This blog is mainly about the spectacular train wreck at The Sacramento Bee and its parent company, the McClatchy Company. But I also post about current events, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, politics, anything else that grabs my attention. Take a look around this blog, hope you enjoy it.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Saturday October 24 -- Got news or an update?
If you have news or an update, leave it in comments. . . .
16 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Eight-Figure Couric Demands 'Humility' From Seven-Figure Wall Streeters
Katie Couric has demanded "humility" from Wall Streeters making seven-figure incomes.
This from a woman pulling down . . . eight figures [an estimated $15 million/year] from CBS while cementing the Evening News' caboose status.
Couric made her hypocritical plea in her "Notebook" segment yesterday, commenting on Pres. Obama's pay czar's plan to cut compensation for employees of financial firms that have received bail-out bucks [emphasis added]:
White House Loses Bid to Exclude Fox News From Pay Czar Interview (Fox)
The Obama administration on Thursday tried to make "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg available for interviews to every member of the White House pool except Fox News.
But the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks decided that none of their reporters would interview Feinberg unless Fox News was included.
Could it be that those news networks are waking up to smell the communism?
Treasury Department Denies it Tried to Exclude Fox News From Interviews (mediaite.com)
We reported earlier that when Fox News was banned from a round-robin interview with Obama administration “Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg, the bureau chiefs of the other major networks banded together to thwart the White House.
Now, Mediaite has learned exclusively that the Treasury Department, who set up the interviews, denies the story.
A Treasury Department spokesperson tells Mediaite the following:
There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did.
Media revolts against Obama's attempt to blacklist Fox News (The Examiner)
The Obama administration's war on Fox has turned the usually fawning media against the President.
Thursday's attempt to exclude Fox News from a round of network interviews with a White House official backfired. Very badly.
One of Obama's three dozen czars was made available to the network pool members, which include Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC.
However, in yet another attempt to attack de-legitimize Fox News, the White House told FNC they would not be allowed to participate in the interviews.
Thankfully, the Washington bureau chiefs for the other networks rallied to Fox's defense.
They told the Obama administration that none of them would do the interviews if Fox was excluded.
Obama's minions relented.
The support of the other networks was more about protecting the First Amendment, and their own hides, than it was about helping Fox News.
The networks are smart enough to realize that excluding one particular media member from White House coverage sets a dangerous precedent.
The moment also provided a nice push back against the bullying tactics Obama's top two advisors tried on CNN and ABC last Sunday.
It also comes in direct contradiction to a statement made by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Monday, when he claimed he would not dictate who belongs in the media pool.
That is exactly what Gibbs' office attempted to do three days later, by excluding Fox.
Rules for Presidents (Obama using Alinsky rules against Fox) WSJ
Blogger Donald Sensing has a fascinating analysis of President Obama's war against Fox News.
He describes the effort as "directly out of the Saul Alinsky playbook." Alinsky was the author of "Rules for Radicals," bible of left-wing community organizers. One of his rules, or "power tactics": "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
Sensing analyzes how Obama is carrying out this advice.... It's hard to see any way in which the White House's war on Fox makes sense.
The aim of the effort seems to be to contain the political damage from stories like the Van Jones and Acorn scandals, which Fox reported well ahead of most media outlets, by encouraging journalists at those outlets to think of Fox as illegitimate.
But that is their natural inclination anyway; it is the reason Fox was out in front on those stories. Other news organizations were embarrassed to be so badly scooped--and rightly so, because it exposed them as, at best, lacking a nose for news and, at worst, being in the tank for the Obama White House.
Anita (Mao) Dunn's Husband Emerging as Top Contender to Replace White House Counsel (Fox News) Major Garrett
White House Communications Director Anita Dunn's husband is emerging as the top candidate to replace Greg Craig as White House counsel, Fox News has learned.
Dunn's husband, Bob Bauer, is President Obama's personal lawyer and a former counsel to his campaign, as well as the top lawyer for the Democratic National Committee.
Senior White House officials declined to comment, but Democrats close to the situation said Bauer is under serious consideration to replace Craig, who is expected to leave the White House by the end of the year.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said no decisions have been made on Craig's future or on any potential replacement.
