There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.
George W. Bush, April 30, 2004 (from White House Press Release)
Link via Josh Marshall
STATEMENT OF THE SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP
The ABC Television network announced on Tuesday that the Friday, April 30th edition of “Nightline” will consist entirely of Ted Koppel reading aloud the names of U.S. servicemen and women killed in action in Iraq. Despite the denials by a spokeswoman for the show the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.
While the Sinclair Broadcast Group honors the memory of the brave members of the military who have sacrificed their lives in the service of our country, we do not believe such political statements should be disguised as news content. As a result, we have decided to preempt the broadcast of “Nightline” this Friday on each of our stations which air ABC programming.
We understand that our decision in this matter may be questioned by some. Before you judge our decision, however, we would ask that you first question Mr. Koppel as to why he chose to read the names of the 523 troops killed in combat in Iraq, rather than the names of the thousands of private citizens killed in terrorists attacks since and including the events of September 11, 2001. In his answer, you will find the real motivation behind his action scheduled for this Friday.
ABC NEWS STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO SINCLAIR
We respectfully disagree with Sinclair’s decision to pre-empt “Nightline’s” tribute to America’s fallen soldiers which will air this Friday, April 30. The Nightline broadcast is an expression of respect which simply seeks to honor those who have laid down their lives for this country. ABC News is dedicated to thoughtful and balanced coverage and reports on the events shaping our world with neither fear nor favor — as our audience expects, deserves, and rightly demands. Contrary to the statement issued by Sinclair, which takes issue with our level of coverage of the effects of terrorism on our citizens, ABC News and all of our broadcasts, including “Nightline,” have reported hundreds of stories on 9-11. Indeed, on the first anniversary of 9-11, ABC News broadcast the names of the victims of that horrific attack.
In sum, we are particularly proud of the journalism and award winning coverage ABC News has produced since September 11, 2001. ABC News will continue to report on all facets of the war in Iraq and the War on Terrorism in a manner consistent with the standards which ABC News has set for decades.
Source: Poynter Online
Link via Eschaton.
“Remember Abraham Lincoln? This guy has the same job.”
From www.mnftiu.cc | get your war on. Take a look around. I laughed till I cried.
Thanks to Three Bed Two Bath for the link.
Kevin Drum, the Political Animal, ranks the major sources of news, starting with the worst:
1. Supermarket tabloids
2. Talk radio
3. Local TV news
4. Small local newspapers
5. Chain newspapers
6. Network newscasts
7. Major national dailies, including the New York Times
8. The very best of the glossy magazines
As [Governor Bill] Owens said, Colorado ranks first among the states in the percentage of population holding college degrees. What that statistic does not reveal, however, is that by and large those are people who moved here with a degree. Colorado ranks dead last in the number of the state’s own children going to college.
From an editorial in The Durango Herald
That’s the big story — Michael [Jackson] and Mark Geragos have split up. Apparently Michael’s upset with Geragos because he wouldn’t play ball. He also wouldn’t play tag, hide-n-seek, or kick the can.
Actually the other rumor is that Mark Geragos quit. See that’s when you know you’re in trouble, when your lawyer looks at both his big cases and decides Scott Peterson may be the more innocent one.
— Jay Leno
This one, from Sgt Hook, on the ground in Afghanistan.
It’s great having Mark Morford back and mad as hell — Where’s My (Bleeping) Sex?
Because what the world really needs now is more uptight little companies from Utah that will help us all block out the random messy naked blood n’ guts of the world.
Companies that will, without anyone asking them to, protect us from media evildoers and exposed flesh and scary exploding things and that part in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” wherein the universe is blessed, for the briefest of moments, with the joy of Kate Winslet’s radiant nipples.
This is what is happening. This is the happy godlike agenda of Utah’s ClearPlay, a twee and shrill little corporation that has taken it upon itself to sit around the cube farm all day and watch countless Hollywood flicks and zap out any and all icky violent suggestive material in, say, “Lost In Translation.” For your protection. How kind.
Continue reading Who wants a DVD player that automatically deletes all the juicy bits of movies?
A couple of items noticed at the bottom of Harper’s Index for March 2004
Maximum prison sentence in months for causing the death of a U.S. worker by willfully violating federal safety regulations : 6 [AFL-CIO (Washington) ]
Maximum prison sentence in months for harassing a wild burro on federal lands : 12 [Bureau of Land Management, National Wild Horse and Burro Program (Washington) ]
From The Week Newsletter
Officials in Manalapan, Fla., population 321, want to photograph every person who enters the town. To prevent crime, town commissioners are preparing to vote on a plan to install surveillance cameras on every road leading into town and photograph drivers’ faces and license plates. Computers would automatically check the plate numbers against police databases. The plan is probably legal, said the local ACLU, but some residents are concerned. “I’d have to make sure I’m dressed up to go out to the mailbox,” said Marion Pulis.
The flag-drapped coffin story is in both The New York Times
The Pentagon’s ban on making images of dead soldiers’ homecomings at military bases public was briefly relaxed yesterday, as hundreds of photographs of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base were released on the Internet by a Web site dedicated to combating government secrecy.
The Web site, the Memory Hole (www.thememoryhole.org), had filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year, seeking any pictures of coffins arriving from Iraq at the Dover base in Delaware, the destination for most of the bodies. The Pentagon yesterday labeled the Air Force Air Mobility Command’s decision to grant the request a mistake, but news organizations quickly used a selection of the 361 images taken by Defense Department photographers.
The release of the photographs came one day after a contractor working for the Pentagon fired a woman who had taken photographs of coffins being loaded onto a transport plane in Kuwait. Her husband, a co-worker, was also fired after the pictures appeared in The Seattle Times on Sunday. The contractor, Maytag Aircraft, said the woman, Tami Silicio of Seattle, and her husband, David Landry, had “violated Department of Defense and company policies.”
and the Los Angeles Times
A website dedicated to publishing censored pictures and documents released dozens of photographs of coffins containing American war dead, which caused the Pentagon on Thursday to renew its ban on releasing such images to the media.
Pictures of flag-draped coffins filling aircraft cargo bays and being unloaded by white-gloved soldiers were obtained by Russ Kick, a 1st Amendment activist in Tucson who won their release by filing a Freedom of Information Act request.
Doonesbury for Friday.
The contract employee who took this photo
was fired Wednesday for violating U.S. government and company regulations. Fair enough, rules are rules.
But NewMexiKen’s question is — why was she the only source of coverage for this side of the war?
Update: The Memory Hole has 361 USAF photos of coffins from Iraq arriving at Dover Air Force Base. The photographs were acquired through the Freedom of Information Act.
The always thoughtful Billmon points out that by simply looking at a map of the Middle East:
you’d be hard pressed not to conclude that defending [Iraq] against external threats would be extremely difficult, and probably impossible, and that a breakdown of political and military control within its borders would create enormous security risks both for its occupiers and for its neighbors. …
This chain of thought left me with a joke, dating from World War II, which I picked up somewhere. It seems a German general and his mistress are indulging in a little pillow talk one night, when he lets slip the fact that the Fuehrer has decided to invade the Soviet Union — Operation Barbarossa.
The mistress, who’s no smarter than she needs to be, is a little vague on the details of European geography. So the general takes her into his study and shows her his wall map. He points out the enormous red expanse of the USSR, and the smallish brown patch that is Germany.
The mistress examines the map with dismay, then worriedly asks her paramour: “But liebling, has the Fuehrer seen this map?”
From the Arizona Daily Sun:
The [Arizona] House of Representatives voted Wednesday to repeal laws which prohibit people who are armed from going into bars, restaurants and other places where alcoholic beverages are sold.
Wednesday’s 32-17 preliminary vote came after Rep. Randy Graf, R-Green Valley, agreed to a provision which says that those who have weapons cannot drink. He said that should satisfy foes who insist that guns and alcohol do not mix.
Did NewMexiKen misunderstand something or wasn’t there a long struggle in the west in the late 19th century to keep guns out of businesses? Could it be that they learned then that there were problems with guns and groups of people in public places?
