A Washington reader’s comment about the attacks of Hillary Clinton and John McCain against “elitist” Obama:
“How many regular people had the Emir of Dubai give them $15 million through a partnership in the Cayman Islands last year?
How many regular people were the spoiled rotten brat of a Navy Admiral, getting a brand new Corvette Sting-Ray for his 16th birthday?
That these two can criticize as elitist the son of a humble single mother is amazing!”
In the picture, Barack Obama with his grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham.
Tags:
Clinton,
McCain,
Obama
Read this interesting analysis from the Scotsman on Sunday.
The lead:
“Democrat grandees Jimmy Carter and Al Gore are being lined-up to deliver the coup de grâce to Hillary Clinton and end her campaign to become president.”
Yes, it could be the end.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Watch this segment of CNN Politics.
These are strong words against Clinton and McCain’s recent attacks on Obama.
Pay special attention to Jack Cafferty’s straight-to-the-point comment.
Cafferty provides mainly politically incorrect commentary and insight for CNN’s political program, The Situation Room, and has a blog with very sharp, smart posts.
VOICES is one of the most read chapters of our annual global report, INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS — an idea from our New York director, Claude Erbsen.
The report devotes just two pages to the best of the best from the past year. So, I am going to start an electronic extension of this popular feature here.
Your contributions for VOICES are very welcome.
Here are the first two quotes:
From Time magazine’s Justin Fox:
“News was already pretty close to free long before the Internet came along.
It was free on TV, free on the radio, and effectively free in newspapers when you consider all the valuable stuff that came packaged with it for 25 or 50 cents, from comics to crosswords to classifieds to supermarket ads.
And unlike, say, a song–which was free on the radio but worth spending money on to be able to play again and again whenever you wanted to hear it–a day-old newspaper was usually less than worthless.”
From Scott Karp:
“Everyone is thinking about the shift in the economics of content in terms of paying for content, but what publishers are really facing is a shift in the economics of distribution.
We’re still paying for a bundle of information to be delivered to our homes — it’s just that now that bundle is traveling via fiber optic cable rather than newsprint.”
And from Jeff Jarvis:
“Don’t let anyone tell you that this is bad for the content business.
It’s only good sense.
Having worked in the magazine business, I saw this even at the dawn of the internet: As I said above, a magazine has to pay up to $30-40 in marketing costs to acquire subscribers; it can pay up to $5-7 to print and distribute a copy of a glossy magazine; it has high editorial costs.
Add that up, and a magazine can find itself in the hole $60 or more per subscriber in the first year of a subscription.
And they get as little as $1 per issue in subscription revenue.
Yet clearly, a magazine can make money because that subscriber’s value to advertisers is much greater.
It’s the relationship that is valuable.
It’s the relationship that is profitable, not the control of the content or the distribution.”
Watch here how strongly Barack Obama responded to criticism from Hillary Clinton and John McCain, at a town-hall meeting in Indiana:
“No, I’m in touch,” Obama said.
“I know exactly what’s going on.
I know what’s going on in Pennsylvania,
I know what’s going on in Indiana,
I know what’s going on in Illinois.
People are fed up, they’re angry, they’re frustrated, they’re bitter and they want to see a change in Washington.
That’s why I’m running for president of the United States of America.”
Oh, boy!
This guy is a fighter.
Obama and Clinton will face off tomorrow night in a CNN debate.
Stay tuned.
This is going to be a good one.
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
In this picture, Adolf Hitler leads the delegation of sports officials and foreign leaders into the Olympic Stadium for the 1936 Olympic Games.
Well, let’s see who wants to be in the same kind of picture in Beijing in less than 120 days:
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, no.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, no.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, no.
French Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, no.
Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk, no.
Czech Republic President Václav Klaus, no.
US President George W. Bush, still not sure …
Bloomberg reports:
The torch relay, based on a ceremony held at the ancient games in Greece, was started by the Nazi organizers of the 1936 Olympics.
And here’s the first carrier.
More details here:
The Torch Relay, as the opening of the Olympic celebration, was revived in the Berlin Olympiad in 1936 and since then the Torch Relay has preceded every Olympic Summer Games.
Starting from Olympia and carried by the first runner, the young athlete Konstantinos Kondylis, the Flame traveled for the first time hand to hand until it reached the Berlin Olympic Stadium.
It seems that the idea of an Olympic Flame was incorporated as a symbol of Olympism. German sports official and sports scientist Carl Diem conceived the idea of an Olympic torch relay for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
That year, more than 3,000 runners carried the torch from Olympia to Berlin.
German track and field athlete Fritz Schilgen was the last to carry the torch, igniting the flame in the stadium.
Oh, my God, what a mess!
The chairman of Japan’s National Public Safety Commission said Japan will not accept Chinese security guards when the city of Nagano hosts the torch relay on April 26.
They will be banned also from escorting the Olympic torch when it comes to Australia this month, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said.
In India, where the torch arrives to be paraded in New Delhi on April 17, the Chinese have demanded their “Red Guard” accompany the torch. India has responded that its own security is up to the job.
(Poster by sergenry.fr.tc)
The Olympic Torch arrives at Buenos Aires airport.
The reception ceremony in the airport was suspended.
Today in the streets of Buenos Aires, there will be more than 1,300 federal police, 1,500 naval police and some 3,000 traffic police and volunteers to protect the Olympic flame.
Argentina is billing the Olympic torch run as an easygoing street fiesta launched by a tango orchestra.
But officials are worried enough about anti-China protests to mobilize thousands of police after protesters warned of a Buenos Aires “surprise.”
(AP Photo/Leo Zavattaro/Argentina’s Olympic Committee)
