Blame city planners for U.S. gas price woes

Maybe not all the blame for the noxious gases spewed into the atmosphere and for the rising fuel prices can be traced to city planners, departments of public works, or whoever's in charge of your entity's traffic engineering, but much of it can -- and now there's proof.

The Institute of Transportation Engineers has reported that most of the traffic lights are either not synchronized or there is no marking to drivers that the synchronization has been installed.

Synchronization or "sync" means that you can travel from one green light to another if you maintain a constant velocity in your vehicle. On major roads, the lights are synched for a certain speed at high traffic hours, another speed at off hours, and some may have sensors in the road to determine if a vehicle is waiting for a light to change.

The ITE said it studied 378 communities in 49 states and gives the city planners nationally an average grade of "D-," a grade just barely passing, on traffic flow efficiency.

This grade tells you, as a driver, something you already know. You sit in traffic, consuming fuel, polluting the air with noxious gases, and your frustration and anger rises. And then when the light finally turns to green, you drive a short distance and go through the entire vicious cycle all over again.

I'm on the road all the time and I know about this problem intimately. It's not so much that the lights on the roads I travel on aren't synched -- many of them are synched. But they are synched for the wrong speed.

Here's an example: Choctaw Blvd is major 4-lane undivided thoroughfare connecting Northwest Baton Rouge to Southeast Baton Rouge. The posted speed limit is 45 miles per hour. But the lights, I have determined through trial and error, are synchronized for 25 mph!

Drivers want to drive posted speed limits. So they normally jackrabbit at the light to get up to speed and hit their brakes to slow down when they come to the next light just three blocks down the road. And they sit and wait for the green only to begin the cycle all over again.

It's not just workers in pickup trucks flooring it to get up to 45, it's moms traveling by themselves in gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles and commercial vehicles, from 6-wheelers to 18-wheelers. Choctaw is a primary conduit for oversize loads to and from the ExxonMobil refinery, and it's a mess 16 hours a day. In the off hours, traveling 25 mph for efficiency to catch the green lights is boring but it's not life threatening. But don't dare try to maintain 25 mph down Choctaw during daylight business hours -- you'll be run over in short order.

It wouldn't take much to change things. A few dollars making signs explaining the sychronization to anyone who hasn't done the trial-and-error test like I have done wouldn't break the city budget. Nor would synching the lights for 45 mph instead of 25 mph break the city budget. Either way, fuel is conserved and the environment doesn't become polluted.

Maybe the city planned it so that people would burn a lot of fuel traveling down Choctaw. Maybe it is part of the business model. Speed down the road, hit the brakes, speed-up, slow down. That equation means money is spent at fueling stations and money is spent for brake replacement ... and for antacid tablets. "Keep honking, I'm reloading" is a common bumper sticker around here.

Whatever the reason, the truth is now out there. It'll be interesting to see if city fathers and mothers around the country respond to the ITE report. If they don't or if they do, I'm sure people will continue to blame President Bush and the Arabs for our troubles. It's just easier to bitch about a problem and hang blame on someone or another than take some personal responsibility for one's actions and implement solutions.

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The Gibbous Effect -- My little cousin Dan, a former paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne, has his own band and now they have their own web site. They sound pretty darn good. But you be the judge. You can listen at the website. His influences appear to be the Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Taylor & Reeves. But you might hear something else there. He's a yankee like me but he's been playing gigs around Tempe, Ariz. Catch a club date if you have a chance. And, if you do, tell him I said to quit smoking. I've been kidding him about the name of the band. "Gibbous" is a phase of the moon and if you look it up at Dictionary.com it says a synonym for "gibbous" is "humped" or "humpback." So, an alternative name for the band might be "The Humpbacked Wailers." Well, I thought it was pretty funny. But he hasn't responded to any e-mail I sent since I mentioned that to him. He's probably just busy.

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Porn spam Easter egg of the day:

"You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on." - Dean Martin

We need a maniac at the U.N.

