed her tapes.
All these cases are under investigation by the Iraqi Association to Defend Journalists, a union that formed amid a chilling new trend of alleged arrests, beatings and intimidation of Iraqi reporters at the hands of Iraqi security forces. Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog group for press freedom, tracked the arrests of five Iraqi journalists within a two-week period and issued a statement on April 26 asking authorities "to be more discerning and restrained and not carry out hasty and arbitrary arrests." http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11545887.htm
Times: Confirmed Tierney is a Rightie hack. The often maddening, but (sometimes) worthy of respect William Safire has been replaced by an ordinary partisan. Witness:
For the mainly Democratic audience - this was a crowd of Washington journalists and luminaries from Hollywood and Manhattan - it was an evening of cognitive dissonance. How to reconcile this charming image on stage with the Bush they love to bash?
Mrs. Bush's performance, and her husband's reaction, wasn't a shock to the reporters who cover the White House. For years they have tried to convince their friends outside Washington that Mr. Bush is actually not a close-minded dolt, and Mrs. Bush is no Stepford Wife or Church Lady. Yes, they're Texans who go to church and preach family values, but they're not yahoos or religious zealots.
The coverage of Mrs. Bush's comic debut may change some minds, but for devout Bush-bashers, it's much easier to stay the course. If you live in a blue-state stronghold, a coastal city where you can go 24 hours without meeting any Republicans, it's consoling to think of the red staters as an alien bunch of strait-laced Bible thumpers.
Otherwise, how do you explain why they're Republican? Or answer the question Democrats asked in astonishment when they saw Mr. Bush's vote totals: Who are these people?
The favorite Democratic explanation is that the red staters are hicks who have been blinded by righteousness, as Thomas Frank argues in "What's the Matter With Kansas?" He laments that middle-class Kansans are so bamboozled by moral issues like abortion and school prayer that they vote for Republicans even though the Republican tax-cutting policies are against their self-interest.
But middle-class Americans don't simply cast ballots for Republicans. They also vote with their feet, which is why blue states and old Democratic cities are losing population to red states and Republican exurbs. People are moving there precisely because of economic reasons - more jobs, affordable houses and the lower taxes offered by Republican politicians. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/opinion/03tierney.html?hp
The Soft-hearted: They’re tired of opposing. Richard Cohen of the WaPost is one.
It just so happens that I think George Bush is doing something interesting with Social Security. The program does need to be fixed or recalibrated or something, and he has had the guts to take it on. Moreover, I kind of like the idea of personal investment accounts if funding them does not weaken the overall program or add to the nation's incredible debt. After all, there is something to be said for expanding the number of American worker-capitalists and having a nest egg an heir could inherit, or one that would not be eliminated by death. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/02/AR2005050201261.html
Yes, Richard, and Bush wants to “save” Social Security, not fulfill the Heritage/Cato dream of converting/abolishing it. Yes, Richard, we can raise the cap AND add private accounts in a happy compromise without compromising the viability of the SS program. And, Bush’s idea to maintain expected payments to the poor, but cut benefits 15 – 40% for everyone else is because he cares about the poor, not because they want to make it a welfare program that people will not support. And, of course, they were victimized by bad intelligence and had been concerned about the Iraqi people’s yearning for democracy so they invaded. ETC!
Army Recruiting: Bending the Rules Deserves traction
Interviews with more than two dozen recruiters in 10 states hint at the extent of their concern, if not the exact scope of the transgressions. Several spoke of concealing mental-health histories and police records. They described falsified documents, wallet-size cheat sheets slipped to applicants before the military's aptitude test and commanding officers who look the other way. And they voiced doubts about the quality of some troops destined for the front lines…
Yesterday, the issue drew national attention as CBS News reported that a high-school student outside Denver recorded two recruiters as they advised him how to cheat. The student, David McSwane, said one recruiter had told him how to create a diploma from a nonexistent school, while the other had helped him buy a product to cleanse traces of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms from his body. The Army said the recruiters had been suspended while it investigated. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/national/03recruit.html .
