Clippings for January 9, 2011

Recommended Audio: Keith Olberman - Violence and Threats Have No Place in Democracy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

ACTION ALERT: Tell Sarah Palin to Stop Inciting Violence

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) & 11 others were shot in a senseless act of a violence on Saturday morning in Tucson, Arizona.

Giffords was on Palin's "target list" (at right) before the election, with cross-hairs (from the score of a rifle) over her district. 

Palin has since deleted the "target list" from her site after the shooting and removed tweets urging her supporters to "reload" and use a "Second Amendment remedy."

Please sign the petition and tell Sarah Palin to STOP inciting violence! 

WikiLeaks' Most Terrifying Revelation: Just How Much Our Government Lies to Us

Fred Branfman writes for ALterNet: "Do you believe that it is in Americans' interest to allow a small group of U.S. leaders to unilaterally murder, maim, imprison and/or torture anyone they choose anywhere in the world, without the knowledge let alone oversight of their citizens or the international community? And, despite their proven record of failure to protect America -- from Indochina to Iran to Iraq -- do you believe they should be permitted to clandestinely expand their war-making without informed public debate? If so, you are betraying the principles upon which America was founded, endangering your nation, and displaying a distinctly "unamerican" subservience to unaccountable authority. But if you oppose autocratic power, you are called to support Wikileaks and others trying to limit U.S. Executive Branch mass murder abroad and failure to protect Americans at home."  Image: Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide

Bradley Manning and the Case Against Solitary Confinement
Kynn Parramore writes for New Deal 2.0: "In the earliest days of our Republic, a group of well-meaning Philadelphia Quakers set out to reform the prison system. The idea was to remove convicts from the mayhem and corruption of overcrowded jails to solitary cells where sinners would return to mental and spiritual health through reflection. In the Walnut Street Jail, no windows would distract the prisoners with street life; no conversation would disturb their penitence. Alone with God, they would be rehabilitated. There was a small problem. Many of the prisoners went insane. The Walnut Street Jail was shut down in 1835."

Timothy Leary on the Culture of Secrecy
Timothy Leary comments for Truthout: "Secrecy is the original sin. The fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The basic crime against love. The issue is fundamental. What a blessing that Watergate has been uncovered to teach us the primary lesson. The purpose of life is to receive, synthesize and transmit energy. Communication–fusion is the goal of life. Any star can tell you that. Communication is love. Secrecy, withholding the signal, hoarding, hiding, covering up the light is motivated by shame and fear, symptoms of the inability to love. Secrecy means that you think love is shameful and bad. Or that your nakedness is ugly. Or that you hide unloving, hostile feelings. Seeds of paranoia and distrust."

Obama Created More Jobs In One Year Than Bush Created In Eight
Alex Seitz-Wald reports for Think Progress: "This morning (January 7, 2011), the Labor Department released its employment data for December, showing that the U.S. economy ended the year by adding 113,000 private sector jobs, knocking the unemployment rate down sharply from 9.8 percent to 9.4 percent — its lowest rate since July 2009. The “surprising drop — which was far better than the modest step-down economists had forecast — was the steepest one-month fall since 1998.” October and November’s jobs numbers were also revised upward by almost 80,000 each. Still, 14.5 million Americans remain unemployed, and jobs will have to be created much faster in coming months for the country to pull itself out of the economic doldrums."

Republicans' Radical Plans for Budget Could Threaten the Economic Security of Millions
Joshua Holland writes for AlterNet: "Through new budget rules that are expected to pass on a party-line vote in the House this week, and anupcoming battle over raising the government's “debt ceiling,” the new Republican leadership is preparing to codify a discredited far-right economic agenda into law, forcing deep cuts to public spending at precisely the moment when the economy needs that spending to build momentum."

Recommended Audio: Wall Street Fat-Cats Flip Public Service Workers the Bird

 New Year, same shell game being played by the fat-cats on Wall Street.  In 2009, public employee Joe Wisniowski made $40,000/year as an Airport Equipment Operator for an Ohio airport while Wall Street raked in $20.3 BILLION in bonuses. Joe's story highlights the need for you to help us STOP THE LIES!  We the taxpayers bailed out Wall Street yet to divert attention, they want you to believe that public service workers are the ones who are overpaid.  Don't let Wall Street destroy the backbone of America. Meet the Public Service workers whose sweat and hard work help our communities.

Recommended Audio: Law and Disorder Radio - Economic Recovery? Austerity in the US and Abroad

In our previous interview with Professor of Economics, Rick Wolff, we talked about austerity, that is imposing on society a severe regimen of rising taxes, or cut government spending to please and satisfy creditors.  Massive protests erupt against austerity in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and soon maybe Spain, as governments raise college tuition, taxes, retirement ages plus cutting worker benefits and wages. These austerity measures are about to hit the United States. Veiled in the recent tax deal with the Republicans is a decision Americans will need to make. Higher taxes or cut services? With growing debts made worse by Obama’s tax deal, the US moves quickly toward austerity while the political establishment and the media mostly pretend all is well says Rick Wolff.
To download the MP3 file, click here. 

US Tax Deal Brings Austerity Closer

Richard Woff writes on his blog: "Once again, the two old wings of the political establishment do business as usual in Washington.  In the tax deal between Obama and the Republicans -- passed with the help of a majority of Democrats -- they all cut taxes, especially on the rich, and extended unemployment benefits.  In short, the government keeps spending mountains of money to subsidize a deeply recessional private capitalist economy, to prevent it from spiraling down into depression.  The result is a further expansion of the deficit that so recently was a pretend concern for so many candidates."

Democrats Failing Media’s Deficit Test: Embrace debt panel’s austerity to prove sincerity
Jim Naureckas writes for Extra!: "Having concluded that the United States needs an austerity program to cure its economic ills (Extra!, 1/10), and having decided in advance that the 2010 midterms were a mandate for downsizing the federal government (Extra!, 12/10), the leading outlets of the corporate media fixed on the deficit commission created by Barack Obama as a test of how serious the Democrats were about doing what needed to be done. The initial verdict: They’re failing the test."

