God's Warriors.... CNN

Did anyone watch CNN's documentary "God's Warriors" hosted by Christiane Amanpour?

It consisted of three two-hour presentations starting Tuesday night on the radical Jews and Israel. On Wednesday evening it considered Islam and fundamentalist Muslims. Tonight it ended with two hours on American evangelical Christians.

I found it not only very interesting, but very disturbing! What I learned was that we ‘normal?' humans on this Earth are all faced with the peril of religious fundamentalism regardless of the denomination, Jew, Muslim or Christian. Each shares the intent of subjugating all peoples to their own beliefs throughout the world - not just from the synagogues, mosques, or churches, but through the political control of governments and terrorism! Pretty scary stuff with no indication of ‘turn the other cheek' or ‘love thine enemy'. .....and the show didn't indicate how any of these mass movements could be stopped or even controlled!

Of course basically, the fundamentalist movements with no remorse regarding bloodshed, revolve around the decadence of our secular freedoms which include rampant sex and pornography amongst other ‘liberal' permissions. I might agree with them on those points except that they also invoke almost prehistoric prohibitions against the rights of women or political and religious dissent, etc. Only someone who could be happy as cannon fodder in the military could tolerate such a life style!

I've been impressed by Christine Amanpour's journalism for several years now and after this documentary, I decided to look her up. She has not only a rather unique genealogy but has also led an interesting life as described at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiane_Amanpour – well worth reading.

Dick & Jane....

Hmmmm.... Seems to me that there are both qualitative and quantitative differences between reading Mary Higgins Clark mysteries, ‘HTML for Dummies', ‘The Unemotional Investor', ‘The Physics of Consiousness', ‘Genome', ‘The Crisis of Islam' or perhaps reading both the 'New Testament' and 'The Jefferson Bible' to discover the philosophical dichotomy between the two - and then, there is Omar's 'Rubaiyat'!

The article below doesn't address quality or subject matter in making its political statement other than a reference to the Republican mantra, "No new taxes", which is of course true, but not reflective of what Republicans might do in the privacy of their own homes – with the shades drawn!

Book chief: Conservatives want slogans
By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer Tue Aug 21

WASHINGTON - Liberals read more books than conservatives. The head of the book publishing industry's trade group says she knows why — and there's little flattering about conservative readers in her explanation.

"The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes,'" Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, said in a recent interview. "It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes' on every page."

Schroeder, who as a Colorado Democrat was once one of Congress' most liberal House members, was responding to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that found people who consider themselves liberals are more prodigious book readers than conservatives.

She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who "can't say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion."

The book publishing industry is predominantly liberal, though conservative books by authors like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and pundit Ann Coulter have been best sellers in recent years. Overall, book sales have been flat as publishers seek to woo readers lured away by the Internet, movies and television.

Rove, President Bush's departing political adviser, is known as a prodigious reader. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Schroeder was "confusing volume with quality" with her remarks.

"Obfuscation usually requires a lot more words than if you simply focus on fundamental principles, so I'm not at all surprised by the loquaciousness of liberals," he said.

"As head of a book publishing association, she probably shouldn't malign any readers," said Mary Matalin, a GOP strategist who oversees a line of books by conservative authors, Threshold, at Simon & Schuster. Matalin said conservatives and others aren't necessarily reading less, but are getting more information online and from magazines.

The AP-Ipsos poll found 22 percent of liberals and moderates said they had not read a book within the past year, compared with 34 percent of conservatives.

Among those who had read at least one book, liberals typically read nine books in the year, with half reading more than that and half less. Conservatives typically read eight, moderates five.

By slightly wider margins, Democrats tended to read more books than Republicans and independents. There were no differences by political party in the percentage of those who said they had not read at least one book.

The poll involved telephone interviews with 1,003 adults and was conducted August 6 to 8. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

AP Manager of News Surveys Trevor Tompson and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

More Bloodshed to come....

Wow! This article, below, reads like a real life spy thriller! And I'd guess that it doesn't bode well for our American and other forces in occupied Iraq.

