Friday, October 29, 2004

Final word on the "mystery bulge"

(Salon link, requires sitting through the "day pass" -- but worth it)

Excerpt:

"Look, he says, "I'm putting myself at risk for exposing this. But this is too important. It's not about my reputation. If they force me into an early retirement, it'll be worth it if the public knows about this. It's outrageous statements that I read that the president is wearing nothing under there. There's clearly something there."

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Bloodbath

Read it and weep. The blood of Iraq is on Bush's hands. I wonder how he can sleep.

Bush to America: Go Fuck Yourself

One picture says it all.



The video clip looks like it's from the 2000 campaign, but some things never change.

UPDATE: According to Buzzflash, the clip is from Bush's days as the governor of Texas.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Bush Press Conference

This press conference got little coverage, though it's one of Bush's most revealing moments.

Thanks to my man Billy and the gang at uglyworld.org.

Friday, October 22, 2004

Sinclair protest followup

For photos, visit Scott Huffines' blog.

Bush's Finest Show Their Mettle

So we're outside Fox 45/WNUV 54 on chilly Wednesday night, a group of 15 or so people, protesting Sinclair Broadcasting's various misuses of the public airwaves -- most notably the Bush attack ad parroted by the hacks at Sinclair's "news" division as a "documentary." There was another protest going on at Sinclair's HQ in Hunt Valley, but we decided to take our gripes directly to the station airing the program.

Everything was going by-the-books for the first half hour -- a congenial group of protesters, mostly 30-somethings and older, with many faces I recognized from other local peace rallies, standing holding signs I had drawn up earlier in the day. Some of the signs were very direct: "Sinclair Lies" and "Unfair and Unbalanced." One showed a diagram of Sinclair's plunging stock, with the words "Get the Point?" (a reference to Mark Hyman's vitriolic "The Point" screeds, aired nightly on Fox 45 local news and other Sinclair stations around the country). About one in every 5 cars honked in support, and not one person driving by gave us the finger. Two guys from Fox stood outside the door of the station. I suppose they were guarding the place from our gaggle of violence-prone liberals.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a strange threesome scoping us out. One tall guy was dressed head-to-toe in camouflage. He was sporting a baseball cap, out of which hung a ponytail. One skinny guy had a video camera and headphones -- he was the documentarian, though who he was taping for remains unknown. The third guy I'll call "Texas Tee." He was wearing a t-shirt with "TEXAS" embroidered on it and shorts -- an odd outfit for the cold, misty evening.

After scoping us out a while, they walked up to me, while the video guy taped everything, a goofy smile on his face.

Camo guy -- hereafter known as Rambo -- read my sign. "'News is Not Proganda', huh? What about Michael Moore?"

"This isn't about Michael Moore," I said. "It's about fairness and abuse of the public's airwaves."

Texas Tee laughed. "You people are fucking stupid," thus setting the level of discourse for the rest of the evening.

Rambo was standing in the street, even though cars were coming at him. He continued to block the lane, seemingly oblivious to traffic. I noticed he had a knife on his belt. He began asking questions of everyone and ignoring their answers, while his documentarian taped the scene, grinning like an imbecile.

A few of Rambo's enlightening comments:

"Heinz ketchup is made in Mexico."
"John Kerry is spending $48 million to smear Bush, and Bush is spending $19 million."
"Teresa Kerry is a millionaire." (like Bush and Cheney aren't?)
"They had to brush mud onto Kerry's shoes to make him look authentic."

I tried to talk rationally with him, but the little mob was clearly not in the mood for a discussion -- they wanted to piss us off. Any time I tried to respond to one of their points rationally, they mocked me and moved on to other attacks. As cars drove by and honked, Texas Tee would flip them off and scream "Fuck you!" and "Asshole!"

Rambo turned to an older man and began peppering him with questions. The older man said, "Why should I talk to someone with a knife on his belt?" Rambo smiled. "You should know your state laws. This is a 4-inch knife." He stroked his knife sheath.

Then Texas Tee turned to my wife, who was holding a sign that said "Unfair and Unbalanced."

"What's your sign say? What do you mean by that?"

She ignored him.

"Why are you out here? You can't even say why you're protesting!" He laughed, in a mocking, frat-boy way.

"I don't have to talk to you," she said.

I felt my blood starting to boil.

"You don't even know why you're protesting," he said. "You liberals are fucking stupid." Another car honked. "Fuck you!" he screamed again. I could feel the tension rising.

