Growing the Nanny State

One of the things I like about the Wall Street Journal is that, unlike most mainstream newspapers, it actually does provide opposing points of view. The other day they ran a piece by Rep. Charles Rangel defending his trillion dollar tax hike idea. Today, they ran this piece on saving for retirement.

The first thing I noticed about this article was that, despite it's title, it was written by a Clintonista. Hmm, I thought, what could a Bubba-lover have to say about fiscal restraint and self-reliance.

Surprise, surprise -- as it turns out -- nothing.

Some No-Brainer Savings Ideas

By LAURA D'ANDREA TYSON
October 30, 2007; Page A18

The recent mortgage-loan crisis has exposed the dark side of predatory lending practices. But it may also help bring to light a potentially larger issue: Not only are Americans making poor choices when it comes to loan deals, but too many Americans are making poor choices -- or no choices at all -- to prepare financially for retirement. [yes, unfortunately that's all too true.]

The average Social Security benefit is about $11,000 a year. It is meant to supplement retirement, not fund it altogether, yet half of all families have no other savings in retirement accounts. People who do set money aside are not putting away nearly enough; half report savings of less than $25,000. [Yikes, what are these people planning on doing when they retire?]

There are many reasons why household savings are so low, but sheer inertia plays a role. Many Americans simply don't make the choices needed to prepare for retirement. Those who do take the time to consider their choices find the decisions too complex -- and complexity translates into nonparticipation and poor financial decision making. [Do you catch her drift? It's ok -- I didn't either when I read this. But this is the transition point of the article. The story line is being developed that "many Americans" are too stupid or too lazy to plan their own retirements. So, somebody's got to do it for them. Any guesses as to who that might be?]

There is a way to harness the power of inertia: the Automatic 401(k), in which workers are enrolled by default in a 401(k), unless they opt out. One year after the Pension Protection Act of 2006 helped smooth the way by clarifying some of the laws, the evidence shows that Automatic 401(k) is working. According to a survey of 350 employers nationwide by Wells Fargo & Co., 44% reported using automatic enrollment; and according to a survey of 1,000 401(k) and profit-sharing plans by the Profit-Sharing Council of America, 39% of employers automatically increased the contribution rate for employees in 2006 -- more than twice the number previously. [Wow, I'm shocked -- it's the government! Gee, since people aren't able to take accountability for their retirement, we need the government to do it for them. I guess it's too much to expect people to be responsible for themselves, and why should we bother educating them; no, the solution is more government!]

What does automatic enrollment mean for employees? The Retirement Security Project, launched by the Pew Charitable Trusts, estimates that a 23-year-old male professional will save an additional $200,000 through automatic 401(k) enrollment and escalation by age 67 -- enough to fund an additional four years of retirement. [Hey, I've got an idea. What's a government program without a government bureaucracy to administer it? We need another government agency. How about the Department of Retirement Security. That has a nice ring to it.]

The success of automatic enrollment in 401(k)s has policy makers looking for other ways to utilize the same "default" approach to help employees increase their contribution level gradually over time, invest prudently, and preserve their retirement benefits through rollovers at the time of job change.

To help the 75 million workers who don't have access to an employer-sponsored 401(k), a bipartisan group of legislators -- led by Sens.Jeff Bingaman (D., N.M.) and Gordon Smith (R., Ore.) and Reps. Phil English (R., Pa.) and Richard Neal (D., Mass.), have introduced a bill to create an Automatic IRA. This would be a standard IRA account, but funded through payroll deductions. It would also offer automatic 401(k)-like features such as an automatic investment choice, level of contribution and enrollment. Under the proposal, employers with 10 or more employees that have been in business for at least two years would enable employees to save their own money in an IRA by using the employer's payroll system.

The Automatic IRA allows employers to facilitate employee saving without having to sponsor a formal, ERISA-regulated retirement plan, or make matching contributions. Firms would receive a temporary tax credit to offset any initial administrative costs; either the employer or the employee could choose which financial institution would hold the money. The Retirement Security Project estimates that the Automatic IRA could increase IRA participation rates significantly from the current rate of one in 10, and could ultimately increase net national savings by nearly $8 billion annually.

The next step is to use the same automatic mechanisms to enable workers to have the security of a guaranteed lifetime retirement income with annuity-like products. Employees could either have annuities built into their retirement savings programs, perhaps by directing the employer match into them, or be strongly encouraged to convert all or a part of their savings upon retirement. [What a great liberal. She hasn't even gotten her government program off the ground yet, but she already has grandiose plans to enlarge it.]

A conversion of savings into annuities could be phased in over time, or it could be accomplished on a trial basis that the retiree could reverse if he or she chose, or it could be in the form of "longevity insurance" that does not begin until say age 85 or so. The key is to make the process as easy and seamless as possible. [Think back to the 30s or 40s when they started Social Security. I can just hear them saying the same things: "It'll be a small program phased in over time. They can reverse it if they choose. The key will be to make contributions as easy and seamless as possible through payroll deductions. Of course contributions will have to be mandatory, but we can call it something innocuous, like "longevity insurance", which will make it more palatable.]

We have learned through hard experience that financial education, although important, is not enough. It has to be accompanied with procedures making it easier for workers to make appropriate decisions. Just as the Automatic 401(k) and Automatic IRA would help to ensure that employees have enough retirement savings, automatic guaranteed lifetime income would help to ensure that they do not outlive their savings.

Ms. Tyson is a professor of business and public policy at, and former dean of, the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley. She served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton.

Falling on Deaf Ears

Well, not quite deaf but over-40 year old ears.

Ever hear of "mosquito ring tones"? Neither did I till today. Apparently, there are ring tones that use higher frequency ranges so that adults can't hear them. This enables kids/teens to ring their friends phones with calls or text messages, but nreaby adults (i.e., parents) remain unaware.

Here is an article on the phenomenon:

June 12, 2006

A Ring Tone Meant to Fall on Deaf Ears

By PAUL VITELLO

In that old battle of the wills between young people and their keepers, the young have found a new weapon that could change the balance of power on the cellphone front: a ring tone that many adults cannot hear.

In settings where cellphone use is forbidden — in class, for example — it is perfect for signaling the arrival of a text message without being detected by an elder of the species.

"When I heard about it I didn't believe it at first," said Donna Lewis, a technology teacher at the Trinity School in Manhattan. "But one of the kids gave me a copy, and I sent it to a colleague. She played it for her first graders. All of them could hear it, and neither she nor I could."

The technology, which relies on the fact that most adults gradually lose the ability to hear high-pitched sounds, was developed in Britain but has only recently spread to America — by Internet, of course.

Recently, in classes at Trinity and elsewhere, some students have begun testing the boundaries of their new technology. One place was Michelle Musorofiti's freshman honors math class at Roslyn High School on Long Island.

At Roslyn, as at most schools, cellphones must be turned off during class. But one morning last week, a high-pitched ring tone went off that set teeth on edge for anyone who could hear it. To the students' surprise, that group included their teacher.

"Whose cellphone is that?" Miss Musorofiti demanded, demonstrating that at 28, her ears had not lost their sensitivity to strangely annoying, high-pitched, though virtually inaudible tones.

"You can hear that?" one of them asked.

"Adults are not supposed to be able to hear that," said another, according to the teacher's account.

She had indeed heard that, Miss Musorofiti said, adding, "Now turn it off."

The cellphone ring tone that she heard was the offshoot of an invention called the Mosquito, developed last year by a Welsh security company to annoy teenagers and gratify adults, not the other way around.

It was marketed as an ultrasonic teenager repellent, an ear-splitting 17-kilohertz buzzer designed to help shopkeepers disperse young people loitering in front of their stores while leaving adults unaffected.

The principle behind it is a biological reality that hearing experts refer to as presbycusis, or aging ear. While Miss Musorofiti is not likely to have it, most adults over 40 or 50 seem to have some symptoms, scientists say.

While most human communication takes place in a frequency range between 200 and 8,000 hertz (a hertz being the scientific unit of frequency equal to one cycle per second), most adults' ability to hear frequencies higher than that begins to deteriorate in early middle age.

"It's the most common sensory abnormality in the world," said Dr. Rick A. Friedman, an ear surgeon and research scientist at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles.

But in a bit of techno-jujitsu, someone — a person unknown at this time, but probably not someone with presbycusis — realized that the Mosquito, which uses this common adult abnormality to adults' advantage, could be turned against them.

The Mosquito noise was reinvented as a ring tone.

"Our high-frequency buzzer was copied. It is not exactly what we developed, but it's a pretty good imitation," said Simon Morris, marketing director for Compound Security, the company behind the Mosquito. "You've got to give the kids credit for ingenuity."

British newspapers described the first use of the high-frequency ring tone last month in some schools in Wales, where Compound Security's Mosquito device was introduced as a "yob-buster," a reference to the hooligans it was meant to disperse.

Since then, Mr. Morris said his company has received so much attention — none of it profit-making because the ring tone was in effect pirated — that he and his partner, Howard Stapleton, the inventor, decided to start selling a ring tone of their own. It is called Mosquitotone, and it is now advertised as "the authentic Mosquito ring tone."

David Herzka, a Roslyn High School freshman, said he researched the British phenomenon a few weeks ago on the Web, and managed to upload a version of the high-pitched sound into his cellphone.

He transferred the ring tone to the cellphones of two of his friends at a birthday party on June 3. Two days later, he said, about five students at school were using it, and by Tuesday the number was a couple of dozen.

"I just made it for my friends. I don't use a cellphone during class at school," he said.

How, David was asked, did he think this new device would alter the balance of power between adults and teenagers? Or did he suppose it was a passing fad?

"Well, probably it is," said David, who added after a moment's thought, "And if not, I guess the school will just have to hire a lot of young teachers."

Kate Hammer and Nate Schweber contributed reporting for this article.

Also, check this out. I did not hear it until it got down to 12khz.

Another Liberal Crashes and Burns on the Radio

and good riddance too.

Whoopi whacked, Forman back on Lite FM

Clear Channel sees the Lite, assigns Forman to mornings and afternoons

October 19, 2007

BY ROBERT FEDER Sun-Times Columnist

It isn't every day that a big broadcast company admits a mistake.

But that's just what Clear Channel Radio did Thursday in dropping Whoopi Goldberg's syndicated morning show after 14 months on WLIT-FM (93.9), the adult contemporary station.

» Click to enlarge image

Melissa Forman is returning to WLIT-FM, replacing syndicated host Whoopi Goldberg.
(STNG file)

Goldberg, whose show has been a disaster in the ratings for Lite FM, will air for the last time today. She continues as a regular panelist on ABC's "The View."

Starting Monday, mornings again will be hosted by Melissa Forman, who'd held the job for five years before Goldberg started in August 2006.

After six months off, Forman was rehired to host afternoons last February. Under a new two-year deal signed Thursday, she will be heard live in mornings and on recorded voice tracks in afternoons.

"I obviously made a mistake in replacing Melissa a year ago, and the ratings have suffered," said Darren Davis, vice president of programming and operations for Clear Channel in Chicago.

"To be frank, I simply underestimated Chicago's love for Melissa. But Chicago has spoken, and Chicagoland clearly wants to hear Melissa on the Lite every morning. I'm just thrilled to have Melissa back where she belongs."

How badly did Whoopi get walloped? In adults between the ages of 25 and 54 -- the group most coveted by advertisers -- mornings dropped from 11th place with a 3.0 percent share under Forman to 19th place with a 1.8 share under Goldberg, based on comparable Arbitron summer surveys.

The new lineup will feature Forman with newsman Rick Zurick from 5:30 to 8:30 a.m., an hour of commercial-free music from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m., Robin Rock from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Forman again from 4 to 7 p.m., and the syndicated Delilah from 7 p.m. to midnight.

The decision to go with just two daytime hosts -- Forman and Rock -- is geared to streamlining the station's product in preparation for Arbitron's new Portable People Meter ratings system, which starts in January.

Saying she "can't wait to dust off that alarm clock," Forman added: "You have no idea how much it means to me to be back on mornings at the Lite. I have missed the listeners and waking up with them every day.

"The statement management has made is a lesson in grace and class. I am so incredibly humbled by the support and outreach of so many amazing listeners."

Forman, who grew up in north suburban Northbrook, hosted mornings at northwest suburban WKIE-FM (92.7) under Big City Radio ownership before joining Lite FM for the first time in 2001.

We've Got the Taxation --
How About Some Representation?

www.investors.com

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Article Title: "Guns And Butter: A Primer "
Author: Section: Issues & Insights		Date: 10/10/2007
Federal Spending: Speaker Pelosi says that for the cost of 41 days in Iraq, 10 million children can receive health insurance for a year. The Constitution says a lot about national defense. It says nothing about insurance. Cut-and run Democrats argue that it's an either/or proposition. The choice, they say, is between defense spending in general and funding the Iraq war in particular and expanding programs like the State Child Health Insurance Program beyond its original intent to meet a need largely already met by the private sector. Democratic attempts to "reauthorize the war" are based on the cliche that had we known then what we know now, they would never have voted for it in the first place. But couldn't that logic be applied to all federal spending programs? How about a vote to reauthorize every program in the federal budget based on its cost-effectiveness? How about a vote, for example, to "reauthorize" the War on Poverty and its legislative legacy? It has consumed trillions of dollars since its inception, but despite all the good intentions, the percentage of people defined as living in "poverty" has hardly budged. Democrats such as Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin have proposed a separate "war tax" to pay for the War on Terror. We have one: It's called the income tax, which began as a 2% levy only on the very rich, but which has morphed into an economy-strangling behemoth that finances an annual budget of $3,000,000,000,000 - that's three trillion dollars. Defense spending constituted only $528 billion of that budget in fiscal 2006 - or about 4% of gross domestic product. In 1953, during the Korean War, it hit a postwar high of 14.2% of GDP. In 1968, in the middle of Vietnam, it reached 9.5%. And in 1986, at the height of the Reagan buildup that doomed the evil empire, it was 6.8%. We're not spending too much on the military. We're spending too little to meet both the needs of the War on Terror and the rising threat of a nuclear Iran, not to mention dealing with the frantic pace at which both Russia and China are arming. Since the end of the Cold War, the needs and commitments of the U.S. military have expanded, not diminished. Yet our forces were almost twice as big at the end of the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations as they are today. The active-duty Army was cut from 18 divisions to 10. The Navy, which reached 568 ships in the late 1980s, struggles today to sustain a fleet of just 276. The number of tactical air wings in the Air Force fell from 37 at the time of Desert Storm to 20 under William Jefferson Clinton. The Preamble to the Constitution speaks of the need to "provide for the common defence" and to "promote the general welfare." But "promoting" doesn't mean providing. And while the Constitution speaks loudly on the structure of our armed forces and the role of Congress and commander in chief, it is silent on things like children's insurance. Democrats forget that the greatest social service that a government can perform for its people is to keep them alive and free.

© 2007 Investor's Business Daily, Inc. All rights reserved. All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of Investor's Business Daily, Inc. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content. For reprint permission, go to www.investors.com/terms/reprints.asp or call 310-448-6714.

"A far green country under a swift sunrise"

PIPPIN: I didn't think it would end this way.

GANDALF: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.

PIPPIN: What? Gandalf? See what?

GANDALF: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.

PIPPIN: Well, that isn't so bad.

GANDALF: No, no it isn't.

Ashoken Farewell

Reporters or Partisans?

If you were to ask your typical journalist what their role is, I'm sure their immediate answer would be that it's to gather and report the news. They are no doubt aware that conservatives and others believe they go beyond simply reporting "the facts" and subtly (and not so subtly) advance their political views. And, no doubt, they'd vigorously deny it.

Take a look at this excerpt from Howard Kurtz's new book about network news coverage of the Iraq war. (Kurtz is the media writer for the Washington Post). Although Kurtz is a liberal and no doubt toes the party line on the "objectivity" of the mainstream media, sprinkled throughout this excerpt are revealing nuggets about how these journalists are determined to make sure that their personal opinions make it into their reporting.

As War Dragged On, Coverage Tone Weighed Heavily on Anchors

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 8, 2007; C01

Charlie Gibson is a product of the Vietnam War era. When he was a television reporter in Lynchburg, Va., he had driven to Washington on weekends to march in antiwar demonstrations. And he had lost friends in that jungle war.

Now Gibson had friends whose sons were dying in Iraq. His thoughts kept returning to one central question: When you commit kids to war, what are they fighting for? What was the mission in Iraq? How could a family say that the war was worth little Johnny's well-being?

The ABC anchor was obsessed with this point. If you were president, and you decided to go to war, was there a calculus in your mind, that the goal was worth so many American lives? After all, your generals would tell you that X number were likely to die. What was the acceptable trade-off? Gibson's threshold would be one: Was the war worth one life? [How did this simpleton get to be the anchor for a major network? Of course it is tragic that lives are lost in war. But, what's the alternative? Do we call up the terrorists and tell them that we don't believe in violence so the war is over? Maybe you could invite them to a world-wide group hug? More to the point, he's supposed to REPORT the news. If he's obsessed with the war and wants to do something about it, quit your job and run for office.]

As the U.S. occupation of Iraq stretched into its fourth bloody year, the media coverage was turning increasingly negative, and the three evening news anchors constantly agonized over how to deal with the conflict. [What do you mean, "deal with the conflict"? They're supposed to REPORT on the conflict, not "deal" with it.]

Their newscasts had become a nightly tableau of death and destruction, and whether that was an accurate picture of Iraq had become a matter of fierce political debate. Certainly the constant plague of suicide bombs, explosive devices, sniper fire and, occasionally, the massacre of large numbers of civilians played into television's need for dramatic events and arresting visuals. Certainly, by 2006 it was easier for the anchors and correspondents to offer a skeptical vision of the war, now that a majority of the country disapproved of the conflict, than in the heady days after the toppling of Saddam Hussein seemed to strike a blow for democracy in the Middle East. By training their powerful spotlight on the chaos gripping Iraq, the anchors were arguably contributing to the political downfall of a president who had seemed to be riding high when he won his second term. [Whew, that's a relief -- although it took us a couple of years, our constant sniping and criticism is finally starting to pay off. Now we don't have to be as subtle in our partisan attacks on the president and can "offer a [more] skeptical vision of the war in our "professionally detached" and "objective" reporting.]

Through the routine decisions of daily journalism -- how prominently to play a story, what pictures to use, what voices to include -- the newscasts were sending an unmistakable message. And the message was that George W. Bush's war was a debacle. [What an unintentionally revealing statement. No, our job is not to REPORT, it's to "send a message". And, of course, our message is to destroy and undermine the president.] Administration officials regularly complained about the coverage as unduly negative, but to little avail. Other news organizations chronicled the deteriorating situation as well, but with a combined 25 million viewers, the evening newscasts had the biggest megaphone.

Painful Images

When Brian Williams thought about Iraq, he thought about his visits to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He was tortured by these trips to comfort the veterans being treated there. It was hard to look at their wounds. He remembered one soldier who had five titanium pins sticking out of his toes. His heart ached for these brave men and women who had been to Iraq, on orders from their commander in chief.

For Williams, it all went back to Sept. 11, 2001. As a citizen, he thought on that fateful day, thank God that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell were on the team. How together we all seemed. There was something about the murderous attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that, in the eyes of the White House press corps, gave Bush a stature that could not be violated. And that was no accident. The administration's deft use of 9/11 against its critics had created an impenetrable shield. It was political magic.

Some people, the NBC anchor knew, believed that the administration was jonesing for a fight, exploiting Sept. 11 as an opportunity to launch a war in Iraq. Whatever the truth, he had to admire, in a clinical sort of way, the political management of the press during what came to be known as the war on terror. It was truly remarkable.

Williams did not enjoy looking back on the run-up to war, knowing what he knew now about the media's flawed performance. He did not want to look back on this period with the same sense of regret. He recognized how deeply the war had divided the country.

