Category: Politics

If you’ve been listening to Air America Radio you’ve probably heard about how the Sinclair Broadcasting Group has ordered it’s affiliates to kill Ted Koppel’s tribute to those of our soldiers who’ve paid the ultimate price for Bush’s war.

If you haven’t been listening to Air America Radio, then you really need to start doing so! In the meantime, here’s the scoop. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, Nightline & Ted Koppel were planning to read the name and display a picture of every US soldier killed in combat over in Iraq; however they later changed their minds and extended the special to include every soldier killed while serving in Iraq.

This special episode is clearly intended as a tribute to the soldiers as evidenced by this quote from the executive producer of Nightline, Larry Sievers:

These people have paid the ultimate price in our name, and it’s important to remember them whether you think the price is worth it or not. It may not be great television. But it’s the right thing to do, and that’s why we’re doing it.

To most people this seems obvious that Nightline is doing something that’s extremely patriotic; however the Sinclair Broadcast Group (amoung other right-wing nuts¹) disagrees and says:

“appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.”

It should be noted that SGB owns a large proportion of the ABC-affiliated stations and their blocking of this Nightline special, effectively means that most of the country will not get to see it ². After hearing all week about how the Bush administration is doing everything they can to stop people from truly feeling the impact of the war on our troops (e.g. blocking the photos of the returning dead, for more info see TheMemoryHole.org); you’d think the right-wing would let this go through; so that their bashing of the left wouldn’t be quite so blatant. You might think that, but you’d be wrong.

*shakes head and sighs* What a world we live in, eh?

So why did I go to the trouble of posting this to my blog? Because it makes it very angry that this SBG it blocking the special. Numbers of the dead or even a list of names don’t bring the full impact of the horror that is war, but maybe just maybe seeing the faces of those soldiers will help to wake America up about what we’re doing over in Iraq. And maybe that will lead to bringing our boys home that much sooner. We can only wait and see what happens.

¹ Another example is Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center:

I think it’s intellectually dishonest to deny the partisan nature of this broadcast. Of course, it’s partisan! What’s the purpose? There’s only one goal in mind: It’s to turn public opinion against the war.

² This is according to Air America Radio’s Unfiltered morning show.

Given that I’m waiting for some fresh code to come back for me to test, I figured I’d take a moment to post my view on the subject. If you’re sensitive to these sorts of issues and would just rather skip this post; stop reading now. Otherwise, click more…

(more…)

As much as I love my iPod; sometimes I get tired of listening to music and need something else. Recently Air America Radio started broadcasting, though not yet in my area of the country. Fortunately for me, they do have a live audio stream off their website. Initially I was somewhat upset by their choice to use RealPlayer, but like CarTalk and the BBC they’re providing links to directly download the free version. I ‘d sort of looked at downloading the free version of RealPlayer when the BBC started this, but wasn’t impressed with the direct link they were offering. However from what I’d been hearing about Air America, I really wanted to start listening to it. So I gave RealPlayer another chance and this time it really was a direct link and I soon had RealPlayer 10 installed on my station. Then I tuned into Air America and have been listening to it all week long. Mostly I listen to it in the afternoon and catch Randi Rhodes show, but this morning I tuned in earlier and have been listening to Unfiltered, which I like a lot better.

This morning the Unfiltered crew pointed out a rather disturbing quirk in our current tax code. If you’re self-employed and buy a Hummer (or some other 6,000+ lb. vehicle); you can deduct upto $100,000 of the cost of that vehicle from your taxes. On the other hand, if you buy a hybrid vehicle (such as the Toyota Prius) in 2004; you’ll get a $1,500 deduction, next year it’ll only be $1,000, the year after $500. This totally encourages people to buy more monsterously wasteful vehicles rather than environmentally friendly ones. I understand that the massive cut on the big vehicles is intended to help businesses, but shouldn’t it then be restricted to certain types of vehicles or businesses (i.e. farm equipment)?

If we restricted it more, then less people would be likely to buy more vehicle than they need, which might hurt the Hummer company but would be better for our environment. And if at the same time we started restricting what businesses could get that massive cut; we increased the deductible on hybrid and possibly even alternative fuel vehicles; it seems to me that we would enable the people who need to buy those massive vehicles the means to do so while reducing our dependenacy on foreign oil and the reduced emissions from the hybrids would help reduce the amount of damage we’re doing to the environment everyday.

For the record, I don’t own a hybrid yet but I’m seriously considering one for my next car. Edmunds.com has an interesting article talking about some of the hybrids that are coming out in the 2005 year. They’ve also got a bit of preview info on a Honda Accord hybrid that’s supposed to be coming out this fall, but I probably won’t have the money for a new car for another year or two. I suppose it’s just as well; as I tend to avoid buying new cars (due to the expense) and new cars in their first year as that’s the year I feel most bugs are found in the vehicle.

I’ve kind of wander around here a bit, so to sum up:

• Air America Radio rocks!
• RealPlayer 10 isn’t as bad as some of it’s older versions were.
• Big surprise, our tax system is screwed up!
• Hybrid vehicles are cool and I want one!