Title Point

So …
I was forced by my boss to participate in (read: 'LISTEN in boredom to') yet another teleconference today.
She hears about/gets these ideas that something might possibly, somehow, perhaps, in the distant future, if our entire company restructures itself and a cost of millions of dollars, be useful. And then she makes others waste their time hearing about it.
OK.. whatever… I get it. And no, not ONE has ever become fruitful.

The hardest part for me is when the presenter has a quirk of speech that you pick up on …. Which drives you insane for the entire ordeal.

For example:
Today’s presenter was a man (with a doctorate, no less) who insisted on using the word “etcetera” (or “et cetera”, if you so choose).
So, like any good classmate, I began to count ….

16 times in the 55 minute presentation. That's a TON.
And with a special treat one time of a 3-etcetera sentence.

All of which would be… OK… except that he insisted on pronouncing it as: “eK-SET-u-ruh”, thereby making my ears bleed.


One other thing that I amuse myself by measuring is the point in a presentation when the title itself is brought in.
All decent books, stories, articles and presentations eventually get around to rounding everything up into a statement of …. THE TITLE.
So it’s important to note that exact eureka! moment when they’ve brought you there.
Today’s moment was at the 48 minute mark.
It’s also fun to get those “looks” from your coworkers when you are on a teleconference, silently sitting at your desk in your office, and you mark the achievement of what I like to call TITLE POINT by screaming out “TITLE !!!” as loud as you can.

Gotta Love Surprises

GM reports 1st-quarter loss of $3.3 billion
DETROIT MSNBC 04/30/08
General Motors Corp. struggled to a $3.3 billion first-quarter loss, due in part to a weak U.S. market, a strike at a major parts supplier and plummeting sales of sport utility vehicles and pickups.


Oh MY GOD...! REALLY?
Who would have seen that coming?
WOW.
But they have been making those SUV's right on up till now, right?
No forethought a few years ago that this was coming at all. Oh, things will be great...
Managers pushing right ahead with design & production of huge-ass gas pigs, saying "It's not us - we are just giving the people what they want..."
Sure...you're paid to all kinds of money to do just that, right? Don't look forward. Don't predict, manage, forecast, right?
And it will be a sudden, terrible tragedy that all kinds of people will be laid off now because you haven't retooled for more economical car lines ... because, oh, THAT takes YEARS to do, and we were ONLY responding to the desires of the consumer.

It's called BAD BUSINESS MANAGEMENT.
Yeah ..this is America and you can buy whatever you want.
It's also your right to be AS STUPID AS YOU WANT.
And it's a businesses right to act as IT sees fit as well.
Fine.
But haven't we just seen how, when stupid business decisions are made, and things go badly, that suddenly the government is called on to step in and "help" because SOOOOO many people are adversely affected? As a result of ignorant & stupid business practices. Well, I guess you're protected then. Enjoy your profits!

We watched the American auto industry fuck up in the 70's, and yet here we go again .... Great lesson learned. Can't wait until they dust off the old HORIZON & PINTO plans. I personally am hoping for that PACER resurgence.

What a total surprise that gas is in too much demand and the price is exorbitant now ~ Who would have figured, hunh?

Morons.

Send in the Clowns ... Don't Bother - They're Here.

Signs the Circus is Coming to Town
PROVIDENCE: Prov Journal
If you drove into work through downtown (Providence) this morning, you may already have spotted the sure signs that the circus is in town.
Pink, yellow, blue fluffy "things" are hanging from poles near parking garages and crosswalks, aimed at catching the eye of youngsters as they head to the Dunkin' Donuts Center on Sabin Street.
Tonight, the 138th edition of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus opens a five-day run at the Dunk with a 7 o'clock show.

----
Additional signs of a circus have been quite visible for several days, however, as state lawmakers perform their annual ritual of pretending to act in the interest of their constituents. Stuck with having to address a budget deficit of over $150 million THIS year, and over $300 million next year, our representatives have taken every opportunity to show how irresponsible they've been - and continue to be.

Let's see ... after months of lambasting the governor's proposed budget (a budget that he is FORCED to present, working with the results of past legislative arrogance, deceit and utter fiscal irresponsibility), they pretty much pass it as is ... Oh, with the exception of those TENS of silently passed bills that amount to back-door deals. Everything gets shoved through in the wee hours of the morning, often without discussion, all piggy-backed to the important legislation that HAS to be passed. Additionally, our illustrious state senators and
representatives make sure to preserve their own fully funded health insurance while cutting tons of jobs and aid to every area of the population, and by increasing the allowed gambling operation hours at the two in-state facilities in DIRECT OPPOSITION TO THE STATED WILL OF THE PEOPLE, both statewide AND in the towns where the facilities are located.

There should be outrage by Rhode Islanders. There should be protest. There should be indignant voter retribution against the acts perpetrated so arrogantly by those we elect to act in our behalf.
But this is Rhode Island. Everyone "knows" someone. And the rest simply don't care.

It's criminal. But it doesn't change. This state is ahead of the rest of the country in economic downturn, job loss and has already been categorized as in recession. And a LARGE part of it is because of the selfish, arrogant, self-serving, 'old-boy' actions of it's political leaders. Leaders who have time and time again proven that they do NOT deserve out trust. Endless corruption and conflict-of-interest behavior have brought us to this point, and will keep us here.

It's pathetic and disgusting that the citizens of this state put up with such treatment.
Everyone deserves what they get.

I'm sick and tired of writing to my senator and representative. I'm sick of putting my trust in these people who are re-elected over and over - many times running unopposed, only to watch them ruin this state. NONE of them gets trust any longer. They are guilty until they prove innocence and integrity FIRST. And incumbents will be voted against REPEATEDLY, and spoken out against until they get out and the behavior changes.

It's not about leaving here. It's about FIXING the mess that exists.

(picking up my soap box and smashing it through the state house window)

One thing at a Time....

Art. ART? ART!

The MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in NY has opened an exhibit of Esquire Magazine covers that were made by a man named George Lois' for about 10 years in the 60's -early 70's.

Article here:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/04/25/esquire.coverart.ap/index.html?iref=hpmostpop

The kind of cool thing about this is the social commentary aspect of these covers.
If you go to his site, he has quite a few of the covers on display along with a small explanatory paragraph about it's creation.

The thing is - he's right. Today, you couldn't do that stuff. Today's magazine covers ~ and today's pop culture SCREAM at you ...

http://www.georgelois.com/

(sigh)

For some reason, this editorial today speaks to me.
To me, she's painting a written picture and presenting an emotional recap of the feelings and sentiments of people throughout America, even though they might not verbalize it.

The news channels scream at us... they push, shove, and cajole us all day, every day and night. They manufacture and present their story lines, telling us what they want us to do and think.
After all - they KNOW.
Only they don't.

They don't even know how much they're ignored now. How impotent they are at affecting us.
They are either the dog or the pony.... one of them. And they meld with the officials, and the hired analysts, and the candidates and the experts and the "truth-sayers".
But the people of America are beyond them now.

Things aren't good. And we've lost a lot.
And we know it.



The View From Gate 14
April 25, 2008 DECLARATIONS By PEGGY NOONAN
The Wall Street Journal
America is in line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty until proved innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. America left its ticket and passport in the jacket in the bin in the X-ray machine, and is admonished. America is embarrassed to have put one one-ounce moisturizer too many in the see-through bag. America is irritated that the TSA agent removed its mascara, opened it, put it to her nose, and smelled it. Why don't you put it up your nose and see if it explodes? America thinks.
And, as always: Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist, and you know I know you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and harassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would agree that all this harassment is the government's way of showing "fairness," of showing that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its high-mindedness and sense of justice? Our politicians congratulate themselves on this as we stand in line.
Corbis
All the frisking, beeping and patting down is demoralizing to our society. It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are not in control, that common sense is yesterday. Another thing: It reduces the status of that ancestral arbiter and leader of society, the middle-aged woman. In the new fairness, she is treated like everyone, without respect, like the loud ruffian and the vulgar girl on the phone. The middle-aged woman is the one spread-eagled over there in the delicate shell beneath the removed jacket, praying nothing on her body goes beep and makes people look.
America makes it through security, gets to the gate, waits. The TV monitor is on. It is Wolf Blitzer. He is telling us with a voice of urgency of the Pennsylvania returns. But no one looks up. We are a nation of Willie Lomans, dragging our rollies through acres of airport, going through life with a suitcase and a slack jaw, trying to get home after a long day of meetings, of moving product.
No one in crowded gate 14 looks up to see what happened in Pennsylvania. No one. Wolf talks to the air. Gate 14 is small-town America, a mix, a group of people of all classes and races brought together and living in close proximity until the plane is called, and America knows what Samuel Johnson knew. "How small of all that human hearts endure / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure."
Gate 14 doesn't think any one of the candidates is going to make their lives better. Gate 14 will vote anyway, because they know they are the grownups of America and must play the role and do the job.
* * *
So: Pennsylvania. As seen from the distance of West Texas, central California and Oklahoma, which is where I've been.
Main thought. Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama's problem. America is Mr. Obama's problem. He has been tagged as a snooty lefty, as the glamorous, ambivalent candidate from Men's Vogue, the candidate who loves America because of the great progress it has made in terms of racial fairness. Fine, good. But has he ever gotten misty-eyed over . . . the Wright Brothers and what kind of country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything? How about D-Day, or George Washington, or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who flocked to Sutter's Mill, who pushed their way west because there was gold in them thar hills? There's gold in that history.
John McCain carries it in his bones. Mr. McCain learned it in school, in the Naval Academy, and, literally, at grandpa's knee. Mrs. Clinton learned at least its importance in her long slog through Arkansas, circa 1977-92.
Mr. Obama? What does he think about all that history? Which is another way of saying: What does he think of America? That's why people talk about the flag pin absent from the lapel. They wonder if it means something. Not that the presence of the pin proves love of country – any cynic can wear a pin, and many cynics do. But what about Obama and America? Who would have taught him to love it, and what did he learn was loveable, and what does he think about it all?
Another challenge. Snooty lefties get angry when you ask them to talk about these things. They get resentful. Who are you to question my patriotism? But no one is questioning his patriotism, they're questioning its content, its fullness. Gate 14 has a right to hear this. They'd lean forward to hear.
This is an opportunity, for Mr. Obama needs an Act II. Act II is hard. Act II is where the promise of Act I is deepened, the plot thickens, and all is teed up for resolution and meaning. Mr. Obama's Act I was: I'm Obama. He enters the scene. Act III will be the convention and acceptance speech. After that a whole new drama begins. But for now he needs Act II. He should make his subject America.
* * *
Here's some comfort for him, for all Democrats. In Lubbock, Texas – Lubbock Comma Texas, the heart of Texas conservatism – they dislike President Bush. He has lost them. I was there and saw it. Confusion has been followed by frustration has turned into resentment, and this is huge. Everyone knows the president's poll numbers are at historic lows, but if he is over in Lubbock, there is no place in this country that likes him. I made a speech and moved around and I was tough on him and no one – not one – defended or disagreed. I did the same in North Carolina recently, and again no defenders. I did the same in Fresno, Calif., and no defenders, not one.
He has left on-the-ground conservatives – the local right-winger, the town intellectual reading Burke and Kirk, the old Reagan committeewoman – feeling undefended, unrepresented and alone.
This will have impact down the road.
I finally understand the party nostalgia for Reagan. Everyone speaks of him now, but it wasn't that way in 2000, or 1992, or 1996, or even '04.
I think it is a manifestation of dislike for and disappointment in Mr. Bush. It is a turning away that is a turning back. It is a looking back to conservatism when conservatism was clear, knew what it was, was grounded in the facts of the world.
The reasons for the quiet break with Mr. Bush: spending, they say first, growth in the power and size of government, Iraq. I imagine some of this: a fine and bitter conservative sense that he has never had to stand in his stockinged feet at the airport holding the bin, being harassed. He has never had to live in the world he helped make, the one where grandma's hip replacement is setting off the beeper here and the child is crying there. And of course as a former president, with the entourage and the private jets, he never will. I bet conservatives don't like it. I'm certain Gate 14 doesn't.

This Can Only Go Horribly Wrong

So a few of my friends & I are planing a summer camping trip up in New Hampshire in August.
After searching around and realizing that most camping facility owners are Luddites, my friend suggested this place...

- http://www.maplehavenresort.com/

Sure! Why not.
They have very cute ICONS, and they have CATERING. Now we’re talkin’….!!
It looks quite fine...who knows? Like - it's summer camping. It is nothing more than a setting for a bloody B-movie horror-type massacre anyway. "Oooo! what's that noise? Let me go check it out alone with no flashlight. You wait right here, darling, scantily clad in your see-through camisole. I'll be right back, perhaps with a shishkabob skewer shoved through my eye."

BTW … the world has completely changed for me when a camping place has video & DVD rentals.
People are wussies.

Oh, and the big cabins at this place are nicer than my freakin’ condo.

Looks fine to me …it’s camping.
(Ominous music, please) How bad can it be?


“Maple Haven” … Sounds like a sanitarium.
“Yep… after we lost our cockatoo, “Feathers” in that nasty wood chipper incident, the wife was never the same … spent the rest of her years up at Maple Haven, poor thing.”

To Protect & Serve ... IF You Can See Us.

A neighboring community here just got all new police cars - which brought to mind something I always have been meaning to bitch about. (Gee - me bitch about something?).

The cars are very nice ... they are black with deep blue lettering.
Which begs the question - WHY do they make POLICE cars that are basically indistinguishable from all other cars on the road? What point does that serve? People who NEED the police can't see them. And isn't the point to DETER? So if you are clearly VISIBLE, then people would be more inclined to obey the laws.
I understand that you might want to "sneak" up on criminals, but the point is to get as MANY people as possible to act properly.
It's been a while now that the police lights have been pretty much indistinguishable from your basic roof rack, too ...and in a lot of cases are internal. I am SURE that the reason is put forth that it saves countless dollars in gas by making the cars more sleek. It couldn't have anything to do with the idea of being as invisible as possible in order to catch more scofflaws and thereby generate more funds.... no way.
Now I know - some might argue that if no one KNOWS which car might be a cop car, then they will have to obey at ALL times. Yeah, well .... have you been out on the roads lately? Look around. That concept is falling woefully short of it's goal. The only time I see drivers slow down or drive properly is when a police car is in the vicinity. SOMETIMES.
And more importantly, the police are supposed to be there ..yes, really... to HELP us.
If no one can SEE them around, then they can't flag 'em down.
Shouldn't the cars be, like, canary yellow or bright orange or something? I mean - they always have undercover cars anyway ....

So I think they should start employing stealth technology going forward... Or maybe they can get something going like this.
Cop? What cop?

"Message Force Multipliers" ... Such Heroes

Well, once again I am chuck full of disgust for the administration and the way our government has acted - in the deceit and misleading lies. Surprised? No. That emotion died long ago regarding the integrity of government, elected officials and military leaders. Is it a new thing that political leaders in this world attempt to manipulate the media and the information that the people receive? Certainly not. But once again I see proof that we are NOT what we once were - or at least TRIED to be: a country of standards, morals and laws. More indignant ranting to come....


Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
By DAVID BARSTOW Published in The New York Times: April 20, 2008
In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.
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The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.
Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.
Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.
Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.
In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.
A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.
“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.
Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.
As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.
“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”
The Pentagon defended its relationship with military analysts, saying they had been given only factual information about the war. “The intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people,” Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said.
It was, Mr. Whitman added, “a bit incredible” to think retired military officers could be “wound up” and turned into “puppets of the Defense Department.”
Many analysts strongly denied that they had either been co-opted or had allowed outside business interests to affect their on-air comments, and some have used their platforms to criticize the conduct of the war. Several, like Jeffrey D. McCausland, a CBS military analyst and defense industry lobbyist, said they kept their networks informed of their outside work and recused themselves from coverage that touched on business interests.
“I’m not here representing the administration,” Dr. McCausland said.
Some network officials, meanwhile, acknowledged only a limited understanding of their analysts’ interactions with the administration. They said that while they were sensitive to potential conflicts of interest, they did not hold their analysts to the same ethical standards as their news employees regarding outside financial interests. The onus is on their analysts to disclose conflicts, they said. And whatever the contributions of military analysts, they also noted the many network journalists who have covered the war for years in all its complexity.
Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.
These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.
Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”
Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, “the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world.” Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many — although certainly not all — faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics.
“Good work,” Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. “We will use it.”
Again and again, records show, the administration has enlisted analysts as a rapid reaction force to rebut what it viewed as critical news coverage, some of it by the networks’ own Pentagon correspondents. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: “I think our analysts — properly armed — can push back in that arena.”
The documents released by the Pentagon do not show any quid pro quo between commentary and contracts. But some analysts said they had used the special access as a marketing and networking opportunity or as a window into future business possibilities.
John C. Garrett is a retired Marine colonel and unpaid analyst for Fox News TV and radio. He is also a lobbyist at Patton Boggs who helps firms win Pentagon contracts, including in Iraq. In promotional materials, he states that as a military analyst he “is privy to weekly access and briefings with the secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high level policy makers in the administration.” One client told investors that Mr. Garrett’s special access and decades of experience helped him “to know in advance — and in detail — how best to meet the needs” of the Defense Department and other agencies.
In interviews Mr. Garrett said there was an inevitable overlap between his dual roles. He said he had gotten “information you just otherwise would not get,” from the briefings and three Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq. He also acknowledged using this access and information to identify opportunities for clients. “You can’t help but look for that,” he said, adding, “If you know a capability that would fill a niche or need, you try to fill it. “That’s good for everybody.”
At the same time, in e-mail messages to the Pentagon, Mr. Garrett displayed an eagerness to be supportive with his television and radio commentary. “Please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay,” he wrote in January 2007, before President Bush went on TV to describe the surge strategy in Iraq.
Conversely, the administration has demonstrated that there is a price for sustained criticism, many analysts said. “You’ll lose all access,” Dr. McCausland said.
With a majority of Americans calling the war a mistake despite all administration attempts to sway public opinion, the Pentagon has focused in the last couple of years on cultivating in particular military analysts frequently seen and heard in conservative news outlets, records and interviews show.
Some of these analysts were on the mission to Cuba on June 24, 2005 — the first of six such Guantánamo trips — which was designed to mobilize analysts against the growing perception of Guantánamo as an international symbol of inhumane treatment. On the flight to Cuba, for much of the day at Guantánamo and on the flight home that night, Pentagon officials briefed the 10 or so analysts on their key messages — how much had been spent improving the facility, the abuse endured by guards, the extensive rights afforded detainees.
The results came quickly. The analysts went on TV and radio, decrying Amnesty International, criticizing calls to close the facility and asserting that all detainees were treated humanely.
“The impressions that you’re getting from the media and from the various pronouncements being made by people who have not been here in my opinion are totally false,” Donald W. Shepperd, a retired Air Force general, reported live on CNN by phone from Guantánamo that same afternoon.
The next morning, Montgomery Meigs, a retired Army general and NBC analyst, appeared on “Today.” “There’s been over $100 million of new construction,” he reported. “The place is very professionally run.”
Within days, transcripts of the analysts’ appearances were circulated to senior White House and Pentagon officials, cited as evidence of progress in the battle for hearts and minds at home.
Charting the Campaign
By early 2002, detailed planning for a possible Iraq invasion was under way, yet an obstacle loomed. Many Americans, polls showed, were uneasy about invading a country with no clear connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Pentagon and White House officials believed the military analysts could play a crucial role in helping overcome this resistance.
Torie Clarke, the former public relations executive who oversaw the Pentagon’s dealings with the analysts as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, had come to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called “information dominance.” In a spin-saturated news culture, she argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent.
And so even before Sept. 11, she built a system within the Pentagon to recruit “key influentials” — movers and shakers from all walks who with the proper ministrations might be counted on to generate support for Mr. Rumsfeld’s priorities.
In the months after Sept. 11, as every network rushed to retain its own all-star squad of retired military officers, Ms. Clarke and her staff sensed a new opportunity. To Ms. Clarke’s team, the military analysts were the ultimate “key influential” — authoritative, most of them decorated war heroes, all reaching mass audiences.
The analysts, they noticed, often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in the news media, they were not of the news media. They were military men, many of them ideologically in sync with the administration’s neoconservative brain trust, many of them important players in a military industry anticipating large budget increases to pay for an Iraq war.
Even analysts with no defense industry ties, and no fondness for the administration, were reluctant to be critical of military leaders, many of whom were friends. “It is very hard for me to criticize the United States Army,” said William L. Nash, a retired Army general and ABC analyst. “It is my life.”
Other administrations had made sporadic, small-scale attempts to build relationships with the occasional military analyst. But these were trifling compared with what Ms. Clarke’s team had in mind. Don Meyer, an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic decision was made in 2002 to make the analysts the main focus of the public relations push to construct a case for war. Journalists were secondary. “We didn’t want to rely on them to be our primary vehicle to get information out,” Mr. Meyer said.
The Pentagon’s regular press office would be kept separate from the military analysts. The analysts would instead be catered to by a small group of political appointees, with the point person being Brent T. Krueger, another senior aide to Ms. Clarke. The decision recalled other administration tactics that subverted traditional journalism. Federal agencies, for example, have paid columnists to write favorably about the administration. They have distributed to local TV stations hundreds of fake news segments with fawning accounts of administration accomplishments. The Pentagon itself has made covert payments to Iraqi newspapers to publish coalition propaganda.
Rather than complain about the “media filter,” each of these techniques simply converted the filter into an amplifier. This time, Mr. Krueger said, the military analysts would in effect be “writing the op-ed” for the war.
Assembling the Team
From the start, interviews show, the White House took a keen interest in which analysts had been identified by the Pentagon, requesting lists of potential recruits, and suggesting names. Ms. Clarke’s team wrote summaries describing their backgrounds, business affiliations and where they stood on the war.
“Rumsfeld ultimately cleared off on all invitees,” said Mr. Krueger, who left the Pentagon in 2004. (Through a spokesman, Mr. Rumsfeld declined to comment for this article.)
