test

greenspun.com : LUSENET : HTML test forum : One Thread

The Link to the story here

New Economy: The Spread of News by E-Mail Is Becoming News Itself

January 29, 2001 By PAMELA LICALZI O'CONNELL

as last week's biggest news story President Bush's education plan? Or was it the study contending that American men may have smaller penises, on average, than Brazilian men?

One story dominated headlines; the other was forwarded frantically around the Net. And the episode provided insight into the role of the Web audience in determining, and maybe even increasing, the market value of information once it goes online.

People often pass around news articles via e-mail. Some even do it compulsively, in part because it's so easy: most news sites include an "e- mail this article" link on some or all of their stories.

But until last spring, apparently, no site made use of the statistics generated by those e-mail links. That was when Yahoo News, on a lark, created a new feature called "Most- emailed content." The page (http ://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/mt/us/dailynews/?u) lists the 20 most-frequently forwarded stories and the dozen photos in the previous six hours from Yahoo News. (The Brazil story was at, or near, the top of the list for several days.)

, and it has become something of a cult favorite among heavy consumers of news. "We were positively surprised," said Kourosh Karimkhany, a senior producer at Yahoo News. "One of our engineers came up with the idea. It wasn't an editor."

As a result of the page's success, Yahoo added "Most- emailed" lists for other news sections, including sports and finance. The company also created another statistics-based feature, this one a bit more conventional: "Most-viewed content," a list of the headlines and photos most clicked on in the last hour.

"Most-viewed," which began in August, is heavy on breaking news and entertainment stories, while "Most-emailed" tends toward the quirky or bizarre. Last Thursday, for example, a news article about the pronouncements of the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, topped the "Most-viewed" list, while "Man Accidentally Saws Off Hand" was No. 1 on "Most e-mailed."

"Most-viewed" and "Most- emailed" are among the most popular pages on Yahoo News, Mr. Karimkhany said, adding that similar efforts were in the works.

Danny Sullivan, who is the editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, compared the "Most" pages to the Yahoo Buzz Index and the Lycos Top 50 — two continually updated lists of the most popular search terms. "Actually, I'm surprised it's taken them this long to turn all that fantastic live data into content," Mr. Sullivan said of the Yahoo News features.

For Yahoo, which remains heavily dependent on advertising revenue, there is every incentive to find ways to increase the page views of its material without increasing costs.

"I think everyone is looking for ways to produce cheap content," said Robert Hertzberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research. "Using internal stats seems a sure-fire strategy. The information is there; why not use it?" •

Of course, Yahoo News is not a typical news site. It does not create articles and photos, but instead culls material from news organizations in exchange for a portion of Yahoo's ad revenues. And so far, major news sites like CNN.com and MSNBC.com seem to take a much more proprietary view of their content and how their audiences use it.

MSNBC, for example, adds an e- mail link only to some of its articles. And while these sites sometimes issue news releases on topics — like which streaming-media files have been downloaded the most during a particular time period — that data is not used to repackage content into greatest-hits lists.

Michael Silberman, MSNBC.com's executive editor, said he had no interest in developing features based on, say, the most clicked story, despite the pressures to produce content more cheaply. His site has long offered a page known as "Viewers' Top 10," which lists the stories rated most highly by its readers. But the list has a different mission from Yahoo's "Most" pages, he said.

"The purpose of this feature is to encourage users to inform other users about interesting stuff on the site — stories not found on the cover page necessarily," Mr. Silberman said. "Our mission is not to try to generate cheap or user-created content."

Cheap or not, popular-demand content has its own intrinsic value.

"People are interested in what other people are interested in," said Sreenath Sreenivasan, a journalism professor at Columbia and administrator of the Online Journalism Awards.

And knowing what most interests the public may prove valuable not only to consumers of news but also to the news media themselves, Mr. Sreenivasan said. He argues that journalists and editors need to pay more attention to sites like Yahoo News, because they are "changing the way readers get news."

"There's never been any medium where you get such great detail on what people are reading and talking about," he said. "What we do with that information could really change our business, if we allow it."

Others see the popularity of the Yahoo features as further confirmation of a post-modern interest in "news about news."

"News tells us what happens," said Arthur Asa Berger, a professor who teaches about popular culture and the media at San Francisco State University. "News about news enables us to speculate about all kinds of things, trends in society and the like. And it may be more engaging than the news itself."

