Recently in News Category
I started really listening to podcasts in '06. These are the ones that I listen to all the time as '07 starts out.
- On the Media
- Marketplace
- Marketplace Money
- This American Life
- Good Food
- Left, Right, and Center
- Wait Wait.. Don't Tell Me!
- Inside Europe
- Science Magazine Podcast
This list reflects my bias toward the produced sound of pubic radio. I find the real value of listening to these shows as podcasts is that I need not worry about when, or whether, they are scheduled to be broadcast in my area.
I'm eager to discover more to listen to so please share your favorite podcasts with me.
UPDATE
I would be remiss to not mention that NPR has begun offering a podcast of Fresh Air. This is a must listen for anyone who cannot easily catch it on the radio.
Oh George...
I wake up early, hoping to have a nice relaxing bowl of granola while I listen to NPR. To my chagrin I learn that el jefe was having a press conference to explain the latest goings on in Iraq; read: the highest causalities in over a year and a schism betwixt the Prime Minister and American forces.
If you missed it, here are the highlights.
Bush was hardly in top form. His primary argument seems to be that all previous wars were a piece of cake. In World War II, you see, we could attack their armies and boats. This time they don't have armies and boats so it's completely different.
He then got into with a reporter who was brave enough to call him out for his abuse of semantics. The President was left to prattle on about how we are talking about benchmarks not timetables even though we called 'em timetables and we have to work together with the Iraqis even though our Ambassador and military commander announced independent benchmarks 'cause it's all about benchmarks not timetables... etc.
It was embarrassing. Fortunately for the election but sadly for our troops on the ground, this ship is clearly rudderless. What the President essentially admitted to is that he is staying the course on goals by refusing to consider leaving until Iraq is essentially Sweden but it cutting and running on the tactics by undermining the exact plan announced yesterday by his own men on the ground.
What a mess!
UPDATE To get an idea of just how big this mess see the report out this week from the U.S. Institute of Peace titled The Long Slog to Overcome Ethnic and Sectarian Politics. They project three basic scenarios:
- "The Long Shot to Overcome Ethnic and Sectarian Politics": "This is an Iraq that slowly, in fits and starts, trudges down the difficult road of creating a functioning state."
- "Lebanonization": "Unable to maintain control, the United States is itself a target when it becomes involved. ... U.S. troops largely retreat behind fortifications, distant from population centers, and head north to Kurdistan."
- "Descent Into Hell": Most of Iraq\x82\xC4\xF4s neighbors are drawn into open regional warfare, and it ends with Iran conducting strikes against Saudi Arabia\x82\xC4\xF4s oil industry.
The report concludes that "avoidance of disaster and maintenance of some modicum of political stability in Iraq are more realistic goals" than Bush's stated goal of "an Iraq that is peaceful, united, stable, democratic, and secure."
I am, without a doubt, no fan of Condoleeza Rice. Her bizarre pronouncements on subjects ranging from foreign policy (her duties) and fundametalist Christianity (her personal life) disturb me. She makes me want to throw things when I see her, like Janus, earnestly defening the double-speak of this administration. I am, on the other hand, quite a fan of The New York Times, the gray lady, the last bastion of "liberal" reporting.
A story on the front page of NYTimes.com today about Ms. Rice seemed to go a little to far in liberally deciding what news is fit to print.
Dance of Diplomacy Is Grist for the Gossip Mill documents the chatter surrounding Ms. Rice's professional associations. Condoleeza, you see, is notoriously single. Some people, including me at times, have delighted in rumors of her pining for the President himself. But such indulgences do not befit a newspaper of such stature.
The particular subject that prompts today's article is the news that Canada's strapping young foreign minister, newly single after his MP-ladyfriend traded him in for the other party, might be of interest to our Secretary.
He has a tan and the build of someone who spends his time on the rugby field, not holed up reading G-8 communiqu?\xA9s. Sure, at 40 years old, he is younger than Ms. Rice, who is 51, but that did not stop gossips from engaging in baseless speculating.... O.K., there needs to be a disclaimer right here. Foreign ministers rarely have a lot of alone time together. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Ms. Rice and Mr. MacKay are linked by anything more than their shared status as singletons.
No it didn't stop the gossips and there is no evidence to warrant evening mentioning these rumors. The lack of foundation didn't stop this very article in fact, from chronicling it with all the saccharin relish of the Daily News.
So what about the juicy details? After twelve paragraphs of foreplay we get to the meat of the rumors: they had dinner and shared an airplane. Sure Javier Solana got a lift too but "he looks like, well, a diplomat."
Yeah, like, who would be interested in him.... what a dork? Right, Condi?
Whatever her quirks, Ms. Rice is the Secretary of State and while she lacks the expertise needed for such a position, being an expert on the Soviet Union and all, she still deserves the same basic human respect granted to other kooks like Donald Rumsfeld or the President. Yes I titter when Bush and Angela Merkel share an ackward moment but the story there is that the President is genuinly behaving innapropriately. Today's news chooses to focus not on anything that Rice has done apart from her job.
As a woman in a male dominated profession she deserves the basic dignity afforded the men in her position: a thorough analysis of the substance of her statements not rumor that she is trying to get in someone's pants.
Researchers have estimates that as many as 100,000 more Iraqis died since the start of the war than would have been expected, based on previous death rates.
The researchers concluded that violence accounted for most of the extra deaths and that air-strikes by the U.S.-led military force were a major factor, according to the Associated Press.
A crew of form embeded journalists have the smoking gun to prove that the missing explosives were present when the Americans invaded Iraq.
Two journalists from the Minneapolis/St. Paul ABC affiliate were based just south of the Al Qaqaa installation, where the high explosives disappeared.
In what seems to be an attempt to outdo previous incompetence, the Iraqi interim government has warned that "380 tons of powerful conventional explosives" are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.
is dead
Chronicle of Higher Ed ... NYT ... Washington Post ... LAT ... Reuters ... BBC ... Le Monde ... Telegraph
Walking back to my office from lunch I looked up in the sky and saw a dirigible meandering through the sky.
Ah cable news, though art so fair and oh so very balanced.
Who is this guy?
