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Pause

Tied up at National Assoc of Broadcasters annual meet in Las Vegas.

Back mid-week.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 1:11 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

42 Responses to “Pause”

Randy Paul Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 6:14 am
I’ve attended that convention. The one thing that I learned there is that broadcasters are generally conservative, a fact that got reflected at the state level as well.
Jim R Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 7:22 am
President Obama completes another popularity tour of the world.

It is difficult for any American to win the friendship of folks like Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez, but with enough listening to the hurt the Evil Imperialists have inflicted on Communism, followed by cool hand clasps and broad smiles, followed by sincere apologies for his misguided country, it was a formula hard to resist and sure to win-over these hurt and sensitive men of the people.

Gosh, even a gift from one of them. A refresher for the President on the excesses his country used to defeat their Communism. A reference for future meetings, and sure to illicit more detailed apologies .
Randy Paul Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 8:11 am
More half-truths from JR. Keep thinking that glass is half-empty; it was completely empty from noon on 1/20/01 to noon on 1/20/09.
Woody Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 9:37 am
So, what’s the problem?

According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.

It must have worked or they wouldn’t have kept doing it.
Woody Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Marc, what do you expect to take back from this conference, and what sessions will you be attending?

Will this make for any changes on your Dissonance video blogs? Are you considering ads for cars and gynecological services on the videos? Does the fact that the conference is in Las Vegas have anything to do with your decision to attend?

Are you also attending to spite Obama< for his call to not take trips to Las Vegas? (“You can’t get corporate jets, you can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer’s dime.”)

The NAB membership site starts by saying, “NAB exists to proactively and vigilantly advance the rights and interests of free, over-the-air radio and television broadcasters.” What is the association doing to fight the Democratic efforts to reinstate the “Fariness Doctrine” to kill conservative talk radio? You need Rush Limbaugh to stay on the air.

These are important questions.
jim hitchcock Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Marc, say hello to Vin Scully for me. Please.
Woody Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 9:05 am
Obama and broadcasting freedom….

Pentagon official blames U.S. for al-Qaida attacks
Worked for George Soros, argued for government control of media

…Meet Rosa Brooks, the Obama administration’s new adviser to Michelle Fluornoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, a position described as one of the most influential in the Pentagon.

…Indeed, Brook’s recent L.A. Times columns evidence views some may find concerning.

…In 2007, she labeled al-Qaida as “little more than an obscure group of extremist thugs….

…Last week, FoxNews.com highlighted Brook’s departing column in which she argued for more “direct government support for public media” and government licensing of the news.
Joseph Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 9:25 am
what is said: “argued for more ‘direct government support for public media’”

what a right-wing extremist hears: “argued for government control of media”

Sad to be on the losing side, ain’t it? Enjoy your increasing irrelevance and fringe-dwelling!

Oh, and in other news, looks like one of your nutty buddy’s flame-throwing parties didn’t turn out so well.
Woody Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 9:36 am
Joseph, if you believe that government “support” doesn’t lead to government control, then ask the former CEO of General Motors about his experience. Once a media outlet accepts government money, it loses its independence.

Look at what Rosa Brooks wrote in her farewll article: “…Like everyone else whose livelihood is linked to the newspaper industry, I’ve been watching, appalled, as newspapers continue their death spiral, with dwindling circulations and thousands of layoffs. …How will we know if government officials have made terrible mistakes, as even the best will sometimes do? How will we know if government officials have told us terrible lies, as the worst have sometimes done?”

Then…“It’s time for a government bailout of journalism.” …We can bail out journalism, using tax dollars and granting licenses….

Only a liberal could come up with that.
Joseph Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 12:11 pm
“Once a media outlet accepts government money, it loses its independence.”

Well, if you buy that, here’s a nugget for you to gnaw your maw on:

“Once a university accepts corporate money, it loses its independence.”

Ruminate, rinse, repeat.
Woody Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Joseph, are you real? Do you really compare the so-called independence of a college with the First Amendment?

Most colleges are not independent, especially of government, liberal foundations, churches, and other major donors. But, there are enough colleges around that people can have choices and not get the same tainted education that’s found at UC – Berkeley unless they want it. There remains a Univ. of Notre Dame where students can even oppose abortion.

However, when Obama has his way, corporate donations to unversities won’t be deductible, so you might rejoice in that. Then the taxpayers can make up the difference from those evil corporations. Yea! Tax the rich! Tax corporations!

