One Little Victory

I actually did not intend to take three weeks off from writing. But the past two weeks have been hectic to say the least.

Comings and Goings

So let’s start with a trip to St. Louis with my oldest. We went to Six Flags, the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Arch. The botanical garden is one of my favorite places to walk. It is incredibly peaceful, there are tree, plants and flowers from all over the world, and there is even a great pond where you can feed the giant carp. I’ll put pics up as soon as I have the chance to upload them.

Then it was off to Utah for almost a week, where I served as faculty at a summer academy. The annual pilgrimage to salt Lake City is very refreshing; I get to spend a week with colleagues and friends, and get to see some incredible scenery. I also went to my first Rodizio (Brazilian) grill. We liked it so much that we went back the very next night.

After getting back from Utah, it was back to St. Louis to again see the boys (Rush) play on the second leg of the “Snakes and Arrows” tour. That makes three times for this album… Chicago, Indianapolis, and St. Louis. Again, pics are forthcoming so look on the “Photos” page.

After that, I took a week off to spend most of it with my kids. We did the typical summer day activities… visiting the park, going to the Discovery Museum and lots of other things. I appreciated quickly how hard it is to raise three kids alone… even for a week it tests one’s patience… especially when the little ones are “that age”. But it was a blast and I wish I had another week to take off with them.

Now I am back to work and “normal” life, though I have some trips in the waiting… perhaps one or two professional trips and then my oldest and I are headed to Maryland for the wedding of my best friend since childhood. 45 years old and finally getting married… good for him.

I’ll catch up on world happenings later. For tonight, let me just end with this…

Rush takes over the Colbert Report

This was great… Alex, Geddy and Neil took over The Colbert Report tonight…. they showed up for the last ten minutes of the show, but the whole first twenty minutes was a spoof on a Rush fan’s obsession with the group. Hmmm…sounds familiar. The boys played “Tom Sawyer” (predictably), but it was just great to see them… it was their first appearance on American television in 33 years.

Last week we lost Tim Russert, one of the best and brightest that the news industry had to offer. Yesterday we lost comedy’s best; George Carlin has died at the age of 71.

Carlin was one of the greatest, if not greatest influences on American comedy, and his social statements were invaluable. Carlin hosted the first ever “Saturday Night Live” and is still known for his “Seven Words”. I loved him for his appearance in “Dogma”, which is one of my favorite movies. I had the pleasure of seeing Carlin perform once, and will forever remember that event.

Award-winning comedian George Carlin dies

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Comedian-actor George Carlin, known for his raunchy but insightful humor, died of heart failure Sunday in Los Angeles, his publicist said. He was 71.

Jeff Abraham said Carlin went into St. John’s Health Center on Sunday afternoon, complaining of chest pain. Carlin died at 5:55 p.m. PT, The Associated Press reported.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

“He was a genius and I will miss him dearly,” Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told the AP.

Full story here…

…and we’ll gladly provide immunity to the telecoms that help them.

This is one of the reasons why I am a member of the ACLU. This legislation is unconstitutional and it is bereft of common sense. Once again Congressional Democrats are complicit in helping a morally bankrupt president get away with illegal activities.

This is also one of the reasons why I am no longer a Democrat.

Telecoms granted immunity in US wiretapping probe
Elana Schor in Washington
guardian.co.uk,
Friday June 20, 2008

In a major victory for the White House, the House of Representatives today passed a bill to grant legal immunity to phone companies that helped the Bush administration eavesdrop on US calls and emails after the 9/11 attacks. The measure was approved 293-129.

Democrats in Congress had previously refused to yield to White House demands that telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon be spared from pending lawsuits related to their role in government wiretapping.

A six-month window for existing wiretap orders expires in August, leaving Democrats leery of charges from the administration that Congress had failed to fulfill its national-security responsibilities. Democrats ultimately agreed to a deal that is almost certain to meet the White House’s goal of immunising the telecom companies.
*****
Meanwhile, civil liberties groups and Democratic activists were openly furious at the party’s congressional leaders for giving ground to the Bush administration.

“Congress is moving so fast and so secretively that we only got a copy of this bill [yesterday],” Caroline Fredrickson, Washington director of the American civil liberties union, lamented in a letter to the group’s members.

“I can tell you it’s horrible. It contains vacuum cleaner-style surveillance that sweeps up the phone calls and emails of Americans. And it’s blatantly unconstitutional.”

Full story here…

Here is a very good article on the hypocrisy of John McCain on taxes… and where his tax cuts will really go.

Taxes, Integrity and Character
Posted on Jun 18, 2008

By Joe Conason

Once upon a time, there was a fiscally and socially responsible senator named John McCain. Despite his presidential ambitions, the Republican from Arizona spoke out against the economic royalism of his party’s leadership in the White House and Congress, and simply said no.

He rejected the Bush tax cuts in 2001 because they provided an unearned bonanza for America’s wealthiest citizens while giving a pittance to the middle class and nothing to the working poor. To him, as a long-standing enemy of waste and profligacy, these proposals were not only unfair but also unwise.