-- testguy (test@guy.com), January 29, 2001

Answers

I am pretty confident that most of you have qualified for at least 1-3. Many of you have seen 4-6.

Enjoy! (as it were)

1 star hangover (*)
No pain. No real feeling of illness. Your sleep last night was a mere disco nap which is giving you a whole lot of misplaced energy. Be glad that you are able to function relatively well. However, you are still parched. You can drink 10 sodas and still feel this way. You are craving a steak bomber and a side of gravy fries.

2 star hangover (**)
No pain, but something is definitely amiss. You may look okay but you have the mental capacity of a staple gun. The coffee you chug is only irritating your rumbling gut, which is craving a rootie tootie fresh and fruity pancake breakfast from IHOP. Last night has wreaked havoc on your bowels.

3 star hangover (***)
Slight headache. Stomach feels crappy. You are definitely not productive. Anytime a girl walks by you gag because her perfume reminds you of the random gin shots you did with your alcoholic friends after the bouncer 86'd you at 1:45 a.m. Life would be better right now if you were in your bed with a dozen donuts and a meatball sub watching the E! fashion awards. You've had 4 cups of coffee, a gallon of water, 3 Snapples and a liter of diet coke - yet you haven't peed once.

4 star hangover (****)
Life sucks. Your head is throbbing and you can't speak too quickly or else you might puke. Your boss has already lambasted you for being late and has given you a lecture for reeking of booze. You wore nice clothes, but that can't hide the fact that you missed an oh-so crucial spot shaving, (girls, it looks like you put your make-up on while riding the bumper cars). Your eyes look like one big vein and your hair style makes you look like a reject from the class picture of Revere High, '76.

5 star hangover,(*****) aka "Dante's 4th Circle of Hell."
You have a second heartbeat in your head which is actually annoying the employee who sits in the next cube. Vodka vapor is seeping out of every pore and making you dizzy. You still have toothpaste crust in the corners of your mouth from brushing your teeth. Your body has lost the ability to generate saliva, so your tongue is suffocating you. Death seems pretty good right now. You definitely don't remember who you were with, where you were, what you drank, and why there is a stranger still sleeping in your bed at your house.

6 star hangover (******) otherwise known as the "Infinite Nutsmacker"
You wake up on your bathroom floor. For about 2 seconds you look at the ceiling, wondering if the cool refreshing feeling on your cheek is the bathroom tile or your vomit from 5 hours ago. It is amazing how your roommate was as drunk as you, but somehow manages to get up before you the next morning....You try to lift your head. Not an option. It is when you turn your head too quickly only to smell the funk of 13 packs of cigarettes in your hair, and suddenly you realize you were smoking, but not ultra lights...some jackass handed you Marlboro reds, and you smoked them like it was your second full time job. You look in the mirror only to see remnants of the stamp "Ready to Rock" faintly atop your forehead...... that explains the stamp on the back of your hand that has magically appeared on your forehead by alcoholic osmosis. You have to be to work in t-minus 14 minutes and 32 seconds and the only thing you can think of wearing is your "hello kitty" pajamas and your slippers.

-- (testing@gain.here), February 02, 2001.


The Five Levels of Drinking

Level 1
It's 11:00 on a weeknight, you've had a few beers. You get up to leave because you have work the next day and one of your friends buys another round. One of your UNEMPLOYED friends. Here at level one you think to yourself, "Oh come on, this is silly, why as long as I get seven hours of sleep (snap fingers), I'm cool.".

Level 2
It's midnight. You've had a few more beers. You've just spent 20 minutes arguing against artificial turf. You get up to leave again, but at level two, a little devil appears on your shoulder. And now you're thinking, "Hey! I'm out with my friends! What am I working for anyway? These are the good times! Besides, as long as I get five hours sleep (snaps fingers) I'm cool.".

Level 3
One in the morning. You've abandoned beer for tequila. You've just spent 20 minutes arguing FOR artificial turf. And now you're thinking, "Our waitress is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen!" At level three, you love the world. On the way to the bathroom you buy a drink for the stranger at the end of the bar just because you like his face. You get drinking fantasies. (like,"Hey fellas, if we bought our own bar, we could live together forever. We could do it. Tommy, you could cook.") But at level three, that devil is a little bit bigger....and he's buying. And you're thinking "Oh, come on, come on now. As long as I get three hours sleep...and a complete change of blood (snaps fingers), I'm cool.".