When I heard the Democratic allegations that John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for United Nations ambassador, chased a subordinate down the halls, tossed papers at her and -- oh my gawd! -- slid letters under her door, I knew this was the guy we needed at the U.N.!

We need an ambassador for the U.N. who's a maniac. It doesn't matter to me if the allegations are true or not. Really, it doesn't. Just the fact that the liberals on the panel cited this hysterical claim is enough of a recommendation for me. It's not like I'm insensitive, but I've met the type of person it sounded like Bolton was dealing with. She was an idiot. I yelled at her, made her cry and she went into theatrics after that. If she would've slugged me, cussed me out or at least stood her ground, I'd have had respect for her. But she was destined to attain a level of mediocrity as a bureaucrat sniping other bureaucrats.

We need an ambassador for the U.N. who's a maniac. For too long, the primary criterium the U.S. had for appointing ambassadors to the U.N. was did the candidate have the ability to kiss six different foreign ass cheeks at once. And what has the soft touch gotten us? The appointment of the Libyan representative to head the human rights committee? That's like naming Janet Reno to investigate Bill Clinton, letting Elliot Spitzer and William Donaldson investigate Wall Street only to bitch-slap a few corporate execs, or naming Bill Clinton and his ex-chief of staff and former SBA head Erskine Bowles to ensure there's no corruption in the tsunami relief program.

We need an ambassador for the U.N. who's a maniac. The U.N. stalled on any U.S. moves against Iraq, and now we know why. Pretty much everyone at the U.N. was making kickback money in the Oil-for-Food scam, from Kofi Annan on down. This is common in countries around the world, a little gratuity, so are we really that surprised? There are as many pirates in the U.N. as there are on Wall Street. The problem is they are feathering their nests at the expense of U.S. security.

We need an ambassador for the U.N. who's a maniac. Of course, there is an investigation of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan, an investigation that has been thwarted on so many levels that two principle U.S. investigators have resigned in disgust. If you're waivering in your support of Bolton, read this story because the networks won't tell you. I heard about how John Bolton was such a maniac tonight from CBS' Gloria Borger (no relation to Lucretia, I'm sure) but I heard nothing about the resignation of the investigators.

The Associated Press reported:

Two senior investigators with the committee probing corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program have resigned in protest, saying they believe a report that cleared Kofi Annan of meddling in the $64 billion operation was too soft on the secretary-general, a panel member confirmed Wednesday.

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The investigators were identified as Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan.

Parton, as the senior investigative counsel for oil-for-food, had a wide purview. He was responsible for investigations into the procurement of companies under the oil-for-food program and he was the lead investigator on issues pertaining to allegations of impropriety relating to the secretary-general and his son Kojo Annan. Duncan worked on Parton's team.

If that doesn't convince people of the need for an ass-kicking maniac at the U.N., I don't know what will. Mark my words, in a few years even the liberals are going to be calling this guy "Johnny on the Spot Bolton."

So, in summation, I'd just like to say ...

We need an ambassador for the U.N. who's a maniac.

[Update 4/22/2005: Rich Lowery, editor of National Review, makes these comments:

"Finally, Democrats are retailing a charge from a partisan Democrat — founder of the Dallas chapter of Mothers Opposing Bush — that Bolton chased her through a Moscow hotel 11 years ago, throwing things and acting like a “madman.” Bolton was working for a company for which the woman, Melody Townsel, was a subcontractor. The head of the company, Jayant Kalotra, says he doesn’t believe it happened and that Bolton was always professional. Townsel’s boss at the subcontractor, Charlie Black, also says he didn’t hear of it at the time, even though Townsel was never shy about complaining."

Where was the U.N. while the genocide occurred in Cambodia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Bosnia/Croatia, Haiti or, more recently, Saddam Hussein's attack on the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs, and the genocide in Sudan? The U.S. gets blamed for not intervening in these human rights catastrophes and gets blamed when it does intervene. Genocide is a world problem that should be address by the world body, but is not. Reuters today reported:

United Nations human rights chief Louise Arbour delivered a stinging closing report to the U.N.'s top rights forum on Friday, saying the way it singled out just four states for rebuke was "not credible." Addressing the 53-state Commission on Human Rights at the end of its annual six-week session, Arbour said nobody could believe that only those four -- Cuba, Myanmar, North Korea and Belarus -- merited scrutiny by the Geneva-based body. "There is something fundamentally wrong with a system in which the question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in any part of the world is answered by reference to just four states," the High Commissioner for Human Rights added.

