Category: News-esque

News that doesn’t fit anywhere else

Michelangelo wears Kabbalah bracelet

Seth Anderson0 comment


“The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo’s Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican” (Benjamin Blech, Roy Doliner)

Could be another case of Dan Brownism (conspiracy theories created without much basis in fact, but fun), I don’t know enough about Michelangelo or Kabbalah to proclaim with any authority.

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which the renaissance artist worked on for four years in the early 16th century, is actually a “bridge” between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish faith, according to The Sistine Secrets: Unlocking the Codes in Michelangelo’s Defiant Masterpiece.

The book, which is already on the New York Times bestseller list, is the work of Rabbi Benjamin Blech, an associate professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University in New York, and Roy Doliner, a tour guide at the Vatican.

Scanning through the arrangement of figures on the vast 14,000 square foot ceiling, the authors have found shapes that correspond to Hebrew letters.

For example, the book states, the figures of David and Goliath form the shape of the letter gimel, which symbolises g’vurah, or strength, in the mystical Kabbalah tradition.

[From Michelangelo ‘hid secret code in Sistine Chapel’ – Telegraph]

Making obscene gestures toward the Pope? Do tell…

The authors believe Michelangelo picked up his knowledge of Judaism while at the court of Lorenzo de Medici in Florence.

In addition, they say there are several attacks on Pope Julius II, who commissioned the work, embedded in the painting.

Disgusted with papal corruption, they think Michelangelo painted the prophet Zechariah in the pope’s likeness.

Behind him, one angel is “making an extremely obscene hand gesture at the back of his head.”

George Carlin, RIP

Seth Anderson0 comment


“Class Clown” (George Carlin)

Any student of American language and culture should have a moment of silence for the passing of one of the greats, George Carlin.

George Carlin, the Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary, poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and groundbreaking routines like “Seven Words You Can Never Use on Television,” died in Los Angeles on Sunday, according to his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He was 71.

The cause of death was heart failure, according to Mr. Abraham.

[snip]

In 1970, Mr. Carlin discarded his suit, tie, and clean-cut image as well as the relatively conventional material that had catapulted him to the top. Mr. Carlin reinvented himself, emerging with a beard, long hair, jeans and a routine that, according to one critic, was steeped in “drugs and bawdy language.” There was an immediate backlash. The Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas terminated his three-year contract, and, months later, he was advised to leave town when an angry mob threatened him at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club. Afterward, he temporarily abandoned the nightclub circuit and began appearing at coffee houses, folk clubs and colleges where he found a younger, hipper audience that was more attuned to both his new image and his material.

By 1972, when he released his second album, ”FM & AM,” his star was again on the rise. The album, which won a Grammy Award as best comedy recording, combined older material on the “AM” side with bolder, more acerbic routines on the “FM” side. Among the more controversial cuts was a routine euphemistically entitled “Shoot,” in which Mr. Carlin explored the etymology and common usage of the popular idiom for excrement. The bit was part of the comic’s longer routine “Seven Words That Can Never Be Said on Television,” which appeared on his third album “Class Clown,” also released in 1972.

“There are some words you can say part of the time. Most of the time ‘ass’ is all right on television,” Mr. Carlin noted in his introduction to the then controversial monologue. “You can say, well, ‘You’ve made a perfect ass of yourself tonight.’ You can use ass in a religious sense, if you happen to be the redeemer riding into town on one — perfectly all right.”

The material seems innocuous by today’s standards, but it caused an uproar when broadcast on the New York radio station WBAI in the early seventies. The station was censured and fined by the FCC. And in 1978, their ruling was supported by the Supreme Court, which Time magazine reported, “upheld an FCC ban on ’offensive material’ during hours when children are in the audience.” Mr. Carlin, refused to drop the bit and was arrested several times after reciting it on stage.

[From George Carlin, Irreverent Comedian, Dies at 71 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com]

A true talent who will be missed.

