Taking a HARD look at the Business of Politics

According to a Reuters Story, Google’s Eric Schmidt is fascinated with the potential use of Google to see if politicians are telling the truth.
In light of the Who Knew What When that’s going on now in the wake of the Foley scandal, this could be quite useful in future. Schmidt predicted, “that “truth predictor” software […]

This image was sent to me by a friend who got it through a newsgroup. I’d love to attribute it but have no clue who did this. Though remembering back to Rushdie and other incidents involving images and cartoons, maybe there’s good reason for that . . .
Ah well, fools rush in where wise […]

Caroline just posted a comment on the Political Vine Site which links to a story by Andrew Bolton on The Hill. The Bolton article details exactly how the Foley scandal was broken to the press, and debunks much of the SPIN Republicans are trying to put into play to defuse this Republican Debacle.
Bolton states that […]

According to the Stop Big Media Blog, over 500 people packed to Standing Room Only each of the two FCC meetings held in LA yesterday. More waited to get in.
And once again CNN did NOT cover the FCC Media Merger story.
The Chicago Tribune seems to be the only one running the AP story online today.
I’m […]

I’ve been talking for the last week about the failures of Big Media. One of the ways the web is changing things is with the Citizen Journalist movement, which is seeking to shake up the media from the bottom up. SlashDot (aka /.) has a pretty intriguing interview with Jay Rosen, one of the pioneers […]

This just in from CNN– “Former Rep. Mark Foley was molested by a clergyman when he was between the ages of 13 and 15, his attorney said Tuesday amid allegations that the congressman exchanged inappropriate e-mails and instant messages with teen congressional pages.” According to Foley’s attorney, Foley is not a pedophile, and never touched […]

American War Dead, The Atomic Bomb, and Politics
An odd confluence of events has me thinking about the War in Iraq. So what’s the death toll now? 2,500 or 2,600? Oops 2,911 (Total 2,911 US Dead (2,695 in Iraq, 215 in Afghanistan and 1 at Guantanamo of non-hostile cause) as of September 25th. So how […]

Whether the large news outlets will pick up this AP story on the FCC Hearings remains to be seen . . .

According to the article in the New York Times, “Officials now agree that on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism deputy, J. Cofer Black, were so alarmed about an impending Al Qaeda attack that they demanded an emergency meeting at the White House with Ms. Rice and her National Security Council staff.”
Woodward’s book […]

ABC News broke the story that resulted in Fla. Rep. Foley’s Resignation. Foley had, for years, been emailing and IM-ing underage boys in the congressional page program about sex in a really sick way. Most of these kids were 15 and 16, and there was more than one involved. The FBI is investigating.
Now, if that […]