Also, investigators from the U.N. Human Rights Commission -- investigators not from commission members Libya, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Congo or Sudan but from Japan and South Korea -- are finally looking into racial discrimination in India, the world's largest racist country. India openly practices systemic racism against the Dalits through a "caste system," who are called "untouchables." Dalit supporters suggest a U.N. conspiracy exists to turn a blind eye to racism and human rights abuses in other countries as well, which they identified as Algeria, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea, Japan, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Yemen. So much for liberals laying heritage claim to protection of human rights. Liberalism must mean "lip service" in Clintonista newspeak. Are any more reaons necessary why we need a maniac as the ambassador to the U.N.?]

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Porn spam Easter egg of the day:

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The numbers game of "Don't ask, don't tell"

The Washington Post, Miami Herald, Associated Press and a myriad of mainstream media have been repeating some misleading figures released recently by the General Accounting Office.

The data say that American taxpayers paid some $190 million over the past 10 years susidizing the costs of the screwy Clinton legacy "Don't ask, don't tell." Those costs, according to these sources, are costs necessary to prosecute and toss out gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members who admit their homosexuality, as well as the costs of recruiting and retraining their replacements. That $190 million is a hefty chunk of money in anybody's book, and it's got several congress persons, including Republicans, signing on to a bill to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military.

Some linguists also were discharged, putting the U.S. at risk, supporters of the measure to lift "Don't ask, don't tell" say. Even the most strident gay activist would agree, I hope, that at least one linguist deserved to be discharged. Nope, too much to hope I guess; strident gay activists don't agree, and this is probably the linquist the Hon. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl), Hon. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), and the Hon. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) are alluding to in legislation they're supporting along with at least 50 Democrats.

It's left unsaid by those pushing this agenda that if the American public supports homosexuals serving openly in the military, the public also has to sign on to the unsaid ramifications of endorsing homosexuality in the military and endorsing homosexuality among members of the military. If I was pushing this gay agenda, I'd leave that part left unsaid as well if I wanted the public to accept it.

What is also left unsaid is the cost of allowing gay and bisexual men to continue to serve in the military, even if they don't openly admit their sexuality. One of these costs is medical care for those soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who contract HIV.

The Navy Environmental Health Center says that since 1985, the Navy has identified more than 5,000 sailors and Marines who had contracted HIV. It says (Note, this link is a PDF file and you need Adobe Acrobat to view it):

"In 2004, 106 active duty Sailors and Marines became infected with HIV. Since 1985, over 5000 active duty Sailors and Marines have been infected with HIV, most of whom have been lost to the service. Of the 480 HIV positive members remaining on active duty at the end of 2004, none are deployable, and the DoN incurs an annual health care cost of approximately $6 million ($12,000 per person) and approximately 10,000 lost duty days (20 per person). The DoN acquires a new estimated $20 million obligation each year for the lifetime HIV health care costs of each newly infected member ($200,000 per person at the annual infection rates of 100 Sailors and Marines) with some significant portion of this passed on to the Veteran's Administration upon separation of the member. Retraining costs for the HIV infected members who separate from service have not been calculated."

The underlining is my emphasis. That's a $20 million obligation each year for just the Navy and Marine Corps if just 100 persons are found to be newly infected with HIV, or an estimated $200,000 per person over a lifetime. If you do the numbers, at $200,000 per person, the Navy and VA already has incurred an obligation of $1 Billion since 1985 for the 5,000 service members who have HIV, some of whom now have fullblown AIDS.

