This year’s presidential election won’t only be getting unprecedented coverage from U.S. networks – news organizations from around the globe will be covering the Obama-McCain showdown on November 4 in ways they’ve never done before. As usual, this will be mainly a television event, but don’t discount the radio and Internet coverage – all will be beefed up to a degree never before seen.

New York’s Rockefeller Center has been awash with patriotism lately, and full of artifacts, news crews, and multimedia presentations. NBC Universal (Center’s most famous tenant) and Tishman Speyer Properties (its owner) remade into a so-called Democracy Plaza, which combines a public civic lesson and a home base for NBC’s various news outlets.

On the Rockefeller Center’s ice rink a map of the United States used in NBC’s election night broadcast has been drawn. As each state is called, the state’s color is supposed to change from clear to red or blue as a piece of fabric is placed within the state’s borders on the rink and sprayed with water to freeze it to the ice. A camera that can zip up to 60 miles per hour on a cable between the ninth floor of 30 Rockefeller Center and Saks Fifth Avenue provides a bird’s-eye view.

Kind of cute, but gimmicky. Personally, we think that more effort should be spent on assuring that people can vote, that the lines in the polling places are not miles long, that the voting machines work and – remembering the previous two U.S. presidential elections – that there is no election fraud, electronic, or otherwise.

Technorati Tags: 2008, coverage, election, gimmicky, presidential, television, tv, unprecedented

According to the Associated Press two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal authorities said Monday.

In all, the two men whom officials describe as neo-Nazi skinheads planned to kill 88 people  – 14 by beheading, according to documents unsealed in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tennessee. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

The spree, which initially targeted an unidentified predominantly African-American school, was to end with the two men driving toward Obama, “shooting at him from the windows,” the court documents show.

Sheriffs’ deputies in Crockett County, Tennesse, arrested the two suspects – Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tennessee, and Paul Schlesselman 18, of Helena-West Helena, Arkansas – Oct. 22 on unspecified charges. “Once we arrested the defendants and suspected they had violated federal law, we immediately contacted federal authorities,” said Crockett County Sheriff Troy Klyce.

It certainly is a good thing that these morons were arrested, but how many other sick, stupid and fanatical perverts are still lurking in the shadows? The lying Republican robo-calls and the right-wing talk shows are not helping matters one bit. Practically the entire world media has picked up this story. Do you really want the world to continue perceiving the U.S. as a nation of backward, uneducated hicks, who cannot stand having someone much better than they will ever be to become president?

Technorati Tags: kill, loonies, obama, plot, right, wing

In recent weeks, many tourists have toured Wall Street to observe signs of its demise. As it turned out, the financial center of their imaginations, which once stretched the length of the fabled street, has long since ceased to exist.

Only a few major financial institutions still have national headquarters on Wall Street. Many have moved over the years to new offices in other parts of Manhattan or New Jersey, or Iowa and South Dakota. Others have mercifully gone under, unfortunately taking with them billions of our dollars.

Wall Street has become an increasingly residential strip of late. You are more likely to run into runners, baby carriages, or fitness clubs than a stretch limo-driven Wall Street multi-millionaire here. Those are safely ensconced in their mansions in the Hamptons, or wherever, where they can count their remaining millions, or even billions in quiet, luxury and peace.

It is rather doubtful that any of these people care in the least about what the damage that they have caused has cost millions of ordinary people in dozens of countries. It also seems pretty doubtful that any of these miscreants will ever get properly punished. They certainly have enough money to hire the best defense lawyers and enough influence in high places to be able to avoid prosecution altogether.

Over the past few weeks, most of us have seen photos and videos of Wall Street traders, ripping their hair out, or slumping in utter dejection. Should we feel sorry for these guys and consider them victims of their super-rich and crooked bosses, or rather judge them as part of the problem?

As far as we can tell, the jury is still out on that…

Technorati Tags: abandon, investment firms, new york, reality, wall street

This comes as no surprise, but it appears that al-Qaida wants John McCain to be elected president of the United States. Remember when Osama bin-Laden broadcast a video just days before the 2004 election, in which he addressed the American people directly? His pitch seemed to have worked, as voters scared of another terrorist attack voted for George W. Bush once again, seemingly forgetting that the 9/11 attacks happened on his watch.

Now, less than two weeks before the next presidential election the Associated Press reports that al-Qaida supporters would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to help promote a McCain presidency.

The al-Hesbah Web site sported a message saying that if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, an “impetuous” Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war ’till the last American soldier,” the message said. “Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush.”

Neither the AP, nor us are suggesting that McCain’s campaign has actively lobbied al-Qaida for support, but the simple fact that Osama bin-Laden and his boys want us to vote for McCain should be enough reason to vote for his opponent. We do hope that all of you super-patriotic ultra-conservatives out there are listening. Hello!!!

Considering the sizeable lead that Barack Obama has in the polls and his advantage in terms of campaign funds, the McCain campaign appears to be ready to sign a pact with the devil in order to win. The Russian mission to the United Nations has released a copy of a September 29, 2008 solicitation addressed to Vitaly I. Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., urging him to contribute as much as $5,000 to “stop the Obama Democrats from seizing control of the entire federal government.”

First bin-Laden, now Putin, who’s going to be next, we wonder…

Technorati Tags: al-qaida, backs, bin laden, bush, election, mccain, presidential, republicans

You might say that the news media have generally performed fairly well in covering the latest economic meltdown. I say “covering”, because the media is usually quite good at reporting events that impact our lives directly, meaning getting wholeheartedly into them after they have already occurred.

Journalists are usually more attuned to working in the present tense, for the past few weeks explaining to us all of the seldom-heard terms, such as mortgage-backed securities, credit swaps, derivatives and so forth. That’s all fine and dandy and informative, but since the media seems to be totally concentrated on covering today’s, or yesterday’s events, in particular those that are outrageous in some way, a lot of these economic woe and outrage stories haven’t been talked about very much until the bottom fell out of Wall Street and out of the associated financial mills.

Both the public and the government would have been much better served, if the media has warned us about what was coming – on the basis of all kinds of existing facts – a year ago, or five years ago, or even 10 years ago.

The Washington Post reported on October 15, 2008:” [Brooksley E.] Born [head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission] wanted to shine a light into the dark. She had offered no specific oversight plan, but after months of making noise about the dangers that this enormous market posed to the financial system, she now wanted to open a formal discussion about whether to regulate them – and if so, how.

Greenspan, Rubin and Levitt were determined to derail her effort. Privately, Rubin had expressed concern about derivatives’ unruly growth. But he agreed with Greenspan and Levitt that these newer contracts, often called “swaps,” weren’t exactly futures. Born’s agency did not have legal authority to regulate swaps, the three men believed, and her call for a discussion had real-world consequences: It would cast doubt over the legality of trillions of dollars in existing contracts and create uncertainty over how to operate in the market.

At the April meeting, the trio’s message was clear: Back off, Born…”

The reported meeting took place in April of 1998. Why did the media wait 10 years, before reporting this? These were of course Clinton administration’s officials and it is quite obvious that the meltdown and the total lack of oversight is not the exclusive domain of the Bush 43 administration. There is also no doubt that the present day officials are at least as guilty and probably more so that Alan Greenspan and his boys.

Although there have been some few and far between media reports about the new financial methods, instruments and machinations, they have never been given nearly enough prominence, neither on television, the radio, or in the newspapers. As usual, the best one in this regard was probably National Public Radio, but very few of the mainstream media even bothered to try to warn anyone, possibly because they didn’t want to “rock the boat” of our virtual prosperity. I am sure that nobody wanted to be blamed for puncturing the housing, or the Wall Street bubble, even though quite a few people have said that this situation could not last forever.

For the past few years we have been hearing all kinds of enthusiastic reports about the Dow reaching record heights, about insane prices of real estate and so forth. Hardly any mention of what all of this was really based on. Nobody seemed to be interested in delving a little deeper, finding out (as if it wasn’t pretty obvious) and informing the public that these figures weren’t in fact real, but virtual, based on hype, lies and greed. It took the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie and Freddie, AIG and others for the media to actually get off their fat butts and report.

Just think that most of the present meltdown could have possibly been averted if the news media was more interested in getting to the root of the stories, instead of the usual sensational events, such as Britney’s panties, or their lack thereof, or how Paris Hilton was fairing after her DUI arrest, or how well in fact the U.S. economy was doing.

Technorati Tags: crisis, economic, failed, News Media