Here’s the education that you can expect from government controlled schools:

Lindsey Pendergrass trusts the government more than she trusts the press. That’s why she doesn’t believe that newspapers should be allowed to publish everything without government approval.

“The press just wants to print something that people will buy,” she says. “The government has to be true to the public.”

The Gresham High freshman is not uncommon in her view of the roles of the press and the government. About half the students who responded to a national survey about the First Amendment disagreed that newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of a story. When The Oregonian mounted an informal survey of readers, about one-third of students disagreed with full freedom of the press — twice the rate of adult readers.

…The national study sponsored by the Knight Foundation also found that a key to students’ understanding and appreciating the First Amendment is whether they are exposed to media classes or newspaper experiences.

Were you in that survey on Lindsey’s side? Good luck with the “Freedom of Information Act” once the government controls what the press prints. Even conservatives, knowing the abuses of liberal media, still defend its independence from government control. But, people like you elected Obama, so don’t be surprised when he bails out newspapers…with strings attached.

After government control of banks and talk radio comes government control of the internet and newspapers. Something tells me that similar programs were used in Russia and China. How did they come out?

Don’t you just love the state controlling our lives? It takes away all the decisions and makes everyone, except those in charge, equal.
Joseph Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 2:16 pm
“Do you really compare the so-called independence of a college with the First Amendment? ”

If you are unable to understand the crucial importance of independent research to a free society then I’m afraid I can’t help you.

“Then the taxpayers can make up the difference from those evil corporations.”

We already do. Hence the bailout of the banks. But you seem to be a rather gullible fellow who apparently believes this is a good thing.

“the abuses of liberal media”

If I scan the radio dial (which I can happily avoid, thanks to podcasts), it is impossible to avoid conservative talk radio. I think everyone but right-wing extremists realize that conservative viewpoints are easily found.

“After government control of banks and talk radio comes government control of the internet and newspapers”

My, so you’re an advocate of net neutrality? That’s wonderful news! We’re definitely on the same page there, comrade!

“Don’t you just love the state controlling our lives?”

Here’s the difference between you and me, kiddo: I don’t want government or corporations controlling my life. You, however, do indeed want government controlling our lives in selective ways that you favor: womb control, control of sexual behavior, arbitrary and/or unjustified wars, and unfettered corporate power. You just couch in a lot of confused, easily flustered, right wing extremist language.
Woody Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Joseph, your attempt at logic and rebuttal is full of holes.
reg Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 6:01 pm
“It must have worked or they wouldn’t have kept doing it.”

Same theory Woody (Homus Impotentus, despite the nickname) has in persisting to post comments here – and almost as painful…
qdpsteve Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Hey all. Thought you all would enjoy (for lack of a better term) the following, a recap of John Yoo’s appearance and “torture debate” at Orange County’s Chapman College:

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/a-clockwork-orange/john-yoo-stars-in-a-most-civil/
reg Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Sick shit…

http://www.beautifulhorizons.net/weblog/2009/04/omfg.html
reg Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Here’s something for Homo E-Wrecktus (aka “Woody”) to suck on:

http://www.liberty.edu/index.cfm?PID=294
Woody Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 7:43 pm
reg (homo defendus) in referencing his post: Sick shit…

Yet, you continue to comment and post.
reg Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Blithering incoherence is actually sort of a step up for you…
Anna Churchill Says:
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:46 am
Reg, your blog post with quotes about Rumsfeld and Cheney trying to get blood out of a turnip is bone chilling.

I haven’t been following the reveals on this. But it seems that that little detail of the two ring leaders being water boarded umpteen times not to necessarily find out what they were up to and if any more operations were to be mounted but to try to substantiate R and C’s warmongering so they could make all that money for everybody.

What I have seen in the internet news bytes is dumb and dumber claim they got intel about the scope of their operations.

Wouldn’t it be fun to imagine the two of them consigned to a Sartrian kind of No Exit endlessly being in one of those no gravity rides they nick name the Vomit Comet– just have them tossing (little pun) back and forth at that critical velocity–in perpetuity.
Woody Says:
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:44 am
Kerry aims to rescue newspapers

Troubled by the possible shuttering of his hometown paper, Sen. John Kerry reached out to the Boston Globe on Tuesday, then called for Senate hearings to address the woes of the nation’s print media.

