danger danger will robinson warning warning

this just may make you upchuck your fruity pebbles


Katie Couric's salary exceeds combined budgets of NPR's top news shows
Posted by Jesse Brown
Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast.

Michael Massing of the Columbia Journalism Review digs up some startling info that helps explain why network TV news is knee-deep in FAIL while National Public Radio thrives:

Katie Couric's annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric's salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one. NPR has seventeen foreign bureaus (which costs it another $9.4 million a year); CBS has twelve. Few figures, I think, better capture the absurd financial structure of the network news. (link).............

skewed data????????????

say it ain't sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. man, that's so hard to believe (that's sarcasm there my peeps)

as an aside, on the way home from work the other day, i heard the ceo or the president or someone at the top of kaiser permanente being interviewed (on npr). he was also taking questions. i hate to say it but he made a LOT of sense you can listen right here


do you know what a magician does? she or he is proficient in M I S D I R E C T I O N. seems so is this firm (and most all of our 'leaders' too)

Research Firm Cited by GOP Is Owned by Health Insurer

By David S. Hilzenrath

Washington Post Staff Writer

The political battle over health-care reform is waged largely with numbers, and few number-crunchers have shaped the debate as much as the Lewin Group, a consulting firm whose research has been widely cited by opponents of a public insurance option.

To Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip, it is "the nonpartisan Lewin Group." To Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, it is an "independent research firm." To Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the second-ranking Republican on the pivotal Finance Committee, it is "well known as one of the most nonpartisan groups in the country."

Generally left unsaid amid all the citations is that the Lewin Group is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation's largest insurers...............

holy schmagolies

but this man CAN PLAY



(found via boing boing posted by David Pescovitz, and the npr link In the Hands of a Master, the Ukulele Is No Toy)
By Renee Montagne

yesterday on my way home from work

i was listening to npr (as i normally do. only that or college stations. NEVER 'regular radio'). it was the tail end of a political show. some republicans were on. what was unusual was they were saying they were going to vote for barack obama. i also heard a few callers say the same thing as well. the callers were disenfranchised with the way mccain's/sarevil's campaigns were going. the callers said they were sick of the negativity. they wanted mccain to talk more about the issues than what was wrong with the 'man' barack obama. they had no problems with mccain tearing obama's POLICIES apart, just NOT the man. i was quite heartened to hear them all.

First Colin Powell, Now…

george packer

Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.

In recent years, Adelman and his friends Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz fell out over his criticisms of the botching of the Iraq War. Still, he remains a bona-fide hawk (“not really a neo-con but a con-con”) who has never supported a Democrat for President in his life. Two weeks from now that’s going to change: Ken Adelman intends to vote for Barack Obama. He can hardly believe it himself.

Adelman and I exchanged e-mails today about his decision. He asked rhetorically,

Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?

Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.......

and they have the nerve

to call barack obama elitist? what do you call someone who has enough money to own EIGHT homes (when a TON of people are having trouble or losing the ONLY home they have)? what do you call someone who has (inherited) MILLIONS of dollars and doesn't share it with her sister? what do you call someone WHO DENIES SHE HAS A SISTER when it's a plain as day FACT

well you call them the mccains

Cindy McCain's Half Sister 'Angry' She's Hidden

by Ted Robbins

All Things Considered, August 18, 2008 · Last Tuesday, NPR broadcast a story about Cindy McCain's business and charity work. In it, Ted Robbins described McCain as the only child of Jim Hensley, a wealthy Arizona businessman. The next morning, NPR received an e-mail from Nicholas Portalski of Phoenix, who heard the story with his mother.

"We were listening to the piece about Cindy McCain on NPR, All Things Considered, and it just struck us very hard," Portalski said.

His mother, Kathleen Hensley Portalski, is also Hensley's daughter.

The Portalski family is accustomed to hearing Cindy McCain described as Hensley's only child.

She's been described that way by news organizations from The New Yorker and The New York Times to Newsweek and ABC............

picture:

Courtesy Nicholas Portalski

Portalski is shown with her late father, Jim Hensley, who also was Cindy McCain's father.

i guess there is a tiny slim chance

this man (and the others arrested in the past) are spies or insurgents or 'bad guys.

or they are simply BRAVE camera men or news reporters doing their jobs.

US military in Iraq holding cameraman

American forces in Baghdad said on Friday they are holding an Iraqi cameraman working for Reuters news agency, and a media rights group said he has been held for nearly a week without charge.

Ali Al-Mashhadani was arrested last Saturday by US troops at the Iraqi parliament press centre in Baghdad's heavily fortified government and diplomatic Green Zone compound, the news agency said.

It said Mashhadani also works freelance for the BBC and US-based National Public Radio, and urged the American military to free him immediately or produce evidence that would justify his continuing detention.

A spokesman for the US military confirmed to AFP that Mashhadani was in custody.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said the cameraman "must be freed at once. It is unacceptable that US troops arrest a journalist and hold him on security grounds.".........

in answering a comment

cv rick made to one of my postings yesterday, i said i heard a story on npr on my way home from work. it was about kbr (yes, the former halliburton kbr) and how they avoid paying taxes and social security on the THOUSANDS of people they hire. npr said they got the story from the boston globe. here are both stories. NOTE: it's NOT illegal BUT IT'S F**KING DIRTY
Top Iraq contractor skirts US taxes offshore
Shell companies in Cayman Islands allow KBR to avoid Medicare, Social Security deductions
By Farah Stockman
CAYMAN ISLANDS - Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven. More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands.
The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies, and officials said the move allowed KBR to perform the work more cheaply, saving Defense dollars........

