enlarge An image we’d have burned into our brains for the rest of our lives. Click here to view this media If you are of a certain age, the one thing you would hear most often around this time of year was “where were you the day Kennedy was shot?” – and everyone of that certain age will tell you exactly where they were, what they were doing and what they were thinking. It was just that kind of day. It was that kind of event. For my part, it began what would become a lifelong pursuit of collecting history. The day Kennedy was shot I was home recovering from surgery and I was bored and playing with my parents tape recorder, just recording random things off the radio. As fate somehow how had it, it was the precise moment I was recording something that the very first bulletins came on. And for some reason, I had to record everything that happened as it was unfolding. As years went on and the archive grew, I began to get more recordings of the event, such as an original ABC Radio network recording, which was a much better version of the one I originally made. The shock and urgency and the feeling of helplessness are still there, even listening to this tape 47 years later. I don’t think there is anything I can add to this that hasn’t been gone over adinfinitum through the years. Here is the first hour, exactly as it happened this day in 1963.
Continue reading …Our liberal scribes and pundits savaged the Bush administration as being a privacy-shredding, terrorist-suspect-abusing tyranny on the march. Now that President Obama is in charge, they lamely suggest that “the government” has failed, but with no president’s name attached in the blame game. For years, the media insisted that the terrorist holding pen at Guantanamo was a horrific stain on our global reputation. It was a “cancer” (CBS’s Bob Schieffer) and the networks uncritically aired Amnesty International quacks denouncing it as “the gulag of our times.” Any denunciation had the words “Bush” and “Cheney” inexorably attached. But now the outrage has died, and the story is being downplayed, since the Evil Bush is no longer the target. Take the case of Gitmo prisoner Ahmed Ghailani, who participated in the U.S. embassy massacre in Tanzania in 1998. When the federal judge crippled his trial in mid-October by omitting a witness, ABC and NBC skipped over it. “CBS Evening News” offered an anchor brief, with Couric calling it a “big setback for federal prosecutors.” Nothing was attributed to the Obama administration. read more
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Now there’s a headline we didn’t count on writing anytime soon, at least not with this news under it: Pope Benedict XVI followed his surprising words about male prostitutes and condoms with a clarification, according to one Father Federico Lombardi, papal spokesman, saying that women and transsexual people could also consider using condoms in certain circumstances. But what exactly are those circumstances? Father Lombardi had some answers Tuesday as members of the Catholic Church, as well as assorted other people and several journalists, endeavored to make sense of this latest development at the Vatican.
Continue reading …Wendell Potter Apologizes to Michael Moore For His Part to Discredit "Sicko"
November 24, 2010 No CommentIf you missed any of this, be sure to watch both videos in this post. It’s definitely some of the most spontaneous and revealing television I’ve seen in a very long time. Keith Olbermann brought together Michael Moore and Wendell Potter in a segment about how the health insurance industry mobilized to smear both Moore and “Sicko” ahead of its release, fearing it would get traction and start a “grass roots uprising” for single payer health insurance. It’s not that it’s a surprise. We all know this is the standard tactic. But what comes through on these videos is how truly angry and passionate Moore is about this effort to discredit work that he viewed as essential to the debate. If memory serves me, they did succeed at marginalizing it, at least to the extent that it was not as relevant to the general debate as death panels were to become. Partial transcript follows… OLBERMANN: Let me jump in, Wendell. APCO, that PR film seems to contradict some of the remarks you made. APCO did not conduct research on Michael Moore’s family. We did not suppress turnout for his movie. Explain what you know about the personal research that was done on Michael Moore and his family. POTTER: I think whoever wrote that, I think, she was just protesting too much. The industry did an enormous amount of research on what we thought was going to be in the movie and on Michael Moore as a movie maker. I, myself did. I have seen every one of his movies, read all three of his books, seen all 24 episodes of “The Awful Truth.” I know where you went to school. I know when you dropped out of college. I know who you are married to. I know a lot about you. Everybody in the industry knows a lot about you. We needed to know as much as we could, not that we necessarily were going to be using that if we didn’t have to. One of the things that I was afraid about doing what I’m doing was that I would be attacked not by the industry directly by but its allies to try to attack my character and reputation. So that’s what’s goes on in a lot of the campaigns like this. MOORE: When you were doing this research and this spying on myself and my family, what, I mean, to what ends, really? Obviously, they don’t really want to have the debate on the issue, whether or not a for-profit health insurance system is what’s really best for Americans? POTTER: right. MOORE: It seemed like their main goal was if people get in to see that film, we are doomed. We have got to make sure as few people see that film as possible. The way to do that is to smear Michael Moore, call him Anti — American, say Anti-American and say he is not telling the truth. You said the other day that you guys were ready for Plan “B” if that failed, If the movie was getting too much traction, that it might be necessary to push me off a cliff, right? > > what exactly did that mean? POTTER: I was in that meeting and those words, indeed, were said. It was not literal, obviously. It meant we would do what we had to do to create ads and op-eds that we would get conservative pundits to place in newspapers with the whole objective of, as they call it, reframing the debate, to try to move the attention from them to you as a filmmaker.
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Having lived through a scary air travel incident last weekend, Leonardo DiCaprio is giving some big cats a shot at survival in the form of $1 million, which the actor donated Tuesday at the first-ever international tiger summit in Moscow.
Continue reading …Tucker Carlson: Warren Buffet Can Pay More Taxes if He Wants to… But Leave my Trust Fund Alone!
November 24, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media Greta Van Susteren wanted to discuss Warren Buffet’s recent interview where he said the rich should pay more in taxes. So of course who else better to discuss it with than Tucker Carlson. I don’t know if there’s anything much more nauseating than listening to a trust fund baby who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth like Tucker Carlson rant about how the rich shouldn’t have to pay their fair share in taxes.
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Last year’s Copenhagen climate summit was a bit of a bust, so much is riding on next week’s global huddle in Mexico in terms of, you know, the future of our planet and other minor considerations. But a new study by UNEP, or the United Nations Environment Program, doesn’t offer much hope that even the combined force of those countries ready and willing to tackle climate change can stage a successful intervention in time to ward off disaster. Meanwhile, delegates will have a nice warm time in Cancun.
Continue reading …By Amy Goodman Health insurance executives at an industry strategy session on how to respond to Michael Moore’s 2007 documentary “Sicko,” thought they may have to implement a plan “to push Moore off a cliff,” says whistle-blower Wendell Potter. Related Entries November 22, 2010 These Tigers Brought to You by Vladimir Putin November 18, 2010 The Day China Diverted the Internet
Continue reading …Yes, TSA procedures suck, and yes, they’re heading toward a tipping point where there will be nearly unilateral support for getting rid of them. But make no mistake, the publicity was turned up by the right in order to leverage maximum political points for them. Had these procedures been in effect when Bush was in office, Rush most certainly would have extolled their value and reminded us all that it was in the name of “keeping us safe”. In Rushbo classic hyperbole, he instead suggests that the president should have his daughter “groped” by the TSA so he can show everyone how safe it is. These procedures are ridiculous, and the right argument to make on both sides is that they will not prevent an attack. They’re a reaction, and one that actually hands a victory over to terrorists instead of dealing with the problem. But once again, instead of dealing seriously with an issue that garners agreements across partisan lines, Limbaugh ignores the real problem and goes after the president. Sadder still, it works. People actually believe what this gasbag says, and how he says it. And so then we have surveys that indicate a majority of Americans believe President Obama’s religion is somehow subversive, scary and different from most Americans, and “patriots” selling copies of Mein Kampf . The tactic? Easy. Keep the noise level high and severe for 2 more years until everyone begs for it to stop, then offer up a nice, white, clean-cut Republican to turn down the volume.
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President Obama is making a cameo appearance on “MythBusters”—and no, it’s not to prove once and for all that he was born in Hawaii. Instead, he’s interested in something called Archimedes’ solar ray, being a giant nerd and all. Related Entries November 22, 2010 Power and the Tiny Acts of Rebellion November 17, 2010 Saying Goodbye to Compassionate Conservatism
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