O'REILLY: No, but you're not going to lose credibility if you smear people. People like to read smear stuff.
Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, new research suggests. Psychologists at the University of Michigan found that men seeking long-term relationship prefer women in subordinate jobs, rather than women above them on the corporate ladder.
The findings, she says, reflect males' evolutionary need for mates who don't pose the specter of "paternal uncertainty". Men may consider subordinate women less likely to cheat on them, Brown explains, and "female infidelity is a severe reproductive threat to males in long-term relationships."
WKVT-AM 1490 in Brattleboro will replace four of its weekday syndicated conservative talk shows on Jan. 17 with programs from the fledgling liberal radio network Air America, which launched in March.
The station will be the second in Vermont to broadcast Air America programs, which include shows hosted by comedian Al Franken and actress Jeanne Garofalo.
The Brattleboro area is highly liberal in its political beliefs and the Air America shows will be a better fit for the station's listeners than the conservative programs hosted by Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, said WKVT program director Peter Case.
"We're calling this a right-to-left switch," he said. "For many years, our programming leaned to the right, but Brattleboro is a very liberal area and our lineup had to reflect that."
A Virginia-based missionary group said this week that it has airlifted 300 "tsunami orphans" from the Muslim province of Banda Aceh to Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, where it plans to raise them in a Christian children's home.
The missionary group, WorldHelp, is one of dozens of Christian, Muslim and Jewish charities providing humanitarian relief to victims of the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami that devastated countries around the Indian Ocean, taking more than 150,000 lives.
Most of the religious charities do not attach any conditions to their aid, and many of the larger ones -- such as WorldVision, Catholic Relief Services and Church World Service -- have policies against proselytizing. But a few of the smaller groups have been raising money among evangelical Christians by presenting the tsunami emergency effort as a rare opportunity to make converts in hard-to-reach areas.
"Normally, Banda Aceh is closed to foreigners and closed to the gospel. But, because of this catastrophe, our partners there are earning the right to be heard and providing entrance for the gospel," WorldHelp said in an appeal for funds on its Web site this week.
The appeal said WorldHelp was working with native-born Christians in Indonesia who want to "plant Christian principles as early as possible" in the 300 Muslim children, all younger than 12, who lost their parents in the tsunami.
"These children are homeless, destitute, traumatized, orphaned, with nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. If we can place them in a Christian children's home, their faith in Christ could become the foothold to reach the Aceh people," it said.
Jan. 13, 2005 | Washington -- A member of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday the agency should investigate whether conservative commentator Armstrong Williams broke the law by failing to disclose that the Bush administration paid him $240,000 to plug its education policies.
Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, a Democrat, said the agency has received about a dozen complaints against Williams.
"I certainly hope the FCC will take action and fully investigate whether any laws have been broken," Adelstein said at the commission's regular monthly meeting.
None of the other commissioners responded to his statement during the meeting. Afterward, both FCC Chairman Michael Powell, a Republican, and David Solomon, who heads the agency's enforcement bureau, declined to comment.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the removal of stickers placed in high school biology textbooks that call evolution "a theory, not a fact," saying they were an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
The disclaimers were put in the books by school officials in suburban Cobb County in 2002.
"Adopted by the school board, funded by the money of taxpayers, and inserted by school personnel, the sticker conveys an impermissible message of endorsement and tells some citizens that they are political outsiders while telling others they are political insiders," U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said in his 44-page ruling.
Six parents of students and the American Civil Liberties Union had challenged the stickers in court, arguing they violated the constitutional separation of church and state.
Mr. Bush told editors and reporters of The Washington Times yesterday in an interview in the Oval Office that many in the public misunderstand the role of faith in his life and his view of the proper relationship between religion and the government.
"I think people attack me because they are fearful that I will then say that you're not equally as patriotic if you're not a religious person," Mr. Bush said. "I've never said that. I've never acted like that. I think that's just the way it is.
Mr. Bush said he has "still got a rigorous agenda" for his faith-based initiative.
The federal government has funneled "about $1.2 billion" to religious groups so far, the president said, and he hopes to improve on that in the next four years.
"What we are going to do in the second term is to make sure that the grant money is available for faith communities to bid on, to make sure these faith-based offices are staffed and open," Mr. Bush said. "But the key thing is, is that we do have the capacity to allow faith programs to access enormous sums of social service money, which I think is important."
Today's Action, courtesy of Care2 is to contact the FDA and insist that they allow over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill. The FDA has until next Thursday,
January 20 to decide to allow over-the-counter sales of the morning-
after pill, Plan B®. The FDA has already found such medication to be safe and effective, and the FDA's own advisors overwhelmingly recommended approving the application.
Yet,on May 6, 2004 the FDA caved in to right-wing
pressure and denied the application. Will the FDA do the right thing
this time and help women prevent unintended pregnancy? Or will
politics prevail again? Your voice matters.
