BuzzFlash's GOP Hypocrite of the Week is Elaine L. Chao:

The slogan you'll find on the home page of our Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, would be enough -- in and of itself -- to make her our Hypocrite of the Week. It reads, "Getting people back to work is what this Department does. Giving people hope in their future is our job."
Yeah, right!
The Bush administration has the worst job creation record since Herbert Hoover, yet Chao marches on like some Soviet poster extolling a worker's paradise.
In addition to her cynical cliche duties, Chao is also another lackey shoveling the Bush daily pile of hypocrisy. For instance, this week, her department warned unions not to use pension funds to oppose Bush's social "insecurity" plans. The unions were also warned not to "hire or fire service providers primarily on the basis of their positions on Social Security legislation."
Are you finished laughing yet?

(Please note, besides reading the text, you can also listen online -- text and audio is offered.)

From IMC, we'll note topito's "Mexican legislators open the door to genetic privatisation:"

During the media screen generated by the presidential succesion, on the 27th of April the Mexican Senator opened the door to the privatisation of genetic resources by means of the unanimous approval of the "Initiative of federal law for access and exploitation of biological and genetic resources", which will no doubt gravely affect, amongst other things, the food sovereignty of Mexico, as in the case of corn which has already been contaminated from its center of origin. This is a legal proposal originally presented by senator Jorge Nordhausen of the far-right and governing Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) party in 2001 and was suspended in 2004. Amongst his "motives" Nordhausen put forward that: (...) For living beings and their derivatives to be transformed into resources with economic and social value, the constant contribution of relevant knowledge is necessary. This initiative was approved at the "last minute", as is common for mexican legislators before the end of their legislative period.

From The Independent, we'll note Patrick Cockburn's "Suicide bomber kills 58 as tensions rise in Baghdad:"

A suicide car-bomber killed at least 58 people in the mostly Shia town of Suwayra, near Baghdad. The attack increases the risk of sectarian warfare between Shias and Sunnis.
The bomber detonated the explosives in the vegetable market of the town, 25 miles south of the capital, yesterday, leaving no doubt that he intended to cause maximum civilian casualties. The Shia, 60 per cent of the Iraqi population, won the election in January which the Sunni boycotted and are forming a government. So far, they have not retaliated.
Earlier, at least a dozen bodies were found in a rubbish dump on the outskirts of Baghdad. Some of the dead had been blindfolded and shot in the head. They were found by scavengers searching the rubbish for items to sell.

We'll note Riverbend/Girl Blogger who has a new post up this week at Baghdad Burning:

These last few days have been explosive- quite literally. It started about 4 days ago and it hasn't let up since. They say there were around 14 car bombs in Baghdad alone a couple of days ago- although we only heard 6 from our area. Cars are making me very nervous lately. All cars look suspicious- small ones and large ones. Old cars and new cars. Cars with drivers and cars parked in front of restaurants and shops. They all have a sinister look to them these days. The worst day for us was the day before yesterday.
We were sitting in the living room with an aunt and her 16-year-old son and listening patiently as she scolded the household for *still* having our rugs spread. In Iraq, people don't keep their carpeting all year round. We begin removing the carpeting around April and it doesn't come back until around October. We don't have wall to wall carpeting here like abroad. Instead, we have lovely rugs that we usually spread in the middle of the room. The best kinds are made in Iran, specifically in Tabriz or Kashan. They are often large, heavy and intricately designed. Tabriz and Kashan rugs are very expensive and few families actually have them any more. Most people who do have Tabriz rugs in Baghdad got them through an inheritance.
[. . .]
Back in the house, E. and I decided he'd go back and see if he could help. We gathered up some gauze, medical tape, antiseptic and a couple of bottles of cold water. I turned back to my cousin after E. had left. He was excited and tense, eyes wide with disbelief. His voice was shaking slightly as he spoke and his lower lip trembled.
"I was just going to cross the street but I remembered I should buy the carrots" He spoke rapidly, "So I stopped by that guy who sells vegetables and just as I was buying them- a big BOOM and a car exploded and the one next to it began to burn... If I hadn't stopped for the carrots..." The cousin began waving his arms around in the air and I leaned back to avoid one in the face.
My aunt gasped, stopping in the living room, "The carrots saved you!" She cried out, holding a hand to her heart. My cousin looked at her incredulously and the color slowly began to return to his face. "Carrots." He murmured, throwing himself down on the sofa and grabbing one of the cushions, "Carrots saved me."

Reminder Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog From Iraq is available as a BuzzFlash premium.

[Note: For anyone new to this site who's scratching their jaw and narrowing their eyes, yes, BuzzFlash did link to Ruth's Morning Edition Report today. There was no trade off. I've been accused of pimping for BuzzFlash since day five of this site. If you check the archives, you'll see that on the second day of this site, November 20, 2004, links were offered to BuzzFlash premiums. We provide those links because we support independent media and because, as I've stated here before, I am a BuzzFlash reader and my place is full of BuzzFlash premiums. Looking over to the TV set, I see two DVDs out of five -- all should be on the DVD rack -- that came via BuzzFlash, on the table behind me are ten books and three were purchased as BuzzFlash premiums. They'll go back to the bookshelves later tonight but the place is a mess tonight, for anyone wondering.]


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

Kirk e-mails to note Jude of Iddybud today. Kirk wants everyone to know that there's a great piece on John Edwards and he also found this of interest:

At the One America website, Cate Edwards has blogged about a new organization which was started by Adrian and Devin Talbott after the last election. It's called Generation Engage, and it is a non-partisan group geared towards getting young people involved in the world of politics. Generation Engage allows its members to become a part of something bigger, a national movement of engaged young people committed to ensuring that their voices are heard. Young people have been unable to unite or coalesce behind a single issue or organization, as other age groups and demographics have. Generation Engage hopes to create a network that defines itself by inclusion, a community that welcomes and joins all young people in a national political discourse.

