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July 28, 2004

Obama for President

I'm sure I'm not the only one predicting this, but Barack Obama is our best shot at the first black President of the United States. Its a good thing they didn't put him on Thursday night, or he would have shamed Kerry's mediocre speaking skills (ok, I'm willing to wait and see how Kerry does, but let's face it...).

In case you missed his speech at the convention tonight, I highly recommend you watch a re-run on CSPAN (real player required). Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:

For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga.

A belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief-I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper-that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America-there's the United States of America.

There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

There's a real satisfaction that comes from living in "blue state" Illinois...

Posted on 12:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 27, 2004

Unfairly Unbalanced

In response to the recent Outfoxed movie, Damian Menscher wrote the following to the comment email inbox at the Fox News Channel. As there is currently a move to challenge Fox's use of "Fair and Balanced" in the courts, and because of the ongoing debates surrounding 9/11, I thought this would make a nice post. All views are of course his, although I obviously support them by posting them here.

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 02:49:21 -0500 (CDT)
From: Damian Menscher <....>
To: comments@foxnews.com
Subject: FNC reporting errors

I've noticed several times on your news show that the claim is made that
the 9/11 Commission Report found a connection between the terrorist
attacks and Iraq. This view is supported by republican guests and
rejected by democrat guests. I am disturbed that your "Fair and
Balanced" reporters are siding with the republican party on this issue,
especially given that the facts show otherwise.

After a guest suggested that viewers read the report for themselves, I
decided that was the only fair way to settle the issue. After all, the
question of whether the 9/11 Commission Report found a link between
al Qaeda and Iraq is easily and unambiguously settled by reading it. I
found the following paragraph on page 334 of the report:

Responding to a presidential tasking, Clarke's office sent a memo to Rice on September 18, titled "Survey of Intelligence Information on Any Iraq Involvement in teh September 11 Attacks." Rice's chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evi- dence linked Iraq to al Qaeda. The memo found no "compelling case" that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks. It passed along a few foreign intelligence reports, including the Czech report alleging an April 2001 Prague meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer (discussed in chapter 7) and a Polish report that personnel at the headquarters of Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad were told before September 11 to go on the streets to gauge crowd reaction to an unspecified event. Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein's regime. Finally, the memo said, there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Ladin on unconven- tional weapons.

I was not able to find any other reference to the links between al Qaeda
and Iraq in the report. Unless I'm missing something, I conclude that
your news anchors are either uninformed or deliberately misleading the
viewing public.

Given that the facts show the democrats to be correct, it seems your
news anchors will have to stop pushing the republican claims. I have
just informed you of your error--if you continue to press the issue
with empty claims of evidence it will only be demonstrating the
intentional bias alleged by the creators of the movie "Outfoxed."

I intend to pass this email on to other news media, but would like to
give you the opportunity to respond with any evidence (include a page
number please) of a connection cited in the Report. I will include your
response in my upcoming news release.

--

Message to Fox: feel free to just leave your response in a comment here if you like.

Posted on 01:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack