The Kansas City Star should have kept their classical music critic and laid off their political writer. Useless, completely useless.

Yeah, I know, tell you something new.

Kraske on Sarah Palin:

ON POLITICS

Best week ever goes to American politics

By STEVE KRASKE

The Kansas City Star

Does it get any better than this…?

…Her coming out Friday was a success as she delivered a host of sizzling lines with a steady, determined hand.

Her best line: “I told Congress, ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves…”

[emphasis added] tiny URL

Oh, really? You’d think a political reporter might do some fact checking, you know, like maybe from sources in Alaska, instead of being just a, a stenographer.

…Today, while I watched her hop out of the “Straight Talk Express” bus, and give the second reading of her acceptance speech, one of my fellow viewers said, “You know, I don’t remember her opposing the Bridge.”  And it hit me.  I don’t remember that either.  A quick double-check with the third member of our watch party confirmed our confusion.  We all live here.  We all watch the news, read the paper, and pay attention to the local political circus, but none of us connected Sarah with her claims of rebuffing the controversial earmark…

“….People across the nation struggle with the idea of building a bridge because they’ve been under these misperceptions about the bridge and the purpose,’ said Palin, who described the link as the Ketchikan area’s potential for expansion and growth.

Palin said Alaska’s congressional delegation worked hard to obtain funding for the bridge and that she ‘would not stand in the way of the progress toward that bridge’.

8-8-06

‘We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative,’ Palin said.”

Ketchikan Daily News 9-28-06

Or, how about this?:

After federal funding had been slashed, Palin was asked if she was still in support of funding the project.  She said:

Yes. I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now-while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.

….So, if Congress had gone along and coughed up what Stevens and Young had asked for, guess what….that bridge to nowhere would have become a reality during the Palin administration.  She supported the bridge every step of the way…until the funding was cut.  So we decided to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.  If we want a bridge we’ll build it ourselves?!”   Is that like the failed earmark version of “You can’t fire me….I quit!”

It’s going to a long journey to election day if our useless media stenographers have their way.

The dead trees edition of today’s Kansas City Star had this headline on the front page, below the fold:

The Star is eliminating 120 jobs

Online:

Amid a drop in print ad revenue, The Star is cutting 120 jobs

By DAN MARGOLIES

The Kansas City Star

The Kansas City Star is cutting 120 jobs, or about 10 percent of its work force, as part of its parent company’s elimination of 1,400 positions companywide….

….In an interview Monday, Zieman said he expected 20-22 positions, out of about 285, to be eliminated in the newsroom. That marks the biggest newsroom reduction since 1978, when some 50 employees left, many voluntarily, after Capital Cities bought the newspaper in 1977 from Star employees for $125 million….

tiny URL [emphasis added]

I didn’t know it was fashionable these days for the traditional media to put their own obituary on the front page.

Yep, times are tough, so you cut production of content (news reporting) which in turn leads to lower readership and ad revenue. Sounds like a plan dubya’s administration would come up with – if they didn’t like news. Oh, wait.

….STEWART: So I wanted to come here today and say… (CROSSTALK)

STEWART: Here’s just what I wanted to tell you guys.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: Stop. (LAUGHTER)

STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.

BEGALA: OK. Now (CROSSTALK)

STEWART: And come work for us, because we, as the people…

CARLSON: How do you pay?

STEWART: The people — not well….

Yep, that bottom line means more corporate profits, less news, a less informed public, a weaker democracy. Sounds like a plan. You got an idea now how the dinosaurs must have felt after that big asteroid hit the earth?

It’s a sign of how debased our national discourse has [be]come when a major metropolitan daily publishes a letter to the editor advocating crimes against humanity.

Limited use of torture [tiny URL]

….Inflicting pain on one person is not as bad as allowing innocent people to die, and the prisoner in this situation can avoid that pain by telling what he knows.

Instead of prohibiting torture, we should regulate how and when it can be used. It should only be used on people we are sure have important information…

“…and the prisoner in this situation can avoid that pain by telling what he knows…”
Or, the prisoner can make a coerced false confession, eh?