You can contact the FDA at http://www.fda.gov/cder/comment.htm .
Thanks for taking today's action.
This past Sunday, the Eastside Women's Health Clinic in Washington State was set on fire. Among other health services, the clinic provides abortions and so been picketed for twenty years by those opposed to reproductive rights. The investigating agencies have all agreed it was arson, yet amazingly after only a few days and before any suspects are named, they are dismissing it as a "random act." The FBI has even withdrawn from the investigation.
Imagine if this was, for example, an office of Focus on the Family which had been firebombed. The right would be screaming, screaming, about domestic terrorism and the evil liberal agenda. It would be front page news all over the "liberal media." Yet when a healthcare clinic which was an advocate of reproductive rights and has been a target of the right for more than twenty years was firebombed, the FBI and other investigating agencies are quick to dismiss it as random and the media barely gives it a second look? Give me a break.
President Bush administration is backing Uganda's policy on AIDS prevention, called ABC, which stands for abstinence, being faithful and condom use. But at international conferences the United States puts the emphasis on abstinence rather than contraceptives, especially among single people.
"ABC is a good strategy, but it has three parts to it and we need to remind the administration of that," Clinton told the International Women's Health Coalition, which funds and helps women's health projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
"There are so many strategies that we know work and we are not yet fully committed in our government to implementing those strategies," she added.
Clinton noted the administration had cut funds to any organization that provided abortions or advocated counseling or legalization of abortion.
But she said that some 20 million women worldwide risked unsafe abortions every year and about 68,000 in poor countries die from the consequences of such unsafe procedures.
"So I hope we will do more to try to protect against these ill-thought-out policies by this administration," Clinton said...
"I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning ... despite that wonderful peace deal Madeline Albright negotiated with the North Koreans, six seconds before they feverishly began developing nuclear weapons. They're a major threat. I just think it would be fun to nuke them and have it be a warning to the rest of the world."
Nicollette Sheridan of TV's "Desperate Housewives" is the worst of the worst when it comes to wardrobe, according to Mr. Blackwell's annual list of fashion winners and losers.
"In barely-there bombs, she's a taste-free pain. Let's crown her the Tacky Temptress of Wisteria Lane," he wrote in a statement released Tuesday.
Lindsay Lohan was the next target of the acid-tongued critic, who called the starlet "over-hyped and under-dressed."
However, Blackwell gave kudos to "fabulous fashion independents" Nicole Kidman, Natalie Portman, Barbara Walters, Kate Winslet, Annette Bening, Oprah Winfrey, Scarlett Johansson, Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Garner and Sheridan's on-screen nemesis Teri Hatcher.
Washington, DC. Today, Rep. Louise Slaughter (NY-28), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Rules joined House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Henry Waxman and other members of the House Democratic leadership in calling for an immediate and thorough examination of departments and agencies under the Bush Administration into their use of covert propaganda.
Last week Rep. Slaughter sent a letter to the Chief Executives of the Sinclair Broadcasting Group and TV ONE, demanding that their contracts with syndicated broadcaster Armstrong Williams be terminated immediately.
As reported in USA Today, Williams was allegedly paid $240,000 by the Bush Administration to discuss the No Child Left Behind program in a favorable light as a regular part of his radio and television broadcasts on stations owned by the two broadcast groups.
"The Armstrong Williams incident is a serious breach of the public trust. The American people deserve to know if there are more secret propaganda contracts being funded with their hard earned money," stated Slaughter.
Dozens of federal and local law enforcement agencies and military commands are planning what they describe as the heaviest possible security. Virtually everyone who gets within eyesight of the president either during the Jan. 20 inauguration ceremony at the U.S. Capitol or the inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue later in the day will first go through a metal detector or receive a body pat-down.
Thousands of police officers and military personnel are being brought to Washington from around the country for the four-day event. Sharpshooters will be deployed on roofs, while bomb-sniffing dogs will work the streets. Electronic sensors will be used to detect chemical or biological weapons.
Anti-abortion protesters have been warned to leave their crosses at home. Parade performers will have security escorts to the bathroom, and they've been ordered not to look directly at President Bush or make any sudden movements while passing the reviewing stand.
Unlike their mother, the twins opted not to go the subdued, covered-up route. "These are not shy-girl dresses," says James Mischka, who with his partner, Mark Badgley, designed a gown for each daughter. "They wanted to look sophisticated and glamorous but young at the same time." More Hollywood than Washington, Jenna Bush's figure-hugging sheath is emerald silk crepe, accented by jeweled insets and metallic leather banding. "It is very much a siren gown," Mischka says.
