Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=40776"><span class="small">Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page</span></a>
Tuesday, 30 May 2017 11:06
Rather writes: "As a deep anxiety permeates our national and global moment, I find myself on this Memorial Day thinking back to the dark early days of World War II when victory in Europe and the Pacific was anything but assured."
Dan Rather. (photo: Christopher Patey)
We Shall Return
By Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page
30 May 17
e shall return...
As a deep anxiety permeates our national and global moment, I find myself on this Memorial Day thinking back to the dark early days of World War II when victory in Europe and the Pacific was anything but assured. Our armed forces were fighting heroically and suffering great losses. Could we persevere? Would we be there for our friends and allies? General Douglas MacArthur fleeing the Philippines in perilous fashion amidst the Japanese assault in early 1942 vowed "I shall return." Two and a half years later he did. And so shall we now.
I have walked amongst the rows of graves in military cemeteries. I have seen the ages of those who have perished in battle - so young. Such a heavy price. I have seen the toll of valor and freedom. I have seen the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform in distant, dangerous, and foreboding lands. I have seen the high cost of hubris and ineptitude from our political leaders paid for in blood by those who were called or pressed into armed service to their nation. I honor all of those who serve and perished on this solemn today. And I mourn with families who have suffered their losses.
For all these reasons, I chose on this Memorial Day optimism for our national destiny. We have asked for so much of our citizenry and have come so far as a nation for us to falter now. This moment is a test that we have no choice but to pass. To consider any other result is too depressingly hopeless, and I firmly believe that the future is ours to shape. Wise leadership can galvanize our nation to return to the path of justice and sound judgement.
To our allies who fear we have lost our way, I say "We shall return." To our adversaries and enemies who gleefully mark our chaotic state, I warn "We shall return." And to all of you who wonder about the future, I plead to not give up. "We shall return."
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=63"><span class="small">Marc Ash, Reader Supported News</span></a>
Tuesday, 30 May 2017 08:25
Ash writes: "While campaigning for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush rallied a raucous assembly of U.S. service members with his vision for a revitalization of the military."
Zaradasht Ahmed's award winning Iraq War image 'Nowhere to Hide.' (photo: Zaradasht Ahmed)
Help Was Not on the Way
By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
30 May 17
hile campaigning for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush rallied a raucous assembly of U.S. service members with his vision for a revitalization of the military. Bush cited low morale, caused by poor funding and neglect in the Clinton years, as an affront to all armed services, something he as president would not abide. “Help is on the way!” he bellowed, and the soldiers roared their approval.
Help was not in fact on the way. On the way was a return to Vietnam era, war-for-profit thinking. Invade first and manufacture a rationale later was the order of yet another day for a bellicose American president and, once again, a Congress unified in their obedience.
It’s become fashionable in Washington to describe the invasion of Iraq as a “mistake.” It was no mistake. It was a carefully planned-in-advance military extravaganza that enriched defense contractors astronomically and has cost the American taxpayer at least 3 trillion dollars, and perhaps double that.
The cost to the men and women who fought the war was greater. Death, disability, and PTSD are as common for Iraq War veterans as they were for those returning from Vietnam. Again, the result was the same: nothing gained in the face of unspeakable loss. The cost to the Iraqi people was, just as it had been to the Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian people forty years earlier, bearing the weight of an apocalyptic crime against them and all humanity.
Perhaps the greatest insult to those who have served their country is using Memorial Day to sell war itself. The corporate media machine is only too willing to glorify militarism on a day set aside to commemorate sacrifice.
There can be only one true memorial to war — peace.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Why You Should Stop Feeding Your Baby From Trendy Little Food Pouches
Tuesday, 30 May 2017 08:17
Goldberg writes: "For the over-stretched parent who doesn't have time to puree plums or soak grains overnight, portable plastic packs jammed with organic and healthful ingredients are a godsend."
Discarded plastic materials block the Vacha Dam, near the Bulgarian town of Krichim, on April 25, 2009. Single-use plastic containers are 'the biggest source of trash' found near waterways and beaches, according to the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. (photo: Dimitar Dilkoff/Getty Images)
Why You Should Stop Feeding Your Baby From Trendy Little Food Pouches
By Eleanor Goldberg, Reader Supported News
30 May 17
or the over-stretched parent who doesn’t have time to puree plums or soak grains overnight, portable plastic packs jammed with organic and healthful ingredients are a godsend.
