ready for my close-up

a camera crew has been allowed "extraordinary access" to texas prosecutor ronnie earle for the past two years coinciding with his pursuit of majority leader tom delay. the filmmakers describe the forthcoming documentary "the big buy" as "a Texas noir political detective story that chronicles what some are calling a 'bloodless coup with corporate cash'" which "follows maverick Austin DA Ronnie Earle's investigation into what really happened when corporate money joined forces with relentless political ambitions to help swing the pivotal 2002 Texas elections, cementing Republican control from Austin to Washington DC."
no partisanship there right?....and it will be fair and balanced of course....

But DeLay did not cooperate with the filmmakers, and neither did a number of DeLay allies. Earle, on the other hand, did. "I had known about Ronnie Earle for a very long time," Schermbeck says. "I thought that would be an angle to approach the whole story, telling something about Tom DeLay, even though Tom DeLay wouldn't grant us an interview."

- speaking of people craving the limelight, the ny times judith miller was released from jail in order to testify. [interesting the NYT was scooped on the story...]
she's pulling out the martyr angle on tv right now at a not-so-impromptu press conference.

depends on your definition of 'socially responsible

the idea of socially responsible investing is noble. investing guru peter lynch famously established the 'invest in what you know' strategy. socially responsible investing takes a different 'invest in what you believe' approach. often SRI means avoiding 'sin stocks' (alcohol, tobacco, gambling) and/or violence-tinged stocks (guns, military, etc).

however, examination of some SRI portfolios reveal some interesting picks. for example, New Covenant Growth Fund holdings

The divestment list for the most recent fiscal year included 71 companies -- both domestic and foreign -- most of which were connected to either tobacco, alcohol, or gambling. Banned companies include Boeing (BA ), General Dynamics (GD ), Altria Group (MO ), Anheuser-Busch (BUD ), and Harrah's Entertainment (HET ).
[snip]
As of June 30, the fund's top 10 holdings were Citigroup (C ), 1.8%; Exxon Mobil (XOM ), 1.6%; Microsoft (MSFT ), 1.6%; General Electric (GE ), 1.5%; Bank of America (BAC ), 1.5%; Time Warner (TWX ), 1.4%; Intel (INTC ), 1.4%; Procter & Gamble (PG ), 1.2%; Pfizer (PFE ), 1.2%; and CIGNA (CI ), 1.1%.

- bank of america and citigroup were involved in alotta shenanigans in the 90's including enron and worldcom
- microsoft abused its monopoly status
- people always accuse oil companies of profiteering and/or gouging (do i really need a link for that?)
- i could go on, but my point is in the current business landscape of multinational, vertically and/or horizontally structured companies, i think its tough to live up to the 'socially-responsible' label

wash those hands

i'm a bit of a germ-o-phobe,
i have a thing about opening public restroom doors after washing my hands...
fearing others haven't washed their hands
so this isn't good news

Ninety percent of the women observed washed their hands, compared to 75 percent of men. By contrast, in an August 2005 telephone survey of 1,013 American adults also conducted by Harris Interactive®, 97 percent of women and 96 percent of men say they always or usually wash their hands after using a public restroom.

the particularly disturbing thing is that people tend to overstate good behavior and/or understate bad behavior in these types of surveys, so the situation could be even worse

media's 'fake but accurate' policy

the media seems to have latched onto a policy of 'fake but accurate' when they are caught making up stuff...

the newsweek guantanamo-quoran debacle comes to mind, but the apparent initiator of this ridiculous defense is dan rather. dan rather still maintains the fake memo-gate story to be accurate, and laments 'not being allowed' to continue his investigation.
yeah, him and OJ with their continued investigations...

close on his heels is the NY Times which falsely attributed a memo to Supreme Court Chief Justice to be John Roberts. the times issued a retraction, but tries to back-up the charges with other tidbits. [NYTimes bugmenot login]

mrs smith goes to washington

former playboy playmate of the year anna nicole smith's long-running case involving the estate of her late billionaire husband J. Howard Marshall will be heard before the US Supreme Court.

given its a ruling from the infamous 9th circuit being appealed to the supreme court, anna nicole may have a chance to be rolling in the money...

road to nowhere

slate's fred kaplan is nothing if not consistent....

after being consistently wrong about north korea--he just realized in september 2005 that kim jong-il may not be a good negotiating partner, then proclaimed a breakthrough just 24 hours before it (predictably) fell apart--now, he is practically gleeful at even the possibility of iraqis rejecting the recently drafted constitution....

that would be a disaster....i haven't seen such anti-democratic thinking since i stopped going to salon.com

don adams, get smart, RIP

one of my favorites, don adams of television spy spoof get smart fame passed away.
that show was consistently hilarious and never, in my opinion, 'jumped the shark'. adams also lent his distinct vocal talents to cartoon classics inspector gadget and tennessee tuxedo

red cross donations

an la times editorial gently questions the operations of the red cross which has received the bulk of hurrican relief donations.

The national Red Cross reports it spent $111 million last year on fundraising alone. And it's hard to escape the organization's warning of Armageddon if you don't call in a credit card number or send a check or donate blood (which it resells to the tune of more than $1.5 billion annually, part of its $3 billion in income).
[snip]
As Hurricane Rita dissipates, let me answer my unpopular question like this: Giving so high a percentage of all donations to one agency that defines itself only as a first-responder and not a rebuilder is not the wisest choice. Americans ought to give a much larger share of their generous charity to community foundations, grass-roots nonprofit groups based in the affected communities and a large number of international "brand name" relief agencies with decades of expertise in rebuilding communities after disasters.

[note: the editorial is written by the head of another relief agency who acknowledges with "But asking where all the privately collected money will go and how much Red Cross is billing FEMA and the affected states is a legitimate question — even if posed by the president of a small relief agency.]

the katrina gravy train

louisiana lawmakers begin with $40 billion as a "starting point"

"about 10 times the annual Corps budget for the entire nation, or 16 times the amount the Corps has said it would need to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane."
[snip]
"The overall Corps budget for fiscal 2005 was $4 billion, and Corps officials have estimated that they could upgrade the New Orleans flood protection system to defend against a Category 5 storm for about $2.5 billion."
[snip]
"This bill boggles the mind," said Steve Ellis, a water resources expert at Taxpayers for Common Sense. "Brazen doesn't begin to describe it. The Louisiana delegation is using Katrina as an excuse to resurrect a laundry list of pork projects."
[snip]
"But the list of potential projects also includes a 50-year-old plan for a $750 million lock for the New Orleans Industrial Canal, a project rated the fifth-worst Corps boondoggle in the country by an alliance of taxpayer advocates and environmentalists. It also includes an effort to deepen the Port of Iberia for oil and gas tankers, a project that the Corps had concluded would provide only 30 cents of economic benefit for each dollar expended by taxpayers."

meanwhile, predictably, the lawyers are salivating at the lawsuit opportunities

good news from the world

reminiscent of arthur chrenkoff's always compelling 'good news from iraq' series, michael barone catalogs some of the good things happening in the world.
...millions voting for the first time...robust global economy...you know all the things the media would never cover...

friends curse

conventional wisdom subscribes to the 'seinfeld curse', but friends may be generating similar bad mojo:

- joey's ratings underwhelmed, getting cut in half during the course of season 1
- jennifer aniston's private life became very public
- matthew perry keeps losing on celebrity poker showdown
- lisa kudrow's comeback is not coming back to the hbo schedule

addendum [sept 23rd]: friends-spinoff joey was beaten by chris rock's everybody hates chris...i can't remember a must see comedy getting beaten at its own game...

undermining minority conservatives

contrary to the fabled VRWC, there is a very public concerted effort by democrats/liberals to undermine minority conservatives.

apparently, two members of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee went on a fishing expedition and got Lt Governor--and potential MD senate candidate--Michael Steele's credit report. the liberal establishment has been after steele for awhile, including name-calling and worse

The Baltimore Sun's editorial-page endorsement of the losing Democratic ticket in the 2002 election addressed the presence of a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor on the ballot with an astonishingly dismissive wave: "Michael S. Steele brings little to the ticket but the color of his skin." A state legislator dubbed Steele an "Uncle Tom." Activists brandished Oreo cookies in an orchestrated stunt at a campaign debate. A Maryland congressman dropped the word "token" while talking about Steele.

unfortunately, the savaging of minority conservatives has been a long-standing tradition. clarence thomas has been eloquently dubbed 'uncle thomas'--uncle tom appears to be a favorite slur. colin powell received similar treatment from a calypso singer....
the list goes on...

euro tv

while the US public says its tiring of reality tv (i don't believe it given the continued success of survivor, amazing race, etc--it's bad reality tv people don't like), europeans seem to be eating it up alternative tv (that's not a fear factor reference).