This cost doesn't include the other services, just the Navy and Marine Corps. Nor does it include the major component of those trying to push the "gays in the military" agenda, recruiting replacements and retraining. This $1 Billion pricetag doesn't include lost time while on active duty and the costs of non-deployability -- both monetary and in lost effectiveness. Nor does it cover costs associated with treating dependents who have become and may become infected by service members.

Of course, not all HIV positive members of the military are homosexual. Some are heterosexual. The Navy acknowledged that in a 2002 article published in the Baltimore Sun. It said:

About 60 percent of the new HIV infections in the military are from homosexual contact ... but infections from heterosexual contact are increasing, particularly among young, inner-city black men.

This 60 percent is an estimate because under the requirements of "Don't ask, don't tell," the member of the military isn't legally required to admit he is gay or bisexual. So the 60 percent comes from personnel who admitted to medical personnel they'd had homosexual contact.

Thus, if 60 percent of all HIV positive cases in the Navy is a result of homosexual contact, then it naturally follows that 60 percent of costs associated with HIV are incurred as a result of homosexual contact. This means that $600 million of the lifetime costs the Navy and Veterans Administration will face already have been incurred because of homosexual contact. Add to that cost $12 million every year if 60 percent of just 100 sailors and Marines contract HIV through homosexual activity. Again, this doesn't include the costs incurred by the other services.

The Urban Institute last October reported that an estimated 65,000 gay and bisexual men and women are serving in the active duty and reserves, comprising less than three (3) percent of the total military complement, yet the Navy says 60 percent of all newly identified cases of HIV result from homosexual contact, a very disproportionate number.

Can it be assumed that if more homosexuals are allowed to join the military, that costs associated with treating HIV will increase? According to research presented at the 15th International AIDS Conference held last year, yes, because risky behavior among gay men is shown to be increasing due to increasing use of recreational drugs, unsafe sexual behavior, and a belief by gay men that HIV can easily be controlled by antiretroviral drugs and not lead to deadly AIDS. U.S. News & World Reports wrote "As antiretroviral drugs become more widely available, many who study HIV worry that people are taking fewer precautions to keep from getting the virus in the first place."

This is not homophobia, and this information is not meant to demonize a class of people. It's statistics and facts, the "rest of the story" if you will, what those promoting a certain agenda aren't telling the public. You can't make an informed decision if you don't have all the facts, and these are facts those pushing the "gays in the military" agenda don't want the public to have.

I don't agree that homosexuals should serve in the military. As the military puts it, "It's prejudicial to good order and discipline." I happen to agree. I've served in the military. There's also the privacy issue, and I've already written about my feelings on that subject.

Many in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered lobby would claim that I'd already served with homosexuals. Yes, I have. As soon as these homosexuals determined they didn't like the rigors and demands of service life -- which can be very, very hard -- they'd come out of the closet and get a free ticket home at considerable expense to the taxpayer as some folk point out. And that was in 1973-1978 when I was on active duty.

Also, when I served, it was against military regulations for homosexuals to enter the military. "Don't ask, don't tell" wasn't in existence then. Yet homosexuals did enlist, homosexuals like retired Army Brig. Gen. Virgil Richard, one of three self-identified gay former military leaders promoting the bill to lift "Don't ask, don't tell." These homosexuals broke the law, lying to the military about their sexuality. Homosexuality is not a character flaw but dishonesty and lying are, and some of those homosexuals were granted security clearances and access to some this country's most closely guarded secrets. If they felt they were above the law prohibiting homosexuals from serving in the military, what other laws would they break and did they break. Enemy agents could've used their homosexuality to blackmail them. It shows also the agencies providing background investigations on military security clearances are horribly broken and in need of major overhaul.

