Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Q Tips


As always, comments about NPR - and especially NPR News - are welcomed.
Posted by Mytwords at 2:40 PM
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13 comments:

Porter Melmoth said...

PrizeWinner AriShapiro just fussbudgeted his way through a precious little exam of ORIGINALISM - you know, interpretation of the Constitution, and the daffiness that results.

It was, incidentally, entirely from a conservative viewpoint, complete with scoffers yowling about how many schools of loony-lefty interpretations of the law of the land there are.

Hell, the audience could have learned more about the Constitution from Larry Craig in an airport men's room than this little bit of scrumptiousness.

NPR at its koochy-koo, doily-embellished best.

Cute, Ari. Cute.

6/23/09, 6:46 PM
Porter Melmoth said...

The NPR Endless Afternoon Comedy Hours, featuring aging Blob Siegal and Missy the Blok, wrapped up another masterpiece of ho-ho-ho news by tussling with Clevelanders over how to pronounce 'Cuyahoga'. Lots of genial, crackerbarrel folksiness comin' on down from our Olympian NPR HQ.

Then Miss Julie (McCarthy) expertly stenographs her way through a drone's efficient elimination of more MusliMilitants (TM pending), who, if they hadn't been blown up with their surrounding villagers, would be marching on Wash DC by now.

Sick. Sick. Sick.

6/23/09, 7:08 PM
JayV said...

Quote:
President Obama said (via NPR's ATC program): "I have made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering in Iran's affairs. But we also must bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. We deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place. [...]

[On Neda Agha Soltani and the video showing her killing:] "It's heartbreaking. It's — it's heartbreaking. And I think that anybody who sees it knows that there's something fundamentally unjust about that."

And if the victims of violence had been Palestinians?

Quote:
NPR's Morning Edition: Airstrikes believed to be carried out by U.S. predator drones have killed at least 45 militants in Pakistan and injured scores more. The reported death toll would make the attack the deadliest since the U.S. deployed its remotely guided missiles to target the Taliban leadership dug into Pakistan's mountainous border with Afghanistan.

Details of the assault on the remote tribal area of South Waziristan known as Pakistan's badlands are still emerging. Local media report that dozens of militants were killed when three drone missiles were fired on Taliban fighters as they gathered for a funeral for fellow militants. Those fighters had been killed earlier in a separate drone attack. [...]

The United States would like the area as flushed of Taliban as possible in advance of a new deployment of American troops just over the border in Afghanistan later this year.

Would the NPR report have been less sanguine if those killed had been American, British, Dutch or Israelis?

6/24/09, 8:59 AM
Anonymous said...

Do you perhaps mean obfussbudgeted?

"loony-lefty interpretations of the law of the land"?

Like the one that says that "the Eight Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment applies to torture"?

yes, indeed. That's WAAAAY out there in left field (even outside the known (right handed) universe)

Or the loony-lefty interpretation that reads the Presidential oath to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" to mean that treaties that have been ratified by the United States Congress (including "UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment") signed by the President are the LAW of this land and REQUIRE the President to perform certain duties, including, but not limited to those given below

Article 12

Each State Party shall ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction.

Article 13

Each State Party shall ensure that any individual who alleges he has been subjected to torture in any territory under its jurisdiction has the right to complain to, and to have his case promptly and impartially examined by, its competent authorities. Steps shall be taken to ensure that the complainant and witnesses are protected against all ill-treatment or intimidation as a consequence of his complaint or any evidence given.

Article 14

1. Each State Party shall ensure in its legal system that the victim of an act of torture obtains redress and has an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation, including the means for as full rehabilitation as possible. In the event of the death of the victim as a result of an act of torture, his dependants shall be entitled to compensation.

2. Nothing in this article shall affect any right of the victim or other persons to compensation which may exist under national law.

Article 15

Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made.

6/24/09, 10:25 AM
geoff said...

There was so much to hate about ME this morning (Wedn) that it's hard to know where to start. I'll start close to home with the story about budget cuts in the Los Angeles Unified Schools District. The reporter, Carrie Kahn, has a BA in Biology from UCSC. I guess that's how journalists are trained these days? Any road, she has little or no understanding of public schools issues, as she makes evident in her report. "More than 2500 teachers won’t be coming back," she reports, accurately enough. But then, "That means class sizes are going up. From 20 to 24 kids in the elementary grades to as many as 43 students per teacher in high school." I'll need to be gathering up my teeth now, but I can write without them. This sentence is misleading, but I'll cut Carrie some slack and say it's from shear laziness and stupidity, rather than deliberate insult. If she'd bothered to do any research, she'd know that average class size in grades 1-3 is 20, but in 4-6, it's 29.

But then the "43 students per teacher in high school" is an ugly distortion of the truth: it's 43 students per class. And if a teacher has 4 or 5 classes, as most do, that's 172-215 students per teacher. No mention is made of the fact that if there were no dropouts, this situation would be at least twice as bad.

Later, Ms. Kahn has a parent hunger striker on who says, "They say they’re saving the money for a rainy day, but it’s raining! Today it’s raining." and Kahn follows this by contradicting the parent: "It was actually pretty sunny today." Apparently metaphor is not taught in the USCS biology curriculum.

6/24/09, 1:29 PM
Porter Melmoth said...

True enough, Anon, but Neocon Publicizing Radiation isn't interested in the bothersome details you illustrate. Because there will be no more history lessons that the US will have to recognize (the 'end of history' being a Neocon tenet), why should they have to obey Constitutional gobbledegook?

I heard Fox's latest darling, Wacko of the Year Glenn Beck say that he wants the presidency to be 'less imperial', and less progressive. And after all that work Cheney & Co. did to MAKE it imperial!

6/24/09, 2:25 PM
geoff said...

Don Gonyea commits this whopper in reporting on Obama's proposal for a government option in his report on ME this am.

DG: (about 3 minutes in) "And the president responded to big health insurers who say they won't survive if forced to compete with a government plan."

BHO: "If they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical."

DG: "But the private insurers worry that it would be impossible to compete against a government plan that's heavily subsidized."

¡BIG LIE ALERT!

It's worth noting that Liz Halloran (formerly of the Republican American) repeats essentially the same lie:
"And Tuesday morning, large insurers told Congress that the president's plan to offer a government-managed — and perhaps subsidized — public insurance option would put them out of business."

For the truth, read Robert Reich:

"Critics charge that the public plan will be subsidized by the government. Here they have their facts wrong. Under every plan that's being discussed on Capitol Hill, subsidies go to individuals and families who need them in order to afford health care, not to a public plan. Individuals and families use the subsidies to shop for the best care they can find. They're free to choose the public plan, but that's only one option. They could take their subsidy and buy a private plan just as easily."

6/24/09, 2:39 PM
beeg!peenk!fuuzzy!buunny! said...

Thanks for the back-on-track there, Gopey.

Less NPR and more CHECK, I rally-cry!!

6/24/09, 5:35 PM
GRUMPY DEMO said...

Hey, I'm not the lonely guy ranting about Juan Williams anymore:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/storyComments.php?storyId=105848172

His hackery today has got a lot of people upset. The peasants are revolting, well at least Grumpy is.

6/24/09, 5:36 PM
bg.pnk.fzzy.bnny. said...

I'm sure they are, Grumps. And the Stepford Fans have reinforced the gauntlet.

Hadn't stopped in there in ages. My bunnytime is too precious and limited.

6/24/09, 5:51 PM
Porter Melmoth said...

Poor NPR! Noodleheaded Public Radio never shoulda opened their website up to commentary. Kowtowing letters once a week is one thing, but daily feedback indicating offensive FAILURE is another.

Because NPR News as we know it today has consummately failed in its mission. (Not that that's a new statement or anything, only an updated one.)

6/24/09, 7:04 PM
geoff said...

bpfb: Thanks for the back-on-track there, Gopey.

First, that you call me "Gopey" is tickling. Only a secret subset of my friends has called me that - do I know you?

Second, it's my sense that having the written words of NPR broadcasts (not always readily available) is a better way of analyzing their content than listening. So I've spent a fair amount of time transcribing. They say that this was the secret behind the success (blacklisting) of IF Stone. So it seems like if you can just study what it is they say, without the audio stream, you're a in a much better place to figure out what it means.

6/24/09, 9:19 PM
Rigen said...

At any rate, I liked some of the vadlo science cartoons!

7/8/09, 8:51 PM

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