- croatia will air a reality show where contestants voted out will literally be led to the slaughter....the contestants are sheep...
- the dutch appear to be leaders with a sperm donor show and a very pregnant contestant
- now, a dutch talk show is one-upping scared straight, by shooting up heroin to prove to kids the dangers of drug use.

able danger

initially, i sort of downplayed 'able danger' revelations as flawed government 'business as usual'/'if only they listened to me', but the active suppression by the 9/11 commission raised the proverbial red flags.

now, the pentagon prevented 'able danger' testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

it's to the point that the fact that so many people don't want it heard leads me to believe that it must be heard.

intergalactic kyoto protocol needed

i thought only humans caused global warming...

scientists have observed that mars appears to be getting warmer

The images, documenting changes from 1999 to 2005, suggest the climate on Mars is presently warmer, and perhaps getting warmer still, than it was several decades or centuries ago.... [Michael Malin, principal investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera] said scientists had no explanation yet as to why Mars might be warming.

those martians need to sign on to kyoto protocol.
the enviros need to get their act together and start blaming people...

opera unleashed

'alternative' browser opera goes ad-free.

while less than 5% of opera's user base paid-up for the previously ad-free version, that still comprised one-third of the company's revenues. the hope is that the move will significantly increase market share and associated revenue streams.

while i'm a dedicated mozilla user, i'll give opera a chance given its extensive and innovate feature set

slamming ebay

my thoughts on ebay and its convenient 'see no evil'-as-long-as-it-makes-money policies are on the record... but bill robinson over at the register goes much further

eBay’s not a bad little business. I say with tongue planted firmly in cheek while holding out the distinct possibility that all is not well there. Being a convicted Contrarian, I don't subscribe to conventional wisdom of any kind.
[snip]
After all, we have witnessed the glowing press and corporate admiration for Enron as near-to-death as a few weeks, days even. And what of Worldcom? And Global Crossing? These massive ethical implosions were shocking with their speed of delivery and the Tech sector has worse ethics, in my opinion, than the rest of the corporate world. No, I could well be wrong. But I certainly have the right to say what I think. Fact is, nobody would bat an eyelash if these web giants crashed and burned So, I repeat: eBay's not a bad little business - but it is unproven, we don't know what the hell's going on behind the scenes. The fact that it has a ridiculously high market cap or stock price doesn't mean it'll have the longevity of a General Electric or even Microsoft.

robinson continues, questioning the wisdom of eBay's planned purchase of skype

In my conversations with strutting Skype VCs a few years ago, they admitted the lack of a serious revenue model and when pressed promised that they had one in the works. Just in the works? Well actually they promised, there is one already devised and ready to roll-out. So how does it work then? They refused to elaborate.
In the ensuing two years, I’ve failed to see any genuine - much less successful - revenue models for Skype to make bona fide cash flow a reality; so much for candor. $60 million in revenues an absurdly low some and pretty paltry when your price tag is upwards of $2.3 billion. Now this becomes eBay’s big, expensive problem.

robinson concludes, perhaps overreaching

If this transaction goes bad in a big way, as I believe it will, then look for Whitman to be out on her ear faster than “HP Carly.” AOL Time-Warner will look like a good probability merger by comparison.
Regrettably, this acquisition looks to be the concrete confirmation that in Technology, at least for the time being, the inmates are still in charge of the asylum.

few transactions will rival the idiocy of aol-time warner, but another gold rush mentality appears to have arisen given the success of google.

good international news

- the afghan parliamentary elections don't appear to have received the media coverage adequate to importance. afghan president Hamid Karzai sums up

"We are making history. It's the day of self-determination for the Afghan people. After 30 years of wars, interventions, occupations and misery, today Afghanistan is moving forward, making an economy, making political institutions."

