Category: Media

This is Why I Supported Howard Dean.

No Comments

From the Democratic Party, Dean’s radio address.

I know he won’t run for president this year, but I would like him to.

Dean: Democratic Candidates for President will End the War in Iraq, Republicans will Stay the Course

Governor Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, delivered the Democratic radio address this week. Chairman Dean outlined the stark differences between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates on the Iraq War. He noted that all the Democratic contenders are dedicated to responsibly ending the war while the Republican field continues to embrace President Bush’s ineffective escalation of the war.

Dean also re-framed the debate about the war in Iraq and the War on Terror by drawing a contrast between the ineffective policies pursued by Republican leaders that have bogged us down in Iraq and Democrats who offer the American people an effective offensive strategy that puts America on the offensive against al Qaeda, by responsibly re-deploying our troops from the civil war in Iraq and into the fight with global terrorists.

To listen to his remarks, click
here.

Text of Radio Address:

Good Morning. I’m Governor Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Last week, President Bush compared the Iraq War to our ongoing commitment in South Korea, suggesting a plan for a 50-year presence in Iraq. By saying this, President Bush and the Republicans showed once again that they simply do not get it.

It’s time to end the war, not escalate it. A 50-year plan for Iraq is a continuation of an ineffective strategy and it is not acceptable.
Our brave men and women in uniform deserve better. They have served with honor and distinction, but its time for the mission to change. It’s time for the mission in Iraq to focus on a political solution, not a military one. It’s time for a responsible end to this war.

This week the American people had the chance to see for themselves the crystal clear difference between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates on the number one issue our nation and our next President will face.

Iraq.

Right down the line, we saw Republican contender after Republican contender embrace President Bush’s escalation of the war and now defend the 50-year plan for Iraq. The Republican field of presidential candidates only offer more of the same ongoing support for the President’s failed, ineffective strategies.

The Democratic candidates for president all stood united and firmly committed to responsibly ending the war in Iraq. This week, they each spoke passionately against any misguided stay-the-course plan that keeps our men and women in uniform policing a civil war.

The Democratic candidates have made it clear that they will not ignore the will of the American people and our military experts.

Democrats in Congress have stood up to this President and fought hard to keep him accountable. They passed a bill that established benchmarks with consequences and set deadlines to bring our troops home.

But the President vetoed it.

The American people hired Democrats last November to ensure that we end this war. So let me be clear, we know that if we don’t keep our promise, we may find ourselves the minority again.

But we have to face the reality that Republicans in Congress are standing with President Bush as he stubbornly wields his veto pen in the face of overwhelming opposition to this war from the American people.

Democrats in Congress will continue to work hard to hold the President accountable and to pressure him to responsibly end this war. We want to ensure that we refocus our military efforts on fighting terrorist networks which are resurging in Afghanistan and that our brave troops have the resources they need both on the battlefield and when they come home.

But there is one way to truly ensure we end this war.

Elect a Democratic president in 2008.

There is one way to ensure that we have a commander in chief who understands that America needs a defense policy that is tough and smart, and ensures an effective strategy to keep America safe at home and around the world.

Elect a Democratic president in 2008.

Republican leaders have pursued ineffective policies that have bogged us down in Iraq for years and led to the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Democrats offer the American people an effective offensive strategy that takes the fight to our real enemies abroad.

Democrats understand that the Iraq war has kept us from devoting the resources we need to hunt down and capture the terrorists who are plotting to attack America. We no longer can afford to be pinned down in a war that has created more terrorists and made America less safe, as recent intelligence reports have shown. That is why we favor shifting more forces back to Afghanistan to win the fight there against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

We also want to make sure our military has the resources they need. And equally importantly, we want to restore our alliances around the world and regain America’s moral leadership.

Our men and women in uniform on the frontlines in Iraq have done their job with extraordinary courage and determination. They deserve an effective offensive strategy, one worthy of their dedication and skill, and one that can be executed successfully.

The best way to do that is to get them out of the middle of a civil war in Iraq.

And the best way to do that is to elect a Democratic president in 2008.

I’m Governor Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Thanks for listening.

Hollywood and Net Neutrality

No Comments

The content providers are so worried about “piracy” that they will impale themselves on the stakes of AT&T and Comcast, who will extract usurious fees.

Make no doubt. These folks will lose far more than someone download a star wars movie if the telcos and cable companies are allowed to go through with this.

Will H’wood take a stand on Net neutrality?

Congloms may be forced to choose as telcos fish for fees
By WILLIAM TRIPLETT

“Net neutrality” may sound like something only a Web geek could love, but at some point showbiz, largely indifferent to it so far, will have to start declaring an interest — perhaps passionately.

