Dumb test of the day

The dumb, dumber, dumbest test for the day from the Globe and Mail.

Do you think doctors should be required to inform the authorities when their patients are gunshot victims?

At last glance it was two to one, YES. But you have to ask yourself why the Globe and Mail would even consider an alternative. But then, the dummies are usually in the newsrooms which probably explains why so many of the questions seem so bizarre.

Ross Gelbspan, Liar

Ross Gelbspan is a name you ought to remember and label "liar" for this ridiculous assertion.

THE HURRICANE that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming. When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global warming.

I musta missed that two-foot snowfall here in Los Angeles. And those wildfires in Spain and Portugal? Maybe he missed the 100 people they arrested in Spain who deliberately set 125 of the fires. Inconvenient for his communist-style politics where agenda trumps truth. It's not surprising that only the New York Times' owned-Boston Globe would allow a nutcase like Gelbspan to publish his stupidity.

Gelbspan is the author of ''The Heat Is On" and ''Boiling Point."

Good news

Good news: "The audience to MTV�s Video Music Awards plunged 22%." Hosted by Diddy. Ignored by millions.

Reuters

"'The policy doesn't need to change. The policy that's in effect is the one that will stay in effect.'"

From Major General Rick Lynch at a news conference in Baghdad referring to the policy of examining detainees regardless of their profession.

A Reuters cameraman is being detained as a "security detainee" at Abu Ghraib for 60 days. The implication from the story is that he was in contact with terrorists (called "insurgents" by the Guardian and Reuters despite the car bombs that kill civilians daily.) "International press freedom groups have spoken out against the arrest, pointing out that journalists' work is likely to put them into contact with insurgents." is practically an admission that the Reuters cameraman was guilty. Most convincing of his guilt, however, is this:

The Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres said it had written to the US's commander in the Middle East, General John Abizaid, to demand Mashhadani's release.

What is most cheering is that the military is not impressed by the demands of Reuters.

Socialized medicine

The thrill of socialized medicine. From the Guardian:

The Department of Health said that the total waiting list stood at 813,700 at the end of July - the lowest since data was first collected in the current way in September 1988.

This is a drop of 10,200 since June, a fall of 59,900 since July last year and a decrease of 344,000 since March 1997.

The figures also showed that only 15 patients were waiting longer than nine months for their operation, with two of these waiting more than a year.

[emphasis mine] You can bet if this story referred to medicine in the U.S. that some human rights group would demand that this was a violation of some right.

Stepford Journalism

Chas Rich has a blog called NEO Babble at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It's a must for daily reading for his insights, including this piece of honesty. (Remarking on a flagrant editorial from the Toledo Blade.)

Yes, I know the Editorial Board of the paper is separate from the news division. These are just unsigned opinion pieces that may not even reflect the entire board (it just gives the appearance since they are unsigned). I even believe most of the public gets that.

Still the editorial board has an impact on the employees of a paper. They read how the people in power are viewing things, and it has to have an effect on how they cover, report and edit stories. It is only natural.

We all knew it, but it's something most journalists deny even while they avidly follow the line.

In Crawford, Texas, 50 people rally with 700 journalists covering the event. In Cologne, Germany, Pope Benedict XVI held a World Youth Day mass attended by 1 million and where a reported 250 million around the world saw the event on TV. Judging by the number of news stories, few journalists attended.

Groundswell, like hell

Greg Mitchell, one of the Peter Pan "never grow up" editors at Editor & Publisher thinks it's time for newspapers to take a stand and get out of Iraq. Cindy Shaffer, Chuck Hagel and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune are a sign of a groundswell toward that end. It's a tipping point for him. Time to cash in the chips and abandon the Iraqis like the hippies abandoned Vietnam. Not because the Left is against war. They just don't want anyone to benefit from any U.S. action. In Vietnam. In Cambodia. In Rhwanda. In the Sudan. In Iraq. In Syria.