- meanwhile, as for the north korea nuke breakthrough [bugmenot login], i'm not optimistic....given the shaky history

rediscovery of poor

the washington post's media critic howard kurtz examines the sudden coverage the race and/or poverty issue in major metropolitan newspapers during the aftermath of hurricane katrina.

while the the nytimes and kurtz's own washington post featured articles about a 're-discovery', la times columnist rosa brooks remarked

"Apparently none of these ace reporters has ever set foot in Washington's Anacostia district, or South Central Los Angeles, or the trailer parks of rural Arkansas"

i think politicians and news media avoid the topic since its depressing and/or not comfortable for audiences to watch. as evidenced by katrina coverage, its only mentioned when it's convenient at that particular moment.

kurtz ends with a likely outcome

As the country begins the long slog of rebuilding New Orleans, with many of its poor scattered in other states, how long before the press moves on to more scintillating subjects?

an opportunity missed

i'm surprised no one has linked president bush, republicans and/or america for this

don't laugh...
the indian ocean tsunami and hurricane katrina have already generated such treatment.

hold it on the self-praise

during the immediate aftermath of hurricane katrina, the news media appeared very happy with its own performance.
a bit more time allows for some perspective on the some of the 'uncritical' reportage

Before self-appointing itself the role of discovering all the failures of the Bush administration in the ongoing national disaster, perhaps they should try to account for how they could have spent so much time informing the American people of a catastrophic loss of life that never occurred. Much of the public perception of governmental incompetence and failure in the relief effort was based on their vastly exaggerated projected body count.
[snip]
Tales of anarchy at the Superdome with large numbers of rapes and murders did not turn out to be true (though they have done enormous damage to our international reputation), as police reported no claims of rapes and few weapons were found.

aside from the high death toll predictions which fortunately have not proven true, the early characterization of new orleans as 'toxic' proved to be an exaggeration according to tests

Despite descriptions of the floodwater as a "toxic soup" and a "witch's brew" of contaminants, the preliminary tests reveal it contains little that is different from what has been seen after past floods in other cities and here.

the news media's tendency towards the sensational--specifically the sensational and dire--must be taken into account in other events such as the iraq war

too much reality

despite the fact that the viewing public may be tiring of the onslaught of reality television, the execs at TVLand are giving Mr T a shot at his own brand of reality.

the show will be called, of course, "Pity the Fool", with Mr T serving as "motivational guru" looking to improve people's lives.
how that qualifies as 'reality'...i'm not exactly sure...

the road to web irrelevancy

one of the easiest ways to become irrelevant on the web is to change a formerly free service to a subscription.

on monday, the nytimes will wall off its opinion section through its TimesSelect subscription program. as it is, the times already had the mandatory registration (which could be circumvented via the invaluable bugmenot)

i understand the soundness of move on a financial basis, but it may hurt the nytimes profile on the model. if this subsciption program works, other media companies (particularly news media) could follow this model.

now you've gone and done it

a blogger apparently part of the VRWC, let the republican talking points memo everyone gets out of the bag

techies really are innovative

oracle head honcho came up with a "very innovative settlement by donating $100 million to charity to make up for nearly $1 billion in alleged insider trading.... don't worry the lawyers made $22.5 million.

meanwhile, cisco is trying to wriggle outta accounting rules which would expense those options cisco executive like to give themselves. the sec rejected the plan despite the new supposedly business-friendly chair christopher cox.

sandy burglar fined

after removing documents from the national archives and destroying them, sandy berger was fined $50,000.[bugmenot login] U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson went above and beyond the recommended $10k fine since "The court finds the fine is inadequate because it doesn't reflect the seriousness of the offense."

i believe some jail time should have been involved since even berger admits

"I let considerations of personal convenience override clear rules of handling classified material," Berger said. "I believe this lapse, serious as it is, does not reflect the character of myself."
"In this case, I failed. I will not again," he said.

that he should have known better.

view polls with healthy skepticism

the pew research center released the findings of a poll regarding hurricane katrina. i quibble with the nature of the poll (glancing reference to state and local governments), but i've already voiced my general displeasure about polls before.

my skepticism of this poll stems from the sampling which yielded results outta whack with reality. despite the fact that fox news ratings have been ~30%-40% higher than cnn's, 31% in pew's sample cite cnn as the main source of info about katrina--~40% more than the 22% fox news garners.

pew would have to have quite a narrow, targeted sample to yield such results.
and surprise! surprise! suprise! it does....

examination of the the demographic breakdown reveals 40% more self-identified democrats than republicans despite the fact that national party registration is essentially split between republicans, democrats and independents.

when a poll oversamples those that have less than positive feelings for bush, it may make for good headlines, but not necessarily relevant results.

update ~530pm: media bistro's always good tvnewser tallies recent cable news ratings

tone deaf fundraising

the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee used the aftermath of katrina to raise funds for democratic candidates.

