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POPSMushroom Clouds A-Popping Is the Republican romance with fear ending? It's served them well for seven years now. Could we be seeing a turn to a more rational and sane policy? They're going to attempt to use it during the coming election. Are we going to sit by and let them?
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POPSWesley Clark on Face the Nation: CNN accuses Clark of “Swiftboating” So how does CNN characterize this tête-à-tête? That Wesley Clark was SWIFTBOATING John McCain! Rick Sanchez’s lead-in to his next segment just now on CNN: “Wesley Clark tried to Swiftboat John McCain today.” I’m liveblogging. He goes on to say: “It will reverberate for weeks. Wes Clark tried to diss McCain’s military record, that his service doesn’t qualify him to be president.” Rick Sanchez is mad. No, not mad…just a huge partisan hack. Now that “swift-boating” has entered the vernacular, let us remember that the original SwiftBoat Veterans for “Truth” were for the most part neither in their hope to take down Kerry’s candidacy. Has Wesley Clark in some way made any untrue allegations in saying that being a POW and a non-combat era fighter pilot does not necessarily qualify you for the highest elected office in the land?
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POPSThe case of the angry (or phony?) colonel From the article: "During the past couple of days, variations on these questions have rattled through blogs on the left and the right. The buzz began on Sunday, when Glenn Greenwald, a political blogger here at Salon, received a long, invective-fraught e-mail that bore Boylan's return e-mail address, steven.boylan@iraq.centcom.mil. Boylan serves as chief spokesman for Gen. David Petraeus, who heads all coalition forces in Iraq. Among other things, the e-mail labels Greenwald a "propagandist" who's "too lazy to do the research on the topics to gain the facts." Greenwald posted the letter."
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POPSPhotographer Fired: Overkill? Yesterday, Al-Jazeera published the photo (orginal and "doctored"), but now I can't seem to find it. Basically, it looks like Hajj got lazy with the photo and did a one-step photo fix or automatic saturation adjustment. The colors are all just much more present. I'm not saying that makes it okay or that the photo shouldn't have been pulled, but is this a legitimate reason to fire a photographer who has been reliably producing photos for 10 years? Or is this another blogger witchhunt?
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POPSMahathir the blogger?
Unspun is still unsure o whether the news that Mahathir now has a blog is the truth or a hoax. Assuming that he has actually opened a blog with th stated intention below then he needs to be told a truth or two. If all he wants to do is publish his " writings as and when I am able to pen my thoughts and opinion," and have the Press, academics and others too lazy to do their own research to quote him, then he should have opened a just a website instead. A website is part of the one-way communications that traditionalists, authoritarians, Umno politicians past and present and other who do not get IT about the new media and conversations start and maintain. A weblog or blog is about conversations. Someone who starts a blog does so because they want to engage others with teir point of view. They are aware that others may hold different views but they nonetheless want to communicate them and have discussions with them, in the underlying belief that no one is all wise and that we
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POPSSunlight on Propaganda As I've written before, "balanced" newscasting is not presenting extreme views from both sides and proclaiming the truth to lie somewhere in the middle. That is lazy newscasting. Real newscasting is finding out the facts with evidence to back them up and presenting that as the news.
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POPSTHE WEST COAST RESPONSE TO SNL'S This is pretty funny. If you have not seen the east coast version check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=zLElfJ9YCh0 Now if all rap where this funny I actually wouldn't mind listening to it or calling it music. I think Hammer is the last one I would consider calling music. The new stuff is all violent and I cannot call it music. Anyway -- these two are funny.