half hour

Yesterday NewsCorp unveiled their new subscription based iPhone app. This was apparently huge news for the people at FOX:

But at 11:00 AM Eastern Time, while MSNBC and CNN ran breaking news alerts and reported live from Cairo, Fox and Fox Business reported live from the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan to bring viewers the unveiling ceremony for News Corp latest product, an iPad newspaper called “The Daily.” Fox News aired a full half hour of the promotional event, featuring NewsCorp chairman Rupert Murdoch giving a hard sell of his latest media foray.

After all, nothing else was going on at that time yesterday. The people in Egypt were all out singing Kum By Yah, while the people in this country basked in summer like weather and Australia had clear skies and no wind.

In other NewsCorp news, the continued new media failure of Rupert’s company hit a new high as they look to offload MySpace.

The news event we all been waiting for has come and went. We were getting
pumped up for this great speech by our President; some skeptical we would be
given a plan, others skeptical of a better vision. What we ended up with is a
half hour of our lives down the toilet and a repeat of the same old facts.

My skepticism may have paid off some though. The President’s speech to the
nation tonight did anything but help his appearance. Instead of presenting a
diligent speech from the oval office, or making the people feel more in touch
with a prime time press conference, he took center stage at a military base. It
had the same ambiance of being on an aircraft carrier, wearing a jumpsuit in
front of a large banner that says “Mission Accomplished”. No in fact what should
have been a rallying point for the President, whose performance is overshadowed
by a constantly falling approval rating, turned into a repeat of more rhetoric
or to put it in his own words “catapulting of propaganda”.

At my count he referenced 9/11 a total of five times. Why is the President
making an association between Iraq and 9/11 again now that it has been proven
there was no link? The answer is simple – FEAR. This administration has shown a
strong desire to lead by bestowing fear amongst the masses. Rather it be in the
form of a bogus terror alert or false accusations of WMD, the President was able
to take the worst moment in our countries short history and turn it to his
favor. He used these associations to 9/11 to defend the war in Iraq now that he
has effectively destabilized the area and turned it into a training ground for
Al Qaeda.