The notorious publisher James Callendar lived by a different standard: he printed whatever spin he was paid to spin. As long as he was being subsidized by Vice President Thomas Jefferson, he blasted President John Adams and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton as traitors. But later, when President Jefferson refused to nominate his former co-conspirator as postmaster of Richmond, Callendar turned his wrath on the Sage of Monticello: “It is well known that the man, whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps and for many years, has kept as his concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is Sally.”
A royally pissed-off Jefferson got even with Callendar by denouncing newspaper publishers for eternity: “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
–From Spin This!: All the Ways We Don’t Tell the Truth, Bill Press, 2001
The Sean Hannity Show, April 6th, 2010
Sean Hannity: Now comes president Obama who has turned a blind eye to the lessons of history and embraced a dangerous draw-down in America’s defense.
Newt Gingrich: I think this is the most unrealistic diplomacy since the 1920s…. So, you have the President over here in a fantasy…. It just doesn’t fit this particular planet.
[source]
PBS News Hour, April 6, 2010
JEFFREY BROWN: Among other changes, a declaration that the U.S. will neither use nor threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries.
But the U.S. reserves the right to make any adjustment to this policy in the case of biological weapons threats. And the new policy doesn’t apply to any countries out of compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT.
ROBERT GATES: If there is a message for Iran and North Korea here, it is that, if you’re going to play by the rules, if you’re going to join the international community, then we will undertake certain obligations to you, and — and that’s covered in the NPR. But if you’re not going to play by the rules, if you’re going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you.
[source] Read the rest of this entry »
“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.”
–Snopes entry
I found a reference to the quote in a work by Dr. Kevorkian called Medical Research and the Death Penalty: A Dialogue, first published in 1960 and revised in 1983.
Mar. 31, 2010
“When police arrived, two children were found dead, Pubins said. One child was 5 and the other 15 months old….
The father, 39-year-old Andre Leteve, had a self-inflicted gunshot wound that police said was not life-threatening…. Police said he was distraught over a pending divorce from his estranged wife.”
[source]
Mar. 31, 2010
“An 18-year-old man died after being shot at a Phoenix apartment complex Wednesday afternoon.
… The men apparently met to engage in some sort of transaction.”
[source]
Mar. 28, 2010
“A Phoenix woman and her boyfriend were arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault, after the woman’s husband was found with a gunshot wound Saturday night, Phoenix police said.
‘Moreno and the victim are husband and wife, and Qhihuis is her boyfriend. Moreno and her husband are going through a problematic divorce/custody battle,’ Thompson said in the press release.”
[source]
Mar. 21, 2010
“He was clearing the weapon inside the home to pack it into luggage for a trip,” Crump said in an e-mail. “When the weapon discharged, the round struck his wife who was in the backyard at the time. The shooting appears to have been unintentional.”
[source]
Mar. 18, 2010
“Man shot to death in driveway of Phoenix home”
[source]
Mar. 6, 2010
“A 19-year-old Chandler man was shot dead Saturday after a gun he was looking at fired as it was being put away, police said.”
[source] Read the rest of this entry »
I was bumming around the ‘Net recently, looking for arguments against socialism, when I came across a speech by Newt Gingrich. Well, I kept hearing stuff that I couldn’t help but question. So, I transcribed the speech and added some annotations. The bracketed numbers, if it isn’t clear, are a rough indication of where Mr. Gingrich said that in the speech.
The speech was posted without information about the venue, date, or time. I can only guess that he gave it in 2005, around the time he published Winning the Future.
The speech starts…now:
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I’m going to take just two or three topics to give you examples of this level—this is the Reagan/Thatcher level of setting up arguments so profound that the other side, in the end, can’t win them, and then just sticking to it.
So, I’m going to give you a couple of areas to think about. I’m going to deal with patriotic education and patriotic immigration. And, in order to explain the context of patriotic education and patriotic immigration, I’m going to talk a little bit about the centrality of our Creator to understanding America as an exceptional country. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is a poem/military chant that is a composite of one that appears in an issue of a comic book called Slow Death (#4, 1972) and one I found at the Digital Tradition Folk Music Database.
The poem/chant is preceded in Slow Death by the following:
Thanks very much for all the letters, no room for a do loop letter page or a Slow Death Quiz this time. The cartoon was sent to us by Eric Kimball. The poem was the work of a group of AF and Army GIs assigned to the First Air Cav who sat down one night in a hootch in Nam and wrote a poem. It expressed their bitterness about the things they had done and toward the military that had made them murderers. The poem was first published in the June 71 issue of helping hand; POB 729, Mountain Home, Idaho 83647. Each verse depicts an actual event that at least one of the men participated in. Read the rest of this entry »
Narration writers: Irene Angelico and Harold Crooks
Intro to the Intro:
“$2 for a cup of coffee. $.01 goes to the grower.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Legislative District 21
PARTISAN BALLOT
US Rep in Congress, District 6:
Rebecca Schneider (DEM)
Jeff Flake (REP)
Rick Biondi (LBT)
* * *
State Senator, District 18:
Judah Nativio (DEM)
_______________________
Russell Pearce (REP) Read the rest of this entry »
“You’ve got to understand there are some in this world that simply do not adhere to the ideals we believe in. In Iraq, they don’t put their hand over their heart and say, “Liberty and justice for all.” They don’t believe in liberty. The dictator who runs Iraq doesn’t believe in justice. He only believes in liberty and justice for those who he decides get liberty and justice.
There’s a lot of talk about Iraq on our TV screens, and there should be, because we’re trying to figure out how best to make the world a peaceful place. There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again. You’ve got to understand the nature of the regime we’re dealing with. This is a man who has delayed, denied, deceived the world. For the sake of liberty and justice for all, the United Nations Security Council must act, must act in way to hold this regime to account, must not be fooled, must be relevant to keep the peace.”
[source]
