Link: http://conovermedia.blogspot.com/

I don't normally lift an entire blog posting, but sometimes you find one that is so cogently and concisely written that you can't plausibly edit it down to quote blocks. Here is one from Daniel Conover:

I spent the weekend at a gathering of what might best be described as the post-mass-media tribe in Black Mountain, N.C.

* They don't read newspapers, and why should they? Newspapers scorn them to begin with.
* They don't watch much TV, either.
* Big music labels piss them off. Small labels that care about music turn them on.
* They don't like one kind of music: they love all sorts of music.
* They would rather entertain themselves than be entertained.
* Some of these people just recently opted out of mainstream culture. Others stopped caring what you think about them 40 years ago. And some of them are second- and third-generation products of the counter culture.

In other words, they're not a counter-culture. They are a culture.

This isn't youthful rebellion. It isn't a bunch of people sitting around smoking pot on Daddy's dime. These are competent, intelligent, community-oriented people with a variety of interests and skills. They care about the environment, justice, free-expression, equal opportunity and liberty. They put their money -- and their muscles --on their values.

And I have this powerful sense that these are the people who are about to power the next wave of cultural creativity in America. Old values, new threats and emerging technologies are morphing into a Green Revolution that is both global and intensely local, with a strong emphasis on sustainability and responsibility.

Thow-away media mean nothing to these people. They don't "do" shoddy.

Got anything for them?

That sums up many of my worldview components. I have also found myself asking the last question more frequently in the last 2 years...

...are indeed interesting to behold, especially when it involves my Congresscritter Pete "The Bankruptcy Bill is a splendid idea" Sessions.
Sessions' district was redrawn in 2003 (with assistance from that beacon of probity Tom DeLay) to ensure that an insufficiently large number of those awkward, uppity lower-income folks would be in the district, since they might have voted against him. This allowed him to defeat Martin Frost and take the seat.
Here is the map of District 32, which shows a nice collection of higher-income areas in his district, with the lower-income areas magically belonging to some other districts...
Mr. Sessions was recently forced to testify in a rather messy divorce case which involved a friend of his, who engaged in the ethically-challenged activity of transferring a large collection of assets to his then-wife in order to evade paying on a bankruptcy judgement. Given his fulsome praise of the Bankruptcy Bill when it first came to the floor of the House, and his supposed respect for the rule of law (you know, the one that the Republican Party thought was so very important when they impeached President Clinton in 1998), one might expect Our Pete to be picking up the phone and alerting some section of law enforcement as to the devious actions of his friend. However, it seems that Pete had an attack of some malady - amnesia, severe carpal tunnel in the dialing hand, who knows? and decided to say nothing. However, when his friend's wife decided to keep the assets, things started to get messy. Hence Pete's court appearance. I would dearly like him to be charged with some malfeasance, but the fact that he has testified, and seemingly not invoked the Fifth, suggests that he is not going to be charged with anything> However, he did get awarded the "Wanker of the Day" title by Digby, who has more of the story here.
Sadly, this is almost unremarkable these days. The Republican Party at Federal and increasingly at State level seems to have assumed the role of the gold standard for political malfeasance. I would never have voted for Pete Sessions, and I expect to be able to contribute to voting him out in the next election. The sooner we send his hypocritical sorry ass packing, the better.

Link: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0704/19/cnr.04.html

Here is an extract from a CNN transcript of a Q&A with President Bush this week:

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRES. OF THE U.S.: That's what they pass to become law. Here's where we are. I said, get a bill to me as quickly as you can.
I believe they committed to a bill late next week or week from next Monday, I think is what they're aiming for. And therefore, we will, you know, sit back and hope they get it done quickly. Time's of the essence. We need to get money to the troops. It's important for them to get the money.
However, I did make it clear that in exercising your authority, if you put timetables or if you micromanage or artificial deadlines or micromanage the war. Or insist upon using a war supplemental to load up with items that are not related to the global war on terror. I will exercise my constitutional authority. And then you will have the opportunity to override my veto if you so choose.
My point to the leaders, it was a very cordial meeting yesterday, by the way. People, the positive news is that we don't, the negative thing is we don't agree 100 percent. That's not, you shouldn't be surprised. The positive news is that there was a cordial discussion. The discussion was dignified, like you would hope it would be. And people were free to express their minds. And, so, my attitude is, if they feel like they've got to send us up there with the strings like they said, please do it in a hurry, so I can veto it. And then we can get down to the business of getting the troops funded.
Sir?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, how would you respond to the rather mistaken idea that the war in Iraq is becoming a war in Vietnam?

