"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Sunday, November 07, 2010

Blast from the six-months-ago past
Posted by Jill | 3:16 AM
New York Times May 11, 2010 article about Peter I. Chernin, former Murdoch #2, and a conversation he had with Comcast CEO and Bush fundraiser Brian Roberts:
Mr. Chernin, meanwhile, offered few hints at an unusual meeting on Tuesday with another media mogul, the Comcast chief executive Brian L. Roberts. The two men chatted during a brunch session at the Cable Show, an annual gathering of the cable television industry. One of the more powerful figures in media-as-it-is went toe to toe with a new player in media-as-it-might-be.

Comcast is in line to acquire control of NBC Universal, once regulators sign off on the $30 billion deal. Mr. Chernin asked Mr. Roberts how he planned to handle daily editorial control of such an immense news operation. “Are you saying that you’ll never interfere?” he asked.

Mr. Roberts blanched slightly at the question, which included a hypothetical situation that had Keith Olbermann, an MSNBC host, attacking a couple of Republican congressmen just as the approvals were being finished.

“Let’s have that conversation in six months or 12 months,” Mr. Roberts said.

OK, so it was 6 days short of 6 months. Can't say Roberts didn't warn us.

Does anyone still believe that the Comcast takeover of NBC/Universal won't happen?

(via)

Labels: , , ,

0 comments
Bookmark and Share
Sunday, August 19, 2007

Superstition
Posted by Anonymous | 9:01 AM
ABC News:
Science vs. politics gets down and dirty
Malicious, vindictive and mean-spirited. These are words that might surface in divorce court.

But they have been lobbed in the course of a different estrangement: the standoff between the Bush administration and the nation's scientific community.

The relationship, which has been troubled since the dawn of the Bush presidency, hit a new low last month when Richard Carmona, surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, lashed out at his former colleagues in testimony before a House committee.

Joined by former surgeons general C. Everett Koop and David Satcher, Carmona said public health reports are withheld unless they're filled with praise for the administration. "It was Surgeon General Koop who pointed out and still says today … 'Richard, we all have fought these battles, as have our predecessors going back over a century, but we have never seen it as partisan, … as vindictive, as mean-spirited as it is today, and you clearly have it worse than any of us had.' "

Though Koop, who served under President Reagan, and Satcher, who was appointed by President Clinton, also spoke of political interference, it was Carmona's testimony that took lawmakers and scientists by surprise. He was, after all, the man who gave the president a hug before TV cameras when he was named surgeon general.

Carmona's statements crystallized the schism between the president and many of the nation's scientists, touching off conversations within and outside the administration on how bad things have gotten, who is to blame and what this means for the future.

From President Bush's televised address on Aug. 9, 2001, when he announced his intention to restrict federal spending on research on embryonic stem cells, conflicts with scientists have been a hallmark of his administration. The debates have included sex education, space exploration, contraception and global warming.

"The science community now recognizes that this administration completely puts its political cart before the scientific horse," says Science magazine editor in chief Donald Kennedy, a former Food and Drug Administration chief. "We've seen it with one issue after another."
"Science is Magic that works." -- Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

Labels: , , ,

0 comments
Bookmark and Share