Shawn e-mailed to highlight RDF at Corrente:

I'm trying hard to make sense of the economic news. Granted, I'm no economist, and I'm lousy at capitalism, but I'm reasonably intelligent and should be able to figure this out. Unless the idea is to make it so complicated that nobody can figure it out.
First, jobs were added in April, but mostly from what I can tell, McJobs in the "retail and service sectors," while manufacturing is still tanking. So, jobs that don't pay well or carry benefits are being added.
Yet, "consumer confidence" is down, and unemployment remains the same.
The logic of this defies me. If consumers aren't buying, how in the hell are jobs being added in retail and services? Unless we're talking about dollar stores and Waljobs (which is like a job, but not really). And how does unemployment stay the same when jobs are being added? It must be a numbers game. Especially when I hear about all of these massive layoffs.
Economic growth is dropping, but productivity is up. So, more people are working harder to produce more, but that doesn't translate into growth. Huh? And, in my simple mind, if the jobs that are mostly available are in retail or service, what the hell are these workers producing at a greater rate? Ten McBurgers a minute instead of five? Five shoe sales an hour instead of three?

Melissa e-mails to note that at Big Brass Blog, Pam's been "covering the Jim West story from the start." Melissa notes this from Pam today:

Well folks, I am still in the thick of things gathering the facts about our lovely homo-bigot mayor. In the meantime, I thought I would post some comments from his peers in the area.
Sen. Jim Honeyford, R-Sunnyside, said from what he's read, "it's a pretty sad situation for Jim ... It will be very difficult for him, if these allegations are true."
Honeyford, a Republican leader in Olympia, said he and his party oppose issues such as gay marriage because, he said, homosexuality is immoral.
He said West "must have kept his personal life separate from his political life." If West is gay, Honeyford said, he would be at odds with GOP values.
"For the Republican mainstream I would say, yes, probably it would be incompatible."

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

My apologies for the delay in posting tonight. Ava and I had planned to review Less Than Perfect for The Third Estate Sunday Review but it wasn't on. They had two episodes of Hope & Faith (which we've reviewed) and the other sitcoms on had also been reviewed (Reba and Living With Fran, the latter is a funny show). We debated 20/20 and Numbers (hope that's the name of the show -- it's the one we'll be reviewing) but 20/20's doing a "hard hitting," "ground breaking," journalistic look at the story of our times, ABC's Lost. The "lead story" is nothing but a commerical for a TV show and the commercial's being passed off as news.

So the scramble to figure out what to watch took more time than I'd imagined.

While we're in this community note, thank you to Heath and to Susan who both e-mailed asking if I was sure I had Bruce Springsteen's Devils & Dust in the CD player correctly since I couldn't get it to play on the JVC or Sony. No, I wasn't sure. And no, I didn't have it in there right. Having flipped the disc over, it is now playing.

For Susan, here's the opening to "Devils & Dust:"

I got my finger on the trigger
But I don't know who to trust
When I look into your eyes
There's just devils and dust
We're a long, long way from home, Bobbie
Home's a long, long way from us
I feel a dirty wind blowing
Devils and dust
-- "Devils & Dust" words & music by Bruce Springsteen

To an e-mailer I'll dub "Flower," who wrote in re: Dexter Filkins and John Burns asking "any word?" I'm not clear what the question is about, sorry. (And e-mail replies probably won't go out until Monday so I'm tossing this out here so you don't feel ignored -- e-mails are saved to draft and then a friend e-mails them out; this weekend, my friend will be out of town.)

If you're asking have I heard anything about the rumors of the "lively going ons in the Green Zone" of the personal nature, yes, many rumors but I'm sure they are just rumors. I haven't seen anything printed on Love Green Zone Style, no.

If you're asking why they weren't noted, I don't even know that they were in the paper today (though you may be asking about earlier in the week). We don't highlight the Green Zone reporting from the Times. Others (such as Ron of Why Are We Back In Iraq?) were much more skeptical of the reporting coming out of the Green Zone than I was. They were proven right. (Or to be Judy Miller about it, "They were proved f**king right!")

I have no interest in highlighting Filkins ever. History won't be kind to his award winning, rah-rah story of the destruction of Falluja -- a story that honestly reminds me of the story in Amy & David Goodman's Exceptions to the Rulers about the Times reporter, William L. Laurence, who covered up for the destruction of nukes. Laurence wrote for the Times. He even won a Pulitzer. For many years after WWII he was held in high esteem. But truth does come out and he's known today, if at all, as the cheerleader for nukes who down played their costs.

Sidebar: William L. Laurence is also now known for "not only receiving a salary from The New York Times. He was also on the payroll of the War Department (p. 297)." The Goodmans note Harold Evans on Laurence:

After the bombing, the brilliant but bullying [General] Groves continually suppressed or distorted the effects of radiation. He dismissed reports of Japanese deaths as "hoax or propaganda." The Times' Laurence weighed in, too, after [Wilfred] Burchet's reports, and parroted the government line.

Awards are forgotten, the truth outlives us all. Christian Parenti and Dahr Jamail are two examples of reporters taking their job seriously. When we note Iraq stories from the Times at all these days, we go with an Associated Press or Reuters article. I believe it was Lizz Winstead and Rachel Maddow on Unfiltered who noted that reporters reporting from the Green Zone should note that. When those comments were made, we stopped making it a point to highlight the Times's coverage of Iraq.

If that didn't answer your question, Flower, please e-mail again and let me know what you were asking because I wasn't clear on my end, sorry.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

Congratulations to Ruth. Her Wednesday's Ruth's Morning Edition Report was linked to by BuzzFlash today. The Third Estate Sunday Review will be interviewing her tomorrow for an article in this Sunday's edition.

We noted when Dallas was linked and I asked at the time if anyone had any objections to noting when members were linked? No objections were raised so we'll note Ruth's wonderful accomplishment and let her know how proud we are of her.

We are very fortunate to have so many talented members sharing with the community (and whether anyone is linked or not, they are talented and their contributions are appreciated).

We're very happy for, and proud of, Ruth being linked to by a site we all enjoy so much.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This post has been corrected. Commas were added to the second to last sentence ("We're very happy . . .") and the verb tense was changed to "being." In addition, the e-mail address was added per Shirley. Thanks to Shirley for catching all changes needed.]