BUSH: Yes, thank you. The, there's a lot of differences. A first, the Iraqi people voted for a modern constitution. And then set up a government under that constitution.
Secondly, that's as opposed to two divided countries. North and south. The, in my judgment, the vast majority of people want to live underneath the constitution they passed. They want to live in peace. And what you're seeing is radical on the fringe, creating chaos and order to either get the people to lose confidence in the government or for us to leave.
A major difference as far as here at home is concerned as far as the military is it's an all-volunteer army. We need to keep it that way. By the way, the way you keep it that way is to make sure the troops have all they need to do their job and to make sure their families are happy.
And there are some similarities, of course. Death is terrible. There's no similarity, of course, is that Vietnam is the first time that a war was brought onto our TV screens to America on a regular basis. Looking around, looking for baby-boomers, I see a few of us here. A different, for the first time, the violence and horror of war was brought home. That's the way it is today.
Americans rightly so, are concerned about whether or not we can succeed in Iraq. Nobody wants to be there if we can't succeed, especially me. And these violence on our TV screens affects our frame of mind. Probably more so today than what took place in Vietnam.

A more complete transcript of the President's responses to various questions is here.
Sorry, but this is stunning...here is the CEO of America Inc., in his second term of office, stumbling and staggering over words like somebody either suffering from mental slowdown or illness (or both).
I once asked a fellow Texan why he had voted for George W. Bush. His response (paraphrased) was "he's a regular guy". My response to that was that I didn't want a "regular guy" running the country. That is the sort of job that should only be given to an exceptional guy. This transcript shows that George W. Bush is not even remotely close to "regular guy" levels when it comes to basic communication. This is before considering even a small number of the other issues with George W. Bush that, in my opinion, render thim unfit to be the CEO of America Inc.
I find this extremely serious. I remain amazed that the media in the USA continues to enable the President by failing to comment on the fact that he cannot complete simple sentences, nor can he talk sense (even allowing for the grammatical errors). When the history of this period of the USA is written, I believe that it will record that the mass media were shown as enabling incompetence, malfeasance and other ethically and legally-challenged behaviours from 2000 through 2008 by the Federal Government and the Bush administration.
The mass media needs to start at the top and ask publicly why the country currently has a President who, when asked to answer fairly straightforward questions from citizens, seems unable to talk coherently, and communicate in any sensible way. Accountability for USA Inc. starts at the top. If the person at the top is not held accountable, nobody lower in the command structure will regard themselves as accountable. It is quite clear from recent events that a number of people in the Bush Administration regard themselves as close to untouchable (don't even get me started on Alberto Gonzales' unbelievably inept and duplicitous performance yesterday).
If the media continue to fail to hold the President accountable, then it is up to us, via our elected representatives, to hold him accountable, if necessary before the end of his term of office.

..reminds me of the lawyer joke:

Q. What do you call 5000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A. A good start...

While Imus' remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team were gratuitously offensive, my question to the media is: have you only just woken up? Other commentators have been uttering this sort of offensive and provocative speech for decades. This posting from DailyKos sums up my question:

As for Imus.. his firing, is a result of 30 years worth of missteps. This should be crystal clear through the remarks of Al Roker, Ron Allen, Keith Olbermann, and the people running NBC.

As Keith Olbermann pointed out last night.. where is the outrage on Limbaugh for his comment on Halle Berry and Barack Obama? Or how about on Michael Savage for his comments on hanging chads in crack houses? John Gibson for his urging whites to have babies to stay the majority? And lets not leave out Glenn Beck's comments about Katrina survivors and his questions to Keith Ellison Rep of MN on being "the enemy".

