Why Are the Media More Interested in Blago Than in Unraveling the Bailout Mystery?

Have you heard what's going on with the government's almost trillion-dollar bailout and how your money is being spent? Do you know all you need to know about who's managing all that taxpayer money -- and how effectively it's being used?

Not if you're getting your news from cable TV. Judging by where the media are focusing their attention, you'd think the Blago/Burris/Reid and Kennedy/Paterson/Cuomo soap operas are the biggest issues facing the nation -- and that little thing about the potential collapse of the world's largest economy is just a sideshow.

Prioritizing the Movement Over the Party

In my book, The Uprising, I wrote an entire chapter about the state of the antiwar movement, and the chapter included a look at Moveon.org. The chapter examined an organization that had - at the time - become a reflexive appendage of the Democratic Party (as opposed to a more movement-based organization focused on progressivism).

America's DTV Transition Beset with Problems

On February 17, 2009, all full-power analog television broadcasts in the United States will cease and existing TV stations will begin broadcasting exclusively in a digital format. The switch to digital television (DTV) will free up frequencies for emergency uses and allow broadcasters to provide more programming for their viewers through "multicasting."

Keeping Out The Cameras and Reporters Simply Doesn't Work

What is Israel afraid of? Using the old "enclosed military area" excuse to prevent coverage of its occupation of Palestinian land has been going on for years. But the last time Israel played this game - in Jenin in 2000 - it was a disaster. Prevented from seeing the truth with their own eyes, reporters quoted Palestinians who claimed there had been a massacre by Israeli soldiers - and Israel spent years denying it. In fact, there was a massacre, but not on the scale that it was originally reported.

Now the Israeli army is trying the same doomed tactic again. Ban the press.

More Oddities in The US "Debate" Over Israel/Gaza

This Rasmussen Reports poll -- the first to survey American public opinion specifically regarding the Israeli attack on Gaza -- strongly bolsters the severe disconnect I documented the other day between (a) American public opinion on U.S.

As The New Year Begins, The Old Year Refuses To Die

The New Year may be here but last year's problems and crimes have stuck to our shoes and we can't seem to scrape them off.  This was the least festive New Years in memory, and for good reason. 

In Gaza, an Israeli invasion posing as an act of self-defense escalates with targeted assassinations and an expected ground invasion. American political leaders are for the most part silent, unwilling, perhaps even afraid to encourage the UN's call for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid.