Month: June 2006

Good news Trib

Quite an upbeat p-one Chi Trib story here, in which we read about progress in Iraq, with only secondary, brief reference to the usual day’s death toll.

The U.S. military pressed its offensive against Al Qaeda in Iraq on Friday, staging an additional 39 raids based mostly on information uncovered during the hunt that led to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air strike.

The fresh raids came as Al Qaeda in Iraq issued urgent appeals for money and volunteers to fight American forces, a day after the news of al-Zarqawi’s death left the organization without a clearly identifiable leader.

is the lede, details follow:

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell displayed a suicide belt, explosives and Iraqi army uniforms uncovered in 17 raids conducted soon after al-Zarqawi’s death. The raids targeted people whom the U.S. had been monitoring in the buildup to the strike, which was delayed until al-Zarqawi had been pinpointed because they were giving “indicators at different points in time as to where Zarqawi might be,” Caldwell said.

An additional 39 raids were conducted Friday, some of them directly related to information obtained in the earlier raids, Caldwell said without giving further details.

That’s us.  They?

[A web-site] statement in the name of Hamil al-Rashash (Holder of the Rifle) struck a more desperate note [than one by head of the Iraqi Mujahadeen umbrella group pleading for volunteers].

“Help, help! Support, support!” it said addressing the Islamic ummah, or community. “Assistance, assistance! Where is your money? And where are your men? There is no excuse for you.

“America won’t benefit you. History won’t be merciful to you. Wake up before it gets too late and before all the curses of Earth and heaven fall upon you.”

A bit of analysis in mid-story points out the role Zarqawi played:

As for leadership, it is unlikely Al Qaeda will quickly be able to replace al-Zarqawi with someone with the same name recognition and appeal to the global Islamist community, experts say. Helped in part by the repeated condemnations of U.S. officials and by his own headline-grabbing tactics, such as the gruesome, videotaped beheadings of hostages, al-Zarqawi had catapulted to worldwide fame over the past two years. [Italics added]

In a war of nerves as well as physical devastation, such things matter greatly.  Let’s hear it for experts, this time anyhow.

Shades of Dan Rather

There are holes in the Haditha massacre story, which has been changing, even in Time Mag.  They are discussed in American Thinker by a Wash DC lawyer, Clarice Feldman, drawing on extended discussion (and exposure) at Sweetness and Light, which in addition to inconsistencies has the Time skinback:

In the original version of this story, TIME reported that “a day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally respected Human Rights Watch, and has been shared with TIME.” In fact, Human Rights Watch has no ties or association with the Hammurabi Human Rights Group. TIME regrets the error.

Feldman winds up her version of Sweetness & Light’s coverage:

The sum and substance of this thumbnail sketch on the Haditha claims is that it follows so closely the template for the TANG [Texas Air National Guard] and [Valerie] Plame stories. Take a reporter with an anti-Administration agenda [apparently Time’s Tim McGirk, as in his at best weird Taliban coverage post-9/11], an interested group (think of the Mashhadanis [Reuters cameraman with insurgent ties and man who fed info] as the VIPS in the Plame case or Burkett and Lucy Ramirez in the TANG case) and a story too good to be checked and circumstances where the people attacked [Marines] are limited in what they can quickly respond to and you get a story which smells to me like it will soon be unraveled.

This time, I’m betting the consequences to the press which rushed to judgment will be more disastrous than it was to Dan Rather. I surely hope so.  [Italics added]

The story too good to be checked, yes.  Reporters and editors smell that meat a-cookin’, as if they were Springfield trough-feeders, and away they go.  I’m staying tuned.

Shades of Dan Rather

There are holes in the Haditha massacre story, which has been changing, even in Time Mag.  They are discussed in American Thinker by a Wash DC lawyer, Clarice Feldman, drawing on extended discussion (and exposure) at Sweetness and Light, which in addition to inconsistencies has the Time skinback:

In the original version of this story, TIME reported that “a day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally respected Human Rights Watch, and has been shared with TIME.” In fact, Human Rights Watch has no ties or association with the Hammurabi Human Rights Group. TIME regrets the error.