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

Get your day planners out, here's the Sunday Chat & Chews.

Due to Chris Donovan (see Monday's entry), I was thinking this afternoon that there must be something nice to be said about Meet the Press. I was thinking that maybe, for instance, Robin Wright (reporter, not actress) would be part of the roundtable and I could note that as a positive. I wasn't planning on fluffing for Meet the Press, but I was thinking that after noting its problems, there would be one thing I could find to praise. Call me ungrateful, Donovan, but I can't. The community appreciates what you did and thanks you. But I lack Elisabeth Bumiller's ability to fluff.

Here are the guests for Sunday's Meet the Press on NBC (check your local listings for air
times):

GARY SCHROEN
Former Senior CIA Officer
Author, "First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan"
JAMES CARVILLE
Democratic Strategist
MARY MATALIN
Republican Strategist

Gary Schroen? I'm with Ruth on his revelations. (And what he wrote did have to be cleared.)

James Carville & Mary Matalin? It's like Crossfire with less chemistry.

Seriously, Carville will shake his head "no" repeatedly while staring down at the desk/table. Matalin will tilt her head and roll her eyes while sighing heavily. Tim Russert will chuckle at each of Matalin's lackadaisical remarks riveting and witty. It's as though we're watching Sonny & Cher on The Mike Douglas Show many years after the show was cancelled (for the second time) and long after we stopped caring. (I'll dub Carville the Cher because he does posses the sparkle and talent.) The act is tired. We've seen it a hundred times over. May they go to their graves (after long, long lives) still singing "I've Got You Babe" but it's not really anything I care to watch.

We will say thank you, again, to Chris Donovan for seeing to it that the "about" page had the proper spelling of Gloria Steinem's name.

Let's note the guests for ABC's This Week (Sunday, check your local listings):

Guests:
Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric and co-author of "Winning"
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., member of the Foreign Relations Committee
Seb. Carl Levin, D-Mich., ranking member of the Armed Services Committee*
Comedian Jerry Lewis
[*"Seb." should probably be "Sen." but I'm going by what's written.]

Jack Welch, hmm. Will he be asked about allegedly screaming, "Call the election!" back on election night November, 2000? No, he won't. (And he refused to turn over the tape from the set -- he sees himself as a journalist. Who knew?) So what's he doing on this show? Will he be asked about what G.E.'s done to the Hudson River? I doubt it. Winning? Guess it's not a book dedicated to stock holders unless it's intended to be read as nah-nah-nah.

Jerry Lewis? What? He's going to talk about his pain (physical). Apparently this is important news. Apparently, This Week is going for the Oprah audience (though Oprah chooses better guests). Maybe Lewis can cause a stir by insulting female comedians again?

But when you think it can't get worse and more non-newsworthy, along comes the roundtable:

Our classic roundtable is back this week -- Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts and George Will -- to chew over the week's big stories.

Classic? It's back, at any rate, like a herpes outbreak. But note, to those who e-mail saying something along the lines of, "I know you're being funny, but it is fair to call it the 'Chat & Chew?" Presumably, we're all on the same page that "chatting" goes on. But note that ABC, their own words, uses "chew." Chat & Chews.

Let's check in with Blinky and see what's coming up on CBS's Face The Nation this Sunday (check your local listings for air times):

Topics:
Social Security; The Filibuster Fight;
The Bolton Nomination
Guests:
Sen. Chuck Hagel
Foreign Relations Committee
Republican - Nebraska
Rep. Sam Brownback
Judiciary Committee
Republican - Kansas
Sen. Dick Durbin
Minority Whip
Democrat - Illinois
Karen Tumulty
TIME Magazine

Oh wait, that's last week! Yes, it's Friday evening and they still haven't posted whom their guests will be this Sunday. Which is why my friend at CBS mocks the show so much, it is that out of touch. It still thinks we live in a world of three chanels and all flip through our TV schedules when deciding what to watch. Playing it like it's still 1972 probably helps the show take a more serious tone than the other two shows, but it also means that more often than not, viewers have no idea what's coming up on Face The Nation.

If I had to watch, if someone had a gun to my head, I'd pick Face The Nation. "But you pick that every week and you don't even know who's on it this week!" True. But, as always, it's a half-hour so I'm spared thirty additional minutes of skin crawling. Second, of the three, it does aspire to something more serious. (Bob Schieffer, to his credit -- and he earned respect for this from many in the news at CBS -- refused to chase after the Michael Jackson story because he, rightly, realized that "news story" has no place on a Sunday talk show about issues facing the nation.)

If you love the Chat & Chews, tape all three. Just remember not to go in the water for at least an hour after.

By the way, if someone else finds out what's on Face the Nation before Sunday and e-mails about it, we'll note it.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

Democracy Now! (Marcia: "always worth watching"):

Headlines for May 6, 2005
- Blair Opponent Demands Apology for Soldiers Killed in Iraq
- Iraqi Resistance Carry Out Attacks
- Iraqi Resistance Carry Out Attacks
- U.S. Holding Journalists Without Charge in Iraq
- Gen. Karpinski Demoted for Abu Ghraib
- U.S. Cannot Find $100 Million in Iraq Money
- Colombia Returns U.S. soldiers Accused of Weapons Trafficking
- Fatah Leads in Palestinian Local Elections
- FDA to Recommend Ban on Gay Sperm Donors

Blair Wins Third Term; Majority Reduced Over Iraq War
Prime Minister Tony Blair wins a historic third term in government but with a drastically reduced majority in parliament for his Labour party. We go to London to speak with longtime British politician, Tony Benn, the political editor of the Guardian (UK) and Tariq Ali, author and editor of the New Left Review.

Bloomington Resolutions Oppose Iraq War, Patriot Act, Seek Higher Minimum Wage
We speak with a member of the Bloomington City Council which has passed several bills and resolutions opposing the invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act, promoting fair elections through a verifiable paper trail and seeking a higher minimum wage. [includes rush transcript]

Biology Prof. Resigns Over Gvt. Use of Plant Research
We speak Dr. Martha Crouch, a former biology professor at the University of Indiana. She ran a lab dedicated to cutting edge plant research but decided to end her career when she found out that biotechnology companies were co-opting her research for profit.