The needs of the service come first and foremost. The military does not exist as a grand social experiment, despite what some liberal thinkers believe. It exists to protect this country. Failure to understand that basic principle leads to a lot of misunderstanding. The military works for this country. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Update 4/28/2005: "The military should be allowed to go back to asking about orientation and barring homosexuals from joining in the first place. Gays are the only group in society that can join the military and then decide to get out at any time with a fully honorable discharge. This has become a real scam, since over 95 percent of gays being discharged are self-referrals. They are not martyrs, as the media usually depicts them -- they knowingly abuse the system to get free training and pay at the expense of taxpayers." CDR. Wayne Johnson, JAG, USN (Ret.), commenting on his legal experience enforcing "Don't ask; don't tell"]

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Neat Freebie: Check into VirtualArmory for your free "American Hero Bracelet." The site is operated by the Army National Guard and is designed primarily as a recruiting tool, but if you don't mind entering some personal information, the Army National Guard will send you a metal band that looks very much like the POW/MIA bracelet I used to wear in the '60s. It's numbered and the Army National Guard says it's giving away one bracelet for every serving Guardsman. It took about two months to get mine, but it's nice. From the website: "The American Hero Band is a free wrist band worn by Americans to demonstrate their support of the 'Defenders of Freedom' who are Army National Guard Soldiers deployed across the globe. Engraved on the metallic wrist band are the words IN HONOR OF AN AMERICAN HERO, SERVING IN THE ARMY NATIONAL GUARD. These words are flanked left by the Army National Guard logo and right by the American Flag. There is also an inscription of the National Guard web site, www.VirtualArmory.com, and a unique serial number engraved inside this commemorative wrist band."

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Porn spam Easter egg of the day:

Why is it when we duck they call us chicken?

God bless the cranks!

Will the scientific community realize it when they meet the next Einstein or read about his or her ideas? Don't count on it, say the scientists themselves.

"Maybe there is an Einstein out there today," said Columbia University physicist Brian Greene, "but it would be a lot harder for him to be heard."

Especially considering what Einstein was proposing.

"The actual fabric of space and time curving? My God, what an idea!" Greene said at a recent gathering at the Aspen Institute. "It takes a certain type of person who will bang his head against the wall because you believe you'll find the solution."

Perhaps the best examples are the five scientific papers Einstein wrote in his "miracle year" of 1905. These "thought experiments" were pages of calculations signed and submitted to the prestigious journal Annalen der Physik by a virtual unknown. There were no footnotes or citations.

What might happen to such a submission today?

"We all get papers like those in the mail," Green said, "We put them in the crank file."

The barriers to any innovation are tremendous, as AP Science Writer Joseph B. Verrengia notes in that report. First you've got to get past the naysayers in your family, then the naysayers among your friends and associates, then the naysayers among your professional acquaintences. Not to mention the press roadblock.

It's not to say it can't be done. A chemist 40 years ago noted that the number of transistors able to be placed on an integrated circuit would double every two years. What a flake, right? The law has come to be known as "Moore's Law." And that crank chemist was Gordon Moore, a co-founder with crank Robert Noyce of Intel. Both Moore and Noyce were underlings of crank Robert Shockley who invented the transistor (which incidentally came about in 1947 shortly after a space ship allegedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, not that I'm hinting there's any connection between the two). The first integrated circuit was developed by a Texas Instruments scientist, crank Jack St. Clair Kilby, in 1958, just 11 short years after Roswell ... er, uh ... after the invention of the transistor.

Cranks are working on flying cars and crank Paul Gilster is still thinking about how to get us to Alpha Centauri.

God bless the cranks among us. In fact, as Einstein showed, He did.

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I've updated my post "Who's spinning you and why?"

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Porn spam Easter egg of the day:

The thing that contributes to anyone's reaching the goal he wants is simply wanting that goal badly enough

Who's spinning you and why?

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Air Force General Richard B. Myers, last week spoke to the annual convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

ASNE is comprised of the editors of the country's leading newspapers. These editors determine what news you, as a news consumer, will read.

Considering the sheer number of the nation's editors gathered under one roof, one might think that the information contained in a speech by Gen. Myers would be reported factually, if not fully, across the news channels. Failure to report all the facts in a report to the police, is called perjury, a lie of omission. In journalism, failure to report all the facts to the readers is called editorial discretion.