“I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief,” he said, joining courageously with Lincoln Chafee, then a senator from Rhode Island, as one of two Republicans who dared to cast such a crucial vote against president and party.

Now Chafee is no longer in the Senate, having lost reelection in 2006 after enduring a brutal primary challenge from the Republican right. And McCain, now driven by ambition rather than principle, has changed. He supports the tax cuts that his conscience once moved him to oppose—and indeed, he promises to deliver even more lucrative benefits to those who need relief least, at the expense of those who need it most.

Tax policy is rarely regarded as a character issue. It is possible to believe that rewarding the rich should be the main purpose of the tax code, and it is also possible to believe that taxation should advance rather than diminish equality—and it is possible for honorable people to argue either way. But in McCain’s case, the complete flip-flop and implausible explanation raise disturbing questions about his integrity. (That is particularly true of a candidate like McCain, who questioned the character of a primary opponent, Mitt Romney, for revamping his positions on abortion and other social issues.)

By the time McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 he had established a strong position against their regressive effects. That stance marked him as a true maverick in his own party and a straight talker who spoke for the national interest against his own personal interests. Running against George W. Bush in the 2000 GOP primary, he mocked the Texas governor’s “misplaced” bonanza for the affluent.

“Sixty percent of the benefits from his tax cuts go to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans—and that’s not the kind of tax relief that Americans need,” he said. Despite his wife’s inherited wealth, he criticized proposals to repeal the estate tax for the same reason, noting that such legislation “would provide massive benefits solely to the wealthiest and highest-income taxpayers in the country.”

As the chance to run for president again drew closer, however, McCain shifted toward conservative orthodoxy. In 2005 he voted for cuts in capital gains taxes that he had previously opposed, and in 2006 voted for essentially the same estate-tax repeal he had once denounced. And today his economic platform extends to the Bush tax cuts and makes them still more regressive—and more expensive.

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the McCain proposals would render almost one-quarter of their benefits to the top one-tenth of 1 percent of taxpayers. Those are households with annual incomes over $2.8 million. Families in the lower 60 percent of the income scale would receive 8 percent of the McCain plan’s benefits. This scheme would result in the loss of at least $4 trillion in revenue over the coming decade, as our physical infrastructure crumbles.

Even more troubling than those numbers, however, is the contorted rhetoric that the Republican nominee-to-be has used to justify his policy reversal. Over the past several months, you see, he has discovered that he never really opposed the Bush tax cuts as unfair. He only opposed them because there weren’t enough spending cuts to balance the revenue reductions.

At the same time, however, he now insists that cutting taxes actually increases federal revenues—the discredited supply-side mumbo-jumbo that he must endorse to win over his party base. But if reducing taxes actually raises revenues, then why is he so worried about spending cuts?

Intellectual honesty was the currency of the straight talker, yet he has squandered that great asset by pandering to the most irresponsible ideologues. How he can bear to do this to himself is a mystery.

I respect the fact that we need some type of FISA bill to deal with the thorny issue of surveillance. I can also appreciate the fact that we need more compromise and less polarization in Congress. Having said that, it is my view that granting immunity - even packeged as limited immunity - to the telecom companies for their role in illegally spying on American citizens, is reprehensible. Anyone who votes for this measure should be ashamed of themselves.

Once again, Congressional Dems forgot why the American people gave them control of the legislative branch in 2006. It would be nice if they would figure it out.

Deal Reached in Congress to Rewrite Rules on Wiretapping
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: June 20, 2008

WASHINGTON — After months of wrangling, Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress struck a deal on Thursday to overhaul the rules on the government’s wiretapping powers and provide what amounts to legal immunity to the phone companies that took part in President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The deal, expanding the government’s powers in some key respects, would allow intelligence officials to use broad warrants to eavesdrop on foreign targets and conduct emergency wiretaps without court orders on American targets for a week if it is determined important national security information would be lost otherwise. If approved, as appears likely, it would be the most significant revision of surveillance law in 30 years.

The agreement would settle one of the thorniest issues in dispute by providing immunity to the phone companies in the Sept. 11 program as long as a federal district court determines that they received legitimate requests from the government directing their participation in the warrantless wiretapping operation.

Full story here…

I knew that this presidential campaign was going to end up becoming the most racist in American history, but one company has already taken hate to a new low.

A company called Republicanmarket was selling its wares at the Texas Republican Convention. One of the items being sold was the following item:

Unfreaking-believable.

Needless to say, the geniuses at Republicanmarket have earned a “Moron of the Moment” Award. And beyond that, they have earned my eternal disdain for their ignorance.

Here is a great article from Truthdig that offers a truly realistic yet novel idea for pursuing answers to humanity’s greatest challenges. It is worth the read:

50 New ‘Manhattan Projects’
Posted on Jun 17, 2008
By Vladimir Keilis-Borok and Michael D. Intriligator

Imagine another major earthquake of the magnitude of the 1994 Northridge quake in Southern California, but this time centered in downtown Los Angeles or San Francisco or Tokyo. Or imagine a series of major terrorist attacks on New York or London, but this time using nuclear or biological weapons. Or imagine a repeat of the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 that killed more people than both world wars combined. Or imagine an international financial crisis, such as the 1997-98 one that spread from Thailand to many other nations, including the Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea and eventually even to Russia, but this time starting in the U.S. and spreading worldwide, repeating the experience of the Great Depression, which started in October 1929. Or imagine the accidental launching of a nuclear weapon or a massive release of radioactivity from the enormous nuclear wastes in both the U.S. and Russia.

These threats and others pose dangers as great as any we have ever faced, yet the truth is that we are not prepared to cope with any of them. Indeed, these acute or chronic dangers keep escalating despite the billions of dollars devoted to contain them using existing technologies.

Both history and common sense teach us that to overcome these threats requires innovative research at the frontier of basic science. Such research has again and again rescued humankind from immediate dangers through decisively better new technologies. We would like to propose a new approach to setting up such research that would address the major threats humanity faces.

The Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II provides a useful model of how we might now mobilize science to address these major global dangers. The military threats of a world war led to international cooperation of distinguished scientists to work in large-scale efforts to achieve scientific breakthroughs. Such international scientific cooperation has tremendous potential to develop creative ways of dealing with many of the challenges that we now face. There are also other instances of such international scientific cooperation, not only the building of the atomic bomb, which was a major technological accomplishment, regardless of whether one supports or deplores the atomic bomb itself. These include the development of hybrid strains of rice, wheat and corn in the agricultural experimental stations of the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico and the Philippines as part of the Green Revolution. Another example is the genetic/genomic revolution that led to new vaccines and other approaches to medical research as developed by private pharmaceutical houses using scientists worldwide. All three of these examples show the potential for such a massive and focused scientific approach that could be initiated and funded by a government, as in the case of the Manhattan Project; or by a foundation, as in the case of the Green Revolution; or by the private sector, as in the case of the genetic/genomic revolution.

With appropriate policies and actions, the scientific establishment can be organized to focus its resources on current global threats. To conduct such research, however, it would be necessary to mobilize our relevant intellectual resources and research facilities with the same determination that drove the wartime projects. A program of global scientific cooperation has tremendous potential to address many of the threats and challenges we face.

Now may be the right time to establish some 50 new “Manhattan Projects.” Each would focus on a specific problem of immense global significance and urgency, like those above and many others, relying on international and interdisciplinary teams of outstanding scientists. Such global scientific cooperation could lead to significant breakthroughs that no nation would be able to accomplish alone.

These new projects could target a wide range of issues using recent developments in science and technology. Some might focus on the dangers identified earlier, while others might focus on other global challenges. These may include:

• Developing alternatives to the global reliance on fossil fuels of oil, gas and coal as our major energy source, particularly renewable nonpolluting energy sources, including the development of new technologies for the incineration of industrial and municipal wastes that can, in effect, turn garbage into fuel, both eliminating solid wastes and generating electric power and thermal energy with no environmental damage.

• Addressing the issues of global warming and climate change.

• Creating new materials and recovering mineral and other resources of the continental shelf.

• Developing novel forms of transportation, such as using dirigibles to replace trucks.

• Addressing internal conflicts (civil wars), especially those in Africa, and global trade in both large and small arms. The latter might include a further development of the proposal of Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias that there be an embargo on arms shipments to sub-Saharan Africa to help reduce the conflicts in that region, including some of the largest wars being fought on the planet today .

• Treating global water resource supply and how to avoid possible future water wars.

• Addressing global hunger and malnutrition, including global food supplies and food security, implying the possibility or necessity of a second Green Revolution to develop new agricultural technologies and also providing micro nutrients to prevent disease and malnutrition.

• Dealing with the problem of failing or failed states, such as Somalia, Zimbabwe and Myanmar.

Innovative approaches in any of these areas would have enormous value for the entire global population.

But are the crises we face of sufficient enormousness to justify such large-scale efforts? Absolutely! Just consider the possibilities of future natural disasters, such as those mentioned earlier, that could have global repercussions. Natural disasters are, however, only one of many threats of similar if not larger scale. Never before has the world lived with such huge risks. The focus of cooperation in these various new projects should be on areas of transcendent importance for our very survival.

To establish these projects would require a bold new initiative. We suggest a simple, straightforward mechanism to help scientists develop such proposals and begin the process of initiating them. First, we would suggest inviting the submission of brief pre-proposals that are adequately based on previous studies. Second, we would recommend having them reviewed by a panel of outstanding scientists that would award grants to work out detailed proposals. Some deviation from the usual review process would probably be necessary. For example, recent achievements of the authors of proposals should be given a larger than usual relative weight; and the authors should be invited to discuss objections. This would help to ensure that the most outstanding ideas were not rejected because they were too unusual and had been rejected by the usual peer review process but still had great potential.

These proposals would be the final product of this venture. The history of basic research gives us assurance that some of them would be sufficiently compelling to be funded by an appropriate source. Depending on the nature of a proposal, this source could be a government agency, an international organization, a nongovernment organization, a consortium of private foundations, etc. This new approach would be a major success if even a few of the proposals generated their own support; that is, if the decision-makers concluded that they could not afford to reject them.

We have to realize that we are already in the midst of a new type of world war when considering the combined threats of natural and man-made disasters. What will be decisive in this war, however, are intellectual resources, with frontier research providing a springboard for new technologies. Through establishing new and cooperative global projects, we can tackle these threats. Overall, we are suggesting a way of mobilizing science in a new type of cooperative effort to deal with some of the gravest challenges facing humanity as a whole.

Vladimir Keilis-Borok is Distinguished Professor at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and the Department of Earth and Space Science, University of California, Los Angeles. Michael D. Intriligator is Professor of Economics, Political Science, and Public Policy, University of California, Los Angeles, and Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, Calif. They presented this paper at the New School of Athens/Global Governance Group conference in Athens on April 4, 2008. It is based on their article (in Russian) with colleagues from Russia, France and the U.S.: “Basic Science for the Survival of Humanity in the Third World War,” by Mikhail V. Alfimov, Robert Corell, Vincent Courtillot, Vladimir E. Fortov, Michael D. Intriligator and Vladimir Keilis-Borok, in Kommersant Daily, Nov. 29, 1997. The article above has been edited by Truthdig.

Not even close.

The Boston Celtics dismantled the Los Angeles Lakers tonight, resulting in one of the biggest blowouts in NBA Finals history, and the Celtics claimed their first championship in 22 years with a 131-92 victory in Game Six. That’s right… they won by 39 points.

In the process the Celtics claimed the greatest franchise turnaround in league history. The Celtics won only 24 games in 2006-2007. But the complete re-vamping of the roster in the off-season led to 66 wins this year, capped by the Celtics record 17th NBA championship.

The Celtics are back.

As a long-time Celtics fan, I remember the 1986 championship team. And I remember being at a party celebrating their win. We had a banner made up with the names of all the players and enjoyed the success of another championship season. But I will never forget looking at those names later and thinking that I just couldn’t see Len Bias’ name in with likes of Bird, McHale, and Parrish. It was inexplicable, but it was a real feeling. And shortly thereafter Len Bias died from a cocaine overdose. And the franchise hasn’t been the same since.

Until tonight.

Tonight a new breed of Celtics’ player, demonstrating the age old Celtics’ pride, rose to the challenge and destroyed their age-old nemesis. And thus are the names Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo, Kendrick Perkins, and Doc Rivers permanently etched into the Celtics’ storied history.

The Celtics win a championship. The Red Sox won the World Series. The Patriots won eighteen straight games before losing the Super Bowl. Hell, even the Bruins made the playoffs this year. Is there any doubt that Boston is now the center of the professional sports universe?

I am a happy sports fan.

C’s Claim 17th NBA Title in Record Fashion
How Sweet It Is

A trip back to Boston was just about all the Celtics needed to claim their 17th NBA Championship in franchise history.

In front of an electric home crowd, Kevin Garnett exploded for 26 points and 14 rebounds as the Celtics dismantled the Lakers in Game 6, 131-92, on Tuesday.

The Celtics captured the NBA Championship in record fashion. Boston’s 39-point win the most lopsided close-out triumph in Finals history, eclipsing the mark it set in 1965 also against the Lakers. Ray Allen also hit seven treys to set a new mark for most 3-pointers in a Finals series (22) and the Celtics’ 18 steals were the most in a Finals contest.

Paul Pierce scored 17 and Rajon Rondo filled up the stat sheet with 21 points, seven rebounds, eight assists and six steals as Boston captured its first title since 1986.

Box Score
Image source: NBA.com

Before you have a stroke, just watch this:

And here is some more video fun with Republicans:

Wow, this is just priceless.

Would someone please explain to these mindless drones that the war against terrorism can and MUST be fought by staying within the framework of the Constitution of the United States as well as international law? I don’t really care what techniques our enemies employ, there is absolutely no reason for us to sacrifice our principles for the sake of national security. Not only will those torture methods not improve our national security, but they undermine the principles of this great nation, and it is these principles that make us uniquely American.

There are two people worth noting as disgraceful, even if they only represent a larger problem within the military and intelligence communities. The first is CIA lawyer John Fredman, who “explained that whether harsh interrogation amounted to torture ‘is a matter of perception.’ The only sure test for torture is if the detainee died. “If the detainees dies, you’re doing it wrong,” Fredman said.

Really? Trial and error with death as the determiner of success? Are we talking about lab rats here? Hey Mr. Fredman, how about we practice some of these techniques on you? Better pray we don’t say “oops… I guess we got it wrong.”