On-the-go moms can just twist off the cap and hand a pouch of blueberry flax and oat to a hungry baby to suck on by himself. No spoon or spoon skills required.
While these packs are pricey ? a 4-ounce pouch can cost north of $2 ? families are willing to fork over the funds for the convenience factor. But this convenience comes with another price: Most of these plastic pouches can’t be recycled and are destined for landfills ? or worse, the oceans. The demand is growing even though reasonably priced alternatives are available that can be used over and over again.
The problem with the disposable pouches is that they’re made from multiple layers of materials and the recyclable components can’t be separated out, said Brent Bell, vice president of recycling at Waste Management, the largest residential recycler in North America.
Empty food packs and other types of trash end up in the ocean due to a mix of mismanaged trash disposal and littering. When a person litters, for example, that item can easily blow into a storm drain, travel through sewer pipes and eventually land in waterways.
Stuffing loads of unusual and healthful foods into plastic casings isn’t sitting well with environmentalists.
“There’s definitely a push for clean eating both for kids and grown-ups,” Lindsay Gallimore, a mother of two who blogs about green issues, told HuffPost. “But all the buzz words that are associated with a ‘greener’ lifestyle are packaged into a packaging that’s not green at all.”
If the baby food industry doesn’t come up with a solution soon, the amount of plastic piling up from these products is only going to grow at an explosive rate.
In 2015, sales from baby food pouches reached $45 million. That was up from $8 million in 2010, according to a report from the Freedonia Group, a market research firm.
While plenty of plastic products are harming the environment, activists take specific issue with baby food packs because a number of convenient and eco-friendly alternatives exist, even for time-strapped parents.
“I can’t get everyone to use washable menstrual pads. I certainly can’t get everyone to use cloth diapers,” Gallimore said. “Feeding your baby healthy purees could happen in so many other ways that don’t require the little squishy packs.”
Gallimore likened the advent of plastic baby food packs to the K-Cup phenomenon. While some of these one-time-use coffee pods are technically recyclable, the process is so painstaking that consumers are more likely to throw them in the trash after using them for a few seconds. In fact, John Sylvan, the inventor of the Keurig machine, said he regrets the innovation.
“It was along the same lines as K-Cups for coffee,” Gallimore said of the similarities between the coffee pods and plastic baby food packs. “We were doing fine without them before.”
Before the plastic squeezy packs hit the market, baby food was mostly packaged in glass jars, which are recyclable, reusable and cheaper. Responding to the surge of plastic packs, a number of companies have developed receptacles that work similarly, but can be washed and used more than once.
Rhoost, for example, manufactures 4.5-ounce plastic pouches that can be filled with pureed food repeatedly and washed by hand or in the dishwasher. They run $12.99 for a four-pack.
Though most of the disposable plastic packs can’t be recycled, some experts say there is some merit to them.
They usually require fewer raw materials to produce than recyclable materials, which results in net energy and greenhouse gas emissions savings, Bell, of Waste Management, said. The packages are also designed in such a way to reduce food waste, which is where the “greatest environmental savings are realized,” he said.
Hain Celestial ? the company behind Earth’s Best and Ella’s Kitchen baby food ? is reducing its plastic footprint by partnering with recycling company TerraCycle. After consumers finish with their packs, they can download free shipping labels and send the waste to TerraCycle.
Since the products can’t be separated, they’re shredded and melted into a plastic and pelletized. That material is then sold to manufacturers who can use recycled plastic in their products, Lauren Taylor, TerraCycle’s global director for communications, said.
While this process is a start, it’s not capturing many plastic packages. Celestial sells about 20 million pouches annually in the U.S. alone, said Jared Simon, vice president of marketing for Better-for-You-Baby at Hain Celestial United States. TerraCycle has collected about 3.3 million pouches in the U.S. and the U.K. since it started doing so in 2013.
Even if those numbers increased, environmentalists likely still wouldn’t be satisfied.
“Recycling is awesome ? it’s great. But recycling is not the be all and end all of environmentalism. It’s expensive and it’s not a perfect solution.” Gallimore said. “Instead, how can we replace what we’re using and throwing away with something that we don’t throw away?”
McClennen writes: "A new Harvard study shows that media coverage of Trump's first 100 days is three times higher than other presidents'."