This morning I submitted the following letter to the editor in response:

from: Michael Bersin
to: letters@kcstar.com,
date: Nov 21, 2007 8:05 AM
subject: Limited use of crimes against humanity

To the editor:

I’m not surprised to read a letter to the editor in the Star advocating crimes against humanity (“Limited  use of torture” 11/21/07) given the tortured parsing of the present U.S. Attorney General at his confirmation hearing. I shouldn’t be surprised since it’s apparent that, as a nation, we appear to base our morality, ethics, and legal knowledge on the superficial content of television melodramas.

The prohibition of torture is a non-derogable human right – an absolute under federal law, international treaty obligations, and the peremptory norms of international law. That is, no executive order, no law, and no treaty (even if “the life of the nation is threatened”) can remove that prohibition under any circumstances. To do so is a crime against humanity.

There are several other non-derogable human rights. The analogy of police deadly force presented by the letter writer is a false one. If he wanted to provide a proper analogy in his justification of torture he should have written about “Limited use of murder (extra judicial death)” or “Limited use of slavery”. Now, that would convince everyone that it’s all okay, don’t you think?

Michael Bersin

In today’s Kansas City Star their resident political stenographer finally notices [tiny URL] that something is afoot with this e-mail thingy plaguing the “baby” Blunt Administration:

…There’s only one option left for Gov. Matt Blunt….

That’s a major staff shake-up that includes the ouster of his pedal-always-to-the-metal chief of staff, Ed Martin.

Only a move that dramatic, that far-reaching, will help Blunt shake off the aftertaste of a miserable month that has left his administration facing a probable lawsuit from a fired staff lawyer and a special investigator nipping at its heels.

This flare-up, of course, could hardly come at a more inopportune time….

Nah, dumping Ed Martin won’t help at all. It’s not just one person, it’s a pervasive attitude within the administration – driven by either gross incompetence or Machiavellian arrogance at the top. Come to think of it, the combination of the two sound like business as usual from dubya’s administration.

The stenographer’s political advice is the equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

“…This flare-up, of course, could hardly come at a more inopportune time…” You think?

There is one chuckle worthy line (well, we must give credit where credit is due) – the stenographer calls the recent media domino game:

…The Shove From the Guv…

Light-rail in Kansas City is going to be a featured topic of my diary for the near future.  With this post, I’ll introduce it, and give an overview of the financial hurdles that we will have to overcome.

I love trains

Let me state up front that I am unabashedly pro-train. Almost didn’t move here because the city didn’t have a train. I have voted for every single light rail proposal that has been on the ballot since I moved to this city in 2001 and registered to vote at the Westport branch of the public library (where my husband went for storytime as a tot in the 50’s, about the time they tore out the last streetcar line) a couple of hours after the coffeepot was unpacked.

I refuse to let the perfect be the enemy of the good in regards to public transportation. I voted for the proposal last November giggling all the while and knowing the gondola was a pipedream that was never gonna happen, and I actively wondered what was in the pipe when Chastain dreamed up that part of his plan.

But the city administration wanting to take a mulligan on the whole election pisses me off to no end. We voted for a train. Get your asses busy writing some grant proposals already, and taking other concrete steps to make it happen. A full freakin’ year has slipped away while y’all have bickered like 12-year-old girls.

It gets my hackles up that the city administration has put all their effort into remaining deadlocked for an entire year. I’m annoyed that, out of a sense of the public’s frustration, the city’s major newspaper put together a viable plan (who would know better how pissed off the public is than the folks who read the submissions to the letters to the editor?) And let’s talk about that for a minute. I give the Kansas City Star a hard time on a regular basis. I have no intention of letting up on them in other areas just because they stepped up like menches on this issue. Every time I catch them stepping on McClatchy’s fine reporting to soften implications of malfeasance against the Missouri GOP, I’ll give ’em hell about it. If they ever get all puffed up and try to charge four bills a year for their website again, I’ll give ’em hell about that, too.

