WEDNESDAY, May 14 (HealthDay News) — Being well-educated can lengthen your life span, according to new study.
The research, published in the May 14 issue ofPLoS ONE, shows that the gap in overall death rates between Americans with less than a high school education and college graduates increased rapidly from 1993 to 2001.
The implication here is that less well educated people don’t know how to take care of themselves. This is part of a larger PR drive for “wellness programs” which our corporate misleadership hope will subsitute for action on healthcare. Read more
He’s regaining his sanity, get this man more Kool-aid, Stat!:
While the Daily Kos diary in question is specifically arguing that the Cooper plan was great (although that is implied), it does take as its main point that health care reform failed in 1993-1994 because Democrats, specifically Hillary Clinton, weren’t nice enough to conservatives. If only Hillary Clinton had been nicer to conservatives, then we could have had great health care plans like Jim Cooper’s. Hell, Jim Cooper himself says so. And look, David Brooks agrees, so it much be right. Read more
WQED Vote 2008: A Town Hall Meeting and Broadcast with Jim Lehrer to Air Live on Sunday, April 20 at 6pm
Public is invited to be part of studio audience
PITTSBURGH - While Pennsylvania presidential campaigns usually begin in Philadelphia, they don’t end there. What do these candidates know about the Pittsburgh region? What does the public want them to know? Read more
skdadl at pogge reminds us that certain parties regularly get away with spinning their regular wrongitude into a larger, more noble narrative of rightness. And that those who were right never get the credit for it.
Look: the point is that Iggy and company may have been wrong in the observable, normal universe—-what you or I might call "reality"—-but they were wrong in a noble, beautiful way. The kind of wrongness to which they fell victim is the kind of wrongness that allows one to cover ones eyes with the back of one’s hand, stretch out the other hand, and sigh, "Ah, me!" Read more
Via Big Blue, I came across something so Zen and perfect that I just had to post on it. Concerning some Villager I never read and a piece he wrote on BHO:
Number of references Tapper made to himself: 14
Number of references Tapper made to Obama: 16
That’s really it, isn’t it? They can’t understand that it’s not about them. Celebrity is a great evil, and clearly it’s utterly corrupted our press. But the next time you need an excuse to get drunk like a frat boy during pledge week, just count the number of times the Villager you’re reading makes reference to himself, and take a drink for each one.
What astounds me is that I think a lot of them believe that America gives a crap about their lives. Newsflash: we don’t. Bloggers should also take note of how little America could care for Insider Squabbles of the Moment, and the personal relationships relating to them.
Eventually, the courtiers at Versailles got too witty for their own good. Tired of our Villagers and their inability to speak with honesty and self reflection? Try this instead. It’s totally possible to love someone you’ve never met, and to be made a romantic again by a single post…
I HAD WANTED in some way to remember Lt. Ehren Watada, as this anniversary of the Iraq Invasion passed us. Remember him? Yeah. Mad respect for this cat. But the media has drowned out that story, it’s slipped away, they lost it…we’ve moved on to Jeremiah Wright and other pressing matters. Here’s to you, sir. You are one of the heroes of this war to me.
You know who was a real Citizen Journalist? Brad Will. I feel trapped into making cute video cookies with my weekly deadline. I want to haul my ass down to the ruins of Katrina or spend weeks getting next to some hidden or ignored truth that the public needs to know about spend time building a story, building rapport, investigating, planning…and really busting out wild with something that matters. This is jingles and I want to do a concept album. I feel I am chasing snacky, quickly rotating headlines. Hey, don’t get me wrong. It’s a way to pay some bills. And I am proud of winning it. But I long to do some good in the face of all the harm being dropped down on so many out there. And I’m more a part of a corporate entertainment empire now than I am in being a useful eye for the public. That’s how I’m feeling lately, at least.
Read more
Whiskeyfire notes that Klein is now admitting he was “stupid” to support the invasion and occupation, and gets mean enough to say that “willful blindness” probably played a greater role. To me, this hardly goes far enough.
Let’s role-play. Imagine one day, a bomb falls on your house. Half your family is killed, including all your children and your grandmother. The people who bombed you were complete strangers with whom you’d had no interaction or relation, and they did so for political purposes that had nothing to do with you. If a few years later, Joe walked up to you and said, “gosh, I was stupid to support bombing you!” you would likely punch him in the face, or worse.
It seems as if most Villagers have no imagination nor compassion. They are truly inhumane, and times like this I’m reminded of that. The list of the true reasons for the invasion and the wide support for it at the time is a long one: greed, racism, bloodlust, insecurity, lack of vision, ignorance, arrogance, local/domestic political posturing, greed…
“Stupid” is too kind. It’s disengenuous, it undervalues the true degree of the sin and crime. It’s like a frat boy turning up his hands when the arresting officer comes by to pick him up on the charge of rape, saying, “Sorry, I was drunk” and expecting to get away with it. It’s the ’liberal’ element of the Unity meme. Republicans will always deny they made a mistake and blame someone else, but ’liberals’ like Klein will have the ’good grace’ to admit to some wrongdoing. Minor, of course. Just enough to make them seem different than their Republican co-cronies and apologists and criminals. “Stupid” is like “silly” and “sorry.” It’s unlike “bloodstained” and “warmongering” and “war criminal.”
