The Statue

Obama's achievement at being elected the first African American President was so great, that instead of inaugurating him President, they're going to inaugurate a statue of Barack Obama, The First African-American President of the United States.

In his desire to bring a "new kind of politics" to Washington and to "be President of all the people," Obama has surpassed all previous Presidents-elect. So he will be sworn in in January as a petrified version of himself, a perfect statue all factions of American society can respect, look proudly upon, and position however needed.

The six foot two and one half inch carving of granite shows Obama in shirt sleeves, blazer jacket slung over his shoulder, necktie loosened, standing at a specially-erected podium and rostrum on the mall, and gesturing upward with his right hand.

According to Frida Berrigan at Alternet,

A new era in Pentagon spending would have to begin with a recognition that enduring security is not attained by threat or fiat, nor is it bought with staggering billions of dollars. It is built with other nations. Weapons come second.

Pundits are saying now that it was the problem of bringing change to the Pentagon, that helped Obama achieve the solution to "turn to stone."

See also, Baker, Peter and Shanker, Tom, Obama Plans to Retain Gates at Defense Department, the New York Times, Tuesday, November 25, 2008.

Check out this offering from sagacious William Greider on the SecTreas appointment:

A year ago, when Barack Obama said it was time to turn the page, his campaign declaration seemed to promise a fresh start for Washington. I, for one, failed to foresee Obama would turn the page backward.

First Amendment

Reporters Without Borders publishes a "Freedom of the Press" Index for about 150 different countries. It has been published for about six years now, during which time the United States has dropped from no. 17 on the list to no. 53.

Some media outlets are trying to spin it so that it looks like the U.S. is no. 36 on the list, but this is a distortion that any baseball fan can see through.

"Another" Voter Fraud Story?

The San Jose Mercury published an interesting story about an ARREST in California, concerning voter-registration fraud.

Where are all the Republican dogcatchers now?

Love Those Foreign Publications

This from The Economist

"It's An Ill Wind:"

"Pitchfork Moment"

The Bush Administration's proposed emergency loan package for the financial industry disenfranchises the American people, who are putting up the loan.

It's not just that Bush's Wall Street cronies Bernanke and Paulson are presenting the current crisis their policies--along with Alan Greenspan's--hatched, as a do or die moment for western civilization.

The worst feature is the "shock-doctrinesque" Treasury coup by Paulson, aided and abetted by Congress. Glen Greenwald refers to it as a "pitchfork moment--an episode that understandably would send people into the streets in mass outrage ..."

Why?

He explains,

What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism -- where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We've retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses. Watching Wall St. erupt with an orgy of celebration on Friday after it became clear the Government (i.e., you) would pay for their disaster was literally nauseating, as the very people who wreaked this havoc are now being rewarded.

It's elegantly simple. The three key provisions: (1) The Treasury Secretary is authorized to buy up to $700 billion of any mortgage-related assets (so he can just transfer that amount to any corporations in exchange for their worthless or severely crippled "assets") [Sec. 6]; (2) The ceiling on the national debt is raised to $11.3 trillion to accommodate this scheme [Sec. 10]; and (3) best of all: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency" [Sec. 8].

Put another way, this authorizes Hank Paulson to transfer $700 billion of taxpayer money to private industry in his sole discretion, and nobody has the right or ability to review or challenge any decision he makes.

The one problem is, you'll never hear or read anything about those points in the commercial media.

Conversion Cover Story

On Tuesday, September 9, the city of Wilmington, NC held an experimental switchover from analog to digital broadcasting. There were some minor problems, but not a lot of details about them in the press.

According to Bruce Dixon, however, Associate Editor of Black Agenda Report, the real problem with the conversion is something the commercial media, the Congress and the FCC aren't talking about.

According to Dixon, "When I put a microphone in Kevin Martin's face and asked him why none of the new channels were being made available to the public, he said, 'That's a good question. I'd like to hear more from the public about that.'"

Unfortunately, Martin is unlikely to hear much from the the public about this on his upcoming tour. Dixon calls it, the FCC's We're Not Listening Tour.

The tour is supposed to provide the public with a forum to give meaningful input to the Commissioners about the upcoming digital conversion.

Anchorage, Alaska
8/27/2008

Fairbanks, Alaska
8/28/2008

Baltimore, Maryland
9/8/2008

San Francisco, California
9/11/2008

Austin, Texas
9/18/2008

Houston, Texas
9/17/2008

Memphis, Tennessee
9/19/2008

New York, New York
9/27/2008

Boise, Idaho
9/29/2008

Atlanta, Georgia
9/29/2008

Missoula, Montana
9/30/2008

Helena, Montana
10/1/2008

Bozeman, Montana
10/2/2008

Billings, Montana
10/3/2008

Nashville, Tennessee
10/7/2008

Charlotte, North Carolina
10/16/2008

Denver, Colorado
10/16/2008

Seattle, Washington
10/20/2008

Spokane, Washington
10/21/2008

Yakima, Washington
10/22/2008

Portland, Oregon
10/23/2008

Chicago, Illinois
11/20/2008

Phoenix, Arizona
12/29/2008

The complete list of 80 cities to be visited by the FCC between now and February is here.

In an interview on Media-Monitors (7:30 pm MNN ch. 56 Sept. 18, 2008), Dixon describes what citizen-activists need to do to use this opportunity to wrest some of the intiative away from the big networks and their affiliates in the upcoming digital channel giveaway.

People need to get their questions ready and show up at the FCC hearing when it comes to their town.

We will post the relevant sections of the 1996 Telecommunications Act here as soon as we can extract them from the legislation text.

Update to CNN

FAIR now has an Action Alert out on the CNN coverage of last Friday's hearing.

Host Campbell Brown:
Campbell@cnn.com

CNN President Jonathan Klein:
212-275-8263


My further response to CNN:

After watching and reviewing the coverage of last Friday's (July 25) Judiciary Subcommittee on the The Constitution's hearings on abuses of Executive Power, I feel compelled to complain about the poor quality of the coverage.

Before introducing the story, Anchor Brown and reporter Hill both joked about the hearing's irrelevance and "stagecraft." However, none of the 35 charges of criminal acts documented in the Articles of Impeachment precipitating the hearing were mentioned.

They include knowingly ordering torture of innocent detainees, innumerable First Amendment violations including unlawful warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, mass murder of Iraqi civilians, neglect of American citizens in need of Federal Emergency Management Assistance after Hurricaine Katrina, conspiracy to profit from war and energy market manipulation, among many others.

These seem to me to be far from a laughing matter.

I'm sorry CNN has fallen so far as to mock the American people, our Congress, Constitution and Justice System, and our right to know -- objectively -- what our elected officials are doing in our name.

I hope CNN will try to do better next time.