Friday, April 30, 2004
Fox news: Cheney's favorite news source
Vice President Cheney endorsed the Fox News Channel during a conference call last night with tens of thousands of Republicans who were gathered across the country to celebrate a National Party for the President Day organized by the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Fox News styles its coverage as "fair and balanced," but it has a heavy stable of conservative commentators that makes it a favorite around the White House. It is unusual for a president or vice president to single out a commercial enterprise for public praise.
The comment came as Cheney took questions from supporters at 5,245 parties that were held in 50 states to energize grass-roots volunteers building a precinct-by-precinct army for President Bush's campaign.
"It's easy to complain about the press -- I've been doing it for a good part of my career," Cheney said. "It's part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events. For example, I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more accurate in my experience, in those events that I'm personally involved in, than many of the other outlets."
I'd say that's the best proof yet that Fox News is just the Administration's cheering section.
posted by chris at 3:07 PM
Winning them over*
Graphic photographs showing the torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners in a US-run prison outside Baghdad emerged yesterday from a military inquiry which has left six soldiers facing a possible court martial and a general under investigation.
The scandal has also brought to light the growing and largely unregulated role of private contractors in the interrogation of detainees.
According to lawyers for some of the soldiers, they claimed to be acting in part under the instruction of mercenary interrogators hired by the Pentagon.
US military investigators discovered the photographs, which include images of a hooded prisoner with wires fixed to his body, and nude inmates piled in a human pyramid.
The pictures, which were obtained by an American TV network, also show a dog attacking a prisoner and other inmates being forced to simulate sex with each other. It is thought the abuses took place in November and December last year.
Story here and here.
*Alternate title: The Trouble with Mercenaries
posted by chris at 2:48 PM
So which war are we fighting again?
The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money, documents show.
Story here, via Tom Tomorrow.
posted by chris at 2:44 PM
Censorship - alive and well in America!
First, Nightline says it's going to devote it's entire show this Friday to simply reading the names of the soldiers killed in Iraq. Then Sinclair Broadcast Group ordered its ABC affiliates to preempt the broadcast, becuase they said it was "designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq." So apparently, honoring the soldiers is also undermining them. And protesting the war in the first place is undermining them. How exactly, then, are we supposed to honor our soldiers? Nice little safe parades on Memorial Day??
Now, Senator John McCain has joined the fray with a letter to Sinclair:
I supported the President’s decision to go to war in Iraq, and remain a strong supporter of that decision. But every American has a responsibility to understand fully the terrible costs of war and the extraordinary sacrifices it requires of those brave men and women who volunteer to defend the rest of us; lest we ever forget or grow insensitive to how grave a decision it is for our government to order Americans into combat. It is a solemn responsibility of elected officials to accept responsibility for our decision and its consequences, and, with those who disseminate the news, to ensure that Americans are fully informed of those consequences.
There is no valid reason for Sinclair to shirk its responsibility in what I assume is a very misguided attempt to prevent your viewers from completely appreciating the extraordinary sacrifices made on their behalf by Americans serving in Iraq. War is an awful, but sometimes necessary business. Your decision to deny your viewers an opportunity to be reminded of war’s terrible costs, in all their heartbreaking detail, is a gross disservice to the public, and to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. It is, in short, sir, unpatriotic. I hope it meets with the public opprobrium it most certainly deserves.
Kos has the lowdown on Sinclair, including this little tidbit:
Sinclair communications corporate counsel decided to pull the Nightline broadcast from their 8 ABC affiliates. Sinclair Broadcasting owns 62 stations, and specializes in "Television Duopolies" - creating markets where all major affiliates are owned by two companies (Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS). They also contribute heavily to Bush -according open secrets the company or its directors have given over $200,000 to the RNC and Republican Candidates, nothing to Democrats.
posted by chris at 2:38 PM
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Thursday, April 29, 2004
An essay: What I did during Vietnam
By George, Dick and John
PRESIDENT BUSH
Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard in 1968 after graduating from Yale University. During his first year of service, he took an eight-week leave to work on a Senate campaign in Florida.