That’s what Klein really is. And millions are dead, homeless, shredded in mind and body, because of people like him. I don’t forget that. Fuck him. And his “stupidity.”
F*cker Tarlson is the latest victim as the Wingnut Welfare financiers hedge their positions in an increasingly reality-based market.
Who would have known that investing in massive airtime for an annoying, screechy, conservative prick would not garner any kind of significant audience following?
The lefty bloggers could have told you, and they were right about the mortgage thing too. But they don’t wear fancy bow ties on the Teevee so nobody should pay attention to them.
Is the propaganda value of unbearably crappy right-wing pundits worth the expense of propping them up financially? Read more
Have folks learned nothing from the past 20 years? The Right Wing will attack any news story, news outlet, journalist, politician or individual citizen they feel is a threat to them. No amount of journalistic or personal integrity will prevent these attacks. Read more
This will be a mostly fact-free touchy-feely sort of post, and although the subject is controversial, I want to make it clear that what I’m asking about has nothing to do with the Man himself, and is only about “the market” that is the progressive/liberal political blogosphere. Which, iirc is about 1% of the size of the Harry Potter Fanpr0n blogosphere, but never mind that…
Anyway, Lambert is trying to make me bust a rib, and linked to this post on ways to make trouble and insult people while losing friends and making new ones. It’s one of several I have seen recently. It’s almost like a new market has been born: how to get 0000s of hits on a brand-new website dedicated to hating the #1 Satan on the interwebs.
I don’t care if he “deserves” it or not; I don’t care if the site is “as good as always” or not. I do care about what seems to be a what, exactly? Splitting? Breaking into divergent parts? Feuding? in the progressive blogosphere. Just as there is great difference between what career DNC folk want and are working for in this primary. Interesting, as this is happening at the same time the progblogosphere seems to be dividing itself into GOS and anti-GOS camps. Which is ironic and funny, because just as Lord Satan isn’t responsible for everything that happens in every corner of the progblogosphere, so too will HRC or BHO be unable to affect the great change in the country that supporters claim and expect. Are “we” once again ahead of the curve, and learning that our heroes have feet of clay, and tools have limits, before the rest of America will?
Anyway, I like Markos and I sometimes find good stuff at his site. I’m not really more invested than that, emotionally, whatever. Sigh, once I was invested in the presidential primary process, emotionally, and more; I wonder if the various camps in the GOS Wars will someday be here too- shrugging and saying, “feh.” And perhaps even learning: there’s more to do out there than crow about an interwebular ranking; activism, even.
The National Press Club, a 100-year-old professional club for journalists, aims to recruit new online-media members through a partnership with Helium.com, a hub for citizen journalists. The deal is expected to be announced on Tuesday. Read more
Last week, I posted a video of “Sam,” whose first dating video was chosen by Esquire as the worst on the Internet. “Sam” had been nice enough to give Correntewire a shoutout in one of his recent follow-up videos.
We’re in the inconvenient-truth biz around here, so I must ’fess up to a convenient sin of omission.
You heard it here first, folks: Sam’s a fake.
Well, he didn’t start out as a fake. Remember the Thermians in Galaxy Quest, and how they thought the small-screen actors were real? It’s kind of like that.
Except this time, instead of an adorable alien, the guileless one was Esquire.com writer Daniel Murphy, who unwittingly pilloried a fictitious character he found on a movie-promo MySpace page.
I’d feel a little empathy for the self-buffaloed writer, but I’m not sure empathy is his thing. Per Murphy, the kind of woman Sam might meet is “probably fat.” And another of his failed-flirt five is, he says, “doing a rather serviceable impression of a man with a traumatic head injury.”
So how did this misunderstanding-turned-hoax come about? How did a promo clip for a little-known movie become an internet phenomenon viewed over 75,000 times?
Funny. I would have thought it was more. From the Center for Public Integrity, via AP:
A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.
This is news? Though it is nice to have the numbers: Read more
National public opinion pollsters, fresh off a glaring failure to pick the winner in New Hampshire’s presidential primary, are now violently queasy about trying to predict a winner in Nevada.
In fact, for a variety of reasons, major news organizations are taking a pass on polling before Nevada’s Jan. 19 caucus.
The concerns stem from the New Hampshire mistake and from knowledge that Nevada has a large transient population not familiar with the workings of a big-time caucus.