Irony Alert

swanksalot0 comment


"The Revolution Starts…Now" (Steve Earle)

Irony Alert1 : Fox News was instrumental in placing George Bush and his faux-Christian moralism in power, and thus Republican Christian Taliban warriors were placed at the FCC. Now, the public scolds at the FCC have been set loose to bring shame upon the often sleazy Fox Network. Ha.

Lonely Zenith

Fox Television said it won’t pay its part of a $91,000 indecency fine levied recently by the Federal Communications Commission for a 2003 episode of a reality TV show that featured strippers and whipped cream.

Fox said in a statement that it won’t pay the fine imposed against five of its stations because it believes the FCC’s decision that the show in question was indecent was “arbitrary and capricious, inconsistent with precedent, and patently unconstitutional.” The network said it will appeal the FCC’s decision and proposed fine on behalf of 13 stations — Fox’s own, several stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group and some owned by other smaller broadcasters — that were targeted by the agency for airing the show.

[snip]

Although the fine isn’t very large, Fox’s decision to oppose the agency suggests that the major broadcast networks including ABC and CBS aren’t backing down from their fight against the FCC’s indecency enforcement, which has been more aggressive since President Bush took office and resulted in more and larger fines. FCC officials have said the fines are appropriate and they’re responding to an increased number of complaints about coarseness on the airwaves.

“We believe in enforcing indecency standards, especially when children are watching,” said Mary Diamond, an FCC spokeswoman.

Fox’s decision to challenge the FCC’s fine comes just a week after the agency scored a victory when the Supreme Court announced it will take up a challenge of the agency’s indecency authority this fall. It’s the first time in 30 years that the nation’s highest court has waded into the contentious issue of broadcast indecency enforcement. In that case, Fox and other broadcasters argued that the FCC’s new policy on fining broadcasters for airing “fleeting expletives,” or the inadvertent or unscripted airing of a profanity, was inconsistent with previous decisions and violated free-speech principles.

Fox’s decision Monday to fight the FCC’s latest fine didn’t involve dirty words, but when and how it’s appropriate to show sexual activity.

Last month, the FCC decided to fine Fox for an April 2003 episode of the short-lived reality show “Married by America.” A pile of complaints have backed up at the agency, which often takes a few years to settle cases. The episode featured scenes of contestants licking whipped cream off strippers whose body parts had been digitally obscured. The FCC originally proposed fining every station that aired the show $7,000 — which would have amounted to a $1.1 million fine — but backed down and decided to fine only 13 stations that had actual complaints lodged against them. In the past, broadcasters believed that digitally obscuring parts of performers’ bodies or bleeping out dirty words would protect them from FCC fines.

[From Fox TV Refuses to Pay Indecency Fine by FCC – WSJ.com]

As much as it pains me, I hope Fox prevails. The FCC should update its policies to worry about the 21st Century, and leave Beaver Cleaver alone. His universe is long dead, let it rest.

(I’d add a Digg link, but Digg is giving errors.)

F the CC, and lyrics, if you are curious.

Footnotes:
  1. repost – testing if I turned off my twitter updater [↩]

Huffington Post to expand into local news

Seth Anderson0 comment

Chicago Daily News

Interesting. I wonder if there will be any real outreach to the already existing Chicago blogosphere? Sam Zell ought to pay attention, but sites like GapersBlock shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

The Huffington Post is planning to expand into local news across the US, founder Arianna Huffington said last night, beginning with a site edited for the community of Chicago.

Huffington said the Chicago site would aggregate news, sports, crime, arts and business news from different local sources as well as contributions from bloggers in what will be the first of a series of projects in “dozens of US cities”. The Chicago site will initially be curated by just one editor.

“We are aspiring to be a newspaper in that we want to covering all news, not just the political blogging the way we began,” said Huffington, speaking at Guardian News & Media’s internal Future of Journalism conference.

“[Huffington Post political editor] Tom Edsell has been mentoring a small team of young reporters who have done a great job breaking news through the election cycle. We are working on our third round of financing and a lot of money raised will go to expanding that reporting team,” she added.