Every day, Williams asked the question: Did Baghdad correspondent Richard Engel have any news other than another 20 Iraqi civilians killed when an IED detonated, leaving the same smoking carcasses and pathetic scenes of loved ones crying? That, Williams felt, was the problem: The horrible had become utterly commonplace. To most Americans, he believed, the war could not be more ephemeral. It was half a world away, and it required no sacrifice by those who did not have a family member in the armed forces.

Williams had his own private intelligence channel on the war. He had an e-mail relationship with a number of military men -- some still in the war zone, some who had returned from the region -- and they were candid about the conflict in a way that top generals were not. These informants alerted him to a wide range of problems with IEDs, armor and morale. But they never spoke on the phone, which would be too dangerous, since they were barred from talking to journalists. Private e-mail was the only safe form of communication.

Under Pressure

Katie Couric had always felt uncomfortable with the war, and that sometimes showed in the way she framed the story. ["Framed the story"? I thought she was simply supposed to REPORT the story. "Framing" the story means "spinning" -- i.e., manipulating the story to promote a particular point of view. So much for "fair and balanced".] When Bush had been marshaling support for the invasion, she felt, the country seemed to be swept up in a patriotic furor and a palpable sense of fear. There was a rush to war, no question about it. The CBS anchor could never quite figure out how Iraq had become Public Enemy No. 1, how the United States had wound up making many of the same mistakes as in Vietnam. She was happy, like most people, when the war initially seemed to be going well. Nobody wanted to see all these young kids getting killed. But the frenzied march to war had been bolstered by a reluctance to question the administration after 9/11.

She had firsthand experience with what she considered the chilling effect on the media. Two months before the 2004 election, when she was still at NBC's "Today" show, Couric had asked Condoleezza Rice whether she agreed with Vice President Cheney's declaration that the country would be at greater risk for terrorist attacks if John Kerry won the White House. Rice sidestepped the question, saying that any president had to fight aggressively against terrorism.

Couric interrupted and asked the question again. Would a Kerry victory put America at greater risk? Rice ducked again, saying that the issue should not be personalized.

Soon afterward, Couric got an e-mail from Robert Wright, the NBC president. He was forwarding a note from an Atlanta woman who complained that Couric had been too confrontational with Rice.

What was the message here? Couric felt that Wright must be telling her to back off. She wrote him a note, saying that she tried to be persistent and elicit good answers in all her interviews, regardless of the political views of her guests. If Wright had a problem with that, she would like to discuss it with him personally. Wright wrote back that such protest letters usually came in batches, but that he had passed along this one because it seemed different.

Couric felt there was a subtle, insidious pressure to toe the party line, and you bucked that at your peril. She wanted to believe that her NBC colleagues were partners in the search for truth, and no longer felt that was the case. She knew that the corporate management viewed her as an out-and-out liberal. When she ran into Jack Welch, the General Electric chairman, he would sometimes say that they had never seen eye to eye politically. If you weren't rah rah rah for the Bush administration, and the war, you were considered unpatriotic, even treasonous.

Couric believed that many viewers were now suffering from Iraq fatigue. She tried not to lead with the conflict every night, unless there were significant developments. And when the day's Iraq events were too big to ignore, Couric made clear -- in starker terms than the other anchors -- her disgust with the whole enterprise. One night she led her CBS newscast, "With each death, with every passing day, so many of us ask, 'Is there any way out of this nightmare?' "

Getting Graphic

By the fall of 2006, an urgent tone began creeping into the anchors' coverage of Iraq. No longer were they describing the war as a difficult battle whose outcome was in doubt, or depicting the military struggle as part of a larger effort to rebuild the battered country. Now it was all about the violence, and they were framing the situation as an unmitigated mess. The anchors were giving real weight to what had once seemed unmentionable, the possibility that the United States might have to pull out.

They were, to be sure, reflecting the rapid erosion of support for the war, and a level of killing and chaos that seemed to grow worse by the day. But given their huge platform, they were also shaping public sentiment, reinforcing the notion that nearly four years after the invasion, the situation was all but lost. [In two sentences, Kurtz totally flip-flops. In the first sentence, the networks are merely reporting "the rapid erosion of support for the war", that is 'just the facts, ma'am'. But in the next sentence, the networks aren't reporting, they are "shaping public sentiment" and "reinforcing the notion ... that the situation was all but lost". Oops, Howard, I think you're lifting the veil a bit too much here. That sure doesn't sound like REPORTING to me. It sounds like INDOCTRINATING.]

"In plain English," Brian Williams said, "this has been a tough week to be hopeful about the prospects for victory in Iraq."

Charlie Gibson spoke of a "killing spree," a "horrific surge in religious violence, Iraqis killing Iraqis in unprecedented numbers." After correspondent Terry McCarthy reported that 50 to 60 bodies were turning up each day, Gibson could not remain silent. "Sobering to see people simply driving by a body in the streets," he said. "But such is life in Baghdad today."

Couric, in particular, appeared to openly yearn for a pullout. One night she spoke of "opposition to the war in Iraq growing and no end in sight." And at times she came close to describing the situation as hopeless: "The day everyone is hoping for, the day American forces can finally come home from Iraq, seems more and more elusive."

The anchors looked for ways to dramatize the grim statistics. Williams, noting "the bloodshed that has become an all-too-common fact of life there for so many people," highlighted a report on how Baghdad coffinmakers could not keep up with demand. Gibson, reporting a United Nations finding on Iraqi casualties in July and August, tried to bring the impact home: "And just to put the 6,600 Iraqi deaths over the past two months in perspective -- if the U.S. lost an equivalent percentage of its population, that would represent 75,000 American dead."

This article is adapted from "Reality Show," which is based on two years of research that included extensive interviews with journalists and executives at all levels of ABC, NBC and CBS. The interviews were conducted on condition that they be used for the book.

OK, Where Do I Sign?

Hmmmm

if BMWs are good enough for both Pope JPII and Ben XVI ....

BMW Presents New Vehicle to Pope

Mar. 14, 2001

VATICAN, Mar. 14, 01 (CWNews.com) -- The German auto manufacturer BMW presented Pope John Paul II (bio - news) with a new car today, at the conclusion of the regular weekly papal audience. BMW also donated three motorcycles for use by Vatican employees.

The black sedan was waiting for the Pope outside the Paul VI auditorium after he addressed pilgrims there. The color contrasted with that of the motorcycles, which are yellow and white-- the colors of the Holy See.

The first papal automobile arrived at the Vatican in 1909, but some years passed before a pope actually used a car. Pope Pius XII received and used several different sorts of autos: a Bianchi, a Fiat, a Graham-Paige, a Citroen, and finally a Mercedes-Benz. It was in the Mercedes that he travels to comfort the victims of bombing raids in Italy in 1943.

After the death of Pope John XXIII, subsequent pontiffs have favored an open Toyota Land Cruiser, which allows the Pope to be seen as he travels through crowds. Pope John Paul II was riding in such a vehicle 1981 when he was hit with a would-be assassin's bullets. Today's "Popemobile" is designed to provide some security for the occupant, but still leave the Pope visible.

