Lies and the Lying Media Who Broadcast Them. CalPundit summarizes a stunning new survey showing that the FoxNews audience is more than three times likelier to hold factual misconceptions than the NPR/PBS audience.

But, as usual, he makes a larger point:

With the exception of the NPR crowd, which is both small and unsurprisingly liberal, people who rely on print media were substantially better informed on specific war issues than people who relied on any of the TV newscasts.

The survey comes from PIPA, the Program on International Policy Attitudes.

Update: Daily Kos links to this summary from the Philadelphia Inquirer. This is a must-read.

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"I had people call me up in the middle of the night and say, 'I know where your wife is; I know where your daughter is going to school.'"

From the 1999 Frontline interview with David Kay.

{ 8:10 AM }

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Finally some real accountability — too late. Ken Lay's hand in the cookie jar just got smacked (Theo Francis in the Wall Street Journal, sub. req'd):

A federal judge in Texas ruled that former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay and Northern Trust Corp., trustee of Enron's 401(k) retirement plan, can be sued under federal pension law for allegedly failing to protect Enron employees.

The ruling could lead to greater protections for workers with employer stock in their 401(k) and other retirement programs. Companies using their own stock in employee-retirement plans, a widespread practice, came under increased scrutiny from Congress and government regulators after Enron's stock collapse devastated its employees' retirement savings.

The wide-ranging, 329-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon in Houston came in response to motions brought in lawsuits by former employees of Enron, which filed for bankruptcy-court protection in late 2001. The ruling said Mr. Lay and Northern Trust -- along with others who oversaw Enron's retirement programs -- had a responsibility to ensure that the plans' investments were prudent. This responsibility extended to decisions about how much Enron stock employees held in their retirement accounts, the judge said.

More than 60% of Enron's $2.1 billion in 401(k) assets were invested in the company's own shares at the end of 2000. The plan covered about 20,000 Enron employees, retirees and their beneficiaries. Enron stock, which peaked at about $90 a share in 2000, currently trades for less than 10 cents a share in over-the-counter trading.

This is a wise ruling that demands accountability from those in charge of company retirement plans, who are effectively the stewards of their employees' retirement savings. The attachment of Northern Trust to this ruling only adds credibility to the obvious failure of prudent executive oversight.

Too bad it's too late. With this kind of legal exposure, expect Ken Lay to declare personal bankruptcy, after which Linda "Jus' Stuff" Lay will probably get another chance to weep glycerine tears on television. Ken Lay has had over two years to sequester all his purloined wealth in assets that are often protected from bankruptcy, such as real estate, annuities, and offshore accounts.

What needs to stay at the forefront of this story is not the talk-show punchline of Lay's criminal behavior, but rather the intimate connection between one irresponsible, thieving failure of an executive and another — George W. Bush.

{ 9:34 AM }

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Oil, auditing, baseball, redistricting. We wouldn't need oil if we could only harness the energy contained in Texas circle jerks (Houston Chronicle):

AUSTIN -- The Republican legislative battle over redistricting may do more than give Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick a new U.S. House seat for his hometown of Midland. It also might send one of President Bush's friends and former business partners to Congress.

K. Michael Conaway -- who was vice president, secretary and treasurer of Bush Exploration for five years -- is the only known Republican poised to run in the proposed Midland-based congressional district if Craddick wins his fight with Senate Republicans on how to redraw West Texas.

Craddick has said he wants a Midland district that Conaway can win.

"I know Tom is way set to get it drawn the way he wants to or it goes down," Conaway, 54, said Tuesday. "Tom's prepared to go either way: not have a bill at all or get it done the way he wants it done."

[…]

Sue Brannon, the Midland County Republican chair, said she is confident Bush would like to see a congressional district created for his former hometown.

"I've talked to him about it, and I know a lot of people out here have talked to him about it," Brannon said. "I know what he thinks about it ... but me commenting publicly on what he thinks about it is not a wise thing to do."

Brannon said she knows of no Republicans who would challenge Conaway in a primary if the new district is created.

Conaway said he met Bush shortly after his 1978 run for Congress. As a certified public accountant, Conaway audited Bush's company for three years before joining it as vice president.