Donald Trump. (photo: Getty Images/Alex Wong/jakkapan21/Salon)
Trump Is a Drug - and the Media Is Addicted
By Sophia A. McClennen, Salon
29 May 17
New Harvard study shows that media coverage of Trump's first 100 days is 3 times higher than other presidents'
ne of the highlights of Stephen Colbert’s first episode as host of “The Late Show” was a bit called “All You Can Trump Buffet.” Colbert opened by mocking the media’s obsession with Trump: “I promise you, just like the rest of the media, I will be covering all of the presidential candidates — who are Donald Trump.” Riffing off of Trump’s claim that he would no longer eat Oreos since Nabisco had moved its plant to Mexico, Colbert alternated between watching media coverage of Trump and pigging out on Oreos.
“One is enough. That is the only Trump story I’ll be treating myself to tonight,” Colbert said, hiding the Oreos under his desk. “Well, maybe just one more,” Colbert went on as he ate an Oreo and showed a clip of Trump and Fusion host Jorge Ramos. Eventually he gave in and poured the whole bag of Oreos over his face while clips of Trump played on. Colbert told viewers he knew that binging on Trump was bad for him, but he couldn’t resist.
That first episode aired on Sept. 8, 2015, well before Trump was the GOP frontrunner, and it proves that Colbert had already nailed a critical problem in media coverage of Trump. Like bystanders staring at a car wreck, the media simply could not take its eyes off of Trump.
There is no way to underestimate the massive damage that the media’s obsession with Trump played in the outcome of the election. In fact, by June 13, 2016, shortly after Trump won the GOP nomination, Harvard’s Shorenstein Center verified that Colbert’s depiction of the media as Trump-addicted had been prescient.
They released a study that showed that the media had given Trump far more attention than his primary race warranted given his early polling numbers.
“Trump is arguably the first bona fide media-created presidential nominee,” they claimed.
The Shorenstein Center further suggested that this unbalanced coverage was likely due to the fact that Trump offered good entertainment value: “Journalists are attracted to the new, the unusual, the sensational — the type of story material that will catch and hold an audience’s attention.” They found that Trump got far more coverage than any of the other candidates — and that most of that early coverage, regardless of the outlet, was positive.
Their next study, which was released one month after the election, found that once Trump was the nominee his coverage turned mainly negative, as it also was for Hillary Clinton. They also found that coverage was “extremely light on policy,” a fact that likely favored Trump. More coverage was on the “horserace” of the election than it was on what the candidates actually stood for.
But more importantly, they found that even in the lead-up to the vote, coverage of Trump was much higher than that of Clinton. “Week after week, Trump got more press attention than did Clinton. Overall, Trump received 15 percent more coverage than she did.”
They also found that Trump defined Clinton more than she defined him. Often if Clinton was covered in the news, the voice describing her was Trump’s and not hers. And yet, when the focus was Trump, he was again more likely to be the voice behind the message.
That data certainly goes a long way to substantiate the claim that the Clinton campaign had to deal with a lot of mansplaining.
Since he took the oath of office, Trump has been the topic of 41 percent of all news stories and has received three times the amount of coverage as that of previous presidents. Even more interesting, Trump was also the featured speaker in nearly two-thirds of his coverage.
Despite cries of liberal bias, the Shorenstein Center also found that Republican voices accounted for 80 percent of what newsmakers said about the Trump presidency, compared to only 6 percent for Democrats and 3 percent for those involved in anti-Trump protests.
Since the inauguration, Colbert’s “All You Can Trump Buffet” has turned into a true gorge-fest.
The latest Shorenstein Report explains that beginning in 1963, when broadcast networks expanded television news to 30 minutes, news coverage began to shift to covering more of the presidency than of Congress. In fact, it is typically true that the president receives about one-eighth of all news attention — coverage that exceeds that of all 535 members of Congress combined.
And yet, “even by that standard,” they explain, “Trump’s first 100 days were a landmark.”
Despite the fact that the Shorenstein Center has been documenting the media’s extraordinary obsession with Trump, news covering their most recent report almost entirely ignored that revelation. Instead, attention was focused on their second key finding about Trump news in his first 100 days: that it was overwhelmingly negative.
In fact, the finding of Trump’s negative coverage was extensively covered by Fox News, especially because the Shorenstein study showed that Fox News was the one mainstream outlet to provide “balanced” coverage. Overall Trump received 80 percent negative coverage of his first 100 days, and yet on Fox News negative coverage logged in at a mere 52 percent.
