[Mb-civic] Urgent Media Action alert AND Philadelphia editorial: Kerry

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

A week before the election, your regular primetime television programming 
could be preempted by a film attacking John Kerry's Vietnam record. 
Sinclair Broadcasting Group, one of the country's largest TV station owners, 
has told its 62 stations -- which together reach one-quarter of American 
homes -- to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal." Worse yet, many 
of these stations are in key battleground states, such as Florida, Ohio, 
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

Media critics are calling the documentary political propaganda, and the 
Democratic National Committee filed a federal complaint Tuesday accusing 
Sinclair Broadcasting of election-law violations. Naturally, public protests are 
underway. 

But will that bother Sinclair executives who are attempting to use the public 
airwaves to broadcast politically partisan views? In April, Sinclair wouldn't let 
seven of its ABC affiliates air the "Nightline" episode with the reading of the 
names of U.S. troops who died in Iraq , but it does require its stations to air 
pre-recorded conservative commentaries. 

Thanks to relaxed media consolidation rules, Sinclair has had an easy time 
building its media empire. And it's still growing. 

There is a petition to stop them: http://www.stopsinclair.org/index.php

The button to send it is a little hard to find. It is located right under the field
where you can add additional comments. It took me about one minute to fill
out and sign this petition, including putting a sentence in the comment
field.  Take a minute now and do it!

-----

The Philadelphia Inquirer
 Sunday Oct. 10 2004

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/2004/10/10/news/special_packages/sunda
y_review/9878518.htm?1c
 

Editorial | Kerry for President


The choice is vivid. The stakes are vast.

Our nation is threatened by jihad warriors who scoff at boundaries. It 
stumbles toward a fiscal ruin that will punish our children. The rules that 
protect our air, water and health are weaker than we know. When 45 million 
of our neighbors fall ill, they have no insurance card to hand to the doctor.

We boast of exporting liberty and rule of law, yet watch them erode at home. 
A hooded prisoner on a box has replaced a soaring lady with a lamp as the 
global icon of America's intentions. Our national discourse has grown 
peevish, choking on distortion and bile.

On Nov. 2, we can return to office the man who, since 2001, has spawned 
some of those ills and shown a shaky touch at healing the others.

Or we can go a new way, one alert to fresh global challenges yet rooted in 
the approaches that made the 1990s so productive. We can elect 
Democratic nominee John F. Kerry.

Dear fellow citizen, this is as important an election as any in which you've had 
a chance to vote.

The Inquirer's urgent, deeply felt recommendation: Cast that ballot on Nov. 2 
for JOHN F. KERRY.

The case for Kerry has two parts. The first is the record of George W. Bush. 
The evidence is compelling, though tallied in sorrow: His was a presidency of 
high promise that lapsed into multiple disasters.

On his watch, useful surpluses have become a sea of red ink. The economic 
rebound he bought with tax cuts is mild, barely more than would have 
occurred in the natural cycle. Those slanted tax changes have left society 
more unequal, its safety net frayed. His team's habits of ignoring science and 
punishing dissent hamper the search for solutions.

His plan for a second term is not to repair those mistakes, but to expand and 
entrench them.

Most worrisome, his response to the stunning blows of 9/11 has gone 
fatefully awry. He has left Americans less safe than they could be and 
America less admired than it should be.

Those are strong words. You deserve to see them documented thoroughly.

That is why, beginning today, we present a 21-day editorial series. It will 
review the facts of the Bush record on an array of issues, from homeland 
security to Head Start, contrasting it with Kerry's ideas. The first appears 
below. Most days, on the facing page, a prominent supporter of President 
Bush will provide a contrasting view.

You deserve a fair and frank debate.

You also deserve a fair picture of the second half of the case for change: the 
record and views of John Kerry.

This, very few of you have gotten during a petty, dispiriting campaign. Some 
blame rests with the Democrat. He has not framed the debate with the force 
and clarity he must master to be an outstanding president.

More blame, though, rests with Bush. Awash in millions from the corporate 
donors to whom his White House caters so avidly, the President has spent 
more time ridiculing Kerry through distortions than presenting his own plans.