[From Huffington Post to expand into local news across the US | Media | guardian.co.uk]

Huffington’s model doesn’t include paying for content, will that continue?

Blood, Oil, and Iraq

Seth Anderson0 comment

Blood, Big Oil, and Iraq met in a back room in Houston somewhere, and agreed that no-bid contracts to drain Iraq of its oil would be a good thing for American taxpayers to fund. I’m sure the Iraqis are thrilled.

BAGHDAD — Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

[From Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back – NYTimes.com]

The Big Oil companies didn’t even make an attempt to seem equitable. There is also suspicion in the non-Arab world that George Bush and Dick Cheney went to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract.

The first oil contracts for the majors in Iraq are exceptional for the oil industry.

They include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today’s prices: the ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash.

“These are not actually service contracts,” Ms. Benali said. “They were designed to circumvent the legislative stalemate” and bring Western companies with experience managing large projects into Iraq before the passage of the oil law.

A clause in the draft contracts would allow the companies to match bids from competing companies to retain the work once it is opened to bidding, according to the Iraq country manager for a major oil company who did not consent to be cited publicly discussing the terms.

Blood for Oil, in other words.

Sidewalks are Symbols

Seth Anderson0 comment

dying embers of the sun
[full version on black is here]

Personally, I only feel at home when I’m living in a neighborhood that has sidewalks. Other than when I lived out in the boonies of Ontario, most of my life I’ve been lucky enough to live in urban environments, and I’m happy with that choice. The suburbs are wastelands. Enrique Peñalosa agrees with me:

Deborah Solomon – Q: As a former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, who won wide praise for making the city a model of enlightened planning, you have lately been hired by officials intent on building world-class cities, especially in Asia and the developing world. What is the first thing you tell them?

ENRIQUE PEÑALOSA: In developing-world cities, the majority of people don’t have cars, so I will say, when you construct a good sidewalk, you are constructing democracy. A sidewalk is a symbol of equality.

Q: I wouldn’t think that sidewalks are a top priority in developing countries.

The last priority. Because the priority is to make highways and roads. We are designing cities for cars, cars, cars, cars, cars. Not for people. Cars are a very recent invention. The 20th century was a horrible detour in the evolution of the human habitat. We were building much more for cars’ mobility than children’s happiness.

Q: Even in countries where most people can’t afford to own cars?/

The upper-income people in developing countries never walk. They see the city as a threatening space, and they can go for months without walking one block.

Q: Isn’t that true here in the United States as well?

Not in Manhattan, but there are many suburbs where there are no sidewalks, which is a very bad sign of a lack of respect for human dignity. People don’t even question it. It’s the same as it was in pre-revolutionary France. People thought society was normal, just as today people think it is normal that the Long Island Sound waterfront should be private.

[From Questions for Enrique Peñalosa – Man With a Plan – Questions for Enrique Peñalosa – Mayors – Bogotá, Colombia – NYTimes.com]

Alleys and sidewalks, the yin and yang of urban life. [More alleyways]

Oil Industry and Congress

Seth Anderson0 comment

Do Not Oil Probe Shaft
[Do Not Oil Probe Shaft]

Oil Industry and Congress: Bitter friends and fast enemies, err, something like that. Both sides of the aisle have an interest in appearing to do something about the ginormous oil industry profits, and subsequent high gas prices for consumers. Fortunately, they managed to avoid actually making any changes.

A package of measures targeting oil-company profits and market speculators failed to reach a vote in the Senate Tuesday, as Republicans blocked Congress’s first effort to address a record surge in oil prices.

Congress and the oil and financial industries are locked in an escalating public confrontation over where to fix blame for oil’s run-up. But industry lobbyists are also huddling privately with lawmakers to horse-trade over measures that could attack the oil issue and work to industry’s advantage.

One way the oil industry could be a winner in the end is through an easing of restrictions on domestic drilling. Republicans have long pushed for more domestic drilling as one response to high oil prices — although it could take years for any new U.S. oil find to have an impact on global prices. Industry lobbyists hope exploration will prove newly palatable to Democrats who are under pressure from voters as well as lobbyists from airline, trucking and manufacturing industries.

[From Lawmakers, Industry Clash And Cooperate as Oil Plans Take Shape – WSJ.com]

The NYT had a slightly different angle on the story, concentrating on the $17,000,000,000 worth of tax breaks the poor, poor oil companies require to conduct business. Without the subsidies, Big Oil would go bankrupt in a minute or two. Luckily for Big Oil, Congress is happy continuing the dole.

A Democratic proposal to impose heavier taxes on big oil companies stalled in the Senate on Tuesday as Republicans and Democrats offered different ideas on how to deal with soaring energy costs.

A bill that would have rolled back some $17 billion in tax breaks on Big Oil and pressured the companies to invest in new energy sources by hitting them with a windfall-profits tax if they did not failed to get enough votes to move forward. Fifty-one senators voted to bring the measure up for consideration, but that was nine short of the number needed under Senate rules. Forty-three senators, most of them Republicans, voted “no.”

The oil-tax proposal was one of two energy-related bills that failed to advance. The other was a proposal to amend the Internal Revenue Code by providing “incentives for energy production and conservation, to extend certain expiring provisions, to provide individual income tax relief, and for other purposes,” as the measure to promote new energy sources was officially described. The vote to take up that legislation was 50-44, or 10 “yes” votes fewer than necessary.

The votes were against a backdrop of $4-a-gallon gasoline and oil prices that have gone over $139 a barrel just at the start of the summer vacation season.

[From 2 Energy Bills, Including Windfall Tax, Stall in Senate – NYTimes.com]

Because the bill was so important, everyone didn’t bother to show up to vote:

Senate Democratic leaders were reportedly resigned to defeat on the oil-tax bill and did not ask Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, who just completed their months-long competition for the presidential nomination, to show up for the vote. The other four absentees were John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee for president; Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Democrats who have been ill.

Six Republicans voted “yes” on the oil-tax bill. They were Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, John W. Warner of Virginia, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Susan M. Collins and Olympia J. Snowe, both of Maine. Only two Democrats voted “no,” Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Harry Reid of Nevada. Mr. Reid, the majority leader, may have voted “no” in a parliamentary move to preserve his right to bring up the proposal again.

Back to the Wall Street Journal, which notes both parties heavily depend upon lobbyists to help legislators make informed decisions. Well, informed in the sense of campaign contributions and three hour luncheons.

As the various proposals fly, lawmakers are choosing sides based partly on whether oil or finance companies contribute most to their home states.

Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has investigators looking into the role of big Wall Street brokerage houses in oil trading. Other Democrats have focused their attacks on oil companies.

Oil- and finance-industry lobbyists have blanketed Washington with advertising deflecting blame for the crisis. In a letter to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee member Sen. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.), Exxon Mobil Corp. blamed financial speculators for more than half the price of a barrel of crude.

The American Petroleum Institute is running newspaper ads depicting a crying baby, to imply that oil-company taxes will hurt consumers most. The API also is touting its study by Robert Shapiro, a former undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs under President Bill Clinton, showing that Middle America holds most “Big Oil” shares. The trade group declined to comment.

Outside of camera range, lawmakers are turning to industry lobbyists for guidance on problems rooted in the opaque economics of commodities markets.

[snip]

Congressional staffers in both parties acknowledged the cooperation. “You do not want to do Band-Aid strategies,” said a House staffer. “We’re trying to talk to everyone we need to.”

Blowjobs and Snow Jobs revisited

Seth Anderson0 comment

Bee Jays
[Bee Jays – click to embiggen]

Eric Alterman notes that the corporate media hasn’t changed much since 1999. Even then, facts were less important than sensationalism.

Back in 1999, I noticed what I thought was an epidemic of stupid reporting about teenage blowjobs. Much to the chagrin of my editors at The Nation, I wrote a column called “Blowjobs and Snow Jobs,” in which I argued that some of the worst reporting you’d find anywhere could be found on this topic, much of it in The Washington Post (for reasons about which I declined, and continue to decline, to speculate). I had no position of the topic, save the desire to point out that per usual, many of the people in the MSM and all of the pundits spouting, ahem, off on it, had no idea whatever they were talking about. Read the column and enjoy the hysteria now that the data are in. According to a study written up in Newsweek of 15-to-19-year-olds by the Guttmacher Institute, “teen sexual behavior in general hasn’t changed much since 1991. Just a little more than half the teens studied had engaged in oral sex, only 5 percent more than had engaged in vaginal sex. Most teens who had had oral sex had also had intercourse, and only one in four teen virgins had had oral sex — not exactly the makings of a teen oral sex epidemic.” … According to the study’s author, Laura Lindberg, ‘There is no good evidence that teens who have not had intercourse engage in oral sex with a series of partners.’ ” And remember this: ” According to a study published in the 2005 Journal of Adolescent Health, teens who had taken abstinence pledges were six times as likely to have engaged in oral sex as teen virgins who hadn’t taken the pledge.”

Of course, the moral of my story is only partially about blowjobs. Reporting this crappy is, alas, the norm, not the exception. It’s just as evident when the topic is Bush, McCain or Obama, when one takes the trouble to look carefully.

[From Media Matters – Blowjobs and Snow Jobs revisited: Teenage (journalistic) wasteland ]

I’d posit that matters have only gotten worse since 1999. Though maybe not much. From the original article:


The Washington Post has twice succumbed to fellatio fever in recent months. One of its best columnists noted that Gore adviser Naomi Wolf “brags in her book


Promiscuities

[that] she was rather adroit” in the oral arts as a teenager. This is slander–Wolf “brags” about no such thing. She does say that as a young teenager she listened to her girlfriends’ older sisters brag about their abilities, but she makes no claims for her own prowess. When I contacted the columnist in question, he admitted that he had never seen the book and was quoting someone who made this claim on Imus, who in turn had not read the book but had seen it “in a wire story.” When the subject is blowjobs (or Naomi Wolf), that’s good enough.

(Washington Post article behind pay wall, but abstract is here, I think.)

Infighting Among the Dems

Seth Anderson0 comment

Bob Herbert is irritated with the fractious Democratic Party, their goofy nomination process, and their self-centered campaigning.

Talk about self-inflicted wounds.

The Democrats may finally be stepping away from their circular firing squad. It took them long enough.

There are so many things that the Democrats need to do to have any chance of winning the White House in November, and it’s awfully late in the game to begin doing them.

Only now is the party starting to rally around Senator Barack Obama, who has been the likely nominee for the longest time. No one knows how long it will take to move beyond the fratricidal conflict that was made unnecessarily bitter by Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The cry of “McCain in ’08!” at the Democratic rules committee meeting in Washington over the weekend came from a supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton.

It reminded me of Bill Clinton’s comment that “it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country.”

He was talking about Hillary Clinton and John McCain. The former president’s comment played right into the sustained effort by opponents of Barack Obama to portray the senator as some kind of alien figure, less than patriotic, not fully American, too strange by half to be handed the reins of government.

[Click to read more Bob Herbert – Infighting Among the Democratcs – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com]

If McCain wins the election, I wouldn’t be surprised to see rioting in the streets.

Floating prison ships!!

Seth Anderson0 comment

Impeachment is too good a solution for these war crimes – George Bush needs to be arrested and tried at The Hague. Floating torture vessels? Horrible.

The United States is operating “floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as “floating prisons” since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.

At this time many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were “disappeared” to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.

[From US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships | World news | The Guardian]

What part of “Rule of Law” don’t these thugs understand? Misleading Congress is an impeachable offense, lest we forget.

Continue reading “Floating prison ships!!”

Fidgeter In Chief

Seth Anderson0 comment

*reposted for our amusement.

White House Briefing News on President George W Bush and the Bush Administration
Let’s start with President Bush himself. How is he holding up?