The second is Pentagon general counsel William “Jim” Haynes, who “sought information as early as July 2002 regarding a military program that trained U.S. troops how to survive enemy interrogations and deny foes valuable intelligence.” According to the story, “Pentagon officials wanted to know if the program could be used to develop more effective interrogation methods at Guantanamo Bay… Haynes testified that he remembers receiving the information, but he did not recall requesting it specifically. In response, SERE officials provided Haynes’ office a list of tactics that included sensory deprivation, sleep disruption and stress positions.”

Thankfully there were enough people with conscience to object to such methods, even if not always for the right reasons. In November 2002, Col. John Ley of the Army’s Judge Advocate General office wrote, “Whatever interrogation techniques we adopt will eventually become public knowledge… If we mistreat detainees, we will quickly lose the (moral) high ground and public support will erode.”

Even though these are old deeds, their revelation requires a new Golden Momo presentation.

Probe: Pentagon sought harsh interrogations
Senate investigation finds techniques drew warnings from military lawyers
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks pursued abusive interrogation techniques once favored by such U.S. enemies as North Korea and Vietnam, despite stern warnings by several military lawyers that the methods were cruel and even illegal, according to a Senate investigation.

The findings, detailed in a hearing Tuesday, brought rebukes of the Pentagon effort from Democrats and Republicans alike.

“The guidance (administration lawyers) provided will go down in history as some of the most irresponsible and shortsighted legal analysis ever provided to our nation’s military and intelligence communities,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an Air Force Reserve colonel who teaches military law for the service.

Full story here…

Just a reminder to Senator McSame and all of his loyal followers…. here is more context on why it is important as to when we get our troops out of Iraq.

The number of American troops killed in Iraq stands at 4,099

The number of American troops wounded in Iraq stands at 29,978

The number if Iraqi civilians killed during the war is between 84,389 and 92,067

The number of Iraqi military killed during the war stands at 8,367

Private contractors killed in Iraq (from around the world) stands near 435

Journalists killed in Iraq (from around the world) stands near 152

The total number of deaths? A MINIMUM OF 97,442

This is an extremely conservative number - using the lowest estimates.

Other estimates place the number of Iraqis killed in excess of 600,000. This does not include the millions displaced by the war. What Saddam Hussein spent a career doing, George W. Bush has accomplished in five years. Have enough people died yet?

U.S. and International Casualty Source
Iraqi Casualty
Iraqi Military Casualty

“Baby Mama.”

Thats how Fox Noise decided to refer to Michelle Obama. Exactly WTF was this network thinking? Do they have no shame at all?

OK folks at Fox, it is very clear that you are not objective… it is very clear that you are Republican propaganda pushers… it is even clear that you will do anything to sabotage the presidential bid of Barack Obama. But do you think you could at least stay away from slurs that are considered blatantly racist in the black community?

Fox Noise… this Momo is yours.

US elections: Fox forced to apologise to Obama for third time in two weeks
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk,
Friday June 13 2008

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News television station has been forced to apologise to Barack Obama for the third time in a fortnight after screening a racially tinged caption referring to his wife Michelle as his “baby mama”.

Bill Shine, senior vice president of programming at Fox, said in a statement on Thursday that a producer “exercised poor judgment” during the segment.

The statement came as Obama established a website to help counter what he referred to as smears and rumours.

One of his first moves was to defend Michelle by debunking a persistent rumour that there is a video showing her speaking from the pulpit of the Trinity church in Chicago in which she allegedly refers to whites as “whitey”. He said she had never spoken at Trinity or used such a phrase.

Republicans see her as vulnerable because she is more inclined than Obama to make off-the-cuff remarks. Obama’s communications director, Robert Gibbs, rejected this in an interview with MSNBC yesterday, describing her as an “asset to the campaign”.

Fox, seen by liberals as a cheerleader for the Republican party, carried an interview this week with the conservative columnist Michelle Malkin about whether Michelle Obama was being unfairly targeted.

During the interview, a caption was flashed up saying: “Outraged liberals: Stop picking on Obama’s baby mama.” The term is slang for a woman who has a baby with a man who is neither her partner nor boyfriend.

The apology comes just over a week after one of Fox’s anchormen expressed regret for a comment on the night that Obama won the Democratic nomination. Obama, in a show of affection, lightly touched his fist against Michelle’s and the anchorwoman referred to it as a “terrorist fist jab”. Previously, a Fox contributor Liz Trotta had to apologise after making a joke about Obama being assassinated.

The trio of apologies is embarrassing for Fox. Murdoch last month praised Obama but stopped short of endorsing him, though his New York Post came out for Obama in January.

This is a bit shocking. I enjoyed him as a political analyst and thought he did a great job with Meet the Press. I was looking forward to his continuing analysis of the presidential campaign, and my condolences go out to his family and friends. He was a tremendous journalist and, by all accounts, an even better human being.

NBC’s Tim Russert dead at 58
Washington bureau chief, ‘Meet the Press’ moderator collapsed on job
NBC News and MSNBC

WASHINGTON - Tim Russert, NBC News’ Washington bureau chief and the moderator of “Meet the Press,” died Friday after a sudden heart attack at the bureau, NBC News said Friday. He was 58.

Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s “Meet the Press” program when he collapsed, the network said. He and his family had recently returned from Italy, where they celebrated the graduation of Russert’s son, Luke, from Boston College.

No further details were immediately available.

Russert was best known as host of “Meet the Press,” which he took over in December 1991. Now in its 60th year, “Meet the Press” is the longest-running program in the history of television.

But he was also a vice president of NBC News and head of its overall Washington operations, a nearly round-the-clock presence on NBC and MSNBC on election nights.

He was “one of the premier political journalists and analysts of his time,” Tom Brokaw, the former longtime anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” said in announcing Russert’s death. “This news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice.”

In 2008, Time Magazine named Russert him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Timothy John Russert Jr. was born in Buffalo, N.Y., on May 7, 1950. He was a graduate of Canisius High School, John Carroll University and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He was a member of the bar in New York and the District of Columbia.

Full story here…

Interesting article below. Al-Sadr is developing a new force to focus solely on fighting the U.S. occupation of Iraq, while at the same time Iraqi legislators are tired of the U.S. trying to force a permanent military presence on the Iraqi people. John McCain’s claim that the surge is a success will likely evaporate just in time for the campaign season to heat up. Yes, the surge has resulted in a decrease in violence, but not because the situation is under control. It’s because the militias have been largely abiding by the cease-fire for their own interests. Thus, I have a feeling it is going to be a bloody summer for U.S. forces in Iraq.

Anyone else want to subscribe to the notion that it’s “not too important” when we can withdraw from Iraq?

Al-Sadr: New force to fight U.S. in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is establishing a new fighting force to battle U.S.-led troops in Iraq, he said in a letter read in Iraqi mosques Friday.

Al-Sadr’s letter said that “the resistance will be exclusively conducted by only one group. This new group will be defined soon by me.”

Al-Sadr’s militia, the Mehdi Army, has a strong and ubiquitous presence in Shiite cities, towns and neighborhoods.

Sources familiar with al-Sadr said they believe he’s trying to embrace what the U.S. calls “Special Groups,” the Iranian-backed Shiite militants, including rogue Mehdi Army members who have been fighting American and Iraqi troops despite a cease-fire that the cleric declared in August.

The mainstream Mehdi Army has operated under the cease-fire, which dramatically reduced violence in Iraq. During that time, however, there has been fighting between U.S. and Iraqi troops and members of the Mehdi Army, with many of the battles this spring in the southern city of Basra and Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood.

Full story here…

Senator McCain wants context? Keith Olbermann is happy to provide it.

Thank you, Keith.

Part One:

Part Two:

Finally, a reasoned point of view from within ESPN. Now if it only came from some of their on-air personalities. This is a blistering commentary about the lack of objectivity shown by Sports Center in reporting on the Spygate controversy. Mark Schlereth and Cris Carter in particular get ripped for their unfounded dramatization of the events. But all of the people reporting on it found themselves under Schreiber’s microscope.

As well they should have.

I am re-posting the article in full, but the source can be found here. A good critique of the article can be found here.

‘SportsCenter Specials’ too often just hot air on hot topics
By Le Anne Schreiber
ESPN Ombudsman

The big news from ESPN last month was the announcement that the network would begin televising live “SportsCenters” from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., beginning in August. Ending the long practice of re-airing the previous night’s “SportsCenters” during those hours has many potential advantages, but the one that most intrigues me is the prospect of saying goodbye to the “SportsCenter Special” as we have known it.

With certain exemplary exceptions, such as the day-long special devoted to the release of the Mitchell Commission report last December, the “SportsCenter” Special has been an unwieldy, artificially bloated, overused mechanism for handling major and not-so-major breaking news. When criticized as such by me or others, the bottom-line defense has been that a live-if-overblown Special is better than re-airs.

With that rationale removed, ESPN will lose its best excuse for asking its on-air talent to fill five gallons of airtime with a half-pint of breaking news. The liabilities of that practice were evident most recently in the “SportCenter Special” of May 13, the day NFL commissioner Roger Goodell met with Matt Walsh, the former New England Patriots videographer who at long last was to tell what he knew about the Pats’ rule-breaking practice of spying on other teams.

The Spygate special, which began at 11 a.m., was handled by the “NFL Live” desk, anchored by Trey Wingo and flanked by NFL analysts Mark Schlereth and Cris Carter, both former players. Wingo’s quick-witted grasp of fast-breaking news served ESPN well during previous specials, but on this occasion, the news broke slowly. When the Goodell/Walsh meeting lasted two hours longer than expected, delaying Goodell’s planned news conference, there was a dangerous amount of air time to fill, live and unscripted.