A "Pledge of Resistance" to Defend Social Security (and Defund the Empire)

Robert Naiman, Truthout: "For the third time in the last 20 years, establishment voices with high-profile slots in traditional media are trying to convince the public to accept cuts to Social Security by endlessly claiming such cuts are necessary, without giving coherent evidence to justify the claim. Twice, under former presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, these voices were defeated - but they didn't give up." Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: dboy, SqueakyMarmot

Republicans Are out for Blood– Yours.
Ken Sayers writes for The Daily Censored: "The Republicans want to kill the health care bill.  They want to strip kids from their parent’s coverage.  They want to eliminate affordable coverage for people who have lost insurance along with their jobs.  They want to put a cap back on the amount of coverage your health insurance will have to pay.  AND, they want to put exclusions for pre-existing conditions back into effect.  Those are just a few of the benefits to which you are entitled under the new health care bill.  They don’t just want to kill health care, they want to kill you."

The Great MMR Vaccine Fraud
Kevin Drum reports for Mother Jones: "The belief that vaccines cause autism got its start in 1998 with a paper in the Lancet authored by Andrew Wakefield. We've known for a long time that it was a piece of crap: it used a nonrandom sample of 12 children, it depended largely on observations by parents, it was marred by egregious conflicts of interest, and in 2004 it was renounced by 10 of its co-authors and later retracted by the magazine. That's all bad enough. But it turns out that it was even worse: the paper was an outright fraud from start to finish."

A ‘Job-Killing’ Law?

FactCheck.org reports: "House Republicans misrepresent the facts. Experts predict the health care law will have little effect on employment.
We find:

• Independent, nonpartisan experts project only a "small" or "minimal" impact on jobs, even before taking likely job gains in the health care and insurance industries into account.
• The House Republican leadership, in a report issued Jan. 6, badly misrepresents what the Congressional Budget Office has said about the law. In fact, CBO is among those saying the effect "will probably be small."
• The GOP also cites a study projecting a 1.6 million job loss — but fails to mention that the study refers to a hypothetical employer mandate that is not part of the new law.
• The same study cited by the GOP also predicts an offsetting gain of 890,000 jobs in hospitals, doctors’ offices and insurance companies — a factor not mentioned by the House leadership."

Cutting the Defense Budget?
Faiz Shakir, Benjamin Armbruster, George Zornick, Zaid Jilani, Alex Seitz-Wald, Max Bergmann, and Tanya Somanader write the Progress Report for Think Progress: "One potential area for bipartisan action in the new Congress may be cutting the massively bloated Pentagon budget, which has risen to $540 billion annually and more than $700 billion if you include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan. Total defense spending in real terms is  higher than at any point since World War II. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates  yesterday announced a series of efficiency proposals to reduce waste in defense spending and to cut the projected Pentagon budget by $78 billion over the next five years. While these proposals represent a good start in constraining the runaway spending that accrued during the Bush administration, the cuts will result only in a decline in the rate of growth in the Pentagon's budget, not in absolute dollars. In other words, Gates was allowed to shift money around, and was not forced to actually cut the budget. As a result under this proposal,  the Pentagon's budget will be bigger in five years than it is now. This is not real fiscal restraint. To adequately address the problem of out-of-control defense spending and a growing deficit, not only are more defense cuts needed, but the U.S. must also re-balance its foreign policy and defense priorities. This means taking a hard look at the utility of continuing combat operations in Afghanistan, eliminating white elephant weapons programs, and looking for ways to make the Pentagon bureaucracy more efficient. Reducing Pentagon spending is possible, since it is advocated not just by progressives, but by  Tea Party conservatives and now the House Republican leadership."

Why the Handwriting is on the Afghan Wall

Chuck Spinney writes for New Deal 2.0: "The lead editorial in a recent Washington Post article, “Steady in Afghanistan,” claimed the early results of President Obama’s escalation strategy in Afghanistan 'are mixed — but promising,' because President Obama 'has raised the odds for success by committing U.S. forces to Afghanistan for four more years and by promising to negotiate a strategic partnership with the government of Hamid Karzai in 2011.' Raised the odds for success? Four more year versus 2011? Consider please the unexamined ramifications of these words." Photo: Getty

Wrong Again, Senator Graham
Juan Cole writes for Truthdig.com: "Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., repeated on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday his hope that the United States can maintain at least two permanent air bases in Afghanistan. He was pushing back against Vice President Joe Biden’s pledge that the U.S. would be out of Afghanistan by 2014 “come hell or high water.” Graham has been wrong about almost everything in the Middle East for a decade and a half, so this harebrained proposal is hardly surprising. But it signals the harder line likely to be pursued by Republicans now that they have taken back the House of Representatives and have much strengthened their position in the Senate."

Freedom Fighters for a Fading Empire
William J. Astore provides the followign analysis for TomDispatch: "Words matter, as candidate Barack Obama said in the 2008 election campaign.  What to make, then, of President Obama’s pep talk last month to U.S. troops in Afghanistan in which he lauded them as “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known”?  Certainly, he knew that those words would resonate with the troops as well as with the folks back home."

Army's "Spiritual Fitness" Test Comes Under Fire

Jason Leopold reports for Truthout: "An experimental, Army mental-health, fitness initiative designed by the same psychologist whose work heavily influenced the psychological aspects of the Bush administration's torture program is under fire by civil rights groups and hundreds of active-duty soldiers. They say it unconstitutionally requires enlistees to believe in God or a "higher power" in order to be deemed "spiritually fit" to serve in the Army."  Image: US Army

Recommended Audio: Keith Olberman - US Military Under Fire for Religious Test
Mikey Weinstein, president and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, discussed Jason Leopold's report detailing the forced spiritual testing of over 800,000 uniformed soldiers as part of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

GOP Votes to Make Constitution Violation Go Away
Alex Pareene reports for Salon.com: "At least the Democrats are having fun in the minority. They're never as united as Republicans are, but most House Democrats voted against today's resolution invalidating the unconstitutional votes taken by Representatives Pete Sessions and Mike Fitzpatrick when they had not yet been sworn in as members of Congress. The resolution magically removes the votes they took while not being members, but doesn't do anything about all the other stuff they did -- like chairing the Rules Committee."

Read It and Weep: How the Tea Party's fetish for the Constitution as written may get it in trouble.