Level 4
Two in the morning. And the devil is bartending. For last call, you ordered a bottle of rum and a Coke. You ARE artificial turf! This time on your way to the bathroom, you punch the stranger at the end of the bar. Just because you don't like his face! And now you're thinking, "Our busboy is the best looking man I've ever seen." You and your friends decide to leave, right after you get thrown out, and one of you knows an after hours bar. And here, at level four, you actually think to yourself, "Well....as long as I'm only going to get a few hours sleep anyway, I may as well....STAY UP ALL NIGHT!!!! Yeah! That'd be good for me. I don't mind going to that board meeting looking like Keith Richards. Yeah, I'll turn that around, make it work for me. And besides, as long as I get 31 hours sleep tomorrow...cool.

Level 5
Five in the morning. after unsuccessfully trying to get your money back at the tattoo parlor ("But I don't even know anybody named Ruby!!!"), you and your friends wind up across the state line in a bar with guys who have been in prison as recently as...that morning. It's the kind of place where even the devil is going, "Uh, I gotta turn in. I gotta be in Hell at nine. I've got that brunch with Hitler, I can't miss that." At this point, you're all drinking some kind of thick blue liquor, like something from a Klingon wedding. A waitress with fresh stitches comes over, and you think to yourself, "Someday I'm gonna marry that girl!!" One of your friends stands up and screams, "WE'RE DRIVIN' TO FLORIDA!!!!!" and passes out. You crawl outside for air, and then you hit the worst part of level five: the sun. You weren't expecting that were you? You never do. You walk out of a bar in daylight, and you see people on their way to work, or jogging. And they look at you-and they know. And they say..."Who's Ruby?"

Let's be honest, if you're 19 and you stay up all night, it's like a victory like you've beat the night, but if you're over 30, then that sun is like God's flashlight. We all say the same prayer then, "I swear, I will never do this again (how long?) as long as I live!" And some of us have that little addition, "and this time, I mean it!"

-- (testing@gain.here), February 02, 2001.




-- Bus Master (busmaster@bus.net), February 03, 2001.



-- testguy (test@guy.com), February 03, 2001.



-- testguy (test@guy.com), February 03, 2001.


Link Eight Years of Fawning Over the Clintons

1993

"If we could be one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in the White House, we’d take it right now and walk away winners...Thank you very much and tell Mrs. Clinton we respect her and we’re pulling for her."
-- Dan Rather at a May 27 meeting of CBS station affiliate’s managers, talking via satellite to President Clinton about his then new on-air partnership with Connie Chung as co-anchor.

"There’s no doubting that the nation is about to be led by its first sensitive male chief executive. He’s the first President to have attended both Lamaze classes and family therapy (as part of his brother’s drug rehabilitation). He can speak in the rhythms and rhetoric of pop psychology and self-actualization. He can search for the inner self while seeking connectedness with the greater whole."
-- Newsweek Washington reporter Howard Fineman, January 25 news story.

"She’s ecumenical but prefers Italian and Mexican. The President fixes her eggs with jalapeño peppers on the weekends. One Christmas she served black beans and chili as part of a buffet. She carries Tabasco sauce wherever she goes....Valentine’s Day at the Red Sage restaurant. Even at a romantic outing, the President can be the date from hell, talking to everyone but the girl he brung.... Finally alone, they have ‘painted soup’ and the lamb baked in herbed bread. They exchange gifts and touch each other more in two hours than the Bushes did in four years."
-- Time reporter Margaret Carlson on Bill and Hillary, in the June Vanity Fair.

 

1994

"To watch this President connect with people emotionally is an awesome thing. It’s a raw, needy, palpable, electrifying thing that happens. There was no smile. It’s as if he’s soaking up the people like he’s soaking up the sun, with the warmth pouring deep and direct into his political soul and recharging him, refilling him somehow once again with his own humanity and some sense of his role in the destiny of his country. Then, the hunger slaked, the great beast of Need fed once again, it seemed you could almost see the gratitude pouring off his brow like sweat as he made his way."
-- Washington Post reporter Phil McCombs, March 30 Style section story on President Clinton vacationing in California.