With a Shiite government in power in Iraq they obviously have two goals - one to punish the Sunni's for Saddam's past crimes and to rid themselves of the American invaders who are, after all, Jew loving Christians and are hindering their progress toward a religiously ‘clean' Shiite ruled nation!

The writing has been on the wall for quite sometime, now. But our administration only sees the chance for our oil companies to glom onto Iraqi oil. In that respect, we had better be nice to Venezuela's Chavez and perhaps Russia because my guess is that because of our overbearing "Christian morality" we're going to lose the friendship of those Muslims who control middle east oil everywhere - including the Saudi's who have been amazingly patient with us - after all, the Chinese will buy all they can produce with profits from selling junk to us and or cashing in their American holdings. In the meantime we had better work toward that difficult goal of "energy independence."

If we're not scared, we should be.

Italy probe unearths huge Iraq arms deal

By CHARLES J. HANLEY and ARIEL DAVID
Associated Press Writers Sun Aug 12

PERUGIA, Italy - In a hidden corner of Rome's busy Fiumicino Airport, police dug quietly through a traveler's checked baggage, looking for smuggled drugs. What they found instead was a catalog of weapons, a clue to something bigger.

Their discovery led anti-Mafia investigators down a monthslong trail of telephone and e-mail intercepts, into the midst of a huge black-market transaction, as Iraqi and Italian partners haggled over shipping more than 100,000 Russian-made automatic weapons into the bloodbath of Iraq.

As the secretive, $40 million deal neared completion, Italian authorities moved in, making arrests and breaking it up. But key questions remain unanswered.

For one thing, The Associated Press has learned that Iraqi government officials were involved in the deal, apparently without the knowledge of the U.S. Baghdad command — a departure from the usual pattern of U.S.-overseen arms purchases.

Why these officials resorted to "black" channels and where the weapons were headed is unclear.

The purchase would merely have been the most spectacular example of how Iraq has become a magnet for arms traffickers and a place of vanishing weapons stockpiles and uncontrolled gun markets since the 2003 U.S. invasion and the onset of civil war.

Some guns the U.S. bought for Iraq's police and army are unaccounted for, possibly fallen into the hands of insurgents or sectarian militias. Meanwhile, the planned replacement of the army's AK-47s with U.S.-made M-16s may throw more assault rifles onto the black market. And the weapons free-for-all apparently is spilling over borders: Turkey and Iran complain U.S.-supplied guns are flowing from Iraq to anti-government militants on their soil.

Iraqi middlemen in the Italian deal, in intercepted e-mails, claimed the arrangement had official American approval. A U.S. spokesman in Baghdad denied that.

"Iraqi officials did not make MNSTC-I aware that they were making purchases," Lt. Col. Daniel Williams of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I), which oversees arming and training of the Iraqi police and army, told the AP.

Operation Parabellum, the investigation led by Dario Razzi, anti-Mafia prosecutor in this central Italian city, began in 2005 as a routine investigation into drug trafficking by organized-crime figures, branched out into an inquiry into arms dealing with Libya, and then widened to Iraq.

Court documents obtained by the AP show that Razzi's break came early last year when police monitoring one of the drug suspects covertly opened his luggage as he left on a flight to Libya. Instead of the expected drugs, they found helmets, bulletproof vests and the weapons catalog.

Tapping telephones, monitoring e-mails, Razzi's investigators followed the trail to a group of Italian businessmen, otherwise unrelated to the drug probe, who were working to sell arms to Libya and, by late 2006, to Iraq as well, through offshore companies they set up in Malta and Cyprus.

Four Italians have been arrested and are awaiting court indictment for allegedly creating a criminal association and alleged arms trafficking — trading in weapons without a government license. A fifth Italian is being sought in Africa. In addition, 13 other Italians were arrested on drug charges.

In the documents, Razzi describes it as "strange" that the U.S.-supported Iraqi government would seek such weapons via the black market.

Investigators say the prospect of an Iraq deal was raised last November, when an Iraqi-owned trading firm e-mailed Massimo Bettinotti, 39, owner of the Malta-based MIR Ltd., about whether MIR could supply 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 10,000 machine guns "to the Iraqi Interior Ministry," adding that "this deal is approved by America and Iraq."

