Two ABC affiliates owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, WXLV in Greensboro and WLOS in Asheville, have been ordered NOT to broadcast "Nightline" tonight because host Ted Koppel intends to read aloud the names of the over 560 U.S. troops killed in Iraq. The Sinclair Group also owns stations in several other states, all of which intend to boycott Koppel's read-aloud.
According to the campaign watchdog group, OpenSecrets.org, the Sinclair
Group has given over $200,000 to the Republican Party and Republican
candidates, and zero to Democrats. A top Sinclair Group executive has
done opinion pieces bashing John Kerry, and the company has criticized
the media for only broadcasting "bad news" about Iraq. Far-right
commentators are now billing Sinclair as "the next Fox News."
If you feel inclined to express yourself about this development, here's the contact information:
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc.
10706 Beaver Dam Road
Hunt Valley, Maryland 21030
410-568-1500 (Main Telephone)
410-568-1533 (Main Fax)
Sinclair CEO: dsmith@sbgnet.com
VP of Programming and Promotions: bbutler@sbgnet.com
Friday, April 30, 2004
Thursday, April 29, 2004
This Just In!
The headline in the New York Times this a.m. -- "Support for War Is Down Sharply," according to a new NY Times/CBS News poll -- and when George W. Bush's mouth moved this morning in his "talk" with the 9/11 Commission, Vice President Dick Cheney's voice came out.
The Specter of Defeat
From reading coverage in the Philadelphia Inquirer of the Sen. Arlen Specter/Patrick Toomey Republican primary in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, you'd get the impression that it was actually Toomey who won rather than the incumbent Specter (the Inquirer requires free registration). The lead paragraph in this morning's analysis piece reads: "Sen. Arlen Specter won. But so did the Club for Growth." How so?
The Club for Growth, the conservative anti-tax organization, groomed Toomey and pumped millions into his attempt to bump off a several-term Senate veteran. That race was given zero chance of succeeding just a few months ago, but by pasting a "liberal" label on Specter, Toomey and his puppet-masters in the Club for Growth came within 16,000 votes of heaving Specter out into the cold. And apparently, a "near upset" of Specter was enough to give the Club for Growth's president Stephen Moore strutting rights, since Specter had to bring in the president himself to help him eke out a very narrow victory. "One thing that came through clearly is there is some discontent with the way Republicans have been governing," Moore said in an interview. "There's a kind of conservative revolt. The White House came within an eyelash of being big-time embarrassed," he said.
Big time! Once again we hear that El Presidente is insufficiently conservative for a large portion of the Republican Party. Sobering thought, ain't it?
Stephen Moore went through the motions, at least, of urging Toomey's supporters to now support Specter in the general election, but there's anecdotal evidence that many of the Republicans who became convinced that Senator Specter has been sleeping with Beelzebub all these years find it difficult to turn on a dime and bust their butts getting to the polls in November on his behalf.
Specter's Democratic opponent this fall is Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel, little known outside of Pennsylvania and maybe not all that well known inside Pennsylvania. Nobody's giving him much of a shot at defeating Specter, but there's a chance that the Specter/Toomey primary will give Hoeffel the boost he needs.
The Club for Growth, the conservative anti-tax organization, groomed Toomey and pumped millions into his attempt to bump off a several-term Senate veteran. That race was given zero chance of succeeding just a few months ago, but by pasting a "liberal" label on Specter, Toomey and his puppet-masters in the Club for Growth came within 16,000 votes of heaving Specter out into the cold. And apparently, a "near upset" of Specter was enough to give the Club for Growth's president Stephen Moore strutting rights, since Specter had to bring in the president himself to help him eke out a very narrow victory. "One thing that came through clearly is there is some discontent with the way Republicans have been governing," Moore said in an interview. "There's a kind of conservative revolt. The White House came within an eyelash of being big-time embarrassed," he said.
Big time! Once again we hear that El Presidente is insufficiently conservative for a large portion of the Republican Party. Sobering thought, ain't it?
Stephen Moore went through the motions, at least, of urging Toomey's supporters to now support Specter in the general election, but there's anecdotal evidence that many of the Republicans who became convinced that Senator Specter has been sleeping with Beelzebub all these years find it difficult to turn on a dime and bust their butts getting to the polls in November on his behalf.