Conaway later was the senior vice president and chief financial officer of the United Bank of Midland, the institution that loaned Bush $500,000 so he could buy his share of the Texas Rangers baseball team.

And it was on that fake "loan" that Dubya made his fake fortune that paid for the fake ranch to support the fake presidency that waged the fake war based on fake intelligence and propped up with fake rhetoric about fake democracy.

He may be a fake cowboy, but he's a genuine horse thief.

{ 3:36 PM }

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More public funding for evangelism. Even though Valerie Plame is grabbing the headlines, other national scandals are taking place.

This one is very sneaky, and it ain't pretty. Read the article "Pulpit Bully" on TomPaine.com:

In a radical move largely ignored by national news outlets, the Bush administration has abolished longstanding prohibitions against federal grants for social programs sponsored by churches and religious organizations.

"Faith-based" groups are now eligible to compete with secular organizations for some $28 billion in government money, subsidizing everything from housing to "mentoring" the children of prisoners.

The new rules, announced Sept. 22 at a White House press conference, give bureaucratic teeth to an executive order issued last year that banned so-called discrimination against religious institutions applying for government grants.

The administration has long argued that religious-based organizations can provide needed social services, especially when numerous federal programs are not being fully funded. But there's another, more disturbing facet to this debate that the recipients of these dollars don't want to acknowledge: Federal funding will greatly enhance their evangelizing and conversion activities.

The conversion agenda can be seen in the fine- and not-so-fine print in the new White House rules.

The most controversial change allows religiously affiliated federal contractors to discriminate against job applicants of other faiths. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao disingenuously insisted that the new rule simply "removes the barrier" preventing religious organizations from hiring members of their own faith.

But there never was a barrier preventing Catholic charities from hiring Catholics or Jewish charities from hiring Jews. What the government did do -- in the days when political leaders respected the First Amendment -- was tell federal contractors, "If you want public money, you can't refuse to hire someone simply because he doesn't share your religion."

The Bush administration is now not only actively encouraging religious discrimination, but promoting its public funding.

"American Taliban" isn't hyperbole — this is a bold move toward theocracy.

{ 12:38 PM }

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Rumsfeld decimates the Reserves. Can there be any doubt that retention of reservists will plummet after the WMD-free invasion of Iraq for Halliburton's ex-CEO? (Yahoo News):

Although the Guard and Reserve say their retention rates have not suffered this year, the figures could be misleading. Under an order known as "stop loss," soldiers on active duty are prohibited from leaving the service until their tours end.

Active-duty and Reserve commanders fear that when U.S. soldiers on yearlong rotations come home next year, many will choose to leave the service.

It's safe to conclude that many reservists will leave the service. After completing their work for Halliburton, many older reservists — heads of households with children — are leaving not only the service but life itself.

{ 10:12 AM }

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Cable news — unwatched and unloved. Audiences for the cable news nincompoops are drying up, at least here in Chicago (Tribune):

This, remember, is all in Chicago, with a nationwide reputation as a very good news town. Here, Ted Koppel's "Nightline" routinely beats Jay Leno's "The Tonight Show."

[...]

Probably the most striking fact in this set of statistics is the illustration of a complaint that television networks have been making for years: that we in the media write way too much about cable news.

At 6 p.m. weekdays in the Chicago area, the audience for all the national cable news programs combined can't equal the viewership of PBS' stodgy old "NewsHour." Way up ahead, like an Olympic miler facing a Sunday jogger, are the numbers that the local news stations draw at the same time, or that the national newscasts do in the preceding half-hour.

The same is true at 7 p.m., where [PBS] WTTW-Ch. 11's newsmagazine "Chicago Tonight" not only kicks Bill O'Reilly's booty but that of all the national cable channels combined.

The most popular evening cable program is O'Reilly's hour of argument at 7 p.m., with 36,250 average viewers over the last four major sweeps months. By contrast, the least popular broadcast news program after 6 p.m. is WMAQ-Ch. 5's "NBC 5 Chicago News at 6," with 186,000 viewers.

Most popular cable show: 36,250 viewers. Least popular broadcast show: 186,000 viewers.

Note to O'Reilly: Shut up!

For confused readers on the east and west coasts — Chicago is Central Time, meaning that our eleven o'clock news is shown at ten. Adjust all showtimes accordingly.