AP: House Health Care Bill Exceeds $1 Trillion Cost over a decade much higher than target President Obama has set
Health care legislation taking shape in the House carries a price tag of at least $1 trillion over a decade, significantly higher than the target President Barack Obama has set, congressional officials said Friday as they struggled to finish work on the measure for a vote early next month.
Democrats have touted an unreleased Congressional Budget Office estimate of $871 billion in recent days, a total that numerous officials acknowledge understates the bill's true cost by $150 billion or more.
That figure excludes several items designed to improve benefits for Medicare and Medicaid recipients and providers, as well as public health programs and more, they added.
The officials who disclosed the details did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.
Some moderate Democrats have expressed reluctance to support a bill as high as $1 trillion.
Last month, Obama said in a nationally televised address before a joint session of Congress that he preferred a package with a price tag of around $900 billion.
Obama also said he would not sign a bill that raised deficits, and the CBO estimates the emerging House bill meets that objective.
The more the fiscal details of the healthcare bills emerge, the more appalling they seem. The Senate Finance Committee bill includes a broad provision taxing all manner of medical devices.
This tax includes such frivolous luxuries as pacemakers, stents, artificial heart valves, defibrillators, automated wheelchairs, mechanized artificial limbs, replacement hips and knees, surgical gurneys, laparoscopic equipment and the like.
President Obama is planning to reduce the cost of medical care by taxing it!
Democrats Vote To Give ACORN Regulatory Authority Over Financial Institutions
WASHINGTON - During consideration of H.R. 3126, legislation to establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee voted to pass an amendment offered by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) that will make ACORN eligible to play a role in setting regulations for financial institutions.
Why Democrats are Smart to Call Public Option "Medicare" (The Atlantic)
Are Democrats really about to re-brand the public option? According to The Hill (via Slatest), Democrats think the term "public option" is too confusing -- it certainly isn't specific -- and they'd like to replace it with something more like Medicare.
Slate's Ron Rosenbaum said earlier this month that public option was the worst phrase ever, but his suggestions -- like government-run insurance program -- didn't quite tickle the pleasure centers.
So I suggested my own ideas and frankly they were pretty bad, too.
FOX IS NOT A NEWS NETWROK. BUT THIS PASSES FOR NEWS FROM MSDNC-AP-McClatchy?
Michelle Obama's Gripe: President's Tennis Game (AP Report)
BURBANK, Calif. (AP) -- What's President Barack Obama's most annoying habit?
It's not practicing his speeches for hours in front of the bathroom mirror or talking too much foreign policy at the dinner table?
No -- first lady Michelle Obama said Friday it's his tennis game.
When they play, the president usually wins.
''He beats me quite often,'' she said on NBC-TV's ''The Jay Leno Show,'' appearing via satellite hookup from the White House. ''That gets to be pretty annoying.''
The show was taped for airing later Friday evening.
In a brief skit, Leno pushed her to talk about her husband's flaws. At first, she sarcastically said he has none.
''He's perfect,'' she quipped. Then she let it out: It's their battles on the tennis court that get her peeved.
Obama Will Attend Opening of New Florida Solar Panel Plant That Will Power 3,000 Homes at a Cost of $50,000 Per Home (GatewayPundit)
(AP) The state of Florida is completing the final touches on a solar panel plant that cost $150 million to build and will only power 3,000 homes.
Barack Obama will visit this solar-paneled cash dump next week. The AP reported:
snip
The White House said President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit the facility Tuesday, when it officially goes online and begins producing power for the electric grid…
…The Desoto facility and two other solar projects Florida Power & Light is spearheading will generate 110 megawatts of power, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than 3.5 million tons. Combined, that’s the equivalent of taking 25,000 cars off the road each year, according to figures cited by the company.
The investment isn’t cheap: The Desoto project cost $150 million to build and the power it supplies to some 3,000 homes and businesses will represent just a sliver of the 4 million-plus accounts served by the state’s largest electric utility.
But there are some economic benefits: It created 400 jobs for draftsmen, carpenters and others whose work dried up as the southwest Florida housing boom came to a closure and the recession set in. Once running, it will require few full-time employees.
The plant cost $150 million to build and will power 3,000 homes or businesses.
In other words it costs about $50,000 per household. No wonder these government-funded projects can’t make it on their own. Sounds like an investment only a democrat (and Lindsey Graham) would love.