Over time, the Pentagon recruited more than 75 retired officers, although some participated only briefly or sporadically. The largest contingent was affiliated with Fox News, followed by NBC and CNN, the other networks with 24-hour cable outlets. But analysts from CBS and ABC were included, too. Some recruits, though not on any network payroll, were influential in other ways — either because they were sought out by radio hosts, or because they often published op-ed articles or were quoted in magazines, Web sites and newspapers. At least nine of them have written op-ed articles for The Times.
The group was heavily represented by men involved in the business of helping companies win military contracts. Several held senior positions with contractors that gave them direct responsibility for winning new Pentagon business. James Marks, a retired Army general and analyst for CNN from 2004 to 2007, pursued military and intelligence contracts as a senior executive with McNeil Technologies. Still others held board positions with military firms that gave them responsibility for government business. General McInerney, the Fox analyst, for example, sits on the boards of several military contractors, including Nortel Government Solutions, a supplier of communication networks.
Several were defense industry lobbyists, such as Dr. McCausland, who works at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, a major lobbying firm where he is director of a national security team that represents several military contractors. “We offer clients access to key decision makers,” Dr. McCausland’s team promised on the firm’s Web site.
Dr. McCausland was not the only analyst making this pledge. Another was Joseph W. Ralston, a retired Air Force general. Soon after signing on with CBS, General Ralston was named vice chairman of the Cohen Group, a consulting firm headed by a former defense secretary, William Cohen, himself now a “world affairs” analyst for CNN. “The Cohen Group knows that getting to ‘yes’ in the aerospace and defense market — whether in the United States or abroad — requires that companies have a thorough, up-to-date understanding of the thinking of government decision makers,” the company tells prospective clients on its Web site.
There were also ideological ties.
Two of NBC’s most prominent analysts, Barry R. McCaffrey and the late Wayne A. Downing, were on the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an advocacy group created with White House encouragement in 2002 to help make the case for ousting Saddam Hussein. Both men also had their own consulting firms and sat on the boards of major military contractors.
Many also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war.
This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda during Vietnam.
“We lost the war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” — using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.”
The Selling of the War
From their earliest sessions with the military analysts, Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides spoke as if they were all part of the same team.
In interviews, participants described a powerfully seductive environment — the uniformed escorts to Mr. Rumsfeld’s private conference room, the best government china laid out, the embossed name cards, the blizzard of PowerPoints, the solicitations of advice and counsel, the appeals to duty and country, the warm thank you notes from the secretary himself.
“Oh, you have no idea,” Mr. Allard said, describing the effect. “You’re back. They listen to you. They listen to what you say on TV.” It was, he said, “psyops on steroids” — a nuanced exercise in influence through flattery and proximity. “It’s not like it’s, ‘We’ll pay you $500 to get our story out,’ ” he said. “It’s more subtle.”
The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.
In the fall and winter leading up to the invasion, the Pentagon armed its analysts with talking points portraying Iraq as an urgent threat. The basic case became a familiar mantra: Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, was developing nuclear weapons, and might one day slip some to Al Qaeda; an invasion would be a relatively quick and inexpensive “war of liberation.”
At the Pentagon, members of Ms. Clarke’s staff marveled at the way the analysts seamlessly incorporated material from talking points and briefings as if it was their own.
“You could see that they were messaging,” Mr. Krueger said. “You could see they were taking verbatim what the secretary was saying or what the technical specialists were saying. And they were saying it over and over and over.” Some days, he added, “We were able to click on every single station and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You’d look at them and say, ‘This is working.’ ”
On April 12, 2003, with major combat almost over, Mr. Rumsfeld drafted a memorandum to Ms. Clarke. “Let’s think about having some of the folks who did such a good job as talking heads in after this thing is over,” he wrote.
By summer, though, the first signs of the insurgency had emerged. Reports from journalists based in Baghdad were increasingly suffused with the imagery of mayhem.
The Pentagon did not have to search far for a counterweight.
It was time, an internal Pentagon strategy memorandum urged, to “re-energize surrogates and message-force multipliers,” starting with the military analysts.
The memorandum led to a proposal to take analysts on a tour of Iraq in September 2003, timed to help overcome the sticker shock from Mr. Bush’s request for $87 billion in emergency war financing.
The group included four analysts from Fox News, one each from CNN and ABC, and several research-group luminaries whose opinion articles appear regularly in the nation’s op-ed pages.
The trip invitation promised a look at “the real situation on the ground in Iraq.”
The situation, as described in scores of books, was deteriorating. L. Paul Bremer III, then the American viceroy in Iraq, wrote in his memoir, “My Year in Iraq,” that he had privately warned the White House that the United States had “about half the number of soldiers we needed here.”
“We’re up against a growing and sophisticated threat,” Mr. Bremer recalled telling the president during a private White House dinner.
That dinner took place on Sept. 24, while the analysts were touring Iraq.
Yet these harsh realities were elided, or flatly contradicted, during the official presentations for the analysts, records show. The itinerary, scripted to the minute, featured brief visits to a model school, a few refurbished government buildings, a center for women’s rights, a mass grave and even the gardens of Babylon.
Mostly the analysts attended briefings. These sessions, records show, spooled out an alternative narrative, depicting an Iraq bursting with political and economic energy, its security forces blossoming. On the crucial question of troop levels, the briefings echoed the White House line: No reinforcements were needed. The “growing and sophisticated threat” described by Mr. Bremer was instead depicted as degraded, isolated and on the run.
“We’re winning,” a briefing document proclaimed.
One trip participant, General Nash of ABC, said some briefings were so clearly “artificial” that he joked to another group member that they were on “the George Romney memorial trip to Iraq,” a reference to Mr. Romney’s infamous claim that American officials had “brainwashed” him into supporting the Vietnam War during a tour there in 1965, while he was governor of Michigan.
But if the trip pounded the message of progress, it also represented a business opportunity: direct access to the most senior civilian and military leaders in Iraq and Kuwait, including many with a say in how the president’s $87 billion would be spent. It also was a chance to gather inside information about the most pressing needs confronting the American mission: the acute shortages of “up-armored” Humvees; the billions to be spent building military bases; the urgent need for interpreters; and the ambitious plans to train Iraq’s security forces.
Information and access of this nature had undeniable value for trip participants like William V. Cowan and Carlton A. Sherwood.
Mr. Cowan, a Fox analyst and retired Marine colonel, was the chief executive of a new military firm, the wvc3 Group. Mr. Sherwood was its executive vice president. At the time, the company was seeking contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq. In addition, wvc3 Group had a written agreement to use its influence and connections to help tribal leaders in Al Anbar Province win reconstruction contracts from the coalition.
“Those sheiks wanted access to the C.P.A.,” Mr. Cowan recalled in an interview, referring to the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Mr. Cowan said he pleaded their cause during the trip. “I tried to push hard with some of Bremer’s people to engage these people of Al Anbar,” he said.
Back in Washington, Pentagon officials kept a nervous eye on how the trip translated on the airwaves. Uncomfortable facts had bubbled up during the trip. One briefer, for example, mentioned that the Army was resorting to packing inadequately armored Humvees with sandbags and Kevlar blankets. Descriptions of the Iraqi security forces were withering. “They can’t shoot, but then again, they don’t,” one officer told them, according to one participant’s notes.
“I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south,” General Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on the trip, recalled in an interview with The Times.
The Pentagon, though, need not have worried.
“You can’t believe the progress,” General Vallely told Alan Colmes of Fox News upon his return. He predicted the insurgency would be “down to a few numbers” within months.
“We could not be more excited, more pleased,” Mr. Cowan told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. There was barely a word about armor shortages or corrupt Iraqi security forces. And on the key strategic question of the moment — whether to send more troops — the analysts were unanimous.
“I am so much against adding more troops,” General Shepperd said on CNN.
Access and Influence
Inside the Pentagon and at the White House, the trip was viewed as a masterpiece in the management of perceptions, not least because it gave fuel to complaints that “mainstream” journalists were ignoring the good news in Iraq.