Why? Because Net neutrality — or, as some call it, Net regulation — has the potential to affect content protection, otherwise known as Priority No. 1 of the entertainment industry.

Access to online content, itself no small concern, could also be at stake.

Even the term “Net neutrality” is the source of some controversy. Is the issue “neutrality” or “regulation”? It depends on who’s talking.

From its inception, the Internet has always delivered information on a first-come, first-served basis, whether it’s your music download, your neighbor’s porn or your office’s email.

Thus the Net has always been “neutral.”

But there’s no rule that says it has to be that way. If you get your Internet from Time Warner Cable, for example, there’s nothing to stop it from sending you content from Time Warner sites first and doling out content from the competition with whatever bandwidth happens to be left over.

Nor is there anything to keep an Internet service provider like Earthlink from taking fees from Disney or NBC Universal to give some sites priority — and to block other sites altogether.

That would give Web sites with deep pockets behind them a new advantage in getting their content in front of Web users, while sites that can’t afford those fees could be kicked to the virtual curb.

Those who value the current “neutral” state of the Internet are seeking legislation to protect “Net neutrality.” Many of the companies involved, though, see an opportunity to make money. They, along with those who generally favor free markets, condemn such legislation as “Net regulation.”

Fears that the current Net neutrality could be lost erupted at last year’s Telecom Next show after AT&T topper Ed Whitacre (who retired June 4) was quoted as saying that Google and other content providers were getting a free ride.

He told Business Week, “The Internet can’t be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes free is nuts!”

Whitacre later backtracked, noting that customers would desert any provider who blocked some sites, but it was too late. The push to protect Net neutrality is on.

Given the potential for chaos if some content gets priority to some customers but not to others, as the pro-NN faction calls it, you’d think the entertainment industry would be all for passing laws that enforce Net neutrality.

You’d be wrong. Very few industry companies have publicly taken a position on NN to date, preferring a wait-and-see approach to the volatile issue.

How volatile? Only one industry exec agreed to be quoted by name on the subject.

“Intellectual property protection is our litmus test,” says Rick Cotton of NBC U, who could easily be speaking for the entire content industry.

As one industry lobbyist notes, showbiz tends to favor the side of the broadband providers, who oppose any mandated Net neutrality, because the providers can help identify and pursue online bootleggers and pirates.

…

Hats Off To Karen Tumulty On Anonymous Sources

No Comments

If someone gives a reporter something without prior mutual agreement as to it being off the record.

Reporters who allow a source to unilaterally declare anonymity are not doing their job.

Part of their job is to get attribution where possible. It makes the story more credible, and adds context.

Obama: Stay Tuned

…

The answer to this is, campaigns should not be allowed to distribute things on a NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION basis. Both NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION and OFF THE RECORD (and their cousins, BACKGROUND and DEEP BACKGROUND) are understandings that are agreed to mutually by a source and a reporter. What I’ve noticed about this cycle is that campaigns (and not just Obama’s) are falling into a bad and sloppy habit of sending out mass hit pieces by e-mail and demanding anonymity. As far as I am concerned, unless I have agreed in advance to accept a specific piece of material from a source on a limited or not for attribution basis, these unilateral declarations of anonymity mean nothing.

…

Porn mag ed sacked for inadequate smut

No Comments

£50k a year? That’s almost $100K US. I’d be willing to edit a “Lad Mag” for that.

My wife might object though.

Of more interest is that even in “Free Market” Britain, there are more worker protections than in the US.

Porn mag ed sacked for inadequate smut

Men Only ‘artistic differences’ kerfuffle
By Lester Haines → More by this author
Published Tuesday 12th June 2007 16:18 GMT
Why Businesses need Business Continuity – Free whitepaperMobile computing: Opportunities and risk – Free whitepaper

The former editor of Men Only has won an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal after being shown the door for refusing requests to use younger models and “bigger and more graphic photos”, The Evening Standard reports.

Pierre Perrone, 49, fell out with owner Paul Raymond’s nephew, Mark Quinn, over the former’s decision to target the grumble mag at “discerning older gentlemen”. Perrone took the helm in 2004, when the publication’s circulation was in free-fall, pressured by net smut, hardcore imports, and “competition from lifestyle magazines such as FHM and GQ”.

He explained to the tribunal he “believed the title had become tired and he had tried to target the more discerning market, using slightly older models”. Quinn was unimpressed, and “repeatedly ordered him to replace the chosen models with younger-looking women” while offering “more explicit” content.