“He can barely stand, he’s about to drop on the spot,” Bush said, with several of his trademark chuckles, when Matt Lauer asked on the “Today Show” yesterday morning.“He’s doing great. He’s got big, broad shoulders,” insisted the first lady.

But maybe Bush was closer to the truth than his wife. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank’s close inspection of Bush’s body language in the video of the interview exposed any number of signs of strain — including blinking and twitching.

“Only the president’s closest friends and family know (if anybody does) what he’s really thinking these days, during Katrina woes, Iraq violence, conservative anger over Harriet Miers, and legal trouble for Bush’s top political aide and two congressional GOP leaders. Bush has not been viewed up close; as he took his eighth post-Katrina trip to the Gulf Coast yesterday, the press corps has accompanied him only once, because the White House says logistics won’t permit it. Even the interview on the ‘Today’ show was labeled ‘closed press.’

”But this much could be seen watching the tape of NBC’s broadcast during Bush’s 14-minute pre-sunrise interview, in which he stood unprotected by the usual lectern. The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts. Bush has always been an active man, but standing with Lauer and the serene, steady first lady, he had the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.

“The fidgeting clearly corresponded to the questioning. When Lauer asked if Bush, after a slow response to Katrina, was ‘trying to get a second chance to make a good first impression,’ Bush blinked 24 times in his answer.

When asked why Gulf Coast residents would have to pay back funds but Iraqis would not, Bush blinked 23 times and hitched his trousers up by the belt.

”When the questioning turned to Miers, Bush blinked 37 times in a single answer — along with a lick of the lips, three weight shifts and some serious foot jiggling.“

Milbank also touches on Bush’s habit of making inappropriate facial expressions. At one point, he writes, Bush ”seemed to lose control of the timing. He smiled after observing that Iraqis are ‘paying a serious price’ because of terrorism.“

And Milbank doesn’t even mention the tic that has been the subject of intense speculation in the blogosphere for several months: Bush’s bizarre, shifting lower jaw movement that increasingly punctuates the ends of his sentences.

Ah, yes, the famous GWB cocaine jaw. The Huffington Post has a (quicktime) compilation of the jaw movements, taken from the Miers press conference, and from the Roberts nomination. I mean, maybe there are other causes of his grinding (tooth decay, mental illness, side effects from other drugs), but it is certainly an odd affectation. I wonder if it has anything to do with the weird device on Bush’s back during the 2004 Presidential debates with John Kerry?

Sometimes Numbers Aren’t Numbers

Seth Anderson0 comment

Simply outrageous. Outrageous is an overused word, here, and elsewhere, but the callousness of our government, and the majority of our media, is despicable. If an invader killed 7.5 million Americans in three years of occupation, would we be throwing rose petals or bombs at their feet?

Eric Alterman: 655,000 Dead: Reporting the Reporting | The Huffington Post

According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, George Bush’s lies have killed not 30,000 innocent Iraqis, as the president not long ago estimated, but nearly 22 times that amount, or 655,000. Neither the Pentagon, nor much of the mainstream media have made much attempt to make their own counts — it’s just not that important to anyone.

So how has the U.S. media reported on these shocking-albeit-necessarily-imprecise findings, based on door-to-door surveys in 18 provinces, by the experts trained in this kind of thing? The actual methods included obtaining data by eight Iraqi physicians during a survey of 1,849 Iraqi families — 12,801 people — in 47 neighborhoods of 18 regions across the country. The researchers based the selection of geographical areas on population size, not on the level of violence. How strict were their standards? They asked for death certificates to prove claims — and got them in 92 percent of the cases. Even so, the authors say that the number could be anywhere from 426,000 to 800,000.

Dr. Alterman continues…

Blogging for Free

Seth Anderson1 Comment

(repost*)
Daily News

Simon Dumenco is not impressed by the Huffington Post’s business model.