Feh. That’s way too generous. How about because they worry that whatever happens in NV, it won’t fit their cut-and-dried she said, he said, two-way celebrity deathmatch narrative? Read more
Ten goddamn minutes. Perhaps more; I’m not sure as I picked up in what sounded like the middle of the story. Blah, blah, ’bottom of the hour, human interest stories are important too.’ If they can devote over ten minutes of their oh so precious morning airtime to a fictional dog from a teevee show in the 50s they can find a 30 second slot for Edwards.
After the dog story, I heard that Hillary is trailing Obama in NH, but is wearing bunny slippers to counter act that. And that while there are only those two people running in the Democratic primaries, Huckabee is a distanct third despite his strong Iowa showing.
Note: The candidate ordering isn’t alphabetical and seeing how Paul is at the bottom it is almost in order of corporate preference.
Just for reference, they don’t have a post about Dems polling only “Most Presidential”, which I’m not sure what that means. Facebook: Obama most presidential
El Gato is right to make fun of this guy’s combover as well as his pathetic ’reasoning.’ Christ, just look at the title:
Unfettered ’citizen journalism’ too risky
My God! Somebody think of the children!!
Supporters of “citizen journalism” argue it provides independent, accurate, reliable information that the traditional media don’t provide. While it has its place, the reality is it really isn’t journalism at all, and it opens up information flow to the strong probability of fraud and abuse. The news industry should find some way to monitor and regulate this new trend. Read more
Tonight’s game was between New Orleans and Atlanta.
I don’t even know who the quarterback on the field for the Falcons was; I’d have no idea of his name if it hadn’t said “REDMAN” on his jersey, and I’d have no clue what the score of the game was — throughout the fourth quarter — had the scoreboard icons not appeared bracketing commercials.
The reasons? Mike Tirico, “play by play” announcer Tony Kornheiser, analyst Ron Jaworski and sideline reporters Suzy Kolber and Michele Tafoya — all they wanted to talk about all night long was Michael Vick. Read more
The head of the federal agency investigating Karl Rove’s White House political operation is facing allegations that he improperly deleted computer files during another probe, using a private computer-help company, Geeks on Call.
Scott Bloch runs the Office of Special Counsel, an agency charged with protecting government whistleblowers and enforcing a ban on federal employees engaging in partisan political activity. Mr. Bloch’s agency is looking into whether Mr. Rove and other White House officials used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans in 2006.
At the same time, Mr. Bloch has himself been under investigation since 2005. At the direction of the White House, the federal Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general is looking into claims that Mr. Bloch improperly retaliated against employees and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination.
Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.
So, to recap: Karl Rove is accused of retaliating against employees and then illegally deleting the evidence. The man in charge of investigating him is accused of retaliating against employees and then deleting evidence.
Pathetic. You can leave some choice comments if you’d like, and let this wanker feel a little blogswarm wrath. Avedon already skewered him:
Avedon wrote:
Some bloggers are doing excellent, real, journalism. They do original reporting, make the phone calls, even put in some leg-work. They’re reporters, pure and simple.
Some bloggers do expert analysis when the subject matter is in our own field of expertise. This will usually be superior to what’s in the major newspapers.
The rest of us know that most of what we’re doing is not reporting. A lot of it is commentary, and no worse than anything you’d find on the op-ed pages of the major newspapers. (I mean, how much worse could you be than Krauthammer?)
And some of us are basically creating our own table of contents - links to articles elsewhere that might interest our readers.
And occasionally, even those of us who don’t usually do reporting or specialist analysis do some local reporting, or do some expert analysis in our own field.
And quite a lot of it is good and enhances our readers’ understanding of what’s going on - and this is vital in a real democracy.
Some of it is not so good, but once you’ve read The Washington Post, you’re used to seeing a mix of very good and very bad journalism. Read more
Check out Bill Moyers on media consolidation. Kevin Martin (a Republican, bien sur) convened the FCC’s final public hearing on media consolidation on just five business days’ notice:
He intends to lift the longstanding ban that keeps one company from owning both the daily newspaper and a radio or television station in the same market.
From the hearings in Seattle:
SUSAN MCCABE: We told you a year ago, when you came to Seattle, that media consolidation is a patently bad idea, no ifs ands or buts about it. So with all due respect, I ask you: What part of that didn’t you understand?
Do you think that another year of listening to the same homogenized, formulaic, mindless crap that passes for news and entertainment on the commercial dial has suddenly caused us to say,
“Please, I’d like a little more of that.”
And as soon as he got back to DC, Martin went ahead with the consolidation plans. Public input meant nothing to him. What a surprise; he’s a Republican, and no doubt has his job with Rupert Murdoch all lined up. Read more
U.S. Secretly Aids Pakistan in Guarding Nuclear Arms The New York Times has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable. The newspaper agreed to delay publication of the article after considering a request from the Bush administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.
I just want an answer to my question:
Without arguing the merits of keeping this particular story secret, just how many huge stories is Keller sitting on? Read more
