Why is it that people in the United States, the land where ‘all men are created equal,’ the land where ‘constitutional patriotism’ was born, have been pulling their hair out over an issue that appears nowhere in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers? For Spain’s Diario Exterior, columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner examines one of the most vexing issues in the U.S. today, and why America’s ‘ethnic neurosis’ is destined to dissipate if people simply wait.

For the Diario Exterior, Carlos Alberto Montaner starts off this way:

The New York Times front page has announced that in the previous year, more than half the children born in the United States (50.4%) were non-White. Of that percentage, 26 percent were Hispanic (mostly Mexican), 15 percent were Black and 4 percent were Asian.

Why was it on the front page? Pure ethnic neurosis. Fear of the other. The same thing happened a few years ago when Samuel Huntington caused such a stir with the publication of his The Hispanic Challenge. This type of information causes a certain anxiety among “Whites.” They think they are losing control over and the direction of America. They fear becoming a minority.

The first bit of nonsense is classification. Hispanics are defined by the language they speak, or by what language they are supposed to speak, regardless of skin color. A Chilean of Basque origin or a Cachiquel Guatemalan are Hispanics, even if the language of the latter isn’t Spanish. Blacks, evidently, are classified by race. Asians, by geography, be they Chinese or Indian.

I have no idea, for example, if an Israeli-American of Sephardic origin is Asian, White or Hispanic. Nor do I know if that brilliant engineer called Rafael Reif, a Venezuelan son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who was recently named President of MIT, is Hispanic, White, or if by chance the census allows it, simply Maracucho. [Maracucho is the Zulian dialect in northwest Venezuela].

Thoughtful, civil comments are welcome at TMV. Please read the Commenters Rules at the top of the masthead. Thank you. Eds.

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I was in one of those custom-made 1970s Pontiac convertibles, outfitted for Elvis and other rock stars with bull’s horns on the front bumper, rifles and handguns pasted everywhere inside and out, encrusted with silver dollars and bullets—-a NRA fever dream of a bygone America that had been fashioned by a Russian immigrant named Nudie Cohn, who started by tailoring outlandish suits and went on to outfit bizarre cars for American idols with no taste and too much money.

In that improbable vehicle, I was separated by a saddle from old friend in uniform, a Democratic activist, but we must have both looked like the dinosaurs who are now furnishing Romney with his lead over Obama.

Sitting there brought back memories of Elvis and Nixon and their strange 1970 White House meeting at which they agreed that the Beatles and drugs had endangered America. Elvis gave Nixon a Colt .45, and he reciprocated with a Bureau of Narcotics badge.

Seven years later, Elvis was dead on a bathroom floor of a drug overdose, and Nixon had resigned in the face of impeachment for White House crimes.

In this election year, ideological strife is back in new forms and the challenge for Barack Obama will be to win back older white men who long for an imagined America.

MORE.

Contrary to the narrative in the West, in Beijing’s alternate reality, Russia and China are the real heroes of the Syria story. According to this editorial from China’s state-controlled Global Times, only Russia and China stand in the way of an even more horrific conflict brought on by selfish Western determination to remake the Middle East in its own image.

The Global Times editorial says in part:

China and Russia have called for a resolution by peaceful means, as this is obviously the least painful path toward transition. Western powers, however, insist that unless Assad leaves, there can be no solution. What this in fact amounts to is calling for bloodshed rather than peace. It will force the Syrian parties to decide their fate through war.

But the regime is not without roots. Half the Syrian population remains loyal to Assad, and if this support is to be eradicated, it will cost Syrians dearly. The West’s strategy is built on Syrian flesh and blood. It is a political kidnapping of the destinies of over 20 million people.

If one country is permitted to intervene in another’s domestic affairs at will, our world would be plagued by a long series of wars driven by the subversion of regimes. However history judges such events, they would be a nightmare for the people of our age.

The West should not expect cooperation from China and Russia if it insists on dictating its values and mindsets to the world by all means possible. For it if does, it will find China and Russia standing in its way.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

In his speech to the 1988 Democratic convention, Rev. Jesse Jackson declared “keep hope alive.” On CNN today, presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s best political bud Donald Trump in essence argued keep birtherism alive.

In what will likely be shown for years as a classic interview on CNN, Trump refused to acknowledge facts as facts, inaccurately stated some things as facts, and went on the offensive against CNN’s Wolf Blitzer who did a non-Sean Hannity interview: Blitzer asked tough questions and follow up questions as trained journalists are supposed to do. Trump got in a few zingers about CNN’s low ratings along the way.

Watch it and judge for yourself:

Now watch the reaction of GOPer David Frum, who I often retweet on my Twitter page:

Most fascinating: Trump did this birther rant before and he fizzled out as a GOP candidate. He’s not now just “remaking the wheel” — he’s reconstructing the looney bin. Some fitting music here and here. And Romney?