“America’s newspapers are struggling to survive, and while there will be serious consequences in terms of the lives and financial security of the employees involved, including hundreds at the Globe, there will also be serious consequences for our democracy where diversity of opinion and strong debate are paramount,” Mr. Kerry said.

Mr. Kerry, who has called for Senate hearings on “the future of journalism” to begin May 6, also cited the negative influence of “agenda-driven reporting” and media conglomerates.

No strings attached, I bet. Only, taxpayer money going to prop up newspapers so that they can continue support of Democrats and hearings on conservative talk radio to put back the Fairness Doctrine.

Yet, you folks have no problem with government control of the media.
Woody Says:
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:54 am
‘Gay Elephant’…. That elephant is going to hell.
Woody Says:
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:06 am
For Marc: NASA Landsat 5 – 25 Years of Growth in Las Vegas
reg Says:
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
For laughs – if you can laugh at the same time you are confronted with the fact that there are other people out there as dumb and deranged as Woody – check this FOX NATION web page out. The rightwing truly has descended in to madness…and good riddance.

http://www.thefoxnation.com/business/2009/04/22/fannie-mac-executives-death-was-it-suicide
reg Says:
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Glenn Beck gets a Woody !!!!

http://tinyurl.com/cqbt7e
Woody Says:
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Happy Earth Day!

- – -

On the question of “Was it suicide,” I firmly believe that the death of the FNMA executive was as much a suicide as was Vince Foster’s death. Don’t you? However, I feel badly for his family unlike the commenter above who uses his death for mockery.

- – -

Regarding Glenn Beck, reg, you seem excited to refer to him as a homo. Does it make you feel less on the outside?

- – -

Miss California Could Sue for Discrimination, Legal Analyst Says

Leave it up to that queer to screw up the Miss USA competiton.

- – -

Hypocrasy Of Obama Continues: Violated Geneva Convention
Woody Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:03 am
How reg and Anna C. celebrated Earth Day, sharing a common language with nature’s creations: LINK

They are like Doctor Dolittle with animals of the wild.
Jim R Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:52 am
“Keep thinking that glass is half-empty; it was completely empty from noon on 1/20/01 to noon on 1/20/09.”

Here’s raising a purple figure to you Randy. Let’s view the history of Republican Regimes to Democratic ones once a gain, shall we.

Carter’s peace through weakness policy produced a nuclear Iran, Reagan’s peace through strength produced a free Eastern Europe. Bush I’s strength policy poduced a free Kuwait, Clinton’s weakness produced 9/11. Bush II’s strength produced a free Iraq, and Obama’s weakness will produced another kick-the-can-down-the-road disaster.

A neutered, neutralized, and numbed CIA under attack by its own Commander in Chief practically guarantees a future disaster, as it did for the FBI pre 9/11. History unlearned is history repeated.
Jim R Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:53 am
‘figure’ is ‘finger’ in first sentence.
.
Randy Paul Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 am
Carter’s peace through weakness policy produced a nuclear Iran

Really? Iran had nuclear weapon capacities in the 1970′s?

Reagan’s peace through strength produced a free Eastern Europe

Of course dissent in Romania, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia had nothing to do with it.

Funny how you fail to mention that Reagan actually sold weapons to iran – in violation of the law.

Bush I’s strength policy poduced a free Kuwait

Women weren’t granted suffrage there until May 2005. Bush, I might add, doubled the Commodity Credits Corporation credits to Saddam to $1,000,000,000, before the invasion, doubling the figure from Reagan. Reagan, by the way, was Saddam’s best friend in the West. He helped Saddam build his military – even while Saddam was gassing the Kurds..

Clinton’s weakness produced 9/11.

As opposed to Bush’s ignoring his 8/6/01 PDB and the advice Richard Clarke and Sandy Berger gave him?:

Sometimes history is made by the force of arms on battlefields, sometimes by the fall of an exhausted empire. But often when historians set about figuring why a nation took one course rather than another, they are most interested in who said what to whom at a meeting far from the public eye whose true significance may have been missed even by those who took part in it.

One such meeting took place in the White House situation room during the first week of January 2001. The session was part of a program designed by Bill Clinton’s National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, who wanted the transition between the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to run as smoothly as possible. With some bitterness, Berger remembered how little he and his colleagues had been helped by the first Bush Administration in 1992-93. Eager to avoid a repeat of that experience, he had set up a series of 10 briefings by his team for his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and her deputy, Stephen Hadley.