Feldman winds up her version of Sweetness & Light’s coverage:

The sum and substance of this thumbnail sketch on the Haditha claims is that it follows so closely the template for the TANG [Texas Air National Guard] and [Valerie] Plame stories. Take a reporter with an anti-Administration agenda [apparently Time’s Tim McGirk, as in his at best weird Taliban coverage post-9/11], an interested group (think of the Mashhadanis [Reuters cameraman with insurgent ties and man who fed info] as the VIPS in the Plame case or Burkett and Lucy Ramirez in the TANG case) and a story too good to be checked and circumstances where the people attacked [Marines] are limited in what they can quickly respond to and you get a story which smells to me like it will soon be unraveled.

This time, I’m betting the consequences to the press which rushed to judgment will be more disastrous than it was to Dan Rather. I surely hope so.  [Italics added]

The story too good to be checked, yes.  Reporters and editors smell that meat a-cookin’, as if they were Springfield trough-feeders, and away they go.  I’m staying tuned.

NYT vs. GM

Letters to Editor writers of the world who feel dissed, you ain’t heard nothing yet.  This about NY Times, item #1 in today’s Poynter Online Romenesko, takes the cake.  NYT has circled wagons to protect its Thomas Friedman, as explained by the man from General Motors:

I’ve spent much of the past week trying to get a letter to the editor published in The New York Times in response to the recent Tom Friedman rant (subscription required) against GM (see “Hyperbole and Defamation at The New York Times,” June 1).

I failed. This is my story.

For those of you who haven’t read it already, Mr. Friedman spent 800 words on the Times op/ed page to accuse GM of supporting terrorists, buying votes in Congress and being a corporate “crack dealer” that posed a serious threat to America’s future. He suggested the nation would be better off if Japan’s Toyota took over GM.

Mr. Friedman later acknowledged in television interviews that the column was a bit “over the top,” but that he wanted to get our attention.

He got it.

What Romenesko, much read by news people, picked out has the point nicely summarized:

You’d think it would be relatively easy to get a letter from a GM vice president published in the Times after GM’s reputation was so unfairly questioned. Just a matter of simple journalistic fairness, right? You’d also think that the newspaper’s editing of letters would be minimal — to fix grammar, remove any profane language, that sort of thing. Not so. Even for me, who worked for nearly 20 years as a reporter and editor, this was an enlightening experience.

We do live and learn, do we not?

NYT vs. GM

Letters to Editor writers of the world who feel dissed, you ain’t heard nothing yet.  This about NY Times, item #1 in today’s Poynter Online Romenesko, takes the cake.  NYT has circled wagons to protect its Thomas Friedman, as explained by the man from General Motors:

I’ve spent much of the past week trying to get a letter to the editor published in The New York Times in response to the recent Tom Friedman rant (subscription required) against GM (see “Hyperbole and Defamation at The New York Times,” June 1).

I failed. This is my story.

For those of you who haven’t read it already, Mr. Friedman spent 800 words on the Times op/ed page to accuse GM of supporting terrorists, buying votes in Congress and being a corporate “crack dealer” that posed a serious threat to America’s future. He suggested the nation would be better off if Japan’s Toyota took over GM.

Mr. Friedman later acknowledged in television interviews that the column was a bit “over the top,” but that he wanted to get our attention.

He got it.

What Romenesko, much read by news people, picked out has the point nicely summarized:

You’d think it would be relatively easy to get a letter from a GM vice president published in the Times after GM’s reputation was so unfairly questioned. Just a matter of simple journalistic fairness, right? You’d also think that the newspaper’s editing of letters would be minimal — to fix grammar, remove any profane language, that sort of thing. Not so. Even for me, who worked for nearly 20 years as a reporter and editor, this was an enlightening experience.

We do live and learn, do we not?