As a result, Mr Perrone said these “artistic differences led to him being demoted, then axed in a sham redundancy” from his £50k a year post. Paul Raymond Publications asserted that he’d been canned because of falling sales and was “genuinely redundant”.

…

Ad Nags at it Again.

No Comments

Oh God! Ad Nags is at it again.

It seems to be endemic at the top of the Journalism food chain, like the NY Times, that any populism must be either political opportunism, or insanity.

They are over paid, and not generally threatened with outsourcing to India. We really need to change that. They are too fat and happy to cover the news honestly.

For John Edwards, he chooses opportunism, despite the fact that Edwards has been talking about this since before his LAST run for prez.

Asswipe.

Staking His Campaign on Iowa, Edwards Makes a Populist Pitch to the Left

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

TIPTON, Iowa, June 16 — Four years ago — facing what seemed to be a certain defeat in the Iowa Democratic caucuses — John Edwards recast his presidential campaign with weeks to go before the vote, unveiling an emotionally powerful speech about poverty that he delivered relentlessly across the state. Mr. Edwards came within a few thousand votes of victory. To this day, he tells associates he would have won with another week.

This year, Mr. Edwards has picked up where he left off in 2004. He visited 14 places in Iowa in the course of three days this weekend, an itinerary reflecting just how much he has settled on this state as the place where his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination will rise or fall.

Mr. Edwards’s latest trip here offered evidence of just how much he studied the lessons of his Iowa defeat last time, though he would prefer to view it as a near victory. It also suggests the extent to which the rhythms of Iowa Democratic politics have shaped Mr. Edwards’s decidedly different candidacy this time around.

This time, he is a candidate of the left in a state marked by a strong antiwar and liberal streak, filling a vacancy created as Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have campaigned from the center. Mr. Edwards has shown a new eagerness to draw contrasts with his opponents on issues like the war in Iraq and health care, in no small part motivated by his struggle not to get lost in a field of big names. And he has gone from the boyish, easygoing one-time senator from North Carolina to a candidate displaying an urgently engaging manner as likely to seize as to charm an audience, an approach that appears to be particularly effective in the close-quarter meetings that fill his days here.

Beyond that, Mr. Edwards is seeking to quell one line of criticism of him from 2004: that he was inexperienced and intellectually light. At every opportunity, he fairly leaps to offer a detailed response to a question, intended as much to provide a contrast to other candidates as to address any concerns about his own depth.

“Here’s what I think,” Mr. Edwards proclaimed repeatedly as he answered a welter of questions throughout the day, an introductory phrase that signaled a lengthy discussion on his opposition to the war in Iraq, his call for national health care or his view of terrorism.

…

Blockbuster expands Blu-ray rentals – Jun. 18, 2007

No Comments

I still believe that HD-DVD will be the winning format in the next DVD wars, given Blu-Ray’s higher costs, Sony’s traditionally incompetent marketing, and it’s Jihad against Pr0n studios, who are universally jumping on board the HD-DVD format, but this indicates that I may be wrong.

We’ll know in 2-3 years.

Blockbuster expands Blu-ray rentals – Jun. 18, 2007
The movie-rental chain says it will expand the high-definition DVDs to 1,700 stores by July.
June 18 2007: 7:20 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Blockbuster Inc. announced Monday it is expanding the inventory of high-density Blu-Ray discs to 1,700 stores by July, in response to the rising popularity of high-definition DVDs.

The movie-rental chain said the stores will carry more than 170 titles in Blu-ray, releasing more as they are distributed by studios Also, the store will continue to offer both Blu-ray and HD DVDs through its online rental service and its initial 250 stores that currently carry the discs.”

…

This is a Bad Headline and Bad Journalism.

No Comments

The bill is NOT about bloggers. It’s about journalists. Bloggers should not be the lede, nor the headline.

Myopic computer press.

Bush administration attacks ‘shield’ for bloggers
By Anne Broache
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: June 14, 2007, 12:19 PM PDT
Last modified: June 14, 2007, 1:52 PM PDT

WASHINGTON–The Bush administration on Thursday blasted a congressional proposal that would shield a broad swath of news gatherers, including some bloggers, from revealing their confidential sources.

The latest draft of the Free Flow of Information Act would pose a grave threat to national security and federal criminal investigations by protecting far too large a segment of the population, a U.S. Department of Justice official told Congress.

“The definition is just so broad that it really includes anyone who wants to post something to the Web,” Rachel Brand, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing here. She also argued it would protect “a terrorist operative who videotaped a message from a terrorist leader threatening attacks on Americans.”

Justice Department opposition has bedeviled Congress throughout its numerous attempts in recent years to enact federal shield laws. Supporters say such legislation is needed in light of high-profile cases involving New York Times reporter Judith Miller and what free-press advocacy groups characterize as a sharp rise in subpoenas to reporters in recent years.

