Jadoo-doo

Matthew Yglesias reports:

[I]t turns out that through [Sinclair Broadcast Group's] wholly owned subsidiary Sinclair Ventures, Inc., SBC is a major investor in a company called Jadoo Power ystems which has won some major military contracts during the Bush years. Defense contracts aside, as Fortune has reported, "Jadoo's biggest coup came after President George W. Bush touted hydrogen as an alternative to foreign oil in his State of the Union speech last January . . . The startup got some unexpected free publicity when Bush held a TV camera using one of Jadoo's lightweight fuel cells on his shoulder as media photographers captured the moment. Jadoo plans to begin selling such batteries to the broadcast market early next year."

Bush gives "unexpected free publicity" to a Sinclair subsidiary, Sinclair gives a little unexpected free publicity to John Kerry's opponents. One hand washes the other.

and:

Another Sinclair Ventures company, VisionAIR, seems to have gotten into the federal contracting business recently. And, conveniently enough, when the Justice Department issued some new rules for contractors in August, VisionAIR was able to happily announce that they were already compliant with the new standards, so it's nothing but less competition for them. Not as fortunate as unexpected free publicity, perhaps, but lucky just the same.

How utterly and completely unsurprising.