Julia Ward Howe: The Woman Behind Mother's DayWe take a look at the woman behind Mother's Day, Julia Ward Howe. The author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, she began advocating for a mother's day for peace in 1870. [includes rush transcript]

Keesha e-mails to note Katrina vanden Heuvel's wrote : "In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask...that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed...to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."
A hundred and thirty-five Mother's Days later, the feisty and fiercely intelligent women of Code Pink--the largest women-initiated, antiwar activist group in the country--are fulfilling Howe's call to action. Founded in 2002 during the run-up to war in Iraq, Code Pink has grabbed the nation's attention with some of the boldest, most direct, creative (and good-humored) protests against the war.
Among our favorite Code Pink actions: their four-month vigil in front of the White House; the "pink slip" campaign; crashing the RNC three nights in a row; interrupting hearings to demand the firing of Donald Rumsfeld, and, later, to protest the nomination of John Bolton.

Cedric e-mails to note that The Black Commentator has a speech by House Rep. Cynthia McKinney:

In the political world, our hesitation about flexing our muscle and standing firm for our Constitutional rights has made us political roadkill.
How else can you describe Republican audacity to roll back the voting laws in our State to almost pre-Voting Rights Act times.
Georgia, whose leaders' words used to drip with interposition and nullification at the time that Dr. King led millions in marches for our rights, now has one of the most – if not the most – restrictive voter ID bills in the country.
Georgia, whose electorate is fully 30% black, has a history of hatred that is well chronicled in the annals of Supreme Court voting decisions.
Georgia, where crossover voting allows white Democrats and white Republicans to come together to oust anyone not to their liking despite the overwhelming presence of black Democrats in the Democratic primary.
Georgia, so sweet and clear as moonlight in the pines.
Leadership in a changing time. That's your theme tonight.
But tell me. From this just-passed Legislative Session, and everything that you've witnessed in your lifetimes, tell me – what has changed?
Our story in this country has been one of struggle, optimism, faith, belief, in the system, in the Constitution, belief in what the leaders of this country have told us.
Our history in this country has been one of triumph and travail. And through it all, we've had inspiring leadership and we've had not-so-inspiring leadership.

Heath e-mails regarding Bob Somerby's The Daily Howler today and picked the section he wanted highlighted (Somerby's addressing Charles Krauthammer's op-ed claim that Bully Boy's plan for Social Security will not result in a cut in benefits):

"No one gets cut," Krauthammer says--and he makes the case here as well as it can be made. Democrats badly need to know how to respond to this fusillade.
Let's start by debunking some flat-out misstatements. In the first of these three quoted paragraphs, Krauthammer discusses the future benefits that Social Security currently promises. And uh-oh! He says those future benefits "are entirely unsustainable. They cannot possibly be paid by the taxes of the fewer workers in the future who will be supporting the many retirees." But this statement is plainly untrue; if we make fairly minor adjustments to existing taxes, it would be entirely possible to pay promised SS benefits over the next 75 years. As Chris Dodd noted on Sunday's Meet the Press, less than one-third of Bush's sweeping tax cuts erases the projected 75-year shortfall. Clearly, taxpayers could support these benefit levels, if we decide we want to do it. Krauthammer may think this would be bad policy. But it’s absurd to say it "cannot possibly" be done.
But after he makes these flat misstatements, Krauthammer's argument rallies. It's true! Under the benefit levels Bush proposed last week, future retirees would get "at least as much or more than any retiree today" -- even if those future benefit checks are adjusted for inflation ("in nominal or real dollars"). For example, consider an average-income worker who retires in 2045. His monthly check will contain more dollars than the check sent to such retirees today. And his monthly check will be bigger than today's check even if you adjust for inflation! This is what Republicans mean when they say there are no "cuts" in Bush’s proposal. If Dems want to win this fight on the merits, they need to know what to say when someone makes these basic points. Drum's response ("So what? It's less than Congress promised in 1983!") isn't likely to help in this fight.
So let’s get at it. Why should Dems care about the benefit levels Bush has now proposed? Why should Dems complain if average retirees get more money in the future, even adjusted for inflation? Simple: Over the course of the next 40 or 50 (or 70) years, living standards are going to change a great deal; if retirees are going to be able to approximate the living standard they maintained while they were working, benefit levels have to reflect that. And Bush's proposal massively changes the ability of the average worker to do that.

Heath alerts us that there's a planned Saturday Daily Howler tomorrow. Heath also informs me that Somerby had a Saturday entry last week. I'm sorry that I missed that and wasn't aware of it. We'll try to grab something from it tomorrow.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

From BuzzFlash, we'll note "Leslie Weise of the Denver Three Asks On Whose Authority They Were Expelled? It Sure Wasn't the Secret Service ..." From that interview:

BuzzFlash: Last week Scott McClellan admitted that the White House unilaterally reserves the right to forcibly remove any American from a taxpayer-funded, official Presidential event, based on the suspicion that an attendee might disrupt the event. It seems that the strategy of preemption has now permeated into the domestic arena, dictating who is allowed to hear the President speak or not -- or who will have their constitutional rights denied or not. This is a disturbing trend. Clearly what happened to you, the "Denver 3," was not an accident or a mistake, but part of a larger strategy to keep anyone who disagrees with the President away from the President.
Leslie Weise: That's made clear from the fact that this has been a repeating occurrence at town hall meetings. This happened not only to us, but also to a student in Tucson, Arizona, the same day of our encounter. It happened in Fargo, North Dakota, where 42 people were denied entry because they had some affiliation with an organization or a viewpoint that was in some way different from Bush's. And it happened in New Hampshire, where a few middle-aged women were removed from the event because of t-shirts they were wearing. So not only has Scott McClellan admitted it, but they've shown that it is a pattern.
BuzzFlash: You have a lawyer. You guys are hot on the case. You have been pressuring the powers-that-be in the White House to release the identity of the man who evidently impersonated a Secret Service agent -- which prompted the Secret Service to launch a criminal investigation. The White House and the Secret Service know the identity of the "mystery man" but they won't release his name. What's the next step for the "Denver 3"?
Leslie Weise: The next step is the step we've been wanting all along, and we still haven't reached -- which is to find out who did this to us. More importantly, who instructed him, and the people he was working with, to throw us out of the event? We also need to find out why -- what is the set of instructions given to these people? And does that cross the Constitutional line? We believe preemptively and forcibly removing Americans from seeing the President based solely on suspicions from the White House -- or because we drove to the event with a "No More Blood for Oil" bumper sticker -- does violate the Constitution. Clearly our First Amendment rights were violated. We were denied the opportunity to participate in this public event despite holding valid tickets, which we received from Republican Congressman Bob Beauprez. It is disturbing to us, as it should be to all Americans, that the threat of having a different viewpoint on any policy with the Bush administration means that action is going to be taken against you. Quite frankly, you'll be considered un-American.