"Her [Hillary Clinton] role has been a success. She awakened the nation. She educated the nation. She enlightened the nation....For when a nation gets two leaders for the price of one -- a Franklin and Eleanor, a Bill and Hillary -- it can tackle twice as many problems, find twice as many solutions, make twice as much progress."
-- Former NBC News President Michael Gartner in his USA Today column, September 27.

"Well, it may seem the sheerest act of heresy to say so, but far from being pathologically dishonest, Bill Clinton has been more faithful to his word than any other chief executive in recent memory. He may have skirted the truth about the draft, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, and so on. But Clinton has kept his contract with voters. On policy issues, he has done almost exactly what he said he was going to do, despite setbacks and enormous obstacles. And by so doing, he has made himself an excellent President."
-- Former Newsweek reporter Jacob Weisberg in New York magazine, September 5 issue.

 

1995

"I’d like to start, if I may, with what I think you may think is a puzzlement. You’ve reduced the deficit. You’ve created jobs. Haiti hasn’t been an enormous problem. You’ve got a crime bill with your assault weapon ban in it. You got NAFTA, you got GATT, and 50 percent of the people don’t want you to run again. Where’s the disconnect there?"
-- Question from ABC anchor Peter Jennings interviewing President Bill Clinton on the January 5 World News Tonight.

 

1996

"If Ken Starr is a credible prosecutor he will bring this to a conclusion and the Clintons will be exonerated."
-- Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift on independent counsel Ken Starr’s investigation, February 10 McLaughlin Group.

"You also quote a letter in [It Takes a Village] that Nelson Mandela wrote to one of his daughters while he was in prison, and I’m paraphrasing a bit, but he wrote that there is no personal misfortune that one cannot turn into a personal triumph if one has the iron will and the necessary skills. You clearly have an iron will, you clearly are skilled. How are you going to turn this personal misfortune into a personal triumph?"
-- Question to Hillary Rodham Clinton from Today substitute co-host Maria Shriver, referring to Hillary appearing before a grand jury, January 16.

 

1997

"His sturdy jaw precedes him. He smiles from sea to shining sea. Is this President a candidate for Mt. Rushmore or what?...In fact, when it comes to influencing the public, a single medley of expressions from Clinton may be worth much more, to much of America, than every ugly accusation Paula Jones can muster."
-- Los Angeles Times television writer Howard Rosenberg reviewing Clinton
*s Inaugural address, January 22.

"As he begins his second term you may lament that President Clinton leaves little eloquence....He faces personal charges about his conduct in a motel bedroom, and ethical allegations about opening the Lincoln bedroom to the highest contributor. But you come back to the fact that if Bill Clinton isn’t always trusted, he has twice been entrusted by the largest responsibility we have to bestow by voters who can have few illusions. Instead they seem to trust that as President Clinton displays his own excesses and frailties he forgives and accepts ours, too."
-- NPR weekend anchor Scott Simon, Jan. 19 NBC Today.

 

1998

"The best chance for Clinton to shine in history might be for Congress to force him to pay the price for lying about sex. In the unlikely event he is pushed from office, it would take only weeks, maybe just days, before a vast national remorse set in. We destroyed our lovable rogue prince of prosperity over this? Clinton would become a martyr to a legal system run amok. His defeat would mean victory over not just sheet-sniffing prosecutors but all those who would criminalize politics with endless investigations. As legacies go, balancing the budget might look puny by comparison."
-- Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter in the August 24 issue.

"Who has ever been punished more for adultery in this country? I mean, you have to go to Saudi Arabia to see people shamed the way the President was. And I think it was nobody’s business."
-- Time’s Margaret Carlson on NBC’s Today, August 19.

"I would be happy to give him [Clinton] a blow job just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs."
-- Time contributor and former reporter Nina Burleigh recalling what she told the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz about her feeling toward Bill Clinton, as recounted by Burleigh in the July 20 New York Observer.

 

1999

"We were talking about -- speaking for all women, if I may, Toni Morrison wrote in The New Yorker that Clinton was our first ‘black President,’ and I think, in a way, Clinton may be our first ‘woman President.’ And I think that may be one of the reasons why women identify, because he does have a lot of feminine qualities about him: The softness, the sensitivity, the vulnerability, that kind of thing."
-- The Washington Post’s Sally Quinn on CNN’s Larry King Live, March 10.