DeLay update: Trouble at home for The Hammer
A new poll of voters in Tom DeLay’s district shows faltering support for the flailing House Majority Leader. A poll conducted by SurveyUSA for a local television station showed 51% disapprove of the way DeLay is handling his job as a congressman. What’s more 39% said he should resign his leadership post, while another 36% said he should resign from Congress altogether (that’s a combined 75% of DeLay’s constituents who believe he should resign from something). In response to the poll, DeLay spokesperson Shannon Flaherty said, “The people of his district know that Congressman DeLay is guided by principles, not by polls.” Keep telling yourself that, Shannon.
What I see is the people who have always been opposed to him, democrats and those that have been opposed to him, they are still opposed to him and they are more vocal," said Eric Thode, with the Fort Bend County Republican Party.
Thode said DeLay still has strong support from republicans in his district, but believes the Local 2 poll did not represent enough Republicans.
Democrats said the Local 2 poll showed DeLay is vulnerable at the ballot box.http://www.click2houston.com/politics/4441145/detail.html
Moonie Counterattack: The Right organ keeps trying
House Republicans called Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi a hypocrite yesterday for not demanding investigations into new ethics questions that have arisen about the travel of her fellow Democrats.
"She demanded an investigation into [Majority Leader] Tom DeLay, but hasn't said a word about these Democrats who have done the same thing," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, North Carolina Republican…
In an ABC interview Sunday, Mrs. Pelosi dismissed questions about travel by Democrats, telling interviewer George Stephanopoulos: "Do not fall into a Republican trap of equating technicalities on reporting, timing of reporting with not upholding an ethical standard of the House."
Republicans see a double standard. http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050504-122024-4420r
Plame Update: Hendrik Hertzberg. Well, more his thoughts than an update, as he notes that journalists, not Robert Novak, are threatened with jail.
Normally, the reporter is being told to testify about his or her knowledge of a crime; this time, the reporter’s conversation—the source’s half of it, anyway—is itself the crime, if a crime there was. Normally, in recent years, the threats to the Washington press corps’s ability to do its job have come from the Bush Administration, which is notoriously secretive, manipulative, and vindictive to journalists who fail to bend the knee. This time, though, the threat is coming from an investigation, a perfectly legitimate one, that targets the Administration, or persons within it, precisely for misusing the press—in this case, by ruining the career of a C.I.A. operative. Then, there is the role of Robert Novak. It was Novak who outed the agent, but it is not Novak who is in trouble. Was he subpoenaed? If not, why not? If he was, and he refused to name his source, why isn’t he in the same jail-bound boat as they are? If he did name names, why the relentless pursuit of Cooper and Miller? No one knows—except Novak and the prosecutors.
Cooper and Miller are not targets of the investigation. But they may yet be forced to a choice between breaking their promise and going to jail; and it is a near-certainty that, as a matter of personal and professional honor, they would choose the latter. There is, then, a strong possibility that (a) a serious abuse of power, possibly a crime, will have been committed by one or more White House officials, and (b), in consequence, two journalists will have been imprisoned. That would be a strange kind of justice, and a singularly grim parody of accountability. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050509ta_talk_hertzberg
Fake News Update: An attempt: The Lautenberg (NJ) – Kerry bill to deal with the use of public funds to create fake news segments, the Truth in Broadcasting Act.
The legislation would require that “prepackaged news stories” produced by the Administration contain a disclosure of the source of the material. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has ruled that the Administration’s use of “prepackaged news stories” was illegal “covert propaganda” because the government’s role was not disclosed to viewers. On March 11th 2005, the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Justice issued memos to all executive branch agencies ordering them to ignore the GAO ruling and gave the green light to further use of fake news stories that hide the government’s role in their production.
The Lautenberg-Kerry Truth in Broadcasting Act would follow the legal ruling of the GAO and establish permanent federal law that prepackaged news stories by the government must disclose the government’s role with a disclaimer. http://lautenberg.senate.gov/~lautenberg/press/2003/01/2005428B52.html
Bolton: Shouldn’t forget, though not currently at issue: "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team and I'm here to stop the count." -John Bolton, Florida, 2000
Bush Poll: CNN/USA Today/Gallup: Bush’s positions remain wildly unpopular. Maybe Laura’s scripted jokes will help.
Approval rating — Bush’s approval rating remains at 48%, which is exactly where it was a month ago. The percentage of poll respondents who disapprove is up to 49%, up slightly from the first week in April.