Major Iraqi Contractor Doesn't Pay Taxes

audio link at the above

i heard some of the testimony

(read by the news reporter) on npr
Exxon Makes Case on Valdez for High Court
by Nina Totenberg

All Things Considered, February 27, 2008 · The Supreme Court heard arguments from Exxon today that the amount the corporation has been ordered to pay as a result of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska is unreasonable.
Lawyers representing fishermen, Native Alaskans and others say the punitive damages are necessary, because Exxon has not shown that it takes responsibility for the spill and it has fired only one person over the incident: the captain of the Exxon Valdez............... (if you click the npr link above, in addition to the rest of the article, there's an audio link)



i was shocked, astounded and very disturbed. it seemed the justices had NO problems with exxon making money hand over fish (yes, i meant that) while the effected citizens of alaska STILL suffered. seems like they didn't hold exxon responsible even though it sure as heck appeared they knew the captain had 'drinking' issues (for at least 3 years they knew). sure they fired the captain (ONLY), AND EVERYONE ELSE GOT A BIG FAT EFFING BONUS.



it's GOOD to be an american (BIG CORPORATION that is)

At the High Court, Damage Control

By Dana Milbank

Exxon Mobil, the giant oil corporation appearing before the Supreme Court yesterday, had earned a profit of nearly $40 billion in 2006, the largest ever reported by a U.S. company -- but that's not what bothered Roberts. What bothered the chief justice was that Exxon was being ordered to pay $2.5 billion -- roughly three weeks' worth of profits -- for destroying a long swath of the Alaska coastline in the largest oil spill in American history.
"So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?" Roberts asked in court.
The lawyer arguing for the Alaska fishermen affected by the spill, Jeffrey Fisher, had an idea. "Well," he said, "it can hire fit and competent people."
The rare sound of laughter rippled through the august chamber. The chief justice did not look amused. ........

surreal moment of the week

i don't work in hartford anymore. it was a two minute trip. i work in windsor now and i go the backroads. on my way in this morning, as i do every morning, i have the bbc on (via npr). so, i'm on a VERY dark road surrounded by tobacco fields or whatever and on comes a story about dog sled racing. siberian husky dog sled racing. that's all well and good and normally NOT surreal. HOWEVER, the person doing the story was a scot (wicked heavy trainspotting accent) and the racing was happening in the uk (scotland i believe). the announcer then started interviewing this woman (she had a heavy british accent). she was talking about how most of the time there really isn't any snow so they do have to race on wheels. anyway, you had to hear it to get the full effect

Dog teams gather ahead of races
Mushers have arrived in Aviemore for the town's annual dog sled rally.
About 200 teams from all over the country will do practice runs on Friday ahead of two-days of competition. The event finishes next Tuesday.
Organised by the Siberian Husky Club of Great Britain the rally is run on tracks around Loch Morlich.
Competitors include schoolchildren and veterans who will mush teams of two and eight dogs running at up to 20mph over four-mile track..........

npr has stones

why don't our congress and our senate? i can't answer that. i CAN vote though

NPR Rebuffs White House On Bush Talk
Radio Network Wanted To Choose Its Interviewer

By Howard Kurtz Post Staff Writer
The White House reached out to National Public Radio over the weekend, offering analyst Juan Williams a presidential interview to mark yesterday's 50th anniversary of school desegregation in Little Rock.
But NPR turned down the interview, and Williams's talk with Bush wound up in a very different media venue: Fox News. Williams said yesterday he was "stunned" by NPR's decision. "It makes no sense to me. President Bush has never given an interview in which he focused on race. . . . I was stunned by the decision to turn their backs on him and to turn their backs on me." ......

i was just listening to npr for a few minutes

(in the car and i got where i was going so that's why i'm not listening now). they were talking (i think it was the bbc world news) about how many iraqis were displaced (approximately FOUR MILLION with a possibility of it going up to EIGHT MILLION very soon. i think they said that came from oxfam) and how many iraqis lacked the basics of life (food, shelter, water, electricty, etc). that is approximately ONE THIRD of iraqis.

who is responsible for this? saddam hussein? no. osama? no. al queda? no. it's king george and his court. it is beyond my comprehension how we let this happen AND how we are CONTINUING TO LET IT HAPPEN. what's even MORE beyond my comprehension is king george and his court think they are saints. they think they are saving the cosmos.

Bush and Counterfactual Confidence
By Shankar Vedantam

In the face of mounting public and political opposition to the war in Iraq, recent reports from the White House suggest that President Bush remains serenely confident.
Bush's confidants report that the president believes he will be vindicated by history. He keeps Churchill and Lincoln close at hand. No matter how tough the situation in Iraq, Bush remains confident about his decision to go to war because he believes that things would have been much worse otherwise.
"Obviously, it was a difficult decision for me to make -- to send our brave troops, along with coalition troops, into Iraq," Bush said at a recent press briefing about the Iraq situation, where he faced a barrage of questions about flagging support for the war. "I firmly believe the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power."........