It's the broken eggs theory all over again while the Left makes omelettes.

Robert Scheer

Certifiably Leftist Robert Scheer on Tim Robbins' play and Judith Miller.

Unanswered was how this embarrassment came to pass. Miller is surely not stupid, so how was she duped so regularly for so long?

Raw ambition is one likely culprit, yet Miller's protection of her secret sources begs the question of whether she is ideologically loyal to the neocons who guided her for so long.

For Scheer, Judith Miller is embedded with the White House. But then anyone who doesn't actually foam at the mouth while uttering "neo Con" is complicit with the warmonger and his cronies at Pennsylvania Avenue.

You owe it to yourself to read some Scheer stuff just so you can visualize how demented the Los Angeles Times is. His wife was a senior Vice President at the newspaper. Scheer spewed out his leftwing venom in the pages for decades. At best he is a mediocre writer. He excels in anger and righteous indignation. You can find his columns at Working for Change and at his own site.

Silly woman

What always exposes Liberal journos is their uncanny ability to distort the facts to fit their agendas. Take Margaret Carlson.

And however much the strain of 24/7 celebrity has dimmed her glow, Sheehan has focused attention on Bush's outsized amount of time away from the White House, when more than two years after he declared his mission accomplished massive attacks are killing Americans and Iraqis, and he simply keeps saying he's staying the course.

She looks utterly foolish to claim that president Bush claimed "his mission accomplished" two years ago. It's sophomoric and plain stupid. As is her complaint that he is taking a vacation in Texas. He works every day there. He isn't away from his office.. He is a away from a largely empty Washington. Congress is on vacation. His office is always open.. 24-hours a day.

What foolishness, Margaret. Makes you cringe, doesn't it?

Good News Dept.

Oh this is good news. Sales of The Secret Man, Bob Woodward's book on Deep Throat isn't doing well. From DrudgReport:

The book has sold 61,000 copies, according to BookScan, trailing Ed Klein's TRUTH ABOUT HILLARY [which is nearing 100,000 copies purchased].

The title is typical New York Times: Editors Ponder How to Present a Broad Picture of Iraq. As if they *would* actually like to report the good news.

What more needs to be said?
















Cindy Sheehan

The Aid Game

No surprise. The wave of corruption is, as Mark Steyn noted, the "Tsunami Tshakedown."

Peter Worthington is, as usual, right. But he misses altogether the corruption in the NGOs (Non-Government Organizations) like the United Nations who never planned to spend the money in the first place, and the donating governments who never actually sent it to the U.N. All relief and aid money is totally unaudited.

When, and if, the U.N. allows independent auditing by multiple auditors to look at their finances, they have no right to ask people for money. And that goes for donating countries, too. You really have to wonder at the kickbacks the U.N. gives to countries like Canada.

A message

From Iraq the Model to Cindy Sheehan.

We did not choose war for the sake of war itself and we didn't sacrifice a million lives for fun! We could've accepted our jailor and kept living in our chains for the rest of our lives but it's freedom ma'am. Freedom is not an American thing and it's not an Iraqi thing, it's what unites us as human beings.

As they say, read it all.

Disgusted

There isn't anything you can say to a post like this.

Some days you wonder if these people are (A) just dumb, (B) products of an school system that focused too much on self-esteem over genuine education, or if they are just (C) so politicized that they no longer have common sense or common decency enough to acknowledge the truth. Or a member of the Media which makes them (D) All of the above.

Preachers of Hate

To the Telegraph, Omar Bakri Mohammed is a preacher of hate. To the BBC, he was a just "a preacher" when he was quoted by the BBC after the London terrorist bombings (July 22nd) as saying he didn't believe the bombers were Muslims. Naturally, the BBC believed him, judging by the article that quotes him as saying "He condemned "any killing of innocent people here and abroad" but said he would never co-operate with police." They describe him as the UK-based Syrian-born preacher.