Bush graduated from flight school at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia in 1969 and completed Combat Crew Training School at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas in 1970. He participated in drills and alerts at Ellington and began working for a Houston-based agricultural company. After his last flight as a Guard member in 1972, Bush moved to Alabama to work on another Senate campaign. He was assigned to guard National Guard units in Alabama. There is no record of him reporting for duty there, but Bush says he did participate. After questions were raised about his service, the White House in February released pay records and other documents supporting Bush's assertion that he fulfilled his National Guard duty. He lost his flight credentials after missing a physical exam.
Bush participated in non-flying drills at Ellington in 1973 and worked at an inner-city poverty program. In the fall, he began attending Harvard Business School and was placed on inactive Guard duty about six months before his six-year commitment ended.
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VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY
Cheney received five student and marriage deferments of service during the war. He received his first student deferment in 1963, while enrolled at Casper College in Wyoming. His status was renewed twice when he was an undergraduate at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
After graduating in 1965, Cheney became a graduate student in the fall and obtained another deferment. He received a deferment under a provision for parents in 1966, when his wife, Lynne, became pregnant.
Cheney told The Washington Post in 1989, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service. ... I don't regret the decisions I made. I complied fully with all the requirements of the statutes, registered with the draft when I turned 18. Had I been drafted, I would have been happy to serve."
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JOHN KERRY:
After graduating from Yale University in 1966, Kerry volunteered for the Navy and served two tours of duty in Vietnam. In his first tour, he spent four months on the USS Gridley frigate off Vietnam's shore. He volunteered for the second tour, where he served nearly five months as a swiftboat commander in the Mekong Delta and won three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.
Kerry's three war injuries -- all minor -- were enough to allow him an early return to stateside duty. Kerry would have been discharged in December 1969 had he not voluntarily extended his tour of duty through the following August. But Kerry asked for an early release so he could run for Congress, and was discharged in January 1970. Kerry then ran for a House seat in Massachusetts, but later gave up his bid for the Democratic nomination. He joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War and became its leading spokesman. During a protest in April 1971, Kerry threw his war ribbons over a fence at the Capitol.
posted by chris at 5:28 PM
You can't handle the truth
The Center for American Progress has launched a new database that allows you to search various quotes from major players in the Administration and then compare it with the actual facts disputing those quotes. You can try it here and then watch as the lies keep piling up.
posted by chris at 5:20 PM
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Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Nightline
From Nightline’s 4-27 daily email (tonight’s show is on the Cheney Supreme Court case):
Now I want to tell you about this Friday’s broadcast. We’re going to do something different, something that we think is important. Friday night, we will show you the pictures, and Ted will read the names, of the men and women from the armed forces who have been killed in combat in Iraq. That’s it. That will be the whole broadcast. Nightline has been reporting on the casualties under the heading of “Line of Duty.”
But we realized that we seemed to just be giving numbers. So many killed in this incident, so many more in that attack. Whether you agree with the war or not, these men and women are serving, are putting their lives on the line, in our names. We think it is important to remember that those who have paid the ultimate price all have faces, and names, and loved ones. We thought about doing this on Memorial Day, but that’s a time when most media outlets do stories about the military, and they are generally lost in the holiday crush of picnics and all. We didn’t want this broadcast to get lost. Honestly, I don’t know if people will watch this for thirty seconds, or ten minutes, or at all. That’s not the point. We think this is important. These men and women have earned nothing less.
One point, we are not going to include those killed in non-hostile incidents. There’s no disrespect meant here, we just don’t have enough time in this one broadcast. But they are no less deserving of our thoughts. I hope that you will join us for at least part of “The Fallen” on Friday.
Sounds interesting. Unless it's just a ratings ploy.
posted by chris at 5:27 PM
The damn ads are more expensive than the medicine
From David Sirota:
The White House today announced it will be spending another $18 million of taxpayer money on television ads promoting its new Medicare bill. Not only was the last round of ads criticized by government regulators as misleading, but the White House is on track to spend more Medicare money on television ads ($80 million) than its own FDA commissioner says is necessary to create a safe system to import cheaper, FDA-approved prescription medicines from abroad ($58 million).