So when they do something right, I am honor-bound to give them their due. Some entity with juice had to take a bold step and break the deadlock that Kansas City politics is famous for. (Say what you will about the Pendergast political machine – but stuff got done when his machine ran the show. The building I live in was constructed as a Pendergast patronage project, and it is possibly the best-constructed and most well-appointed brick walkup in the entire city. And an interesting and related aside, the public transit system as it exists today was, apparently, designed for the people who live in this building.)

For a solid year, since the election last year, the powers that be have squabbled. The results of the vote were shocking – I figured it would be like every other proposal and me plus twelve other cranks would vote for it, they would make fun of us for a couple of weeks on Ruckus, and that would be that. Then holy hell! It not only passed, gondola and all, it passed overwhelmingly! Woody Cozad is still, a year later, completely apoplectic.

Kansas City is unique in a lot of ways. There are two states and somewhere between eight and ten counties, depending on how you define “metro area” There is a hodgepodge of local governments, every last one of them antagonistic to all the others, the only thing they can all agree on is that they all resent the hell out of every penny that their citizens leave in KCMO. Herding cats is an understatement.

The Star did a bit of research (which is what newspapers are supposed to do) and found evidence that in virtually every instance of an urban area adopting a starter line in the heart of the city, the suburbs get a taste of public transit done right, they get jealous, and the lines expand. $3.00 a gallon gas, added to an undeniable awareness of the effects of anthropogenic global warming, and the demand for efficient and reliable public transit is bound to accelerate.

Only a few dinosaurs like Cozad are flat-out opposed to light-rail no matter what. I say lets just ignore them.

Which brings us to funding

A starter line in KCMO is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. A regional system would cost billions. But it turns out that we might be closer to footing the bill than one might think.

Of course, there are obstacles. Among the highest hurdles to clear: Kansas political leaders want Kansas money to stay in Kansas, and they are skeptical that rail transit is the best option. But other communities, namely Seattle, have overcome such parochial concerns and learned to work together for the betterment of the community.

Let’s look at potential revenue streams.

Local funding for a starter line will initially have to come from KCMO and North Kansas City. North KC is essentially an industrial area that sits between the Missouri river and Kansas City North. NKC has a very low residential population, employing many times their population in the businesses that operate there. It simply stands to reason that the area would benefit from light rail – employees who are discouraged from looking for employment outside their immediate area by high gas prices would suddenly find the options of employment in NKC more attractive. Additionally, we get some very active weather. Employees who drive to work would be les likely to call in when the roads are covered with snow and ice if they only had to get to a train station, and not all the way across the river.

Kansas City Kansas is another potential partner. Western Wyandotte County is booming, and the county looks to have $20 million available by 2013 in new taxes from development projects, and Joe Reardon, the Mayor of the Unified Government of KCK and Wyandotte County has indicated that some of that could be used for transit.

Regional taxes. Missouri has agreed to give it’s counties the option to pass a half-cent transit sales tax, but the initiative failed in Kansas in 2006. Missouri may go ahead and pass the tax without waiting for Kansas. A regional tax could potentially produce a significant amount of money for transit improvements and expansions. The Star reported that a metro-wide half-cent tax would produce $134 million a year. That would be sufficient revenue to finance a $3 billion construction effort.

State funding. Dream on. Kansas only spends $6.2 million per year in public transportation funds, and Missouri spends even less, a mere $4.2 million, and Missouri has over two times the population and two major, bi-state metropolitan areas with their urban cores in Missouri. Both states have Republican state legislatures that are foaming-at-the-mouth insane about taxes. Kansas is locked in at their current funding level until 2009, but Missouri, whose highway monies are limited by the state constitution would be very difficult to squeeze another dime from.

Federal funding is most likely to be a viable source of much-needed revenue in the future. If federal funds are sought for a starter line, it would delay the project by a couple of years. No matter how the starter line proceeds, federal funding will certainly be pursued in the future for system expansions.

Getting a starter line going on our own could help with the effort to obtain federal funds in the future. Competition for light-rail funds is strong now, and only expected to intensify in the future as communities look to light-rail to solve transit needs.

I think the time to strike was seven years ago, when the iron was hot, gas prices were still under $1.50 per gallon, and the competition for federal funds wasn’t so fierce. But that’s just me doing the “I told you so!” dance again. Since we didn’t, and got a MAX express bus line instead, we need to act now.