"She emerged on health care, only to beat a very bruised retreat. She clearly hated being thought of as just Bill Clinton’s wife. But ironically, it would take his scandals, finally, to free her. Finally, last November 1998, Hillary Clinton showed the world what she could do on the campaign trail without him. Political mastery, every bit as dazzling as his, the thoughtful speech, unapologetically strong, emboldening Democrats, electing Senators. So her friends say she has really earned this campaign, this moment, if she chooses, earned it by changing herself, searching, stumbling, and at the end, by standing, not by her man, but by herself."
-- Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America, March 12.

"It’s not unlike watching a BMW, fully loaded, the sunroof back, the heated seats, the Blaupunkt speakers blasting. No curves, no spin, a 180-kilometer-an-hour purity of performance. It’s December and a press conference in the bowels of the cement box that is the State Department, and up there on the stage, hand jauntily in pocket and press corps in the palm of his hand, the President is wowing ‘em again. So you have again the fractured promise of William Jefferson Clinton. Oxford Bill with the political skill set of a veteran Chicago ward-heeler. More intellectually supple than Al Gore without the rent-a-wreck personality. More politically attuned than George W. Bush, and he really reads the books."
-- Washington Post reporter Michael Powell in a December 9 Style section story the day after a Clinton press conference.

 

2000

"You’re going to miss that guy. Don’t tell me you’re not gonna miss that guy. This is a master. He may be a rogue, but he is an artful and pleasant rogue and done a hell of a job as President. I’m gonna miss the guy...He should’ve been the vice presidential candidate."
-- Geraldo Rivera after humming the theme from Rocky over footage of Clinton’s pre-speech hallway walk at the Democratic convention, August 21 Rivera Live on CNBC.



-- Bus Master (busmaster@bus.net), February 08, 2001.

The Link to the story here NASA to webcast Eros landing
By: Lucy Sherriff Posted: 12/02/2001 at 12:39 GMT A NASA space probe will land on the asteroid Eros later today. NASA says that it will provide a video stream of events at mission control over the web as well as via satellite. The pictures will be available to the public, via either the NASA site or the NEAR homepage, on a "first-come-first-served" basis, the agency said. Over a four hour period today, starting at 10.31 AM Eastern Standard Time, the US space agency will initiate a series of engine burns that will bring the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft down onto the surface of the asteroid. The first pictures from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) will be broadcast on the Telstar K5 satellite between seven and eight AM, EST, but the first web feed of the descent begins later - at 1:30, again eastern time. The landing of the NEAR Shoemaker probe will be the furthest landing from earth ever undertaken. The craft has orbited the asteroid for the past year. Its mission was to collect as much compositional data as possible about the asteroid, and learn more about its relationship with the rest of the material in the solar system. NASA said that it hopes streaming material over the web will stimulate the public's interst in NASA and its missions. ®

-- testguy (test@guy.com), February 12, 2001.

I've added a new. It's an HTML practice forum.

Learn how to do this

OR

How to post photos like this...



Click the link to go to Uncle Bob's HTML Practice Forum.

Practice what you post and post what you practice! You may pre-post a message here so you can see it, tweak it, and perfect it before you post it elsewhere. The forum includes links to HTML sites for beginners or experts. You may download a free code generator as well. You do not need to register in order to practice here. Practice anonymously as the forum will be pruned on a regular basis. Check it out!

-- testguy (t@t.t), March 01, 2001.



-- testguy (t@t.t), March 02, 2001.



-- testguy (t@t.t), March 02, 2001.




-- testguy (t@t.t), March 02, 2001.

Is this what the electorate wanted?

Did Americans really want a president who would smile in the faces of poor children even as he was scheming to cut their benefits? Did they want a man who would fight like crazy for enormous tax cuts for the wealthy while cutting funds for programs to help abused and neglected kids?

Is that who George W. Bush turned out to be?

An article by The Times's Robert Pear disclosed last week that President Bush will propose cuts in the already modest funding for child- care assistance for low-income families. And he will propose cuts in funding for programs designed to investigate and combat child abuse. And he wants cuts in an important new program to train pediatricians and other doctors at children's hospitals across the U.S.

