Reuben Gant

Be safe Nick, today and in the coming days. I have many friends in London that use public transport, so I will be uneasy until I hear from them. Good to hear from you.

Thanks, me too. You're a good sport.

I had the priviledge of playing golf today with a CB. He said he served in the Meditteranean in WWII. He said the great things about the CB's was there was the feeling they could build or do anything. He said he could remember three times specifically that men he was with were running bulldozers under heavy fire. He got too choked up to tell me any more but I felt honored to be playing him.

not a bad dish if you want to enhance a nice meal and feel fresh all day.

I'm surprised you included the Washington Times in there - As far as success goes in Iraq, or Afghanistan, my take is this. All good news is public, nobody, especially the administration is sitting on much good news, they want it out there. The bar was set pretty high by the administration: Osama will be brought to justice, the Anthrax guy will be brought to justice, a free Iraq will transform the region. So whatever you define as progress beyond that is pretty hard. The media also have a vested interest in not getting killed to report these stories, as well as the drive to keep newsrooms profitable, which greatly reduce the efficacy of reporting foreign news and keeping foreign news bureaus open. I have found that John F. Burns reporting for the New York Times to be pretty ballsy stuff, and he is very practical about what is knowable. If you are a regular reader of the NYT then you know most of their columnists and editorial policy has supported the war, and at least they have protected their sources in this Valerie Plame mess, Hell, they broke Whitewater for that matter. I still find their reporting too conservative. I am often getting the idea that anything that is not lauditory, or praiseworthy, or at least flattering to the Neo-Conservative orthodoxy is called liberal. If that is what you think is liberal, then yeah, it is the "liberal media." I think looking back on this era ten years from now the story will be how soft media reporting got. Especially in the transformation from an age of written media, the literate age, to one of sound and image. just my two cents.

him with a ACL tear would be disaster.

"could you repeat that please, my hearing aid was not turned on."

Oh, I thought that you meant nobody in America knows who Sean Hannity is. Or was your point that FOX is not part of the mainstream media? I don't think you can downwardly define holding political power to account as a "liberal media bias." More often than not, and I don't expect you to agree with me on this, but it is how I would answer your question about equivilency, is that there is tremendous amount of omission in the mainsteam media: 1. Downing Street Memo - non-story 2. Robin Cook's resignation - non-story 3. US sponsored coup in Haiti - non-story 4. full exposes on prewar intelligence - soft story 5. Valerie Plame -soft story 6. Body Counts in Iraq for non-americans -non-story These are just ones that come to mind. What you find in the media are two very conservative forces, and that is careerism, and consumerism. The media, for its part, should be challenging the claims of government and not providing an echo chamber: in the words of Michael Hoyt: "When a Republican former treasury secretary publicly parts company with his president on economic policy, that's a legitimate story fit for national discussion. Ditto for a book by a top antiterrorism expert who seriously argues that the administration is blowing the war on terror. Ditto for the need for some attention to the work of Woodward, a quality reporter on the insider perspective (and whose book on the run-up to the war was carefully balanced). An effort to map the young George Bush's record in the Guard, unknown to this day? That's legitimate, too -- if, of course, it's done right. Abu Ghraib? It was an insult to America's commitment to morality that, if anything, has been undercovered. One can have a legitimate debate about the weight that ought to be given to stories such as these but to suggest they should not be aggressively reported is to slip away from the world of real discourse." When things are going right, the media and government should have an adverserial relationship. What passes as balance these days is a bashing about from a Republican and Democratic Senator. To not see this idea of balance as a powerful and conservative filter is to have a very different idea about the media's role than me.

You must be joking: have a lookie, cable ratings for may: http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/original/may05ranker.pdf

So your proof is based on the average American that has no idea. I can't argue with that logic.

I played Cricket. There is nothing like taking your first catch or hitting a six. It is a superb game, but to the uninitiated no explanation is possible.

The mainstream media in this country are dominated by liberals. I was informed of this fact by Rush Limbaugh. And Thomas Sowell. And Ann Coulter. And Rich Lowry. And Bill O'Reilly. And William Safire. And Robert Novak. And William F. Buckley, Jr. And George Will. And John Gibson. And Michelle Malkin. And David Brooks. And Tony Snow. And Tony Blankely. And Fred Barnes. And Britt Hume. And Larry Kudlow. And Sean Hannity. And David Horowitz. And William Kristol. And Hugh Hewitt. And Oliver North. And Joe Scarborough. And Pat Buchanan. And John McLaughlin. And Cal Thomas. And Joe Klein. And James Kilpatrick. And Tucker Carlson. And Deroy Murdock. And Michael Savage. And Charles Krauthammer. And Stephen Moore. And Alan Keyes. And Gary Bauer. And Mort Kondracke. And Andrew Sullivan. And Nicholas von Hoffman. And Neil Cavuto. And Matt Drudge. And Mike Rosen. And Dave Kopel. And John Caldara. They are all saying that the liberal media must be stopped.

He, however, was overmatched by Dan Quayl.

Many thought the Perot candidacy was serious until Stockdale said: "Who am I, and what am I doing here?" He was sadly overmatched and should have never been chosen. Sad that a good man will mostly be remembered for that.

Anyone wondering, this is the acticle that started it all: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertn...n20030714.shtml

But it was Novak who said the sources were two senior Administration officials. Of course "senior official" is up for interpretation, but it never sounded like a lower-level person.

Thanks, I was suprised by the tense. I don't think Bush can nominate Gonzales between his thing on torture and abortion. But I think he was the one Bush wanted.

It is a hard line to walk, but we are so good at it.

Am I missing something, Gonzales hasn't been nominated, has he?

Yes, he's a national Genius.

The press had to be muzzled about it because confidentiality was at stake. Time Warner blew it. The typical play is to plead guilty and let a judge suspend the sentence. Also, who do you think controls access to the President? Rove. Piss him off and you have bitten the hand that feeds you.

Without confirmation hearings? That sounds curiously like rhetoric to me....

Do we really need the national Anthem before sporting events? I like the National Anthem, but I never understood the need to play it before every sporting event.

Oooo that ruins it for me, I was thinking along the lines of those two Miller Light girls that fight and make out. http://www.stuffmagazine.com/cover_girls/girl.aspx?id=294