Bill Moyers

Only two weeks ago did we learn that Mr. Tomlinson had spent $10,000 last year to hire a contractor who would watch my show and report on political bias. That’s right. Kenneth Y. Tomlinson spent $10,000 of your money to hire a guy to watch NOW to find out who my guests were and what my stories were. Ten thousand dollars.

Gee, Ken, for $2.50 a week, you could pick up a copy of TV Guide on the newsstand. A subscription is even cheaper, and I would have sent you a coupon that can save you up to 62 percent.

In the speech, which you can read here and watch here, Moyers threatened to come out of retirement. Do it Bill — and bring Walter with you.

Newspeak

Without a trace of irony, the powers that be have appropriated the Newspeak vernacular of George Orwell’s 1984. They give us a program vowing no child will be left behind, while cutting funds for educating disadvantaged children; they give us legislation cheerily calling for clear skies and healthy forests that give us neither, while turning over our public lands to the energy industry.

Bill Moyers

Another best line of the day from Bill Moyers

“A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.”

Bill Moyers

Best line of the day, so far

“I came to see that news is what people want to keep hidden, and everything else is publicity.”

Bill Moyers in speech responding to charges by Kenneth Tomlinson of liberal bias at PBS.

GOPBS

Jesus’ General has the new PBS logo and some upcoming programming highlights.

A Very Special Bert and Ernie Special

Sesame Street becomes Rapture Road after Pastor Bob and Freedomland Development Corp. run all of the brown people out of the neighborhood. Homeless, penniless, and desperate, Bert and Ernie accept the Lord Jesus into their lives and begin reparative therapy.

“A pack of lies”

From Crooks and Liars the video of British House of Commons member George Galloway defending himself before a U.S. Senate committee Tuesday. The Senator he is addressing is Norm Coleman (R-MN).

I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.”

Strong stuff. Watch.

I was told there would be no math

It’s been pointed out in a comment that I’m 14 names short on my list of the 100 Greatest Americans; that I started at 57 instead of 44. I’d feel foolish if doing this in the first place hadn’t already made me feel that way.

But here they are:

44. Charles Lindbergh — see comment re: Lindbergh
45. Frank Capra
46. John Ford
47. Orson Welles
48. Jedediah Smith
49. John Wesley Powell
50. Sequoyah
51. Sitting Bull
52. Chief Joseph
53. Sam Adams
54. “Black Jack” Pershing
55. Hyman Rickover
56. Joseph Henry — foremost American scientist of the 19th century

I can’t restore “Hef” to the list as one commenter has argued. While I agree with Garth that Hefner fostered a healthy liberalization of standards, Hefner also fostered an unhealthy attitude toward women as toys. And, most assuredly, there are other more important publishers who also supported a free press, for one, Katharine Graham during Watergate.

Yosemite blog

Yosemite Blog

This was discovered as a result of a comment just made at NewMexiKen. Much about this week’s flood including great photos!

Thanks Loyd. Glad you found NewMexiKen so that we could find Yosemite Blog.

Nikon D70 Owners

Nikon has made major upgrades to the firmware for the D70. These include the auto-focus and design of the menus.

Reading Is Fun

It’s Reading Is Fun Week, May 15-21. NewMexiKen hopes you are making “each day a little wacky and a lot of fun!”

Today is Wacky Wednesday and tomorrow is Thrilling Thursday.

The 100, one last time

NewMexiKen opened up 57 slots on the 100 Greatest Americans list yesterday. Their replacements:

First, I suggested three as I deleted the others:

58. Bing Crosby
59. Brigham Young
60. Omar Bradley

Then, I liked Functional Ambivalent’s nominees, so they’re in as a block, counting Lewis and Clark as one:

61. Lewis and Clark
62. Ernest Hemingway
63. Frank Lloyd Wright
64. Margaret Sanger
65. David Sarnoff
66. Douglas MacArthur
67. W.C. Handy
68. Ray Kroc
69. Rachel Carson

A few incredibly important political-military-judicial figures need to be added:

70. James Madison
71. John Adams
72. Ulysses Grant
73. George Marshall
74. John Marshall
75. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
76. Earl Warren
77. Thurgood Marshall
78. Jane Addams

Inventors were among America’s greatest contribution to the world:

79. Eli Whitney — the cotton gin yes, but much more importantly, interchangable parts
80. Samuel Colt — automatic firearms
81. Cyrus McCormick — agricultural implements
82. Samuel F. B. Morse — communication
83. Philo Farnsworth — television
84. James Watson — DNA