“We’re hitting a home run on this trip,” a senior Pentagon official wrote in an e-mail message to Richard B. Myers and Peter Pace, then chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Its success only intensified the Pentagon’s campaign. The pace of briefings accelerated. More trips were organized. Eventually the effort involved officials from Washington to Baghdad to Kabul to Guantánamo and back to Tampa, Fla., the headquarters of United States Central Command.
The scale reflected strong support from the top. When officials in Iraq were slow to organize another trip for analysts, a Pentagon official fired off an e-mail message warning that the trips “have the highest levels of visibility” at the White House and urging them to get moving before Lawrence Di Rita, one of Mr. Rumsfeld’s closest aides, “picks up the phone and starts calling the 4-stars.”
Mr. Di Rita, no longer at the Defense Department, said in an interview that a “conscious decision” was made to rely on the military analysts to counteract “the increasingly negative view of the war” coming from journalists in Iraq. The analysts, he said, generally had “a more supportive view” of the administration and the war, and the combination of their TV platforms and military cachet made them ideal for rebutting critical coverage of issues like troop morale, treatment of detainees, inadequate equipment or poorly trained Iraqi security forces. “On those issues, they were more likely to be seen as credible spokesmen,” he said.
For analysts with military industry ties, the attention brought access to a widening circle of influential officials beyond the contacts they had accumulated over the course of their careers.
Charles T. Nash, a Fox military analyst and retired Navy captain, is a consultant who helps small companies break into the military market. Suddenly, he had entree to a host of senior military leaders, many of whom he had never met. It was, he said, like being embedded with the Pentagon leadership. “You start to recognize what’s most important to them,” he said, adding, “There’s nothing like seeing stuff firsthand.”
Some Pentagon officials said they were well aware that some analysts viewed their special access as a business advantage. “Of course we realized that,” Mr. Krueger said. “We weren’t naïve about that.”
They also understood the financial relationship between the networks and their analysts. Many analysts were being paid by the “hit,” the number of times they appeared on TV. The more an analyst could boast of fresh inside information from high-level Pentagon “sources,” the more hits he could expect. The more hits, the greater his potential influence in the military marketplace, where several analysts prominently advertised their network roles.
“They have taken lobbying and the search for contracts to a far higher level,” Mr. Krueger said. “This has been highly honed.”
Mr. Di Rita, though, said it never occurred to him that analysts might use their access to curry favor. Nor, he said, did the Pentagon try to exploit this dynamic. “That’s not something that ever crossed my mind,” he said. In any event, he argued, the analysts and the networks were the ones responsible for any ethical complications. “We assume they know where the lines are,” he said.
The analysts met personally with Mr. Rumsfeld at least 18 times, records show, but that was just the beginning. They had dozens more sessions with the most senior members of his brain trust and access to officials responsible for managing the billions being spent in Iraq. Other groups of “key influentials” had meetings, but not nearly as often as the analysts.
An internal memorandum in 2005 helped explain why. The memorandum, written by a Pentagon official who had accompanied analysts to Iraq, said that based on her observations during the trip, the analysts “are having a greater impact” on network coverage of the military. “They have now become the go-to guys not only on breaking stories, but they influence the views on issues,” she wrote.
Other branches of the administration also began to make use of the analysts. Mr. Gonzales, then the attorney general, met with them soon after news leaked that the government was wiretapping terrorism suspects in the United States without warrants, Pentagon records show. When David H. Petraeus was appointed the commanding general in Iraq in January 2007, one of his early acts was to meet with the analysts.
“We knew we had extraordinary access,” said Timur J. Eads, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and Fox analyst who is vice president of government relations for Blackbird Technologies, a fast-growing military contractor.
Like several other analysts, Mr. Eads said he had at times held his tongue on television for fear that “some four-star could call up and say, ‘Kill that contract.’ ” For example, he believed Pentagon officials misled the analysts about the progress of Iraq’s security forces. “I know a snow job when I see one,” he said. He did not share this on TV.
“Human nature,” he explained, though he noted other instances when he was critical.
Some analysts said that even before the war started, they privately had questions about the justification for the invasion, but were careful not to express them on air.
Mr. Bevelacqua, then a Fox analyst, was among those invited to a briefing in early 2003 about Iraq’s purported stockpiles of illicit weapons. He recalled asking the briefer whether the United States had “smoking gun” proof.
“ ‘We don’t have any hard evidence,’ ” Mr. Bevelacqua recalled the briefer replying. He said he and other analysts were alarmed by this concession. “We are looking at ourselves saying, ‘What are we doing?’ ”
Another analyst, Robert L. Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who works in the Pentagon for a military contractor, attended the same briefing and recalled feeling “very disappointed” after being shown satellite photographs purporting to show bunkers associated with a hidden weapons program. Mr. Maginnis said he concluded that the analysts were being “manipulated” to convey a false sense of certainty about the evidence of the weapons. Yet he and Mr. Bevelacqua and the other analysts who attended the briefing did not share any misgivings with the American public.
Mr. Bevelacqua and another Fox analyst, Mr. Cowan, had formed the wvc3 Group, and hoped to win military and national security contracts.
“There’s no way I was going to go down that road and get completely torn apart,” Mr. Bevelacqua said. “You’re talking about fighting a huge machine.”
Some e-mail messages between the Pentagon and the analysts reveal an implicit trade of privileged access for favorable coverage. Robert H. Scales Jr., a retired Army general and analyst for Fox News and National Public Radio whose consulting company advises several military firms on weapons and tactics used in Iraq, wanted the Pentagon to approve high-level briefings for him inside Iraq in 2006.
“Recall the stuff I did after my last visit,” he wrote. “I will do the same this time.”
Pentagon Keeps Tabs
As it happened, the analysts’ news media appearances were being closely monitored. The Pentagon paid a private contractor, Omnitec Solutions, hundreds of thousands of dollars to scour databases for any trace of the analysts, be it a segment on “The O’Reilly Factor” or an interview with The Daily Inter Lake in Montana, circulation 20,000.
Omnitec evaluated their appearances using the same tools as corporate branding experts. One report, assessing the impact of several trips to Iraq in 2005, offered example after example of analysts echoing Pentagon themes on all the networks.
“Commentary from all three Iraq trips was extremely positive over all,” the report concluded.
In interviews, several analysts reacted with dismay when told they were described as reliable “surrogates” in Pentagon documents. And some asserted that their Pentagon sessions were, as David L. Grange, a retired Army general and CNN analyst put it, “just upfront information,” while others pointed out, accurately, that they did not always agree with the administration or each other. “None of us drink the Kool-Aid,” General Scales said.
Likewise, several also denied using their special access for business gain. “Not related at all,” General Shepperd said, pointing out that many in the Pentagon held CNN “in the lowest esteem.”
Still, even the mildest of criticism could draw a challenge. Several analysts told of fielding telephone calls from displeased defense officials only minutes after being on the air.
On Aug. 3, 2005, 14 marines died in Iraq. That day, Mr. Cowan, who said he had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the “twisted version of reality” being pushed on analysts in briefings, called the Pentagon to give “a heads-up” that some of his comments on Fox “may not all be friendly,” Pentagon records show. Mr. Rumsfeld’s senior aides quickly arranged a private briefing for him, yet when he told Bill O’Reilly that the United States was “not on a good glide path right now” in Iraq, the repercussions were swift.
Mr. Cowan said he was “precipitously fired from the analysts group” for this appearance. The Pentagon, he wrote in an e-mail message, “simply didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t carrying their water.” The next day James T. Conway, then director of operations for the Joint Chiefs, presided over another conference call with analysts. He urged them, a transcript shows, not to let the marines’ deaths further erode support for the war.
“The strategic target remains our population,” General Conway said. “We can lose people day in and day out, but they’re never going to beat our military. What they can and will do if they can is strip away our support. And you guys can help us not let that happen.”
“General, I just made that point on the air,” an analyst replied.
“Let’s work it together, guys,” General Conway urged.
The Generals’ Revolt
The full dimensions of this mutual embrace were perhaps never clearer than in April 2006, after several of Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals — none of them network military analysts — went public with devastating critiques of his wartime performance. Some called for his resignation.
On Friday, April 14, with what came to be called the “Generals’ Revolt” dominating headlines, Mr. Rumsfeld instructed aides to summon military analysts to a meeting with him early the next week, records show. When an aide urged a short delay to “give our big guys on the West Coast a little more time to buy a ticket and get here,” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office insisted that “the boss” wanted the meeting fast “for impact on the current story.”