I jumped in. "Look, that's my wife you're talking to. She knows what she's here for. She doesn't need to explain it to you."

He stared at me. "You know what I think? I think she's only here because YOU'RE here." The dorky videographer laughed out loud - he was excited to catch such witty repartee on his camera.

Relax, I said to myself. They want you to react. Then they can get violent -- the clear purpose of their verbally abusive provocations. I thought back to the first Gulf (tm) War, when a "No Blood for Oil" bumper sticker got me run off the road several times, maced by a group of Bush Youth who followed me home in my car, and made my car a target for vandalism on four separate occasions. Aside from some asshole anarchists, I've never seen a group of liberal protesters threaten anyone or destroy property. I've never known Bush/Cheney signs to get trashed by rampaging Democrats, yet I keep hearing stories of entire neighborhoods having Kerry signs stolen or destroyed. There's a clear difference in tactics.

I don't mind people counter-protesting -- in fact, I think it's a good thing. When this particular group first approached us, though, I could tell they weren't out to express their support for Sinclair, or to put forth a counter-argument to our protest -- they were there to piss us off and intimidate us, pure and simple.

By this point, everyone had realized the threesome was hell-bent on causing trouble and just ignored them. But it didn't stop them. Rambo kept blabbing typical Free Republic talking points about Kerry turning the U.S. over to the U.N. and ketchup anecdotes. Texas Tee was more aggressive and kept trying to bait us with his angry taunts.

It was getting late. "Let's wrap this up, folks," I said. All of the protesters exchanged pleasantries, and we headed back to our cars.

"George Bush is gonna win this state, and then you'll see how stupid you are," Texas Tee said as I walked away. "Then you liberals will really be fucked."

"See you at the polls," I said.



Hunter S. Thompson weighs in

Excerpt:


I watch three or four frantic network-news bulletins about Iraq every day, and it is all just fraudulent Pentagon propaganda, the absolute opposite of what it says: u.s. transfers sovereignty to iraqi interim "government." Hot damn! Iraq is finally Free, and just in time for the election! It is a deliberate cowardly lie. We are no more giving power back to the Iraqi people than we are about to stop killing them.

Your neighbor's grandchildren will be fighting this stupid, greed-crazed Bush-family "war" against the whole Islamic world for the rest of their lives, if John Kerry is not elected to be the new President of the United States in November.

The question this year is not whether President Bush is acting more and more like the head of a fascist government but if the American people want it that way. That is what this election is all about. We are down to nut-cutting time, and millions of people are angry. They want a Regime Change.

Some people say that George Bush should be run down and sacrificed to the Rat gods. But not me. No. I say it would be a lot easier to just vote the bastard out of office on November 2nd.

Friday, October 15, 2004

Sinclair Protest - Weds., Oct. 20, 2004

Stop Sinclair Broadcasting's Misuse of the Public Airwaves!
Boycott Unfair and Unbalanced News!

*UPDATE: It appears that FOX 45 will not be airing the program, but WB 54 (headquartered at the same location) will be airing it. This does not affect Wednesday's action.

Wednesday, October 20th
5:30pm
2000 W. 41st Street
Baltimore, MD 21211
Map: http://tinyurl.com/465jg

On Thursday, October 21st, Baltimore's WB 54, under orders from its corporate owner, Sinclair Broadcasting, will air the anti-Kerry documentary "Stolen Honor" in a blatant attempt to influence the upcoming election. Former Federal Communications chairman Reed Hunt has compared the directive from Sinclair as "ordering stations to carry propaganda.... absolutely off the charts."

Six months ago, when Sinclair banned its ABC affiliates from showing a special edition of Nightline, in which Ted Koppel read the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, Senator John McCain called the move "a very misguided attempt to prevent your viewers from completely appreciating the extraordinary sacrifices made on their behalf by Americans serving in Iraq." How did Sinclair reply? By slandering McCain, saying "It's been 25 years since [McCain's] worn a military uniform."

And why did they refuse to air the Nightline episode? "We find it to be contrary to the public interest," said Sinclair's general counsel. "We do not believe political statements should be disguised as news content."

Let's hold them to their word!

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Technical expert weighs in on "mystery bulge"

From Salon (required free day pass -- worth sitting through to see the photos)

"There's no question about it. It's a pretty obvious one -- larger than most because it probably has descrambling capability," said Alex Darbut, technical and business development vice president for Resistance Technology in Arden Hills, Minn. Darbut examined photographs of the president's back taken from the Fox News video feed at the first presidential debate in Coral Gables, Fla., as well as 2002 photos of the president driving and working in a T-shirt on his Crawford ranch, which were posted on the White House Web site.

Darbut speculates that the device the president wears is provided by the Secret Service, noting, "They're not going to have him driving around the countryside on his ranch without being in instant contact with him."

More Repuglican dirty tricks

Registering people to vote.... then destroying the democratic registration forms!

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Sinclair Protest

Anyone interested in protesting at Sinclair Headquarters (in Hunt Valley, MD, about 25 minutes from Baltimore City) please email me. Depending upon how this story develops, I'm thinking that Tuesday the 19th of October might be a good date.

Stay tuned...

More Sinclair

An article from the Washington Post:

Copyright 1996 The Washington Post
The Washington Post

November 25, 1996, Monday, Final Edition

SECTION: FINANCIAL; Pg. F27; WASHINGTON INVESTING

LENGTH: 1312 words

HEADLINE: At Sinclair Broadcasting, a Series of Setbacks

BYLINE: Jerry Knight , Washington Post Staff Writer

BODY:

Sinclair Broadcasting Group Inc. was going to be television's big hit this season, the hottest thing to come out of Baltimore since the NBC series "Homicide: Life on the Streets."

Taking advantage of the Federal Communications Commission's decision to loosen limits on the number of TV stations a company can own, Sinclair became the nation's largest independent broadcasting chain earlier this year, wowing Wall Street as its stock shot from $ 21 a share to $ 48.50 last summer.

But investors can change channels as quickly as TV viewers, and this fall they've clicked off Sinclair's stock. Since mid-October the shares have fallen faster than one of David Letterman's bad jokes, thudding from $ 43.75 a share to $26.25 at the close of Friday's trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

The slide has slashed the value of investors' Sinclair holdings by more than $100 million and prompted Sinclair to withdraw plans to sell 6.25 million additional shares.

As Sinclair shareholders have watched the stock fade, they've seen two brothers who are top Sinclair executives playing roles straight out of a couple of late-night reruns.

In a scene that could have come from "Wind in the Willows," corporate secretary J. Duncan Smith, 42, recently auctioned off a 19th-century Calvert County manor house called Toad Hall, which he bought on a $ 2 million whim and sold for a $ 200,000 loss after visiting the place a total of eight times.

Like the peripatetic Master of Toad Hall in Kenneth Grahame's furry tale, Smith arrived for the auction in a raucous infernal machine -- in this case, a helicopter rather than Mr. Toad's motorcar.

Mr. Toad's wild ride might also be an apt metaphor for the incident involving a company-owned Mercedes Benz and brother David Smith, Sinclair's chief executive, though as Baltimore police describe it, it was more like a scene from "Homicide."

Smith, 44, was arrested Aug. 14 by Baltimore undercover officers and charged with a misdemeanor sex offense involving a female prostitute. Smith, who is married and has children, has not appeared in court or entered a plea. Sinclair issued a statement saying the incident "is unrelated to our business."

The episode made headlines in Variety, the entertainment industry daily, and several broadcasting industry publications. It generated a profile in Forbes magazine and focused attention on Sinclair's little-noticed growth into one of the nation's longest chains of broadcasting properties.

Sinclair Broadcasting's properties are not big, but there are a lot of them -- 28 television and 33 radio stations, mostly in medium-sized cities such as Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, San Antonio, Des Moines and Columbus, Ohio. Only five of the stations are affiliates of the Big Three networks. Typical are Sinclair's Baltimore stations, Channel 45, a Fox network affiliate, and Channel 54, a former independent that now carries UPN network programming.

Sinclair's corporate strategy, widely praised by Wall Street analysts, is to move as rapidly as possible to take advantage of the FCC's decision to remove limits on the number of stations a company can own.

From four stations just four years ago, the company has grown steadily by buying other independent stations. Sinclair broke into the big leagues of broadcasting last spring with the $ 839 million acquisition of River City Broadcasting, a St. Louis company with 10 TV and 31 radio stations.

To finance his expansion strategy, CEO Smith converted Sinclair from a family-owned business into a public corporation. The company raised $ 100 million with an initial public stock offering in July 1995 by selling 5 million shares for $ 21 a share. It also has sold more than $ 300 million worth of high-yield bonds and plans to sell additional securities at some time in the future.

Sinclair's Smith - paragon of GOP Virtue

If he wants to play dirty and air an anti-Kerry propaganda piece on all of his stations right before the election, I certainly think it's fair to look into his sordid past.