The go-between — the Al-Handal General Trading Co. in Dubai — apparently had communicated with Bettinotti earlier about buying night visors and had been told MIR could also procure weapons.

Al-Handal has figured in questionable dealings before, having been identified by U.S. investigators three years ago as a "front company" in Iraq's Oil-for-Food scandal.

The Interior Ministry's need at that point for such a massive weapons shipment is unclear. The U.S. training command had already reported it would arm all Interior Ministry police by the end of 2006 through its own three-year-old program, which as of July 26 has bought 701,000 weapons for the Iraqi army and police with $237 million in U.S. government funds.

Negotiations on the deal progressed quickly in e-mail exchanges between the Italians and Iraqi middlemen of the al-Handal company and its parent al-Thuraya Group. But at times the discussion turned murky and nervous.

The Iraqis alternately indicated the Interior Ministry or "security ministries" would be the end users. At one point, a worried Bettinotti e-mailed, "We prefer to speak about this deal face to face and not by e-mail."

The Italians sent several offers of various types and quantities of rifles, with photos included. The negotiating focused on the source of the weapons: The Iraqi middlemen said their buyer insisted they be Russian-made, but the Italians wanted to sell AK-47s made in China, where they had better contacts.

"We are in a hurry with this deal," an impatient Waleed Noori al-Handal, Jordan-based general manager of the Iraqi firm, wrote the Italians on Nov. 13 in one of the e-mails seen by AP.

He added, in apparent allusion to the shipment's clandestine nature, "You mustn't worry if it's a problem to import these goods directly into Iraq. We can bring the product to another country and then transfer it to Iraq."

By December, the Italians, having found a Bulgarian broker, were offering Russian-made goods: 50,000 AKM rifles, an improved version of the AK-47; 50,000 AKMS rifles, the same gun with folding stock; and 5,000 PKM machine guns.

The Iraqis quibbled over the asking price, $39.7 million, but seemed satisfied. The Italians were set for a $6.6 million profit, the court documents show, and were already discussing air transport for the weapons. At this point prosecutor Razzi acted, seeking an arrest warrant from a Perugia court.

"The negotiation with Iraq is developing very quickly," he wrote the judge.

On Feb. 12, in seven locations across Italy, police arrested the 17 men, including the four alleged arms traffickers: Bettinotti; Gianluca Squarzolo, 39, the man whose luggage had yielded the original clue; Ermete Moretti, 55, and Serafino Rossi, 64. If convicted, they could be sentenced to up to 12 years in prison.

The at-large fifth man, Vittorio Dordi, 42, was believed to be in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he apparently is involved in the diamond trade. Italian authorities were seeking information on him from the African country.

In the parallel Libya case, the Italians allegedly paid two Libyan Defense Ministry officials about $500,000 in kickbacks to speed that transaction for Chinese-made assault rifles. It isn't known whether such bribes were a factor in the Iraq deal. No Libyans or Iraqis are known to have been detained in connection with the cases.

Al-Handal's operations have caught investigators' notice before. In 1996-2003, the company was involved as a broker in the kickback scandal known as Oil for Food, the CIA says.

In that program, Iraq under U.N. economic sanctions bought food and other necessities with U.N.-supervised oil revenues. Foreign companies, often through intermediaries, surreptitiously kicked back payments to officials of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government in exchange for such supply contracts.

Those Iraqi middlemen also engaged in "misrepresenting the origin or final destination of goods," said the 2004 report of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, which investigated both Iraq's defunct advanced weapons programs and Oil for Food.

That report also alleged that during this period Al-Handal General Trading, from its bases in Dubai and Jordan, secretly moved unspecified "equipment" into Iraq that was forbidden by the U.N. sanctions.

Reached at his office in Amman, Jordan, Waleed Noori al-Handal denied the family firm had done anything wrong in the Italian arms case.

"We don't have anything to hide," he told the AP.

