The press

Just because Obama has been elected doesn't change the reality of today's corporate news organizations:

The framers of our nation never imagined what could happen if big government, big publishing, and big broadcasters ever saw eye to eye in putting the public's need for news second to their own interests—and to the ideology of market economics. The greatest moments in the history of the press came not when journalists made common cause with the state but when they stood fearlessly independent of it.

-- Bill Moyers

Silly humor

Here's a joke that was sent out on today's Prarie Home Companion email. The math geek in me really likes it!

Q: Have you heard my new statistics joke?

A: Probably.

Obama Portrait

Isn't this simply lovely? I found it on Democratic Underground and you can see a larger version of it here. The artist, Mimi Tabby, is making signed prints of it available for $40 plus shipping. I really recommend that you explore the rest of her blog. She does incredibly beautiful stuff.

I do love the Guardian

They've published an article entitled "The Apology Bush Owes Dan Rather" . Here's part of what it says:

As George Bush shuffles off to a long absence that is not only with leave but with a heartfelt global sentiment that it is long overdue, he leaves behind a lot of unfinished business. One wonders whether, just in case, he will smuggle in a pardon for himself for his technical desertion and very definite absence without leave from the Texas Air National Guard.

What is really in order is some sort of pardon and apology to Dan Rather, who CBS's cowardly management squeezed from 60 Minutes for telling the truth about Bush's war record.
...
The investigation carefully did not consider the veracity of the charges against Bush, simply the provenance of the scrap of paper, but by the time it was over, many people who should have known better assumed that the story of Bush's desertion was refuted.

In fact, the evidence was compelling. Many others, myself included in my book, Deserter, had proved that George Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard with nepotistic backing in order to avoid service in Vietnam, a war that he agreed with. And then he went missing and failed to fulfill the terms of his service, an offence for which other less well-connected people were going to prison or being drafted to the jungle.

Let us consider the sins of Rather. Firstly, he admitted openly what everyone knew – that anchormen are performers not journalists. Secondly, 60 Minutes pandered to the television need for a McGuffin to wave around. However, it is still not proven that the memo under consideration was a forgery. What has been proven beyond doubt was that the information in it was accurate. The very secretary who said that she had not typed that particular piece of paper attested that she had typed exactly that same message.

I so agree with this. That whole episode made me purely sick. I hope Rather wins his suit against CBS.

Funny!!!

Paul Rogers sent me this. Thanks, Paul!

Cheney and Gonzales

By now it has undoubtedly come to your attention that Cheney and Gonzales were indicted in Texas yesterday by a grand jury. Here's what the BBC says about it:

The indictment says Mr Cheney - who has invested $85m (£56m) in a company that holds shares in for-profit prisons - conspired to block an investigation.

The indictment has not been seen by a judge, who could dismiss it.
...
The three-page indictment also alleges that former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "used his position...to stop the investigations as to the wrong doings."

The grand jury wrote that it made its decision "with great sadness," but said they had no other choice but to indict Mr Cheney and Mr Gonzales "because we love our country."

Well, let's see where this goes. I must say, it doesn't surprise me.

Oh, I just love this!

This was on today's edition of All Hat No Cattle. Well done, Lisa!!!

Hate radio on the rampage

Can you believe this man? Here's something Michael Savage said:

I'm as good an expert as any. I have found in my life that most of the Ph.D. experts on children are either gay or crazy and were never married. Or if they were married, they either tried to kill their wife or were in rehab for a few years, and then came out and went into psychotherapy to find out why they killed, or attempted to kill. And then they washed it all away, and suddenly they're experts on childrearing.

You can read more about it on Media Matters right here.

Something we all need to ponder

This top pie chart describes how the money is really spent:

The pie chart below is the government view of the budget. This is a distortion of how our income tax dollars are spent because it includes Trust Funds (e.g., Social Security), and the expenses of past military spending are not distinguished from nonmilitary spending. For a more accurate representation of how your Federal income tax dollar is really spent, see the large chart (top).

I found this information right here.

Back in the '70s when I was in graduate school I remember discussing the so-called "failures" of our public schools in a philosophy of education class. I remember making the point that somehow we managed to find enough money for the military to make it work. The professor commented wryly that we didn't know whether we could make education really work if we allocated enough money to get the job done because we had never tried.

Can you just imagine what would happen if we really did spend exactly the same money on education as we do on defense? Heck, we'd probably have a cure for cancer as soon as those students we started with entered the work force. Just imagine what we could do as a society!

What would you say is the dominant culture?

Here's Mad Priest's "Thought for the day". I have to say I agree with him:

Liberals and progressives in the Church are constantly being accused by reactionaries and conservatives of being too willing to embrace modern culture. But when you think about it the main cultural trends at this moment in time are individualism, rampant capitalism and invading other countries, all of which are usually supported and adhered to by conservatives. You probably have to go back 2000 years to a small region in the Roman Empire called Palestine and a small group of disparate men and women following a wandering evangelist with big ideas, to find a culture similar to the one most liberals and progressives want to align themselves to. Which is hardly modern, is it?

Mad Priest's place is called Of Course I Could Be Wrong. (Be prepared for just about anything over there!)

For all band music lovers!

Artist: Justine Linville

I've been meaning to post about this for a long time and I keep forgetting. My good friend, Doug Brown, is the host of a wonderful new radio show called Wind and Rhythm. It is broadcast every Sunday evening at 7:00 (Central time) on Tulsa classical radio KWTU at 88.7 on your dial. Or you can listen on their webite right here. Please tune in. I promise you won't be sorry!

All the racisim out there

Oh dear. Look what the Associate Press reports in an article called "After Obama victory, an outbreak of racial anger":

Crosses burning. Children chanting, "Assassinate Obama." Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Reports of incidents such as those across the country are dampening the glow of racial progress and harmony that bloomed after the election of Democrat Barack Obama, an African American, to the presidency.

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of incidents, including vandalism, threats and at least one physical attack. There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

In Snellville, Ga., Denene Millner said that a day after the election, a boy on a school bus told her 9-year-old daughter that he hoped "Obama gets assassinated." That night, Millner said, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door.

"It definitely makes you look a little different at the people who you live with," said Millner, who is black. "And makes you wonder what they're capable of and what they're really thinking."
...
A black president is "the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War," said William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. "It's shaking the foundations on which the country has existed for centuries."

How appalling. How tragic. How shameful.

Our "cool" President-elect

Just a great paragraph from the Prarie Home Companion guy himself:

The world expects us to elect pompous yahoos, and instead we have us a 47-year-old prince from the prairie who cheerfully ran the race, and when his opponents threw sand at him, he just smiled back. He'll be the first president in history to look really good making a jump shot. He loves his classy wife and his sweet little daughters. At the same time, he knows pop music, American lit and constitutional law. I just can't imagine anybody cooler.

-- Garrison Keillor

It's from an article he wrote entitled "Sitting on top of the world".

"From the old to the new"

I hope this is true of the present time:

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the sound of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.

-- Jawaharlal Nehru