The issues — Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of just about everything, including foreign affairs (45-49), the economy (43-53), Iraq (42-55), Social Security (35-58), and energy policy (34-52).
And: 53% of Americans feel that Republicans are trying to abuse their majority power while 47% feel Democrats are trying to abuse the filibuster procedure.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/polls/tables/live/2005-05-02-poll-results.htm
Arnold: Letter-to-the Editor, LA Times:
I think it is time that California closes it border with Austria. Those Austrians come here and take jobs away from others, get California driver's licenses and drive fuel-inefficient cars, harass our women and then want to tell the rest of us how to run the state … and all those things.
Jeff Robbins, Los Angeles http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-immig3may03,0,3478297.story?coll=la-news-comment-letters
Lighter/Brighter Side: For those who find this digest-blog too dark / depressing:
(1) Republican Values: Gossip / Trouble
According to the Wilkes Barre Times-Leader, Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) had a "domestic incident" recently made public concerning a 29-year-old woman "who told operators that Sherwood 'choked her for no apparent reason' while giving her a backrub."
The woman also said that she and Sherwood, "who is married, have had an ongoing relationship since 1999, when the two met at a Young Republicans meeting."
Republicans are circling the wagons around U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood, R-Tunkhannock, in the wake of an incident involving a 29-year-old woman in his Washington, D.C., apartment last September.
“The only thing you have in life is your reputation,” said Marge Matisko, an activist with the Luzerne County Republican Party. “Don Sherwood has always been very well-respected, and he always valued that. This has hurt him personally and professionally, and that’s a shame.”
No one was charged in what police termed a domestic incident.
Despite an absence of charges, Sherwood may have suffered severe political damage, one pundit says. http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/11549677.htm
(2) Starbucks; No fan, but must acknowledge that Howard Schultz, their “Global Strategist”, is participating in “Cover the Uninsured Week”…along with Orrin Hatch, others.
Cover the Uninsured Week 2005 Launched April 27
View our webcast to see Senators Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden, Starbucks Chief Global Strategist Howard Schultz and Americans facing life without health coverage discuss why we must work together to get America covered. Available in Windows and Real Player formats http://covertheuninsuredweek.org/
3) Media: Colbert exits to own show. Plus-minus- Potential plus, though leads to rare appearances on Daily Show.
Stephen Colbert, who plays a phony correspondent on the fake-news program "The Daily Show," is getting a real promotion.
Comedy Central said yesterday that it was giving Mr. Colbert his own show: a half-hour that is expected to follow "The Daily Show" on weeknights and will lampoon those cable-news shows that are dominated by the personality and sensibility of a single host. Think, he said, of Bill O'Reilly and Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity.
… when asked if he planned to be a guest on the program, Mr. Stewart snapped, "I don't stoop to start-ups." A moment later, suspecting that he had been too harsh toward his mentee, Mr. Stewart softened, saying he would consider an appearance "if the show gets its footing."
When told of Mr. Stewart's resistance, Mr. Colbert said his boss should consider himself unwelcome.
"His shadow is dark enough," Mr. Colbert said. "I don't want to ask the source of darkness for help. I'm not interested in that same liberal claptrap. That meow, meow, meow, ironic detachment." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/arts/television/04come.html
(4) Rock Star Accountability: Dave Matthews Not exactly Exxon-Mobil
The Dave Matthews Band has agreed to pay $200,000 and keep a log of when and where its buses empty their septic tanks to settle a lawsuit filed after one of its buses dumped 800 pounds of human waste through the grates of a bridge onto a sightseeing boat carrying 100 passengers on the Chicago River last summer, The Associated Press reported.
The settlement, announced by the Illinois attorney general's office last week, followed a guilty plea last month by the driver, Stefan Wohl, to charges of reckless conduct and discharging contaminants to cause water pollution. He has since been fired by the band, said its spokesman, John Vlautin, who added, "Although the band members were not on the bus when the incident took place, we have always said that if it was our bus we would take responsibility for what happened." The band had already donated $50,000 to Friends of the Chicago River and $50,000 to the Chicago Park District. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/arts/04arts.html?pagewanted=all
-R
