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A cooperative of working Independent broadcast journalists; not Democrats, not Republicans. We're tired of our editors telling us what the news is; If our editors knew we were doing this, we'd probably be fired.

Michael Shiloh, Editor & Webmaster.

John O'Roarke, Publisher.

E-mail: ORoarke@Juno.com

The Latest News Brief

UN-PRESIDENTED!

The Associated Press estimates, in the Florida vote computer recount, Republican George W. Bush is leading Democrat Al Gore by 331 votes, as of Friday evening.

As it stands legally, Bush is president-elect of the United States.

Gore appears to have won the popular national vote by a tiny margin, but without Florida's electoral votes cannot win the presidency. With the first Florida recount finished, Gore appears to be a lame-duck vice president.

Bush is not calling for Gore to concede; Bush said Friday he believes each candidate should do what he thinks is right.

At Gore's request, several Florida counties, including the disputed Palm Beach County, will conduct a manual "hand" count of ballots from Tuesday's election. It's to begin right away.

Bush has authorized former Dick Cheney, who's now his vice president-elect, to go to court to stop another recount of votes in Florida.

Bush says he's pushing ahead with interviewing candidates for his presidential Cabinet, despite the ongoing recounts. Bush has named his vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney as Transition Coordinator to a new administration.

As expected by most analysts, foreign affairs scholar Condoleeza Rice is in line as Bush's National Security Advisor.

Gore partisans have been calling Bush's naming of a transition team "presumptive." In fact, Gore already has a transition team in place, just in case he's elected president.

Quietly, fellow Democrats are giving Gore the message that his political options are quickly running out.

Gore was Friday projected to be the winner of the Oregon vote. He gets the seven electoral votes, bringing his total to 167, but because a Friday recount has placed New Mexico's vote so close (Gore now leads Bush by a scant 164 votes), Voter News Service -- the company that does winner projections -- can no longer project Gore as the winner of that state, so take back five electoral votes. It's now Gore: 162, Bush 149.

Former Secretary of State James Baker said Friday it's time for the campaign to end and for Gore to concede (again) that Bush has won the presidency. "The business of an orderly transition (of power) should begin, there should be some finale to the election process, Baker said. What if we (the Republicans) insisted on recounts in other the states that were very, very close?"

Is President Clinton the behind-the-scenes coordinator of the legal maneuvering in Florida to put Gore in the White House? Many people think so, including British Sun columnist "Littlejohn."

Chances of a new vote in the disputed Florida counties? Experts say extremely remote.

It will be the end of next week, at the earliest, before the certified official tally of winners in Tuesday's Florida vote is in. Next Friday, November 17th, all absentee ballots will be in; then, officials say, the final vote will be counted and certified.

In New York, Senator-elect Hillary Clinton Friday said she's ready to sponsor a Constitutional amendment for the elimination of the Electoral College, even though she hasn't taken her oath of office yet.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has adopted incensed voters in Florida's Palm Beach County who, officials say, filled out ballots incorrectly, causing those ballots to be thrown out. In the majority of cases, those voters -- fewer than 19,000 or about four-percent of the county total -- punched two holes in their ballots under the category of President of the United States; since no one is allowed two votes, those ballots were discarded.

Some national Democrats -- and Florida voters -- are claiming the ballots weren't clear as to which hole was for which candidate, so they say an unusual number of voters in Palm Beach County punched the hole next to Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan's name, meaning to punch the hole next to Gore's name; so they punched Gore's name too.

Buchanan did receive a disproportionately large number of votes in southern Florida, one official says, but others say Buchanan had a strong number of supporters there. Buchanan, no fan of the GOP, agrees there could have been confusion over which hole to punch on the ballot.

It's widely regarded nationwide that voters who fill out ballots incorrectly deserve to have the ballots disqualified; should Daley receive a new election in the Florida counties he wants, it could trigger a new election in any US county where ballots were thrown out and blamed on voter confusion.

There could be presidential vote recounts in Oregon, Iowa and Wisconsin, since the vote was so close in all three states.

A number of news media, such as ABC, a drawing parallels with the election of 1876, which took four months to resolve.

One of Cable News Network's original anchors, Bernard Shaw is leaving CNN -- he says he wants time to write books.

Golf legend Tiger Woods has been hit with a 100-thousand dollar fine by the Screen Actors Guild (he's a member) for crossing picket lines to make a TV commercial while the Guild was on strike against ad agencies this past summer. The strike is now over.