Of course, this is the same preacher who said (reported by the Telegraph August 7th) that he supported the targeting of children in British schools. Two days later, the still non-judgemental BBC conducted an interview (August 9) after his departure, referring to him now as a radical Islamic preacher when he assured them that he was coming back. He was just taking a vacation, visiting his mom. Watch the video at the BBC site where he suddenly becomes a victim of state persecution.

No mention at all of his affiliation with Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group he brought to the U.K. in 1986. You remember them. One of their members was an intern at the Guardian who was recently fired after a blogger identified his membership in HT. He's not the only British media connection. From Wikipedia, under an article about the Hizb ut-Tahrir: "Mr Mohammed M. Ramadan, a journalist and announcer at the BBC's Arabic section in London, was a member of HT in opposition against the military regime of Qadhafi." Qadhafi didn't take the interference lightly. He had Mohammed M. Ramadan assassinated outside of Regents Park. Two Libyans were tried for the crime and in 1980 were sentenced to life in prison. Small wonder the BBC still doesn't think the preacher is all that bad.

In 2000, the then-described "Syrian-born activist " called upon Muslims in Britain to join a holy war against Israel. "Mr Bakri Mohammed told the crowd: "All Israeli targets are legitimate for you. All Israelis must be destroyed." as he lead marchers to the Israeli embassy in London.

By 2002, the BBC was referring to him as "the leader of a radical British Muslim group" when he warned that "Islamic extremists could launch 11 September-style terrorist attacks on the UK if it backs military strikes against Iraq."

All those warnings conveniently ignored by the BBC.

Are you ready for this?

The headline: Clinton says US should make friends, not foes from an AFP item at Expatica.
It's an extension of the Clinton "Go along, get along" foreign policy.

Called the Clinton Global Initiative. A cynic could be excused for thinking that it's a United Nations II, complete with the Great One.

Free speech

Free speech, Canadian style. You always knew those "hate crime" activists were dangerous.

Wasn't Canada once consider civilized?

Peter Jennings

While rock stars thow a concert every 10 or 20 years to demonstrate their generosity, news anchors write books to demonstrate their love of country.

It's always sad when someone dies, and heartfelt sympathy to the family of Peter Jennings for their loss.

Honesty, however, forces me to acknowledge that while anchors write about The Greatest Generation, much of the MSM were, and still are, the Traitorous Generation. That's the one where love of country is subservient to their own ambitions, sharing a view of the world as multicultural and politically correct, with a distinct preference for internationalism over home pride. They are the generation who honestly see no difference between the Soviet Union and the United States. Saddam Hussein killed tens of thousands of his own people with hundreds of thousand casualties and a brutalized population and the Traitorous Generation are unable to condemn him for fear of someone misinterpreting judgement as pro-American. They loathe the military without knowing a single person in it. They have nothing but contempt for middle America without knowing any of us either. I can live with all that. What I find despicable is what it did to human lives.

Mr. Jennings died, I am sure, with his family surrounding him. Free of pain or discomfort. My cousin died two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He was Hungarian. He never smoked, but had throat cancer and Soviet medicine. He had little hope for effective treatment, died at home, without hospice care, few drugs to ease his pain except those we could mail to them. He was 54. One of the joys of his life came after the fall of communism when he could read his own country's history.

He and his wife craved factual information after a lifetime of lies. They devoured travel books about places they would never visit, just for the wonder of reading about a world they couldn't even dream about under communism. Ivan lived his whole life, except for two short years, under communism. The Traitorous Generation couldn't find the moral courage to join that battle either. If they had, perhaps Ivan might have had more than those two years to savor free air.

I have nothing against Mr. Jennings. I am sure he was a fine person. I am sure each his four wives thought so, too. He anchored the news for decades in a country he owed so little loyalty to that he didn't even take out citizenship until 2003. And, even then, it was a dual loyalty. He maintained Canadian citizenship.