Featuring flowy, ruffled silk chiffon in aquamarine, Barbara Bush's gown for the Texas State Society's Black Tie & Boots ball has "more of a romantic feeling," says Mischka. "Sort of like the 1930s, but totally modern because of the bare back and the way the dress is cut" — down to there. Despite the plunging necklines, Mischka feels confident that this time around the twins are "not going to have any wardrobe malfunctions" as they Texas two-step. While dancing with her dad in 2001, Jenna experienced such a red-faced moment when her strapless dress dipped farther than intended.
But most of all, together, we have to rebuild the American community. We will never succeed by treating our nation as a collection of separate regions or separate groups. There are no red states or blues states, only American states. And we must talk to the people in all of these states as members of one community.
That word -- 'values' -- has lately become a codeword for appeasement of the right-wing fringe. But when political calculations make us soften our opposition to bigotry, or sign on to policies that add to the burden of ordinary Americans, we have abandoned our true values.
We cannot let that happen. And we cannot just mouth the words. Our party must speak plainly and our agenda must clearly reflect the socially progressive, fiscally responsible values that bring our party -- and the vast majority of Americans -- together.
With its towering dinosaurs and a model of the Grand Canyon, America's newest tourist attraction might look like the ideal destination for fans of the film Jurassic Park.
The new multi-million-dollar Museum of Creation, which will open this spring in Kentucky, will, however, be aimed not at film buffs, but at the growing ranks of fundamentalist Christians in the United States.
It aims to promote the view that man was created in his present shape by God, as the Bible states, rather than by a Darwinian process of evolution, as scientists insist.
The centrepiece of the museum is a series of huge model dinosaurs, built by the former head of design at Universal Studios, which are portrayed as existing alongside man, contrary to received scientific opinion that they lived millions of years apart.
Other exhibits include images of Adam and Eve, a model of Noah's Ark and a planetarium demonstrating how God made the Earth in six days.
More controversial exhibits deal with diseases and famine, which are portrayed not as random disasters, but as the result of mankind's sin. Mr Ham's Answers in Genesis movement blames the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, in which two teenagers killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves, on evolutionist teaching, claiming that the perpetrators believed in Darwin's survival of the fittest.
Other exhibits in the museum will blame homosexuals for Aids. In a "Bible Authority Room" visitors are warned: "Everyone who rejects his history – including six-day creation and Noah's flood – is `wilfully' ignorant.''
At the time, the battle over evolution had been raging throughout the country. It came to a head when 24-year-old teacher John Scopes challenged Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in the state's public schools and universities. His persecution set the stage for a legendary courtroom showdown that pit celebrated Chicago defense attorney Clarence Darrow against Williams Jennings Bryan, the crusading populist, fundamentalist and three-time presidential candidate.
Bryan, the nation's leading anti-evolutionist, made his case in populist terms. In his 1993 book "The Creationists," historian Ronald Numbers wrote, "Throughout his political career, Bryan had placed his faith in the common people, and he resented the attempt of a few thousand elitist scientists 'to establish an oligarchy over the forty million American Christians' to dictate what should be taught in the schools."
Bryan and his fellow Scopes prosecutors won their trial, but the national mockery that followed it did much to alienate conservative Christians from secular society, setting the stage for the culture wars of later decades. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Scopes trial, "Summer for the Gods," Edward Larson wrote about the birth of the right-wing religious counterculture in the wake of the Pyrrhic victory in Tennessee:
"Indeed, fundamentalism became a byword in American culture as a result of the Scopes trial, and fundamentalists responded by withdrawing. They did not abandon their faith, however, but set about constructing a separate subculture with independent religious, educational and social institutions."
Eventually, of course, the religious right emerged from its subculture to renew its attack on secularism. Today, cultural conservatives are mustering almost exactly the same arguments that Bryan made in Dayton 80 years ago.
"Biology," he said, was "laced with Darwinism." He wanted a book that balanced theories of evolution with Christian creationism, and he was willing to turn his town into a cultural battlefield to get it.
"This country wasn't founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution," Buckingham, a stocky, gray-haired man who wears a red, white and blue crucifix pin on his lapel, said at the meeting. "This country was founded on Christianity, and our students should be taught as such."
America's feminist leaders and their critics agree on at least one current political fact: These are daunting times for the women's movement as it braces for another term of an administration it desperately wanted to topple.
"The next four years are going to be tough, so we must be tougher," National Organization for Women (news - web sites) president Kim Gandy recently told supporters. "Our health, our rights, and our democracy are teetering on the brink."
NOW, the Feminist Majority Foundation and numerous like-minded groups campaigned zealously against President Bush (news - web sites), contending that his economic agenda would inflict disproportionate harm on women and that his potential judicial appointments could jeopardize abortion rights.
To the feminists' dismay, Bush not only won — but he sharply reduced the Democrats' "gender gap" edge among women voters. Republicans also increased their majorities in Congress; new GOP senators include several staunch foes of abortion.
