W's Farewell-More Great Moments in Disappointment

by Tom Yamaguchi

Breaking news-Bush now admits he has made some mistakes during his presidency. We understand, George. We've made a couple, too: 2000 and 2004. But that is another story.

It may be too early to judge if Bush is the worst President in history. He is clearly the most disappointing in my lifetime, even more disappointing than Jimmy Carter. I voted for Jimmy Carter. What was I thinking? Oh that's right; I was getting my news from Rolling Stone and taking advice from Hunter S. Thompson. What was I thinking?

Can we say anything positive about the presidency of George W. Bush? He did raise money to fight the AIDS epidemic in Africa. I am glad Bush and the Republicans are taking the AIDS epidemic seriously. Too bad they weren't so motivated when the epidemic started while Reagan was president in the 1980's. We could have saved a lot of money and lot of lives. Reagan did not say the word AIDS in public until the middle of his second term. 

Bush may be right about keeping us safe from more terrorist attacks, but we have no way of verifying that. He says he was not afraid to make the tough decisions, but what about making tough decisions on climate change? The impact of global warming is a greater threat to our safety than Al Qaida. Failure to ratify the Kyoto Treaty is on Bush's list accomplishments. "I guess I could have been popular by accepting Kyoto, which I felt was a flawed treaty," he said at his final press conference, "and proposed something different and more constructive." Instead, the Senate ended up not ratifying any treaty. Frustrated cities and states have committed themselves to achieving the goals set by Kyoto while the federal government has done nothing. Bush's EPA was more interested in fighting states from using clean air laws to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Bush was elected in 2000 with the high hopes of being a compassionate conservative. He acknowledged that half the country had voted against him. He promised to reach across the aisle as he had done as Texas Governor. One thing I didn't hear him say during the 2000 campaign was "Oh, and if elected, I will go to war with Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein." If he did, I missed that speech. He may want us to believe the war was a reaction to 9/11. All the evidence, including the Downing Street Memo, show the Bush people were setting us up for the war as soon as they got into office. Lyndon Johnson's vision of a Great Society was derailed by the Vietnam War. To his defense, Johnson got stuck with a war he inherited from Eisenhower and Kennedy. Bush was derailed by a war he started.

All presidents disappoint us, and Obama will be no exception. So far, the disappointments have been nothing to get too worked up about. Rick Warren is a bad choice, but he will be out of the picture soon enough. The nominee for Treasury Secretary has to explain why he didn't pay his income taxes. Bush's Defense Secretary is keeping his job after being responsible for keeping our troops in Iraq and preventing detainees in Guantanamo Bay from getting due process. The nominee for Surgeon General is not a supporter of universal health care and seems to be in bed with the major drug companies. We are sure to see bigger disappointments. 

According to the St. Petersburg Times, creator of the Truth-O-Meter, Obama made 510 promises in his campaign. The Truth-O-Meter evaluated the accuracy of the candidates' campaign advertising. Now the paper will be evaluating Obama's campaign promises with the Obameter. The Obameter will track how many of those promises the new president will keep and how many he will break. The web site, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises, notes that Obama asks us to hold him accountable and replies, "OK, we will."

When we do find ourselves getting really upset with Obama, we can try saying this: "President John McCain." That should help ease the pain a bit.

Welcome To The Inhoguration

Finally our long national nightmare is over. Here's hoping that we don't have a new one, but things don't look good.

First of all the new president has fucked up a lot. Come on, Rick Warren for christ sake! What a slap in the face to gays everywhere who campaigned for Obama to have this future Jerry Falwell give the invocation. To appease the gays a few days ago he asked an Episcopalian bishop Gene Robinson who is gay to give the invocation, but not at the inhoguration but at the Sunday kickoff event.  Obama just doesn't get it.   He says he wants to be inclusive.  Then why not invite the Ku Klux Klan  or the American Nazi Party?  Warren is an immoral fuck who shouldn't be allowed within 10 miles of this event let alone on the dias. As for being inclusive, for 8 goddamn years they didn't include us. Fuck 'em, it's our turn.  Obama wants to compromise.  Nothing good ever comes out of compromise except watered down ideas. 

Then there is the Bill Richardson gaffe.  He had to step down from being Commerce Secretary due to an investigation that is going on about possible improprieties on his part.  Then there was his Treasury Secretary to be Timothy Geithner who it seems forgot to pay some $30,000 in taxes and has an undocumented alien working for him.   All this from a guy who will oversee the IRS.   How about Julius Genachowski his choice for FCC Commisioner who was an old pal from law school who was once an FCC attorney.  Smell like cronyism doesn't it? If these actions were made by a Republican the liberals would have a "hissy fit".