In the Middle East nation of Yemen, officials say more than 85 people have been detained for questioning about the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole last month, but there is fear that the four main suspects have fled the country.

The terrorists who bombed the Cole actually intended to bomb another ship ten months earier, a US warship docked in the same Yemeni port as the Cole, according to ABC News, but the Janury attempt failed when the terrorists loaded their boat with so many explosives, it sank.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is due to speak with President Clinton in Washington over the weekend; Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat met with Clinton Thursday.

While in the US, Arafat condemned a Thursday Israeli missile attack on Palestinians that killed an Arafat ally, saying the latest Palestinian-led bloodshed can't be blamed on him.

It was 200 years ago that the White House was officially made the residence of the president; there's a big party there tonight, former presidents invited include George and Barbara Bush. The party may be a little tense, though, since President Clinton has made disparaging remarks about George W. Bush; George and Barbara are said to be miffed.

Some members of the US House of Representatives are calling for a full investigation of the TV networks and their use of exit polling in reporting the election vote Tuesday night. The networks "called" Florida for Gore before the state's western panhandle had finished voting (it's in a different time zone from the rest of the state).

Voter News Service (VNS), which secretively provides TV networks with exit-poll results on election days, says it will consider legal action against websites that obtained the exit-polling and published it on the 'net, calling the information "copyrighted" material.

Among those who said they would supply VNS exit-poll results on the Internet was Matt Drudge; he had very little chance to reveal those results, though, because his website was overwhelmed by hits, crashing the site.

It was Voter News Service that supplied TV networks with weak polling data that caused networks to incorrectly "call" Florida for Gore early Tuesday night.

Millionaire publicity-seeker Jesse Jackson is trying to make racial hay out of the Florida vote; he's expected to meet with black leaders in the Sunshine State to find out whether any racism was involved in any ballot "irregularities." Jackson hints at lawsuits; AP and UPI will report on it.

"It's time for the broadcast networks to stop declaring winners based on exit polls and precinct analysis. That's not good jouranlism." -- Curtis Gans at the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, Wednesday.

The Internet site WorldNetDaily reports that a number of military personnel overseas, many thought to be pro-Bush and some Florida residents, weren't given ballots in time to vote in Tuesday's election.

Newspapers such as a now-famous early edition of the New York Post that featured the headline "Bush Wins" are drawing as much as $30 in Internet auctions.

The Latest in computer monitors: a flat screen with the clarity of an original photograph. IBM says it's been working on the technology for three years and has figured out how to manufacture the super-hi-tech monitor, which would cost about 20-thousand dollars each. That's good news to atomic scientists, who say they want to be the first to use the new screens to conduct high-efficiency computations.

Flu vaccines are late, so many companies that administer the shots are postponing; production snafus have caused a temporary shortage of the vaccine, so experts recommending the shots in November be given to the elderly and the infrim only. Full vaccines should be available next month.

The Latest in cars: Ford's new Focus FR-200, aimed at the "echo boomer" market, kids between the age of two and nineteen, which include the largest number of consumers in US history. The zippy compact FR-200, Ford claims, is equally at home on the road and the race track.

The company's creditors have forced the specialty-sport Korean automaker Daewoo Motor Company into bankruptcy. General Motors have been looking into a purchase of Daewoo.

Thursday's editon of the New England Journal of Medicine includes a report on a recently discovered Herpes virus that's spread through kissing; the virus causes a rare form of cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma, which is confined mostly to those who've contracted the AIDS virus.

-30-

columnist E-Gadfly

THE TV NETWORKS FAIL AMERICA

You trust them, don't you? Those TV people who tell you what you're supposed to know.

Well, boy, they screwed up last night. Caught up in their agendas, they failed to give us the real story of what was happening in the presidential race.

Oh, you believed them? They served you well? Well, why was Gore winning at nine PM, then Bush was winning after midnight, and now, if you believe CBS's unbelieveably biased reporting, Gore will be Our New Saviour.

No matter what happens, CBS' Dan Rather implies, Hillary has won the Senate race from New York. We can count on that, so the Clinton legacy remains.

Real History in the making: the first First Lady to actually "steal" money from First Lady White House budgets to further her political ambitions (jet rides for contributors, overnights in the Lincoln Bedroom for contributors, et cetera): and the people of New York reward her with representation! You New Yorkers, you're the top! The hell with morality, right, my man? Who cares?

News anchors keep saying that Hillary Clinton's win is "historic." What, she's the first woman in Congress? Wrong. She's the first woman to take federal money intended for tea parties and use it for personal politcal gain.

But like her husband, she's amoral, especially when it comes to the needs of her country. And when she won, she said "we're all New Yorkers now." Yeah, right.

This whole night of reporting has been an outrage.

Yes, it is the screwiest campaign in history.

Yes, it's bizarre that anyone actually thinks that Bill Clinton and Al Gore can morally lead America.

Some say it's "crazy" to think of George W. Bush as the president. After all, his position is based on morality. And in America today, morality is defined as loosely as "is" is. Right?

Dan Rather on CBS, ashen-faced, reported after midnight that George W. Bush would be the next president of the United States; by four AM he was buoyant: Florida was taken out of the Bush camp and put back into play for Gore.

(Rather's ties to the Democratic Party are well documented.)

By five AM, Rather reported with glee that Gore "wouldn't concede anything."

Correspondent Leslie Stahl was there, and when Rather reported that Gore was adamant, Stahl, the distinguished co-host of "60 Minutes," said "Wow."

On MSNBC, the cable-satellite TV "network," which also called Bush the New President, it was a tough night for anchor Brian Williams, who was trying incessantly to keep the mood light while the politics became inextricably Byzantine.

On cable-satellite Fox News, you could literally watch Paula Zahn and Brit Hume wilt under the pressure of an endless night; one hopes there were cots for them to sleep on; their analysts carried the show.

CBS' Dan Rather, an obviously anti-Bush Texan (go figure) was babbling by four in the morning that Gore, since he backed out of his concession, now had a chance, since the Bush lead was dwindling.

Over and over, Rather harped on Bush's diminishing lead, demanding from his surrogate reporters a way for Gore to come out on top.

By five AM, Gore had taken the lead in the national CBS vote count. Rather was satisfied, and within minutes, the morning team had taken over and Rather was gone.

ABC did a fair job, calling it the Closest Election In History.

NBC was solid in its reporting, crossing over its CNBC- and MSNBC-cable/satellite reporting.

But if you wanted to be truly informed, you were out of luck.

America is changing so fast even the lightning-quick TV networks couldn't keep up.

And who do we thank?

President Clinton, his wife, the New Senator Hillary, and the Democratic Party -- and it's racial divisiveness, it's Donna Brazile-inspired racism, it's lies and evasive rhetoric and all the accompanying partisan Politics of Personal Destruction, which are their stock-in-trade.

Ironically, it's that kind of partisan politics that President Clinton has condemned. Yet he -- and Gore and Hillary -- practice them.

The networks have missed that story. Why haven't one of the big-time, research-heavy TV networks done a documentary on the psychology of the Clintons?

It would be must See TV.

The networks are too caught up in their own narcissitic dominance. But then so is President Clinton. So is Hillary. And so is Al Gore.

Gore believes he can give in, then take it back. That's just what he's done in this election.

Unprecedented.

Why would he do that?

He's a wimp. I know the background of Gore's time in Washington, and believe me, President Clinton and I both know Gore's wimp.

But that's not a big story to the networks. Because he's the Vice President, he can do what he wants, right?

That's what the news media say.

But the news media has missed the real story here.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

George W. Bush was a guy who most people had never heard of a year ago; he's come from "nowhere" to corner the sitting vice president into a virtual standoff.

George W. Bush is the news story of the century so far.

Who are you? If you happened to come out of nowhere to challenge the President and his Number Two man and actually made it down to the closest election in history, wouldn't you be doing an incredible piece of work?

Oh, that's not the way the New York Times sees it. They stopped the presses last night because they heard there was a chance Gore could pull the election out after it was literally conceded to George W. Bush.

Hope springs eternal for The New York Times, their error-prone reporters and biased editors and liberals everwhere.

As a writer, my ears hurt when I heard a tired Dan Rather say it may be "nine AM in the morning" before the Florida vote was straightened out. Such a redundency is not to be expected from an anchor of Rather's esteem.

But then, all night reporters on CBS, NBC and ABC kept saying that if it weren't for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, Al Gore would have made a stronger showing.

In fact, if Al Gore were the "come from nowhere" challenger and George W. Bush were the incumbent, Gore would be laughed out of the race and roundly defeated.

Sorry, but if it hadn't been for Bill Clinton, Al Gore would have made a stronger showing.

Or, as David Letterman might have said, if it hadn't been for Al Gore, Al Gore might have made a better showing.

Did the networks report any of this?

No.

The networks have failed us, in this and so many other ways.

-- E-GADFLY