Dahlia Lithwick writes for Salon.com: "Members of the Tea Party are really into the Constitution. We know this because on Thursday, House Republicans propose to read the document from start to finish on the House floor, and they also propose to pass a rule requiring that every piece of new legislation identify the source of its constitutional authority. Even Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute—its popular pocket version of the Constitution is only $4.95!—agrees that these are largely symbolic measures, noting in the Wall Street Journal that as a legal matter, "at least since Marbury v. Madison in 1803, the Supreme Court has had the last word on what the Constitution authorizes Congress to do." Nobody has suggested that legislators don't have an independent duty to uphold the Constitution as they understand it. But that doesn't change the fact that the courts, not Tea Party Republicans—even those with the benefit of extra-credit classes from Justice Antonin Scalia—get to make the final call."

Republicans to Spend $1.1 Million Reciting Constitution on House Floor
Juli Weiner reports for Vanity Fair: "As we reported this morning (January 4), House Republicans will kick-start the 112th Congress tomorrow with a spirited recitation of the Constitution, a document whose recent relevance is due largely to the ideological and sartorial interests of the Tea Party. It’s an opening act designed to herald the arrival of a new season of checks, balances, and financial cutbacks. As Politico’s nocturnal prophet Mike Allen reported, House Republicans plan to reduce Congress’s budget by $32.5 million—a savings reaped from cutting 'the amount authorized for salaries and expenses of Member, committee, and leadership offices in 2011 and 2012.'"

Kris Kobach Campaigns for Secretary of State: An Overview of Candidates, Credibility, Strategy and Media/Voter Response

Dave writes for the Journal of Idiocracy: "On November 2nd, 2010 citizens of Kansas were asked to elect an official to the position of Secretary of State. As known to most individuals, the secretary of state is constitutionally charged with administering elections, voter registration, lobbyist registration and the filing of campaign finance reports. In short, if it involves elections, the secretary of state will be involved to ensure they are effectively run, maintained and fair. In addition to these duties, the secretary of state registers businesses, trademarks and provides regulation for these entities within the state of Kansas. Whoever holds the office of secretary of state serves a term lasting four years, after which candidates, including the incumbent, may seek election."

'Aflockalypse': Here's Why We Should Really Be Concerned About the Huge Bird and Fish Die-off
Tara Lohan reports for AlterNet: "By now, we've all seen the news reports of the "Aflockalypse." The New Year came in with a bang in Beebe, Arkansas when thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky. As news reports of the eerie incident spread, similar stories began surfacing all over the world: Massive fish kills by the thousands in Brazil, New Zealand, the Arkansas River and the Chesapeake; more bird deaths in Louisiana, Kentucky and Sweden; and tens of thousands of dead crabs (aptly named dead devil crabs) washing ashore in the U.K."

Panel: BP Well Blowout Revealed Industry-Wide Problems
Mark Seibel reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "The errors and misjudgments that led to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling rig last spring weren't the result just of blunders by BP and its contractors, but reflect industry-wide problems that require new regulations and standards, a presidential commission has concluded."

Recommended Audio: Voice of America - FEAR IN THE U.S. NEWS MEDIA

Doug Stanhope discusses the U.S. media's fear-mongering and what it really means for you in the new series of Charlie Brooker's Newswipe..."I'm Doug Stanhope and that's why I drink."



Taking Media Mergers to the Next Level: Comcast/NBC would be unprecedented powerhouse

Krystle Manintveld writes for Extra!: "Over the last decade, dozens of media mergers and purchases have resulted in a media industry controlled by a handful of companies—and the cable giant Comcast wants to be one of them.  After a failed attempt to purchase Disney in 2004 for $66 billion (Inter Press Service, 3/20/04), Comcast offered to take over NBC Universal for the bargain price of $30 billion—which would buy a 51 percent controlling interest from General Electric, with the expectation of acquiring the remaining stake over the next seven years (Globe and Mail, 12/3/09)."

Court Reverses Order Unmasking Politician's Critics
Wendy Davis reports for Media Post News: "Backing online commenters' right to anonymity, an appellate court in Pennsylvania has overturned an order requiring a Web site operator to disclose the identities of commenters who slammed a local politician. The Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled that Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas Judge Peter O'Brien didn't adequately examine whether the commenters' right to speak out anonymously was outweighed by former Scranton City Council President Judy Gatelli's defamation allegations. "Comments on matters of public importance or those which criticize public officials are entitled to robust protection, for it is in the public forum that the First Amendment right of speech is strongest," the court wrote."

Net Neutrality Fight: GOP wields garlic against FCC "vampires"

Nate Anders reports for Ars Technica: "The new, Republican-controlled House of Representatives started work yesterday, and it took only a few hours before anti-net neutrality legislation was introduced to stop the "vampires" at the FCC from imposing net neutrality on American Internet access providers. No surprises here; Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) had last year made plain her opposition to net neutrality, and she pledged back in November to legislate against the FCC."

The FCC's Net Neutrality Rules Leave the Future of the Internet Unclear
Fipna Morgan reports for Independent Weekly: "One of the best things about the Internet is its indifference to how you use it. Call your mom on Skype, watch some Simpsons on Hulu, settle an argument by consulting Wikipedia, update your blog. Whatever you do, you're seconds away from doing the next thing. Behind the scenes, there is a shakedown going on that may change the way you use the Internet, as well as how—and how much—you'll pay. Last month, the Federal Communications Commission approved rules that regulate network neutrality, or net neutrality for short. While the concept has many definitions, the guiding principle is that everything on the Internet, be it content, applications or services, should be treated equally, and that Internet service providers should not be allowed to serve as gatekeepers of what you can access online."

Schools, Libraries Say They Need Faster Broadband
John Eggerton reports for Multichannel News: "A just-released Federal Communications Commission study found that while 95% of schools and libraries that receive e-rate funding have some terrestrial broadband connection to at least one facility (2% have satellite and 3% still use dial-up), and while over half of those (55%) have it at speeds greater than 3 Mbps, 80% say it is not enough to meet their current needs.  Ten percent said they had speeds greater than 100 mbps.  The e-rate program provides discounted broadband service to schools and libraries through the Universal Service Fund."

The Newsonomics of Tablets Replacing Newspapers
Ken Doctor writes for Nieman Journalsim Lab: "Ready to trade up? That’s the new question now moving to the forefront of news publishers’ longer-range strategic planning, as the real tablet revolution seems to be upon us. The Consumer Electronics Show is shining a bright light on The Year of the Tablet. With tablet sales projected to reach 70 million in the U.S. in 2011 and 2012 (50 million of them iPads), and with early survey results, such as the Reynolds Journalism Institute’s study, showing longer news session times, more-than-snippets-reading, and a renewal of lean-back, pleasurable longer-form reading, publishers have been edging into an age of news reading renewal."