Specter's Democratic opponent this fall is Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel, little known outside of Pennsylvania and maybe not all that well known inside Pennsylvania. Nobody's giving him much of a shot at defeating Specter, but there's a chance that the Specter/Toomey primary will give Hoeffel the boost he needs.
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Do You BELIEVE These Guys?
Not only is El Presidente apparently holding to his plan of putting his tender little hand into the big strong paw of his vice president before going in TOGETHER tomorrow morning to face the meanies on the 9/11 Commission ... an amazing admission in itself that Bush without Cheney has no brain ... but the Bush White House has also decreed that there will be no recording made of the event, no recording device allowed in the room, but rather a "note-taker," and if the White House has its way, probably an arthritic note-taker with a bad Bic. (New York Times story here.)
Somewhere over the weekend I recall seeing Bob Woodward on one of the Sunday Morning Gasbag Hours speculating that surely -- SURELY! -- Bush would change his mind about going in with Cheney, just for the pure embarrassment factor alone of having a presumably grown president who can't seem to stand on his own before a panel looking to get to the bottom of what happened to allow 19 citizens of the Third World to defeat completely and utterly the 21st century defenses of this great nation. Evidently, somewhere right now Bob Woodward is incredulously repeating to himself, "Bush is ACTUALLY going through with it ... hiding behind Cheney!" Remarkable.
But even more remarkable is Bush's further scrambling to make sure that no one ever knows what exactly he says in that closed, recorder-less room. And that the 9/11 Commission agreed to these conditions! "Mr. Bush will not be under oath, and the White House has been adamant that what he says should not be considered official testimony. 'He is not testifying, he is talking to them,' " said an unidentified White House spokesperson.
"He's NOT testifying," folks. He's "talking." Well, maybe not even that.
Vice President Cheney: "Come here, little fellow, and sit on my knee. Pull your shirttail out, and let me get my hand up under there. Now! We're ready for questions, Mr. Chairman. Aren't we, little pal?"
It'll be about as transparent as that. "Legal scholars said the lack of an official transcript would give the White House some deniability and make it more difficult to use the president's words as evidence in a future suit against the government. 'It gives them more maneuverability in case someone slips up or says something he regrets,' Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, said."
Yeah, quite the man's man we've got in the White House! Quite the brave soul. Quite the leader of the Free World.
Somewhere over the weekend I recall seeing Bob Woodward on one of the Sunday Morning Gasbag Hours speculating that surely -- SURELY! -- Bush would change his mind about going in with Cheney, just for the pure embarrassment factor alone of having a presumably grown president who can't seem to stand on his own before a panel looking to get to the bottom of what happened to allow 19 citizens of the Third World to defeat completely and utterly the 21st century defenses of this great nation. Evidently, somewhere right now Bob Woodward is incredulously repeating to himself, "Bush is ACTUALLY going through with it ... hiding behind Cheney!" Remarkable.
But even more remarkable is Bush's further scrambling to make sure that no one ever knows what exactly he says in that closed, recorder-less room. And that the 9/11 Commission agreed to these conditions! "Mr. Bush will not be under oath, and the White House has been adamant that what he says should not be considered official testimony. 'He is not testifying, he is talking to them,' " said an unidentified White House spokesperson.
"He's NOT testifying," folks. He's "talking." Well, maybe not even that.
Vice President Cheney: "Come here, little fellow, and sit on my knee. Pull your shirttail out, and let me get my hand up under there. Now! We're ready for questions, Mr. Chairman. Aren't we, little pal?"
It'll be about as transparent as that. "Legal scholars said the lack of an official transcript would give the White House some deniability and make it more difficult to use the president's words as evidence in a future suit against the government. 'It gives them more maneuverability in case someone slips up or says something he regrets,' Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, said."