That same day, Pentagon officials helped two Fox analysts, General McInerney and General Vallely, write an opinion article for The Wall Street Journal defending Mr. Rumsfeld.
“Starting to write it now,” General Vallely wrote to the Pentagon that afternoon. “Any input for the article,” he added a little later, “will be much appreciated.” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office quickly forwarded talking points and statistics to rebut the notion of a spreading revolt.
“Vallely is going to use the numbers,” a Pentagon official reported that afternoon.
The standard secrecy notwithstanding, plans for this session leaked, producing a front-page story in The Times that Sunday. In damage-control mode, Pentagon officials scrambled to present the meeting as routine and directed that communications with analysts be kept “very formal,” records show. “This is very, very sensitive now,” a Pentagon official warned subordinates.
On Tuesday, April 18, some 17 analysts assembled at the Pentagon with Mr. Rumsfeld and General Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
A transcript of that session, never before disclosed, shows a shared determination to marginalize war critics and revive public support for the war.
“I’m an old intel guy,” said one analyst. (The transcript omits speakers’ names.) “And I can sum all of this up, unfortunately, with one word. That is Psyops. Now most people may hear that and they think, ‘Oh my God, they’re trying to brainwash.’ ”
“What are you, some kind of a nut?” Mr. Rumsfeld cut in, drawing laughter. “You don’t believe in the Constitution?”
There was little discussion about the actual criticism pouring forth from Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals. Analysts argued that opposition to the war was rooted in perceptions fed by the news media, not reality. The administration’s overall war strategy, they counseled, was “brilliant” and “very successful.”
“Frankly,” one participant said, “from a military point of view, the penalty, 2,400 brave Americans whom we lost, 3,000 in an hour and 15 minutes, is relative.”
An analyst said at another point: “This is a wider war. And whether we have democracy in Iraq or not, it doesn’t mean a tinker’s damn if we end up with the result we want, which is a regime over there that’s not a threat to us.”
“Yeah,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, taking notes.
But winning or not, they bluntly warned, the administration was in grave political danger so long as most Americans viewed Iraq as a lost cause. “America hates a loser,” one analyst said.
Much of the session was devoted to ways that Mr. Rumsfeld could reverse the “political tide.” One analyst urged Mr. Rumsfeld to “just crush these people,” and assured him that “most of the gentlemen at the table” would enthusiastically support him if he did.
“You are the leader,” the analyst told Mr. Rumsfeld. “You are our guy.”
At another point, an analyst made a suggestion: “In one of your speeches you ought to say, ‘Everybody stop for a minute and imagine an Iraq ruled by Zarqawi.’ And then you just go down the list and say, ‘All right, we’ve got oil, money, sovereignty, access to the geographic center of gravity of the Middle East, blah, blah, blah.’ If you can just paint a mental picture for Joe America to say, ‘Oh my God, I can’t imagine a world like that.’ ”
Even as they assured Mr. Rumsfeld that they stood ready to help in this public relations offensive, the analysts sought guidance on what they should cite as the next “milestone” that would, as one analyst put it, “keep the American people focused on the idea that we’re moving forward to a positive end.” They placed particular emphasis on the growing confrontation with Iran.
“When you said ‘long war,’ you changed the psyche of the American people to expect this to be a generational event,” an analyst said. “And again, I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job...”
“Get in line,” Mr. Rumsfeld interjected.
The meeting ended and Mr. Rumsfeld, appearing pleased and relaxed, took the entire group into a small study and showed off treasured keepsakes from his life, several analysts recalled.
Soon after, analysts hit the airwaves. The Omnitec monitoring reports, circulated to more than 80 officials, confirmed that analysts repeated many of the Pentagon’s talking points: that Mr. Rumsfeld consulted “frequently and sufficiently” with his generals; that he was not “overly concerned” with the criticisms; that the meeting focused “on more important topics at hand,” including the next milestone in Iraq, the formation of a new government.
Days later, Mr. Rumsfeld wrote a memorandum distilling their collective guidance into bullet points. Two were underlined:
“Focus on the Global War on Terror — not simply Iraq. The wider war — the long war.”
“Link Iraq to Iran. Iran is the concern. If we fail in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will help Iran.”
But if Mr. Rumsfeld found the session instructive, at least one participant, General Nash, the ABC analyst, was repulsed.
“I walked away from that session having total disrespect for my fellow commentators, with perhaps one or two exceptions,” he said.
View From the Networks
Two weeks ago General Petraeus took time out from testifying before Congress about Iraq for a conference call with military analysts.
Mr. Garrett, the Fox analyst and Patton Boggs lobbyist, said he told General Petraeus during the call to “keep up the great work.”
“Hey,” Mr. Garrett said in an interview, “anything we can do to help.”
For the moment, though, because of heavy election coverage and general war fatigue, military analysts are not getting nearly as much TV time, and the networks have trimmed their rosters of analysts. The conference call with General Petraeus, for example, produced little in the way of immediate coverage.
Still, almost weekly the Pentagon continues to conduct briefings with selected military analysts. Many analysts said network officials were only dimly aware of these interactions. The networks, they said, have little grasp of how often they meet with senior officials, or what is discussed.
“I don’t think NBC was even aware we were participating,” said Rick Francona, a longtime military analyst for the network.
Some networks publish biographies on their Web sites that describe their analysts’ military backgrounds and, in some cases, give at least limited information about their business ties. But many analysts also said the networks asked few questions about their outside business interests, the nature of their work or the potential for that work to create conflicts of interest. “None of that ever happened,” said Mr. Allard, an NBC analyst until 2006.
“The worst conflict of interest was no interest.”
Mr. Allard and other analysts said their network handlers also raised no objections when the Defense Department began paying their commercial airfare for Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq — a clear ethical violation for most news organizations.
CBS News declined to comment on what it knew about its military analysts’ business affiliations or what steps it took to guard against potential conflicts.
NBC News also declined to discuss its procedures for hiring and monitoring military analysts. The network issued a short statement: “We have clear policies in place to assure that the people who appear on our air have been appropriately vetted and that nothing in their profile would lead to even a perception of a conflict of interest.”
Jeffrey W. Schneider, a spokesman for ABC, said that while the network’s military consultants were not held to the same ethical rules as its full-time journalists, they were expected to keep the network informed about any outside business entanglements. “We make it clear to them we expect them to keep us closely apprised,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Fox News said executives “refused to participate” in this article.
CNN requires its military analysts to disclose in writing all outside sources of income. But like the other networks, it does not provide its military analysts with the kind of written, specific ethical guidelines it gives its full-time employees for avoiding real or apparent conflicts of interest.
Yet even where controls exist, they have sometimes proven porous.
CNN, for example, said it was unaware for nearly three years that one of its main military analysts, General Marks, was deeply involved in the business of seeking government contracts, including contracts related to Iraq.
General Marks was hired by CNN in 2004, about the time he took a management position at McNeil Technologies, where his job was to pursue military and intelligence contracts. As required, General Marks disclosed that he received income from McNeil Technologies. But the disclosure form did not require him to describe what his job entailed, and CNN acknowledges it failed to do additional vetting.
“We did not ask Mr. Marks the follow-up questions we should have,” CNN said in a written statement.
In an interview, General Marks said it was no secret at CNN that his job at McNeil Technologies was about winning contracts. “I mean, that’s what McNeil does,” he said.
CNN, however, said it did not know the nature of McNeil’s military business or what General Marks did for the company. If he was bidding on Pentagon contracts, CNN said, that should have disqualified him from being a military analyst for the network. But in the summer and fall of 2006, even as he was regularly asked to comment on conditions in Iraq, General Marks was working intensively on bidding for a $4.6 billion contract to provide thousands of translators to United States forces in Iraq. In fact, General Marks was made president of the McNeil spin-off that won the huge contract in December 2006.
General Marks said his work on the contract did not affect his commentary on CNN. “I’ve got zero challenge separating myself from a business interest,” he said.
But CNN said it had no idea about his role in the contract until July 2007, when it reviewed his most recent disclosure form, submitted months earlier, and finally made inquiries about his new job.
“We saw the extent of his dealings and determined at that time we should end our relationship with him,” CNN said.