There is a lot of outrage.
I for one am glad to see someone finally. As Jessie Jackson said last night, lets keep the momentum going.
I get really freaking frustrated when people tell me to "chill out" when I witness racism (on any level) OR am told that racism doesn't exist.
Conservatives do this all the time, and they call it a battle against political correctness. Its not.. they just use it as a license to discriminate and have a hearty laugh afterwards.

As is usual in these kinds of situations, the firing of Don Imus had very little to do with political correctness, offensiveness or any other considerations of constructive commentary and debate. Imus was fired because the advertisers ran away from his programming at high speed. If no advertisers had fled, Imus would be continuing with his brand of commentary as I write this. Networks currently react to economic reality, not what is right, good and proper.
There is a lesson there for all progressives. If you want to banish egregiously mean-spirited commentary that seeks to diminish groups in society, don't expect to achieve that result by protesting verbally. The right course of action is to go to the corporations that indirectly enable this kind of speech via advertising. I am not using Amazon any more because they refused to step up to the plate and toss Ann Coulter's website from their affiliates program, despite the fact that Coulter's website comments clearly violated the Amazon Affiliates policy. I encourage other progressives to adopt a similar policy.
The firing of Don Imus will be portrayed by the authoritarian wing of American politics as an example of political correctness run amok. We will read the usual protestations about "free speech", the "First Amendment", and Imus' firing will be contrasted with the writings of "profane", "potty-mouthed", "mean-spirited" "leftie bloggers". All of those utterances will be the emanations of empty vessels. Saying "this is f**king ridiculous" does not have the same meaning as suggesting that a Supreme Court judge should perhaps be poisoned, and anybody who tries to make that argument is going to get a short sharp answer from me along the lines of "who are you trying to fool?". I can tell the difference between in-context profanity and threatening speech, and I would hope that, as time goes on, more and more Americans will also be able to discern the difference.

Link: http://randi.org/images/commentary/200703/Checklist%20for%20identifying%20dubious%20technical%20processes%20and%20products.pdf

here is a checklist for use if you are ever confronted with amazing claims for a new device or invention...

Link: http://www.correntewire.com/a_conversation_with_a_white_house_journalist

A lot of the interactions between bloggers and the media are fairly, (how can I put this) spiky. Numerous media figures have publicly complained about "uncivil", "angry" bloggers, often after a swarm of bloggers have picked over a news story and believe that they have found errors or distortions. In turn, the blogging community has been left with the impression of a defensive, unrepentant media in "circle the wagons" mode, seeking to brush off or ignore criticism by pointing to the style of the criticism rather than bothering to address the substance.
So, it is interesting (and somewhat unusual) when a journalist, who also has access to the White House as part of his job, sits down with a blogger to answer questions about his role, how he views the performance of the media, and his opinions of bloggers and the interactions between the media and blogging worlds. The resulting dialogue (which is necessary for both sides) may hopefully lead to a reduction in the current high levels of antipathy between media journalists and bloggers.

Link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=SPE8vL5hlFA

...I find visuals on the Internet where you wonder "what were they thinking?". Here is one example...There may be a couple of Darwin Award candidates appearing in this video...

Link: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/3/13/8252/83798

...courtesy of Bill in Portland Maine, today's DailyKos features a letter to a citizen from the Department of Homeland Security. Priceless...

Link: http://thenonsequitur.com/

The Washington Post still continues to engage in cheer-leading for the "Surge" - see Glenn Greenwald's latest analysis of Robert Kagan's article (which, by the way, totally fails to mention that Robert Kagan is the brother of Frederick Kagan, one of the architects of the whole "Surge" strategy...talk about a conflict of interest there...).
However, a different analysis is available here, one that focusses on the numerous inconsistencies and fallacies in the whole case for the "Surge", in addition to the current flmsy arguments for why it will succeed.

Link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=HLjS3gzHetA

Some of the satire of "Monty Python" really is timeless. This sketch about Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson is still amazingly relevant today, as we watch the media fixate on irrelevant nonsense while seemingly failing to pay any attention to much more weighty issues...