Citing the names of "friends" in top U.S. military ranks in Iraq, al-Handal said his company has fulfilled scores of supply and service contracts for the U.S. occupation. Asked why he claimed U.S. approval for the abortive Italian weapons purchase, he said he had a document from the U.S. Army "that says, 'We allow al-Thuraya Group to do all kinds of business.'"

In Baghdad, the Interior Ministry wouldn't discuss the AK-47 transaction on the record. But a senior ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity, acknowledged it had sought the weapons through al-Handal.

Asked about the irregular channels used, he said the ministry "doesn't ask the supplier how these weapons are obtained."

Although this official refused to discuss details, he said "most" of the 105,000 weapons were meant for police in Iraq's western province of Anbar. That statement raised questions, however, since Pentagon reports list only 161,000 trained police across all 18 of Iraq's provinces, and say the ministry has been issued 169,280 AK-47s, 167,789 pistols and 16,398 machine guns for them and 28,000 border police.

A July 26 Pentagon report said 20,847 other AK-47s purchased for the Interior Ministry have not yet been delivered. Iraqi officials complain that the U.S. supply of equipment, from bullets to uniforms, has been slow.

A Pentagon report in June may have touched on another possible destination for weapons obtained via secretive channels, noting that "militia infiltration of local police remains a significant problem." Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq's civil war have long been known to find cover and weapons within the Interior Ministry.

In fact, in a further sign of poor controls on the flow of arms into Iraq, a July 31 audit report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office said the U.S. command's books don't contain records on 190,000 AK-47s and other weapons, more than half those issued in 2004-2005 to Iraqi forces. This makes it difficult to trace weapons that may be passed on to militias or insurgents.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, has described the Interior Ministry's accounting of police equipment as unreliable.

Here in Italy, Razzi expressed puzzlement at the Iraqi officials' circumvention of U.S. supply routes.

"It seems strange that a pro-Western government, supported by the U.S. Army and other NATO countries on its own territory, would seek Russian or Chinese weapons through questionable channels," the anti-Mafia prosecutor wrote in seeking the arrest warrant that short-circuited the complex deal.

Healthcare reform....

California, the most socially advanced country in the nation is doing what it does best - leading the way in social reform.

I miss California but having been priced out and crowded out of the state of over 36 million people I can only hope that someday enough Californians will over-flow into Arizona to make it equally advanced as opposed to the old and decadent East Coast and the rabidly conservative desert states to say nothing of the mid-westerners most of whom live their lives out in quiet desperation.

Rule of thumb is that California has traditionally led the nation by five years in social structure and reform - here in Arizona it may take a bit longer....

Calif. lawmakers promise health reform this year
By Lisa Baertlein Sat Aug 11

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California lawmakers on Saturday promised to send a health care reform bill to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this year, even as the $145 billion state budget has stalled and the legislative session winds down.

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Assembly Republican Leader Michael Villines made their vows to hundreds of people attending an eight-city, satellite-linked meeting focused on covering the state's 6.5 million uninsured.

Schwarzenegger, a former action film star, has made health care for all Californians a priority and has been publicly battering fellow Republicans in the state Senate, whom he also blames for the six-week budget delay.

Speaking at the same forum, Schwarzenegger told the Los Angeles audience that Senate Republicans "are holding up the budget so they don't have to deal with health care."

Nunez, who like Perata and others have proposed their own fixes for the state's burdened health care system, said lawmakers will get the job done.

"In the absence of real action on the part of the federal government and Congress ... we in California are going to deliver," he said.

But time is running out. California lawmakers do not expect movement on a spending plan until the state Assembly returns from vacation on August 20. They have until September 14 to pass a health reform bill this calendar year.

Rebuttal: A Gale is Blowing

I wrote this in a letter to the editor of the Kingman Daily Miner of Kingman, AZ in response to an editorial which indicated that young people are not satisfied with politics and politicians.... Duh!

I read reporter Gail Adams' fluff piece (Aug. 9th), rehashing the perpetual disjunction between the young and the old especially involving politics - where the young, driven primarily by hormones, complain about how lousy the world is, but expect their elders to do all of the work to fix it!