Laws recognizing some form of “reporter’s privilege” already exist in 49 states and the District of Columbia–but, crucially, do not shield journalists from federal prosecutors. The Bush Administration claims there’s no evidence that source-related subpoenas to reporters are on the rise and argues that it already has robust internal guidelines, including a requirement that the attorney general personally approve such subpoenas and provide an appropriate balance between press freedom and investigative needs.

This year’s Free Flow of Information Act, which has been introduced in both the House and Senate, proposes a protection for a broader swath of people than earlier versions. It covers anyone engaged in journalism, which is defined as “gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public.”

Even those covered individuals could be forced to give up their sources under certain circumstances, including when it’s clear that crimes have been committed, when “imminent and actual harm” to national security could occur, or when trade secrets, nonpublic personal information or health records are compromised in violation of existing laws.

Av Week Editorial Slams “U.S. Footdragging” On Global Warming

No Comments

As I have said before, AW&ST has a fairly right wing editorial page, and this an indication that the scientific whores trying to cast doubt on global warming have lost.

U.S. Global Warming Initiative Is A Step Backward (Subscription Required)

Aviation Week & Space Technology
06/11/2007, page 66

Open a good book on global warming and in its index you will find references to a wealth of data and analysis from NASA Earth sciences flight programs and scientists, as well as to their contribution to the growing awareness and understanding of risks our planet faces from greenhouse gases.

Thus it is a mystery how NASA’s administrator, Michael Griffin, could have become so entangled during a National Public Radio interview on May 31, and how President Bush could have come up with so passive a greenhouse-gas proposal for last week’s Group of 8 meeting in Germany.

Griffin is a very smart man who sometimes says not-so-smart things. He did it again on NPR, commenting that he couldn’t say whether global warming is “a long-term concern.” When a dumbstruck interviewer followed up, asking whether Griffin had “any doubt that this is a problem that mankind has to wrestle with,” the administrator waded in up to his waist. “To assume that [warming] is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate . . . and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change.”

…

Tom Shales – Dan Rather Takes On Network News With His Tart Remark – washingtonpost.com

No Comments

Never been a great fan of Rather, but I’ve always respected him as a journalist.

He said the truth, and that’s why people are squealing like the pigs they are.

Tom Shales – Dan Rather Takes On Network News With His Tart Remark
By Tom Shales
Wednesday, June 13, 2007; Page C01

‘It may not have been the wisest thing I’ve done this week,’ Dan Rather joked yesterday by phone from his office in New York.

Wise or not, the former CBS anchor’s comments about the network’s evening newscast have created a firestorm — the kind that is probably good for the TV news business.”

Rather sparked the controversy during a radio appearance Monday morning when he said CBS executives have attempted over the past year to lure viewers to the “CBS Evening News” — which has plummeted in the ratings — by “dumbing it down and tarting it up.” He said they have tried to graft the ” ‘Today’ show ethos” onto the program, which just happens now to be anchored by former “Today” star Katie Couric.

…

And in The Get A Life Department

1 Comment

Sorry, but I want my women in meat space, not cyber space.

Playboy takes a ride to Second Life

Adult magazine unveils virtual rabbit head-shaped island populated with female avatars and merchandise.
June 12 2007: 1:07 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Playboy Enterprises, Inc. slipped into the virtual world known as Second Life Tuesday with the launch of Playboy Island.

The adult entertainment company said it is offering Second Life residents a taste of the Playboy lifestyle on a rabbit head-shaped island, which houses a retail store and will feature events and social opportunities.
Video More video
Fortune’s David Kirkpatrick talks about what he sees as the future implications for Second Life and the 3-D Internet.
Play video

The virtual Playboy store includes merchandise from PlayboyStore.com and ShoptheBunny.com, and is staffed by female avatar employees wearing Playboy-branded apparel or Playboy Bunny costumes. Playboy-branded apparel can be purchased in the virtual store for real-world wear or Second Life avatars.”

Fox News Doesn’t Do News

No Comments

Yes, they spend more time on she who must not be named than they do on the Iraq war.

That’s ignoring the pundits who are dishonest, stupid, and just plain insane.

War takes up less time on Fox News – Yahoo! News

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer Mon Jun 11, 9:52 AM ET

NEW YORK – On a winter day when bomb blasts at an Iraqi university killed dozens and the United Nations estimated that 34,000 civilians in Iraq had died in 2006, MSNBC spent nearly nine minutes on the stories during the 1 p.m. hour. A CNN correspondent in Iraq did a three-minute report about the bombings.