For information on the Denver Three and other similar actions, check out Matthew Rothschild's "McCarthyism Watch." You can also refer to Democracy Now!'s "Three People Forcibly Removed From Bush "Town Hall" Meeting on Social Security."

On The Rachel Maddow Show this morning, Maddow noted that Jane's Defence Weekly was reporting on the defense budget in the U.S. Maddow noted that, "Our spending in twelve months on our defense will equal what the entire rest of the world spends on defense this year."

From The Independent, we'll note Andrew Grice's "Blair secures his third term - but how long will he last at No 10?" From that article:

Tony Blair saw his majority cut sharply today as Labour was hit by a Tory revival and a protest vote over the Iraq war. The party was still heading for a third successive general election victory for the first time in its history, but suffered a string of surprise defeats.
A BBC projection at 4am forecast that Labour's majority would be slashed from 167 at the 2001 election to 70. A Sky News projection put Labour's majority at 72 ­ still more than halved.
The early results showed that many people who voted Labour in 1997 and 2001 had deserted the party to give Mr Blair a "bloody nose" over the Iraq war, which became the dominant issue in the second half of the election campaign.
Labour suffered a spectacular defeat in Hornsey and Wood Green, north London, where the war was a big issue, at the hands of the Liberal Democrats, who achieved a huge 14.6 per cent swing.
In a clear sign of an "Iraq effect", Labour performed much worse in the capital than other regions. It lost Enfield Southgate, Putney, Hammersmith, Ilford North and Wimbledon to the Conservatives.

Folding Star is also addressing the elections at A Winding Road:

The system is so different from ours. Here in America, we elect our Legislative and Executive branches completely separately. In the UK, it's all one and the same, really. Whichever party has a majority in the House of Commons gets to form the Government, its party leader (who is elected to the House of Commons along with everyone else) becomes Prime Minister and chooses his Cabinet from among his colleagues in the House.
I've tried to explain this to friends before. When you're only familiar with our system here in the US, it can be hard to grasp that voters in Britain (or in most parliamentary Governments) don't go to the polls to elect a Prime Minister. The country at large does NOT elect Tony Blair. Each district votes for their own local Member of Parliament and that is the extent of it.
The equivalent would be if our President was picked based on which party had the majority in the House of Representatives. Given the make up right now, the Republicans have the majority and their leader- Tom DeLay (shudder)- would be President and would choose his Cabinet from among fellow Republicans in the House. They'd all continue to serve in the House and represent their districts in addition to their Government roles.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This post has been corrected to make the Rachel Maddow paragraph more clear. This includes noting that Jane's is a magazine.]

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

As promised last night, here are some stories from the latest issue of The Nation. (Check out their new online look.)

Let's start with one that Ruth should enjoy, Scott Sherman's "Good, Gray NPR:"

In its journalism and its financial structure, NPR has indeed evolved into a somewhat different entity from what its founders envisioned. On May 3, 1971, it went on the air with the first broadcast of All Things Considered. The program began with a kaleidoscopic account of a major antiwar rally in Washington, DC, at which more than 6,000 people were arrested. "Excuse me," NPR's reporter asked a police sergeant attempting to quell the protests, "Is that a technique? Where the men actually try to drive the motorcycles right into the demonstrators?" Three decades later, rough-edged, in-your-face reportage has largely been supplanted by conventional punditry from the likes of Cokie Roberts, Daniel Schorr and David Brooks, and by consciously mainstream news reporting by correspondents whose voices are often indistinguishable from one another.
To some extent, financial and political pressures help to explain NPR's turn toward mainstream respectability and high-minded professionalism: NPR's founders had every expectation that public funds would cover the budget, but Republican hostility to public broadcasting thwarted those early hopes and dreams. Three decades after its creation, NPR now draws a significant portion of its funding from corporations such as Wal-Mart, Sodexho and Archer Daniels Midland. Likewise, NPR had sound journalistic reasons for turning away from its edgy, countercultural roots. Over the past decade, as media conglomerates dumped public-affairs programming in favor of "infotainment" and tabloid trash, NPR recognized the void and moved to fill it with high-quality news reporting. That news-oriented model, by drawing in listeners hungry for substantial coverage of politics and public affairs, has enabled NPR to thrive: Today, it continues to add correspondents and bureaus at a time when most other major news organizations are trimming them. A fair-minded evaluation must conclude that if NPR has turned its back on some of the values enshrined in its original mission statement, it has also, in other ways and despite enormous political pressure from its detractors, remained true to them as well.
But a price was paid on the road to respectability. With growth and stability has come stodginess, predictability and excessive caution. NPR was founded as an antidote to the mainstream media. Its founders had a unique journalistic and cultural vision that contrasted sharply with the values of establishment publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post. As NPR began its transformation into a middle-of-the-road, "hard news" entity in the mid-1970s, some of the founders warned that the experiment could end badly, with NPR sounding like an aural equivalent of The Congressional Record. That didn't happen, but today's NPR does, at times, seem quite empty and soulless, very much like the eminent daily newspapers its executives venerate.
Some NPR veterans are acutely aware of what has been lost since NPR's birth in 1971. "Over the years, we've become much more sober," says Susan Stamberg, who was an early co-host of All Things Considered, and who remains a lively and mischievous presence at NPR today. "We've become the good, gray Times. They've put color on their front page"--Stamberg pauses for her trademark cackle--"but we're upholding the gray. We're not nearly as quirky as we used to be. And I miss it."