The problem is that when newspaper editors decide not to report on a topic themselves, they rely on syndicates or wire services to report the news. If the wire service reporter has his or her own personal agenda, that agenda is repeated in the newspapers, and on the tv and radio stations around the world. And now, since the creation of the internet, that information is repeated across the ether by well-meaning but uneducated junior blog journalists who take the news from such places like the Associated Press or British wire service Reuters as complete, objective and balanced.

Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth and the facts.

The speech by Gen. Myers is a classic example of what the press hears and what the press reports.

According to the Department of Defense and journalism trade publication Editor & Publisher, Gen. Myers spoke at length to the gathering of the nation's news gatekeepers about the relationship between the press and the military, asking the editors to report on the full and complete story about U.S. actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As reported by the Armed Forces Press Service, the DoD's own reporters:

“It’s particularly important today … because the American people need to know the full story,” said Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, “because it is going to be their resolve that is so critical to our ability to confront the extremist threat.”

Myers told the editors that he reads far more about the problems of servicemembers’ equipment and the latest insurgent attack than about “the thousands of amazing things our troops are accomplishing.” This concerns him, he said, because American resolve is key to success.

The chairman said that part of the problem lies with the military. He said commanders must be more responsive and give more access to reporters. “We’re working on that,” he told the editors.

But still, “a bomb blast is seen as more newsworthy than the steady progress of rebuilding communities and lives, remodeling schools and running vaccination programs and water purification plants.”

Of course, the liberals would say that since this was reported by the DoD's own stable of reporters, it must be "fake news." But it's news that was also reported independently by Editor & Publisher.

After the end of Gen. Myers' speech to the editors, J. Ford Huffman, an openly gay deputy managing editor at Gannett's flagship USA Today, mounted a soapbox making a statement out his question on whether Gen. Myers continued his support of "Don't ask, don't tell."

As reported by Andrew Ackerman for Editor & Publisher:

When asked by J. Ford Huffman, an assistant managing editor at USA Today, if he has reconsidered his support for the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy in light of a recent government study that found the military has spent more than $220 million on enforcing it, and considering that the military is having trouble reaching recruitment goals, Myers declined to offer any personal reflections: "The way I feel about it right now is support the law the Congress passed in the mid-1990s, and we'll see if we have hearings on this or what."

This was one question with one answer. And, considering Gen. Myers hadn't changed his position on the subject of gays in the military, it was old news and a non-issue. What would the nation's editors deem the most newsworthy part of the speech -- the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff's request to editors that the newspapers' coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan be balanced and fair, the question about gays in the military or both?

If you're a well-read individual, you already know the answer. The nation's newspapers, radio and television stations, and the internet news outlets used an unsigned Associated Press report on the "Don't ask, don't tell" question, covering the answer by Gen. Myers, filling in with historical information on how many gay, lesbian and transgendered service persons have been cashiered from the military since 1993 but declining to inform readers that the question was in fact asked by an openly activist gay editor from USA Today more interested in making a statement and making news himself than covering the news and reporting it fully and accurately.

A Reuters reporter also covered the speech by Gen. Myers. You might think he'd independently write his own story, being from a different news service and a British news service at that. You'd be wrong. Reuters correspondent Will Dunham reported solely about Gen. Myers' position on "Don't ask; don't tell" and declined to include any information about Gen. Myers' request for fair and balanced coverage from the nation's editors.

Only the report by Ackerman at Editor & Publisher contained all the information.

I don't mean to imply there's some kind of conspiracy going on here at the nation's newspapers among the nation's editors, but both reports from the wire services brought in information recently contained in pro-gay, pro-lesbian and pro-transgendered service personnel editorials recently printed in the Washington Post and the Miami Herald that could have been written by the same editorial writer. (I've written about these editorials previously.) And those reports by the Associated Press and Reuters were suprisingly similar to the report written by Paul Johnson, Washington Bureau Chief of 365Gay.com, a gay, lesbian and transgendered news web site with no pretense of balance or objectivity considering the heterosexual viewpoint or the viewpoint of the military on the "gays in the military" issue.