Inevitably, talk among Wingo, Carter and Schlereth focused on the handiest new Spygate topic, the eight tapes from 2000-02 that Walsh had turned over to the NFL, and which the NFL had released to the media that morning while Goodell was still in his meeting. The question immediately put up for grabs was: What benefit might the Patriots have derived from these tapes?

As Wingo later told me, “We all, not only Mark and Cris but myself included, had a real visceral reaction to seeing those tapes for the first time, and their opinions were driven by their emotions. Before seeing the tapes, they weren’t sure what benefit they might have, but when they saw the way it matched up — with down and distance on the scoreboard, the coaches’ signals and the formation all matched up — they both were thinking, ‘Holy Cow!’”

Fueled by that emotion, Schlereth imagined how such tapes might affect the outcome if film was shot, edited and utilized “during the course of a game” — a practice Patriots coach Bill Belichick had consistently denied since last September, and for which there was no evidence. Never mind. The mere possibility that tapes could have been shot and used during a given game, with likely “amazing” effect on game outcome, got Schlereth and then Carter so riled up that pretty soon they had convinced themselves of the virtual certainty of their speculation.

“If it’s not helping you during the course of the game, then why are you videotaping teams [like the 2002 Chargers] that don’t play within your division?” Schlereth asked, before providing his own answer. “Because you are using it during the course of the game. You are making adjustments during halftime.”

Carter noted that the situation most likely to provide the opportunity for editing tapes for in-game use was the extra-long halftime of a Super Bowl.

“To think that a Super Bowl might be slanted in a team’s favor!” Carter fumed.

For an hour and 15 minutes preceding the Goodell news conference, this “SportsCenter Special” was a runaway train of inflammatory speculation that had Schlereth and Carter placing asterisks on all the Patriots’ Super Bowl wins under Belichick.

Several times, Wingo tried to remind viewers this was simply the analysts’ personal opinion, but Schlereth resisted the notion that his opinion was debatable. Nothing short of a flashing red “speculation” sign filling half the screen for a full 75 minutes would have had any chance of counteracting the effect Schlereth and Carter were having.

Where were the calm heads?

Even normally calm heads like John Clayton and Sal Paolantonio, ESPN reporters put on screen to comment from their remote locations, caught the fever. Clayton in Seattle offered the information that, with current technology, you could now burn CDs from videotapes at halftime and use them during the game.

“They obviously had some value within the game,” said Paolantonio, in Manhattan at the still-delayed news conference.

Wingo succumbed as well, echoing Carter’s Super Bowl theory: “We would be naive to think [Belichick] did not tape the Super Bowl.”

In the realm of speculation, however, it is an anchor’s job to remain neutral, even at the expense of seeming naive. When the Goodell news conference finally, mercifully started, the first question posed was whether Walsh had said anything about the Patriots’ use of tapes during games.

“He was very specific that the tape remained in his possession the entire game,” Goodell said, “and that they were not used during games.”

Never mind.

When the special continued after the news conference, Carter and Schlereth still spoke with impassioned conviction about the game-changing, Super Bowl-changing use of tapes during games. On the 4 p.m. “NFL Live” show, Schlereth’s last words on the subject were, “There is an asterisk by this football team for the rest of history.”

At 5:30 p.m. on “PTI,” hosts Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser had 90 seconds to sum up their reactions to the day’s Spygate news. Wilbon called it “the final and bogus chapter” of the “absurdly hyped” Spygate story. Kornheiser said, “This was nothing!”

Ninety minutes of one opinion, 90 seconds of another. That was the balance.

Whose job is it?

“That’s not on them,” Wingo said of Schlereth and Carter. “That’s on me. Their job is to give opinions, and if there is a perception by more than Pats fans that we went too far, then I didn’t do my job as well as I should have.”

I agree that you can’t blame Schlereth and Carter for offering their honest opinions, however impassioned and precipitate. And I don’t blame Wingo either. The fault lies with the misuse of the “SportsCenter Special” to fill a vacuum of airtime by pumping it with hot air on a hot topic.

When I described the Spygate special to Vince Doria, ESPN senior vice president and director of news, as a runaway train of one-sided speculation, he said, “I can’t tell you your characterization is incorrect. That is just the nature of us sometime, in an unscripted, we-don’t-know-how-substantive-the-news-is-going-to-be, we-don’t-know-when-the-news-is-coming situation. It is hard in our format to come in and out.”

In theory, live 6 a.m.-3 p.m. “SportsCenters” will allow ESPN the flexibility to find a better fit between the size of the news and the size of the special. But will ESPN take advantage of that?

“We’ll have to wait and see how it all plays out,” Doria said, “but it’s still going to be the same people planning these shows. Will we have the discipline? Should we have the discipline? You say, ‘Yes,’ but we are still driven very much by how we think the media works, which is that viewers come and go, and on a day major news is expected, they want to be able to come in at any time and see something about it.”