{ 1:21 PM }

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If Texas is the symptom, as a nation we're becoming more diseased every day. Gubna Dubya did not exactly lead his state to health and prosperity (Houston Chronicle):

One out of every four Texans lacks health insurance, the highest percentage of uninsured residents in any state in the nation, according to new Census Bureau figures.

The findings are part of a report that shows the ranks of the uninsured nationwide swelled by 2.4 million last year as insurance costs kept rising and more Americans lost their jobs and health care coverage.

[...]

Analysts say numerous factors contribute to the high numbers in Texas, including the state's lack of organized labor and a high percentage of Hispanics, some of whom are immigrants and less likely to hold jobs that offer health insurance.

"They have jobs, but they have jobs at the very bottom of the totem pole that provide no benefits whatsoever," said Stephen Klineberg, a sociology professor at Rice University.

But the lagging economy has also taken its toll.

The bureau report shows significant increases in uninsured rates occurred among whites, blacks, people 18 to 24, and middle- and higher-income earners nationwide.

"You have more unemployed people," said E. Dale Wortham, a board member at the Harris County Hospital District. "The other thing is you have people that are employed but cannot afford health insurance."

But Texas, home of Dubya's fake ranch, isn't the only symptom of what's wrong with bogus approaches to healthcare.

Presidential brother and eventual White House candidate Jeb Bush, using the state of Florida as a test case, has a simplistic one-size-fits-all answer to the insurance crisis: tort reform.

{ 11:52 AM }

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Banks ♥ Republicans. In 1992, for every dollar commercial banks gave to Republicans they gave a dollar to Democrats too.

Not any more. A decade later, as we approach the 2004 election cycle they prefer Republicans by a margin of more than two to one, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

{ 8:56 AM }

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The Cheney/Chalabi intelligence — worthless. That's what the Defense Intelligence Agency thinks of Cheney's barbecue and golf buddy Ahmed Chalabi and his useless intelligence (New York Times):

An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that most of the information provided by Iraqi defectors who were made available by the Iraqi National Congress was of little or no value, according to federal officials briefed on the arrangement.

In addition, several Iraqi defectors introduced to American intelligence agents by the exile organization and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, invented or exaggerated their credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi government and its suspected unconventional weapons program, the officials said.

The arrangement, paid for with taxpayer funds supplied to the exile group under the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, involved extensive debriefing of at least half a dozen defectors by defense intelligence agents in European capitals and at a base in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil in late 2002 and early 2003, the officials said. But a review early this year by the defense agency concluded that no more than one-third of the information was potentially useful, and efforts to explore those leads since have generally failed to pan out, the officials said.

Mr. Chalabi has defended the arrangement, saying that his organization had helped just three defectors provide information to American intelligence about Iraq's suspected weapons program, and that two of them had been judged to be credible.

But several federal officials said the arrangement had wasted more than $1 million in taxpayers' money and had prompted them to question the credibility of Mr. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. Both have enjoyed powerful backing from civilian officials at the Pentagon and are playing a significant role in the provisional government in Baghdad.

Intelligence provided by the defectors that could not be substantiated included information about Iraq's suspected program for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as well as other information about the Iraqi government, the officials said. They said they would not speculate on whether the defectors had knowingly provided false information and, if so, what their motivation might have been. One Defense Department official said that some of the people were not who they said they were and that the money for the program could have been better spent.

Will we ever discover an end to the ways Dick Cheney has wasted taxpayer money, national credibility, and the blood of thousands of innocents, including our own soldiers?

{ 3:13 PM }

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Regarding Valerie Plame, a reminder from Cursor... Speaking at the 1999 dedication of the George Bush Center for Intelligence, George H.W. Bush said (in 1999):

"I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors."

Dare we say it — treason! In his own dynasty!

But wait, there's more! He preceded those remarks with this:

We need more human intelligence. That means we need more protection for the methods we use to gather intelligence and more protection for our sources, particularly our human sources, people that are risking their lives for their country. (Applause)

For an overview of the Plame Affair, see Body & Soul.

See also OS Politics' Plame Roundup by Mark A.R. Kleiman.

{ 9:52 AM }

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