They probably were looking out the window in civics class when they were informed that one has to be over 35 to be elected president for the simple reason that until a person is about 25, she doesn't have the mental maturity (read: common sense) to drive a car, say nothing of run a nation!

Yes, we have a primitive two party system for the simple reason that a third party never has and never will win an election. We aren't set up Constitutionally for coalition (parliamentary) governments like most of the rest of the world. And yes, when running for office the two parties can get vicious - however, I don't see a "youth party" being all that different - and perhaps they'd be even more violent.

I suspect that if you drop in on either a local Republican or Democratic party meeting - which should be published regularly on page two here in the Miner, an adult (read: ‘volunteer') of any age would be welcome with open arms! However, I'm sure you'll find that the only ones who take the civic trouble to hobble in are well over fifty! They're all tired and hurt most of the time - but someone's gotta do it.

Yes, our government's a mess - we all know it! Supposedly in a Democracy (which we aren't) the majority rules! Right? Not so! Neither party can pass significant legislation in the Senate without the Aye vote of 60 Senators! Conversely, it only takes 41 Senators to block the measure. So the fact that the Democrats after many years finally have a majority of the members, they can't seem to scrape up enough Republicans to help them pass even so called "bi-partisan" bills co-written by senators from both parties!

And then, there is the war and the administration. A good 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the American people of all parties are opposed to the Iraq war, the lack of military aggressiveness toward Al Caida and the Taliban, and, in general, the fact that the Bush administration simply doesn't care what the people think from either party ("We don't watch the polls!"). There have been plenty of Republicans from Congress who have tried to get the President to heed their counsel, but he seems to think he knows best. And he holds the trump cards.

So what can we do? Well, not much. We could impeach the president and vice-president in the House of Representatives which would bring all legislative business to a halt - just as it did when the Republicans impeached Bill Clinton, and nothing would get done until about 2008. Or we can just wait it out and elect a new president in 2008. I'm not sure, but if we were to impeach the President he would still be in office until the Senate held a trial and, if found guilty, would throw him out of office. Problem is that there are probably enough of the president's men in the Senate to prevent finding him guilty. So besides besmirching the president's ‘legacy' which is already besmirched, where is the gain?

So, Ms Adams, did any of your young friends come up with any answers to the above problems? It is awfully easy to be a critic!

Mortgage market pandering....?

Hate to say this, but I think that in this case, Hillery is pandering the ‘po folk' vote by advocating setting up programs to help pay their mortgages.

The problem is, of course, that there was an irrational housing bubble coupled with a lot of criminal activity on the part of realtors, lenders and appraisers who scammed the system and sold homes to people who were not at all qualified either through credit history or income. Coupled with speculators who leveraged into houses with the idea of ‘flipping' and we had a disaster in the making when they simply walked away when the market topped.

Aside from putting a lot of those people in jail for fraud, conspiracy, etc. I agree that there should never be pre-payment penalties, ever, and variable rate mortgages should be outlawed simply because the low early rates are intended to lure buyers who then get in big trouble if and when the rates go up.

Perhaps legislation which would make an original lender still responsible for a loan after he spins it off to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac in the secondary mortgage market would have a good moderating influence! Some legislation of home builders making them somewhat responsible for the properties they build after they sell them and liability for local governments who issue building permits simply for revenue without zoning concerns, etc.

In other words, the problem is regulation and responsibility, not billion dollar bailouts which is required to prevent future abuses! ... It really is that simple!

Clinton proposes crackdown in mortgage market
By Jeremy Pelofsky

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With the U.S. mortgage market in turmoil, Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton on Tuesday proposed clamping down on lending abuses and providing more aid to families who face losing their homes.

Her proposals were a sign that America's brewing housing crisis has become an issue facing candidates in the November 2008 election, with thousands facing the prospect of losing their homes because they accepted mortgages that are now too expensive.

The New York senator, on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, also proposed a $1 billion fund to supplement state programs that help homeowners catch up on mortgage payments, renegotiate loan terms or provide financial counseling.

She pressed for eliminating penalties for early repayment of mortgages, which are often associated with less traditional home loans to individuals who fall short of qualifying for prime loans and turn to more expensive subprime mortgages.