Yeah, quite the man's man we've got in the White House! Quite the brave soul. Quite the leader of the Free World.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Young Women Waking Up to Threats to Abortion Rights
The coverage I've been reading about the massive abortion rights march in Washington, D.C., last Sunday -- like this one -- has emphasized the great numbers of young, college-aged women who participated ... something of a turn-around since the last big women's rights march 12 years ago when the predominate age group protesting the first Bush administration's abortion policies were women "of an age," that is, those who could remember what life was like in pre-Roe v. Wade America, especially in pre-Roe v. Wade North Carolina. (I remember at least one ASU student who was taken out of state in 1972 for an abortion that was positively, absolutely illegal in N.C. -- not to mention immoral enough to bust hell wide open!)
With El Presidente poised to replace a Supreme Court justice or two in his second term, more and more young women, for whom 1973 is not only ancient history but literally pre-history, are beginning to catch on to the fact that freedom of choice is NOT guaranteed in the Land of the Brave and the Formerly Free, and that the dark forces currently in charge of the Republican Party, and to whom El Presidente (but not his wife, God bless her!) owes his allegiance, are not only determined to outlaw ALL ABORTION but ALL BIRTH CONTROL as well, as soon as they can. This struggle is, and always has been, a war on women's freedom from the consequences of sex.
I grew up in pre-sexual revolution rural Texas where the Southern Baptist Church was supreme and where there simply was no such thing as abortion. Didn't exist. Wasn't even talked about. We were preached at constantly. Having sex would be like touching a downed powerline. You die instantly! And yet, you know, abstinence training was just -- how you say? -- inadequate. I knew plenty of teenage girls -- including one notorious one, aged 13 -- who turned up pregnant. First, they were escorted out of school, never to return. Couldn't have a pregnant girl in school, oh no! Then she was hastily married off to the young man, whether the young man was quite ready for that step or not. No question 'bout that. The fruits of total abstinence training were bitter. Adults told us all along that sex was death, and that's exactly how it turned out.
A few of those forced marriages actually lasted, though the notorious 13-year-old later put her enforced husband's pistol to her temple on her 30th birthday. I knew her. She was as smart as a whip and rebellious, and she had the patience to wait a full 17 years before taking her revenge on a system that enforced her unwilling servitude. Her body was not her own, and she resented the hell out of it.
George Bush is from Texas, and he seems very comfortable with the notion of returning us all to 1957, just like it was in Texas. You have sex, you die! Especially if you're a woman. (But not, naturally, if you happened to be the playboy rich kid of a rich daddy, but let that go!)
I've made some college-age males uncomfortable recently urging that we bring back the draft. I can understand their unease. But until college-age men, along with college-age women, wake up and begin to notice what's happening to the democracy they've taken for granted, the death-dealing of the Rovians is going to be on all our heads. The draft, I figure, just like the end of Roe v. Wade, is the clearest wake-up bell that can possibly ring.
With El Presidente poised to replace a Supreme Court justice or two in his second term, more and more young women, for whom 1973 is not only ancient history but literally pre-history, are beginning to catch on to the fact that freedom of choice is NOT guaranteed in the Land of the Brave and the Formerly Free, and that the dark forces currently in charge of the Republican Party, and to whom El Presidente (but not his wife, God bless her!) owes his allegiance, are not only determined to outlaw ALL ABORTION but ALL BIRTH CONTROL as well, as soon as they can. This struggle is, and always has been, a war on women's freedom from the consequences of sex.
I grew up in pre-sexual revolution rural Texas where the Southern Baptist Church was supreme and where there simply was no such thing as abortion. Didn't exist. Wasn't even talked about. We were preached at constantly. Having sex would be like touching a downed powerline. You die instantly! And yet, you know, abstinence training was just -- how you say? -- inadequate. I knew plenty of teenage girls -- including one notorious one, aged 13 -- who turned up pregnant. First, they were escorted out of school, never to return. Couldn't have a pregnant girl in school, oh no! Then she was hastily married off to the young man, whether the young man was quite ready for that step or not. No question 'bout that. The fruits of total abstinence training were bitter. Adults told us all along that sex was death, and that's exactly how it turned out.
A few of those forced marriages actually lasted, though the notorious 13-year-old later put her enforced husband's pistol to her temple on her 30th birthday. I knew her. She was as smart as a whip and rebellious, and she had the patience to wait a full 17 years before taking her revenge on a system that enforced her unwilling servitude. Her body was not her own, and she resented the hell out of it.