Clippings for 17 November 2010

Living in the Age of Imposed Amnesia
Henry A. Giroux comments for Truthout: "We live in an age in which punitive justice and a theater of cruelty have become the defining elements of a mainstream cultural apparatus that trades in historical and social amnesia. How else to explain the electoral sweep that just put the most egregious Republican Party candidates back in power? These are the people who gave us Katrina, made torture a state policy, promoted racial McCarthyism, celebrated immigrant bashing, pushed the country into two disastrous wars, built more prisons than schools, bankrupted the public treasury, celebrated ignorance over scientific evidence ('half of new Congressmen do not believe in global warming') and promoted the merging of corporate and political power."

Shocking State Fair Scandal, Wage Theft Epidemic, Spur Nationwide Protests
Art Levine reports for In These Times: "Activists in more than 30 cities, organized by Interfaith Workers Justice and backed by labor groups, are staging a National Day of Action Against Wage Theft on November 18.... As much as $19 billion is stolen from American workers annually in unpaid overtime and minimum wage violations and, in some cases, through the human trafficking of legal immigrant workers."



Rebooting the American Dream: Chapter 1 - Bring My Job Home!

Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers: "The simple fact is that we no longer make computers or TVs or clothes or power tools or toys or pretty much anything in the USA, except military hardware, processed food, and pharmaceuticals. So when we 'stimulate' our economy by putting money into the pockets of working people, they go to Wal-Mart and buy things made in Asia - creating jobs in that part of the world. So here is the first big way we can reboot the economy: lose our recent fascination - obsession, really - with 'free trade,' get back to protectionism, and impose tariffs (import taxes) on imported consumer goods as we used to do."

Businesses Do Not Create Jobs
Dave Johnson comments for the Campaign for America's Future: "Many people wrongly think that businesses create jobs. They see that a job is usually at a business, so they think that therefore the business 'created' the job. This thinking leads to wrongheaded ideas like the current one that giving tax cuts to businesses will create jobs, because the businesses will have more money. But an efficiently-run business will already have the right number of employees."

The Coming Sell-Out to the Super Rich and What It Means for the Rest of Us

Michael Hudson writes for Counter Punch: "Now that President Obama is almost celebrating his bipartisan willingness to renew the tax cuts for the super-rich enacted under George Bush ten years ago, it is time for Democrats to ask themselves how strongly they are willing to oppose an administration that looks like Bush-Cheney III. Is this what they expected by  Obama’s promise to rise above partisan politics – by ruling on behalf of Wall Street, now that it is the major campaign backer of both parties?"

The Man Who Shattered Our Economy
Robert Scheer writes for Truthdig.com: "Rejoice, the housing market is back. Sandy Weill just picked up a humdinger of a wine vineyard estate in Sonoma, Calif., for a record $31 million, so the foreclosure crisis—which the former CEO of Citigroup did so much to create when he successfully lobbied then-President Bill Clinton to sign off on radical deregulation of the banking industry—must be over."

Land of Plenty? US Hunger Rate Remains Stubbornly High

Tony Pugh reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "U.S. agriculture officials said Monday that the nation's 15 federal nutrition programs helped keep hunger in check in 2009 even as the number of unemployed Americans soared. After a record one-year increase from 2007 to 2008, the number of U.S. households facing food shortages increased only slightly last year to roughly 17.4 million, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture." Photo: AlwaysBreaking

GOP's Top Tax Guy: Republicans Will Block Permanent Middle-Class Tax Cut
Brian Buetler reports for Talking Points Memo: "The Republicans' top tax guy in the House threatened in the clearest possible terms today that he and the rest of the GOP would vote to block any tax cut for the middle class during the lame duck session unless tax cuts for the wealthy are extended for the same period of time. In a policy speech at the business-friendly Tax Council today, incoming Ways and Means Committee chairman David Camp called the Democratic plan for tax cuts -- a permanent tax cut extension for all income up to $200,000, and a temporary extension for income above that level -- 'a terrible idea and a total nonstarter.'"

Defense Trims: Why Not?

Eugene Robinson writes for Truthout: "I come not to bury the manifesto issued last week by President Obama's debt-reduction commission, but to praise the most welcome of its ideas: Slash defense spending along with everything else. The panel's co-chairmen, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, identify $100 billion in defense cuts that could be made in 2015. That would be too little and too late, but what's almost revolutionary is the notion that if we're ever to get this nation back on sound economic footing, we have to cut what Dwight Eisenhower called the 'military-industrial complex' down to size."

The Stimulus Package in Kabul
Tom Engelhardt provides the follow analysis for TomDispatch: "While Americans fight bitterly over whether the stimulus package for the domestic economy was too large or too small, few in the U.S. even notice that the American stimulus package in Kabul, Islamabad, Baghdad, and elsewhere in our embattled Raj is going great guns. Embassies the size of pyramids are still being built; military bases to stagger the imagination continue to be constructed; and nowhere, not even in Iraq, is it clear that Washington is committed to packing up its tents, abandoning its billion-dollar monuments, and coming home."

Kandahar: The Latest Casualty of an Invisible War
Juan Cole writes for Truthdig.com: "Not only is it unclear that the U.S. and NATO are winning their war in Afghanistan, the lack of support for their effort by the Afghanistan president himself has driven the American commander to the brink of resignation. In response to complaints from his constituents, Afghanistan’s mercurial President Hamid Karzai called Sunday for American troops to scale back their military operations. The supposed ally of the U.S., who only last spring petulantly threatened to join the Taliban, astonished Washington with this new outburst, which prompted a warning from Gen. David Petraeus that the president was making Petraeus’ position “untenable,” which some speculated might be a threat to resign."

Obama Without Tears
William Greider writes in The Nation: "Given the election results, the question Barack Obama has to decide for himself is whether he really wants to be president in the fullest sense. Not a moderator for earnest policy discussions. Not the national cheerleader for hope. Not the worthy visionary describing a distant future. Those qualities are elements in any successful presidency, and Obama applies them with admirable skill and seriousness."

