It Looks Like This (sorry, no ice cream) 

The Shame of ABC

I guess ABC just wanted to demonstrate that they can be as vapid as CBS.

Comes word now that ABC is dropping coverage of the Kucinich, Sharpton, and Moseley-Braun campaigns, something they announced shortly after Kucinich verbally bitch-slapped Ted Koppel at the debate the other night. Although the timing looks suspicious, there is good cause to believe that this move was imminent anyway. If nothing else, there was Koppel's reference to their campaigns as "vanity" campaigns (as an aside, could somebody please explain that phrase to me? It seems to me that anybody running for President has a fair amount of vanity and presumption and, except for the press-annointed front-runners, all candidates are presumably long-shots. There is not a significant statistical difference between these three candidates and the other who consistently poll in single digits. So what is it?). Aside from that, Howard Kurtz's December 9 Washington Post article shows that the animous towards these candidates was already there. As Koppel put it, "How did Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun get into this thing?" Koppel asked. "Nobody seems to know. Some candidates who are perceived as serious are gasping for air, and what little oxygen there is on the stage will be taken up by one-third of the people who do not have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the nomination." Nice, eh? That's the cream of your national press corps, right there. Sorry to inconvenience you fellows, what with you having to deal with this riff raff cluttering up your pretty show.

Most galling, though, is that in terms of being newsworthy, or even of serving the public, Kucinich at the moment stands out above the other candidates; he is the only one who actually seems to have a job as a public servant and is doing it.

I would say this a sad day for both American media and politics when coverage of the canditates is dictated not by issues but by what's convenient for the media, but it has always been this way. We have a corrupt and lazy media and this is just the latest example. Such a shame that we have the First amendment with no apparent need for it.

Who Should Rebuild Iraq

With all the fuss over whether those who failed to support our imperialistic adventure in Iraq should have access to the spoils, or whether they should be reserved for those countries who willingly coalesced with us, we seem to be overlooking the obvious.

What say we let the Iraqis rebuild the country. They seemed to have done an adequate job, under harsh conditions (international sanctions) after the first gulf war; perhaps we ought to let them put that experience to work now. And wouldn't giving them jobs (to say nothing of profits) be a slightly more convincing way to show them we are on their side than herding them into safe zones or blasting their homes?

Just a thought.

Ted Koppel, Your Bias is Showing

Overheard from Ted Koppel, as he prepared for the debate the other night:

"How did Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun get into this thing?" Koppel asked. "Nobody seems to know. Some candidates who are perceived as serious are gasping for air, and what little oxygen there is on the stage will be taken up by one-third of the people who do not have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the nomination."

Nice to see our national press providing such unbiased coverage. From what angle though, I'm wondering, could that be perceived as a liberal bias?

Our Children's Debt

In a column in Sunday's Sacramento Bee, Daniel Weintraub discussed the governator's proposed bond, his solution to California's debt problem. He quotes Phil Angelides, California's Treasurer,as he describes this bond, "This bond, when it's all paid off by our children in 30 years, will leave us with nothing but a bill paid. Unlike a school that's being constructed, unlike a transportation project in which our children and grandchildren share in the benefit, our children and grandchildren get nothing out of this bond other than a tab which is stuck to them."

This is an important point Angelides is making. In the twenty five years I've been voting in California, it has been a rare election that hasn't brought us at least one bond measure to pay for funding for schools, or highway and bridge construction or maintenance, or prisons. Most of these measures, it seems, have passed. And, as Angelides points out, California voters, when they passed these measures, were buying something; there was something tangible they expected to get for their money, something tangible to pass on to the next generation of Californians.

The governor's proposal is different and I think it is important that Californians understand this difference. If the governor's proposal passes, all that we will be buying is the ability to fill a hole in this year's and next year's budgets. All that we will be passing on to the next generation of Californians is a huge debt to pay off. No new schools, no new or improved highways, no new prisons (okay, that part isn't so bad). In fact, by passing our current debt on to future generations, we will be hampering their ability to fund tangible improvements in the infrastructure.

It may be that this is the best solution to our current crises. I don't know. Before we settle on this, though, it is important that this state takes a long look at our alternatives. It is clear now that Schwarzenegger had no plan as he ran for governor and this one seems rather hastily cobbled together. It is time to take a longer look at this one, and to search for and debate alternatives.

Now this is Powerful

This could and should be run by any Democrat running for President.

When I posted this entry, the link led to a different ad. I believe at the time the ad featured changing images of our soldiers who have died in Iraq, while a voiceover discussed the lies that put them there. Since then (December) different ads have been moved in and out of this link, so whether the one currently there is "powerful" I couldn't say. Nonetheless, go ahead and click and take your chances.