In the end, he will be judged by his choices. That so many, many people had to suffer because of the willful neglect of The Traitorous Generation is something that none of us should forget. We should thank God every day that we are not Cambodian. Or Zimbabwean. Or Ugandan. Or Rwandan, all of whom depended upon the MSM to give voice to their plight and were betrayed by The Traitorous Generation, killed by evil unacknowledged to this day by the Peter Jennings of the world.

Robin Cook

You can find lots of tributes to Robin Cook, the former British Foreign Secretary, who died on Saturday while hiking in Scotland. An avowed Socialist, Cook was a student activist from his Marxist days fighting for another Marxist, Salvadore Allende in Chile, although few publications mention the fact. Fewer still will mention his missteps as the British Foreign Secretary.

The stealth Left like to disguise their roots while the hard-to-the-core, open, in-your-face Marxists don't mind a bit telling their story. We'll have to wait for them to fill in the blanks. Meanwhile you can still find copies of Simon Jenkins article in the Times of London, on Robin Cook and the KLA, another terrorist organization beloved by New Labour, and the mess he made of Kosovo -- as Jenkins called it, "Robin Cook's Wasteland."

Like the late Derek Fatchett, MP for Leeds (home of most of the 7/7 London suicide bombers) Cook was another Old Labour Marxist turned New Labour Socialist, except Robin never shaved off the revolutionary chic beard.

Cook's contribution to New Labour was immense even after he left office. From the Guardian obituary.

He made a major effort to reassure anti-war voters - and particularly Muslims - that they could continue to support the party even if they had serious differences with its leadership over Iraq.

Leftwing politics, Marxist MPs joining "New Labour," Islamic funding for the enterprise, radical politics, Islamo-terrorists, and Robin Cook. And the fruits of it all were always very predictable.

State-sponsored Terrorism, like Communism, like Marxism, like Socialism, like Fascism, after all, are European inventions, their periodic flirtation with evil in a continent that long ago gave up believing in God.

OUR terrorists

The leftwing Independent's view of history is reminiscent of Pravda's liberal view of truth. It's the eye of the beholder. Or, in this case, the media outlet. In a story about three IRA terrorists who have been in hiding after conviction in Columbia for training Marxist terrorists, the Independent has their own version of history.

They are "Irish republicans," the Marxist terrorists are "Farc rebels," they were originally acquitted of the "major charge against them, that of training the Farc rebels. "

REALITY
The reality is there if you look for it. A brief summary: The three IRA terrorists were charged with training the FARC terrorists "to make and deploy IRA-style weaponry, including truck-mounted mortars." And gas cylinder bombs. They had traveled to Columbia with false passports. One of the three IRA terrorists had been based in Cuba for several years. He was, in fact, the official IRA representative in Cuba (see below,) although ABC-news, that should know a terrorist when they see one, conveniently missed that part, substituting instead, "It had been thought they were hiding in Cuba or Venezuela." CNN adopted the same verbiage, again, without supplying the fact that Niall Connolly had lived in Cuba for eight years as the official IRA representative or that Venezuela under the Marxist Chavez has allowed free use of the borders for the Marxist FARC to move in and out of Columbia.

ACCUSED of IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY MEMBERSHIP
Reuters, on the other hand, doubted they were members of the IRA even while admitting the FARC group was Marxist.

Three Irish fugitives accused of Irish Republican Army membership and convicted by a Colombian court of teaching Marxist rebels how to make bombs resurfaced in Ireland on Friday, triggering a political storm.

That's odd, when you consider Reuters isn't sure about their membership in the IRA a full three years after the BBC acknowledged them to be more than just members of the IRA. The BBC:

Their mood worsened when it emerged that the three men did indeed have republican links. James Monaghan had escaped explosives charges in the 1970s but had resurfaced in the 1980s as a member of the Sinn Fein executive.
Niall Connolly was described as Sinn Fein's Spanish-speaking Cuba representative. Martin McCauley had been a party worker.

So, Reuters lied outright about them being members of the IRA. How about being terrorists? Ann Applebaum of the Washington Post has no illusions that the IRA are terrorists. It was a distinction that Tony Blair could not make in his news conference (rebroadcast on C-SPAN). Small wonder when you consider that the dealmaking between the IRA and Tony Blair is still in progress as lists of "The Forgiven" have grown to 55. It's a question that even a Guardian article could not answer: "how can terrorism be utterly and unforgivably wrong in one case, but tolerable and negotiable in another? Why is murderous Islamic militancy so different from murderous Irish republicanism?"

Following the attack in New York, Blair could have taken the opportunity to crush the IRA by branding it as a fascist terrorist movement essentially indistinguishable from al-Qaeda, but he had already locked himself into a position of negotiating with another group of terrorists. Last week he again showed that this position is at once intellectually absurd, historically ignorant, and morally shameful.

He said by way of extenuating the IRA that he could not imagine them killing 3,000 people. That is not merely a dubious argument: as so often with Blair, it is based on premises which are simply false. If the IRA did not kill many more innocents it was not for want of trying. Long before Osama bin Laden had set up shop, the IRA were blowing up pubs and hotels and then moved to office blocks and what they called big-city 'spectaculars'. Their bombs in the City of London caused hundreds of millions of pounds' worth of damage, and might easily have taken thousands of lives.

Any suggestion that the IRA's killing was somehow restrained is grotesquely insulting and painful to those who have been bereaved by vile bombings in Enniskillen or Belfast, London or Birmingham, but the claim is wrong in any case. In proportion to the respective populations of Northern Ireland and the US, the numbers killed by the Provisional IRA are equivalent to 330,000 Americans. Would Blair have dismissed that as a trivial figure?

The article was in response to a news conference reported by the BBC. The Mirror shares Tony Blair's contention that "The IRA and al-Qaeda are entirely different kinds of terrorism." One, as Blair noted in yesterday's news conference, you can negotiate with. Really????

OUR TERRORISTS AND YOUR TERRORISTS
It's a distinction that actually impairs the fight against terrorism, says Malaysian Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar.

Referring to the infighting in Ireland between the pro-Catholic Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Protestant British, Syed Hamid said the terrorist attacks by the IRA were just referred to as IRA attacks and not connected to the religion involved.

"The same treatment should also be given to the Muslims, and this would give the moderate Muslims greater strength to fight terrorism," he told reporters on the sidelines of the one-day Asean Regional Forum (ARF), here.

Perhaps that is the reason the U.S. is considering changing the name of the War on Terrorism to the War against Extremism. Maybe, though, we should rename it a War against Leftwing Politics that Use Terrorism as their Weapon of Mass Destruction. That way we can include the Democrat Party and their links to the Black Panthers that even now share the political spoils in Oakland, CA. Or the American domestic Panther connection to radical Islam. Or the tolerance of the Socialists in Spain for ETA and Mitterand's apeasement endorsement of terrorism when he pardoned 31 known terrorists, lifted a ban on terrorists publications, and quickly abolished the State Security Court that had set up to deal with terrorism. Then we can include the MSM who forged those links and protect the story. And the universities and colleges that now employ em.

Retired Canadian general lashes out at U.N.

A retired Candian general criticising the United Nations in a Canadian newspaper? Yes, but the story won't have legs. Don't look for it to be repeated anywhere else because that's how the MSM deep six the truth while playing up their own agendas. (Scroll down article for their agenda.)

Retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie MacKenzie "told the audience of U.N. failures to successfully intervene in troubled regions like Cyprus, the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He described his disillusionment as innocents were slaughtered in wars the U.N. Security Council might have prevented." He said a lot more, and perhaps his speech will be transcribed at some point. A brief overview of his speech at Couchiching Summer Conference sounds promising. It'll be interesting to read the keynote closing address. /snicker

Invasion of the Pod People

Slate review of Current TV by Dana Stevens. Subtitle: "youth culture as imagined by Al Gore"

And look at this bit of misbegotten copy from the Current Web site's description of the channel's identifying logo: "See those four squares in our logo? We call it the cursor, and like an old-school command prompt, it means we're awaiting input." That would be really cool, except that unfortunately, computers haven't displayed that kind of "old-school command prompt" since ... well, the '90s.

Good summary of what I found on Current TV, too. Except I think it's just another version of the dot com bomb, bilking investors out of millions. Let's hope so. Those are Democrats investing in the sink hole.

Britain outlawing Guardian group

Britain will ban the radical Islam group Hizb ut-Tahrir. You remember the group, don't you? One of their interns was recently fired from the leftwing Guardian after American blogger Scott Burgess brought it to public attention.

Bush's dirty war

Pay close attention to the Clinton's special White House advisor, Sydney Blumenthal, writing in the Guardian, describing the war on terrorism as Bush's dirty war. Another Clinton media advisor in the news as well. And then remember that this is why the Democrat party isn't electable any more.

Thought crime

Doesn't this sound like a thought crime?

Haiti to the North

In custody since 1999 a Canadian is has lost another appeal to avoid extradicted to the U.S. The British Columbia Court of Appeals decided no judicial review for Alfred Reumayr, accused of planning a Millenium bombing of the Alaskan pipeline. It was, apparently, another gift from Canada planned for New Year's 2000.

There is still the Canadian Supreme Court. And THEY are certifiably left of Lenin.

More Glories of Communism

Three "dissidents" arrested last month in Cuba will be tried for the crime of trying to "undermine Cuba's communist government."

The law, enacted in 1999 to rein in the political opposition, carries sentences of up to 20 years. It's the same law that was applied to most of the 75 opponents arrested in a highly publicized crackdown in March 2003. All were found guilty and sentenced to long prison terms.

Bet the New York Times doesn't have an editorial on this one either.

ABC-tv to lose accreditation in Russia

ABC-tv, the Disney news network, has been banned in Russia and declared persona non grata for good reason.

ABC conducted an interview with a Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev and played it on Nightline.

In the interview conducted by Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky, Mr. Basayev, who has a $10-million (U.S.) bounty on his head, said he was plotting more attacks.

Among other attacks, Mr. Basayev has been linked to a 2002 hostage-taking assault on a Moscow theater that left 170 people dead, a 2003 suicide attack in the Moscow subway that killed 41 people, and a 2003 double suicide bombing at a Moscow rock concert that killed 17 people.

Basayev "who has claimed responsibility for some of Russia's most terrifying terrorist attacks, including last year's hostage seizure at the school in Beslan, which ended in the deaths of more than 330 children and adults."

The interview was conducted by Andrei Babitskii, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty staffer, who "was not on assignment for RFE/RL at the time."

From The Moscow Times:

Babitsky said he had not expected the authorities to go as far as kicking ABC out of Russia. "I suppose the anger was caused not by the actual interview, but by the fact that as a result of this interview the law enforcement and special services ended up in a ridiculous situation," he said. "Using taxpayers' money for the past six years, they are unable to catch Basayev, and yet a journalist talks to him. ... It is rather odd that journalists are made responsible for the inefficiency and professional incompetence of the law enforcement agencies."

That's the Disney news for you. Glorifying terrorists.

UPDATE: When they aren't legitimizing terrorists, ABC is not helping the fight against them either.

Current TV

On August 1st, the America-hating NewsWorld International, that brainchild of Maurice Strong's Power Corporation of Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting system will officially become Current, the Al Gore channel. Naturally, the New York Times dutifully hypes the network. It may be optimistic considering Al Gore's legendary tin ear to politics, but it's a great reward for him running the "Sky is falling," global warming scam called the Kyoto Protocol envisioned by Maurice.