Neither story merited a mention on Fox News Channel that hour.

That wasn’t unusual. Fox spent half as much time covering the Iraq war than MSNBC during the first three months of the year, and considerably less than CNN, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The difference was more stark during daytime news hours than in prime-time opinion shows. The Iraq war occupied 20 percent of CNN’s daytime news hole and 18 percent of MSNBC’s. On Fox, the war was talked about only 6 percent of the time.

The independent think tank’s report freshens a debate over whether ideology drives news agendas, and it comes at a delicate time for Fox. Top Democratic presidential candidates have refused to appear at debates sponsored by Fox. Liberals find attacking Fox is a way to fire up their base.”

…

Deluge of peanuts brings back ‘Jericho’ TV show | CNET News.com

No Comments

I’ve not seen the show, but my dad was one of the thousands of people who wrote to NBC in 1967 to save Star Trek.

Deluge of peanuts brings back ‘Jericho’ TV show | CNET News.com

An online protest involving 20 tons of peanuts delivered to CBS Entertainment in New York and California has succeeded in bringing back the television show Jericho, which the network canceled last month.

….

Peanuts…Heh.

Practice What You Preach, You Gravy Sucking Pig!!!

No Comments

Here we have a women who has made her career on shallow personality news and who is now in a position to do something about it.

Her response is to bring vapid personality chit-chat to Edward R. Murrow’s chair.

Katie Couric Seven for ’07: Simple Lessons for a Complicated Time

….

Pursuing something you love should be the first thing on your post-graduate to do list. But too often, that’s not what drives young people as they look at their life goals. According to a recent survey, many say their top two priorities are number 1, being rich, and number 2, being famous. Believe me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be …

So quit and do the news industry a favor. Not only don’t you deserve to sit in Edward R. Murrow’s chair, you don’t deserve to sit in Geraldo’s chair.

You are a rich shallow person elevated well past your level of competence. Get out.

But thanks to self-made You Tube productions, and so-called reality shows like The Apprentice and Survivor, … fame, even the fleeting sanjaya-type, seems easier to attain, and more seductive, than ever.

The proliferation of celebrity magazines makes Lindsey Lohan’s latest stint in rehab seem more important than what’s happening in Darfur.

The kind of fluff that accosts us on the newsstand may seem like harmless fun, but it should also come with a warning label that says it can rot your mind and distort your values.

…

Cthulhu on a Croissant! What’s next? Rush Limbaugh lecturing people on the dangers of drug abuse????

Ummmm…Bad Example….

Tom Delay lecturing people on ethics….

Oops….

Robert Bork lecturing people on frivolous law suits???

OK…It may take a while for me to find a non-hypocrite winger.

Hypocrite!

FCC Prudes Get Spanked by Court

No Comments

The court basically said that Dick Cheney told Pat Leahy to go Cheney himself, he made the word “Fuck” acceptable.

The FCC Jihad was bad policy anyway, it was just driven by the need to pander to the Republithug base.

Court Rebuffs F.C.C. on Fines for Indecency – New York Times

By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: June 5, 2007

WASHINGTON, June 4 — If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.

That, in essence, was the decision on Monday, when a federal appeals panel struck down the government policy that allows stations and networks to be fined if they broadcast shows containing obscene language.

Although the case was primarily concerned with what is known as “fleeting expletives,” or blurted obscenities, on television, both network executives and top officials at the Federal Communications Commission said the opinion could gut the ability of the commission to regulate any speech on television or radio.

Kevin J. Martin, the chairman of the F.C.C., said that the agency was now considering whether to seek an appeal before all the judges of the appeals court or to take the matter directly to the Supreme Court.

The decision, by a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, was a sharp rebuke for the F.C.C. and for the Bush administration. For the four television networks that filed the lawsuit — Fox, CBS, NBC and ABC — it was a major victory in a legal and cultural battle that they are waging with the commission and its supporters.

Under President Bush, the F.C.C. has expanded its indecency rules, taking a much harder line on obscenities uttered on broadcast television and radio. While the judges sent the case back to the commission to rewrite its indecency policy, it said that it was “doubtful” that the agency would be able to “adequately respond to the constitutional and statutory challenges raised by the networks.”

The networks hailed the decision.

…..

Reversing decades of a more lenient policy, the commission had found that the mere utterance of certain words implied that sexual or excretory acts were carried out and therefore violated the indecency rules.

But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning. “In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities.”

Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost” to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.

“We find that the F.C.C.’s new policy regarding ‘fleeting expletives’ fails to provide a reasoned analysis justifying its departure from the agency’s established practice,” said the panel.

…….