31 March 2005 @ 5:30PM >> It’s a very brief mention, and he is a little confused over the name of this site, but Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post did mention this site in passing:

In the spate of blog attacks on the media, critics have featured such headlines as “GOP Slimed by Another Fake Memo?,” as a site called Evan’s Journal put it.

How does that saying go? Any publicity is good publicity as long as you spell my name right? Maybe that should be amended to: ...as long as you get my site right.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin responds to the Kurtz article, noting:

We still don’t know who wrote the memo. We still don’t know who distributed it. ABCNews.com still hasn’t retracted its unsubstantiated characterization of the memo as “GOP Talking Points.” ABC still has not acknowledged that Kate Snow misspoke. The Post still hasn’t acknowledged that it wrongly implied that the memo was written and/or distributed by Republicans.

31 March 2005 @ 5:17PM >> This scene would have been cool to see...

31 March 2005 @ 4:28PM >> Remember the unrelenting coverage of the Enron scandal? Listening for similar media indignation over Oil-for-Food? You’re probably hearing nothing but crickets and faint coughs.

Dollar-wise, Oil-for-Food is a much bigger scandal, and that’s ignoring the fact that the U.N. and some of our supposed allies were essentially being paid by Saddam Hussein to oppose our foreign policy position on Iraq. You’d think something like that would be worth covering extensively, but then again, you’re not the editor of The New York Times.

At his G-Scobe website, Gregory Scoblete takes a look at the Times’s editorial outrage gap between Enron and Oil-for-Food. Illuminating, but not entirely surprising.

28 March 2005 >> Slate has an interesting piece on the changing face throat of the advertising voice-over business.

28 March 2005 >> In The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes reports on the latest Republican-bashing mystery memo promoted by the establishment press:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist never saw it. Neither did the Senate Republican whip, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The number three Republican in the Senate, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, didn’t get a copy. Nor did the senator with the closest relationship with President Bush, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. And the senator with the familiar Republican last name, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, didn’t see it or read it. The same is true of Senator Mel Martinez, the rookie Republican from Florida.

Yet the infamous memo that argued Republicans stood to gain politically by saving the life of Terri Schiavo was characterized by ABC News as consisting of “GOP Talking Points.” True, a few paragraphs were of Republican origin. They had been lifted, word for word, from a Martinez press release outlining the provisions of his legislative proposal, “The Incapacitated Person’s Legal Protection Act.” This was the inoffensive part of the memo. The offensive part—it didn’t come from Martinez—left the strong impression that Republicans are callous and cynical in their attempt to save Schiavo’s life, ill-motivated in the extreme.

Despite the fact that nobody could authenticate the memo or determine its source, both ABC News and The Washington Post described it using language that implied it came from the Republican Party itself:

Supposedly the memo was distributed only to Republicans on the Senate floor. Ergo, it was a Republican document. ABC correspondent Linda Douglass first reported its existence on March 18, saying the network “has obtained talking points circulated among Republican senators, explaining why they should vote to intervene in the Schiavo case.” She mentioned the two offensive passages, and the memo was shown on the screen. The ABC website was explicit about the source of the memo: These were “GOP talking points on Terri Schiavo.” Two days later, the Washington Post referred to it as “an unsigned one-page memo, distributed to Republican senators.”

There wasn’t a hint in these reports the memo could have any other source but Republicans. Yet there was no evidence it had come from Republicans. It was unsigned and had no letterhead or date. Nothing indicated it came from the Republican leadership or the House or Senate campaign committee or from the Republican National Committee or even from a stray Republican staffer.

[...]

How did ABC and others get wind of the memo in the first place? It came from “Democratic aides,” according to the New York Times, who “said it had been distributed to Senate Republicans.” Not exactly a disinterested source.

How curious that such sloppy reporting just so happens to work against Republicans yet again. But it gives the Republicans an opportunity to strike back: simply author an “incriminating” but unsigned memo with no letterhead, get some GOP staffers to pass it out, claiming that it came from Democrats, and wait for the establishment media to report the “story.” Think you might be waiting a long time? Then I guess you understand the game by now.

Update: The memo’s author has come forward.

27 March 2005 @ 3:32PM >> It seems the esteemed U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is a little bummed out these days:

Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, is said to be struggling with depression and considering his future. Colleagues have reported concerns about Annan ahead of an official report this week that will examine his son Kojo’s connection to the controversial Iraqi oil for food scheme.

[...]

One close observer at the U.N. said Annan’s moods were like a “sine curve” and that he appeared near the bottom of the trough.

Kofi’s depression comes with good reason, and it isn’t just the Oil for Food scandal. The Washington Post reports:

The United Nations is investigating 150 instances in which 50 peacekeeping troops or civilians in the Congo mission are suspected of having sexually abused or exploited women and girls, some as young as 12.

[...]

Similar charges have been made about U.N. missions in Sierra Leone and Liberia, as well as Kosovo and Bosnia in Europe.

The United Nations is also investigating reports of rape or sexual assault in Congo, including one case in which a French logistics employee was found with hundreds of videotapes that showed him torturing and sexually abusing naked girls. Last week, U.N. officials announced they had fired one employee and suspended six others from among 17 civilian staff members being investigated in the Congo abuses.

Will these scandals ever reach the saturation coverage of Abu Ghraib? Probably not. As far as the establishment media is concerned, what matters isn’t the severity of the crime, but who perpetrates it.

26 March 2005 >> Financial Times is reporting:

Many of Iraq’s predominantly Sunni Arab insurgents would lay down their arms and join the political process in exchange for guarantees of their safety and that of their co-religionists, according to [Sharif Ali Bin al-Hussein,] a prominent Sunni politician.

This alone would not end the attacks, because the foreign al Qaeda affiliates and their allies still remain:

Sharif Ali distinguishes many Sunni insurgents, whom he says took up arms in reaction to the invasive raids in search of Ba’athist leaders and other “humiliations” soon after the 2003 war, from the radical jihadist branch associated with Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Still, such a move would isolate the foreign insurgents even further from the rest of Iraqi society and therefore make them more easily identifiable by Iraq’s security forces. It also seems like another post-election sign that things in Iraq are moving in the right direction.

25 March 2005 @ 5:40PM >> Victor Davis Hanson asks:

[W]hat do Linda Ronstadt, Harold Pinter, Scott Ritter, Ted Rall, and George Soros all have in common? The same thing that unites Fidel Castro, the European street, the Iranians, and North Koreans: an evocation of some aspects of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany to deprecate President Bush in connection with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Bush’s political opponents have been comparing him to Adolf Hitler for years. (I’ve made an online cottage industry out of documenting it myself.) Hanson psychoanalyzes the “Bush is Hitler” left, and concludes that—while the extreme rhetoric is evidence of their waning political influence—the environment it creates risks “unleashing even greater extremism by the unhinged.”

25 March 2005 @ 12:59PM >> Republicans are often (unfairly) stereotyped as prudes by the media and pop culture. While hard-line social conservatives may be easy to put in that box, to assume that they represent the whole of the Republican Party or the conservative movement is a mistake. Still, it seems that Republicans who disprove that stereotype make people feel uncomfortable. Just ask Michele Zipp, the now-former editor-in-chief of Playgirl magazine. Drudge reports:

Playgirl editor-in-chief Michele Zipp has been stripped of her duties after she revealed how she voted Republican in the 2004 election.

Zipp, in an e-mail, claims she was fired after an onslaught of liberal backlash.

“Hello Drudge,

“After your coverage of my article about coming out and voting Republican, I did receive many letters of support from fellow Republican voters, but it was not without repercussions. Criticism from the liberal left ensued. A few days after the onslaught of liberal backlash, I was released from my duties at Playgirl magazine.

“After underlings expressed their disinterest of working for an outed Republican editor, I have a strong suspicion that my position was no longer valued by Playgirl executives. I also received a phone call from a leading official from Playgirl magazine, in which he stated with a laugh, “I wouldn’t have hired you if I knew you were a Republican.

“I just wanted to let you know of the fear the liberal left has about a woman with power possessing Republican views.”

The tolerant left, once again striving for diversity in the workplace...

23 March 2005 >> The McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform bill represents the greatest infringement on the First Amendment in my lifetime. Now we find out that the grassroots groundswell of support for the bill was manufactured by a handful of monied left-wing foundations. Last week, Ryan Sager blew the lid off this scandal in the New York Post:

Campaign-finance reform has been an immense scam perpetrated on the American people by a cadre of left-wing foundations and disguised as a “mass movement.”

But don’t take my word for it. One of the chief scammers, Sean Treglia, a former program officer of the Pew Charitable Trusts, confesses it all in an astonishing videotape I obtained earlier this week.

The tape — of a conference held at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication in March of 2004 — shows Treglia expounding to a gathering of academics, experts and journalists (none of whom, apparently, ever wrote about Treglia’s remarks) on just how Pew and other left-wing foundations plotted to create a fake grassroots movement to hoodwink Congress.

“I’m going to tell you a story that I’ve never told any reporter,” Treglia says on the tape. “Now that I’m several months away from Pew and we have campaign-finance reform, I can tell this story.”

Ryan’s video evidence is posted on his website. McCain/Feingold should be repealed, and it should be repealed now.

22 March 2005 >> Over the last week, Brain Terminal was inaccessible to large portions of the Internet, and much of the e-mail sent to me has been bouncing back to the sender. (If you sent me an e-mail that bounced, please re-send it.) The problem was related to GoDaddy.com’s domain name servers working intermittently and an apparent bug in their “Offsite DNS Manager.” After countless hours on the phone with their technical support representatives, it became clear to me that they were not going to be able to resolve the problem; I was never able to speak with anyone who had enough understanding of DNS to recognize the problem that I was describing. Their “solution” was to ask me to move my domain name registrations from Network Solutions to them. I explained that I would not be giving them more business when they were unable to provide proper service for what I had already purchased.

Recently, I moved Brain Terminal to a “virtual dedicated server” from GoDaddy. I am quite happy with that server—it is noticeably faster than the previous server—but their technical support staff was not able to resolve the problem with DNS. I have since moved away from using GoDaddy for DNS, and the problems began clearing up almost immediately. It may still take another 24 hours or so for the updates to propagate around the Internet, but it seems like the worst of the outages are behind me. I apologize for the problems and the recent lack of updates to the site. The time I would have spent posting was instead spent on the phone with technical support.

Although I’ve ditched GoDaddy’s DNS services, I will continue to use their virtual dedicated server; it is fast and allows me quite a bit of technical control over the environment. It would also require a huge effort to move my site yet again, and I have neither the time nor the patience. So, GoDaddy will continue to host this site, but I do not expect to be giving them any additional business.

The moral of the story? GoDaddy is a good service as long as everything works, but don’t expect much in the way of knowledgeable technical support. If you have any problems beyond the ordinary, you may be on your own.

21 March 2005 @ 9:39AM >> The adrenaline of the upset over Kansas did not manage to propel Bucknell beyond the second round of the NCAA tournament, but I hope the Bison basketballers appreciate just how well they’ve done. Never before has Bucknell won an NCAA tournament game; in fact, never before has any Patriot League team won a tournament game. Congratulations, guys!

19 March 2005 @ 12:06PM >> Congratulations to the basketball team of my alma mater, Bucknell University, for their stunning upset victory over Kansas in the NCAA finals tournament. Go Bison!

18 March 2005 >> In response to this story, a friend e-mails:

Why is it OK for Bill Clinton to commit perjury under oath but not Lil’ Kim? Is it because she’s a sistah?

Maybe that, and the fact she didn’t have the entire political establishment of one party working to excuse her perjury...