The cuts are indefensible, unconscionable. If implemented, they will hurt many children.

The president also plans to cut off all of the money provided by Congress for an "early learning" trust fund, which is an effort to improve the quality of child care and education for children under 5.

What's going on?

That snickering you hear is the sound of Mr. Bush recalling the great fun he had playing his little joke on the public during the presidential campaign. He presented himself as a different kind of Republican, a friend to the downtrodden, especially children. He hijacked the copyrighted slogan of the liberal Children's Defense Fund, and then repeated the slogan like a mantra, telling anyone who would listen that his administration would "leave no child behind."

Mr. Bush has only been president two months and already he's leaving the children behind.

There are many important reasons to try to expand the accessibility of child care. One is that stable child care for low-income families has become a cornerstone of successful efforts to move people from welfare to work.

Members of Congress had that in mind when they allocated $2 billion last year for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. That was an increase of $817 million, enabling states to provide day care to 241,000 additional children.

Now comes Mr. Bush with a proposal to cut the program by $200 million.

Is that his idea of compassion?

The simple truth is that the oversized tax cuts and Mr. Bush's devotion to the ideologues and the well- heeled special interests that backed his campaign are playing havoc with the real-world interests not just of children, but of most ordinary Americans.

Mr. Bush is presiding over a right- wing juggernaut that has already reneged on his campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions (an important step in the fight against global warming); that has repealed a set of workplace safety rules that were designed to protect tens of millions of Americans but were opposed as too onerous by business groups; that has withdrawn new regulations requiring a substantial reduction in the permissible levels of arsenic, a known carcinogen, in drinking water; and that has (to the loud cheers of the most conservative elements in the G.O.P.) ended the American Bar Association's half- century-old advisory role in the selection of federal judges, thus making it easier to appoint judges with extreme right-wing sensibilities.

The administration of George W. Bush, in the words of the delighted Edwin J. Feulner, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is "more Reaganite than the Reagan administration."

Grover Norquist, a leading conservative strategist, said quite frankly, "There isn't an us and them with this administration. They is us. We is them."

Mr. Bush misled the public during his campaign. He eagerly donned the costume of the compassionate conservative and deliberately gave the impression that if elected he would lead a moderate administration that would govern, as much as possible, in a bipartisan manner.

Last October, in the second presidential debate, Mr. Bush declared, "I'm really strongly committed to clean water and clean air and cleaning up the new kinds of challenges, like global warming."

And he said, as usual, "No child should be left behind in America."

He said all the right things. He just didn't mean them.



-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), March 26, 2001.

Single-Page View

March 26, 2001

IN AMERICA

The Mask Comes Off

By BOB HERBERT

Related 
Articles

Op-Ed Columns Archive
Readers' 
Opinions

Join a Discussion on Bob Herbert

Is this what the electorate wanted?

Did Americans really want a president who would smile in the faces of poor children even as he was scheming to cut their benefits? Did they want a man who would fight like crazy for enormous tax cuts for the wealthy while cutting funds for programs to help abused and neglected kids?

Is that who George W. Bush turned out to be?

An article by The Times's Robert Pear disclosed last week that President Bush will propose cuts in the already modest funding for child- care assistance for low-income families. And he will propose cuts in funding for programs designed to investigate and combat child abuse. And he wants cuts in an important new program to train pediatricians and other doctors at children's hospitals across the U.S.

The cuts are indefensible, unconscionable. If implemented, they will hurt many children.

The president also plans to cut off all of the money provided by Congress for an "early learning" trust fund, which is an effort to improve the quality of child care and education for children under 5.

What's going on?

That snickering you hear is the sound of Mr. Bush recalling the great fun he had playing his little joke on the public during the presidential campaign. He presented himself as a different kind of Republican, a friend to the downtrodden, especially children. He hijacked the copyrighted slogan of the liberal Children's Defense Fund, and then repeated the slogan like a mantra, telling anyone who would listen that his administration would "leave no child behind."

Mr. Bush has only been president two months and already he's leaving the children behind.

There are many important reasons to try to expand the accessibility of child care. One is that stable child care for low-income families has become a cornerstone of successful efforts to move people from welfare to work.