Conservadems Try To Strip Pelosi's Power To Assign Committees

Brian Beutler reports for Talkign Points Memo: "Three of the conservative Democrats who've been grousing about Nancy Pelosi's bid to lead the party in the 112th Congress are trying meekly to strip her of some of the perks that come with being top dog -- like picking committee chairs. In a letter circulated to Democratic members this morning ahead of the Dems' leadership elections, Reps. Larry Kissell (D-NC), Jim Matheson (D-UT), and Dan Lipinski (D-IL), are trying build support for stripping Pelosi of the powers that come with being minority leader."  Photo: Sloan/AP

How Republicans and Their Big Business Allies Duped Tens of Millions of Evangelicals into Voting for a Corporate Agenda
Frank Schaffer writes for AlterNet: "Tens of millions of American voters got duped badly in the 2010 election. The bible-thumping white underclass thought they hit back at what they regarded as the nefarious forces trying to 'take our country away.' They were bought, paid for, sold, traded and manipulated by the most powerful in the US election: a Billionaire Lynch Mob led by Rupert Murdoch, Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, and hundreds of millions in organize corporate cash. They peddled a fear agenda: fear of immigrants, fear of government control of our lives, fear that their country would become irrevocably changed."

The Coming Tea Party Civil War

Stephanie Mencimer writes for Mother Jones: "In the months leading up to the midterm congressional elections, the tea party movement managed to tamp down on its internal divisions in pursuit of a shared goal of defeating Democrats. But with the elections over, the movement's fault lines are starting to show, and tensions between the tea party's social conservative and libertarian wings are poised to explode into an all-out civil war." Photo: Flickr/Fibonacci Blue

What Happens to Your Phone When You Recycle It?
Jen Phillips writes for Mother Jones: "I'm thrilled that my phone contract is up in February. I've been coveting the iPhone, which will be a welcome change after two years of toting around a clunky, barely web-enabled dinosaur. But when I upgrade to a smart phone, what will become of my dopey old dumb phone?"

The Money and Media Election Complex
John Nichols and Robert McChensey write for The Nation: "'Like the wizard telling the people of Oz to "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,' Karl Rove used media appearances at the close of the 2010 midterm campaign to dismiss President Obama's complaints that Republican consultants, led by the former White House political czar, were distorting Senate and House races across the country with a flood of money—hundreds of millions of dollars—from multinational corporations and billionaire conservatives into Senate and House races. 'Obama looks weirdly disconnected—and slightly obsessive—when he talks so much about the Chamber of Commerce, Ed Gillespie and me,' Rove mused. 'The president has already wasted one-quarter of the campaign's final four weeks on this sideshow.'"

Cable Companies' $46+ Billion Robbery -- Subscribers Have Been Ripped off for $5 a Month Since 2000

David Rosen and Bruce Kushnick report for AlterNet: "When cable television subscribers open their monthly bills they will not see a charge for the “Social Contract.” Since the mid-1990s, it appears that every cable subscriber has shelled out $1 per month increasing to $5 a month by 2000 to subsidize cable companies’ system upgrades. There has been no accounting for the total monies raised through this subsidy nor a thorough assessment of whether the cable operators fulfilled the system upgrades (including wiring and services to public institutions) the subsidy is suppose to underwrite."

Seven Reasons Newspapers Are Not Rebounding Financially
Rick Edmonds writes for Poynter Online: "This was to be a year of convalescence for newspapers, not a total recovery but a dramatic improvement on the dismal results of 2008 and 2009. However, with third-quarter earnings in and just seven weeks left in 2010, the industry's vital signs are distinctly mixed. The good news first. Newspapers are solvent and profitable, often quite profitable on an operating basis. Only a handful went out of business during the great recession. Newspaper companies now are generating enough cash to pay down debt and finance robust exploration of potential new digital revenue streams."

Open Internet Needed for All

Michael J. Copps, Federal Communications Commissioner, writes in the Albuquerque Journal: "The Internet was born on openness, has flourished on openness and depends on openness to realize its full potential. And its potential is so great. This incredible technology intersects with just about every great challenge confronting our nation — whether it's jobs, education, energy, climate change and the environment, news, international competitiveness, health care or equal opportunity. There's no solution for any of these challenges that does not have a broadband component to it. We now have a technology with near limitless potential and are just beginning to truly harness its full ability."

Olbermann, O'Reilly and the Death of Real News
Ted Koppel comments in the Washington Post: "To witness Keith Olbermann - the most opinionated among MSNBC's left-leaning, Fox-baiting, money-generating hosts - suspended even briefly last week for making financial contributions to Democratic political candidates seemed like a whimsical, arcane holdover from a long-gone era of television journalism, when the networks considered the collection and dissemination of substantive and unbiased news to be a public trust."

The 2010 Midterm Election - What Does It All Mean?

Community Bridge opens this week with K-State Professor of Political Science, Joe Aistrup, with a discussion of Tuesday's Mid-term election results and what they mean nationally and for the state of Kansas.  At 45 past the hour, we are joined by Stephanie Alderman-Oler from the K-State Fair Trade Advocates to discuss this year's Fair Trade Marketplace that will open with a fashion show on November 16th and closes on Thursday November 18th.

MP3 File

The Hudspeth-Jenkins Debate

This is a rebroadcast of the debate sponsored by KTWU Channel 11 and the Topeka/Shawnee County Chapter of the League of Women Voters between Cheryl Hudspeth, Democratic challenger, and Rep. Lynn Jenkins, Republican, for the second congressional district of Kansas. This debate originally aired on KTWU on October 19th.  Community Bridge and KSDB thank KTWU for making this audio available for rebroadcast to our listeners.

MP3 File

Clippings for 24 October 2010

Biggest Document Leak in History Exposes Real War
Rachel Oldroyd reports for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: "For the first time the files reveal just how much the American military detailed the escalating violence in Iraq, and how this contrasts markedly to what the politicians said in public. This is the story behind the pronouncements - the uncensored detail Washington did not want us to know."


PROMO from TBIJ on Vimeo.

An Open Letter on the Needed Response to the Upcoming Wikileaks Report

Josh Steiber writes for Znet: "This is an anticipatory letter aimed to advise you on your response and responsibility for the coming Wikileaks release, expected on October 23rd. Based on the White House’s response to the last leak about Afghanistan, the temptation seems strong to once again divert attention away from accountability. I write as a young veteran who once fully embraced the concept of a preemptive war to keep my fellow citizens safe and, as President Bush declared, because “America is a friend to the people of Iraq.” I now hope to preempt your response to the information regarding that war in which I fought. When I learned in school about the design of the American system of government and all the noble qualities it represented, invading Iraq seemed to me, at the time, to be a surefire way to make the world a better place."

