Creepy

See if this quote doesn't creep you out.

I am not proud of myself for even considering the notion that another terror attack that costs even one American life could ever be considered anything else but evil and hurtful.

BUT BUT,

What if another terror attack just before this fall's elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?

I start from the premise that there is already a substantial portion of the electorate that tends to vote GOP because they feel that Bush has "kept us safe," and that the Republicans do a better job combating terrorism.

If an attack occurred just before the elections, I have to think that at least a few of the voters who persist in this "Bush has kept us safe" thinking would realize the fallacy they have been under.

If 5% of the "he's kept us safe" revise their thinking enough to vote Democrat, well, then, the Dems could recapture the House and the Senate and be in a position to:

Block the next Supreme Court appointment, one which would surely result in the overturning of Roe and the death of hundreds if not thousands of women from abortion-prohibiting states at the hands of back-alley abortionists;

Be in a position to elevate the party's chances for a regime change in 2008. A regime change that would:

Save hundreds of thousands of American lives by enacting universal health care;

Save untold numbers of lives by pushing for cleaner air standards that would greatly reduce heart and lung diseases;

More enthusiastically address the need for mass transit, the greater availability of which would surely cut highway deaths;

Enact meaningful gun control legislation that would reduce crime and cut fatalities by thousands a year;

Fund stem cell research that could result in cures saving millions of lives;

Boost the minimum wage, helping to cut down on poverty which helps spawn violent crime and the deaths that spring from those acts;

Be less inclined to launch foolish wars, absence of which would save thousands of soldiers' lives- and quite likely moderate the likelihood of further terror acts.

Russell Shaw, writing in the Huffington Post.  Praying for a teeny tiny terror attack, please, -- maybe 100 or so -- so that his party can win.

Kinda makes you sick, doesn't it?   It's for the greater good, you know.   Now WHERE have we heard those words before?

Mediacrity: A UN Hack's 'Tribute' to Rachel Corrie

From Mediacrity, news of a UN hack tribue to Rachel Corrie.

Rachel Corrie, you might remember, was the twit peace activist who fell under a tractor while climbing rubble ostensibly to "protect a Palestinian home."   Her parents later sued Caterpillar.   A memorial to her inadvertently shows how utterly unwise she was.   Make sure to scroll down to her screaming hate-filled pose with Palestinian children as she holds aloft a picture of a burning American flag.  

You can do a google image search and come up with 10 pages of images of Corrie.

Fake Photojournalism, Fake News Stories

First we have fake photojournalism by Reuters and the AP.   Now there is news of fake journalism - video news releases masquerading as stories, although the Washington Post made sure to smear the White House in their article on the subject.

Most of us have seen the fine hand of the press release handout in news stories for decades.   Mailed to an editor by an activist group, or, more probably, given to an editor by another newspapaper's editor and handed over to a "journalist", the press release is only superficially re-written as a news story.   It's a little harder to do now that the activist groups post their press releases on line, but, nonetheless, the habit is hard to break.   For decades, however, the video news release has been used in television news, sometimes without any rewriting at all.

How widespread is the use of video news releases?   Nielsen studies indicated that 100 percent of the stations surveyed aired VNRs.

In 2004, a survey by the major VNR producer D S Simon Productions found that more than 80 percent of television stations were airing the same number or more VNRs on medical topics, compared to 2003.

And to help it along, the VNR supplier buys spots, virtually assuring the play of the video as a news item.   They call it "branded journalism" when they buy time on broadcast networks and cable networks, guaranteeing that for $10,000 to $50,000 that the video news release would be aired.

Freepress.com is campaigning to crack down on fake news and the FCC is responding by issuing letters of inquiry to some 42 TV stations.   Failure to identify can result in a fine of up to $32,500 for each violation, something that might take out the economic incentive for stations to make use of the VNR. 

Too bad we don't have a similar agency to investigate the press.  

Love This

Slublog reports on The Passion of the Toys.   Heh

Crackpots

Putz.

born in New York City in 1940, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in Far Eastern history, was an exchange student at National Taiwan University in the 1960s, and did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, in Chinese History where he earned a Ph.D (Abd). He has worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and traveled widely in China.

He is also a contributor to such magazines as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Granta, Wired, Newsweek, Mother Jones, The China Quarterly, and The New York Review of Books."

AND,

The author of fourteen books, nine of them about China, and the contributor to numerous edited volumes, his most recent books are "Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangrila From the Himalayas To Hollywood," "The China Reader: The Reform Years," and "Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China's Leaders."

He has also served as a television commentator for several network news programs, has worked both as correspondent and consultant for a number PBS "Frontline" documentaries and has been the correspondent for an Emmy award-winning program on the CBS program "60 minutes."

AND,

serves on the boards of Human Rights Watch, the Sundance Documentary Fund jury, and the Social Science Research Council. He is also a member of the Pacific Council, the Council on Foreign Relations and a regular participant in the World Economic Forum at Davos, in Switzerland.

AND, he is:

Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley

Orville Schell thinks citizens are "incapable of making intelligent decisions" (about who to vote for, naturally) because they " don't listen, they don't read or they don't wanna accept the results of scientists, of journalists, of historians, whomever..."

And you wonder why journalists are so far Left they think China is a friendly nation and the U.S.is a danger to democracy.   Why all of us are dangers to democracy because we are just too stupid to listen to crackpots like Orville Schell.