Nothing succeeds like succession

The insurgent — and surging, at least in newspaper coverage — Tony Peraica makes a good point in his latest (12:42 p.m.) release about his defeated resolution calling not only for “public hearings and the subpoenas for medial [sic] records and testimony from medial [sic] experts” but also a “clause establishing a process for the temporary replacement of the County Board President, to be modeled after the U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment.”

“[S]hould the evidence adduced at such meeting suggest that the President and 4th District Commissioner [the ailing Stroger] has a present temporary disability which is likely to cease prior to December 4, 2006 [when the new president will be sworn in], this Board’s presiding officer (or acting presiding officer) shall request that the State’s Attorney of Cook County draft an ordinance for this Board’s consideration modeled after the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article V., Section 6 (b) of the Illinois Constitution providing for a process for the temporary replacement of a Cook County Board President or Cook County Commissioner during such time as that officer is temporarily unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.

This “would not only have put the Board on track to ending this current crisis, but it would have ensured that the voters and tax payers of Cook County would never again have to wonder, ‘Who’s in charge of Cook County government?’”

As matters stand, they don’t.

Not Boring

No one will ever be bored by this board, By JIM BOWMAN in Wednesday Journal of OP&RF, June 07, 2006

DIFFICULT MEETING: Oak Park Trustee Martha Brock saved the day, or night, at the village board meeting a month ago when she and Trustee Elizabeth Brady changed their minds about who should lead the Colt building redo. Brady had explained herself reasonably enough: matters of substance had combined with matters of politics. There was nothing substantive to add when Brock’s turn came.

But speaking after Trustees Bob Milstein and Geoff Brady, she saved the situation. The other two had called out an editor, a political opponent who had addressed the board, and fellow trustees in a remarkable display of pique, disappointment, and veiled or unveiled animosity, chilling the room, or at the least the one where I sat watching on TV.

Brock rambled a bit but did not hesitate. She got personal but not maudlin and not angrily defensive. Like an earlier speaker, she spoke of resigning. But she accused no one. It was not a masterpiece of argument but a candid, apparently guileless display that cooled things down. She finished, the meeting proceeded, business was completed, everybody went home.

HISTORICAL PRECEDENT: The affair was all about backing into a meat grinder. The butcher’s wife did that. The result was predictable: Disaster. So did our bold if misguided Board Majority back into a public opinion meat grinder. The result? Temporary setback apparently viewed as disaster. Two defected, leaving two others disturbing the ether with ineffectual haymakers.

But all four may take grim consolation from Oak Park political history. Officeholders and staff have had to swallow some bitter medicine over the years. At a hot District 97 board meeting a long time ago, a disgruntled parent asked a board member to step outside. (He didn’t.)

When the library board tried to close a branch, people demanded otherwise. The Village Manager Association, still chewing dust from the last election, lost a much earlier one over the firing of a garbage man. A lawsuit did the same for a hard-charging school board. Former officeholders have left town. You need insulation from the slings and arrows.

LANDMARK ALERT: Meanwhile, Oak Park’s Historic Preservation Commission convenes with statutory authority to declare your building a landmark with all the benefits and liabilities that includes—whether you like it or not.

That’s what Trustee Greg Marsey learned at the May 15 board meeting, where the 400 North Maple block condo development was discussed. Marsey asked and got it verified by Village Attorney Ray Heise, who admitted the coercion written into village ordinance—no, the owner cannot decline landmark status—only after noting that the owner is invited to participate in landmark discussions.

Marsey appeared stunned. President David Pope, trying to wrap up discussion, said he did not want to get into “nuance” at that point. But one man’s nuance is another’s heart of the matter. Someone can start the process for you the owner? And in the end you have to go along with commission and board decision, with drastic implications as to what you can do with your own property? You have in mind neither whorehouse nor shooting gallery nor saloon, but a spanking new building with toilets that work, but it doesn’t matter, or might not matter.

There was more. So clearly was the board moving to stop the Maple Avenue development that Trustee Baker volunteered on the spot to mediate in the matter of developer vs. NIMBY neighbors. He would recuse himself from voting when its landmark status came before the board, he offered, presenting himself as a neutral third party who would bring developers and neighbor to agreement.