Berger attended only one of the briefings—the session that dealt with the threat posed to the U.S. by international terrorism, and especially by al-Qaeda. “I’m coming to this briefing,” he says he told Rice, “to underscore how important I think this subject is.” Later, alone in his office with Rice, Berger says he told her, “I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.”

The terrorism briefing was delivered by Richard Clarke, a career bureaucrat who had served in the first Bush Administration and risen during the Clinton years to become the White House’s point man on terrorism. As chair of the interagency Counter-Terrorism Security Group (CSG), Clarke was known as a bit of an obsessive—just the sort of person you want in a job of that kind. Since the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000—an attack that left 17 Americans dead—he had been working on an aggressive plan to take the fight to al-Qaeda. The result was a strategy paper that he had presented to Berger and the other national security “principals” on Dec. 20. But Berger and the principals decided to shelve the plan and let the next Administration take it up. With less than a month left in office, they did not think it appropriate to launch a major initiative against Osama bin Laden. “We would be handing [the Bush Administration] a war when they took office on Jan. 20,” says a former senior Clinton aide. “That wasn’t going to happen.” Now it was up to Rice’s team to consider what Clarke had put together.

So, Jim, tell us what the Bush adminsitration did to respond to tell Al Qaeda from 1/20/01 to 9/10/01. Clear brush?

Your hagiography would be laughable if it wasn’t so full of crap.
Anna Churchill Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:55 am
C’mon, Jim R. Answer Randy Paul.

You and Woody NEVER directly address a rebuttal to your cracked generalizations that can’t stand up to one iota of clarification.

That is what makes fringe fucks like the two of you just noise.
Woody Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:59 am
Randy: …what the Bush adminsitration did to respond to tell Al Qaeda from 1/20/01 to 9/10/01?

Randy, the so-called advice from Clinton is quite overstated and even laughable. What did Clinton do, except put a wall between the CIA and FBI to protect a political appointee?

Being understated are the decisions of Clinton to not attack al-Qaeda unless he needed to wag the tale to cover up a crime.

You can thank Sandy Berger for some of the information gaps, as he sneaked classified documents regarding Clinton and 9-11 out of the Archives on more than one occassion and destroyed them, resulting in the 9-11 Commission being kept from the complete truth in preparation of another attack. I guess it was that or end up like Vince Foster.

Also, in fairness to Bush, he got a late start on putting together his staff and getting the team up to speed, thanks to Al Gore delaying the transition in an attempt to steal the election. Consider how far Obama is behind in staffing and orientation at this point.

Frankly, the 9-11 attack was so bizarre, I don’t know that anyone could have anticipated it before the fact, other than all the Monday-morning-quarterbacks.

What worries me isn’t who to blame for 9-11 but who can we count on to stop the next terrorist attack, now that Obama is tearing apart the CIA and crippling intelligence gathering.
Randy Paul Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 11:52 am
Please: more facts and less gas, Woodrow.
Woody Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Randy, there is nothing in my comment that isn’t common knowledge. If there is anything that you don’t understand, then it is easily researched — and, from source more reliable than TIME magazine.

Once again, you refuse to discuss something and use the excuse that a point is not sufficiently documented to your satisfaction.
Woody Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
How objective and reliable is TIME?

OBAMA GRACES COVER OF ‘TIME’ [FOR 13TH TIME IN PAST YEAR]…
Randy Paul Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Once again, you refuse to discuss something and use the excuse that a point is not sufficiently documented to your satisfaction.

All you do is engage in vague, unsourced generalities and elide important information such as Richard Clarke”s position on Al Qaeda.

You’re not a serious man, but a buffoon.
Woody Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Sorry, Randy. The more knowledgeable of us thought that we had put Richard Clarke’s credibility to rest in the past.

While Clarke claims that he is “an independent” not driven by partisan motives, it’s hard not to read some passages in his book as anything but shrill broadsides.

Lies, damn lies, Albright and Clarke

In 2002 you told Jim Angle of Fox News and a handful of other reporters that:

There was no plan on al-Qaida that was passed from the Clinton administration to Bush’s.

You said the Bush administration decided to “increase CIA resources for covert action, five-fold, to go after al-Qaida.