Even before Al signed the document, the U.S. Senate publicly repudiated it in a resolution authored by that sanctimonious, former Klu Klux Klansman, windbag Senator Robert Byrd (D). Nevertheless, the MSM made great use of the decision of the Bush administration not to ratify Kyoto another campaign for Bush bashing and loathing the U.S. (Clinton wouldn't send it for ratification either after the 95-0 vote on the resolution. Not a single Democrat signalled their intent to consider the protocol.) I doubt any one of them would invest in Current either.

As you would expect, the new network is funded by major Leftwing Democrats, including Joel Hyatt, Howard Metzenbaum's son-in-law, and Richard Blum, Dianne Feinstein's husband, and Ron Burkle, "a heavyweight Democratic fund-raiser" and Bradley Whitford who, apparently, is well qualified for heavy political thought and serious discussion because he "plays a White House adviser on "The West Wing." But the choice of president of programming is typical Gore inspiration, surfing the wave of innovation just when it grounds on the shore.

DAVID NEUMAN
The president of programming will be David Neuman, 44, "a former executive at CNN and Disney who served as a fellow in the Reagan White House." (No telling how long he was at the White House, no one states, and it doesn't show up in this brief bio, but you got to suspect that anyone who eventually went to work at CNN and Disney under Eisner had to have impeccable Leftwing credentials. The Nation is thrilled. "David Neuman--the former programming chief for CNN who recruited Paula Zahn, Anderson Cooper and Soledad O'Brien." )

For a look at the company Newman headed before, read Matt Welch's hilarious account of how he worked for "Maharishi Dave" at DEN. The New York Times mentions none of this, but then, they probably didn't write the story they printed today that sounds suspiciously like a press release. But they must know about DEN. Digital Entertainment Network Inc (DEN) was, in Business Week's words, "a hot Web startup" that aimed to "create the online equivalent of a TV network for 14- to 24-year-olds." It didn't help that a co-founder of DEN settled a lawsuit for having sex with a 13 year old boy, then quickly resigned, nor the industry criticism of execs having extravagant salaries. (CNET story on DEN problems specifically mentions Neumann's salary.) DEN went bankrupt. Neuman is a fellow land surfer dude.

In an interview with NPR, Newman was expansive.

"Well, our entire network is going to be in short form, so think of it as like the structure of the original MTV, but instead of videos that are just about music, there's videos that cover the whole range of the young adult audience. We're calling them pods.

It sounds to me like body snatcher things, but Neuman obviously positioning himself to surf the iPod wave after it has crested. The interview continues.

As for content, it will be provided by the audience.

Yeah, I think American Idol is in the gene pool of this network. We love that. I think we think of that as a form of democratizing the television medium that we think is a cool thing.

The NPR interviewer had reservations, however.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: David, I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but you know two of the three examples you gave had to do with illegal drug cultivation and hip hop music. And the thing is, there's always been a concern that kids aren't interested, young people aren't interested in the news, but is it because they're not hearing about the subjects they care about or because the stories they ought to care about aren't being told well?

DAVID NEUMAN: By the way, my referencing Sierra Leone and the Myanmar stories really might be reflective of, you know, what I'm interested in, but the reality is that we aren't selecting subjects according to - oh, our audience is interested in drug use, and therefore that's what we should focus on. We're looking for compelling stories from around the world.

It promises to be interesting. Gore's tone deafness, however, might prove an obstacle, as the New York Times notes.

That there is a generation gap between Mr. Gore and his young charges became evident after the screening, when he suggested that someone call Norman Lear for some advice. The blank stares he got back suggested that no one in the room had ever heard of the producer of "All in the Family."

The MSM will never give up their fondness for the bozo. The article is entitled, "For Gore, a Reincarnation on the Other Side of the Camera." Still, you can be forgiven for thinking the investors have more interest in keeping Al Gore away from a microphone than making a buck. They can always use the tax writeoffs.