Romney is essentially enabling Trump, arguing that he can’t be responsible for what his followers say. The most likely explanation (which Howard Fineman also has, based on Fineman’s comments on MSNBC) is: Romney has noted that his goal is to get the 50.1 percent he needs to win so whoever Trump can get worked up and however Trump can do it, fine — as long as they vote against Obama and for him. It’s a classic case of the ends justify the means — any means. This would also would fit into the 2011-2012 incarnation of Mitt Romney who pulls out all stops to obliterate his opposition. He may not have decades long political positions, but he has the steel to do whatever it takes — no matter how it looks to pundits — to win. He has also been of saying things…at varience…with the truth.. to an extent not seen in American politics.

Will it play for independent voters? Some say indes won’t care. My prediction: he will lose a chunk of independent voters who yearn for a SERIOUS political discussion by SERIOUS candidates.

And how is this playing in the media? The Reuters article below is just one article that is not exactly the kind of image a candidate who wants to win over independent voters would want:

Controversy over the “birther” movement hung over a meeting in Las Vegas on Tuesday between Mitt Romney and high-profile supporter Donald Trump, whose comments about President Barack Obama have put the Republican presidential candidate in an awkward spot.

Trump has again raised doubts about whether Obama was born in the United States, an issue that is most passionately pursued by conspiracy theorists and which Romney has tried to avoid as he focuses on attacking the White House’s economy record.

“A lot of people are questioning his birth certificate,” Trump said on CNBC on Tuesday. “They’re questioning the authenticity of his birth certificate.

“I’ve been known as being a very smart guy for a long time. I don’t consider myself birther or not birther but there are some major questions here and the press doesn’t want to cover it,” he said.

Romney has said he believes Obama was born in the United States but he has drawn fire from Democrats for not distancing himself from Trump, who has alleged Obama was born in Kenya and is thus not eligible to be U.S. president.

Romney was to appear with Trump, who once had presidential ambitions of his own, at a fundraiser in Las Vegas. Romney also is likely to clinch the Republican nomination on Tuesday night at the Texas primary where he is expected to pick up scores of delegates and reach the target of 1,144 needed.

The LA Times’ headline is “Donald Trump rages in CNN meltdown over Obama ‘birther’ issue”:

Donald Trump is seething over the President Obama “birther” issue — and the latest target of his wrath is CNN.

In an interview Tuesday, the real estate magnate and “Celebrity Apprentice” overseer got into a war of words with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, castigating the network for what he dubbed “inaccurate” reporting and ridiculing its low ratings.

At one point, Blitzer said that Trump was beginning to sound ridiculous. “I think you sound ridiculous,” Trump shot back via telephone.

Trump has been a leading proponent of the theory that Obama either was not or may not have been born in the U.S. This view is a focal point of attacks on the administration from some critics, although the state of Hawaii has offered documents that say Obama was indeed born there. Most leading GOP politicians have shied away from the issue, but it persists, particularly at a grass-roots level. Trump is keeping the issue alive even as he brandishes his support for the presumed Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

Meanwhile, Romney inched into the birther waters a bit himself. The Huffington Post:

At an afternoon event at a furniture warehouse in Las Vegas, Romney did not mention Trump’s remarks, but also made a comment that touched on the topic of a president’s birth place.

He said that a local restaurant owner, in a conversation earlier in the day, told him that he’d like the change the Constitution.

“‘I’m not sure I could do it,’ he said. ‘I’d like to have a provision in the Constitution that in addition to the age of the president and the citizenship of the president, and the birth place of the president being set by the Constitution, I’d like it also to say that the president has to spend at least three years working in business before he can get the job of president,’” Romney said the man told him.

Romney’s campaign message is that he understands the economy and Obama doesn’t. But this comment appeared to be an attempt by the Romney campaign to signal that it is not worried by Trump’s remarks.

In other words: let the birther demonization begin or, rather, resume?

And, also, let me get this straight:

Future Presidential candidates should be required to spend three years working in business?

What would that have done to someone like….Ronald Reagan?

So while Romney wants to require future Presidents to have background in business, Trump is giving the President — and voters who want to see candidates talk about the issues and challenges facing our country rather than hear talk radio show talking points or regurgitated blog posts — the business.

Writes Andrew Sullivan:

All I can say is that Romney’s embrace of Trump and passive letting go of Grenell are signs of personal weakness, not strength.

And I’m betting many independent voters will conclude just that.

“The study concludes that media sources have a significant impact on the number of questions that people were able to answer correctly. The largest effect is that of Fox News: all else being equal, someone who watched only Fox News would be expected to answer just 1.04 domestic questions correctly — a figure which is significantly worse than if they had reported watching no media at all.”

It would be nice to write here that Fox is the only culprit in the big media dumb-down. Alas, based on my own nightly search for good domestic
coverage, flipping back and forth between ABC, CBS, and  NBC in a desperate search for some real information, I rarely come away satisfied.