From the Albuquerque Tribune:
A federal judge ruled [Wednesday] that the government was negligent on two of three counts in a wrongful-death case involving a drunken U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs worker who killed four people in a head-on car wreck.
But U.S. District Judge William “Chip” Johnson ruled in favor of the government on one count and said he needed up to 30 days to rule on what monetary damages, if any, to assess.
In his ruling in the non-jury trial in Albuquerque, Johnson said the BIA was negligent for entrusting a vehicle to Lloyd Larson, and for keeping him on the job when he should have been fired.
But the judge also ruled that Larson was not acting within the scope of his employment when he crashed his government-owned pickup truck head-on into a car on Interstate 40 on Jan. 25, 2002. Larson, who inspected construction projects on Indian reservations, had a blood-alcohol level of more than 2 1/2 times the state’s legal limit several hours after the crash.
This time it’s Samuel P. Huntington, Harvard professor and author. Follow the link and enjoy the irony about the The Unassimilated Hispanic Menace.
Link from Colorado Luis, who got it from Latino Pundit who got it from …
From the St. Petersburg Times:
Could invading Iraq really have anything in common with sending a wine glass crashing to the floor while browsing at Pottery Barn?
Absolutely not, say the folks at Pottery Barn, who are miffed by a metaphor attributed to Secretary of State Colin Powell in a new book by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. The book debuts in bookstores today.
Supposedly Powell warned Bush that if he sent U.S. troops to Iraq, “you’re going to be owning this place.” That was based on what Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage called “the Pottery Barn rule” of “you break it, you own it.”
The real Pottery Barn has no such rule. And it’s a bit weary of Powell’s remarks being quoted in newspaper and television reports the last few days.
“This is very, very far from a policy of ours,” said Leigh Oshirak, public relations director for the brand, owned by Williams-Sonoma Inc. of San Francisco. “In the rare instance that something is broken in the store, it’s written off as a loss.”
Link via Wonkette.
NewMexiKen doesn’t know if militarily Iraq is like Vietnam, as some are saying, but the “you’re not a patriot if you don’t support the war” contagion sure evokes a strong sense of déjà vu.
From The Albuquerque Journal:
The Sandoval County Republican Party doesn’t want County Clerk Victoria Dunlap as a member.
“Other than assassination, all we can do is censure her,” committee chairman Richard Gibbs said before the vote. The resolution of censure says the clerk “has brought disgrace to the party as a whole.”
Victoria Dunlap is the county clerk who continues to fight for the legalization of same-gender marriage.
[Note: The Albuquerque Journal does not make its stories available on-line unless you subscribe to the rag paper.]
Troubled by the realities of war? So is Doonesbury.
When Henry Kissinger left Harvard and went to Washington to serve in the Nixon administration, he was asked by one his new colleagues about the poltical infighting in academia. “In Washington we’re famous for political intrigue – it’s our job,” someone asked, “but we’re pikers compared to the backstabbing and dirty politics at universities. Why do you people fight like that?”
Kissinger is said to have responded in his low gravelly voice, “It’s because the stakes are so low”.
Click on photo to enlarge.
Thanks to many for the link and to the The Seattle Times for the photo and article.
The most influential people in the world according to Time.
Leaders and revolutionaries
Artists and entertainers
Builders and titans
Heroes and icons
Scientists and thinkers
From The New York Times, Security Companies: Shadow Soldiers in Iraq.
Far more than in any other conflict in United States history, the Pentagon is relying on private security companies to perform crucial jobs once entrusted to the military. In addition to guarding innumerable reconstruction projects, private companies are being asked to provide security for the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer III, and other senior officials; to escort supply convoys through hostile territory; and to defend key locations, including 15 regional authority headquarters and even the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad, the center of American power in Iraq.
With every week of insurgency in a war zone with no front, these companies are becoming more deeply enmeshed in combat, in some cases all but obliterating distinctions between professional troops and private commandos. Company executives see a clear boundary between their defensive roles as protectors and the offensive operations of the military. But more and more, they give the appearance of private, for-profit militias — by several estimates, a force of roughly 20,000 on top of an American military presence of 130,000.
This reliance on contract military strikes NewMexiKen as an uneasy portent. Are they available to the highest bidder?