Kucinich For President

There are some prominent political bloggers out there who, for whatever reason, won't indicate who they support for President. I'm not sure why this is, and it probably varies from blogger to blogger. In part it may spring from a desire to not alienate some of their readers. If that's it, I think that is plain silly. Every time a blogger puts anything of substance up, the risk of alienating readers arises. I put some things up just because I want people to disagree with me so that we can have a robust debate (I must admit to having been singularly unsuccesful in this. Either people who disagree with me just haven't found this blog, or those who have found it and disagree with me just aren't bothered enough to comment about it). (Oh yes, one more thing: please don't take this paragraph as an indication that I in any way believe I am a prominent blogger; I harbor no such illusions).

Anyway, with all the preliminaries out of the way, I support Dennis Kucinich for President. I don't agree with everything he has in his platform, in fact I vehemently disagree with some of it. More so than with the other candidates, though, I believe I share his opinion of where this country is and where it is headed and where it ought to be headed.

Tucson Citizen

Since printing a letter from one of its readers advocating the killing of non-combatant Iraqis by US forces to discourage violence against our forces, the Tucson Citizen has received much criticism, both from its usual readers and in countless blogs, for printing the letter. In an editorial today, the paper agreed that it erred by printing the letter.

I think this is unfortunate. One of the advantages of a free press is that it allows the people to engage in debates about controversial issues. Although the suggestion in the original letter was reprehensible, and may have engendered fear among Muslims living in this country, the responses to the letter writer unanimously condemned him and revealed that most Americans still maintain a commitment to decency, even in harsh conditions in times of war.

It is useful to be reminded that people with views like the original letter writer, as well as people with other extreme views, live among us. We need reminders that these people are here in our communities, and that only by exposing and challenging their views can we combat them.

I would hope that most people recognize that most letters to editors that are printed do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors themselves and that printing these letters, though they may offend some readers, does not harm the community.

Ah yes, that dreaded "N" word

Here I am again, at a complete loss to understand just what the hell is going on.

According to the Cavalier Daily, it seems that the discussion at a staff meeting at the University of Virginia turned to football, then to football team mascots and team names. One employee apparently said something along the lines of, "I can't believe in this day and age that there's a sports team in our nation's capital named the Redskins. That is as derogatory to Indians as having a team called Niggers would be to blacks."

This is where I get lost. This is being referred to as a "racial incident." As in, something bad happened here. And I can't figure it out. What was the bad thing that happened? Was it simply the use of the word "nigger?" Are we completely forbidden to use that word anymore, in any context? The guy who used the word acknowledged that it is a derogatory term; that was his whole point. Is the problem that he equated it with the term "redskin?" Is that it? Whether that is it or not, the implications of the fact that this has raised such a brouhaha are that "nigger" is more offensive to blacks than "redskin" is to Native Americans. Personally, I have a hard time imagining that this is the case.

Anyway, I am seriously lost here and I welcome a serious explanation from anybody who thinks he or she can explain to me what was so bad about what the guy said. And frankly, although I usually hesitate to speak for anybody else, I imagine there are millions of others who are wondering just what the hell this is all about.

Hang 'em...Hang 'em high

Lets start out with something easy but juicy.

In a letter to the Tucson Citizen (although this link is still live, the letter has apparently been removed from the newspaper's web page)a "Dr. Emory Metz Wright, Jr." offers this lovely piece of work:

"We can stop the murders of American soldiers in Iraq by those who seek revenge or to regain their power. Whenever there is an assassination or another atrocity we should proceed to the closest mosque and execute five of the first Muslims we encounter.

After all this is a "Holy War" and although such a procedure is not fair or just, it might end the horror.

Machiavelli was correct. In war it is more effective to be feared than loved and the end result would be a more equitable solution for both giving us a chance to build a better Iraq for the Iraqis."

Yeah. Well, that approach ought to clear up any lingering doubts anybody might harbor about whether we are in Iraq as liberators or occupiers.

ID'd any spies lately?

So much disinformation and so many lies to keep up with, I'm afraid I may have missed something important. Has anybody heard any news of the Justice Department's investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame? They've been on the case, what, two and a half, three months now? Surely they have uncovered something by now. Perhaps Novak was just lying. Maybe he got his information somewhere else, but because of his notorious antipathy toward the Bush White House he fingered anonymous senior officials there. If that's not it, how hard could it be? It has been noted by many that there are relatively few "senior officials," so, since they are such a trustworthy lot, a few direct questions to each of them should resolve this in no time.

Okay, we no that none of this isn't going to happen. We know that there really is no serious investigation into this matter and that even if there were the White House would stonewall and outright lie about it. My question is, why isn't this a story? Why isn't the lack of an investigation, the lack of any development here a story for the press to cover? This is an administration and a political party (the two are no longer distinguishable) that trumpets itself as being the stronger on national security measures and this whole story is just one of many (shall we speak of security at chemical and nuclear plants?)that exposes that as a huge lie. Why, after a steady diet of lies from this administration since Bush's campaign for office was launched more than 4 years ago, does the press still eat it all up (witness the Thanksgiving incident in which AF1 was allegedly spotted in air on its way to Iraq by a British Airways pilot, something British Airways denies occurred), printing as fact whatever the White House says?