The Elephant in the Foreclosure Fraud Room: Second Liens
Zach Carter writes for AlterNet: "Investor lawsuits against mortgage servicers could be even more damaging than these other lines of legal inquiry. The four largest banks hold nearly half a trillion dollars worth of second-lien mortgages on their books - loans that could be decimated if investors successfully target improper mortgage servicing operations. The result would be major trouble for the financial system. The result would be major trouble for too-big-to-fail behemoths."

Watching the Collapse

Kevin Drum reports for Mother Jones: "Noam Scheiber writes today about two different views of the recession. The first, represented by Johns Hopkins economist Chris Carroll, relies on a model that says recovery depends on three things: wealth, unemployment expectations, and access to credit. As they recover, so will the economy: 'The beauty of Carroll’s model is that it explains, with uncanny precision, consumer behavior going all the way back to the late ’60s. Those three simple variables — wealth, unemployment, and credit — tell you most of what you need to know about changes in the saving rate, and their predictive power has held up even through 2010.'"

The Perfect Storm
Robert Reich writes on the Robert Reich Blog: "It’s a perfect storm. And I’m not talking about the impending dangers facing Democrats. I’m talking about the dangers facing our democracy. First, income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans. The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us."

Obama Administration Handed Over Detainees Despite Reports of Torture
Angus Stickler reports for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: "President Barack Obama's government handed over thousands of detainees to the Iraqi authorities, despite knowing there were hundreds of reports of alleged torture in Iraqi government facilities.  Washington was warned by the United Nations and many human rights organisations that torture was widespread in Iraqi detention centres. But the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal the US’s own troops informed their commanders of more than 1,300 claims of torture by Iraqi Security forces between 2005 and 2009."

Veteran Suicides Outnumber US Military Deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan

Nadia Prupis reports for Truthout: "More than 1,000 veterans in California under 35 died after returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan between 2005 and 2008 - three times as many California service members who were killed in conflict overseas, according to a recently published Bay Citizen report. Investigative journalist Aaron Glantz studied the cases of Reuben Paul Santos, Alex Lowenstein and Elijah Warren to shed light on a growing trend among Afghanistan and Iraq veterans who have died through high-risk behavior and suicide after being discharged. In particular, veterans who returned home to California died through motorcycle and motor vehicle accidents and unintentional poisoning; in addition, veterans were two and a half times as likely to commit suicide as Californians of the same age who had not served in the military." Photo: Ken Harper / Flickr

ACLU Sues Ashcroft
ACLU reports: "In al-Kidd v. Ashcroft (10-98), the Ninth Circuit affirmed an Idaho district court and held that former Attorney General John Ashcroft could be held personally liable for damages if he adopted a post- 9/11 policy of using the material witness statute as a pretext to arrest and detain suspects without probable cause to believe that they had committed a crime. The Solicitor General’s certiorari petition is pending. The plaintiff in the case, Abdullah al-Kidd, is a 37 year-old African-American, U.S. citizen born in Kansas who converted to Islam while attending the University of Idaho, where he was a standout running back on the football team."

Lawless Courts
Jacqueline Stevens reports for The Nation: "One day in April, J. Dan Pelletier, a government adjudicator, faces a video camera in an Atlanta immigration court. At the same moment, in a Stewart Detention Center mini-court in the Georgia hinterland, two dozen men in orange and blue jumpsuits seated behind a low rail are watching Pelletier on a monitor wheeled in front of a vacant dais. Pelletier addresses the men brusquely: 'I have been told each of you has admitted the allegations and conceded removability back to your home country. Is there anybody in this group that does not want an order of removal to their home country?'"

Obama Accuses Republicans of Peddling "Snake Oil"
Caren Bohan reports for Reuters US Online Report Politics News: "President Barack Obama, fighting to keep Democrats in control of the Senate, accused Republicans on Friday of peddling discredited "snake oil ideas" about the economy. On a five-day sprint through western states, he also entered the highest profile race of the November 2 congressional elections -- a contest between Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and Republican Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle."

White House Goes into Bunker Mode
Howard Krutz writes for The Daily Beast: "Imagine if the Chilean mining disaster had happened here in the States. President Obama would have been hammered for 69 days for failing to rescue the men, right up to the moment the first one was pulled to safety. That’s the sensibility inside the White House these days: If there’s a bad story out there, even one far removed from the presidential orbit, the Obama crowd will own it. Every administration feels besieged at times, pilloried by the press, misunderstood by the public. But conversations with White House officials suggest a team that feels almost snakebit during a midterm election that is likely to produce substantial losses."

Memo: Health Insurance, Banking, Oil Industries Met With Koch, Chamber, Glenn Beck to Plot 2010 Election

Lee Fang reports for ThinkProgress: "While the Koch brothers - each worth over $21.5 billion - have certainly underwritten much of the right, their hidden coordination with other big business money has gone largely unnoticed. ThinkProgress has obtained a memo outlining the details of the last Koch gathering held in June of this year. The memo, along with an attendee list of about 210 people, shows the titans of industry - from health insurance companies, oil executives, Wall Street investors, and real estate tycoons - working together with conservative journalists and Republican operatives to plan the 2010 election, as well as ongoing conservative efforts through 2012."

NAACP Catches Ties between Tea Party, Racist Extremist Groups
Eric Dolan writes for The Raw Story: "The Tea Party movement has links to white supremacists, anti-immigration groups, 'birthers' and other 'extremists,' according to a report released by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  The 94 page report, entitled Tea Party Nationalism (.pdf), investigates six national organizations "at the core" of the Tea Party: FreedomWorks Tea Party, 1776 Tea Party, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, and the Tea Party Express."

Racist Elements in the Tea Party?
Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III writes for Truthout: "If there are links between the Tea Party and racist hate groups as the report indicates, then, as NAACP CEO and President Benjamin Jealous states, 'These links should give all patriotic Americans pause.' The members and leadership of the Tea Party should 'distance themselves from those Tea Party leaders who espouse racist ideas, advocate violence, or are affiliated with white supremacist organizations.' They have no place in our 'one Nation under God'; they have no place in our politics."

The Extremist GOP

The Editors at The Nation write: "The GOP's lurch toward extremism extends far beyond the ideological cleansing of moderate RINOs, 'Republicans in Name Only.'... Broadening the debate is fine. But when one party pulls that debate toward extremes that even its most radical leaders have recently rejected, the prospect of political dysfunction, if not explosion, grows exponentially.... Joe Miller, running strong for an Alaska Senate seat against Murkowski, supports repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment, which provides for the direct election of senators; wants to privatize Social Security; and is against abortion even in cases of rape or incest." Photo: Flickr

SarahPAC Candidate "Should Be in Jail"
Greg Palast reports for Truthout: "'What he [Griffin] did was absolutely illegal and he should be in jail.' That's hardly the kind of endorsement a candidate for Congress expects. But that is the conclusion of voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after digging into the evidence of Congressional candidate Tim Griffin's role in directing the Republican National Committee's (RNC) racially biased attack on voters known as 'caging.' A brutal mano-a-mano race in Arkansas' Second District has become a showdown between Sarah Palin's banner carrier Griffin (funded by SarahPAC) and Democrat Joyce Elliott, who has drawn homeboy Bill Clinton back to Little Rock."

AZ Immigration Law Writer Running For Office In Kansas On Voter Fraud Platform

Rachel Slajda reports for Talking Points Memo: "For the most part, the Republican machine that churns out allegations of voter fraud in the weeks before an election operates in the shadows, a few steps away from the actual Republican Party. Not so in Kansas, where the Republican candidate for secretary of state is running almost entirely on a platform of preventing voter fraud, especially by illegal immigrants.The candidate, Kris Kobach, is promising to check identification at polling places, require proof of citizenship when registering and turn the secretary of state's office into an enforcement powerhouse."

How the Kansas Chamber and Corporate Special Interests Encourage Illegal Immigration
WorkingKansas.com writes: "Let’s  face it, illegal aliens are not flocking to Kansas for our mild summers–and certainly not our mild winters. Illegal aliens are coming to Kansas for jobs. And a host of Kansas’ more unscrupulous employers are more than willing to put these folks to work, taking a job from one of 100,000 unemployed Kansans. And why wouldn’t they? The pay is cheap and there are no benefits. Job theft by illegal aliens takes a few different routes in Kansas. Among the most popular of those routes is the practice of misclassification. Put simply, misclassification is the practice of treating working Kansans as independent contractors instead of as employees. Many dishonest employers will deliberately classify employees as independent contracts and, in doing so, skirt filling out appropriate paperwork, such as the I-9 (immigration form) and paying taxes, workers compensation and unemployment insurance, gaining an unfair advantage over those Kansas employers who do play by the rules."

Polluter-Funded Groups Spending Almost $70 Million on Anti-Clean Energy Ads
Josh Dorner reports for ThinkProgress: "Amid an unprecedented surge in mostly secret money into this year's election campaign, a new report released yesterday by the Center for American Progress Action Fund details how 13 right-wing groups - including large secret money groups like American Crossroads, the US Chamber of Commerce, and American Action Network - have spent more than $68.5 million this year on 'misleading and fictitious televisions ads designed to shape midterm elections and advance their anti-clean energy reform agenda.'... The New York Times reports this evening that 'nearly half' of the Chamber's $149 million in contributions in 2008 came from just 45 donors. (The Chamber claims to have 300,000 members.) 'Many of those large donations coincided with lobbying or political campaigns that potentially affected the donors.'"

"Natural" Gas Industry Shills Use the Media to Mislead the Public - Here's How to Spot Them

Maura Stephens reports for AlterNet: "In papers everywhere we hear arguments such as the one that appeared recently in the Rochester (NY) Business Journal, in an article by economist Raymond J. Keating, under the heading 'N.Y. is missing out on economic opportunity.' Keating wrote, 'Environmentalists are claiming that hydraulic fracturing threatens groundwater supplies and are using anecdotal evidence to support their claims. Yet years of evidence have demonstrated that the fracking process is safe.' This is not just misleading; it's artful misuse of the language. Or, as my mother would have put it in her habitually blunt way, it's a lie."  Photo: a wellhead for hydraulic fracturing, with injection pipes. Source: dpcusa.org

The Environmental Dangers of Hydraulic Fracturing
Sara Lee writes for the Defenstrator: "Carter Road, in Dimock, Susquehanna County, has earned the nickname “ground zero,” as it gains fame in the natural gas controversy of Pennsylvania. Residents of Carter Road organized to file suit against Cabot Oil and Gas after 14 wells used for drinking water became undrinkable. (See "Passing the Buck on Water Contamination" for details of the lawsuit). While Cabot denies that deep rock fracking caused the water contamination, the company was heavily fined by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, and later forced to plug three wells in Dimock."

Recommended Audio - Jon Stewart To Larry King: I Pick On CNN Because It's 'Terrible'

Jon Stewart was on Larry King Live last night, and didn't let the fact that he was on CNN deter him from criticizing the network. He said to King, who is leaving CNN, "you're the last guy out of a burning building." When King asked later why Stewart picks on CNN so much, Stewart replied that it's because "you're terrible."



Beneath Juan Williams' Reality

Faiz Shakir, Benjamin Armbruster, George Zornick, Zaid Jilani, Alex Seitz-Wald, and Tanya Somanader write the Progress Report for Think Progress: "Last week, Fox News kingpin Bill O'Reilly set off a firestorm on ABC's The View when he declared that " Muslims killed us on 9/11 " After apologizing on set, O'Reilly retreated to his safe zone at Fox News where he and his colleagues quickly defended O'Reilly's bigotry. On Monday, O'Reilly invited National Public Radio analyst and frequent Fox News contributor Juan Williams to counter his claim that "there is a Muslim problem in the world." Surprisingly, Williams told O'Reilly he was "right." Citing the "paralysis" of "political correctness," Williams admitted that when he "see[s] people who are in Muslim garb" on an airplane, "I get worried. I get nervous." Two days later, NPR fired him. Williams' statements and subsequent termination sparked wide-ranging reactions in the media over whether NPR's response was proportional or appropriate. Regardless of whether NPR should have fired Williams, it was certainly the outlet's right to do so. And given the firing of other media figures for controversial statements, NPR's decision advances the idea that there shouldn't be a double standard surrounding the treatment of Muslims by the media. As Salon's Glenn Greenwald Tweeted yesterday, "watch how many people who cheered when [previous media figures] were fired scream CENSORSHIP!! all day over Juan Williams." Within right-wing circles, that number was large. Upon word of Williams' dismissal, a myriad of conservative pundits and lawmakers immediately lambasted NPR, calling for boycotts and the governmental defunding of NPR. While Fox News made sure Williams walked away with a $2 million contract, O'Reilly is determined to suspend public funding for the outlet, declaring, "it's over for NPR. " Appearing on the O'Reilly Factor yesterday, Williams stood by his original comments. Williams' original comments could have opened a constructive dialogue about entrenched Islamophobia, if handled in a more professional manner. However, as the American Prospect's Adam Serwer notes, "it's clear from the context that Williams wasn't merely confessing his own personal fears, he was reassuring O'Reilly that he was right to see all Muslims as potential terrorists." And, in standing by such statements without any clarification, Williams fails to address what the Washington Post's Greg Sargent notes as the central issue: Williams' original "instinctual feeling" is 'irrational and ungrounded, and something folks need to battle against internally whenever it rears its ugly head.'"