Almost every night they all spend so much time on ads for things like in-grown toenails and erectile dysfunction that there isn’t much time left over to report the news. And during the contracted time period supposedly devoted to actual news, they waste additional time on house ads disguised as news. When they deign to do a real news story at all, it tends to be one of those feeding frenzy pieces that have been done to death everywhere. Hard issue coverage of any kind is a rarity.

My choice for a good broadcast news station based in the Fairleigh Dickinson study and my own observations? None of the above.

—

Here’s a link to my youtube movies about The Big Belch

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=BigBelchGraphicNovel&view=videos

And one to my blog about creating The Big Belch.

In honor of our fallen troops, CNN.com has created an amazing interactive “Home & Away map” which includes information about all of the men and women who have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars since 2001.

It is a stunning, interactive map where you can learn where our heroes lived and how and where they died on the battlefields, in the deserts, in the mountains and in the streets of towns and cities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, the distribution according to age (note how young most of them were), home states and when they died.

For example, point and click to Monroe, MI, and the names of the two service members from that town who died in Iraq will pop up. Click on one of the names, and you’ll see where and how he died. You can also leave a message or memory about them for their families.

Amazing and sad.

Please take a moment during the final hours on this Memorial Day to visit the site and honor our fallen soldiers here and here.

President Obama Commemorates Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery

In an unusual “op-ed” published today in Military.com, Military Times and Stars and Stripes, President Barack Obama paid tribute to all “our men and women in uniform who gave their lives so that we could live free” in all our wars, but singled out the Vietnam War (This Memorial Day marks the beginning of the 50th anniversary of that War), those who died in that war and its veterans.

Indicating that he would join Vietnam veterans and their families for a ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., the President writes:

I’ll join Vietnam veterans and their families for a ceremony to begin this 50th anniversary. It will be an occasion to honor the 58,282 names on The Wall—men and women who gave their lives in that war. We’ll stand with their families, who have borne that loss ever since. And we’ll reaffirm our commitment to never stop searching for the 1,666 service members who are still missing from that war.

The President expresses sorrow — and shame — that the Vietnam War veterans “didn’t always receive the respect and thanks they deserved, [that][a]t times they were neglected and even shunned,” and makes it clear that this 50th anniversary is America’s “opportunity to do it right,” to give our Vietnam veterans the respect and honor they deserve.

He concludes:

This Memorial Day, let’s remember all those who’ve put on the uniform, served far from home, and laid down their lives so we can live ours in security and freedom. And let’s take this opportunity to truly honor and support all those who served and sacrificed in Vietnam. That’s what we’ll be doing when we gather today at The Wall, and that’s what we can all do together in the months and years ahead.

Please read the entire op-ed here.

Image: White House.gov

It’s that time of year again: The U.S. State Department has issued its annual report on human rights around the world. And, as has become the custom, states like North Korea and China, which disapprove of America’s rendering, issue denunciations of the report.

We have posted three articles, two from China and one from North Korea, that encompass the latest counter-criticisms of the United States by the two one-party states.

First, in an article headlined America ‘Disqualified’ as Global Human Rights Judge, China’s state-run Global Times, informs that Beijing has issued its own report on human rights in the United States that highlights America’s ‘dismal human rights record,’ which renders it ineligible to judge others:

“The cases highlighted in this report are tiny but illustrative reflection of America’s dismal record on human rights … America’s tarnished human rights record renders it a morally, politically and legally feeble judge of global human rights.”

Also from the Global Times, although this and most Chinese editorials and op-eds are published almost simultaneously in all of its media, in an editorial headlined Human Rights Criticism of China a Fig Leaf for Diminishing U.S. Influence, Beijing argues that given America’s loss of financial and military influence, the human rights issue is Washington’s last remaining ‘ace in the hole.’ :

“While China’s improving human rights situation brings no benefit to the United States, discrediting China by finding fault with its rights record pays important dividends. In an age when Washington is losing its economic advantage and cannot use its military might at will, America has no ace in the hole left other than the human rights issue.”

Finally, one of Pyongyang’s state-mouthpieces, the Rodong Sinmun, quotes a commentary from another state-run media outlet, the Korean Central News Agency, which cites U.S. abuses that the Kim Jong-un regime asserts disqualifies Washington from criticizing anyone else. Say what one will about young despot Kim Jong-un, the quality of commentary coming out of Pyongyang since he came to power at least sounds more sane that its former Stalinist drivel:

“The right to food, clothing and housing – the most elementary of all human rights, are mercilessly suppressed in a society where the law of the jungle reigns and money is everything. … Furthermore, the consequences of America’s deeply-rooted racial discrimination regularly manifest in the fabric of everyday life. … The unending violence against women fully betrays how a barbaric U.S. society is facing the end of an era.”

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

UPDATE:

The Huffington Post has published a piece on the Associated Press report that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are filing for disability benefits at a historic rate.

As of this writing, there are already 618 comments (with 34 more pending).