Members of Congress had that in mind when they allocated $2 billion last year for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. That was an increase of $817 million, enabling states to provide day care to 241,000 additional children.

Now comes Mr. Bush with a proposal to cut the program by $200 million.

Is that his idea of compassion?

The simple truth is that the oversized tax cuts and Mr. Bush's devotion to the ideologues and the well- heeled special interests that backed his campaign are playing havoc with the real-world interests not just of children, but of most ordinary Americans.

Mr. Bush is presiding over a right- wing juggernaut that has already reneged on his campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions (an important step in the fight against global warming); that has repealed a set of workplace safety rules that were designed to protect tens of millions of Americans but were opposed as too onerous by business groups; that has withdrawn new regulations requiring a substantial reduction in the permissible levels of arsenic, a known carcinogen, in drinking water; and that has (to the loud cheers of the most conservative elements in the G.O.P.) ended the American Bar Association's half- century-old advisory role in the selection of federal judges, thus making it easier to appoint judges with extreme right-wing sensibilities.

The administration of George W. Bush, in the words of the delighted Edwin J. Feulner, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is "more Reaganite than the Reagan administration."

Grover Norquist, a leading conservative strategist, said quite frankly, "There isn't an us and them with this administration. They is us. We is them."

Mr. Bush misled the public during his campaign. He eagerly donned the costume of the compassionate conservative and deliberately gave the impression that if elected he would lead a moderate administration that would govern, as much as possible, in a bipartisan manner.

Last October, in the second presidential debate, Mr. Bush declared, "I'm really strongly committed to clean water and clean air and cleaning up the new kinds of challenges, like global warming."

And he said, as usual, "No child should be left behind in America."

He said all the right things. He just didn't mean them.



-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), March 26, 2001.



-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), March 26, 2001.

1">Single-Page View

March 26, 2001

IN AMERICA

The Mask Comes Off

By BOB HERBERT

Related 
Articles

Op-Ed Columns Archive
Readers' 
Opinions

Join a Discussion on Bob Herbert

Is this what the electorate wanted?

Did Americans really want a president who would smile in the faces of poor children even as he was scheming to cut their benefits? Did they want a man who would fight like crazy for enormous tax cuts for the wealthy while cutting funds for programs to help abused and neglected kids?

Is that who George W. Bush turned out to be?

An article by The Times's Robert Pear disclosed last week that President Bush will propose cuts in the already modest funding for child- care assistance for low-income families. And he will propose cuts in funding for programs designed to investigate and combat child abuse. And he wants cuts in an important new program to train pediatricians and other doctors at children's hospitals across the U.S.

The cuts are indefensible, unconscionable. If implemented, they will hurt many children.

The president also plans to cut off all of the money provided by Congress for an "early learning" trust fund, which is an effort to improve the quality of child care and education for children under 5.

What's going on?

That snickering you hear is the sound of Mr. Bush recalling the great fun he had playing his little joke on the public during the presidential campaign. He presented himself as a different kind of Republican, a friend to the downtrodden, especially children. He hijacked the copyrighted slogan of the liberal Children's Defense Fund, and then repeated the slogan like a mantra, telling anyone who would listen that his administration would "leave no child behind."

Mr. Bush has only been president two months and already he's leaving the children behind.

There are many important reasons to try to expand the accessibility of child care. One is that stable child care for low-income families has become a cornerstone of successful efforts to move people from welfare to work.

Members of Congress had that in mind when they allocated $2 billion last year for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. That was an increase of $817 million, enabling states to provide day care to 241,000 additional children.

Now comes Mr. Bush with a proposal to cut the program by $200 million.

Is that his idea of compassion?

The simple truth is that the oversized tax cuts and Mr. Bush's devotion to the ideologues and the well- heeled special interests that backed his campaign are playing havoc with the real-world interests not just of children, but of most ordinary Americans.

Mr. Bush is presiding over a right- wing juggernaut that has already reneged on his campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions (an important step in the fight against global warming); that has repealed a set of workplace safety rules that were designed to protect tens of millions of Americans but were opposed as too onerous by business groups; that has withdrawn new regulations requiring a substantial reduction in the permissible levels of arsenic, a known carcinogen, in drinking water; and that has (to the loud cheers of the most conservative elements in the G.O.P.) ended the American Bar Association's half- century-old advisory role in the selection of federal judges, thus making it easier to appoint judges with extreme right-wing sensibilities.

