Monday, October 24, 2005

NYT: "Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report" "Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said." Goodness. So much for the spin about where the Bush folks heard it. "It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government's deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry." 10:40:45 PM   permalink   comment []

In the 1930s a textile union was attempting to organize workers at the predecessor companies of Cone Mills Corp. The National Labor Relations Board told my grandfather, Sydney Cone Jr., that he was guilty of unfair labor practice for (as he put it) "advising employees not to buy gold bricks." According to an unpublished memoir written by my grandfather, the union lawyer then asked bleachery overseer Charlie Frazier if he, too, spoke to workers about joining the union. Frazier responded, "I said it is your cow, you can kiss either end of it." He was cited for unfair labor practice, too. But it wasn't all so funny. An armed confrontation between management and organizers was narrowly averted in Greensboro during the tense summer of 1934. The parallels with 1979 are eerie, including Communist leadership of the union drive and white supremacist rhetoric among some union opponents. There was barbed wire outside the Cone mills, and armed men on the roofs. (At this point in the story, my grandfather would always say that he was in his office with "a well-oiled rifle," and my grandmother would always say he was lucky he didn't shoot himself in the foot.) Elsewhere in the south, there were violent and sometimes deadly confrontations. Nothing funny at all about that history. 1979 did not happen in a vacuum. 9:25:11 PM   permalink   comment []

Fitzgerald's wide net. 1:21:54 PM   permalink   comment []

Motley Fool: "Sales and service of the popular BlackBerry handheld communicator may come to a halt. Soon." eWeek: "The result would be to black out [BlackBerry] e-mail service in the United States." 1:12:56 PM   permalink   comment []

Funnier than the fake news: Kit Seelye reports, "You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month...But it found time to add another item to its agenda -- stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal." 12:25:06 PM   permalink   comment []

AdAge reports: "U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs." (free registration required) The article says blog-reading is in addition to time spent at news sites. No data on its impact on traditional time-wasters such as online shopping, looking at porn, talking to friends on the phone, and reading magazines tangentially connected to work, including AdAge. 12:14:17 PM   permalink   comment []

Borrell Associates report: "Local online advertising is enjoying a bonanza year, with many site operators reporting revenue increases of 50 percent or more...Next year is likely to see continued growth, though not quite as strong as in 2005...Not all markets will fare that well: we expect a dozen small markets to see declines, while many of the larger markets will see above-average growth..." "...Looking ahead, the biggest growth category in online advertising is the one that most local site operators cannot even offer: Local paid search." Emphasis mine. Opportunity yours. 8:36:27 AM   permalink   comment []

From Nicholas Carr's much-discussed essay on web-hype: "Forced to choose between reading blogs and subscribing to, say, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, and the Economist, I will choose the latter. I will take the professionals over the amateurs." 8:22:27 AM   permalink   comment []

Herbert is the lone DarkTimes columnist this morning. In a piece headlined "How Scary is This" he quotes recent remarks by a retired Army colonel and former chief of staff to Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, who said: ""The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made." Herbert on Wilkerson on Iraq: "In his view, if American forces were to pull out too quickly, the U.S. would end up returning to the Middle East with 'five million men and women under arms' within a decade." Herbert says "the Bush administration is immune to prosecution for its greatest offense - its colossal and profoundly tragic incompetence." 8:10:02 AM   permalink   comment []

The fun new game in the 'sphere is assessing the "market value" of your blog...I think Mr. Sun has nailed it. 7:59:29 AM   permalink   comment []

Plead the First has another political cartoon up...I've heard people say that the N&R could use more local cartoons, maybe they can find what they need in the online alt media world... 7:55:36 AM   permalink   comment []