I realize that many of our readers would not “be caught dead” visiting the HuffPost.

However, I would recommend that you take a chance this Memorial Day and venture to that site and browse through those comments.

Skip the ones that blame Bush for the Iraq disaster and that blame Obama for the continuing carnage in Afghanistan.

Skip the ones that reflect a twisted political or anti-war agenda.

And especially skip the callous and cynical comments such as “Great—-just what the USA needs—-more entitlements!!!” and ”Those are the things you need to think about before you sign up to go to foreign countries to kill the local inhabitants.”

Some will say, “That doesn’t leave many.” Perhaps, but those that “are left” are the heart wrenching accounts by widows, wives, sons and daughters of our veterans from our many wars, that tell us that these wounds and injuries — physical and mental — are real, are horrendous and debilitating and must be adequately addressed by the nation and the people who sent these brave men and women into battle.

And while our readers are at it, perhaps they may also want to read an opinion piece in the New York Times, written by a former U.S. Marine who, in 2001, was part of the initial force of Marines who landed in Afghanistan and who, in 2003, took part in the heavy fighting of the first wave of the invasion of Iraq, and who writes about the hell he has been through since coming home.

==

Original Post:

As we remember and honor those who have fought and died in all our wars, let us not forget the hundreds of thousands who have been injured and continue to be injured — physically and mentally — in our two most recent wars.

This sad reality is poignantly brought home this Memorial Day weekend by an Associated Press report, published in the Stars and Stripes which tells us that an astounding “45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related.”

According to the Stars and Stripes:

That is more than double the estimated 21 percent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told the AP.

These new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea, just two.”

In its report, the Associated Press postulates that there may be many factors that drive up these figures: “[T]he weak economy, more troops surviving wounds, and more awareness of problems such as concussions and PTSD.”

Other factors and circumstances pointed out by the Associated Press which “spent three months reviewing records and talking with doctors, government officials and former troops to take stock of the new veterans” :

More — 28 percent of those filing disability claims — are from the Reserves and National Guard rather than career military.

“More of the new veterans are women, accounting for 12 percent of those who have sought care through the VA… Some female veterans are claiming PTSD due to military sexual trauma…”

The different types of injuries incurred by the new veterans, such as those caused by improvised bombs and the fact that improved body armor and improved battlefield care has “allowed many of them to survive wounds that in past wars proved fatal.”

Please read more about these somber statistics and the horrific injuries adding up to some staggering numbers here.

Image: www.shutterstock.com

His video was supposed to be just for his friends, shot shortly after receiving devastating news. But, instead, it went viral. By the time he died yesterday, his final days would also serve as a role models for how to appreciate the the present and how to leave it for eternity. And due to You Tube which carried his words, emotions and wise perspective to millions, Australia teenager Shaun Wilson-Miller passed away having won millions of friends all over the world due to what they saw when they watched — and learned — in his emotional, heart and spirit felt “My Final Goodbye” video.

In the 17-year-old’s video, intended for family and friends but seen by 1.9 million people by Sunday morning, the Melbourne schoolboy revealed he was suffering chronic heart rejection after his second transplant and that there could not be a third.

“I won’t be here for as long as I thought,” he said in the video.

“This has been an awesome ride. I have no regrets,” he said. “Live life to the fullest because you never know what’s going to happen.”

Dad Cameron Miller said his son’s positive outlook had never faltered, with Shaun giving him constant hugs in recent days, the Herald Sun reported Sunday.

“He passed peacefully with me holding his hand; that is something the family will hold with us,” he told the Herald Sun.

Tributes immediately began flowing in from around the world and from his beloved Essendon Football Club, the newspaper said.

A bit more on his video – which is likely to be seen and thought about for many years to come:

Shaun Wilson-Miller, 17, recorded his message in his bedroom and intended to share it with his Facebook friends.

But now more than 1.3 million people have seen his heartbreaking home movie after a technical problem meant he had to upload it to YouTube.

Shaun, from Melbourne, Australia, suffers from a chronic heart condition that means his body has rejected two transplants.

Doctors said he cannot undergo a third operation – and it is believed Shaun has just months to live.

Shaun recorded the message in his bedroom late at night soon after hearing the devastating diagnosis.

He urged his loved ones to live their lives to the fullest and look after his dad when he is gone.

Here is his video:

It sparked reports such as this one on NBC:

Some were so moved they felt they should do videos to express their views and share their own experiences:

Some felt moved enough to write music in support. Here’s Shaun Miller’s song – B-mike ( stay strong ) which also has a gallery of photos of Shaun.

Australia’s Herald Sunh as this must-read-in-full-story which has some details about his post-video life:

In his final weeks, Sean filmed a role on Neighbours and met his footy hero Essendon captain Jobe Watson.

He had also found love with a fellow heart patient.

Shaun sighed: “The hardest thing for me is leaving her, knowing that I won’t get to marry her. To have kids together. To grow old together. That is what makes me sad.”