The administration of George W. Bush, in the words of the delighted Edwin J. Feulner, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is "more Reaganite than the Reagan administration."

Grover Norquist, a leading conservative strategist, said quite frankly, "There isn't an us and them with this administration. They is us. We is them."

Mr. Bush misled the public during his campaign. He eagerly donned the costume of the compassionate conservative and deliberately gave the impression that if elected he would lead a moderate administration that would govern, as much as possible, in a bipartisan manner.

Last October, in the second presidential debate, Mr. Bush declared, "I'm really strongly committed to clean water and clean air and cleaning up the new kinds of challenges, like global warming."

And he said, as usual, "No child should be left behind in America."

He said all the right things. He just didn't mean them.



-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), March 26, 2001.


Single-Page View

March 26, 2001

IN AMERICA

The Mask Comes Off

By BOB HERBERT

Related 
Articles

Op-Ed Columns Archive
Readers' 
Opinions

Join a Discussion on Bob Herbert

Is this what the electorate wanted?

Did Americans really want a president who would smile in the faces of poor children even as he was scheming to cut their benefits? Did they want a man who would fight like crazy for enormous tax cuts for the wealthy while cutting funds for programs to help abused and neglected kids?

Is that who George W. Bush turned out to be?

An article by The Times's Robert Pear disclosed last week that President Bush will propose cuts in the already modest funding for child- care assistance for low-income families. And he will propose cuts in funding for programs designed to investigate and combat child abuse. And he wants cuts in an important new program to train pediatricians and other doctors at children's hospitals across the U.S.

The cuts are indefensible, unconscionable. If implemented, they will hurt many children.

The president also plans to cut off all of the money provided by Congress for an "early learning" trust fund, which is an effort to improve the quality of child care and education for children under 5.

What's going on?

That snickering you hear is the sound of Mr. Bush recalling the great fun he had playing his little joke on the public during the presidential campaign. He presented himself as a different kind of Republican, a friend to the downtrodden, especially children. He hijacked the copyrighted slogan of the liberal Children's Defense Fund, and then repeated the slogan like a mantra, telling anyone who would listen that his administration would "leave no child behind."

Mr. Bush has only been president two months and already he's leaving the children behind.

There are many important reasons to try to expand the accessibility of child care. One is that stable child care for low-income families has become a cornerstone of successful efforts to move people from welfare to work.

Members of Congress had that in mind when they allocated $2 billion last year for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. That was an increase of $817 million, enabling states to provide day care to 241,000 additional children.

Now comes Mr. Bush with a proposal to cut the program by $200 million.

Is that his idea of compassion?

The simple truth is that the oversized tax cuts and Mr. Bush's devotion to the ideologues and the well- heeled special interests that backed his campaign are playing havoc with the real-world interests not just of children, but of most ordinary Americans.

Mr. Bush is presiding over a right- wing juggernaut that has already reneged on his campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions (an important step in the fight against global warming); that has repealed a set of workplace safety rules that were designed to protect tens of millions of Americans but were opposed as too onerous by business groups; that has withdrawn new regulations requiring a substantial reduction in the permissible levels of arsenic, a known carcinogen, in drinking water; and that has (to the loud cheers of the most conservative elements in the G.O.P.) ended the American Bar Association's half- century-old advisory role in the selection of federal judges, thus making it easier to appoint judges with extreme right-wing sensibilities.

The administration of George W. Bush, in the words of the delighted Edwin J. Feulner, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is "more Reaganite than the Reagan administration."

Grover Norquist, a leading conservative strategist, said quite frankly, "There isn't an us and them with this administration. They is us. We is them."

Mr. Bush misled the public during his campaign. He eagerly donned the costume of the compassionate conservative and deliberately gave the impression that if elected he would lead a moderate administration that would govern, as much as possible, in a bipartisan manner.

Last October, in the second presidential debate, Mr. Bush declared, "I'm really strongly committed to clean water and clean air and cleaning up the new kinds of challenges, like global warming."

And he said, as usual, "No child should be left behind in America."

He said all the right things. He just didn't mean them.



-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), March 26, 2001.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