Now comes the biggest oversight of all.  I believe we are in a recession if not a downright depression that is effecting everyone. Then why the fuck are we spending over $150 million dollars on the inhoguration?   Sure $45 million is in private funds, but still, what kind of example of austerity does this send?   Obama says he wants recognize these financial times so he asked that no flowers be bought for the 10...count 'em 10 inhogural balls.   Wow does that ever send a message of modest behavior and change.

If he really wanted to send a message of change and make a point that these are tough times, he could have just done the whole swearing in thing inside The White House and televised it.  His hero Franklin D. Roosevelt did that in 1942 when there was a war on and said it would be in bad taste to lavish any extravagance on the event. The speech was short and the event small.

So tonight inside people in their tux and gowns will be feting on wine an pheasant in our nation's capitol while outside Americans go hungry and wonder how they will survive this financial Apocalypse. It is sad to say that this man, who so many are putting their  faith in, is kicking off his presidency in such an elitist way.

The sad part is that he doesn't even see it.

Kicking A Man When He's Dead

It's a holiday so here is a rerun of one of my favorites

This article appeared as one of my columns for Hustler Magazine and was edited by Bruce David.  Of all the columns I have done so far, this one is my favorite and I thought I would share it with you.

A few months ago an article of mine appeared in Hustler magazine called “The Political Cage Match” in which I discussed the appalling coverage by the news networks of the campaign for the presidency. I especially picked on NBC whose coverage was so terrible that I was compelled to rip each and everyone of their sleazy news team a new asshole. But I saved my biggest salvo for Tim Russert a man who embodied everything that has been egregious about this year’s election coverage. As luck would have it old Tim died just about day and date with that issue coming out. Did I feel bad? Did I try and buy up all the known copies of that issue? No! In fact I felt no remorse about my critique. The coverage of his death that followed only made me more resolute in my feelings as it went into overkill.

Constantly for seven straight days they hammered away at his passing. Look, I’m not so hard hearted as to not understand that the passing of a close associate, especially one that came so suddenly did warrant some on the air tributes but this went on for a week.

It was as though NBC News was sitting Shiva for a gentile. Sitting Shiva for all you non-Jews out there is ritual in which the immediate family goes back to the home and (if you’re really orthodox) sit on hard benches for seven days while friends come by and bring food and drink for them. I work about a block away from their New York News Center and was almost compelled to walk over there with a box of knishes it was getting so morbid. It’s a toss up as to which is in worse taste, what I am writing now or the way they handled the whole thing.

All the tributes told us what a great guy he was. There were remembrances about what a great father he was. Proof of that was his son Luke who seemed like a well mannered and decent individual of great bearing, but who wound up spending more screen time that week than any NBC newsman. After a while it seemed like he was auditioning for his father’s job. Don’t worry if you liked him, I’m sure this won’t be the last we’ll see of him.

There were constant mentions of what a “workaholic” he was, sometimes working as much as 14 hours or more a day. My question is, when did he have enough time to be a great husband and father? Didn’t he realize the besides depriving his family he was setting himself up for the heart event that removed him from their lives completely?

By the way, I should note that a few weeks later Tony Snow, the former press secretary and host on Fox news died. In many ways he was more important than Tim, but the media played this one out after just a weekend and that was it. Maybe Fox does have some taste after all.

Sure it was sad that Tim had to go at the age of 58. It is far too young for anyone to die. But so is 18 or 21 or even 34 and those are ages that our men and women are being slaughtered at in the war in Iraq. So many soldiers died so young and all because of the likes of Tim Russert.

It was “Timid Tim” after all who was part of the press helping George Bush beat the drums for war by believing every press handout from the White House without question. As Washington bureau chief for NBC he made major editorial decisions and allowed the “Bushies” to get away with wholesale murder not by action but by inaction. He blithely allowed the run up to the war to be reported without asking questions.

The press should be our ombudsmen. We don’t have access to power and the truth but they do and we invest in them the responsibility to do what we cannot. The value of a strong and vigilant press is that they do the snooping for us and attempt to sort fact from fiction.

So whom am I supposed to feel sorry for? Tim at 58 who dropped dead while recording the opening for “Meet The Press” at the air-conditioned NBC studios in Washington DC or the soldier who died younger than he should have lying in a ditch somewhere in the blazing heat of the Middle East. It’s got to be the soldier who found himself in a hellhole because Tim didn’t do his job.

Mind you, I’m not callous. I feel sorry for Tim’s family who never again will have the fleeting glance of seeing him in a blur going out the door to work at dawn and then a quick peek when he arrived home at 10:00 at night exhausted. Most of all I feel sad for Tim Russert who left this “mortal coil” with blood on his conscience because he failed in his duty as a journalist to ferret out the truth.

Some Sunday Fun Video

Girlfriend and I go to brunch with Michael Billy and his significant other Matt.

"Mosaic" On LinkTV Is The Worlds Most Interesting Newscast

For the longest time I have been checking in on this program from LinkTV. To truly understand the issues, you have to look at all perspectives of the issues. This is one of the best examples of that mantra. If you come and check this everyday, it will change as the episodes do.

Just Something to Amuse You On A Frozen Thursday

Ann Coulter Visits "The View"

By Alex Bennett

On Tuesday Ann Coulter visited "The View" and its requisite "hen party". What bothered me is that is that it turned out to be a gang hit of 5 on 1. I intensely dislike Coulter, but this encounter was really quite unfair. It seemed as though they were ready to pounce on her the minute she came out. I think it is wrong to invite someone to be on a show and then do what they did. Yes it's Coulter, but fairness would dictate that one person should have been selected to argue with her.

Coulter talked about single motherhood especially among blacks being corrosive to the children and our society. Interestingly she was simply making in her abrasive, PR getting way, the same things that Bill Cosby and President-Elect Obama has been saying.

These women made the case for everything that Coulter has said about what she feels is liberal bias and unfairness. All they did was play into her game while she sold a few more books. Boy these women are morons!

I Got Screwed And So Did You!

Barack Obama is engaging in croneyism. Reprinted is this item from Broadcast Television from yesterday. Oh well there goes my future career because "Mr. Change" is doing what every other pol would do and give friend a cushy job.

Genachowski Expected to Head FCC Broadcast agenda likely to include DTV public interest obligations...

The word in Washington is that Julius Genachowski will be named FCC chairman. The 46-year-old is a former law school chum of the President-elect and a member of his transition team. Genachowski also served as media advisor for Reed Hundt, chairman of the FCC from 1993-97. Hundt gives Genachowski props in his 1997 book, “So You Say You Want a Revolution.”

“During the summer of 1994, my broadcast team, including a brilliant former Supreme Court law clerk, Julius Genchowski, assembled our network-friendly broadcast policy. In an effort to find compromise between the networks and the public interest advocates, the team proposed to require three hours of educational television per week.”

Genachowski clerked for Justices Souter and Brennan, and for D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Abner Mikva. He also worked for Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the Iran-Contra joint committee.

Aside from helping craft the current public interest obligations for broadcasters, little is known about Genachowski’s view of the industry. He is expected to push the establishment public interest rules for digital TV, which have not been set, and to oppose the relaxation of media ownership limits.

Genachowski will likely push broadband initiatives, having worked in Barry Diller’s InterActive Corp for eight years. He’s not expected to be the bane to the cable industry that is current Chairman Kevin Martin, who’s called for a la carte pricing over the last two years.

Genachowski’s regulatory orientation will likely be influenced by his entrepreneurial experience. He’s a co-founder of Rock Creek, a venture capital firm, and founding partner of LaunchBox Digital, a Washington, D.C. incubator for online startups.

Political veterans on Capitol Hill describe Genachowski as “highly qualified” and “smart.” One former colleague said, “Extremely intelligent, fair and generous with his time.”

Once appointed, Genachowski will have to be confirmed by the Senate, which could take several weeks. President-elect Obama is expected to name one of the two democratic FCC commissioners--Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps--interim chairman some time next week.

Blood on the Tracks

by Tom Yamaguchi

Like many cities, Oakland has a street named for Martin Luther King Jr. The former Grove Street runs north from downtown Oakland and through the city of Berkeley. At the border of the two cities is a sculpture called Here/There. The two words appear in eight-foot steel letters, a reference to Gertrude Stein's famous line, "There is no there there." The "There" part is on the Oakland side. The art piece sits on a plaza next to the tracks of Bay Area Rapid Transit where the tracks descend into a tunnel beneath Berkeley after traveling elevated along MLK Jr. Way in North Oakland. Trains speed commuters along the elevated tracks, past the old Merritt College campus where the Black Panther Party was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966.

But it was on a different set of BART tracks that Oscar Grant was riding on early in the morning on New Year's Day. That section emerges from a tunnel from downtown Oakland to another elevated track through East Oakland. The track roughly parallels International Blvd., which has much in common with MLK Jr. Way. If you are looking for what is wrong with America's big cities, you can find it along either of those two Oakland streets.

Oscar Grant was riding BART that morning after joining the crowds in San Francisco celebrating the arrival of 2009 with fireworks. The train stopped at Fruitvale station with reports that a fight had broken out between two groups of young people. BART has its own police force, and a group of BART police officers were dispatched to the station platform, pulling suspects off the train as other riders watched the spectacle. Before it was over, Oscar Grant was dead. At Grant's funeral one week later, no one could still answer the question "Why?"

BART first reported that there was no recording from the surveillance cameras on the station platform. It soon retracted that statement and reported a recording was made but did not show the incident. Then Karina Vargas stepped forward. She recorded the event on the new camera she received for Christmas. Vargas turned her footage to KPIX-TV in San Francisco, determined to make her evidence public. She was able to get away from police who wanted to confiscate her camera. Other cameras were confiscated by the police that morning, but fortunately not all of them. More videos have since been given to the local media. 

As BART stumbled in its effort to conduct its investigation, the public was left with only the raw video footage to judge what happened. They do show the officer Johannes Mehserle shooting Oscar Grant in the back as Grant lay on his stomach on the floor. Mehserle resigned his position before he could be forced to submit to an interview for the internal investigation. We can only guess what caused Mehserle to shoot Grant. One theory is he had reached for his taser but had pulled his service revolver instead.

The video evidence itself is inconclusive. There is a lot of screaming and very little coherent audio. Many of the shots by Vargas' camera were blurred or blocked by the crowds. Fortunately, Vargas was able to see what she was unable to record on video. She described the scene in detail for KPIX, and what she saw was Grant and the other detainees cooperating with police and not resisting arrest. If what Vargas saw is true, then there was no reason for Mehserle to pull a gun or a taser. People can speculate about the cause of the fight that morning or Grant's previous brushes with the law. None of that changes that Oscar Grant appeared to do nothing that morning to deserve being shot. 

On the day of Oscar Grant's funeral, a demonstration was held at the Fruitvale BART station. Though intended to be a peaceful gathering, a group broke off and started marching west on International Blvd. They ended up in downtown Oakland where they started smashing windows, setting fires, and throwing anything they could find at police. Mayor Ron Dellums, who started his political career as an anti-Vietnam War activist, was shouted down as he tried to calm the crowd. He quickly retreated into City Hall. Grant's family pleaded for calm, as well, to no avail. Later, the organizer of the demonstration Evan Shamar broke down in tears as he spoke to the press. "I was devastated by it," Shamar told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I worked diligently for the past 72 hours, and for it to be destroyed by a group of anarchists was extremely upsetting. I felt like my integrity had been compromised."

It is easy to feel hopeless for the future of Oakland, but for a number of residents the coming MLK Jr. holiday represents a new opportunity. This year, it happens the day before the inauguration. Barack Obama is asking the nation to celebrate his inauguration by joining the National Day of Service. Many do not know that the MLK Jr. holiday was originally intended to be a day where people volunteer to the benefit of their communities. The call went out via email to Obama's list of supporters. Participants were invited to register their events or volunteer for events already registered by going to www.usaservice.org. In Oakland, one group will be cleaning up trash along International Blvd. and planting seeds and plants along tree wells. Another group will be planting trees on the median beneath the BART tracks along MLK Jr. Way. One tree will be dedicated to those who died as a result of violence during the past year. 

A token effort, you might say, and you might be right. If the job stops there, nothing will change. Or it could be the first step in a new direction, one where people can learn how to be community organizers. The Obama campaign has discovered some very powerful organizing tools through email, the web, and social networking. These tools are energizing young people like nothing we have seen since the 1960's. They helped elect our first African American President. Will those tools work to bring peace to Oakland? Who knows? At least it is worth the try.

I have volunteered in elementary school classrooms during past King holidays. The students sing Stevie Wonder's birthday song and hang King's portrait on the bulletin board. If asked, they can only tell you two things they know about Martin Luther King: he had a dream, and he got shot. They have been taught about a mythical King who seems to have no connection to what is going on today. They have not been taught what King understood about nonviolent organizing.

"Now I cannot say that violence never wins any victories," said King in a speech made over fifty years ago. "It occasionally wins victories. Nations often receive their independence through the use of violence. But I can say this, that that is all it does. Violence only achieves temporary victory; it never can achieve the ultimate peace. It creates many more social problems than it solves."

The people who rioted on the streets of Oakland may have won some small victory. They may have embarrassed the BART board to speed up its investigation of Grant's killing. But at what price? Minority-owned businesses were trashed, and the owners wonder why they were targeted. There is greater distrust between the police and the public, making it more difficult to find the cooperation needed to solve violent crimes. Blame will be assigned, and people will be vilified. People who felt temporarily empowered by trashing police cars will return to feeling alone and powerless.

We can vilify and abandon Evan Shamar for his inability to organize a peaceful demonstration. Or we can provide him and the other peacemakers of Oakland the tools they need to do the job. This will not be easy work, but it can be achieved. We do not have King here to teach us, but we do have his writings and speeches, as well as the people who knew and worked with him. Obama knows the troubles of our major cities and has committed to invest in their revival. Success can only be achieved by investing heavily in our peacemakers. Step one, as Harvey Milk well understood, is "You gotta give 'em hope."

Since When Did Fairness Become A Dirty Word?

Here is an item from the Radio and Records website that appeared last Thursday:

It didn’t take the new 111th Congress but a day or two to introduce partisan legislation in both the Senate and House that would block the re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine. On Tuesday (Jan. 6), a pair of Republican senators, Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and John Thune (S.C.) introduced their bill to "prevent the Federal Communications Commission from repromulgating the fairness doctrine (S.34)." The companion measure was introduced the next day, Wednesday (Jan. 7), in the House (H.R. 226) by Republicans Mike Pence, of Indiana, and Greg Walden, of Oregon.

In 1987 at the close of the Reagan White House, the "Fairness Doctrine" which mandated that broadcast outlets present contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues was vacated. It was claimed that the statute had a chilling effect on freedom of speech. That of course was bullshit. We soon found out that without it, freedom of speech was curtailed even more. In the past a talk show host like Rush Limbaugh couldn't just spew his distortion without someone to counter them. When the doctrine was removed Rush seized on the opportunity. The result was a flood of conservative talk shows that permeated the airwaves after that.

I would agree that we might be best served without such a doctrine if the right wing licensees had played fair, but they didn't and for over two decades, left to their own honesty, it was hard hear anything else on the radio but the neo-con palaver. It would be nice to believe that given the freedom to do what was right they would have done so, but they didn't and if the doctrine comes back in some form, then they have no one to blame but themselves and their flagrant disrespect for balance.

Now these assholes are trying to prevent us from instituting any measures that would reign them back in. In fact Mike Pence one of the sponsors of the house bill was a conservative talk show host and station owner. Not exactly the kind of upstanding individual to talk about free speech when he was a perfect representation of that has been wrong without the doctrine.

The article goes on to state:

NAB Executive VP Dennis Wharton this morning (Jan. 8) said, "Since the Fairness Doctrine's elimination in 1987, America has witnessed an absolute explosion in alternative media outlets, providing a rich diversity of viewpoints from all sides of the political spectrum.

What absolute crap! The explosion in alternative media was not the result of the suspension of the "Fairness Doctrine" but with the creation of new uncensored media technologies, paramount among them being the internet. But mass terrestrial broadcasting represented by the NAB which offers more access for more people has failed to show any of this alternative diversity. In fact they have tried to prevent alternative voices as was seen with their war against satellite radio.

Back in 1991 when I was out of work, I had a meeting with the program director at WABC in New York. She had heard of me and positively so. In our talk she asked "What's your political bias?". When I told her I was a lefty, she blanched and said "oh my general manager would never want that!" This of course was the home of Rush Limbaugh and other right wing talk show hosts. That's what the doctrine's suspension created.

This doesn't mean that a host would have to present both views if the station presented a host with an alternative perspective. This means that those stations that ran Rush would also run Tom Hartmann. Currently liberal thought is relegated to a gulag of low power stations with numbers on the lower end of the dial, while the neo-con's are on the powerful stations higher up. To this day, the impact of the liberal programs is diminutive compared to the right wing shows and it's not because they aren't entertaining. It is because they are ghettoized.

For now let's not bring back the "Fairness Doctrine", but let's not make it's implementation impossible by passing a law. This way, the omnipresent fear that we could bring the "Fairness Doctrine back might just might force them to play fair.