The article is worth reading and a good history of NPR.

Also worth reading is Rep. Dennis Kucinich's "An Open Letter to Howard Dean:"

Perhaps you now believe that an electoral victory for Democrats in 2006 and beyond requires sweeping this war under the rug. If so, you are only the latest in a long line of recent Democratic leaders who chose a strategy of letting "no light show" between Democrats and the President on the war. Emphasize the economy, instead, they advised, in 2002 and again in 2004.
Following this advice has kept us in the minority. During the 2002 election cycle, when Democrats felt they had historical precedent on their side (the President's party always loses seats in the midterm election), the Democratic leadership in Congress cut a deal with the President to bring the war resolution to a vote, and appeared with him in a Rose Garden ceremony. The "no light" strategy yielded a historic result: For the first time since Franklin Roosevelt, a President increased his majorities in both houses of Congress during a recession.

Members would be advised to avoid the cover story. There's no mention of Laura Flanders, Mike Papantonio and Bobby Kennedy, Marty Kaplin, Mike Malloy . . . Janeane Garofalo is "chanced" upon while doing a bit (and the writer uses a word that not only would we not put on this site but is also a word that Garofalo didn't use on the radio -- maybe he's got Bumillie fever?). That's it. She's reduced to a bit and I know the e-mails will come in on that. Randi Rhodes is noted largely for the Ralph Nadar phone call on her first show. What? She's only done one show?

They cover Democracy Radio by apparently not mentioning Stephanie Miller.

Maybe it's a behind the scenes look? (The story on Al Gore's new network was, a point that Candy Perfume Boy missed over at his site. They interviewed investors and people involved with the project. Or rather, Ari Berman interviewed them. I thought it was a strong article, but, hey, at least CJR Daily finally discussed a cover story by The Nation, right?)

I wasn't impressed with the article. Others may be. If it wanted to be behind the scenes, it should have been. Instead it (my opinion) goes for some blend it never achieves. (And no, Lizz Winstead and Chuck D aren't mentioned. Jerry Springer is mentioned but there's no story about the pulling of Unfiltered -- which is a story and if you're going to write about Air America Radio today, seems to me you need to include it. Martha noted in an e-mail this week that it was still a topic popping up on the AAR boards.)

I gave it a quick read. I'd planned to pull something on Janeane Garofalo because she is very popular with members. Maybe a comment on Laura Flanders (who has contributed articles to The Nation) or other favorites. But they aren't in the story or they're mentioned in passing.

Sorry to be negative on The Nation but members will want to skip the story. (And those who don't, I'm sure, will e-mail. If that happens, we'll post a reply this weekend.)

Instead check out Lizzy Ratner's article on Amy Goodman, "Amy Goodman's 'Empire:'"

Amy Goodman didn't know if anyone was listening.
It was the morning of September 11, 2001, and the host of the muckraking radio news program Democracy Now! was broadcasting from her studio in a converted firehouse just blocks from the World Trade Center. She was hunched over her microphone, intent on painting an audio portrait of the "horrific scene of explosions and fires," but the truth was she didn't know if anyone could hear her. The phone lines were dead or temporarily blocked, and she had already overshot her slated hourlong broadcast time. More serious, she had recently been banished from her professional home at Pacifica Radio after a hostile internal shake-up, and she was only being aired by twenty or so affiliate stations.
Still, as the neighboring businesses evacuated into the streets, Goodman decided to go on talking. She kept the lines open and the microphones hot, throwing her voice into the radio murk in case any stations chose to pick up the feed. "We are not going to draw any conclusions at this point, just reporting the information of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center buildings, the plane crashing into the Pentagon, a fire at the Pentagon right now," Goodman said in her grainy alto, at the beginning of what would become an eight-hour marathon broadcast that was eventually picked up by KPFA, the one Pacifica station still airing her broadcasts. And then, shortly after 10 am, she announced: "It looks like the south tower of the World Trade Center has collapsed..."

There are many good articles in the issue so please check out the web site to see the magazine's new look. The cover story is a clunker to me but maybe I'm focused too much on picturing the e-mails that might come in over this if a warning wasn't given? Regardless, you have been warned.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

 

Ruth: If you write to me care of common_ills@yahoo.com, C.I. does forward them to me.

There are so many wonderful e-mails. Most of you write along the lines of "I thought I was crazy. Anytime I complain about NPR, people look at me like I'm crazy." I'd argue those people aren't listening or they aren't listening closely. Possibly, they are getting all the news from NPR and are unaware of certain details that skew or get omitted.

A few e-mailed to ask if I hated NPR? No, I do not hate NPR. It is not what it used to be by a long shot. But there are still strong stories most days and there are some people who obviously care about what they do.

Do I hate Morning Edition? I thought hard on that one. I was a huge Morning Edition fan in the days of Bob Edwards. He was on top of each broadcast. These days, it's like we've got the kiddie patrol making jokes and asking their carefully rehearsed questions.

I noted The Diane Rehm Show this week and that's the example of a strong broadcaster. When people are speaking, she's not attempting to fire off her next question, she's actively listening and responding to what they are saying.

On Morning Edition, and this is most obvious when Cokie Roberts does her political "analysis," there is no listening. Cokie says whatever she wants to say and no one asks her to explain what she's talking about. She'll offer a bit of jargon and a good broadcaster would follow up by asking her to explain what that means? When she makes one of her "people are reporting . . ." statements, a good broadcaster would ask who is reporting?

Cokie Roberts is useless to me as a listener but she's made more useless by the fact that no one wants to get her to credit sources or to explain jargon.

But even with that, there is no excuse for her to get away with the claim that the Washington Post editorial board favors the Democrats. What world does Cokie live in?

Long before I ever started doing the Morning Edition Report, I heard Cokie say something that was so off base from what The Washington Post was reporting. I e-mailed C.I. and got sent back a thing from The Daily Howler by Bob Somerby where he noted that it appeared Cokie just read the headlines of The Washington Post and not the actual articles. That's a highly likely proposition.

But this week when she got off her charge that The Washington Post favored the Democrats, I really expected someone to call her on it.
For anyone who missed it, check Monday's post.

Here's the exchange from that post:

Renee: The Democrats have yet to come up with a solution to the long term problems that social security will face are they starting for-to feel any heat about-about that?
Cokie: Again, not so far. But they can't be happy that the usually friendly Washington Post editorial page is now saying that they will have to come up with some specifics given the fact that the *Bully Boy* has. And people do seem to be taking something of a serious look at the *Bully Boy*'s proposal.
[I've substituted any term such as "president" or his last name with "Bully Boy" and noted it with astericks.]

The usually friendly Washington Post editorial page is usually friendly, but to the Bully Boy. Cokie got that off unchallenged, pushed the unfounded myth of "the liberal media" on NPR, and no one appeared to notice.

That's what a great deal of the e-mails are about and usually end with, "Why didn't anyone notice?" I have to wonder if anyone pays that close attention to NPR, honestly.

Were Cokie fact checked, she'd fail more often than not.

I do support NPR (less so PBS) and that was another big question. But I find it very hard to support Morning Edition which grows more juvenile every day. What was an audio version of a daily paper has become a show filled with "happy talk" by the anchors. It's hard to take the show seriously when it doesn't appear to take itself too seriously.

Bob Edwards was not a grinch but he could set a relaxed mood and still bring you the news. These days, it seems more and more that two airheads have taken over two hours of NPR's time.

Now the NPR ombudsman would disagree. He recently wrote about how ratings were up for Morning Edition. Does it matter if the rise comes from dumbing down the show?

I still don't know if the story ("for balance") about a wildcat that was saved was a joke or for real? I'm not questioning that it happened but when NPR gets angry e-mail regarding a true story on wildcats and then decides to later "balance" it out with a happy story, you can call the show whatever you want, but don't call it Morning Edition.

I was honestly surprised that they even responded to the e-mails because I was one of the people e-mailing in October to complain that Robert Kagan was brought on to evaluate John Kerry. For those who are not aware of this, Robert Kagan's wife [Victoria Nuland] worked for Dick Cheney. So you had a man married to a woman working for one ticket critiquing the statements of the head of another ticket. How did that pass muster?

Where was the outcry? (I know The Common Ills dealt with this not long after it started up in November. But why did we have a month of silence before The Common Ills came along.) I e-mailed to the ombudsman who did what he usually does, ignored my e-mail. Then he wrote the column dealing with the complaints from listeners and wrote, basically, "Robert Kagan may be pro-war" or some such nonsense. But did Mr. [Jefferey] Dvorkin ever address the issue of conflict of interest due to Mr. Kagan's marriage? No, he didn't.

What is the purpose of the ombudsman if not to address something that serious? He didn't want to know about it. Robert Kagan was allowed to present himself on Morning Edition as an objective analyst because Morning Edition refused to inform their listeners who Mr. Kagan was married to. When the issue was raised with Mr. Dvorkin, he decided to ignore it.

I'm sure many listeners have no idea to this day how "questionable" (I'd call it wrong) the decision to bring Mr. Kagan on was.

Do I hate Morning Edition? I wish it were better. I wish it were worth listening to. Now that I keep my grandson each weekday, Morning Edition is often the only show I can pay full attention to on NPR. Sometimes, if I'm rocking him, I can hear a large segment of another show. But he's very active and we're all over the house. So I really count on Morning Edition to provide me with solid information and it is, frankly, no longer doing that.

The other big question this week was how did I miss the big scoop about the CIA plan to capture bin Laden, behead him, etc.? I missed it because I didn't think it was a story.

This wasn't a reporter breaking a story they had come across. This was a former agent revealing a plan. That has to be cleared with the CIA ahead of time.

Here is the summary from the first part of that two-part story:

Morning Edition, May 2, 2005 · Gary Schroen is one of the CIA's most respected and experienced spies. Two days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, his bosses handed him a new mission targeting Osama bin Laden: "Bring his head back in a box" is the phrase Schroen remembers. Five days later, the veteran operative and his six-man team were on a plane.
They were the first Americans to enter Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. Over the next few weeks, Schroen paid $5 million in bribes to Afghan commanders, paved the way for U.S. military forces to enter the country, and armed anti-al Qaeda fighters with silencer-equipped machine guns and grenades.
Schroen's work with the Northern Alliance and smaller groups led to some successes, but he says his team never got close to killing the al Qaeda leader -- or his top deputy, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was reportedly in the eastern section of Kabul.

That's a lot of information for the C.I.A. to allow Mr. Schroen to release. It struck me as "news management." I wasn't impressed with the story because I felt it was an attempt at manipulation. The administration has been very good about saying, "Look at this hand, not at that one!" To me, this was another example of a "release" that attempted to cover something else. I have no idea what.

Bully Boy is under a great deal of criticisim for not having found bin Laden all these years later. Perhaps this was an effort to get us to care that there was a "plan" or that people "tried?" I don't have the slightest clue.

But when I talked to my granddaughter Tracey about it and told her my concerns, she said, "Grandma, don't write about it then." If it was indeed an attempt to get this story to overwhelm something the administration found embarrassing, I didn't want to ignore my own suspicions and play into the administration's hands.

Agent Schroen had a great deal to say. My question was how he got clearence for his remarks?

Some e-mailed to ask if I could please do an NPR report or a Morning Edition report every day?

I would love to but time doesn't permit that. I'm not able to actively listen to all the NPR shows and if my grandson is sick or dropped off early, that cuts into the time I would have to write down a report.

I have no problem with someone else also doing a Morning Report report. They might pick up something I missed or they might offer a different perspective on the same story. But like everyone who wrote, I, too, feel that NPR has been overlooked. It needs to be examined and held accountable the same way that a newspaper like The New York Times is. NPR has a great deal of influence.