Next up: More on obstacles to progress, and the obstreperous nature of our local politics.

There’s only one thing worse in partisan politics than public hand wringing: anonymous public hand wringing. Not by much, though.

Some Democrats fear a Clinton nomination could hurt other party candidates [tiny URL]

….”There’s only one person capable of uniting the Republicans, and that’s Hillary,” said longtime Democratic operative Jim Bergfalk. Unlike the others working their worry beads in the party, he was willing to be quoted by name in this article….

So, what’s the motivation for this public display of angst?

Dave Helling goes on in the same Kansas City Star article:

….But polls suggest Clinton’s margin for error here isn’t large. A recent Survey USA poll, conducted for KCTV in Kansas City, showed Clinton losing Missouri to Rudy Giuliani by three points – the only Democratic front-runner to lose the state to any Republican candidate….

Yes, Dave, let’s talk about Rudy Giuliani in Missouri – as I wrote on MyDD:

…Especially since Rudy Giuliani doesn’t have any family values problems, or “controversial” business associate problems, or hasn’t ever flip-flopped on any major wedge issues important to the republican base….

That’ll all go over really well in Missouri, eh?

And still, we have consultants who talk to reporters who then report what the consultants say (sometimes “anonymously”, sometimes not). A consultocracy as it where.

If you’re really in the know you shouldn’t be telling all to the media, should you? Unless you’ve got an agenda.

McClatchy Newspapers has an online explanation of its Iraq casualties story. The original story was also carried by the Kansas City Star on September 2nd under a different (and misleading) headline in its printed “Kansas City Edition”.

A story by Pentagon Correspondent Nancy A. Youssef that we published on Sunday sparked a huge outcry in the blogosphere this week….

I first wrote about the versions of the article here.

The original McClatchy headline [Combat deaths in Iraq decline; reasons aren’t clear] was correct. The Kansas City Star print edition headline [American casualties plunge in Iraq] was not.

The McClatchy post continues:

…Combat casualties then fell consistently for the next three months, reaching a  low of 56 in August, (filter by August 2007). That’s the lowest number of combat casualties all year. You have to go back to July 2006 to find combat casualties at that level…

The problem in the media is in their loose definition of “casualties” in contrast with “combat deaths”.

The U.S. military defines casualties as such:

…Look at the word “casualty,” for example. Joint Publication 1-02 defines casualty as “any person lost to the organization by having been declared dead, duty whereabouts unknown, missing, ill, or injured.” Thus, only those DNBI and battle injury (BI) personnel lost to the organization are casualties. By definition, a person who is treated and immediately returned to duty is not a casualty…

casualty
(DOD) Any person who is lost to the organization by having been declared dead, duty status – whereabouts unknown, missing, ill, or injured. See also casualty category; casualty status; casualty type; duty status – whereabouts unknown; hostile casualty; nonhostile casualty.

To be more precise, the discussion of casualties should include those who are wounded and do not immediately return to duty.

McClatchy Newspapers used the term “combat deaths” in its online headline. The Kansas City Star used the term “casualties” with the agenda indicating modifier “plunge”. There’s a distinct difference.

Note how the McClatchy explanation post does confusingly conflate the terms “casualty” and “combat”, sometimes making the distinction, and sometimes not.

Nancy A. Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers has an article on American military casualties in Iraq on the front page of today’s Kansas City Star. The Star headline (front page, above the fold) in this morning’s  printed “Kansas City Edition”?

American casualties plunge in Iraq

[This headline is not available on the Star web site.]

The headline on McClatchy Newspapers national website?

Combat deaths in Iraq decline; reasons aren’t clear

Juan Cole observes:

…journalists are still falling for the false Bush administration story that the death toll for US troops has fallen this summer because of the surge. First of all, the death toll has always fallen in the summer because it is hot as hell in Iraq then. Second, the death toll is way more than previous summers, and the total number of US dead this year is much greater than for the same period in 2006…

Larry Johnson, via Juan Cole, writes:

…Compare the current number of U.S. fatalities in Iraq with previous eight month periods for 2006 and 2005. For the first eight months of 2007 there have been 735 American troops killed and 4430 wounded. This is significantly higher than the casualty rate in 2005 or 2006. We have 1000 more dead and wounded this year than last year for the period January-August….