Now don't go believing that Editor & Publisher will always contain balanced information either. Just because Ackerman reported the full story from the speech by Gen. Myers doesn't mean that his associate Joe Strupp didn't short-sheet his report of the comments by conservative Kathleen Parker in a discussion on newspaper bias. Strupp allocated Parker a measely 57 words in his 1,035 word report on the discussion, which quoted heavily from the liberals on the panel.

Strupp wrote: "By and large, however, the other panelists dominated the discussion." But Parker assures me she contributed as much information to the discussion as any of the others, despite being a last minute substitute for a missing panelist. "Anyone who was there would be surprised by that report (in E&P by Strupp)," she wrote me in an e-mail.

Caveat lector -- Reader beware. Considering how the nation's media covered his speech, I hope Gen. Myers isn't counting on complete, fair and balanced coverage of the military in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the news consumer will still be getting ripped off by second rate, agenda-filled reporting masking as journalism.

[Update 4/18/2005: Media that used the unsigned AP report on "Don't ask, don't tell," failing to give their readers a complete and accurate report of Gen. Myers' speech included, at least: Army Times, Miami Herald/Nuevo Herald, USA Today, MSNBC, Kansas City Star, The Guardian (U.K.), San Francisco Chronicle, The Times-Leader, The Herald-Sun, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and San Diego Union-Tribune. If you subscribe to any of the newspapers and are unhappy being short-changed by the reporting of the AP on this particular story, you might want to write the editor and tell them. They may not know their readers missed any information at all.]

[Update 4/18/2005: I've sent notes myself to several of the editors at newspapers which printed the AP story. If I could find an e-mail address or a feedback form on their web site, I sent them a note. Editors select which stories should be printed and it is left to their news judgement what stories the news consumer reads. I personalized each note sent to each publication, citing the URL where the editor printed the particular story. I'll post the responses as I receive them. What follows is the general format of each note I sent out:

Dear XXXXXX,

I just wanted to alert you that an Associated Press wire story your newspaper printed last week contained incomplete information and could mislead readers.

The article in question concerned a speech given by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, to the national convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The article is displayed on your website at the following hyperlink:

[URL for the particular page at each newspaper upon which the AP report was printed.]

Gen. Myers' speech contained much more information than this AP article would lead readers to believe. Editor & Publisher and the Armed Forces Press Service contained salient information the AP failed to report. [Following paragraph added to note to San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com: I realize the San Francisco area has a large gay, lesbian and transgendered community, but giving that community information regarding only gay, lesbian and transgendered issues panders to a particular aspect of their lives and fails to fully serve their news and information needs.][In the e-mail to USA Today, I noted that the question regarding "Don't ask, don't tell" was reportedly asked by USA Today deputy managing editor J. Ford Huffman and added the following paragraph: I realize USA Today may have a large gay, lesbian and transgendered readership, but giving that community information regarding only gay, lesbian and transgendered issues panders to a particular aspect of their lives and fails to fully serve their news and information needs. Moreover, I believe it should be the job of an editor to seek balance and fairness and not be an advocate to any particular cause. That crosses the boundaries of most Codes of Ethics.]

I've also written about this apparent failure on my blog, including hyperlinks to more complete versions of the story:

http://news4a2.blogspot.com/2005/04/whos-spinning-you-and-why.html

I just thought you'd appreciate knowing that your readers are being under-served and short-changed by the AP.

Sincerely,

Mark McBride
Editor, Publisher
The 6th Estate

Response from Kent Miller, Editor, Army Times, Time-News Online: "I'll take a look. Thanks."

Response from Bob Ashley, Editor, The Herald-Sun of Durham, N.C.: "Thank you for your note, and for bringing your concerns about the AP story to my attention. I don't doubt that any wire-service report may include less detail than some who were familiar with the original intent may have wished to see. I would suggest you might want to convey your concerns to the Associated Press." [NEWS4A2, blood-sucking journalist, note: I've contacted the Associated Press on previous occasions regarding another post on The 6th Estate and failed to get a response to my interrogatories. I can guess what their response on this particular report would be -- de nada. But then I don't give them any money. Your local newspaper does.]

