It's Not What You Say, Its How You Say It.

The attack ads have fully engulfed the 2008 campaign, but if what they say is trite, overblown, contradictory, or just plain wrong, then what does matter?

Buying a Legacy

Aired 12/03/06 Buying a Legacy

week the news came out that Bush was preparing to start fundraising for his presidental library and was planning on raising five hundred million dollars. The announcement is astounding both in how early it is beginning and how huge the number is. It is orders of magnitude larger than any other recent presidential library.

The two facts are related. The president has two more years of presidential favor to trade for the 10 to 25 million dollar 'mega-donations' that will make most of the fundraising. Note that unlike ordinary political contributions these are unlimited in size and do not have to be named.

The reason why the fundraising is so huge is not that the library is going to be many times larger but because it is going to include the endowment of an institute. The purpose of the institute? To study the positive effect of the Bush Presidency on American History. In other words Bush is going to fight historians concluding that Bush was the worst president ever by paying historians to say nice things about him. Well, it goes right along with paying reporters to write fake news, doesn't it? But I guess there are plenty of wealthy folks who have a financial or personal stake in not having the Bush policies be regarded as a disaster and are willing to help pay to keep it from happening.

Tags: Bush, Media, Library, Iraq, Politics, Podcast

What is it?

Aired 12/01/06 What is it?

This week NBC became the first major media channel in the US to make an editorial decision to call the situation in Iraq a civil war. (Fox by comparison on Friday issued an official memo saying that they are to absolutely not call it a civil war.) You might think of this as simply a battle of semantics, of spinning the situation more positively or negatively. It is in fact more than that, and Bush will fight adopting the designation tooth and nail. The situation inn Lebanon under Reagan and in Somalia under Clinton (as in the movie Black Hawk Down) were both blamed on putting US forces in the middle of a civil war. Thus congress has questioned the Pentagon, and the Pentagon's top generals have agreed in testimony to congress, that US forces would not be put in the middle of a civil war in Iraq. So agree that it a civil war and you are also agreeing that the troops have to leave. That is why the term will be opposed so strongly.

Tags: Bush, Media, Bush, Civil War, Iraq, Politics, Podcast

A Big Week

Aired 11/27/06 A Big Week

On Sunday the War in Iraq passed the duration of our involvement in World War 2. And the first week past that threshold looks to be a very significant one, with reports, summits, and new developments on the ground.

Tags: Bush, Media, Maliki, James Baker, Al-Sadr, Iraq, Politics, Podcast

Public and Private

Aired 11/24/06 Public and Private

The Decision by Rupert Murdoch's media empire to drop the OJ Simpson hypothetical-tell-all book and interview was seen as his finally having pushed the envelope of taste too far. But I am not so sure. On their own enough people would have still tuned it to make it a ratings win for Fox in the time period, which was the whole point of it. They might not have admitted seeing it to anybody afterword, but they would have looked at it anyway.

The sequence of events told a slightly different story. it was an advertizer abandonment of the show that started the ball rolling. Compared to watching a show having your ad appear during it is a public act. You can't pretend that you weren't there the next day.

Tags: OJ Simpson, Media, Rupert Murdoch, Politics, Podcast

Catching the Car

Aired 11/17/06 Catching the Car

While the War in Iraq is certainly the big picture issue of the midterm elections there will certainly be no easy solution and no obviously good one. So I believe that an important thing will be for the Democrats to quickly validate to voters that things are different because they were voted in. That is not so easy because there are still President Bush's veto and the Republicans' veto power to get around. In this podcast I suggest three things that the Democrats could possibly pass in the first hundred days after being sworn in that would validate themselves to the voters.

Tags: Guest Workers, Media, Minimum Wage, Stem Cell, Podcast