With friends my age who listen to NPR, I don't usually have to explain in great detail when NPR gets something wrong because we're old enough to remember when it was a first rate source of news. Back then, it earned it's reputation. You can still get quality reporting from Nina Totenberg. But more and more, the voices like Ms. Totenberg's are overwhelmed by people reporting silly stories. This may or may not attract more listeners but it weakens what NPR stood for.

Today [Thursday], we heard the tale of the runaway groom. That was apparently another "balance" story to even out the reports of the runaway bride. I listened to that story and wondered exactly who made the call that this was a story important enough to air on Morning Edition?

C.I. has written about how, especially on Sundays, "lifestyle stories" make the front page of The New York Times. The runaway groom was a "lifestyle story." It wasn't a news story.

I'm also bothered by the reading of listener's e-mails which focuses on grammar as opposed to serious issues with reporting. I certainly don't need mocking voices of the anchors rotating out line by line to tell me that "an" was used instead of "and" or something equally worthless. (This week it was that Bill Gates used "irregardless." Does anyone really care?)

People listen to Morning Edition while they're getting ready for their day, while they're eating breakfast or on their way to work, and I don't think they're hoping to hear a Bob Newhart comedy lp. (Tracey will reprimand me for that with, "Grandma! We call them CDS!") I believe they are hoping to get some solid news in that two hour period.

I also don't believe listeners want to hear Cokie play Carnac the Magnificent. Cokie makes far too many predicitions and offers far too little "analysis." Not to kick her when she's down, but if Cokie's E.S.P. was so good, wouldn't she have realized she was being dumped as the co-host of ABC This Week and done something to keep that job?

Rebecca e-mailed me that she thought Cokie was the Rona Barrett of NPR and I have to agree with that. It is like listening to a gossip maven as opposed to a reporter.

I'm an old woman and Mr. Dvorkin would probably dismiss me as such (though we may be around the same age). But I have children and grandchildren and I do worry about the world they're facing now. I support NPR and will do everything in my power to see that it remains free from attempts to turn it into an opinion-journal. But fighting that fight means also holding NPR accountable for what it is doing on air. (That's in response to a question about what I see my "mission" as.) I've also noted before how much I have received from the community in terms of insight and common sense so I hope I give back a little of that in each post.

With the C.I.A. story, I was specifically thinking back to reports that NPR did, strong reports, on the manipulation and back alley ways of the C.I.A. in the seventies. Maybe you have to be old enough to remember those to raise an eyebrow this week when the two-parter story about a plan, almost four-years-old, airs? Tracey's always after me to be funnier and more of a letz. She'll try to get me to work in some hip lingo or tell a joke she's heard on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. She'll say, "Don't come off like such a mensh." (I don't think she's learned the meanings of some of the Yiddish words she's picked up from me.)

But, to quote her quoting Kat, "It is what it is." I wonder if Kat realizes how popular that saying has become in my family? "The potato salad didn't turn out too good, did it?" "It is what it is."

Gina e-mailed (and I'm assuming it's okay to quote her here) that she really enjoys me adding my two-cents worth. I really enjoy adding it too. Before I started doing this, my children would have to hear from me about Morning Edition each Sunday at lunch. Now they're usually saying, "Mama, you got that right this week" or "Mama, you were so wrong." It's really nice to have this outlet (in answer to another question).

One of my favorite features at The Common Ills is when members sound off or ask questions. If I'd prepared ahead of time, I would have gotten permission from everyone who wrote so that I could name them here. But when I was reading over the e-mails, I realized this would be a nice thing to focus on and plunged right in. If you could note if you want to be named, I'll do that next time I do a response to the e-mails.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]


 

Elisabeth Bumiller rates a special entry for "Russia Objects to Bush Visit to Neighbors; Rice Replies." She's left the safety zone of her White House Letter but damned if she doesn't pack her fluffing kit. Proving once again that she doesn't merely serve on the Elite Fluff Patrol, but actually is the squad leader, Bumiller leaves behind her usual Sweet Valley High voice to
pursue a foul mouthed version of Duncan Watt's Wallace Boys.

Check out this crackling piece of machismo:

Americans who have seen the letter describe it as an audacious objection by Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov to the itinerary of the president of the United States. Ms. Rice promptly shot back, in effect, that Mr. Bush could visit whatever countries he wished.
"Rice doesn't scare worth a damn," said a senior Bush administration official who insisted on anonymity because he did not want to be identified as taunting Moscow.

"Audacious objection." Not just an objection, mind you, an "audacious one." That's what has elevated Bumiller to the top of the Elite Fluff Patrol. That and the fact that when unnamed sources are ready to dish, Bumiller is there with pad and pencil -- if not skepticism.

"Ms. Rice promplty shot back . . ." I just bet she did! Paint that picture, Bumillie. It's all so very Skulduggery in the South Atlantic.

". . . Mr. Bush could visit whatever countries he wished." Two-fisted he-man Condi don't back down!

"Rice doesn't scare worth a damn . . ." Didn't Bumiller just establish this? Repetitious, but on message! Flying high and blind, without a net, heading where few would ever dare to go, Bumiller's on a one-woman reconnaissance mission to bring back the manhood of the Bully Boy, and Condi, and by "damn" she will do so.

Why this ham-fisted Wallace Boys tale? Maybe Bumillie felt Laura's "funnies" had emasculated her poster boy and his administration?

Maybe she was afraid Condi would pimp slap her?

Who knows why Bumillie ever does what she does? But did the Times really think this action/adventure yarn passed for reporting? Did no one wonder if Bumillie might need to tone it down? (Or is it that when you're the Elite Fluff Patrol squad leader, you don't take orders, you "damn" well give them!)

Purple prose straining for Mike Hammer but, with Bummiler's arrested development, only achieving the level of "young adult reader," this is truly bad "reporting."

If this is what access brings, someone cut her off, she's had more than enough. Can we get a designated driver?

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.  Also note, there are additional items there and they'll be posted here this evening.]