Many of the conservative activists and organizations that cheered the GOP triumph — and now claim expanded influence in Washington — are stridently anti-feminist. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, for example, recently referred to NOW as "The National Order of Witches"
Bush, of course, can make a strong case that he respects women — his new Cabinet will likely have four, including Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, and women for years have been among his closest political and legal advisers.
Beyond Washington, meanwhile, women are making impressive professional gains — as big-city police chiefs and university presidents, for example. They now comprise roughly half the enrollment in U.S. medical schools. And though a wage gap persists, woman now earn 80 percent of what men do, compared to 62 percent in 1980.
To both journalism and blogging, credibility is essential. What are the areas of common ground shared by these very different approaches to handling news and information? Can journalists who also blog do their work without conflicting standards? Might bloggers adopt standards and a transparency that will elevate their credibility? Our purpose is to bring together a small group of smart and thoughtful people to ponder these and other related issues, which will result in a published report and - we hope - will mark the beginning of an on-going and very important dialogue.
With the internet, this arbiter function is lost. Every man [sic] can be his [sic] own I.F. Stone now. Stone used to say that you could always find the truth in the newspapers, but it would often be in a short paragraph on page sixteen. Most of the damage that bloggers do to the established media doesn't come from independent reporting, but from displacing the copy editors by highlighting stories the editors wanted to downplay.
On the right, the blogosphere has been incorporated into their message machine. (Indeed, the political blogosphere was really invented by a guy named Drudge, wasn't it?) They feed and are fed, without explicit direction. They know what they are supposed to say and it filters up down and around talk radio, cable news and into the mainstream. We all know how it works. This is why only a right wing freelance political blogger was invited to the conference --- the mainstream of both political parties are really only aware of the bloggers who have been pushed to the forefront by the Mighty Wurlitzer. Just as they are only aware of ... so many things that have been pushed to the forefront by the Mighty Wurlitzer. It's the essence of our political weakness.
People who promote Judith Miller, but fire Robert Parry, really need to shut up about credibility. "Credibility" is just the conventional wisdom -- if you disagree with it, you're not credible. (Scott Ritter knew as much about the facts of Iraqi WMD as anyone did, and he was right when almost everyone else was wrong, but do you see him on TV any more, or read him in the NYT? No. Not credible.)
The quality, capability, or power to elicit belief: "America's credibility must not be squandered, especially by its leaders" (Henry A. Kissinger).
n : the quality of being believable or trustworthy
Bush quoted all the numbers for the tsunami in speeches this week: 150,000 lives lost, including 90,000 in Indonesia; perhaps 5 million homeless; millions vulnerable to disease. That stands in hypocritical contrast to the refusal to count the Iraqi civilians killed in his invasion over false claims of weapons of mass destruction and the crime-ridden chaos of an occupation that did not plan on an "insurgency."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Iraqi commander Tommy Franks both said, "We don't do body counts." Then, right in our faces, Powell said civilian casualty figures were "relatively low." Central Command spokesman Pete Mitchell hailed the invasion for its "unbelievably low amount of collateral damage and needless civilian death." Paul Bremer, Bush's former civilian reconstruction envoy, said, "We have freed people with one of the great military battles of all time, in a period of three weeks, with almost no collateral damage, very few civilian deaths, and they are now free."
The White House left the counting to journalists, doctors, think tanks, and human rights groups. The numbers range from conservative guesses of 3,200 in the first few weeks of the war and occupation estimates ranging from 15,000 to 100,000. No matter if the number was 3,200 or 32,000, this atrocity of silence makes the torture in Abu Ghraib pale in comparison.
The two traditional American values that I think -- that I know -- have to be discarded are, first, unbridled consumerism resulting from our sense of being in a land of unlimited resources. Historically the United States has viewed itself as the land of infinite bounty, endless fields of grain. But now we're in a world that does not have unlimited resources, and we have to come to grips with that.
And the other long-held American value is the value derived from the United States' relative isolation. George Washington in his farewell address warned Americans about the danger of entangling alliances, and for a couple of hundred years the United States was able to function well because we were separated by oceans from any country that might damage us. But now the oceans don't separate us from countries that could damage us. Now, even desperately poor countries like Afghanistan and Iraq can raise absolute hell with our economy -- as well as killing a few thousand people in the process. So the other long-held value with which we have to come to grips is our sense of isolation. We're not isolated anymore. We have to engage with the rest of the world -- not in order to be charitable to them but for our own self-interest. It's much cheaper to put a few tens of billions of dollars into world programs for public health and environment than to throw $150 billion into Iraq and $100 billion into Afghanistan, when there are about 20 other countries waiting to become the next Iraq and Afghanistan. We can't afford it.