First Interview with NPR CEO Vivian Schiller on Juan Williams Firing
Rodney Ho writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Call me lucky. I had a pre-scheduled interview this morning with NPR CEO Vivian Schiller this morning before her speech at the Atlanta Press Club Newsmakers luncheon at the 191 Club in downtown Atlanta. So lo and behold, the entire Juan Williams firing blew up the past 24 hours. I happen to be the first person to talk to her about it. She basically said he was on NPR as a news analyst and wasn’t supposed to express opinions, something he had done time and time again on Fox News. This was just the final straw. Commentators, in contrast, are specifically called that on NPR and are supposed to be opinionated."

Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint Take Aim at NPR Funding

Josh Silver writes for the Huffington Post: " The reactionaries of the far-right are clawing and scratching at their latest red meat: National Public Radio's decision to fire Juan Williams for comments he made about Muslims on Fox News Channel. It's hard to work up too much sympathy for Williams -- a once esteemed journalist who has repeatedly embarrassed himself in recent years as a soloist in Bill O'Reilly's amen chorus. He was warned multiple times by NPR about providing commentary on Fox News that violated his employment contract. And his reward for the noxious comments that cost him one job was a new $2 million contract from Fox, announced Thursday."

Press Freedom Index 2010: U.S. ranks No. 20, Eritrea worst
Melissa Bell reports for the Washington Post: "Reporters Without Borders, the journalism watchdog group, released its Press Freedom Index for 2010, tracking media freedom across 178 countries. The report measures the violations of press freedom in the world, taking into account murders, imprisonment, physical attacks and threats as well as censorship, confiscation, searches and harassment. The United States remained in the same position as it occupied last year: No. 20 on the list, behind most of the Northern European countries, New Zealand, Japan and Estonia."

Media, Stop Ambushing Female Candidates
Mega Tandy writes for In These Times: "There is a fear both subtle and obvious running rampant through our news media. It is not fear of a U.S. economy stuck in recession, or more housing foreclosures, or Obama-care, or the Tea Party, or feigned socialism, or terrorist attacks, or the flu, or immigrants. It’s the fear of women—specifically, fear of women politicians and leaders. Because of this fear, female politicians, candidates and leaders face blatant sexism and misogyny in both corporate media and parts of the blogosphere for challenging the male-dominated political system."

Defend Free Speech on the Internet
Christopher Calabrese writes for Save the Internet: "In 2006, America Online censored e-mails that referenced a blog entry questioning the company’s e-mail fee system. In 2007, AT&T cut out lyrics critical of the Bush administration during its live feed of a Pearl Jam concert. That same year, Verizon Wireless decided that text messages from pro-abortion-rights group NARAL to its supporters were too “controversial,” so it cut off access to the group’s text messaging program. Preserving network neutrality means preventing these violations of free speech. An ACLU report released this week suggests that broadband carriers be held to the same “common carrier” rules that have long been applied to telephone networks, railroads and public highways. “Freedom of expression isn’t worth much if the forums where people actually make use of it are not themselves free,” the report points out."

Soros Donates $1 Million to Media Matters

Michael D. Shear report for the New York Times: "Media Matters, the liberal activist group that wages a rhetorical war against Fox News Channel and others in the conservative press, will announce on Wednesday the receipt of a $1 million donation from the philanthropist George Soros. In a statement obtained by The Caucus, the organization says it plans to use the money to intensify its efforts to hold the Fox host Glenn Beck and others on the cable news channel accountable for their reporting. “Fox has transformed itself into a 24-7 G.O.P. attack machine, dividing Americans through fear-mongering and falsehoods and undermining the legitimacy of our government for partisan political ends,” the group will say in the statement, to be released Wednesday afternoon."

Taking the Public Out of Public TV
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting reports:" A multi-part FAIR exposé of PBS's most prominent news and public affairs programs demonstrates that public television is failing to live up to its mission to provide an alternative to commercial television, to give voice to those "who would otherwise go unheard" and help viewers to "see America whole, in all its diversity," in the words of public TV's founding document. In a special November issue of studies and analyses of PBS's major public affairs shows, FAIR's magazine Extra! shows that "public television" features guestlists strongly dominated by white, male and elite sources, who are far more likely to represent corporations and war makers than environmentalists or peace advocates. And both funding and ownership of these shows is increasingly corporate, further eroding the distinction between "public" and corporate television. There is precious little 'public' left in 'public television.'"  UPDATE: Sign FAIR's petition to bring back Now to Friday nights.

'Editor & Publisher' Fires Entire Editorial Staff
Greg Mitchell reports for The Nation: "Just received an e-mail from my former managing editor at Editor & Publisher (my exit came in January after 10 years) Shawn Moynihan:  'The editorial staff of Editor & Publisher has been eliminated by its new owners, Duncan McIntosh Co. inc. As such, I’m writing to let you know I am no longer E&P’s managing editor/online editor.'  One of my old colleagues in the once-sturdy VNU/Nielsen magazine unit, Tony Case, was first with the news. Top editor Mark Fitzgerald and tech editor Jim Rosenberg also were axed. The new editor works for owner Duncan McIntosh who took over in January—his other titles, based in Irving, Ca., are boating and fishing magazines. Richard Prince has a more lengthy report here."