17 March 2005 >> If you can see this message, it means you are viewing Brain Terminal on the new, faster server. (Hopefully the speed increase, particularly in the discussion forum and here in the Journal, will be apparent. It is to me, anyway!) The new location for the domain name has not yet finished propagating around the Internet, so there may continue to be intermittent problems accessing the site.

Also, it seems that some people are having trouble sending me e-mail. If you’ve tried e-mailing me but received a bounce message, you can contact me by posting to this discussion thread.

16 March 2005 @ 6:17PM >> I will be moving Brain Terminal to a faster server at a new hosting provider.

I’ll need to temporarily shut down the discussion forum in order to move the database to the new server. The shutdown will begin at midnight tonight ET, and will remain in effect until the domain name service (DNS) records propagate that point the “brain-terminal.com” name to the proper server.

Because DNS records propagate at different rates throughout the Internet, some of you will be reaching the old server while others reach the new server. There is no guarantee exactly when you’ll be hitting the new server, but the change should be complete within 24-48 hours. If, after midnight tonight, you see the discussion forum is open, you’ll know you’re hitting the new server. (You may also notice a speed increase with the dynamic portions of the site, such as the Journal and the discussion forum.)

Sorry for the inconvenience.

16 March 2005 @ 2:59PM >> Over at Slate, Jacob Weisberg asks, “Who is a journalist?”

[M]edia outfits including the Times insist on the need for a federal “shield law” that would create a privilege for journalists akin to privileges for lawyers, doctors, and priests.

A majority of states have such media protection ordinances on the books. But there’s a big problem with journalist shield laws, which advocates have yet to answer. How do you decide who is a journalist? If you create a privilege that applies to a group, someone has to decide who belongs and who doesn’t. [...] Journalism does not require any specific training, or institutional certification, or organizational membership, or even regular employment. It’s just an activity some people engage in that is protected under the Constitution.

The question of who gets to call themselves a journalist and who doesn’t is an important one, especially in light of the McCain/Feingold campaign finance law. McCain/Feingold carved out wide exemptions for establishment media. If you write your opinions in a newspaper, if you give your opinions as a guest on Hardball, or if you can find Hollywood distribution for a film that contains your opinions, you are exempt from McCain/Feingold.

And while the Internet is also currently unregulated, the Federal Election Commission is now examining whether that should change. If it does, web-based commentators like me could have our free speech rights curtailed whenever election season rolls around. Suddenly, where an opinion is expressed would determine whether or not it is subject to restrictions. Michael Moore can put out his sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11, and he’ll enjoy unfettered free speech rights. However, if I create a similarly political film in the future—and if I can’t secure Hollywood distribution and can only make it available online—I might be breaking the law simply by expressing my opinion.

That’s why I’ve signed the Online Coalition petition to preserve free speech rights on the Internet. The goal is to get the FEC to continue the current hands-off policy towards the Internet. But the real problem is McCain/Feingold. Shame on Congress for passing it, shame on President Bush for signing it, and shame on the Supreme Court upholding it. All three branches of government have conspired to take a huge chunk out of the First Amendment. Muffling the cacophony of free speech might make things more palatable to the governing class, but for those of us who like to think we’ve got the right to express our opinions, it is a disastrous turn down a dangerous road.

16 March 2005 @ 1:13PM >> Consider this: 18 of the 19 hijackers on September 11th carried multiple driver’s licenses from states with lenient licensing laws. These days, driver’s licenses are effectively used as legal identification, enabling things like opening bank accounts and checking into hotels. Of course, they’re also used to verify the identity of passengers as they board planes.

How much easier did we make the terrorists’ mission that cloudless Tuesday morning by handing them driver’s licenses? We may never know, but one thing is certain: more stringent licensing laws could have denied them the legal documentation they used as they plotted their attack and boarded our planes. It is remarkable that 3 1/2 years later, nothing has been done about this critical national security issue.

The Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License is working to change that. Through a new ad campaign, the coalition is working to inform the public about the gaping hole in our nation’s defenses left by the insecure licensing laws of some states. The House of Representatives has already passed legislation to tighten licensing laws, and a similar bill is pending in the Senate.

This is a tremendously important issue. If you agree, you might want to let your Senator know.

14 March 2005 >> Over at TownHall.com, Tim O’Bryhim reviews Brainwashing 101:

If one cares about academic freedom, this documentary is a must-see. It shows in painful detail how little many university administrators know or care about the ideas that their students advocate on campus... especially when those ideas conflict with the administrators’ ideological biases. The film is not a conservative screed nor does it become mean and nasty to the antagonists; it is primarily a call to action. Brainwashing 101 draws attention to the fact that universities are becoming tolerant of anything except ideas which they regard as reactionary — i.e. anything that is remotely conservative or Republican in nature. That notion is antithetical to liberal democracy and freedom. It must be exposed as such or else we will find our universities becoming the enemy of our freedom. And that is not acceptable.

14 March 2005 @ 4:57PM >> Reuters reports:

U.S. media coverage of last year’s election was three times more likely to be negative toward President Bush than Democratic challenger John Kerry, according to a study released Monday.

Apparently, people aren’t surprised:

“It may be that the expectations of the press have sunk enough that they will not sink much further. People are not dismayed by disappointments in the press. They expect them,” the authors of the report said.

Is public disenchantment with the establishment media working to the advantage of online outlets? Could be:

The study noted a huge rise in audiences for Internet news, particularly for bloggers whose readers jumped by 58 percent in six months to 32 million people.

That could also simply be the result of more and more people coming online. Still, when there are so many alternatives available, it doesn’t help to have dissatisfied customers.

11 March 2005 >> BlogAds posted the results of its 2005 Blog Reader Survey. The results are quite interesting. To me, the most surprising revelations are:

• More than three-quarters of respondents were male.
• 39.3% of respondents identified themselves as Democrats, while only 27.3% said they were Republicans. (19% identified as independents.)

11 March 2005 @ 11:03AM >> Occasionally, I get an e-mail from someone who disputes the contention that, overall, the establishment media has a liberal bias. Some of those e-mails claim that the media is largely unbiased, with the notable exceptions of Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times. In such a world, media bias doesn’t exist except for the handful of outlets that can arguably be described as conservative.

Other people write me to claim that the media has a generally conservative bias, and they often point to President Bush being in the White House and the Republicans controlling Congress as evidence of that bias. By this logic, voters are lemmings who pull the lever for whichever candidate or party the media supports, and that nobody can get elected without the support of the media. Also by this logic, if the media had a conservative bias in 2004, then it had a liberal bias in 1992, 1976, 1964, 1960, etc.

Apparently, Jeffrey Dvorkin, NPR’s ombudsman, receives similar e-mails from disgruntled listeners on both the right and the left. What’s interesting is the line of reasoning employed by his left-of-center correspondents and what it says about their view of the news media’s purpose:

From the left, I sense that some of the e-mail nastiness has to do with frustration over the re-election of President Bush. These listeners feel that the media was unwilling or unable to stop Bush’s ascent to victory.

So, in their world, the purpose of the media is not to dispassionately report the facts, but to actively prevent certain politicians from winning elections. This is really a gripe about the effectiveness of the establishment media, not it’s bias. After all, what was the goal of CBS’s phony memos if not to “stop Bush’s ascent to victory”?

Liberals may recognize the lessening effectiveness of the media’s inherent bias and assume that it means the media is shifting to the right. I would argue that the bias of the press hasn’t changed, it’s just that in today’s new media environment, impact of that bias is now diminished. This may really be what rankles the liberals who fume at folks like Dvorkin.

11 March 2005 @ 9:13AM >> More evidence of the establishment media’s continued decline:

The Prudential Equity Group issued a biting 72-page report this morning on the state of circulation and found that both quality and quantity continue to decline.

[...]

“Decline in both quality and quantity of circulation at several key newspapers owned by the New York Times Co. and Tribune, points to the potential for further pricing pressure from advertisers in future quarters,” the report observed.