Friends and family wrote their condolences on the Facebook page of Shaun’s father, Cameron Miller.

“You showed so much courage for so long,” said one message. “Fly high sweet angel.”

He did in his video.

And I’m sure he will now.

As they were no doubt intended to be by White House aides, symbolism lovers may be wrenched by the distance between that early image of the breakthrough significance of Obama’s election and the bitter racially tinged battle for reelection now.

Yet the subtext is clearly there as the President and his supporters try to get their footing in these early days of the campaign, and the unspoken question is how far white-bread appeal will take Romney with voters who never accepted the idea of a black president and have compounded their racism by blaming him for the ills of the economy ever since.

The coming months will see a complex tangle of demographic struggles, as evidenced by early signs that Obama’s aggressive foreign policy has won him unlikely support among veterans and the military.

Some voters will believe anything in an election year…

MORE.

While America is a young country not as prone as some others to preserving ‘relics’ of the dead, we do appear to have a thing for blood, which, if modern science progresses as some think it might, could result in some interesting historical clones. This article on the subject by El Pais columnist Marcos Balfagon reflects on this odd historical preoccupation, and on the wisdom of someday restoring another Ronald Reagan to the world.

For El Pais, columnist Marcos Balfagon starts off this way:

An online auction house [PFC Auctions] based on the island of Guernsey, a British tax haven, has put up the “for sale sign” for a vial of blood that supposedly came from Ronald Reagan. According to the seller, the sample, now dried out, was taken on March, 30, 1981 at the hospital in Washington that the-then president was taken to in the moments after he was wounded at the hands of a madman. Of course, the news has angered the Reagan family, and through its foundation, denies the authenticity of the sample, as does the U.S. medical profession.

This not the first time – nor will it be the last – that civil relics have been for sale. As mentioned by the magazine The Atlantic, the United States lacks the saints whose alleged remains have been saved through the centuries in Europe – nor has it an officially-recognized church to protect them. To indulge their fetishism, they have to opt for newer remains. The blood-stained sheets of assassinated President Lincoln are preserved, as is the blood-spattered dress Jackie Kennedy wore as her husband was killed in Dallas.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR SPANISH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Recent Time and Newsweek covers constitute last gasps in the dying newsweekly business. Of greater concern, however, is that while these magazines are already in media’s rearview mirror, their turn toward tabloid-style sensationalism reflects what is happening all along the information highway.

You saw or heard about the covers that caused the fuss: Time with a 26-year-old mother breast feeding her unusually mature 3-year-old son; Newsweek with a rainbow halo over Barack Obama’s head and the line, “America’s first gay president.” Selling magazines and tabloid newspapers with shock and schlock isn’t new, but the fact that the techniques have gone viral — to use new media’s favorite term — is troubling.

One day’s front-page headlines on AOL: “Grandma Goes to Walmart, Vanishes” and “I Ate to Scare Classmates Away.” That same day CNN.com’s top items were flesh-eating bugs and “Horse bolts into ocean, swims 2 miles.” On the conservative Drudge Report: “Rocks Found at Beach Ignite in Woman’s Pocket.”

This is now the standard stuff of top Internet sites as well as cable-TV, broadcast TV morning shows and, of course, local TV newscasts. Even many of the most reputable news organizations, such as the Los Angeles Times, play it straight on their printed front pages but turn frisky on the Web. The flesh-eating bugs and burning rocks — plus several celebrity items — were front-page news on the Times’ site.

One major reason for this condition involves the difference between serving a stable, subscription-based audience versus non-paid, transient customers. News organizations that charge for content, especially via ongoing subscriptions, face less pressure to woo readers with the most eye-opening developments of the moment. Free media, and publications largely reliant on single-copy sales, are in a constant struggle for attention.

Time and Newsweek are goosing up covers in a desperate effort to stimulate newsstand sales and media buzz. The most popular Websites, almost all offering content for free, play the grabber game minute-to-minute, knowing that readers are just a click away from disappearing. As long as the “free model” persists in new media, the trend toward sensationalism will continue.

Another factor is the 24/7 pace of modern communication. “Breaking News” is the mantra of cable coverage — even if much of it is hardly newsworthy and is barely breaking. A truck in flames on a Midwest Interstate might qualify as breaking news on national cable — especially if there’s video — but would never appear in a summary of the day’s most important developments.

Then, too, there is the popularity of “reality” and celebrity-driven programming across the TV spectrum. These shows came along at just the right time to synergize with other media. Contestants perform at night and show up the next morning on competing networks to talk about it. Not since Charles Van Doren captivated the nation on the NBC quiz program “Twenty One” has media paid so much attention to TV-created competition — and it should be remembered that Van Doren’s appeal was his intellect and not, to cite a current NBC show, how much weight he could lose from one week to the next. The fact that “Twenty One” was rigged only made for better tabloid headlines.

