Bear Left!

Fact of the Week

**Fact of the Week**
When President Bush planned to speak Thursday about homeland defense, his handlers expected that speech would be seen by most Americans. Alas, only ABC found the speech worthy of broadcast. Even Roger Ailes of unabashedly conservative Fox News reviewed an advance copy of the speech and decided that a cartoon was more worthy. Nationally, the Bush speech received an 11 share, well behind "Friends" on NBC (22 share) and "Survivor" on CBS (18 share). Bush did beat out "WWF Smackdown" on UPN (7 share), "Family Guy" on FOX (6 share), and "Popstars 2" on WB (5 share). Sources: Washington Post, 9 November 2001, for Fox News decision, and Zap2it.com for national overnight Nielsen ratings

The Search for New Voting Technology: Changing the way we vote is more urgent and less complicated than you think (Stephen Ansolabehere, Boston Review).
Tobacco Firm to Profit from Cancer Genes: Japan Tobacco plans eventually to market a lung cancer vaccine thanks to deals with biotech firms (Sarah Boseley, The Guardian).
The Political Clock is Ticking: Don't despair about how popular the President is. History is on the side of the Democrats (Kevin Phillips, Los Angeles Times).
LBJ Tape "Confirms Vietnam War Error": Lyndon Johnson secretly admitted that the Tonkin Gulf incident probably never happened (Martin Fletcher, London Times).
Revealed: How Bungled US Raid Came Close to Disaster: That videotaped raid by Army Rangers was a debacle (Luke Harding, Julian Borger, and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian). [See also this article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker.]
Disappearing in America: The nation is sliding toward a trap that we entered this conflict vowing to avoid (New York Times).
Fliers See Bias as Pilots Move to Bump Them: Pilots are discriminating against passengers who have the wrong name or skin color (Stephanie Stoughton, Boston Globe).
American Crusade 2001 Trading Cards: need a laugh? Check out these cards, thanks to our friends at InfiniteJest.org.

"Bear left!"/"Right, Frog!" (Kermit and Fozzie, The Muppet Movie)

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