George Bush is from Texas, and he seems very comfortable with the notion of returning us all to 1957, just like it was in Texas. You have sex, you die! Especially if you're a woman. (But not, naturally, if you happened to be the playboy rich kid of a rich daddy, but let that go!)
I've made some college-age males uncomfortable recently urging that we bring back the draft. I can understand their unease. But until college-age men, along with college-age women, wake up and begin to notice what's happening to the democracy they've taken for granted, the death-dealing of the Rovians is going to be on all our heads. The draft, I figure, just like the end of Roe v. Wade, is the clearest wake-up bell that can possibly ring.
How to Get a College President's Goat
Only now are we finding out that Dick Cheney's attack on John Kerry's patriotism yesterday at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, was a phony set-up that has angered the college's president. Seems that Cheney's people called the Westminster officials days before to say that the vice president wanted to make a "major foreign policy" address in the exact same campus building where Winston Churchill first coined the term "Iron Curtain" in a famous speech in 1946. Oh, well then, a history-making event like THAT induced the college president, Fletcher Lamkin, who also used to be a former administrator at West Point, to assemble the entire college community to sit reverently for the vp's important "major foreign policy" address. Only it turned out to be nothing more than a campaign event, a slashing attack on Kerry as unpatriotic, from a man who dodged the draft himself during the Vietnam War with a student deferment.
Well, President Lamkin AIN'T amused. Josh Marshall published today an email that Lamkin sent to the entire Westminster College community expressing his distaste for Cheney's craven behavior: "I was surprised and disappointed that Mr. Cheney chose to step off the high ground and resort to Kerry-bashing for a large portion of his speech. The content and tone of his speech was not provided to us prior to the event -- we had only been told the speech would be about foreign policy, including issues in Iraq."
President Lamkin has felt obliged to offer John Kerry the same platform and opportunity to defend himself against the vp's intemperance. We trust that Kerry will take the president up on the offer. Missouri is one of those battleground states, after all.
Well, President Lamkin AIN'T amused. Josh Marshall published today an email that Lamkin sent to the entire Westminster College community expressing his distaste for Cheney's craven behavior: "I was surprised and disappointed that Mr. Cheney chose to step off the high ground and resort to Kerry-bashing for a large portion of his speech. The content and tone of his speech was not provided to us prior to the event -- we had only been told the speech would be about foreign policy, including issues in Iraq."
President Lamkin has felt obliged to offer John Kerry the same platform and opportunity to defend himself against the vp's intemperance. We trust that Kerry will take the president up on the offer. Missouri is one of those battleground states, after all.
Catholic Church Declares a Jihad
Catholic Cardinal Francis Arinze, a top Vatican official who was apparently speaking for his boss the pope, said last Friday that Catholic parish priests should withhold communion from Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, which everyone took to be a direct attack on Sen. John Kerry but naturally took in scores of others not so high-profile.
Cardinal Arinze was apparently not inclined to be embarrassed about making such pronouncements from the highest reaches of a church hierarchy that has spent decades covering up the busy world-wide grubbing of boy-buggerers.
And we note that his pronouncement also took in our own Governor Mike Easley, a devout Catholic who was known to pack a concealed handgun during his days as a prosecutor and who has about the same response to church thugs as he did to drug thugs ... i.e., "You have my sincere permission to pound sand." According to a piece in this morning's News & Observer, Gov. Easley "will not be deterred by a top Vatican cardinal's pronouncement that Catholic politicians who support abortion rights should be denied Communion.
Easley has always been comfortable that his belief in a woman's right to choose abortion is compatible with his Catholic faith. He attends church services every Sunday...."
Cardinal Arinze was apparently not inclined to be embarrassed about making such pronouncements from the highest reaches of a church hierarchy that has spent decades covering up the busy world-wide grubbing of boy-buggerers.
And we note that his pronouncement also took in our own Governor Mike Easley, a devout Catholic who was known to pack a concealed handgun during his days as a prosecutor and who has about the same response to church thugs as he did to drug thugs ... i.e., "You have my sincere permission to pound sand." According to a piece in this morning's News & Observer, Gov. Easley "will not be deterred by a top Vatican cardinal's pronouncement that Catholic politicians who support abortion rights should be denied Communion.