Finally, and sadly, increased competition among media often brings out the worst in news judgment. Consumers are blessed to have so many digital options from which to choose, and cursed that so many of them vie for attention by seeking the lowest content denominator.

While industry observers tend to view the market as divided between “paid” and “free,” the distinction is also increasingly between “serious” and “superficial.” There are notable exceptions, but that’s the trend.

Much of what we get as news these days isn’t worth the pixels it’s displayed with.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker and can be reached at www.CandidCamera.com. ©2012 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate. His column is licensed to run on TMV in full.

As I read this story, I had a creeping sense of horror. And my oft-stated sentiment that maybe I made a mistake ten years ago by blogging under my own real name became a genuinely fearful reaction.

Really, this should be called terrorism.

I’ve been known to call some people who comment anonymously on the internet cowards, at least when they make vicious inflammatory comments that they know no one will be able to call them out on. I’ve always been proud of the fact that, even when I’ve embarrassed myself by losing my temper or drunkblogging, writing things I regretted, I could always say without shame that at least I wasn’t hiding myself and was willing to take the heat for whatever I said. Even if I was harshly critical of a person, you knew who I was, I wasn’t hiding under a fake name so I could say nasty things and not have to own up to it.

But in my ten years of blogging, I know I’ve been professionally slandered, that it has at times hurt my career, and I’ve known people who lost their jobs just through saying things online (including commenters and guest posters on Dean’s World) that someone didn’t like. I have been targeted for online harassment, including sometimes-innocent but sometimes obviously-intentional out-of-context quotations of my work, but I shrugged it off as “just part of the internet, man.” I have received threats, but usually shrugged them off although occasionally feeling the need to note, “by the way, I do own a gun and know how to use it in defense of self and my family.”

But this appalling attack on Patrick Frey has me wondering if I shouldn’t simply pull my blog completely offline, root and branch, and start over somewhere else with a different name that no one will know. There are times when I’m pretty sure blogging here has hurt my career, and now I begin to wonder if it could hurt me or someone I love in a much more direct way.

This is not a f*n joke: they could have KILLED Patrick Frey. For the audacity of having opinions they don’t like, and for committing shameless acts of journalism they didn’t care for.

I worry about it now. I write something someone doesn’t like: about feminism, about AIDS, about Islam, about Fundamentalist Christianity and its Rapture Cult, about the Tea Party, about Occupy Wall Street, or Obama, or Bush, or the Iraq War, about men’s rights, or abortion, and not only might some lunatic come looking for me, but worse, someone might attempt what could be called “murder by cop” just because they don’t like my opinion?

The cops could have killed this man. Not because the cops were bad, but because they were doing their jobs and some slimebag who hated him filed a phony police report. One wrong move by Frey there, one rookie cop whose training slipped for just a second, and we might be talking about the man’s f*n FUNERAL.

I want to vomit.

I offer a prayer for you and your family, Patrick. We may have had our agreements and our disagreements these last 10 years, but my God man. I’m so sorry. I hope they not only find this bastard but that he does hard, serious time. They probably can’t call it attempted murder, but whatever the maximum penalty for filing a police report is, and anything else they can book him for, I hope that’s what he gets.

And by the way, let’s not forget to call this what it is: an assault on journalism and free press.

(This item cross-posted to Dean’s World.)

In 1940, FDR won reelection against a likable corporate lawyer, Wendell Willkie, who was dubbed the Barefoot Boy from Wall Street and easily defeated.

Four years later, Thomas E. Dewey, a buttoned-down former prosecutor with a campaign strategy of not being “prematurely specific” on issues, was described as an opportunist who “changes his views from hour to hour.” Pictured by his own aide as “cold as a February iceberg,” Dewey was dispatched as the Little Man on the Wedding Cake.

Now, Obama is running for reelection against a changeable Wall Street insider with current views that make Willkie and Dewey look like flaming radicals, one who claims that his experience as a venture capitalist qualifies him to be President.

Democrats have floated Vulture Capitalist, but the label has not stuck. Now Obama is working on another, Clueless Capitalist.

On the stump, the President tells of Romney’s answer to a question about financial struggles, “right out of an economic textbook. He said, ‘Our productivity equals our income.’ And the notion was that somehow the reason people can’t pay their bills is because they’re not working hard enough.

“If they got more productive, suddenly their incomes would go up. Well, those of us who’ve spent time in the real world (laughter) know that the problem isn’t that the American people aren’t productive enough…”

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How confused and ‘dangerous’ has German foreign policy become? For the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, German Vice Admiral Ulrich Weisser [ret.] pulls no punches, as he lays out in detail how Germany has disappointed the United States and its NATO partners in Europe with its U.N. Security Council abstention on action in Libya, its refusal to allow its forces to face the same dangers as its coalition partners in Afghanistan, and its unhelpful attitude toward vital cooperation with Russia on missile defense.

