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Saturday, January 24, 2004 |
The “Center for American Progress” has published a document called State of the Union Response to point out over 20 misrepresentations in Bush’s speech. Did Bush lie, or is this politics-as-usual? You be the judge. [debris.com]
2:23:53 AM 
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MoveOn raised the $1.6 million it needed to get an anti-Bush spot aired during the Superbowl, only to be turned away at the gate. CBS has rejected the winning ad on the supposed grounds that they don't do ideology, only product. Although exceptions are being made to air anti-drug and anti-smoking ads. [birdhouse.org]
1:55:15 AM
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Former intelligence official Larry C. Johnson blasts the Bush administration's "outright pattern of bullying." [Salon]
1:45:34 AM
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AlterNet is carrying an interesting article by CMU's Richard Florida called the Creative Class War. The article details the decline of what the author terms the "creative class" in the US and how these people are now both not immigrating to the US and how US policies are resulting in a reverse brain drain of educated people fleeing the US. Among examples cited are how Peter Jackson's (LOTR) new movie facilities in New Zealand contributes to the decline of Hollywood, IT outsourcing trends, how MIT had to cancel a large AI project "because the university couldn't find enough graduate students who weren't foreigners and who could thus clear new security regulations," down to individual examples such as stem cell researcher Roger Pederson leaving California to do research in the UK because "they haven't made such a political football out of stem cells." Overall, a fascinating and thought-provoking article. [Kuro5hin.org]
1:17:02 AM
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Boston Globe: Infiltration of files seen as extensive. Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe. From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
1:10:40 AM
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The Internet voting operation the Pentagon is planning for expatriates is not the same as electronic voting machines now under attack inside the U.S. It's much, much worse. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
1:10:06 AM
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Paul Krugman (NYT; reg req): Going for Broke. But some Americans will respond to upbeat messages, no matter how unrealistic. And that may be enough for Mr. Bush, because while he poses as someone above the fray, he is continuing to solidify his base. The most sinister example was the recess appointment of Charles Pickering Sr., with his segregationist past and questionable record on voting rights, to the federal appeals court — the day after Martin Luther King's actual birthday. Was this careless timing? Don't be silly: it was a deliberate, if subtle, gesture of sympathy with a part of the Republican coalition that never gets mentioned in public. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
1:09:20 AM
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CBS is said to have refused to run MoveOn's winning ad, citing its policy not to run commercials dealing "with controversial issues of public importance." CBS will instead run ads from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy -- apparently an issue of public importance that is not controversial. Who would of thought an ad criticizing a $1 trillion deficit was more "controversial" than an ad about the war on drugs?
Here's what the true libertarians have been saying for a long time -- the biggest reason to worry about concentrated media in a world where media is regulated is exactly this. [Lessig Blog]
1:07:16 AM
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© Copyright 2004 The Decline and Fall of the American Empire.
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