When recipients clicked on a link to the petition, the top center of the screen _ above the call to "Fire the FEMA director" _ had asked for a donation to the DSCC.

after they were caught, the DSCC took the page down

what happened to espn

when i was in college, sportscenter was a staple of daily life. there was a communal nature to sitting around and watching it with your buddies.

once the catchphrases and personalities became overemphasized at the same time as actual sports highlights became marginalized, i turned away. i now find myself going to espnews and more often the web for my sports fix.

a sports writer at cornell's student paper chronicles his disenchantment with espn:

- "Of late, I find myself doing double takes to make sure I’m watching ESPN and not E!SPN."
- "ESPN has abandoned its friends — the fans."

i especially like the statistical breakdown of a typical sportscenter

- "You took the best years of my life, Stuart Scott, and I want them back."

franken proves to be a 'lying liar'

michelle malkin has been all over this 'air america taking money from a kid's charity, then not paying it back...all while the MSM doesn't cover it at all' ruckus (that's my name for it at least).
al franken, who has been denying any knowledge, signed a legal document detailing the whole thing. he's taking the, as michelle malkin puts it, "the other guys are crooks, I'm just an idiot" defense.

proactive mayor nagin

this just in, mayor ray nagin authorized a forced evacuation of new orleans.
only 10+ days / 300 hours late i suppose.
the most disturbing thing is it's still not that mandatory.

While acknowledging the declaration, police Capt. Marlon Defillo said late Tuesday that forced removal of citizens had not yet begun. He said that officers who were visiting homes were still reminding people that police may not be able to rescue them if they stay.
"That would be a P.R. nightmare for us," Defillo said of any forced evacuations. "That's an absolute last resort." [emphasis added]

one would hope saving lives would outweigh "a P.R. nightmare"

self congratulations

after several months of self-criticism,
the news media appears to be very satisfied with itself thanks to its katrina coverage

expecting more

columnist mark steyn apologizes...for predicting, a week ago, a noble response to hurricane katrina:

What the hell was I thinking? I should be fired for that. Well, someone should be fired. I say that in the spirit of the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, the Anti-Giuliani, a Mayor Culpa who always knows where to point the finger.

he didn't expect significant segments of the NO police to go awol [bugmenot login]let alone join in the looting. or the ineffectual pre-planning

Consider the signature image of the flood: an aerial shot of 255 school buses neatly parked at one city lot, their fuel tanks leaking gasoline into the urban lake. An enterprising blogger, Bryan Preston, worked out that each bus had 66 seats, which meant that the vehicles at just that one lot could have ferried out 16,830 people. Instead of entrusting its most vulnerable citizens to the gang-infested faecal hell of the Superdome, New Orleans had more than enough municipal transport on hand to have got almost everyone out in a couple of runs last Sunday.
Why didn't they? Well, the mayor didn't give the order. OK, but how about school board officials, or the fellows with the public schools transportation department, or the guy who runs that motor pool, or the individual bus drivers? If it ever occurred to any of them that these were potentially useful evacuation assets, they kept it to themselves.
So the first school bus to escape New Orleans and make it to safety in Texas was one that had been abandoned on a city street. A party of sodden citizens, ranging from the elderly to an eight-day-old baby, were desperate to get out, hopped aboard and got teenager Jabbor Gibson to drive them 13 hours non-stop to Houston. He'd never driven a bus before, and the authorities back in New Orleans may yet prosecute him. For rescuing people without a permit?

the school bus issue represents all the lost opportunities.

sometimes 'payback' is good

with the single largest pledge of international aid i have heard of yet, kuwait offers $500 million in hurricane relief [bugmenot login]:

"It's our duty as Kuwaitis to stand by our friends to lighten the humanitarian misery and as a payback for the many situations during which Washington helped us through the significant relations between the two friendly countries"

that 'no blood for oil' crowd didn't see the karmic value of stopping saddam's violation on the sovereignty of its neighbor.

lost bin laden opportunities

excuse me, mr president
you know the guy who declared war on the united states...
the guy linked to some attacks on US interests...
the guy we've been warning you about...
we have him on video, what do you wanna do about it?

...apparently nothing

trust and microsoft, oxymoron

despite promises and being a charter member of the trusted computing group, microsoft resists trusted computing standards in the forthcoming version of windows, vista

poor headline choice

eweek (link found through the register) should be more careful with headlines:

"T-Mobile Opens Wireless Floodgates in New Orleans"