Honorable guy, huh? Read below.

(And any Maryland/D.C./Baltimore people who are outraged enough to want to do something about it, I'm planning a protest at Sinclair's HQ. Email me for details at profpan@charm.net).

Daily Variety

August 16, 1996 Friday

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 429 words

HEADLINE: Sinclair group CEO arrested

BYLINE: JOE FLINT

BODY:

David Smith, president and CEO of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, was arrested
Tuesday night in Baltimore after allegedly soliciting a prostitute and engaging
in oral sex.

Smith, 45, spent the night at Baltimore's Central Booking center and was
later released on his own recognizance. He was charged, along with Mary DiPaulo,
with committing "unnatural and perverted" sex acts.

According to the Baltimore Sun, DiPaulo told an undercover police officer,
who also was soliciting her at the time, that Smith was a regular customer.
Smith and DiPaulo were later arrested in one of the company's Mercedes-Benzes.

Sinclair, which is based in Baltimore, owns 29 TV stations and 34 radio
stations and is one of the fastest-growing broadcast groups in the country. It
owns the most TV stations of any broadcaster and, in many markets, controls two
stations through local marketing agreements that allow one broadcaster to
program two outlets.

Smith and the Sinclair group are known as renegades in the TV industry. The
group, which primarily controls Fox affiliates, has had nasty relations with
both the network and syndication companies. With its large holdings, Sinclair
often uses its leverage to bargain programmers down on price.

Earlier this year, Sinclair made waves when it bought River City Broadcasting
for $ 1.2 billion and installed that group owner's topper, Barry Baker, as CEO
of newly formed Sinclair Communications. Smith and family members control the
majority of the company's stock.

TX:While Smith, who is married and has children, could not be reached for
comment, a Sinclair spokesman confirmed his arrest.

"The allegations against Mr. Smith are of a personal nature and do not relate
to the business of the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Mr. Smith is charged with a
misdemeanor, involving an alleged consensual act with an adult woman," the
spokesman said, adding that the company is confident the matter will "conclude
in a fair and equitable resolution."

The company, the spokesman said, "will continue to operate under the
direction of its current management."

While the representative stressed that Smith's arrest should have no impact
on the company, the FCC probably won't be thrilled with a prominent
license-holder being arrested on a charge of solicitation, among other things.
However, since his alleged crime is a misdemeanor, odds are nothing will happen
to the broadcast group, which already has tested the limits of FCC rules through
its business deals over the years.

Sinclair stock dropped 75 cents to close Thursday at $ 38.50.

Friday, October 08, 2004

Was Bush wired in the debate?

No, I'm not talking about cocaine.

Some excerpts from the Salon article:

The president is not known to wear a back brace, and it's safe to say he wasn't packing. So was the bulge under his well-tailored jacket a hidden receiver, picking up transmissions from someone offstage feeding the president answers through a hidden earpiece? Did the device explain why the normally ramrod-straight president seemed hunched over during much of the debate?

Bloggers are burning up their keyboards with speculation. Check out the president's peculiar behavior during the debate, they say. On several occasions, the president simply stopped speaking for an uncomfortably long time and stared ahead with an odd expression on his face. Was he listening to someone helping him with his response to a question? Even weirder was the president's strange outburst. In a peeved rejoinder to Kerry, he said, "As the politics change, his positions change. And that's not how a commander in chief acts. I, I, uh -- Let me finish -- The intelligence I looked at was the same intelligence my opponent looked at." It must be said that Bush pointed toward Lehrer as he declared "Let me finish." The green warning light was lit, signaling he had 30 seconds to, well, finish.

---

Suggestions that Bush may have using this technique stem from a D-day event in France, when a CNN broadcast appeared to pick up -- and broadcast to surprised viewers -- the sound of another voice seemingly reading Bush his lines, after which Bush repeated them. Danny Schechter, who operates the news site MediaChannel.org, and who has been doing some investigating into the wired-Bush rumors himself, said the Bush campaign has been worried of late about others picking up their radio frequencies -- notably during the Republican Convention on the day of Bush's appearance. "They had a frequency specialist stop me and ask about the frequency of my camera," Schechter said. "The Democrats weren't doing that at their convention."

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Invoking 9/11

Repeat ad nauseum.

Dick Cheney - the Halliburton Years

A pity Edwards didn't bring up the fact that Cheney did business with Iraq (during the good old days when Saddam actually did have chemical weapons)....

Friday, October 01, 2004

5 words about last night's debate

The Emperor has no clothes.