“I’ve always been ‘easy,’ and I’m a skinny girl.”

I got to appear on Blog Talk Radio today with Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters, discussing my year-end review of the L.A. Times. You can listen to an archived version here. Sounds like my cell phone cut out a couple of times during the conversation; hopefully you’re able to follow the flow.

[Guest post by DRJ]

Happy New Year from Australia:

“SCORCHING temperatures all across the southeast of the country set the tone for an explosive welcome to 2008 last night, as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, parks and beaches to see in the new year.”

From Iraq:

“It was something not seen in Baghdad since before the 2003 invasion—people publicly welcoming a new year with singing, dancing and alcohol-fueled revelry. The ballrooms of two landmark hotels—the Palestine and the Sheraton—were full of people for the first New Year’s Eve celebrations after four years of violence that has bloodied Iraq.”

From Britain:

“In London, where 350,000 turned out for the celebrations, Trafalgar Square filled up early and people lined the Embankment to hear the chimes of Big Ben and get the best view of the annual firework spectacular at the London Eye.”

And from Australia again, because Sydney knows how to do fireworks:

And, finally, from me!

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

NASA released today its controversial National Aviation Operational Monitoring Service (NAOMS) report, a study of commercial airline safety that was previously deemed too disturbing to release because it would upset travelers and hurt airline profits. For several reasons, the Houston Chronicle was not impressed:

“NASA begrudgingly released some results today from an $11.3 million federal air safety study it previously withheld from the public over concerns it would upset travelers and hurt airline profits. It published the findings in a format that made it cumbersome for any thorough analysis by outsiders. Released on New Year’s Eve, the unprecedented research conducted over nearly four years relates to safety problems identified by some 29,000 pilots interviewed by telephone.

Earlier characterizations from people who have seen the results said they would show that events like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than previously recognized. Such information could not be gleaned from the 16,208 pages posted by NASA on its Web site, however, because of information that was edited out. The data was based on interviews with about 8,000 pilots per year from 2001 until the end of 2004.

The NASA Web site shows formatted, printed reports that the space agency scrubbed to ensure none of the pilots who were interviewed and promised anonymity could potentially be identified. The data was posted as NASA officials began a telephone news conference, allowing no time to look at the material and ask them questions about it.

NASA did not provide documentation on how to use its data, nor did it provide keys to unlock the cryptic codes used in the dataset.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told reporters the agency typically releases information in Adobe System’s portable document format, known as pdf, which presents the information on formatted, printed pages. But there are dozens of reports available from NASA’s Web site about other subjects in Microsoft’s Excel data format, which would permit researchers to conduct a meaningful analysis more easily.

Griffin said NASA wanted to ensure that no one modified the survey results and circulated false data as NASA’s research product. He said even inexpensive optical character recognition software could convert the formatted reports. Such software can risk introducing errors in the data as it performs these conversions. “We’ve gone the extra mile with this data, and well beyond our original intentions,” Griffin said.

He dismissed suggestions that NASA chose to release the data late on New Year’s Eve, when the public is distracted by holidays and news organizations are thinly staffed. “We didn’t deliberately choose to release on the slowest news day of the year,” Griffin said.

NASA drew harsh criticism from Congress and news organizations for keeping the information secret. Rejecting an Associated Press request under the Freedom of Information Act, NASA explained that it did not want to undermine public confidence in the airlines or hurt airline fortunes. Griffin later overruled his staff and promised Congress that he would release at least some data by the end of the year.

NASA’s survey, the National Aviation Operations Monitoring System, was launched to see if a massive pilot survey would help pinpoint problems and prevent accidents. Survey planners said it was unique because it was a random survey, with an 80 percent response rate, that did not rely on pilots to take the initiative to report problems but rather reached out and interviewed them.

Griffin said NASA never intended to analyze the data it collected, but rather they planned on passing on its methodology to the aviation community. He said he had only looked at a few results, but that, “It’s hard for me… to see any data here that the traveling public would care about or ought to care about.” That would be up to others who chose to analyze the data, he said.

Pilots were asked how many times they encountered safety incidents in flight and on the ground, such as near-collisions, equipment failure, runway interference, trouble communicating with the tower and unruly passengers.”