But elected officials normally recuse themselves only when past activity indicates conflict, and they do it regretfully. They don’t do it ahead of time so as to adopt a new role that an official considers more important than the one he was elected to fill. Milstein dissuaded Baker from his bad idea, though without saying how bad it was.

Nothing succeeds like succession

The insurgent — and surging, at least in newspaper coverage — Tony Peraica makes a good point in his latest (12:42 p.m.) release about his defeated resolution calling not only for “public hearings and the subpoenas for medial [sic] records and testimony from medial [sic] experts” but also a “clause establishing a process for the temporary replacement of the County Board President, to be modeled after the U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment.”

“[S]hould the evidence adduced at such meeting suggest that the President and 4th District Commissioner [the ailing Stroger] has a present temporary disability which is likely to cease prior to December 4, 2006 [when the new president will be sworn in], this Board’s presiding officer (or acting presiding officer) shall request that the State’s Attorney of Cook County draft an ordinance for this Board’s consideration modeled after the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article V., Section 6 (b) of the Illinois Constitution providing for a process for the temporary replacement of a Cook County Board President or Cook County Commissioner during such time as that officer is temporarily unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.

This “would not only have put the Board on track to ending this current crisis, but it would have ensured that the voters and tax payers of Cook County would never again have to wonder, ‘Who’s in charge of Cook County government?’”

As matters stand, they don’t.

Strange, dear, but true, dear

Daily Kos, a left-leaning blog, commenting on the Zarqawi hit:

“Where is Osama? Where are the batillions [sic] of trained Iraqis? Doesn’t matter, we got this guy, right? We wrote a 25 million check as a reward, and get a new headline to bump off Haditha.”

Wow.  For him the big news is Haditha.  U.S. perfidy trumps victory, which he defines as “making a peaceful nation in a land fractured by ethnicity and then war.”

Don’t get me wrong Zarqawi is a great catch.  And I hope beyond my cynicism that this symbolic victory will do something on the street in Iraq.  But let’s make sure we have a plan for when it turns out, this guy wasn’t the be all and end all of our Iraq problems.

Let’s have a well-laid plan, even if the best-laid ones gang aft agley.  (We don’t care!)  Another trademark of the fussbudget left: The plan’s the thing.

Ban that eatable!

Chi alderman Ed Burke, the city’s “most powerful,” has his gimlet eye fixed now on what?  FATTY FOODS!  This be the never-far-from-irritated Burke who on leaving a Loop building was irritated by smoke from smokers on SIDEWALK near its doorway and immediately proposed a ban on smoking near doorways!  Foie gras has bitten the dust, as we know, banned in Chicago, that important foie gras profit center.  Now for “fatty, fried fast food,” which Alderman Mother wants to limit as preliminary gesture:
Finance Committee Chairman Edward M. Burke (14th) has an ordinance pending that would ban Chicago grocers from selling meat treated with carbon monoxide to make it look pink and more appetizing.
 
Burke said it “might be a good jumping off point” to target french fries and other fast food that’s cooked in artery-clogging oil and food that’s processed or loaded with additives and preservatives.
Fact is, Burke, “who pumps out more consumer-oriented ordinances than any other alderman,” is a regular Carrie Nation in this fat-saturated and otherwise self-endangering city,  Thanks much to his leadership, the city council has delivered or proposed delivery on these “big ideas,” says Sun-Times:
• Ban the sale of foie gras (passed) • Ban cell phone use while driving (passed) • Force Chicago cabdrivers to wear uniforms (proposed) • Establish a 10-minute limit on outdoor dog barking (proposed)  [Ed.: Make it one minute] • Set a two-hour time limit on dog tethering (proposed) • Impound ice cream trucks that play music after 7 p.m. (proposed) • Ban parasailing and restrict skateboarding and in-line skating (proposed) • Require horses pulling carriages to wear diapers (proposed)
Who says this city ain’t ready for reform?