Last week, the Huffington Post, the liberal news/political blog co-founded by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, successfully lured [Betsy ]Morgan away from CBSNews.com. The inevitable headlines and analysis — about how the scrappy blog was edging ever closer to mainstreamness by luring a respected news veteran to be its CEO — was helpful not only in underscoring Huffington’s status as a national media power broker.

It also helped everyone forget Lerer’s astonishing statement in USA Today, just days earlier, that HuffPo has no plans to ever pay its bloggers. “That’s not our financial model,” he told the paper. “We offer them visibility, promotion and distribution with a great company.”

Coming right out and saying that — and saying it that way, with those particular words — takes cojones. Not our financial model. Geez, wow. Not since the Pets.com sock puppet scored a deal to write his memoir (published in 2000 as “Me by Me: The Pets.com Sock Puppet Book”) has there been a more tellingly, creepily poetic new-media moment. In fact, if it weren’t for Betsy Morgan’s vote of confidence in the Huffington Post — if Morgan weren’t willing to put her career on the line to endorse the blog’s place in the media firmament — Lerer’s pronouncement could have been HuffPo’s jump-the-shark moment.
[From Advertising Age]

Gawker’s media empire doesn’t pay its writers much either, but both Gawker and HuffPost bloggers get paid more than B12’s stable of bloggers (who make about a dime a day, after expenses are paid. Those Google ads on our sidebar bring in less and less.) Dumenco continues:


First of all, arguably, it’s the other way around: Despite Arianna’s cable-news omnipresence, it’s the excellent work of such regular bloggers as Harry Shearer, Nora Ephron and Bill Maher that gave HuffPo visibility, promotion and distribution. They lent their credibility and influence — and their built-in audiences (Shearer with his radio show, Maher with his “Real Time” on HBO, Ephron with the fans of her books and movies) — to Arianna and Ken. And for what? Bupkis now — and bupkis forever! (Suckas!)

Second, the vast majority of the Huffington Post’s bloggers get virtually no significant visibility, promotion or distribution simply because there are so damn many of them — 1,800 at last count, which means that unless you’re one of Arianna’s favorites (and/or a scoop-slinging insider), you’re probably rarely going to get on the home page — and if you do, only fleetingly.

Third, the Huffington Post actually does pay some of its bloggers — the ones it has on staff, such as “Eat the Press” media editor/blogger Rachel Sklar — so the financial model is, well, what then? Pay some of the bloggers some of the time? Don’t pay the bloggers who are wealthy enough from their real gigs not to care? That, to me, is not only not a real “financial model,” it’s a wacky, ad hoc, college-newspaper-esque compensation scheme unworthy of a self-proclaimed “great company.”

Mind you, Lerer has also claimed that the Huffington Post will be profitable in 2008 — after burning through at least $10 million in venture capital. If HuffPo ever gets a lofty valuation — through an IPO or through the sale of a publicly valued stake — the serfs will surely revolt as they watch Lady Arianna and Lord Ken and their backers get rich(er).

I’ll admit I was skeptical when the Huffington Post launched, but I do glance over there from time to time, and do find stories of interest to me occasionally. There are so many bloggers though, that I’d guess 80-100 entries are posted a day, and who has time to read them all?

* From time to time, I’m reposting articles from my old blog to my new. No reason, really, other than the best way to test something new is to use it, use it, use, you gotta work it, work it. I’ll try to remember to try [sic ]to append *reposted. Please don’t be irritated if I forget.

Air Travel Sucks

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Flight 1053

Survey says…

Nearly half of American air travelers would fly more if it were easier, and more than one-fourth said they skipped at least one air trip in the past 12 months because of the hassles involved, according to an industry survey.

The Travel Industry Association, which commissioned the survey released Thursday, estimated that the 41 million forgone trips cost the travel industry $18.1 billion — including $9.4 billion to airlines, $5.6 billion to hotels and $3.1 billion — and it cost federal, state and local authorities $4.2 billion in taxes in the past 12 months.

When 28 percent of air travelers avoided an average of 1.3 trips each, that resulted in 29 million leisure trips and 12 million business trips not being taken, the researchers estimated.