Bush backers cling to a tired, tiresome slogan of elections past: Kerry is a 
clueless liberal, out of touch with the American mainstream.

Here is what Kerry thinks, and what his record as a U.S. senator, lieutenant 
governor and prosecutor underscores:

John Kerry thinks government should pursue solutions to problems that 
haunt American lives, but must pay for each initiative as it goes - not stick the 
nation's children with the tab. Robert Rubin, the superb Treasury secretary 
under Bill Clinton, praises Kerry as a senator who stood tall on the tough 
votes that tamed deficits.

He thinks work is better than welfare; he voted for welfare reform.

He thinks it's unacceptable that 45 million Americans lack health coverage; 
he has a smart plan to shrink that number dramatically.

He wants science to do all it can to speed cures for illnesses.

He knows that protection of America's air, land and water can't be left to the 
whims of corporations.

He doesn't just shrug when he sees American children slipping into poverty, 
or more paychecks losing buying power.

If those aren't mainstream American values, then God help America. But of 
course these are American values.

If you're an undecided voter, consider this: As president, Kerry will have to 
work with a Congress where at least one chamber is Republican. Checks 
and balances, a prescription for moderation. A vote for Bush risks one-party 
rule, with Congress under the control of aggressive conservatives and 
reelection concerns no longer checking Bush's impulses.

You've heard - eight gazillion times - that John Kerry is a flip-flopper. No 
doubt, he's a man who relishes nuance. His penchant for thinking out loud is 
ill-suited to a sound-bite culture. He'll have to curb that, seeking a more 
disciplined clarity. But the flip-flop label rests mainly on one sound bite. All 
together now: "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

Muddy words, but a defensible vote. The Bush campaign's incessant 
mockery of it relies on voters' unfamiliarity with the workings of the Senate, 
where two or more versions of a bill often come up for votes. Kerry voted for 
a Democratic version of this Iraq appropriation, which would have rescinded 
tax cuts for the affluent to pay for body armor, etc., for the troops. The GOP 
version, which passed easily, added to the ever-growing load of debt we are 
leaving to our kids.

Let's deal with another pack of poisonous distortions: Vietnam.

Kerry served, showed courage, won medals, then raised an honorable, if 
hyperbolic, alarm about a misguided war. Case closed. Perhaps the Boston 
convention overdid the allusions to those facts, but that doesn't justify the 
baseless Swift-boat assaults of August.

Kerry doesn't talk much about his Senate record, a curious omission. That 
record isn't spectacular, but it is solid and qualifying. Names on bills are just 
one road to effectiveness. Kerry took the less glamorous path of 
investigation. He had major successes.

He was one of the first to spot and expose the scandal that came to be 
known as Iran-contra. He took the lead in unraveling the criminal deeds of 
the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which financed drug cartels 
and terrorists. Finally, he worked well with John McCain and others to resolve 
the emotional issue of Vietnam MIAs.

Not flashy, not easy. Just important.

The BCCI probe showed Kerry spotting early on a key thread in the global 
web of terror.

Thwarting terrorism is a president's core job in these haunted times. Kerry's 
approach is more thorough than that of Bush, whose two main tools seem to 
be bombs and bombast. Bush's reckless missteps in Iraq have cost a painful 
toll in lives, credibility, alliances, Islamic anger and lost opportunities.

Kerry is right to press hard on: tracking down loose nuclear material in 
Russia and elsewhere; repairing alliances that can help spot terror cells and 
roll up financing networks; better securing our chemical and nuclear plants 
and ports.

It is absurd to claim that, had Kerry been president on that awful day in 2001, 
he would merely have shrugged and sent a strongly worded memo to the 
World Court. Any president would have done much of what Bush did in late 
2001 - with less soaring eloquence perhaps. But few would have raced as he 
did into the deadly detour of Iraq.

John Kerry isn't perfect. He has things to learn. One thing Americans should 
have learned by now, though, is that the incumbent lacks the realism, 
judgment and ability to adjust to events that the United States needs in its 
commander in chief. In this perilous moment, the safer choice, the wiser 
choice, is John F. Kerry.
 
-


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Action is the antidote to despair.  ----Joan Baez
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