First Response from David de la Fuente, Online Editor, SFGate.com -- the internet portal for the San Francisco Chronicle: "This is not for publication on your blog. News doesn't often run stories on itself. You can say that's because it wants to protect its own biases; personally, I think it's because most people (other than the diehard "the media is all liberal!" crowd) just aren't as interested in the media itself as in what it reports. Inside baseball, so to speak. If your argument is from the school that believes that the AP photographers don't deserve their Pulitzer because they weren't showing all the great things that came out of Bush's war and were only showing the nasty bits, then I don't have a lot of use for it." [NEWS4A2, blood-sucking journalist, note: I replied to Mr. de la Fuente's order for me to keep his comments off the record: Thank you for your response. I will publish it on the blog. Since we had no prior agreement, I must deny your request for your comment not to be published. I reported the information to the editor of SFGate.com as the editor of a blog not as your buddy. I was soliciting feedback; you chose to respond. You should have the expectation that I was seeking a response for publication. If I called you on the telephone and told you I was a reporter, would you expect any comments you make to be kept off the record? Of course not. That's the news business. Again, thank you for your reply.]

Second response from David de la Fuente, Online Editor, SFGate.com: "Let me further suggest that E&P, whose audience is journalists, would have an interest in running that story; so would the Armed Forces Press Service, which has an interest in publishing it (both based on who "owns" it and who its audience is). Please remember that we are a general audience medium, and your average John Doe is just not going to be interested in the inside baseball of media reporting. If you'd rather chalk it up to media bias than how we try to serve our audience, be my guest. As a conservative friend of mine once said years ago, You can't convince anyone of anything. These days, he's more right than ever." [NEWS4A2, blood-sucking journalist, responds: To claim that what Gen. Myers had to say to editors was shoptalk strictly for journalists and wouldn't appeal to the public is ludicrous. I wasn't there but let me rewrite the lead based on information I have read: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff accused reporters of slanting the news in Iraq and Afghanistan, concentrating solely on covering the on-going violence but neglecting the progress made. "A bomb blast is seen as more newsworthy than the steady progress of rebuilding communities and lives, remodeling schools and running vaccination programs and water purification plants," Gen. Richard B. Myers told the group of journalists assembled here for an annual editors convention. I'd guarantee the public would be interested in that claim, although this country's admittedly liberal journalists wouldn't want to air their dirty laundry.]

Third response from David de la Fuente, Online Editor, SFGate.com, obviously unhappy with my refusal to follow his order to keep his comments off the record: "Then I further have no use for you, as you do not respect the conventions of the business. Any newspaper would not publish a letter that said "not for publication" at the top. Why, then, are you doing so? If I said early in a phone conversation that these comments were off the record, you ought to respect that. I don't know whether you would; apparently you would not. Nice reporting there. I truly would be surprised if you ever had been a journalist for a reputable news source. Of course, I'm guessing that in your mind, none of us are reputable. [NEWS4A2, blood-sucking journalist, responds: I guess some journalists don't like to be news subjects themselves. Note to news sources who might be interviewed by Mr. de la Fuente, when he calls or writes and identifies himself as the Online Editor of SFGate.com and you've never met him before, he's just doing it to be friendly and chat you up. Trust me, I'm with the press! Any comments you make -- written or otherwise -- won't be recorded for publication until you give him the high sign. I'll bet President Bush will be relieved by that policy! He won't send e-mail to his daughters because he learned his personal e-mail is subject to the Freedom of Information Act, not that any journalist would ever try to obtain private information about the President's daughters just to embarass him ... or them. I'll go by the rules set by the mainstream media: What's good for the President is good for the press. Make your words sweet; one day you may have to eat them.]

[Update 6/5/2005: Read the news the press didn't want to report, and you decide what was the most important information from Air Force Gen. Richard Myers. The website for the Joint Chiefs of Staff has provided transcripts, not only of JCS Chairman Myers' speech to the ASNE convention, but also the follow up question and answer session.]

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Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.