[...]

Prudential said it compiled the report at this time because of the industry’s “very difficult year” in circulation and because circulation “is a key metric in setting advertising rates.”

Glenn Reynolds cites the report above, and notices something odd:

I cancelled my newspaper subscription — not out of pique, as is probably the case with many LAT subscribers, but because we weren’t reading it any more, and copies just piled up. They sent a guy to my house to offer me a free subscription. I said no, but last week they just started delivering copies again anyway. I thought it was just a mistake by our carrier, but now I wonder if it wasn’t a circulation-boosting strategy . . . .

10 March 2005 @ 1:16PM >> Amir Taheri poses some important questions to leftist protesters:

[T]he Arab street seems to be heading for an explosion. From North Africa to the Persian Gulf and passing by the Levant, people have been coming together in various “Arab streets” to make their feelings and opinions known.

[...]

In almost every case we are witnessing a new kind of citizens’ movement, an Arab version of people power in action. But the most important feature of these demonstrations is that they are concerned not with imagined external enemies, be it Israel or the United States, but with the real deficiencies of contemporary Arab societies. In almost every case the key demand is for a greater say for the people in deciding the affairs of the nation.

[...]

What is interesting is that there are, as yet, no signs, that the “Western street” may, at some point, come out in support of the new “Arab street.”

[...]

I spent part of last week ringing up the organizers of the anti-war events with a couple of questions. The first: Would they allow anyone from the newly-elected Iraqi parliament to address the gatherings? The second: Would the marches include expressions of support for the democracy movement in Arab and other Muslim countries, notably Iraq, Lebanon and Syria?

In both cases the answer was a categorical no, accompanied by a torrent of abuse about “all those who try to justify American aggression against Iraq.”

[...]

Why are so many Westerners, living in mature democracies, ready to march against the toppling of a despot in Iraq but unwilling to take to the streets in support of the democratic movement in the Middle East?

Is it because many of those who will be marching in support of Saddam Hussein this month are the remnants of totalitarian groups in the West plus a variety of misinformed idealists and others blinded by anti-Americanism?

Or is it because they secretly believe that the Arabs do not deserve anything better than Saddam Hussein?

Those interested in the health of Western democracies would do well to ponder those questions.

8 March 2005 @ 9:37AM >> DrudgeReport discovers that the editor-in-chief of Playgirl is—gasp—a Republican!

When it comes to sex and politics, Democrats are the more liberal, right? Not so fast. Playgirl editor-in-chief Michele Zipp explores “down and dirty” politics and examines sexuality on both sides of the aisle. In the process she comes to a realization about herself and reveals for the first time she’s now a Republican.

“Siding with the GOP when you live in the bluest state around is almost like wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey at a New York Yankees’ home game,” says Zipp in the April issue of PLAYGIRL. “I cannot tell you how many times a person assumed I voted for John Kerry in 2004. Most of the time, I don’t have the heart to tell them, or the energy to discuss my reasons for going red this election year. But this is Playgirl magazine so it’s about time I was the one who bared what’s underneath.”

How could a member of the media who produces adult entertainment for women possibly side with conservatives from the red states? Zipp spells it out. “Those on the right are presumed to be all about power and greed — two really sexy traits in the bedroom. They want it, they want it now, and they’ll do anything to get it. And I’m not talking about some pansy-assed victory, I’m talking about full on jackpot, satisfaction for all.”

8 March 2005 >> How many times can Walter Cronkite gleefully fork the corpse of Dan Rather in a single interview? Find out.

Meanwhile:

It is barely six weeks since the U.S. President delivered his second inaugural address, a paean to liberty and democracy that espoused the goal of “ending tyranny in our world”. Reactions around the world ranged from alarm to amused scorn, from fears of a new round of “regime changes” imposed by an all-powerful American military, to suspicions in the salons of Europe that this time Mr Bush, never celebrated for his grasp of world affairs, had finally lost it. No one imagined that events would so soon cause the President’s opponents around the world to question whether he had got it right.