This led Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson, who had previously disparaged the work of the Shorenstein Center, to gloat. For Carlson, the fact that Fox News had more “even” coverage of Trump proved that Fox was a more egalitarian and less biased network than other cable news. Erik Wemple called the Carlson story a “Shorenstein celebration.” For him, Carlson’s excitement simply proved that Fox News is nothing more than “hypocrisy in action.”
Of course the proof of Fox’s hypocrisy is not news after all. And, for what it’s worth, the finding of news media’s negative bias is not news either. The Shorenstein Center reports that beginning with Vietnam and the Watergate era news reporting turned negative and never really recovered. Journalists tend to focus on what is wrong with a president, not what is right; this helps boost ratings and reputation.
This means, they argue, that if the media has a bias, it is toward the negative, not toward the left. And that bias is driven by the fact that the negative sells better; it hooks viewers who are mesmerized by scandal, sensation and hype.
While it is true that Trump has had more negative coverage than previous presidents, it is less clear why that shift happened. Is it because the press has a vendetta against Trump, as he would like us all to believe? Or it is because his administration has been one dumpster fire after another?
In case you were wondering which conclusion has more basis in fact — it is the dumpster fire.
According to the Shorenstein Center, even accounting for the press’s penchant for the negative, Trump’s administration has brought on the negative reporting all by itself: “The early days of his presidency have been marked by far more missteps and miss-hits, often self-inflicted, than any presidency in memory, perhaps ever.”
We have an unsettling confluence of key factors: Just as the media is increasingly obsessed with sensationalism and biased toward the negative, we elect a Trump administration that is massively inept, aggressive, scandalous, self-aggrandizing and stupid.
But perhaps the most unsettling finding of all is that while the coverage has been negative, it has still focused obsessively on Trump himself. The Shorenstein Center explains that “what’s truly atypical about Trump’s coverage is that it’s sharply negative despite the fact that he’s the source of nearly two-thirds of the sound bites surrounding his coverage.”
News coverage has spent too much time covering Trump’s every move and every tweet — especially those tweets where he attacks the media. In fact, the media loves covering Trump’s meltdowns over his negative media coverage. Trump attacks the media, then the media negatively covers the attacks, then the cycle just repeats itself. It’s a vicious circle that drives ratings and depresses the public.
Meanwhile substantive policy coverage wanes. Focusing on the White House and Washington power plays may make for entertaining TV, but that strategy doesn’t help inform the public on matters of policy in ways that can help citizens be meaningfully engaged.
In fact, this new Shorenstein report only proves that Jon Stewart was right to beg the press to get over its breakup with Trump and stop obsessing about him. Stewart made a cameo on “The Late Show” in late February where he asked the press to “get its groove back.”
“Let’s face facts,” Stewart said, addressing the media.”You kind of let yourself go a little bit these past few years, put on a few pundits, obsessing 24 hours a day, seven days a week, about this one guy: ‘What’s Donnie up to? Did he say anything about us? You think he’s gonna come on our show?'”
Stewart admitted that he understood that it may hurt to see their ex “swiping far right,” but he reminded the press that a breakup can also be a chance for self-reflection and improvement.
“Take up a hobby,” Stewart advised. “I recommend journalism!”
Over 100 days in, Stewart’s advice still hasn’t caught on and there is no reason to think that it will anytime soon. And that’s because, despite all of the negativity, ratings for cable news in the Trump era are on the rise. It’s the audience for the news that’s part of the problem, too. The more viewers reward this soap opera, the more we can expect the drama to continue.
That means that the only way for the media to deal with its addiction to Trump is for all of us watching to finally accept that we have a problem, too. The addiction intervention may well need to start at home.
Jared Kushner's Charmed Life Is About to Come to a Screeching Halt
Monday, 29 May 2017 13:55
Shapiro writes: "Perhaps Jared Kushner really believed that his New York real-estate skills set him up to bring peace to the Middle East, solve the opioid crisis, run a government SWAT team of business experts and protect his father-in-law from disloyal White House advisers."
'Did he think a secret back channel was like a small boy's tin-can telephone?' (photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Jared Kushner's Charmed Life Is About to Come to a Screeching Halt
By Walter Shapiro, Guardian UK
29 May 17
Now that he is ensnared in an FBI investigation, his life in the coming months and maybe years will be a study in misery
erhaps Jared Kushner really believed that his New York real-estate skills set him up to bring peace to the Middle East, solve the opioid crisis, run a government SWAT team of business experts and protect his father-in-law from disloyal White House advisers. And that he could do it all while observing the Jewish Sabbath and reserving enough time for family ski vacations with Ivanka and their three children.
Or maybe Kushner just calculated that all the hype surrounding his White House role was a not-to-be-missed family branding opportunity. After all, the Washington Post recently watched as his sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer, hawked American visas in Beijing to would-be Chinese investors in a troubled Kushner New Jersey real-estate development.
But in all his fantasies about conquering Washington at Donald Trump’s side, Kushner undoubtedly never imagined being ensnared in an FBI investigation.
All that changed, of course, when news broke late last week that Kushner had discussed opening up a secret back channel to Moscow last December in a Trump Tower meeting with the ubiquitous Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Let’s put the most charitable interpretation possible on the facts that have emerged about Kushner:
The bizarre suggestion to use the Russian communications system to secretly link the Trump transition team and the Kremlin could have came from Michael Flynn, the star-crossed national security adviser who was also at the meeting.
Kushner, in his naiveté about government, may also not have remembered that Barack Obama was still president and in charge of all negotiations with Russia. And it was an innocent oversight that Kushner failed to mention his talk with Kislyak on his government security clearance form.
Even under the benign theory that Kushner thought that a secret back channel was like a small boy’s tin-can telephone, his life in the coming months and maybe years will be a study in misery. He will probably spend more time with his personal lawyer, Clinton Justice Department veteran Jamie Gorelick, than with Ivanka or his children. Whether it is an appearance under oath on Capitol Hill or the inevitable FBI interview, every sentence Kushner utters will bring with it possible legal jeopardy.
Kushner may have once thought that he established his tough-guy credentials when he stared down angry creditors and impatient bankers over his ill-timed 2007 purchase of a $1.8bn Fifth Avenue office building. But the worst thing that can happen to an over-leveraged real-estate investor (as Trump himself knows well) is bankruptcy. When the FBI and special prosecutor Robert Mueller get involved, the penalties can theoretically involve steel bars locking behind you.
That ominous sound is familiar to Kushner from his weekly visits more than a decade ago to his real-estate mogul father, Charles, in federal prison in Alabama. US Attorney Chris Christie (the ironies of Trump World abound) successfully prosecuted Charles Kushner in 2005 for tax evasion, witness tampering and unlawful campaign contributions. The Jared Kushner coming of age story pivots around a loyal son taking over the New Jersey-based real-estate firm when his father was a guest of the government.
Now the presidential son-in-law may be worrying in his late night moments that family history may be repeating itself. He may put on a brave front in public and encourage the current rumors that he and Ivanka are tiring of Washington, but for Kushner the high adventure of a senior White House post ended abruptly during last week’s European grand tour.
If Jared and Ivanka do return to New York – either voluntarily or as part of a White House legal strategy – their departure will accentuate Trump’s fate as the loneliest man in Washington. Trapped in the trappings of a White House that he can’t demolish to build something grander, Trump is surrounded by aides like Reince Priebus and HR McMaster whom he neither fully trusts nor feels
All White Houses go through a phase when the familiar faces from the campaign and the Inauguration have disappeared from burnout and a desire to cash in. That is when a president looks around at his senior staff and asks himself: “Who are these guys? Why am I surrounded by strangers?”
Usually that moment comes sometime in a president’s second term. For Trump, the exodus may occur before his first summer in the Oval Office is over.
The Kushner news reminds me of the saddest person I ever saw coming out of the White House. It was a Clinton administration official, shuffling along with his downcast eyes focused on the sidewalk, who had been caught up in the exaggerated first-term scandal known as Whitewater.
There in his familial loyalty to Donald Trump goes Jared Kushner, who is learning a hard lesson about Washington, back channels to the Russians and the FBI.
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e shall return...
or the over-stretched parent who doesn’t have time to puree plums or soak grains overnight, portable plastic packs jammed with organic and healthful ingredients are a godsend.
ne of the highlights of Stephen Colbert’s first episode as host of “The Late Show” was a bit called “
erhaps Jared Kushner really believed that his New York real-estate skills set him up to bring peace to the Middle East, solve the opioid crisis, run a government SWAT team of business experts and protect his father-in-law from disloyal White House advisers. And that he could do it all while observing the Jewish Sabbath and reserving enough time for family ski vacations with Ivanka and their three children.