The proposals come as world markets have been see-sawing in reaction to problems in the U.S. subprime mortgage markets and rising defaults among less credit-worthy borrowers. Lenders in recent months have tightened their loan standards as a result.

"We can look at the statistics, wring our hands, and continue to do nothing, or we can do what America has always done in times of difficulty: acknowledge that we face a real challenge, and confront it head-on with real solutions," Clinton said.

She has a 22-point lead over her closest rival, Sen. Barack Obama, according to the latest USA Today/Gallup poll. Almost half, 48 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, backed her, versus 26 percent for Obama.

Two major residential lenders who specialized in subprime loans have filed for bankruptcy protection this year, American Home Mortgage Investment Corp and New Century Financial Corp and dozens of lenders have closed.

The Bush administration has argued that the recent subprime mortgage market turmoil appeared to be contained and is not hurting the broader economy, but it is closely monitoring the situation.

"We need to help those facing the pain of foreclosure," Clinton said in a statement. "We need to secure the marketplace and put reforms in place right now."

Her proposal also includes requirements that mortgage brokers fully disclose their compensation to borrowers when they apply for a mortgage and require federal registration for mortgage brokers.

Additionally, Clinton said another $1 billion should be set aside to help state and local trust funds that help subsidize low-income housing. The New York lawmaker did not offer details on how she would pay for the programs if enacted.

Some lawmakers in Congress, including Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Chris Dodd, have been looking into overhauling regulations governing the subprime mortgage market, but no concrete proposals have advanced in the House of Representatives or Senate.

Rudy G.

Poor Rudy! Obviously he's not a good family man - even though he's tried several times. The following is in my mind not relevant to his running for President or his ability to perform the job. My reason for not voting for him is, of course, because he doesn't espouse the philosophies, policies nor have international expertise (especially what to do with Iraq) I think he should hold and have. However, there are a lot of very superficial voters out there who "focus on the man" rather than his qualifications.

In the long run, if he really wants to be a politician, I think he's in the wrong party! His daughter is a Democrat, obviously and he has backed many Democratic policies such as women's choice and gay rights. I also doubt that he is a ‘born-again Christian' - and actually, he may not be a Christian at all! After all, how many practicing Catholics have been married three times?

Anyway, this is sort of a fun read.

Giuliani's daughter backing Obama
AP

WASHINGTON - The daughter of Republican hopeful Rudy Giuliani has signaled she's backing Democrat Barack Obama for president.

According to her Facebook profile, Giuliani's 17-year-old daughter, Caroline, belonged to Democrat Barack Obama's Facebook group "Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)." She left the group Monday morning after the online magazine Slate sent an inquiry.

Her profile can be viewed by Facebook users who have access to New York City's Trinity School or Harvard University networks. Caroline, who is Giuliani's daughter with his second wife, Donna Hanover, recently graduated from Trinity and will attend Harvard in the fall.

Slate posted a screen shot of her profile, which uses a slightly different last name. She lists herself as having liberal political views.

Giuliani, a leading Republican candidate, has asked for privacy to deal with strained relationships in his family. Son Andrew, 21, has said their relationship became distant after Giuliani's messy divorce from the children's mother and his marriage to third wife Judith Nathan.

"There's obviously a little problem that exists between me and his wife," Andrew Giuliani told The New York Times earlier this year.

In May, Giuliani attended his daughter's high school graduation but kept a low profile, sitting in a last row balcony seat with his wife and leaving without speaking to his daughter, the New York Daily News reported.

Neither the Giuliani nor Obama campaigns had any comment on Caroline's political preference.

Media Matters & Commentary

"Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."

Granted, this is a progressive organization who watches the neocon writer's lies and inaccuracies but not those on the liberal side. However, my interest primarily involves slurs against the candidates I'm most likely to vote for. (I wouldn't vote for Jesus Christ if for some demented reason he'd come back to Earth as a Republican!)

On the other hand, I just pointed out gross innaccuracies in a posted left-wing article written by a David Swanson about GWB's grandfather's involvement in a plot to overthrow the US government in 1933 and aligning with Hitler in a post on Care2!