Based on this article, it’s hard not to share the Chronicle’s disdain for NASA’s attitude. On what planet is it logical to believe the traveling public would not be interested in “near-collisions, equipment failure, runway interference, trouble communicating with the tower and unruly passengers”?

It seems others are concerned, too:

“Griffin outraged some NASA employees by saying the project had been poorly managed and its methodology not properly vetted. Survey experts who worked on it, however, said they used state-of-the-art industry techniques and carefully validated the results.

NASA’s handling of the matter prompted a congressional investigation and separate investigations by its inspector general and by a union representing NASA workers.

Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who helped design the project for NASA, said the release of information was inadequate. “The data they released are intentionally designed to prevent people from analyzing the rates properly and are designed to entrap analysts into computing rates that are much higher than the survey really shows,” he said Monday.”

Here is the NASA NAOMS website that contains links to the study the Chronicle described as too “cumbersome for any thorough analysis by outsiders.”

This sounds like a job for the internet!

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

The US government provided intelligence information and security advice to Benazir Bhutto and her staff but she failed to act on it:

“The United States provided a steady stream of intelligence to Benazir Bhutto about threats against her before the former Pakistani prime minister was assassinated and advised her aides on how to boost security, although key suggestions appear to have gone unheeded, U.S. officials said Monday.

Senior U.S. diplomats had multiple conversations, including at least two private face-to-face meetings, with top members of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party to discuss threats on her life and review her security arrangements after a suicide bombing marred her initial return to Pakistan from exile in October, the officials told The Associated Press. The intelligence was also shared with the Pakistani government, the officials said.

Much of what was passed on dealt with general threats from Taliban extremists and al-Qaida sympathizers and “was not actionable information.”

The officials said Bhutto and her aides were concerned, particularly after the October attack, but were adamant that in the absence of a specific and credible threat there would be few, if any, changes to her campaign schedule ahead of parliamentary elections.

“She knew people were trying to assassinate her,” said an intelligence official. “We don’t hold information back on possible attacks on foreign leaders and foreign countries.” The official added, however, that while the U.S. could share the information, “it’s up to (the recipient) how they want to take action.” “We gave them a steady stream of intelligence,” one official said.

The officials spoke to AP on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter and amid widespread disbelief over the Pakistani government’s assertion that Bhutto died not from bullet or shrapnel wounds but from injuries sustained while hitting her head on her vehicle’s sunroof during Thursday’s attack by a suicide bomber and gunman.”

The claims by the Pakistan government about the nature of Bhutto’s injuries and cause of death look particularly feeble and point out the need for other nations to participate in the investigation. That may be why, as reported in the linked article, the US has also quietly joined calls for international cooperation in investigating Bhutto’s assassination. There are indications that Britain’s Scotland Yard will assist and any US role will be limited.

It was also reported that Bhutto considered hiring private British or US security but the US government discouraged that because the involvement of Western interests might “increase the threat and become a target itself.” Instead, the US recommended Bhutto hire private Pakistani security and reduce her visibility in large crowds:

“However, there was no indication that Bhutto’s team—including her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who attended at least one of the meetings—had followed through on the most critical of the recommendations, including the hiring of private guards and reducing her visibility in large crowds like the one in Rawalpindi where she was killed.

The officials said Zardari rejected using private Pakistani security companies due to fears they might be infiltrated by extremists even though several of the recommended companies have international components and are used by Western embassies to protect personnel.”

Apparently Bhutto, her family, or the PPP had been in contact with the US company Blackwater about its services:

“Anne Tyrell, a spokeswoman for the private U.S. security company Blackwater Worldwide, known for its operations in Iraq, said her company had been approached about possibly providing protection for Bhutto, “but unfortunately, an agreement was never reached.”

While Bhutto’s staff did take some steps to improve the safety of the party’s vehicles, the officials expressed surprise that the car in which she was riding when attacked had a sunroof and stressed that they would have strongly advised her against popping her head out of it in the presence of large numbers of people.”