And, as Kos notes, this is all about re-electing Bush and Cheney.
posted by chris at 1:39 PM
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Monday, April 26, 2004
Califonia smacks Diebold
California should ban the use of 15,000 touch-screen voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems from the Nov. 2 general election, an advisory panel to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley recommended Thursday.
By an 8-0 vote, the state's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel recommended that Shelley cease the use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold has performed poorly in California and its machines malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election, turning away many voters in San Diego County.
The recommendation affects 15,000 Diebold touch-screen machines in San Diego, Solano, Kern and San Joaquin counties.
Machines made by Diebold and other manufacturers in 10 other counties are unaffected, although the panel was to consider them later in the day.
More.
posted by chris at 4:00 PM
Howard Zinn on Iraq
The history of military occupations of Third World countries is that they bring neither democracy nor security. The long U.S. occupation of the Philippines, following a bloody war in which American troops finally subdued the Filipino independence movement, did not lead to democracy, but rather to a succession of dictatorships, ending with Fernando Marcos.
The long U.S. occupations of Haiti (1915-1934) and the Dominican Republic (1916-1926) led only to military rule and corruption in both countries.
The only rational argument for continuing on the present course is that things will be worse if we leave. There will be chaos, there will be civil war, we are told. In Vietnam, supporters of the war promised a bloodbath if U.S. troops withdrew. That did not happen.
There is a history of dire forecasts for what will happen if we desist from deadly force. If we did not drop the bomb on Hiroshima, it was said, we would have to invade Japan and huge casualties would follow. We know now, and knew then, that was not true, but to acknowledge that did not fit the government's political agenda. The U.S. had broken the Japanese code and had intercepted the cables from Tokyo to the emissary in Moscow, which made clear that the Japanese were ready to surrender so long as the position of the Emperor was secure.
Truth is, no one knows what will happen if the United States withdraws. We face a choice between the certainty of mayhem if we stay and the uncertainty of what will follow.
More.
posted by chris at 3:44 PM
Just in time for summer
The link between common household pesticides and fetal defects, neurological damage and the most deadly cancers is strong enough that family doctors in Ontario are urging citizens to avoid the chemicals in any form.
The frightening message came yesterday when the Ontario College of Family Physicians released the most comprehensive study ever done in Canada on the chronic effects of pesticide exposure at home, in the garden and at work.
"The review found consistent evidence of the health risks to patients with exposure to pesticides," the study said, naming brain cancer, prostate cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer and leukemia among many other acute illnesses.
As well, the college found consistent links between parents' exposure to certain agricultural pesticides at their jobs and effects on a growing fetus ranging from damage to death. The risks, they concluded, can come even from residue on food, ant spray and the tick collar on the family cat.
The researchers also found that children are far more vulnerable to the effects of pesticides than adults because their bodies are growing, they have a greater skin surface in proportion to their size than adults, they ingest more food for their size than adults and they often have less-developed systems to excrete chemicals.
Not only that, but after examining 12,000 studies conducted from 1990 to 2003 around the world, and winnowing that down to the most sound 250, the researchers said there is no evidence that some pesticides are less dangerous than others, just that they have different effects on health that take different periods to show up.
Story.
posted by chris at 10:08 AM
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Sunday, April 25, 2004
The reelection strategy: tie everything back to terrorism. Keep the people scared.
Karen Hughes, an adviser to President Bush, appeared on CNN today to provide a counterpoint to the anti-Bush sentiment on the Mall. She praised the president on his "very strong record for women," saying he has employed more women in senior-level staff positions than any other presidential administration.
She also said that abortion-rights activists were moving against what she said was popular momentum, particularly since the terrorist attacks of 2001, in favor of anti-abortion policies.
"I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life," she said. "President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."
From this story.
posted by chris at 4:56 PM
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