And so now I'm accused of being an "employee of Bushco" implanted in the thickets of Care2.. Prescott Bush was not a good honest patriot but he simply didn't go that far. By all accounts, he was simply a greedy 2nd tier American businessman! ....AG

August 3, 2007
The weekly update from Media Matters for America

Daily Howler writer Bob Somerby (among others) describes the media's relentless fascination with (Democrats') haircuts and (Democrats') earth tones and (Democrats') necklines as a focus on "trivia." As in, the cost of one of John Edwards' haircuts is perhaps interesting to some, but quite insignificant -- it is the answer to a trivia question, not something that should be considered the defining element of the man.

But over and over and over again, media treat these trivial matters -- what songs are on Hillary Clinton's iPod? What color shirt is Al Gore wearing? How much was John Edwards' haircut? What is Barack Obama's middle name? -- as deeply significant revelations about the candidates' character. We've tried -- over and over and over again -- to explain the problems with this form of campaign journalism. And we'll likely do so -- over and over and over again -- in the future.

But this week, we're struck by something else: How frequently reporters are wrong not only about the importance of these trivial matters, but about the trivia itself. They aren't Ken Jennings, racking up win after win on Jeopardy. They're more like Cliff Clavin, spouting off in the bar about a "little known fact" that is completely false.

For example: A July 22 New York Times article about candidates' clothing warned that candidates "risk becoming Al Gore in earth tones, in other words, to cite a famously lampooned misstep the former presidential candidate undertook on the advice of Naomi Wolf, then his image consultant." That was probably an inevitable line; media just love to snark about Wolf picking Gore's clothes out for him. This is classic trivia -- it couldn't possibly matter less that Al Gore wore a brown pair of pants, or that he did so on the advice of an image consultant. Indeed, since the media constantly tell us that candidates' appearances matter -- the July 22 Times article is but one of many examples -- they arguably should have considered Gore a savvy pol for seeking professional sartorial advice.

Oh, I almost forgot one little detail: Naomi Wolf didn't tell Al Gore to wear earth tones, and she wasn't an "image consultant," as the Times acknowledged in a correction on July 29.

Why it took the Times a full week to correct a claim that anybody who cares has known is false for the better part of a decade is anybody's guess. But perhaps we should just be grateful the correction eventually came. When Times columnist Maureen Dowd made the same bogus claims during the 2000 presidential campaign, her falsehoods went uncorrected. Take, for example, her November 3, 1999, column that declared "Time magazine revealed that Al Gore hired Ms. Wolf, who has written extensively on women and sexual power, as a $15,000-a-month consultant to help him with everything from his shift to earth tones to his efforts to break with Bill Clinton." Wrong and wrong again -- Wolf didn't have anything to do with "earth tones," as the Times now acknowledges, and Time magazine didn't reveal that she did. Dowd was playing trivial pursuit -- but she kept getting the answers wrong.

Now, another presidential campaign brings still more media insistence that trivial observations about candidates' clothing are somehow deeply revealing matters of great importance. After The Washington Post ran an article about Hillary Clinton purportedly showing some cleavage during a statement on the floor of the Senate, journalists rushed to defend the paper from predictable (and well-deserved) derision.

CNBC chief Washington correspondent John Harwood, for example, defended the article by suggesting that Clinton's cleavage was the result of "the calculation that goes into everything that Hillary Clinton does." Shortly thereafter, he decided he needed to defend himself, and explained his comments by invoking -- you guessed it -- Al Gore's earth tones.

Washington Post reporter Amy Argetsinger took to MSNBC to defend her paper's article. In doing so, she claimed the article was "very complimentary" toward Clinton and that it was "not critical of the cleavage display." In fact, as Media Matters for America noted, the article described Clinton's appearance as "unnerving," adding "it was more like catching a man with his fly unzipped. Just look away!"

