Scrapbook
Scrapbook In Memoriam A few hundred people gathered the other day at a wet state park in the wooded hills of Maryland to honor four American journalists who've died in the line of duty in the war...
...Echoing Lincoln's words at nearby Gettysburg, he said we must rededicate ourselves to the unfinished task...
...And there were ordinary citizens...
...There were family and friends of the fallen...
...On September 12, the Times released a statewide poll showing that 50 percent of Californians intended to vote to recall Democratic Gov...
...They constituted 82 percent of likely voters...
...Gray Davis and 47 percent were opposed to removing him from office...
...The Hood singers sang "Eternal Father, Strong to Save...
...In the last election in California, Asians and blacks constituted only 10 percent of the electorate...
...The paper's poll results are widely distrusted...
...We need to turn the page," he continued...
...He said war correspondents go to the heart of darkness and danger, to shine the bright light of empathy and intelligence and curiosity so the rest of us can understand events far away...
...Yep, just your typical "hard-hearted" industrialists and "caring" liberals playing to type...
...That money to help 7,500 students will come from the pot for 160,000 students...
...If he's so outraged by charters' drain on the public system, he could of course have given back the money he himself has "walked out" with—his kids go to one of the city's existing charter schools...
...Apparently, Detroit's school kids can't rely on Kilpatrick to save them, either...
...Polls Apart A favorite pastime of political junkies in southern California is trying to figure out how the Los Angeles Times comes up with the poll numbers it does...
...In a recent interview with the Detroit News, Detroit mayor Kwame Kil-patrick, who led the fight against Thompson's proposal, had this to say: "Every time a kid leaves the Detroit system that's $7,000 walking out the door...
...Governor Robert Ehrlich of Maryland presided, under the trees...
...What then...
...Blair Gets It For those who thought that Tony Blair's left-wing party might pull apart the Anglo-American alliance in the terror war, Blair's speech to the Labour party conference was a powerful rebuttal: "I believe the security threat of the 21st century is not countries waging conventional war...
...When the deal fell through, Kil-patrick didn't seem too distraught...
...There was no easy choice...
...Some are history buffs fond of the quirky, 50-foot memorial arch there that pays tribute to war correspondents...
...It was a kind of mini-festival of freedom, solemn and heartfelt...
...The Bush administration sent not only a cabinet member, Gale Norton, whose Interior Department owns the historic site, but also Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, among the most articulate proponents of the Bush Doctrine...
...Tired of being used as a bargaining chip in the statewide debate over charter schools, the Thompson Foundation withdrew its offer to jumpstart 15 charter schools in inner city Detroit...
...It bears the names of 157 writers and artists who covered wars, and the first famous battlefield photographer, Matthew Brady...
...We who started the war must finish the peace...
...Well, Mervin Field and Mark DiCamillo have discovered why the Times produced a more favorable result for Davis...
...Mike Kelly's 7-year-old son said it was too loud...
...Last week, in an astonishing display of political gamesmanship at its worst, Michigan Democrats managed to scare off a $200 million donation to Detroit's struggling education system...
...Scrapbook In Memoriam A few hundred people gathered the other day at a wet state park in the wooded hills of Maryland to honor four American journalists who've died in the line of duty in the war on terror...
...Some said they like to hike through Gathland State Park on the Appalachian Trail...
...It's highly unusual for one pollster to question the professional integrity of another...
...That will cause greater harm to the city...
...Do the math and you'll see these 18 percent of voters would have to be 2-to-1 against the recall to produce the narrow 50 to 47 percent edge for the recall...
...But Field and DiCamillo asked a good question that points inescapably to the answer: The Times, which is ferociously anti-recall, toyed with the sample to get the result they wanted...
...The Hood College Chamber Singers sang the national anthem a capella...
...So: A businessman gives $200 million to inner-city children and Democrats make his life hell...
...A Navy trumpeter played taps, and men in Civil War dress fired a period cannon...
...The new plaque honors Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal, murdered by Islamic extremists in Pakistan in February 2002, and three reporters who died in Iraq in April 2003, Michael Kelly, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, David Bloom, a reporter for NBC News, and Elizabeth Neuffer, foreign correspondent for the I J-U1 Boston Globe...
...The Times found that the largest two groups of voters were solidly pro-recall, whites by 54 to 43 percent, Latinos by 53 to 41 percent...
...Two things are wrong with this...
...That left 18 percent who had to be blacks or Asians...
...Suppose they got hold of a chemical or biological or nuclear dirty bomb...
...Thanks, But No Thanks Robert Thompson is going to take the money and run...
...Robert Thompson said that the contentious debate had "taken a personal toll on my wife and me...
...Now the chief pollsters for the rival Field Poll have offered an explanation: The folks at the Times play games with their sample of voters...
...asked Field and DiCamillo in an article...
...I believe that in today's interdependent world the threat is chaos...
...Did the Times poll sample include a proportionate number of black/African Americans or a disproportionately large number, whose inclusion, due to their strong opposition to the recall, could have skewed their poll results...
...And this fall other polls have found that Asians are slightly more in favor of the recall than not...
...A Field Poll, conducted just before the Times survey, got a quite different result: 55 percent for recall, 40 percent against...
...Representing the press, Tom Brokaw spoke of the lessons for future generations preserved in the monuments we build...
...We couldn't rely on Bob Thompson to either save us or kill us...
...That could be the beginning of the demise of the Detroit public school system...
...The stone monument, with its crenelated tower, statue of Mercury, and terra cotta horse heads, was dedicated in 1896, the creation of George Alfred Townsend, the youngest man to cover the Civil War...
...and if they could, they would...
...No wonder the Times's polls are so suspect...
...So whatever we each of us thought, let us agree on this...
...Suppose the terrorists repeated September 11th or worse...
...A light rain cleared in time for the ceremony...
...He was not "saddened because I know there is another day...
...It is fanaticism defeating reason...
Vol. 9 • October 2003 • No. 5