Pope's BMW X5

Sunday Mirror, Oct 9, 2005 by Quentin Willson

THe new German Pope now drives a new German car. Pope Benedict XVI was given the keys to a BMW X5 to celebrate the fact that he was born in a small Bavarian town just an hour away from Munich, BMW's spiritual home. Nice work if you can get it.

Smog Of Oblivion

BY R. EMMETT TYRRELL JR.
August 1, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/59568

James Taranto, the very clever Wall Street Journal writer and editor of opinionjournal.com, has a thesis regarding our political culture. He believes that the liberals are victims of their own cultural hegemony. They say things that are quite inaccurate.

Their inaccuracies are repeated by their intellectual look-alikes throughout the culture. They reread their inaccuracies and are roundly confirmed in their ignorance. Conservatives think the liberal opposition is composed of liars or suave deceivers. Actually our liberals are sincere in their ignorant beliefs. Grant them at least this much.

If our liberals were not so ubiquitously dominant in our political culture they might be confronted occasionally by disagreement. It would smarten them up. It might even cheer them up, for they have a very gloomy view of the world. Today they are profoundly convinced, as one of their very brightest has put it, that the war in Iraq is "lost."

The very bright fellow is that rumpled, loveable old curmudgeon from Nevada, Senator Reid. He is not the only one. So far as I can tell almost all the Democratic presidential candidates think the war is lost. Congress abounds with solons who are calling for retreat. Just the other day I watched Rep. John Conyers intoning this defeatist line to Wolf Blitzer, and Mr. Blitzer too seemed to agree this war is lost.

Rather heroically, the editor of the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol, submitted a Washington Post piece two weeks back arguing that victory was still attainable in Iraq and that history would view President Bush benignly. The hoots and the ha-has from the liberals are still to be heard. Of course, he had a point.

The new strategy of General Petraeus seems to be working. Casualties among civilians in Iraq are perceptibly lower. Sheiks in once hostile provinces such as Anbar and Diyala are joining forces with us against the savages of Al Qaeda, the Iraqi military is gaining strength, and wider areas of the country are assuming a semblance of law and order.

Now two critics of the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq have returned from an eight-day visit there and published a piece in the New York Times that sounds very much like the writers have come to Mr. Kristol's point of view. What will happen to our liberal friends if they read it? Perhaps Mr. Conyers will perceive it as satire. It is hard to imagine anything shaking his conviction that Iraq is a lost cause.

The critics writing in the Times are analysts from the liberal Brookings Institution, Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack. They chide the defeatist critics of the administration who they say "seem unaware of the significant changes taking place" in Iraq. "As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush Administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily ‘victory' but sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with." They conclude by saying, " … there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008."

That would take us into an election year with the Democrats saying the war is lost. What will they say if we are, as these analysts seem to think, winning? My guess is that they will continue to say we are losing. Return to Mr. Taranto's insight. The political culture is almost totally befogged by liberal misconceptions and bugaboos. It is, as we say at the American Spectator, a Kultursmog. It pollutes the liberals' minds and renders them oblivious of any evidence contrary to their gloomy views.

Thus they will continue to say we are losing. They may pipe down somewhat, but they are not likely to admit to being wrong. How would they know?

If their calls for retreat gain no support from the electorate, perhaps they will change the subject to another of their favorite misconceptions, to wit, the economy is going to hell.

Actually the economy is chugging along in a healthy and protracted period of growth. For the past five years per capita gross domestic product has grown at 11%. We are living through a vast global economic boom, and the Democrats seem completely unaware.

In 2008 their presidential candidate will be moaning that we have lost a war and are economically in a hell of a mess. The Republican will only have to point to a healthy economy and the success of Mr. Petraeus's splendid army to win. Then the Democrats will whine that the Republicans stole the election from them. That is my prediction, and I base it on the evidence.

Mr. Tyrrell is the founder and editor in chief of the American Spectator, a contributing editor to The New York Sun, and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. His book "The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House" has just been published by Thomas Nelson.

'Nuff Said

Thank You Liberal Media

I was catching up on some reading today and came across this very interesting article by James Taranto. With just a few points difference in the votes, John Kerry could be president today. Taranto argues that we have the liberal media, incredibly, to thank for helping defeat Kerry!

Kerry's Quagmire
How the liberal media helped re-elect George W. Bush.

BY JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

What were the Democrats thinking? Didn't John Kerry have "loser" written all over him? After all, he was not only a Massachusetts Democrat but Michael Dukakis's former lieutenant governor. He was as liberal as Dukakis but lacked the inspiring immigrant background: a man who married another man's fortune, from a state where a man can marry another man. He had a haughty air, and he looked French, or so some anonymous Republicans told the New York Times in 2003. Mr. Kerry replied, "The White House has started the politics of personal destruction"--proving that he was thin-skinned as well. Yet exit polls showed that Democratic primary voters backed him because he was "electable."

Of course "electable" at that point chiefly meant "not Howard Dean," whose campaign in retrospect seems more performance art than politics. But once Mr. Kerry won the nomination, he had--or seemed to have--something else going for him: the support of the liberal media, which loathed President Bush and yearned for his defeat. "The media, I think, wants Kerry to win," Evan Thomas of Newsweek said last July. "I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards--I'm talking about the establishment media, not Fox--but they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all. There's going to be this glow about them . . . that's going to be worth maybe 15 points." Mr. Thomas later revised his estimate downward, to five points.

If Mr. Thomas was right, then, Mr. Bush would have won re-election with a popular-vote margin of between 7.5% and 17.5% of the total vote--rather than the 2.5% he actually got--but for the liberal media. Yet there's a case to be made on the other side: that the liberal media actually helped President Bush, rendering the Kerry campaign ineffective by telling Democrats what they wanted to hear rather than what was true.

By the way, did you know that John Kerry served in Vietnam? This brief entry on his résumé--a four-month tour of duty for a (then) nearly 20-year Senate veteran--turned out to be central to the myth that the Democrats, with help from sympathetic media, tried but failed to build around Mr. Kerry.

To hear them tell it, Mr. Kerry's Vietnam stint was one of the best-kept secrets in American politics. "The U.S. senator from Massachusetts said few voters in neighboring New Hampshire even know he's a military veteran," the Eagle-Tribune of Andover, Mass., reported in October 2003, three months before the Granite State primary. "It is stunning," Mr. Kerry told the paper's editors. "That's the one thing you'd think the voters would know about me. Especially in New Hampshire. You can't take anything for granted. You have to tell people about yourself again and again."

Perhaps Mr. Kerry was traumatized in 'Nam and finds his experience there difficult to talk about. If so, it was a difficulty he managed to overcome. In July, he arrived at Boston's FleetCenter to accept his party's nomination for president of the United States. Before reading his prepared speech, he saluted and declared that he was "reporting for duty."

The media helped the Mr. Kerry campaign get out its "war hero" message. "If the Republicans had any hope of casting Kerry as some Michael Dukakis-style effete Eastern liberal, that's over," declared CNN's Bruce Morton on January 30, three days after Mr. Kerry's New Hampshire victory made him the all-but-certain nominee. "The band of brothers stands in its way."

The tone hadn't changed six months later, when CBS's Byron Pitts filed the following report in advance of Mr. Kerry's convention appearance: "The day before his speech, Kerry crossed Boston Harbor with some of his crewmates from Vietnam. His band of brothers. They have one battle left. But tonight the loner will stand alone here in his hometown one more time and look to do what John F. Kerry has nearly always done--find a way to win."

The Kerry campaign's narrative contrasted its man with Mr. Bush, whom it portrayed as a slacker who avoided Vietnam by using political connections to secure a spot in the Texas Air National Guard. Again, the media played along. In a July 22 interview on the "CBS Evening News," Dan Rather asked Mr. Kerry: "Speaking of angry, have you ever had any anger about President Bush--who spent his time during the Vietnam War in the National Guard--running, in effect, a campaign that does its best to diminish your service in Vietnam? You have to be at least irritated by that, or have you been?"

"Yup, I have been," replied Mr. Kerry. Mr. Rather, it seemed, had stumbled on a way to get a straight answer out of the notoriously nuanced nominee. (A tip of the hat to the Media Research Center for the quotes from Messrs. Morton, Pitts and Rather.)

Of course, the president's National Guard service proved to be Mr. Rather's undoing rather than Mr. Bush's. But long before Rathergate and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, there were reasons to doubt that Mr. Kerry's Vietnam narrative would be a winning strategy.

For one, the supposition that a military record is a key to electoral success finds little support in history. Presidents have been elected on the strength of their military service--Washington, Grant, Eisenhower--but these men were generals who led America to victory in its three greatest wars, not junior officers in an unpopular and losing conflict. Mr. Bush himself beat two Vietnam veterans in 2000: POW John McCain and Army journalist Al Gore. Bill Clinton, who evaded military service altogether, defeated World War II heroes in both 1992 and 1996. Was 2004 different by virtue of being a wartime election? But Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon both won re-election against dovish veterans, and wartime presidents Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR all had little or no military experience.

By constantly reminding Americans of the one war we lost, Mr. Kerry fed suspicions that his attitude toward the war on terror was a defeatist one. "The Democrats' problem isn't that Americans think they're wimps who lack personal courage," Peter Beinart, editor of the liberal New Republic, noted in December 2002. "Their problem is that Americans think, rightly, that they lack an agenda for protecting the country. Bush understands that in this terrifying new era, what Americans want from their leaders isn't heroism; it's clarity and direction." But few other liberal journalists shared Mr. Beinart's insight.

There was also something deeply weird about the way Mr. Kerry talked about his Vietnam experience. Not for him the quiet dignity of the true war hero; rather, he spoke of his combat experience with an odd combination of braggadocio and obsessiveness. In a December 2002 "Meet the Press" appearance, Mr. Kerry mentioned Vietnam nine times by Mr. Beinart's count, including in answer to a question about why he favored capital punishment for terrorists: "Just as I, in a war, was prepared to kill in defense of my nation, I also believe that you eliminate the enemy."

And Mr. Kerry's own Vietnam story was, to say the least, complicated. He first rose to public prominence not for his exploits in combat but for his leadership of the radical Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In a 1971 protest, Mr. Kerry threw what were ostensibly his own medals over a fence surrounding the U.S. Capitol; it later emerged that he had kept his medals and tossed someone else's. Earlier that year, Mr. Kerry had testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that American servicemen had committed "war crimes," including rape, murder and torture, "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

These calumnies left many veterans angry and resentful, and they made it likely that Vietnam would prove to be the candidate's Achilles' heel rather than his silver bullet. One veteran quoted in "Unfit for Command" summed things up pointedly: "In 1971-72, for almost 18 months, [Mr. Kerry] stood before the television audiences and claimed that the 500,000 men and women in Vietnam, and in combat, were all villains--there were no heroes. In 2004, one hero from the Vietnam War has appeared, running for president of the United States and commander in chief. It just galls one to think about it."

The Kerry camp evidently hoped the media would gloss over the candidate's antiwar activities, and for the most part, for many months, they did. One exception was ABC's Charlie Gibson, who in April 2004 confronted Mr. Kerry about the 1971 medal incident. Mr. Kerry answered evasively, then muttered into a live microphone that Mr. Gibson was "doing the work of the Republican National Committee." This was a telling comment. Mr. Gibson was, in truth, doing the work of a journalist: asking a politician tough questions. But Democrats expect the mainstream media to treat them sympathetically--an expectation that has ample basis in experience.

Yet it's far from clear that such sympathy serves the Democrats' interests. Suppose that, once Mr. Kerry secured the nomination, the media had aggressively investigated and reported on his antiwar activities. The candidate would have been forced to respond. If he had been smart, he would have delivered a major speech in which, without renouncing his opposition to the Vietnam War, he repudiated and apologized for his decades-old slanders against fellow veterans. He might have concluded by saying of the Vietnam conflict, "I hope and pray we will put it behind us and go forward in a constructive spirit for the good of our party and the good of our country"--the words with which he ended a February 1992 Senate speech criticizing fellow Vietnam vet Bob Kerrey for trying to make Bill Clinton's draft avoidance an issue in that year's Democratic primaries.

This surely would have gone a long way to defusing the issue. Instead, Mr. Kerry bet that the media's silence would carry him through to the election--and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling Swift Boat Veterans. A month after the Democratic Convention, they launched their first round of anti-Kerry ads, coinciding with the publication of "Unfit for Command." The claims that Mr. Kerry had falsified his heroics in order to win medals and an early end to his tour of duty were mostly unverifiable, and fair-minded Americans probably would have been inclined to give Mr. Kerry the benefit of the doubt. But the ads goaded Mr. Kerry into responding, which in turn forced the media to pay attention. Whereupon the Swift Boat Veterans turned their attention to Mr. Kerry's antiwar activities, on which they had him dead to rights.

Then, in early September, CBS News aired its disastrous story on Bush's National Guard service. So eager were Mr. Kerry's supporters in the media to believe the worst of the president that Mr. Rather and producer Mary Mapes went to air with a report based on obviously fabricated documents, then stood by their story for an agonizing two weeks. Yet even if it had been true--or had gone undebunked--it's unlikely it would have made a difference. As the Washington Post's liberal TV critic, Tom Shales, acknowledged with hindsight in an Inauguration Day column, "It's common knowledge that Bush was a spoiled little rich boy who did not serve with any great distinction, so this story wasn't exactly a blockbuster."

The CBS debacle marked the end of Vietnam as a campaign issue. In the remaining weeks before the election, Mr. Kerry talked a lot less about Vietnam and more about matters of contemporary concern. He performed adequately in the debates, and with the help of a massive get-out-the-vote effort he avoided a landslide defeat.

After the Swift Boat Veterans and Rathergate, it must have been clear even to Mr. Kerry that campaigning on Vietnam had led him into a quagmire. If the media had treated his war-hero narrative with more skepticism in the first place, he might have reached this realization--and developed a better campaign strategy--much earlier. Conservatives love to complain about liberal media bias, and for the most part they're right. But they should count their blessings, too. Were it not for the media reinforcing the Democrats' spin, John Kerry might be president today.

Mr. Taranto is editor of OpinionJournal.com. This article appears in the July/August issue of The American Spectator.

Luciano Pavarotti
Requiescat in Pace

Italian Tenor Pavarotti Dies at 71
Sep 6, 9:05 AM (ET)
By ALESSANDRA RIZZO

ROME (AP) - Luciano Pavarotti, opera's biggest superstar of the late 20th century, died Thursday. He was 71. He was the son of a singing baker and became the king of the high C's.

Pavarotti, who had been diagnosed last year with pancreatic cancer and underwent treatment last month, died at his home in his native Modena at 5 a.m., his manager told The Associated Press in an e-mailed statement.

His wife, Nicoletta, four daughters and sister were among family and friends at his side, manager Terri Robson said.

"The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer," Robson said. "In fitting with the approach that characterised his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness."

Pavarotti's charismatic personna and ebullient showmanship - but most of all his creamy and powerful voice - made him the most beloved and celebrated tenor since the great Caruso and one of the few opera singers to win crossover fame as a popular superstar.

"He has been, of course, one of the greatest tenors ever, one of the most important singers in the history of opera," colleague Jose Carreras told reporters in Germany. "We all hoped for a miracle ... but unfortunately that was not possible, and now we have to regret that we lost a wonderful singer and a great man."

For serious fans, the unforced beauty and thrilling urgency of Pavarotti's voice made him the ideal interpreter of the Italian lyric repertory, especially in the 1960s and '70s when he first achieved stardom. For millions more, his thrilling performances of standards like "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's "Turandot" came to represent what opera is all about.

"Nessun Dorma" turned out to be Pavarotti's last aria, sung at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Turin in February 2006. His last full-scale concert was at Taipei in December 2005, and his farewell to opera was in Puccini's "Tosca" at New York's Metropolitan in March 2004.

Instantly recognizable from his charcoal black beard and tuxedo-busting girth, Pavarotti radiated an intangible magic that helped him win hearts in a way Placido Domingo and Carreras - his partners in the "Three Tenors" concerts - never quite could.

"I always admired the God-given glory of his voice - that unmistakable special timbre from the bottom up to the very top of the tenor range," Domingo said in a statement from Los Angeles.

Pavarotti, who seemed equally at ease singing with soprano Joan Sutherland as with the Spice Girls, scoffed at accusations that he was sacrificing his art in favor of commercialism.

"The word 'commercial' is exactly what we want," he said after appearing in the "Three Tenors" concerts. "We've reached 1.5 billion people with opera. If you want to use the word 'commercial,' or something more derogatory, we don't care. Use whatever you want."

In the annals of that rare and coddled breed, the operatic tenor, it may well be said the 20th century began with Enrico Caruso and ended with Pavarotti. Other tenors - Domingo included - may have drawn more praise from critics for their artistic range and insights, but none could equal the combination of natural talent and personal charm that so endeared Pavarotti to audiences.

"Pavarotti is the biggest superstar of all," the late New York Times music critic Harold Schonberg once said. "He's correspondingly more spoiled than anybody else. They think they can get away with anything. Thanks to the glory of his voice, he probably can."

In his heyday, he was known as the "King of the High C's" for the ease with which he tossed off difficult top notes. In fact it was his ability to hit nine glorious high C's in quick succession that turned him into an international superstar singing Tonio's aria "Ah! Mes amis," in Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment" at the Met in 1972.

From Beijing to Buenos Aires, people immediately recognized his incandescent smile and lumbering bulk, clutching a white handkerchief as he sang arias and Neapolitan folk songs, pop numbers and Christmas carols for hundreds of thousands in outdoor concerts.

His name seemed to show up as much in gossip columns as serious music reviews, particularly after he split with Adua Veroni, his wife of 35 years and mother of their three daughters, and then took up with his 26-year-old secretary in 1996.

In late 2003, he married Nicoletta Mantovani in a lavish, star-studded ceremony. Pavarotti said their daughter, Alice, nearly a year old at the time of the wedding, was the main reason they finally wed after years together.

In the latter part of his career, he came under fire for canceling performances or pandering to the lowest common denominator in his choice of programs, or for the Three Tenors tours and their millions of dollars in fees.

He was criticized for lip-synching at a concert in Modena. An artist accused him of copying her works from a how-to-draw book and selling the paintings.

The son of a baker who was an amateur singer, Pavarotti was born Oct. 12, 1935. He had a meager upbringing, though he said it was rich with happiness.

"Our family had very little, but I couldn't imagine one could have any more," Pavarotti said.

As a boy, Pavarotti showed more interest in soccer than his studies, but he also was fond of listening to his father's recordings of tenor greats like Beniamino Gigli, Tito Schipa, Jussi Bjoerling and Giuseppe Di Stefano, his favorite.

Among his close childhood friends was Mirella Freni, who would eventually become a soprano and an opera great herself. The two studied singing together and years later ended up making records and concerts together.

In his teens, Pavarotti joined his father, also a tenor, in the church choir and local opera chorus. He was influenced by the American movie actor-singer Mario Lanza.

"In my teens I used to go to Mario Lanza movies and then come home and imitate him in the mirror," Pavarotti said.

Singing was still nothing more than a passion while Pavarotti trained to become a teacher and began working in a school.

But at 20, he traveled with his chorus to an international music competition in Wales. The Modena group won first place, and Pavarotti began to dedicate himself to singing.

With the encouragement of his then-fiancee, Adua, he started lessons, selling insurance to pay for them. He studied with Arrigo Pola and later Ettore Campogalliani.

In 1961, Pavarotti won a local competition and with it a debut as Rodolfo in Puccini's "La Boheme."

He followed with a series of successes in small opera houses throughout Europe before his 1963 debut at Covent Garden in London, where he stood in for Di Stefano as Rodolfo.

Having impressed conductor Richard Bonynge, Pavarotti was given a role opposite Bonynge's wife, Sutherland, in a Miami production of "Lucia di Lamermoor." They subsequently signed him for a 14-week tour of Australia.

It was the recognition Pavarotti needed to launch his career. He also credited Sutherland with teaching him how to breathe correctly.

Pavarotti's major debuts followed - at La Scala in Milan in 1965, San Francisco in 1967 and New York's Metropolitan Opera House in 1968.

Throughout his career, Pavarotti struggled with a much-publicized weight problem. His love of food caused him to balloon to a reported 396 pounds in 1978.

"Maybe this time I'll really do it and keep it up," he said during one of his constant attempts at dieting.

Pavarotti, who had been trained as a lyric tenor, began taking on heavier dramatic roles, such as Manrico in Verdi's "Trovatore" and the title role in "Otello."

In the mid-1970s, Pavarotti became a true media star. He appeared in television commercials and began singing in hugely lucrative mega-concerts outdoors and in stadiums around the world. Soon came joint concerts with pop stars. A concert in New York's Central Park in 1993 drew 500,000 fans.

Pavarotti's recording of "Volare" went platinum in 1988.

In 1990, he appeared with Domingo and Carreras in a concert at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome for the end of soccer's World Cup. The concert was a huge success, and the record known as "The Three Tenors" was a best-seller and was nominated for two Grammy awards. The video sold over 750,000 copies.

The three-tenor extravaganza became a mini-industry and widely imitated. With a follow-up album recorded at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles in 1994, the three have outsold every other performer of classical music. A 1996 tour earned each tenor an estimated $10 million.

Pavarotti liked to mingle with pop stars in his series of charity concerts, "Pavarotti & Friends," held annually in Modena. He performed with artists as varied as Ricky Martin, James Brown and the Spice Girls.

The performances raised some eyebrows but he always shrugged off the criticism.

Some say the "word 'pop' is a derogatory word to say 'not important' - I do not accept that," Pavarotti said in a 2004 interview with the AP. "If the word 'classic' is the word to say 'boring,' I do not accept. There is good and bad music."

It was not just his annual extravaganza that saw Pavarotti involved in humanitarian work.

During the 1992-95 Bosnia war, he collected humanitarian aid along with U2 lead singer Bono, and after the war he financed and established the Pavarotti Music Center in the southern city of Mostar to offer Bosnia's artists the opportunity to develop their skills.

He performed at benefit concerts to raise money for victims of tragedies such as an earthquake in December 1988 that killed 25,000 people in northern Armenia.

Pavarotti was also dogged by accusations of tax evasion, and in 2000 he agreed to pay nearly roughly $12 million to the Italian state after he had unsuccessfully claimed that the tax haven of Monte Carlo rather than Italy was his official residence.

He had been accused in 1996 of filing false tax returns for 1989-91.

Pavarotti always denied wrongdoing, saying he paid taxes wherever he performed. But, upon agreeing to the settlement, he said: "I cannot live being thought not a good person."

Pavarotti was preparing to leave New York in July 2006 to resume a farewell tour when doctors discovered a malignant pancreatic mass. He underwent surgery in a New York hospital, and all his remaining 2006 concerts were canceled.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most dangerous forms of the disease, though doctors said the surgery offered improved hopes for survival.

"I was a fortunate and happy man," Pavarotti told Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published about a month after the surgery. "After that, this blow arrived."

"And now I am paying the penalty for this fortune and happiness," he told the newspaper.

Fans were still waiting for a public appearance a year after his surgery. In the summer, Pavarotti taught a group of selected students and worked on a recording of sacred songs, a work expected to be released in early 2008, according to his manager. He mostly divided his time between Modena and his villa in the Adriatic seaside resort of Pesaro.

Just this week, the Italian government honored him with an award for "excellence in Italian culture," and La Scala and Modena's theater announced a joint Luciano Pavarotti award.

In his final statement, Pavarotti said the awards gave him "the opportunity to continue to celebrate the magic of a life dedicated to the arts and it fills me with pride and joy to have been able to promote my magnificent country abroad."

He will be remembered in Italy as "the last great Italian voice able to move the world," said Bruno Cagli, president of the Santa Cecilia National Academy in Rome.

The funeral will be held Saturday inside Modena's cathedral, Mayor Giorgio Pighi told SkyTG24.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.
And may perpetual light shine upon him.
May the souls of the faithful departed
through the mercy of God rest in peace.
Amen.

Whew, That's A Relief

I can never get over the stupidity behind the mindless application of governmental rules and regulations. Even in the most extreme situations, some bureaucrat could insist on the imposition of a law. Check this out:

Rabid bear killed trying to enter Garrett Co. home

The Associated Press

A rabid black bear trying to rip out a window air conditioner lost its tug-of-war with a terrified housewife when her husband blasted the beast with a shotgun, the woman and a state wildlife official said today.

The bear rushed the house after Charlotte Stanton yelled out her screen door to try to scare it away from a goat pen. Stanton, 39, of rural Grantsville in Garrett County, said she was losing her tussle with the 134-pound sow when Michael Stanton pulled the trigger.

"I finally yelled at my husband, because I couldn't hold on to that air conditioner much longer," she said. "It seemed like forever, but I'm sure it was just seconds."

The load of buckshot didn't kill the bear, which lay bleeding and moaning in the yard of the Western Maryland home for about 30 minutes Aug. 29 before a state Natural Resources Police officer arrived to remove it.

All four family members -- including daughter Caitlin, 10, and son James Winebrenner, 15 -- will receive a series of rabies shots because of their exposure to the animal's blood and saliva, Mrs. Stanton said.

"We cleaned up the blood and stuff from the house," she said today in a telephone interview. "All of us had pretty much blood on us."

Michael Stanton, 49, won't be charged with a wildlife violation because the state allows killing bears out of season to defend people and livestock, The Cumberland Times-News reported.

The bear was the first known case of a rabid black bear in Maryland, said Harry Spiker, who heads the state's bear management program. Rabid bears have been confirmed in Pennsylvania and Canada, he said.

Spiker said the agency tested the bear for rabies because she was so aggressive.

"That behavior was just completely out of the ordinary," Spiker said.

Stanton said bears often come into her yard and most are easily chased away. But now, "when I see a bear in the yard, I'm not going to think twice about running for the house or even getting a gun out," she said.

Look at this situation from Michael Stanton's perspective: A bear is trying to tear its way into his house to get at his wife. His young kids are there as well. I'm sure he didn't know at the time that the bear was rabid, but its behavior was pretty clear -- it was trying to attack his wife, and he and the kids were likely targets as well. So, he did what any normal person would do, he got his shotgun and put that bear down.

Look at this situation from the governmental bureaucrat's perspective: The law is the law and we may need to prosecute this man for illegally shooting this bear. It may not matter that the bear was rabid. It may not matter that if this fellow didn't shoot the bear, his wife almost certainly, and probably his kids, were going to be killed or mauled by the bear.

It boggles the mind that a rational human being would even have to spend any time evaluating this situation.