GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israel sent more troops to the Gaza border Wednesday, rapidly moving forward with preparations for a possible ground offensive as the next stage of its military assault on the coastal territory's Hamas rulers. Israel rebuffed calls by world leaders for a truce, and Hamas also was cold to a cease-fire.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Stop The Presses! I Mean... Start Them!
When the fourth rail melds into the third.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.
Nicastro represents Connecticut's 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.
That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.
Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. "The media is a vitally important part of America," he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.
To some experts, that sounds like a bailout, a word that resurfaced this year after the U.S. government agreed to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the automobile and financial sectors.
Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.
Denmark Muslim Violence (Imported Article)
Breaking- Israel Matzav is reporting:
Israel Radio is reporting that a 'Palestinian' opened fire on a group of Israelis in a supermarket just outside of Copenhagen.More... Ekstra Bladet has this on the shooting:
Two people were injured, since shortly after 15 shots were fired in Rosengårdscentret center in Odense, the police, according to Ritzau.Haaretz is reporting the shooters were Arab youths:
The status is unknown.
We are looking for an offender at the moment, said the guard commander at the 16-time Ritzau.
We have plenty to look for right now, so we can not say more.
A group of Arab youths opened fire Wednesday evening on a number of Israelis working at a mall in the Danish city of Odenza, some 200 kilometers north of Copenhagen.Hat Tip DMartyr
The Israelis, who were operating a stall in the shopping center, were lightly wounded in their legs. There is no apparent danger to their lives.
The Foreign Ministery is following the reports closely, and Israelis emissaries in Copenhagen were headed to the site.
Mortimer J. Adler
If you have never heard or read Adler’s works/lectures, here is your chance to meet one of the great minds of the Twentieth century. These are in multiple parts so be prepared to take a few minutes to learn. I came across these because a surfer came across my site using these search words: youtube mortimer adler c-span. I did not have any videos for this person to find. The only reason they came across my site was I have a quote and a book listed on my main page. I am remedying this problem.
The two-part interview is with William F. Buckley. Buckley was key in forming the Republican base today, as Adler was key in forming theistic base of rational Christian faith today (CS Lewis would be another, as well as Francis Schaeffer -- videos I will add later).
Buckley
(Part-I)
(Part-II)
Fitness - Bush vs. Obama (Media Bias)
Media hypocrisy in all matters, big and small, healthy and unhealthy”
Obamas Are 'Fabulously Fit' Follow-up: Press Treated Bush Fitness As 'Creepy' and an 'Obsession'
By Tom Blumer
November 25, 2008
In Old Medialand, all it takes for a personal habit -- in this case, exercise -- to go from vice to an overhyped virtue is a change in the party affiliation of the White House occupant.
Yesterday, NB's Tim Graham commented on a puff piece about the Obamas' exercise routines by Associated Press groupie -- er, reporter -- Deanna Bellandi, who characterized the couple as "fabulously fit."
Several NB commenters at Graham's post pointed out that Barack Obama has been smoking cigarettes for years, something Bellandi "somehow" overlooked. Further, Obama has promised to quit, and it's not at all clear that he has.
More to the point, during the Bush presidency, the press treated the current White House occupant's exercise routine quite differently, characterizing it as "creepy," an "obsession," and an "indulgence," even in supposedly objective wire service reports.
In an August 2005 Reuters report about the president's 2-hour, 17-mile bike ride with cycling legend Lance Armstrong in Crawford, Texas, reporter Caron Bohan told readers -- twice -- that Armstrong opposed the war in Iraq. She also managed to work Cindy Sheehan into the narrative, while saying the following about the president's fitness and his routine:
The president was described by his doctors in his annual physical as being in "superior" condition for a man his age.
He takes pride in his six-day-a-week workout regimen and last week he showcased the statistics on his heart rate monitor for a group of reporters who rode with him. The monitor showed he burned 1,493 calories in a two-hour ride, also 17 miles.
Bush says exercise helps sharpen his thinking.
But some of his critics view his exercise obsession as an indulgence that takes time away from other priorities.
Among them is Cindy Sheehan, the Vacaville, California, mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, who until late last week was camped out down the road from Bush's ranch seeking a meeting with him to discuss her opposition to the war.
Sheehan, who left her vigil on Thursday to tend to her sick mother, has said she believes Bush should take fewer bike rides to have more time to focus on the "the nation's work."
LA Times columnist Jonathan Chait was at his Bush-deranged worst in July of that same year:
..... Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy.
Given the importance of his job, it is astonishing how much time Bush has to exercise.
There’s no denying that the results are impressive. Bush can bench press 185 pounds five times, and, before a recent knee injury, he ran three miles at a 6-minute, 45-second pace. That’s better than I could manage when I played two sports in high school. And I wasn’t holding the most powerful office on Earth. Which is sort of my point: Does the leader of the free world need to attain that level of physical achievement?
Bush not only thinks so, he thinks it goes for the rest of us as well. In 2002, he initiated a national fitness campaign.
Chait wrote as if Bush was the first president to have "a national fitness campaign," when in fact the President's Council on Youth Fitness has been around since the 1950s, and was renamed the President's Council on Physical Fitness in the 1960s.
This must mean that Ike and Jack Kennedy were obsessed too. The historical record shows that JFK indeed exhibited obsessive behavior -- but in a different physical arena.
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