So which way is the wind blowing, Mrs. Clinton?

Do these people just not care that any person at all can type in www.google.com and find everything they've said? I repeat - how can you expect me to vote for you and put my trust in you when you change your story to fit your desire at any given moment?
The bottom line is that you will say anything, and you don't deserve my backing or trust. There's zero evidence that you would be truthful AFTER being elected, so go away.


August 8, 2007 Presidential Debate. (pbs.org)
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D), New York: “Well, I do not believe people running for president should engage in hypotheticals …” “… you shouldn't always say everything you think if you're running for president, because it has consequences across the world.”

Oct 13th, 2007 Campaign appearance (AP).
FLORENCE, S.C. -- Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday that President Bush has made a mistake in failing to push direct diplomacy with Iran despite the increasing tensions between Washington and Tehran. Responding to a woman's hypothetical question, Clinton said it would be "devastating to the world economy." She said she would "immediately open diplomatic negotiations with Iran over all of the issues we disagree with them on," and said she thought such talks would be indispensable to American credibility in the region…”

April 22, 2008 Good Morning America (abcnews.com)
Hillary Clinton: “Well, the question was, if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be. And I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that, because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society, because at whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program, in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel we would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.”


So.
On one hand you don't believe that any presidential candidate should respond to hypothetical situations and questions because it can have consequences across the world.
Then you RESPOND TO HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT A SITUATION.

Furthermore, in that response you state that you would immediately open direct diplomatic negotiations with Iran (pointing out that the current President was wrong in not doing so).

And then 6 months later, AGAIN responding to a hypothetical situation and question, you threatened Iran with a nuclear response, making sure to use saber-rattling dialogue such as "obliterate".

Remember the part where you indicated that what a candidate for the presidency might say in response to a hypothetical situation could have consequences across the world - and that is why it shouldn't be done? Well.... let's read this and discuss....

VIENNA, Austria (AP) April 23, 2008
The U.N. nuclear monitoring agency on Wednesday announced what it called a "milestone" agreement with Iran that aims to provide answers about allegations that Tehran tried to develop nuclear weapons.

Suppose the threat you made was to affect the position of Iran regarding this agreement that was being negotiated. I would think this is a VERY tentative agreement on Iran's part, and here you are swinging the big one .... Brilliant!

I don't trust you. You exhibit the same distrustful tendencies that your husband's administration exhibited, and which you were part of in SOME way (though depending on the day, your details of that change) .

And yet! And yet! To my bafflement, lots of people voted for you in my ridiculous state, and in Massachusetts and yesterday in PA.

I guess, in many ways, people get what they bargain for.

CNN 'Jumps the Shark'

Are you SERIOUS???!!!

Suddenly, along side some story links on CNN.COM, appears a small icon that looks like a t-shirt. Why? Because this will bring you to a site where you can buy a T-SHIRT WITH THAT PARTICULAR CNN HEADLINE ON IT.

Give me a BREAK!

I used to think the line was blurring between real news outlets and farcical entertainment & commercial "info-news" channels (except in FOX's case - there was never any doubt where that abomination stood)... but now I realize there IS no blurred line separating these things. they are intermingling, dancing and copulating right before our eyes. and THAT makes me want to poke them out with a dull, dirty stick.

The whole concept coming from a supposed NEWS channel is insipid, revolting, disgusting, inane, degrading and moronic. Other than that, I just am undecided about how I feel.

But it DOES open the door for other possibilities that would certainly raise the bar for other channels and opportunities. Perhaps there could be another icon, say one that looks like a rubber chicken, which, if you click, open s a window where the story is read to you by a clown, with punctuation highlighted by his red rubber horn.

Or perhaps a little "Theatrical" icon

where if you click THAT, you can see a little YouTube video where the newspeople act out the actual story themselves .... and they could also have an "I'm at Work" option where it's done by mimes so your boss won't catch you goofing off.

Ohhh...You Underestimate Yourselves!

(Debate) Moderators Come In For Criticism
From US News & World Report - Daily Bulletin
"In the Washinton Post's "Media Notes" column, Howard Kurtz reports ABC moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos "found themselves under fire for focusing on campaign gaffes and training most of their ammunition" on Obama. The New York Times reports Gibson and Stephanopoulos "became the subject of a fierce and somewhat unexpected debate themselves on Thursday, as viewers, bloggers and television critics lamented what they described as an opportunity lost: a chance to ask the two candidates for the Democratic nomination substantive questions early and often." The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says the "big losers" were the moderators, while the Los Angeles Times reports that "many who watched" the debate "were livid." The AP adds that Greg Mitchell "of the trade publication Editor and Publisher said it was 'perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate this year.' "


Ohhhh... C'mon, now! That's nothing! You KNOW you can do better. You're just not applying yourself. I mean, really! It's IMPORTANT to the future of this country - to the decision-making process - that we see Hillary sipping a shot of Crown Royal, or Obama BOWLING (he got a 37 - he sucks). It's imperative that the media focus on every single thing OTHER than the candidate's positions on the issues that will form this country's future.

Oh, and by the way ... could someone please tell me when becoming elite became a BAD thing?
"ELITE: the choice or best of anything considered collectively, as of a group or class of persons. "
I think maybe, for once, I'd LIKE a person who is better than me as the leader of the free world. The more recent concept that "one of us", who's a "regular guy" should be in charge hasn't worked. I want someone who is smart, intelligent, thoughtful, erudite, and eloquent. and I want someone who EXHIBITS this. I'm tired of the supposed leader of the free world embarrassing himself and the country by being an idiot. I'm sickened by a man who thinks it's "folks-y" to tell the Pope that he just made an "awesome speech". Seriously, George - you and your cronies can't go away fast enough.

Insert Chumbawamba Song Here

Don't know if both of these links will work, but I figured I'd give it a try.
This first link is a piece on MSNBC regarding th enew Nike commercial by Kobe Bryant.
Go here and view the final version.

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/24071921/


...and here's what collegehumor.com describes as "The FIRST Attempt" ....
It's awesome.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1811089

Maybe Geraldo Could Do the Play-by-Play

I COMPLETELY agree with this article appearing today ~ especially the part about Joe Morgan making you vomit.

RIVALRY'S BUZZ TAKES A BEATING
By JOEL SHERMAN (NY POST) 04-16-08
I DO NOT want to write this column, but I must, because the Red Sox and Yankees start a series tonight and someplace next to the original Gutenburg press is a journalistic playbook that demands we trumpet each new sighting of The Rivalry as if it were the ball coming down on New Year's. Even if the two teams just played over the weekend in Boston. Even if this series is just two games. Even if it is just April 16.
You see, we in the media are as addicted to Red Sox-Yankees as any junkie is to a drug. We have all decided to ignore realities that this series has lost a good deal of its juice the past few years, and now contains two of the worst traits of modern baseball: The games are usually way too long and too often come with the commentary of Joe Morgan. In fact, this series has become Joe Morgan in many respects: Famous for something that happened in the past and now something presented to us regularly as extraordinary that, quite frankly, isn't.
This is like "Survivor" or "ER" now. Something that used to be unique and special and well done, that lost its essence years ago. However, it stays on the network schedule in hopes that it can recapture what it once was. I asked a Fox executive before the Saturday game if he covers his eyes while the game is in progress and hopes when he opens them that Pedro Martinez and Don Zimmer will be rolling around on the ground? He laughed. I didn't.
It is Red Sox-Yankees, so yes, it comes with a ton of history and, thus, more buzz than, say, Brewers-Pirates. But it also comes 18 times a year. If Christmas were celebrated 18 times a year, it would be hard to sing the carols with quite the same gusto.
And here is the big thing: The Red Sox win now. Not just games and series, but championships. The great backstory to this matchup evaporated along with that three-games-to-none lead the Yanks let slip away in the 2004 ALCS. Boston was no longer Charlie Brown falling on his butt after the Yankees went all Lucy and kept pulling it away at the final second.
In 2003-04, every game - heck, every inning, every pitch - was as riveting as baseball gets. But that was because the Yankees had something and the Red Sox were trying to take it away. The context was everything. The Curse defined The Rivalry. Once the hex was lifted, so was the Luke-and-Laura-are-getting-married portion of the script. The intensity could never be the same again.
In fact, now it is contrived. We are told these games carry the same heat as always by their presence in special time slots on Fox and ESPN, and by people like me trying to convince you that nothing has changed, that it is Red Sox vs. Yankees and it is the same as it has ever been.
This is where I abandon ship. I remember being young once and going to a bar with my pals and a few of us having quite a special night after meeting a few ladies. And we kept going back to that bar over and over and over hoping to recapture what had happened that one great night. Of course, we never did have an instant replay. It was a moment in time, great and gone.
And this is where Yankees-Red Sox is now. I am so glad that I was there for all that occurred in 2003-04 - whether it was Big Papi emerging to greatness or Derek Jeter going headfirst into the stands or Karim Garcia and Jeff Nelson re-enacting the Hell's Angels side of Altamont in the Fenway visiting bullpen. But I approach yet another Red Sox-Yankees series feeling like I have learned the lesson that even too much chocolate will make you sick.
And having to hear Joe Morgan discuss it will then make you vomit.

"It's Just a Fucking Stick!!!"

For those who don't watch Survivor, this will have absolutely ZERO meaning to you,

but I'm sorry, that was the funniest line I've heard yet (in context).

When Q-Tips Meet

I am constantly amazed at how dumb people can be (myself included, of course) - and I was thinking that, on occasion, when something I hear about strikes me as especially stupid, I could put it in a re-occurring section here. Since these will be examples of your basic empty-headed behavior, I decided to call it: "When Q-Tips Meet".

My first installment will be the person who was doing the closed captioning this morning for CNN. The news story was about a Texan who committed some crime, ran, and then was eventually caught in Mexico. The problem was, according to this closed-caption genius, that the felon in question mistakenly believed that "Mexico did not Extra Diet people.".

Yup! That's right. They might cut down your portions a little, but there's no WAY that they will extra diet you. WTF??!!!! You're kidding, right?

And that kind of thinking, my friends, occurs when Q-Tips meet, if you catch my drift.

SPEAK UP, DAMNIT!!

I am by NO means a fan of Glenn Beck (CNN). I often disagree and feel he is an obnoxious, arrogant blather mouth.

HOWEVER.... He had an editorial on CNN.COM today that I felt was true. The AA analogy is a little annoying (and I cut the beginning of of his article out where he sets all this up...), but the statements and the substance of the rest is compelling as far as I am concerned.

I also think it is as true with regards to Rhode Island as it is with America as a whole.

Everyone is busy in their lives.... but it doesn't take long at all to make your views known....spend 5 minutes to collect the email addresses of your national and local elected officials. Then it's easy to just shoot off a quick note to them when you hear, read or see something that concerns you. Look at it this way ... if you DO it, then you have every right to get up there on that high horse and BLAT the SOB's when things are going wrong. It's a justification to bitch - AND, it might even influence the bastards to do what YOU want, not what THEY want.

I really do feel overwhelmed by the cacophony of screamingly bad decisions, corruption and arrogance in out representatives. I think we ALL need to care more about where this country is going .. about where our states are going. And in the absence of direction form us, the people who represent us are screwing things up.

Anyway ... (getting down off the soap box) .... here's the article in part. Beck can be a jerk ~ but he happens to be right this time.

…
Through hard work and unwavering principles, America took itself from a far-fetched idea to the greatest, most compassionate, most free country the world has ever known. But as our success has grown, so has our arrogance.
We've compromised our values, sold out our principles and used our freedoms to justify giving more power to the government. In the first century of America's life, its government was afraid of its citizens. Now, it's the other way around.
Maybe America should consider starting on the same kind of 12-step program that's helped millions of other addicts who couldn't see that they were slowly killing themselves. Here's my version of it, condensed to six steps since I know that Americans are way too lazy to stick around for all 12.
Step One: Admit we are not powerless.
Take a look at our Constitution. Not just a transcript; find an actual picture of it. The first three words, "We the People," are at least four times larger than the others. Do you think that was an accident? Of course not. Our framers chose those words, and made them that size, because they knew they were the answer to any problem we would ever face.
Step Two: Believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.
I think this one pretty much speaks for itself.
Step Three: Decide to take our power back.
A recent polls says 81 percent of Americans now say that our country is on the wrong track. If you're one of those people, who do you blame? The Bush administration? Congress? The media?
Here's a crazy idea: How about blaming ourselves?
If you don't like the fact that your city has led the country in poverty and homelessness for the last 10 years, then ELECT SOMEONE NEW. Stop voting for the same people from the same party every year.
Our power hasn't gone away (see Step One), it's just been masked by politicians who are tearing us apart for their own gain. We need to reclaim that power, and then we need to use it.
Step Four: Make a complete and fearless moral inventory.
Alcoholics aren't exactly big fans of introspection and self-examination, but this is one of the most important steps to recovery.
What are America's faults? What are our assets? By taking stock of both, we can start to work on maximizing our strengths and eliminating our weaknesses. It sounds simple, but when's the last time you really thought about what America does right? That brings me to Step Five.
Step Five: Admit our wrongs, and our rights.
We're constantly reminded about America's faults and flaws, but what about our achievements?
If you want to teach our kids about Vietnam, that's fine, but you better also teach them about World War II. And if you want to talk about our wars, you better also talk about our welfare. America is one of the most charitable countries in the history of the world, yet our mistakes are always glorified far more than our generosity. That needs to be reversed.
Step Six: Be ready to remove our defects.
Just like an alcoholic, we simply cannot go from sleeping on the street to perfection overnight. This is a big ship, and it takes a long time to turn it around.
But we have to start somewhere, and the best place is with the defects that almost all of us agree on. For example, does anyone really believe that being addicted to Saudi Arabia's oil is a good idea? What about China owning billions of our debt? Speaking of debt, what about the fact that we've saddled our children with $53 trillion in future Social Security and Medicare obligations?
But before we can address any problems, we have to first admit we have them. Many of us are in denial about just how divided we've become. We think that it's just the election or the war that's tearing us apart, but the truth is, it's much larger than that. We're every bit as arrogant, greedy and self-destructive as I was when I hit bottom.
Fortunately, it's not hopeless. It never is. If a program can work on a rodeo clown like me, it can definitely work for a country as great as ours. But until we're able to stand up and say, "Hello, my name is America and I have a problem," we'll never even have a chance.