For the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Vice Admiral Ulrich Weisser writes in part:

Germany is untrustworthy. The expectation on the part of our most important European allies and America that we would adopt a reasonable strategic role in and for Europe was bitterly disappointed when our country sidelined itself in the face of a looming humanitarian crisis in Libya. Germany’s abstention at the U.N. Security Council has far-reaching consequences.

The German position is also diametrically opposed to the future needs of European security: With the U.S. commitment to Europe diminishing, Europeans will have to handle future crises on their own. This historical failure on the part of Germany is a result of the many caveats imposed by the federal government and Bundestag, which have tied the hands of German soldiers in action – in combat against piracy and also in Afghanistan. This has prevented our soldiers from shouldering the same risks as their NATO comrades.

And so far, the federal government has not distinguished itself in furthering an improvement in relations between NATO and Russia. The Alliance has made no substantial progress on the critically-important issue of whether and how to establish a shared missile defense system. Russia has long expressed a clear willingness for genuinely equal cooperation on the project, would be a litmus test for the Alliance’s sincerity on the issue of partnership and mutual transparency on strategic issues. The lack of willingness for cooperation that became so apparent at the summit therefore represents a failure of far more than just a project.

Inexplicably, NATO still refuses to guarantee to the Russians that the missile defense system would not be directed at its strategic response capability.

Although the U.S. repeatedly asserts that Russia has no need to worry about the issue, the guarantee Moscow demands has failed to materialize. President Obama would have to have a suitable treaty approved and ratified in the Senate, which seems impossible given the domestic political confrontation between the two parties in Congress; and Republican Mitt Romney still considers Russia America’s most dangerous enemy. This view fails to recognize that our most dangerous and threatening risks – radical Islam and terrorism – are concentrated in the Middle East, and thus right at our doorstep.

READ ON IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

The New York Times has an interesting and, I am sure, controversial opinion piece, which from the beginning (Title: “G.O.P. Nightmare Charts”) to its conclusion (see below) suggests that present trends “do not bode well for Republicans.”

All sarcasm aside and keeping in mind that the Times is called a “liberal newspaper” and worse, that it is written in “a place for opinionated political thinkers from all over the United States to make their arguments about everything connected to the 2012 election”, that polls and surveys are meaningless, unless they support one’s position; that it is still a long time before the elections and that the writer bringing this to your attention is a biased Democrat, here is a thumbnail.

The author, Charles Blow, has selected two questions “tucked away” in two polls that caught his eye but do not grab the headlines.

Questions that, according to Blow, “get us away from the presidential race, both of which highlight just how much trouble the Republican brand continues to find itself in despite the party’s many legislative and statehouse victories in 2010.” Blow adds: “Public sentiment is slowly drifting away from the Republicans in a way that must be giving the party’s long-range strategists sleepless nights.”

What are the two questions?

The first question comes from the NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey released on Tuesday (question number 27). It read:

“When it comes to (READ ITEM), which party do you feel is most attuned and sensitive to issues that affect this group.”

Among the “Items” are groups such as religious conservatives, men and women in the military, retirees, stay-at-home moms, Hispanics or Latinos, Gays and Lesbians.

You can analyze the responses and charts yourself. Blow summarizes:

The chart illustrates just how narrow Republican support is. Respondents viewed Republicans as more sensitive to religious conservatives, people in the military and small business owners. That’s not enough for a winning coalition. For everyone else — including the middle class, young adults and Hispanics — Democrats won out. Democrats even scored higher than Republicans among some groups that conventional wisdom associates with supporting Republicans, like retirees and stay-at-home moms. (I wish that the pollsters had also asked about men and racial groups, but unfortunately they did not.)

The second question comes from a Gallup morality poll that was also released on Tuesday. The question read:

“Next, I’m going to read you a list of issues. Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, for each one, please tell me whether you personally believe that in general it is morally acceptable or morally wrong.”

Some of the issues in the list are divorce, gambling, sex between an unmarried man and a woman, birth control, medical research using embryonic stem cells, gay or lesbian relations, abortion, pornography, the death penalty and suicide.

Again you can do your own analysis. Among Blow’s comments:

Of the 18 moral issues, Democrats were more permissive than Republicans on 14. No surprise there. But what was a bit surprising was that on seven issues, independents eked out a small margin of permissiveness over Democrats. (This may be due in part to the fact that some devout Democrats like blacks are rather conservative, socially speaking.)

Republicans were only more permissive than Democrats and independents on three measures and they all had to do with the killing of people and animals — the death penalty, buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur and medical testing on animals. Interpret that as you will.

Independents were closer to Democrats than to Republicans on 13 of the 18 issues outlined. The only exceptions were medical research using embryonic stem cells, the death penalty, suicide and human cloning. (On cloning animals, Democrats and Republicans were both less permissive than independents, and in equal measure).

When people are asked to identify themselves by political ideology, Americans may appear to be center-right, but independents look more like Democrats than Republicans on moral issues.