And how about the robber barons:

85. John Jacob Astor — established America’s first settlement on the Pacific Coast
86. John D. Rockefeller — oil
87. J.P. Morgan — capital
88. William C. Durant — General Motors

And the writers:

89. John Muir — for his conservation ideology
90. Louisa Mae Alcott — every young woman read her novels; immeasurable influence
91. Edgar Alan Poe — Evermore
92. Toni Morrison — Nobel Prize; seems more relevant than Pearl Buck, another American woman Nobel Prize winner
93. Sinclair Lewis — Nobel Prize; The Jungle
94. William Faulkner — Nobel Prize

American music:

95. Stephen Foster — the 19th century
96. Irving Berlin — the 20th century
97. Louis Armstrong — the greatest American musician; changed music forever
98. Duke Ellington; — America’s greatest composer
99. Hank Williams — did for Country what Elvis did for pop and Ray Charles did for Rhythm & Blues — revolutionized it

Which gets us to 99 and too many names left:

Frank Capra, John Ford, Orson Welles
Jedediah Smith, John Wesley Powell
Sequoyah, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph
Sam Adams, “Black Jack” Pershing, Hyman Rickover

Porciuncula

Porciuncula (see below) is from a chapel near Assisi in Italy that Saint Francis restored and made the center for the Franciscan Order.

The large church built at Pecos Pueblo beginning in 1622 was named Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de Porciuncula de los Pecos. It was the largest European structure north of Mexico until destroyed in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The ruins there now are from the smaller 18th century church.

“Our Lady” was apparently “Queen of the Angels” in Los Angeles, but only “of the Angels” 150 years earlier in Pecos.

“[I]t seemed like forever.”

A well-done report on the submarine San Francisco’s collision with an uncharted undersea mountain in The New York Times: Adrift 500 Feet Under the Sea, a Minute Was an Eternity.

The submarine crashed at top speed - 33 knots, or roughly 38 miles an hour - about 360 miles southeast of Guam. The impact punched huge holes in the forward ballast tanks, so the air being blown into them was no match for the ocean pouring in. The throttles shut, and the vessel briefly lost propulsion. As the emergency blow caught hold, mainly in the rear tanks, the sub was just drifting in the deep, its bow pointing down.

It’s not that he has that much to say …

but Norman Mailer blogging is an event.

I think he’s right, by the way. The Newsweek business has the look of a dirty trick. “Let’s see, we take out CBS, then Newsweek …”

Best line of the day, so far

“I went to a Saab owners convention in the mid-1990s — where there were more gray ponytails than in a herd of Appaloosas …”

Dan Neil

Star Wars

At the theater NewMexiKen usually attends, Star Wars is already sold out tonight (Thursday morning) at 12:01am, 12:10am, 12:20am, 12:30am, 12:40am and 12:50am.

Mossberg looks at the free email services

From The Mossberg Report:

As for how they rank, Yahoo Mail takes the lead. It’s fast, and its gigabyte of free storage is more than enough to free most users from deleting old mail. I also like Yahoo’s autocompletion of addresses, as well as its folder and filter systems. Plus, its overall user interface is clean and clear.

Google’s Gmail is also pretty good, though its quirky design could put off some users — it’s clearly still a work in progress. Gmail has the most free storage of the Web-based providers, which is a big plus, and searching all that mail is fast and accurate. But a simple operation such as deleting an e-mail takes more steps than in Yahoo. …

Hotmail comes in last. It offers only a fraction of the free storage of Yahoo and Gmail, which, for my money, flatly disqualifies it as a serious contender.

The City of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels

El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reyna de los Angeles de Porciuncula has given Antonio Villaraigosa a landslide victory as its new mayor (58%). He’s the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since Cristobal Aguilar left office in a town of 6,000 people in 1872.

“It doesn’t matter whether you grew up on the Eastside or the Westside, whether you’re from South Los Angeles or Sylmar,” [Villaraigosa] said. “It doesn’t matter whether you go to work in a fancy car or on a bus, or whether you worship in a cathedral or a synagogue or a mosque. We are all Angelenos, and we all have a difference to make.”

Read all about it in the Los Angeles Times.

NewMexiKen really doesn’t have much to say about this. I just wanted to write out the original Spanish name for the city we so carelessly call L.A.

Thanks to Colorado Luis for the reminder.