The new administration, you claimed at that time, “Then changed the strategy from one of rollback with al-Qaida over the course of five years which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of al-Qaida.”

In your resignation letter, you wrote, “I will always remember the courage, determination, calm and leadership you demonstrated on September 11th …”

You claimed March 24, 2004, that the Clinton administration had “no higher priority” than destroying the terrorism, whereas the Bush administration made it “an important issue, but not an urgent one.” Yet you told Angle and the reporters in the August 2002 interview that the Clinton administration “never had a plan” for dealing effectively and forthrightly with terrorism.

How the Bush-hating media abetted Richard Clarke’s lies and attempts at character assassination.

…What Eccleston didn’t tell us is that Clarke’s allegations have been successfully refuted and the man exposed as a partisan liar.

…Mansoor Ijaz, a former Clinton administration official, revealed that Clarke actually blocked efforts to have bin Laden extradited from the Sudan.

…Now Fox News released an embarrassing tape of Clarke stating: “The Bush administration decided … mid-January [2001] to … vigorously pursue the existing [Clinton] policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings … to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided. …”

This single statement exposes Clarke’s contradictions and reveals him to be a liar.

It really is sickening. Lying leftwing journalists are now attacking Bush for not doing in eight months what the Clinton administration didn’t do in eight years — and that includes Clarke, who was Clinton’s anti-terror Czar. Another fact that lefty journalists playdown or ignore.

Of course, Randy, you’ll never be satisfied with any documentation that Clarke has been misleading and dishonest when it comes to Bush and terrorism.

Only a buffoon would stick with lies after the truth is presented to him.
Woody Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Oops. Here’s that second link corrected: Lies, damn lies, Albright and Clarke
Anna Churchill Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:28 pm
“Frankly, the 9-11 attack was so bizarre, I don’t know that anyone could have anticipated it before the fact, other than all the Monday-morning-quarterbacks.”

au contraire. attacks on US soil were muy anticipated. after first Trade Center bombing there was a doc/report on tv. Frontline maybe. Something like that. point is a French agent, on camera, gave a rather precise, prescient evaluation and categorically stated that within 10 years. there would be attacks on US soil. as it was sometime ago i can’t recall the exact pronouncement but his summary of the situation was very much from the point of view of some serious intelligence.
Anna Churchill Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
engage with reality, woody. these problems don’t just erupt out of one administration and the difference between idiots like you and your nemesis– the sane people–is that we understand nothing is black and white (as you insist LITERALLY that everything is including the color of people). we don’t assume that just because one is a Democrat, Liberal or Progressive that they are beyond reproach. you, on the other hand defend people like Palin when serious Conservatives run screaming from the room and vote Democrat.

you lack discrimination. and sanity. sanity, mostly.
Randy Paul Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
The more knowledgeable of us thought that we had put Richard Clarke’s credibility to rest in the past.

What on Earth makes you believe that includes you?

Amazing. Time is un”reliable” when you disagree with it and reliable when you agree with it.

In any event, the takeaway you ignore is this from the same five-year-old article:

That’s a shame, since many of his contentions — about the years of political and intelligence missteps that led to 9/11, the failure of two Administrations to destroy al-Qaeda and the potentially disastrous consequences of the U.S. invasion of Iraq — deserve a wide and serious airing. From now on, the country would be best served if Clarke lets the facts speak for themselves.

Given that it now coming to light that the Bush administration tortured specifically to gin up a reason for the Iraq War, the main criticisms of the article now seem, in fact, to be borne out.

As for your second article, I know a deranged screed when I read one; reading your comments have only increased that bit of awareness on my part.

In any event, one of the sources cited was Mansoor Ijaz, a man with a pathological animus against Clarke. Ijaz has advanced the argument that the Clinton Administration was offered OBL by Sudan, but Clarke nixed the idea (as if he would have the power to do so on his own). The 9/11 Commission refuted that claim.
Randy Paul Says:
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:53 pm
A neutered, neutralized, and numbed CIA under attack by its own Commander in Chief practically guarantees a future disaster, as it did for the FBI pre 9/11. History unlearned is history repeated.

This is why it is impossible to take Jim R’s tendentious nonsense seriously.

Jimbo, did you actually see the president’s appearance at the CIA this week. The employees applauded him. Thunderously so.