Ergo, Blow’s verdict that all this does not bode well for Republicans “as the composition and conscience of the country continues to change” and as “we are slowly becoming less religious, more diverse and increasingly open-minded.”

Analyze it all for yourself here.

Image: www.shutterstock.com

This is yet another bit of bad news for the tornado of bad news swirling American newspapers. New Orleans will soon be the largest American city without a daily newspaper since the company will cut part of its staff and go to three days a week.

Three days a week is better than none.

But three days a week doesn’t a daily newspaper make:

Times-Picayune publisher Ashton Phelps Jr. has confirmed that the newspaper will cease daily publication, moving to three days a week in the fall: Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. He also confirmed staff cuts, though he didn’t say how large they will be. The New York Times’ David Carr reported Wednesday night that the paper likely would cease daily publication and that the two managing editors would leave.

This would make New Orleans the largest U.S. city without a daily newspaper. The Times-Picayune, with a circulation of about 155,000 on Sundays and 134,000 weekdays, would be the largest paper in the U.S. to shift to non-daily publication. Its circulation in March 2005, before Hurricane Katrina flooded the city and shrank the city’s population: about 285,000 on Sundays and 257,000 weekdays.

In 2009 Advance Publications, which owns The Times-Picayune, shifted to twice-weekly printing for The Ann Arbor News and started to focus more on its website. It expanded that approach to other newspapers in Michigan last year.

“I think this is a big blow,” said Poynter business analyst Rick Edmonds. “Yes, it’s happened in a few places, but Saginaw and New Orleans are not the same thing. You’re talking about a major-league city.”

Newspapers have truly fallen on hard times and there are an increasingly large number of people who feel many of the currrent survivors will not survive at all. I worked overseas writing for newspapers from India, Bangladesh and Spain in the 70s, then joined the Wichita Eagle which was owned by the now dead Knight-Ridder chain. KRN killed the evening Wichita Beacon when I was there, “merging it” into the Eagle promising to all of us worried employees in the room and to the world that it would produce the best newspaper in the world, by golly, one that would keep the best of both words. Basically: KRN killed the Beacon and (in that case) did it with a minimum of layoffs. This was part of the first stage of decline for American newspapers: many evening papers died because they could not compete with the evening network newscasts. Shaun Mullen who writes for TMV is a former Knight Ridder editor; to many of us, it was the BEST chain around with the most solid newspapers, and the most content-obsessed focus (to extent that it was legend that KRN didn’t care if marriages fell apart but it’s editors would be also married to the newspaper, and guess which marriage came first?). But as time went on that commitment to content excellence waned as the market began to change along with corporation changes at the top.

I left Wichita to join the San Diego Union which was then owned by the Copley Press, which also owned a host of smaller newspapers. I left after about 8 years to do some ventures on my own and predicted the death of the Evening Tribune and some insisted it would “never” happen soon. A year after I left Copley killed the Tribune, “merging it” into the Union but in the end readers really (again) got one newspaper. The merger involved buyouts and layoffs.

And, as the market changed, there were more layoffs. Copley then sold the paper to a private equity firm which fired some 300 people shortly after taking possession. Over the years they laid more and more people off (the whole copy desk, basically…reporters…editors…security guards…some librarians) and sold it to local developer Doug Manchester, who seems gung ho about owning it. But, today, the UT, as it is called has a much smaller staff (of still talented writers and editors) — and is a shadow of what it used to be in terms of its national journalistic aspirations, size and content.

But San Diego still has an enthusiastic DAILY newspaper.

A three day a week solution must be making reporters and editors shuddering.

Because now that is a new option.

And corporations in trouble do tend to look at options.

And choose them.

You can follow more commentary on this story HERE.

It started four days ago with a “Meet the Press” gaffe(?), quickly recanted, by Obama supporter Newark Mayor Corey Booker labeling the attacks(?) as “nauseating.”

The question marks are for skepticism about Booker’s motives. Those who remember Bill Clinton’s “Sister Souljah moment” in 1992, as the Mayor surely must, can testify to the selfish value of distancing oneself from ideological “extremism” on your own side.

But when and how did Romney’s Bain Capital claims become sacrosanct? How did what the President says “this campaign is all about” become so toxic to him?

His immediate answer to the Booker uproar was: “If your main argument for how to grow the economy is, ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,’ then you are missing what this job is about.

“It doesn’t mean you weren’t good at private equity. But that’s not what my job is as president. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some…Their priority is to maximize profits, and that’s not always going to be good for businesses or communities or workers.”

Joe Biden followed up about Bain in his usual unvarnished way, observing that “companies go under, everybody loses their job, the community is devastated but they make money.”

Such reasonable responses to Romney’s self-puffery have now morphed into attacks on Capitalism, Motherhood and Apple Pie, putting gun-shy Democrats on the defensive. Their reaction suggests a deeper anxiety.

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