Easley has always been comfortable that his belief in a woman's right to choose abortion is compatible with his Catholic faith. He attends church services every Sunday...."
Monday, April 26, 2004
My President Is Cheap Cosmetics
Matt Bai published a fascinating and detail-laden inside look at the Bush/Cheney reelection effort in the New York Times Magazine yesterday, and the bottomline is that Rovians have apparently organized on the Amway model of the pyramid scheme, or Multi-Level Marketing, as it's known, with each precinct captain an independent entrepreneur recruiting other sub-entrepreneurs who'll do their work recruiting sub-sub-entrepreneurs for the cause of passing on the propaganda without question and all in hope of the ultimate reward, an extra cushion in Heaven ... sort of like the Mary Kay Cosmetics pyramid, with a ride in a pink Cadillac of Bush/Cheney as the ultimate motivational impetus.
"...the Bush campaign [has] its own kind of toolbox for recruits. It includes ''7 Steps to 72-Hour Success,'' a brochure that shows you how to create your very own ''magic chart,'' a color-coded time line for every activity in the campaign. Another of the seven steps is to recruit Bush Team Leaders, or B.T.L.'s, as the campaign sometimes refers to them. These are volunteers who are given prizes, like a signed note from the president, for accomplishing six specific tasks, the first of which is to recruit five other B.T.L.'s. Volunteers are also rewarded (with 'a presidential screen-saver') for calling in to talk radio programs or writing letters to the editor on behalf of the president. 'Train volunteers in each of the 7 Steps,' the brochure commands. 'They will be the implementers.' "
There's much more revealing detail and specific strategies for the selling of the president, by the pound or by the ounce.
Amazing stuff! And effective, we suspect. This is what $180 million will buy you. Even if the same money can't make the quagmire in Iraq disappear.
(Thanks to Susan for the tip!)
"...the Bush campaign [has] its own kind of toolbox for recruits. It includes ''7 Steps to 72-Hour Success,'' a brochure that shows you how to create your very own ''magic chart,'' a color-coded time line for every activity in the campaign. Another of the seven steps is to recruit Bush Team Leaders, or B.T.L.'s, as the campaign sometimes refers to them. These are volunteers who are given prizes, like a signed note from the president, for accomplishing six specific tasks, the first of which is to recruit five other B.T.L.'s. Volunteers are also rewarded (with 'a presidential screen-saver') for calling in to talk radio programs or writing letters to the editor on behalf of the president. 'Train volunteers in each of the 7 Steps,' the brochure commands. 'They will be the implementers.' "
There's much more revealing detail and specific strategies for the selling of the president, by the pound or by the ounce.
Amazing stuff! And effective, we suspect. This is what $180 million will buy you. Even if the same money can't make the quagmire in Iraq disappear.
(Thanks to Susan for the tip!)
Where Is the ACLU When You Need It?
Those of you who think America's in the hands of the Just and the Righteous and only the guilty have any reason to fear for the future ... take a look at what happened to a 15-year-old (15-YEAR-OLD!) kid in Washington state who expressed his inner Goth in some student art that depicted El Presidente as a devil launching a missle. Another drawing showed President Bush's head on a stick. His art teacher -- bless her meddling, small heart! -- told on him to the school administrators, who, in turn, called in police, who know a dangerous character when they see one, so they called in the Secret Service. (Story here.) "The boy was not arrested but the school district has taken disciplinary action." Our hapless 15-year-old has not only had his first taste of art criticism; he's gotten an indelible lesson in Freedom of Expression under the Bush Regime.
Whatever "disciplinary action" might amount to, it's clearly not enough. Oh come on! Can't we do better than a slap across the face? He looks like an "enemy combatant" to us and needs sending to Guantanamo. That'll sap the "art" right out of him!
Whatever "disciplinary action" might amount to, it's clearly not enough. Oh come on! Can't we do better than a slap across the face? He looks like an "enemy combatant" to us and needs sending to Guantanamo. That'll sap the "art" right out of him!
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