….fewer deaths [of Iraqi civilians] in certain neighborhoods has an alternative and darker explanation. Violence is down because there are fewer people. The absence of respiration is not a sign of life….

Look at the actual numbers – either at the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count or at USWarWatch. From February 1, 2007 (the start of the surge) to today the average daily number of coalition military fatalities in Iraq has been 3.27. For the 1626 days of the war the average daily number of coalition military fatalities in Iraq has been 2.48. In the 412 days preceding the “surge” the average daily number of coalition military fatalities in Iraq was 2.39. You tell me, is that a “plunge” (in the headline words of the Star)?

In August 2003 there were 35 American fatalities for a total of 43 coalition fatalities. In August 2004 there were 66 American fatalities for a total of 75 coalition fatalities. In August 2005 there were 85 American fatalities for a total of 85 coalition fatalities. In August 2006 there were 65 American fatalities for a total of 66 coalition fatalities. In August 2007 there were 81 American fatalities for a total of 85 coalition fatalities. You tell me, is that a “plunge” (in the headline words of the Star)?

Has there been a decline over the last few months?  There was an increase in American and coalition fatalities in April, May and June (with a horrific peak in May), but the levels in July and August are the same, if not higher than in previous years. You tell me, is that a “plunge” (in the headline words of the Star)?

Is serial dubya administration apologist and cheerleader E. Thomas McClanahan of the Kansas City Star now extending his op-ed schtick into being a headline writer?

The only way to make today’s Kansas City Star headline true is to bring our troops home now.

In a column in yesterday’s KC Star, Barbara Shelly starts off well in her headline, “Wouldn’t it be great to a have Republican Party that embraced the center?” Gee, Barbara, that would be great. She finishes strong too:

Still, it’s been a good week. So good that I find myself imagining that, just maybe, the Kansas Legislature will spend more time in its next session discussing energy policy than late-term abortion …

… and that Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt will stop trying to roil his conservative base by inventing fears about “activist” judges…

… and that Missouri lawmakers will cease obsessing over potential embryos in lab dishes and start fixing the state’s fraying public universities…

… and that Jeff Roe, the local master of base-driven politics, will join Karl Rove on an extended hunting trip.

Freeze those visions as a delectable reminder of what could be.

Yes!!! I’m right there with you, Barbara. It’s what you wrote in between that scares me. More below the flip.

After an auspicious start with the headline, Shelly takes a hard right turn.

Goodbye Karl Rove.
Hello Rudy Giuliani.

Freeze this moment. The national Republican Party is suddenly looking good to me.

Rove is leaving Washington for Texas, having abandoned his bold dream of a permanent Republican majority anchored by its conservative base.

Giuliani, a centrist candidate, is sitting atop the party’s nationwide opinion polls.

Rudy Giuliani is a centrist? It’s a testament to how far right the conservative noise machine has moved the discourse in this country that Giuliani could be considered a centrist. Let’s forget his incompetence, typified by locating his emergency response HQ in a well-known terrorist target, the World Trade Center. Let’s also set aside his personal troubles, such as letting his wife know about their divorce from an interview in the New York Times. Let’s look at his actual policy positions.

On Iraq, Giuliani says that invading Iraq was “absolutely the right thing to do.” He could also support a further escalation in Iraq above and beyond the additional troops that Bush already sent in. On torture, he says, “Whatever methods they can think of.” On foreign policy, Giuliani submits a vision called “Toward a Realistic Peace” that is neither realistic nor peaceful. Even on abortion, where Giuliani is supposedly moderate, he supports the Hyde Amendment and would appoint the right kind of activist judges.

Barbara, when you say that you wish you that the legislature would pay more attention to the state’s well-being than to the whims of religious conservatives, I’m right there with you. But when you call a man a centrist who proclaimed proudly, “Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do,” I fear for our country.