Argetsinger went on to make a more telling false statement. Describing the article's genesis, Argetsinger said that the writer, Robin Givhan, "took note of the fact that Hillary Clinton was showing a bit of cleavage because she had been watching Hillary Clinton over the years and had noticed that she had never shown cleavage." Givhan's piece also indicated the cleavage display was a new development -- it was headlined "Hillary Clinton's Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory," and made much of how "surprising" it was to see "coming from Clinton."

The notion that this -- utterly trivial -- display of a little cleavage is a new and out-of-character development for Clinton is presumably the basis for the obsession many journalists have with the topic -- and for Harwood's insistence that it is the result of political calculation. It is also false. More than a year ago, for example, the National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez noted, "Senator Clinton's blazer is a bit lowcut today" and predicted a Washington Post Style section article about the topic. She even posted a screen-capture of Clinton on the Senate floor, showing just as much (which is to say, very little) cleavage as that which inspired the current media obsession with Clinton's "calculated" neckline.

More Clinton trivia appeared in The Washington Post's coverage of the most recent Democratic presidential debate, during which Clinton said that she and her husband sent their daughter Chelsea to private school upon arriving in Washington because the Clintons had been advised that if Chelsea went to public school, "the press would never leave her alone."

The Post's Peter Baker wrote up Clinton's comments under the headline "CHELSEA'S SCHOOLING Blame the Media? Once It Wasn't So." Baker's three-paragraph report was full of snarky observations: Beginning "Ah, it was the media's fault," the report went on "Funny thing -- that's not what the Clintons said in January 1993 when they announced the decision. ... Nothing about reporters -- who, by the way, aren't exactly allowed to waltz into public schools any more than they are private schools. And who over eight years pretty much left Chelsea alone, regardless of school."

Now, the Clintons' reasons for sending Chelsea to private school are basically trivia. Neither the Clintons nor any other progressive I know of thinks private schools should be banned, so there isn't any hypocrisy at play here (though, of course, you can't expect reporters to understand that.) But whatever substantive merit there may be to exploring the Clinton's reasons, the question of what the Clintons said in January 1993 is purely trivia. Regardless of what they said when, it's hard to imagine that anybody really doubts that concern for Chelsea's privacy was a factor in the decision. That was perfectly clear to observers at the time - a January 1993 Newsweek report, for example, noted "Chelsea's privacy could be one factor" in the decision.

But Baker focused on the trivia of what the Clintons announced in January, 1993 -- according to Baker, a White House spokesman said "They chose Sidwell Friends because it's a good school." His Post colleague John Solomon declared it an "insightful catch of Sen. Clinton changing her story. ... Hillary Clinton may have had privacy in mind back in 1993 when she and her husband made the choice for Chelsea, but they didn't tell us that then, so noting it now is useful."

Well, no, it isn't particularly useful, or insightful. And it's also false to say that the Clinton's "didn't tell us" about privacy concerns "back in 1993." It's trivia, and it's wrong. In May 1993, the Associated Press reported:

Sending his daughter to a pricey private school gave her a chance to "be a normal kid," President Clinton said today. He insisted that the decision was not a rejection of public schools.

"My daughter is not a public figure. She does not want to be a public figure. She does not like getting a lot of publicity, and frankly she has more privacy and more control over her destiny where she is than she would if she were at public school," Clinton said in a two-hour "Town Meeting" broadcast on CBS.

"Back in 1993," President Clinton told a national television audience that concern for Chelsea Clinton's privacy -- her dislike of "publicity" -- was a factor in the decision to send her to Sidwell Friends. This is little more than trivia -- but it is trivia Baker and Solomon get wrong.

The defining characteristics of the 2000 presidential campaign were the media's focus on trivia over weighty matters -- Al Gore's purported fib about dog medicine received far more scrutiny than George W. Bush's lies about taxes and Social Security -- and its tendency to get even the trivia wrong. Al Gore didn't claim to have invented the Internet, he didn't claim to have discovered Love Canal, he didn't wear earth tones at Naomi Wolf's insistence.

If we're going have another presidential campaign dominated by media focus on this kind of trivia -- and, for the love of all that is good, let's not -- reporters should at least make an effort to get the answers right.

Then again, if they had the facts right about these things, there wouldn't be any reason to talk about them.

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