Fox News, a brilliant think-tank of some of the best & brightest right-wing anchors and “journalists” working in television today, (falsely showcasing themselves as “Fair and Balanced” – thus having the un-intended side effect of immediately making their viewers question their objectivity without so much as watching a clip of news), further showcased how even a network of their questionable journalistic stature, couldn’t sink any lower in a humorous attempt to smear a sitting President, thus coming up with a brilliant poll out of questioning Obama’s appearance on The View with the following poll generated out of clear desperation:

Is It Right For Obama to Skip the Boy Scouts’ Jamboree?

They couldn’t stop there, they even came up with a huge article portraying Obama as irresponsible for missing this jamboree as well ending with the following quote from Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, a Democrat:

“I think the president should be accessible, should answer questions that aren’t pre-screened, but I think there should be a little bit of dignity to the presidency,” Rendell told MSNBC, at one point comparing “The View” to “The Jerry Springer Show.”

There’s many reasons to “report” on the President the last time we checked. Actual NEWS for example? World affairs? White House Press briefings? In the meantime, we had a better recommendation for a Fox News poll and follow-up article:

Was Fox News coverage of Shirley Sherrod, decidedly racist and based on tampered video clips?

As the article and edited clip here suggests, Fox should expect a resounding “yes” in their poll results, regardless of what Bret Baier tries to further spin against Howard Dean’s claim of racism.

If you’re a Fox News Viewer, feel free to call their news hotline at: 1-888-369-4762 or feel free to email any of them and demand “actual news”, not sad attempts at political theater that are purely fabricated for entertainment ratings.

See Fox News’ amusing “defense” here against Howard Dean:

Here’s the story according to the recent Guardian piece:

“US authorities have known for weeks that they have suffered a hemorrhage of secret information on a scale which makes even the leaking of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war look limited by comparison.

The source for these leaks is Wikileaks, the website which specializes in publishing untraceable material from whistleblowers, which is simultaneously publishing raw material from the logs. Washington fears it may have lost even more highly sensitive material including an archive of tens of thousands of cable messages sent by US embassies around the world, reflecting arms deals, trade talks, secret meetings and uncensored opinion of other governments. [Imagine that - the general public might get a free glimpse into their own government's shady dealings!].

The Guardian continues: “Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange, says that in the last two months they have received yet another huge batch of “high-quality material” from military sources and that officers from the Pentagon’s criminal investigations department have asked him to meet them on neutral territory to help them plug the sequence of leaks. He has not agreed to do so.”

While “true” US foreign policy has always been held close to the chest with a closed fist by the US government, (and more or less deemed “classified” to the public), when information rears it’s head, history has shown it’s been often heavily edited and/or santized by the media depending on the content.

Wikileaks might be the beginning of the end of such a process, and the American public has every right to be witness to the various atrocities and financial dealings of their own government.

Instead of saluting this leak of free information, the mainstream US media has instead started a backlash against Wikileaks. This reads thin as jealousy (at the free publicity Wikileaks is generating), and publicity means revenue for a struggling mainstream media company that’s answering to shareholders.

Media companies should remember that if you’re NOT going to expose information and truth, you don’t have the right to criticize others that will at their own potential legal expense, and only for the benefit of an unknowing public. Where you clearly failed, someone else only succeeded.

In 1984, photojournalist Steve McCurry was in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan. He followed the sound of voices to a tent where he found a group of girls. “I noticed this one little girl off to the side that had his incredible set of eyes that seemed almost haunted — or very piercing,” he tells NPR’s Audie Cornish.

McCurry snapped a picture that ended up on the cover of National Geographic’s June 1985 issue. “The Afghan Girl” became one of the magazine’s most widely recognized photographs — and one of the century’s most iconic. To get that shot, McCurry used a type of film that has become iconic in its own right: Kodachrome.

Listen to the excellent NPR piece on this photographic legacy

As a journalist, Schorr was able to bring to contemporary news commentary a deep sense of how governmental institutions and players operate, as well as the perspective gained from decades of watching history upfront.

“He could compare presidents from Eisenhower on through, and that gave him historical context for things,” said Donald A. Ritchie, Senate historian and author of a book about the Washington press corps. “He had lived it, he had worked it and he had absorbed it. That added a layer to his broadcasting that was hard for somebody his junior to match.”

Schorr’s 20-year career as a foreign correspondent began in 1946. After serving in U.S. Army intelligence during World War II, he began writing from Western Europe for the Christian Science Monitor and later The New York Times, witnessing postwar reconstruction, the Marshall Plan and the creation of the NATO alliance.

Read more at the NPR piece about Schorr’s life

The changes, made before Genachowski was appointed last year, would make it easier for cross ownership of different types of media outlets in the same city or region. Read about how the courts kicked this problem down the road because they don’t want to actually solve it…

Modern English know what their audience wants and they have no qualms about giving it to them. If the mostly reformed original 80’s line up wasn’t enough of a clue then the merchandise table made it pretty obvious; it offered the choice of their first three albums which span the years 1981-1984 (plus their new album) and one t-shirt design with the cover art for the original “I Melt With You” single emblazoned on it.

Most of the band members seem to have aged well, certainly better than some of their music. Energetic front man, Robbie Grey, comically announced they had just come from Toronto with broken keyboards and broken equipment as broken men. But they looked pretty healthy and happy as they ripped through beefy and very loud, rock oriented versions of classic tracks from their first three LPs as well as a couple of songs from their new album Soundtrack. The new songs were surprisingly decent; the title track sounded like an inspired nourish rocker a la Pulp’s “This Is Hardcore” only darker and louder. The older songs held up pretty well for the most part although they did make a few missteps such as turning the dour, dancy, Joy Division influenced “Life In The Gladhouse” into a schmaltzy, band intro number and not playing any tracks from the unfairly maligned and recently reissued, Stop/Start.

Even though they played very well and the band, especially Grey, have obvious enthusiasm for the material, there seemed to be something missing. Perhaps tellingly, they were at their best when playing songs from their twenty-nine year old debut LP Mesh & Lace. Ironically, these songs sounded the most contemporary and animated with Grey, himself stating his preference for that album over After The Snow before the band launched into a blistering version of “Black Houses”.

The band ended the relatively short set with their two biggest hits, “Hands Across The Sea” and the inevitable, audience sing-along “I Melt With You”. All of which seemed curiously anticlimactic until after a very brief pause they returned to play an excoriating but sadly, shortened version of “Sixteen Days”. As the band tore the song into shreds of guitar feedback and tribal drumming and Grey began jumping around wildly and screaming “sixteen days no bread and water!” the joy and energy they exuded was contagious and you couldn’t help but wish the entire set was as good as the encore.