Hindsight is 20/20 but I’m surprised the PPP and Bhutto didn’t hire private security, especially after the October bombing.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Mike Huckabee is getting lots of media attention and scrutiny in Iowa, and that’s not surprising for a front-runner in an early primary state. However, some of that attention is not very flattering, such as this Politico article that paints Huckabee as a showman up to classic tricks:

“Mike Huckabee’s move to not run ads hitting back at Mitt Romney is a risky move that could rejuvenate his fading campaign — or ensure his defeat on Thursday.

That Huckabee still showed the spot to dozens of reporters jammed into a press conference will ensure the most skeptical, bordering on cynical, coverage on every national news broadcast tonight and in all the major national papers tomorrow. After it became clear that he was not going to air the ad on Iowa television, but would still preview it here, the press corps offered a collective laugh in plain recognition of what Huckabee was up to. But what the snickering big feet here say tonight or write about tomorrow is not as important as how it will be described by the local journalists who were here.

How do the local TV affilates here describe the move? What will the AP story that dozens of papers here pick up tomorrow read like? And what sort of presentation and play will The Des Moines Register give to what can only be described as a singular moment in an already topsy-turvy campaign?

More than being a preacher and pol, Huck is a showman first. And today he was in his element on center stage. He’s risen to this point almost entirely by virture of his unparalled communications skills. Those were put to the test today under a withering line of questions.”

So far, the Des Moines Register has treated this as a straight news story, without commentary, noting that Huckabee showed the ad to reporters but decided not to run the ad state-wide about an hour before the news conference:

“Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee cancelled an attack advertisement today that his campaign had planned to air against his competitor, Mitt Romney. However, he showed the television advertisement to a room packed with members of the media in a room at the Marriott hotel in downtown Des Moines.

In the ad, Huckabee criticized Mitt Romney’s “dishonest attacks” even against “an American hero, John McCain.”

Huckabee said he decided about an hour before the noon press conference, which was originally planned to unveil the ad, to pull it. “At some point we have to decide, can we change the kind of politics and the level of discourse?” he said. “I‘d like to believe we can, and it’s got to start somewhere, and it might as well start here, and it might as well start with me.”

This story isn’t up yet at the Quad-City Times but the Times did have two other interesting Huckabee soundbites:

“Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee defended his failure to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran in early December, joking in an interview Monday that President Bush didn’t read intelligence reports for four years.

Huckabee came under fire in early December when, in response to a reporter’s question about the Iran report, Huckabee said he wasn’t aware of it. Huckabee’s lack of familiarity with the National Intelligence Estimate — a report that showed Iran had discontinued its nuclear program — provided fuel for his critics who said he was a lightweight on foreign policy.

“The whole perception was based on an ambush question on the NIE report,” Huckabee said in an interview Monday with the Quad-City Times. “From there, it was like, ‘Wow.’ That was released at 10 o’clock in the morning. At 5:30 in the afternoon, somebody says, ‘Have you read the report?’ Maybe I should’ve said, ‘Have you read the report?’ President Bush didn’t read it for four years; I don’t know why I should read it in four hours.”

There was also this excerpt about the purpose of punishment in criminal law cases:

“Just as he was hitting the trail, a man who manages a halfway house asked Huckabee about prisoner rehabilitation. “One of the reasons I get into a whole lot of trouble is because I do believe that you don’t just keep punishing people forever,” responded Huckabee, whose record on pardons has been criticized by some of his rivals.

Huckabee said the reason to punish should be to correct. “We lock up a lot of people that we’re mad at, not the ones we’re really afraid of,” he said. “And we ought to lock up the ones we’re afraid of, but the ones we’re just mad at we might find better ways” of correction.

The man told Huckabee: “If you’re going to continue on that path, you’ve got my vote. Huckabee said he was glad to hear it, “cause I would have hated to give that answer in front of all these cameras and lose your vote.”

That’s a sad commentary on the American justice system — that we lock up people we’re mad at — but it illustrates how well Huckabee uses simple soundbites to communicate. Reading Huckabee’s quotes makes him sound entertaining and likeable, similar to Bill Clinton. He’s a great salesman … but I’m not buying.

UPDATE: Here’s more from the New York Times’ Politics Blog on Huckabee’s “Enough is Enough” news conference.

– DRJ