[From Survey: Americans make 41M fewer air trips — Lifestyle and Leisure, Delta Air Lines — chicagotribune.com]

I travel a lot less than I used to. Just too much of a hassle. Investigated taking trains (haven’t done that yet, but still thinking about a trip out west, or to Austin), investigated investing/subscribing to web conference software to avoid business travel, and just avoid vacations that involve air travel. Everything about the experience is miserable, TSA terrorism theater, surly airline employees, worries about airline mechanics skimping on proper maintenance, constant delays due to decades old software, yadda yadda. Flying on The Starship it ain’t.

Is re-regulation an answer? Nobody mentions it, and maybe it was just coincidence, but when the airlines were regulated, pre-Regan, flying sure seemed a lot more fun, and smooth. The airlines would be better served if competition wasn’t so cut-throat (and CEO compensation wasn’t so enormous, but that’s a different topic), they obviously are in trouble as matters stand.

Roger Dow, president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based association, said the research “should be a wake-up call to America’s policy leaders that the time for meaningful air system reform is now.”

“The air travel crisis has hit a tipping point — more than 100,000 travelers each day are voting with their wallets by choosing to avoid trips,” Dow said in a statement.

That’s a big blow to airlines, many of which are losing money as the industry struggles with soaring fuel costs. Carriers have raised fares, added fees, cut capacity and scaled back expansion plans, and some small airlines have declared bankruptcy, while Delta Air Lines Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp. announced plans to combine in an effort to reduce costs.

Drugs Dollars and Doctors

Seth Anderson0 comment

Got to pay for that house in Aspen somehow….

Benjamins

Suit Details How J&J Pushed Sales of Procrit – WSJ.com

Documents in a lawsuit filed against Johnson & Johnson by two former salesmen show how the pharmaceutical giant sought to boost sales of its blockbuster anti-anemia drug Procrit by offering contracts that fattened doctors’ profits and urging its salespeople to push higher-than-approved doses.
…
Some of Mr. [Dean] McClellan’s documents [a drug salesman for 12 years] reviewed by The Wall Street Journal indicate that Ortho Biotech created complex purchasing programs offering doctors discounts and cash rebates on Procrit, which would increase the doctors’ profits.

Procrit is an infused drug, which is administered by a doctor. Unlike pills sold by pharmacies, infused drugs offer profit opportunities for doctors, who can buy the drugs, administer the infusions in their offices, and collect the payments from insurers or the government. Drug companies can fatten the doctor’s margin using discounts and rebates to lower the price.

How are these doctors any different than a street corner drug dealer? Why doesn’t the DEA spend some time investigating these pushers too? Reminds me of Glenn Greenwald’s question as to why doctors can over-rule patients.

Mr. McClellan’s documents on the marketing of Procrit show that in 2004 — after Amgen Inc.’s competing drug Aranesp came on the market — J&J made offers that would allow buyers of Procrit to receive discounts off an already-reduced price as well as rebates. For example, an internal company memo calculates that a physician who bought nearly $1 million of Procrit over 15 months would get a check for $237,885 back, or 24%.

Another J&J program offered hospitals an incentive to buy Procrit and shun Aranesp: discounts on purchases from across Johnson & Johnson’s product line — including some huge-selling drugs and medical devices sold by different subsidiaries — if the hospital used Procrit at least 75% of the time when prescribing anti-anemia drugs.

In addition, J&J created a “Right of First Refusal” contract for doctors, requiring them to allow Ortho Biotech to make a counteroffer if Amgen’s Aranesp price undercut Procrit.

Mr. McClellan also alleges the company pushed doctors to prescribe a higher dose years before it was approved as safe and effective by the FDA. For years, the company focused on educating health care providers on Procrit’s medical benefits, he says. But in the mid-1990s at a national sales force meeting, an Ortho executive announced that the division was moving to promote what it called “QW dosing,” switching patients from three, 10,000-unit doses a week to a single, 40,000-unit dose in cancer patients, Mr. McClellan says.