One of the people planning these shows is senior coordinating producer Glenn Jacobs, who will oversee the new block of live “SportsCenters.” If the morning “SportsCenters” had been live on May 13, would he have stayed with regular programming on other topics when he learned of the news conference delay?

“Yes,” Jacobs said.

Asked if he thought live “SportsCenters” would relieve anchors of responsibility for filling excessive airtime with analyst speculation, Wingo said, “I think that is one of the driving forces behind it.”

Shoot self in foot

The excess of that Spygate special reinforced a belief held by the legion of Patriots fans who have been writing me for months. As one fan politely put it, “Many in New England now view ESPN with a great deal of mistrust and feel that the organization embellished the scandal far beyond what was merited by the facts of the case.”

Inflaming that mistrust was an act of self-sabotage, because during the prolonged Matt Walsh chapter of Spygate, which began well before his name first surfaced in a New York Times story during Super Bowl week, ESPN had taken unusual steps not to go beyond what was merited by the facts of the case.

“We had been talking to Matt Walsh since September,” Doria said, “and we had heard about the Rams’ walk-through rumor, as had every other media outlet, but we didn’t air it or write it because Walsh wouldn’t confirm it and nobody could come up with a source that sounded solid.”

When The New York Times put out Matt Walsh’s name and when the Boston Herald followed by publishing the Rams’ walk-through rumor, ESPN reported those reports, but as far as ESPN knew, that did not suddenly make either Matt Walsh or the Rams’ rumor any more reliable. ESPN analysts and ESPN.com columnists were instructed not to speculate about what Matt Walsh knew or would say.

“What we told columnists,” said Patrick Stiegman, ESPN.com vice president and executive editor, “was, ‘Don’t jump to any conclusions that we cannot support with facts.’ We wanted to make sure all commentary was based on new information, not new speculation.”

And new information was hard to find.

“There was a lot of rumor and innuendo coming into us,” Stiegman said, “and we were filtering that through the enterprise unit, and through [reporter] Mike Fish, who spent a lot of time reporting on things that didn’t pan out. There wasn’t much new to report after the Super Bowl beyond the status of Matt Walsh’s negotiations with the league and whatever [Senator Arlen] Specter was saying.”

Stiegman said they were vigilant about a common temptation: “It’s a dangerous thing when reporters hear a lot of rumor but can’t report it, and then they try to hint at it. It’s the worst thing you can do.”

I think ESPN.com columnist Gregg Easterbrook succumbed to that temptation last fall, but during the Walsh chapter of Spygate, he and other columnists kept their rumor-based suspicions publicly in check. Many readers were outraged by the May 17 Easterbrook column that called for Belichick’s suspension. They found it a judgment unwarranted by the known facts. I found it more significant that this time Easterbrook did not go beyond the known facts in building his argument.

This time, reader and commentator shared a level playing field of fact, which makes for a fair fight of opinion. That is very different from a commentator’s adopting a there-are-things-I-know-that-you-don’t stance toward his audience. A commentator is most likely to adopt that stance when he is dealing with a source who adopts that stance, i.e., Matt Walsh.

Crossfire is not balance

Some readers and viewers were also bothered by the play given to an interview with Dolphins linebacker Joey Porter, a former Steeler who happens to share the Schlereth/Carter perspective.

“They [the Patriots] cheated, there should be an asterisk,” said Porter, whose remarks, made on the May 23 “NFL Live,” gained further mileage on “SportsCenter” and ESPN.com.

Why treat one player’s angry personal opinion on a league-wide matter as news? Why not solicit a wider range of opinion? Those were the questions those who wrote me wanted answered.

“On the day the tapes were released, we contacted every opposing team affected and not a single team would comment,” Stiegman said. “So one reason we ran the Porter story is that to this day, not a lot of people in the league — front office, coaches or players — will talk about it publicly.”

In that case, I think the blanket public silence at all levels of the league is more of a story than Joey Porter’s sounding off, and his remarks should have been placed explicitly in that context.

One final recommendation: When a studio crew like that of “Baseball Tonight” or “NFL Live” is given the responsibility of managing major breaking news, whether the coverage is called a “SportsCenter Special” or not, ESPN should make sure the anchor always has a reporter sitting at the desk, as well as insider analysts.

As Wingo said of the Spygate special, “I can’t just say to somebody, ‘OK, pretend you are on the other side.’”

No, he can’t, and in this case, the need was not to counter anti-Patriot opinion with pro-Patriot opinion, which would not be balance but crossfire. Balance required the presence of a reporter ready to uphold the importance of sticking to the known facts. An anchor cannot fill the hold-your-horses role by himself when he is charged with eliciting opinion for hours on end.

Knowing full well that the Repug slime machine is going to do whatever it takes to slander Barack Obama, including going after his wife Michelle, the Obama campaign has done what John Kerry’s campaign should have done… confront each lie and call it out publicly.

The Obama campaign website has a page dedicated to exposing the smears being propagated against Obama and his wife. It is worth a look and I am including a permanent link in the sidebar.

See Fight the Smears here.