That debate is now happening, in America and beyond, as the first waves of reform lap at the Arab world. Post-Saddam Iraq has held its first proper election. In their own elections, Palestinians have overwhelmingly chosen a moderate leader. Hosni Mubarak, who for 24 years has permitted no challenge to his rule in Egypt, has announced a multi-candidate presidential election this year. Even Saudi Arabia is not immune, having just held its first municipal elections. Next time around, Saudi spokesmen promise, women too will be permitted to vote.

Not gonna gloat. Wouldn’t be prudent. Not at this juncture.

7 March 2005 >> Bogus memos may have been Dan Rather’s downfall, but it certainly wasn’t his first foray into outright political fraud. Apparently, in 1963, Dan Rather lied when he reported that a group of school children cheered the assassination of President Kennedy:

The tale was perfect for the moment, reinforcing the notion among distant media elites that Dallas was a reactionary “City of Hate.” It slyly played to a local audience, too: The school named was in upper-income University Park, one of two adjacent municipal enclaves that shared a school district and a reputation for fiercely protected, lily-white privilege.

So, if Rather’s four-decades-plus career is capped on each end by politically-motivated lies, it’s natural to wonder how many times in between he’s gotten away with it.

5 March 2005 >> After a long time of being dissatisfied with Radio UserLand, the software that—until today—powered Evan’s Journal (but not the rest of this site), I finally moved to WordPress 1.5, a terrific, easy-to-use yet extremely tweakable and, best of all, free open-source software package.

Eventually, I plan on moving the entire content portion of Brain Terminal over to WordPress, although it will take some time. (Currently, most of Brain Terminal is built using software I wrote before blogging packages became popular.) Until then, one downside is that the search mechanism for the main portion of this site is completely separate from that used for Evan’s Journal.

4 March 2005 @ 3:29PM >> For those of you who don’t believe that the establishment media is biased, a little exercise: listen very closely to the “reporting” on the proposed reforms to Social Security.

This week, while gathering footage for my film, I drove from New York City to several stops around the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. During the trip, I spent around 12 hours in the car, so I had plenty of time to listen to the radio. And, because I don’t know the stations up there, I did plenty of flipping around trying to find something interesting.

I did find something interesting, but it wasn’t what I expected. What I found was a full-on media assault against Social Security reform disguised as news. Sure, it isn’t a scientific survey, but I listened to news reports on about ten different stations during my drive. Each and every one of them included a report on Social Security. And each and every one was strongly negative about President Bush’s plan. There was zero effort made to balance the discussion, and the reporters used the usual tricks: citing unnamed detractors using the “some people say” device, and using man-on-the-street interviews where five of the interviewees opposed the plan and, if I was listening to a slightly less biased report, maybe one person on the other side to add a thin veneer of balance.

In each case, the people who opposed the plan recited the Democratic talking points, and there was no effort made by the reporters to refute those points. Most often, people talked about how the plan would “drain the Social Security trust fund.” But the reality is, there is no trust fund. Any money collected Social Security above what is needed to pay out benefits is spent for other government purposes. People also talked about the risk of letting people control their own money, but nobody talked about the risk of letting the government operate a Ponzi scheme that will undoubtedly collapse in the future. There was certainly no mention of the fact that under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the creator of Social Security, the system was intended to become very similar to the one President Bush is now proposing.

In other words, the reports contained only the arguments against the plan, but none of the arguments in favor of it. This is what passes for news these days.

Pay attention to how the media is reporting the proposed Social Security reforms. If you want to see media bias in action, you’ll get a prime example. And if you’re one of those people who think the only biased media outlet is Fox News, you’ll get an education.

3 March 2005 >> The feature-length follow-up to Brainwashing 101, scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of this year, was recently named the Most Anticipated Documentary of 2005 by the American Film Renaissance festival. (More information about the AFR awards is available at WorldNetDaily.)