Pellicano Pleads Guilty; Anita Busch Blasts “Unethical Idiots” at the L.A. Times PATTERICO
Anthony Pellicano and Alexander Proctor pled guilty today to threatening former L.A. Times reporter Anita Busch. The sentence was three years, to be served concurrently with his 15-year federal sentence for wiretapping.
I asked Anita Busch tonight if she had a statement and she sent me this:
I’m very relieved all the criminal trials are over. If this had gone forward, I would have had to testify in two more criminal trials. It was seven years since my life was threatened, computer hacked into and my phones illegally wiretapped.
What they did to me was an act of domestic terrorism, and they are both in prison where they belong. Everything I said has now come to pass. I can hold my head high because I told the truth the entire time.
What I learned through this experience was that most people are afraid of the truth...
and that includes certain unethical idiots at the Los Angeles Times.
Not only did they lie about my employment status, but also called Anthony Pellicano for help on my case and then hid that from their own staff, from me and from law enforcement.
16 comments:
Eight-Figure Couric Demands 'Humility' From Seven-Figure Wall Streeters
Katie Couric has demanded "humility" from Wall Streeters making seven-figure incomes.
This from a woman pulling down . . . eight figures [an estimated $15 million/year] from CBS while cementing the Evening News' caboose status.
Couric made her hypocritical plea in her "Notebook" segment yesterday, commenting on Pres. Obama's pay czar's plan to cut compensation for employees of financial firms that have received bail-out bucks [emphasis added]:
White House Loses Bid to Exclude Fox News From Pay Czar Interview (Fox)
The Obama administration on Thursday tried to make "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg available for interviews to every member of the White House pool except Fox News.
But the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks decided that none of their reporters would interview Feinberg unless Fox News was included.
Could it be that those news networks are waking up to smell the communism?
Treasury Department Denies it Tried to Exclude Fox News From Interviews (mediaite.com)
We reported earlier that when Fox News was banned from a round-robin interview with Obama administration “Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg, the bureau chiefs of the other major networks banded together to thwart the White House.
Now, Mediaite has learned exclusively that the Treasury Department, who set up the interviews, denies the story.
A Treasury Department spokesperson tells Mediaite the following:
There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did.
Media revolts against Obama's attempt to blacklist Fox News
(The Examiner)
The Obama administration's war on Fox has turned the usually fawning media against the President.
Thursday's attempt to exclude Fox News from a round of network interviews with a White House official backfired. Very badly.
One of Obama's three dozen czars was made available to the network pool members, which include Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC.
However, in yet another attempt to attack de-legitimize Fox News, the White House told FNC they would not be allowed to participate in the interviews.
Thankfully, the Washington bureau chiefs for the other networks rallied to Fox's defense.
They told the Obama administration that none of them would do the interviews if Fox was excluded.
Obama's minions relented.
The support of the other networks was more about protecting the First Amendment, and their own hides, than it was about helping Fox News.
The networks are smart enough to realize that excluding one particular media member from White House coverage sets a dangerous precedent.
The moment also provided a nice push back against the bullying tactics Obama's top two advisors tried on CNN and ABC last Sunday.
It also comes in direct contradiction to a statement made by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Monday, when he claimed he would not dictate who belongs in the media pool.
That is exactly what Gibbs' office attempted to do three days later, by excluding Fox.
MSNBC Hypocrisy: Fox Not 'Normal News' Due to Tea Party Promo; MSNBC Promoted Own Healthcare Rallies (Newsbusters)
Big shock here - MSNBC's Rachel Maddow agrees with the White House, which is the Fox News Channel is not really a news organization.
Sarcasm aside, on her Oct. 23 MSNBC program, Maddow attempted to justify the Obama administration's tact over recent months with Fox News.
Rules for Presidents (Obama using Alinsky rules against Fox) WSJ
Blogger Donald Sensing has a fascinating analysis of President Obama's war against Fox News.
He describes the effort as "directly out of the Saul Alinsky playbook." Alinsky was the author of "Rules for Radicals," bible of left-wing community organizers. One of his rules, or "power tactics": "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
Sensing analyzes how Obama is carrying out this advice....
It's hard to see any way in which the White House's war on Fox makes sense.
The aim of the effort seems to be to contain the political damage from stories like the Van Jones and Acorn scandals, which Fox reported well ahead of most media outlets, by encouraging journalists at those outlets to think of Fox as illegitimate.
But that is their natural inclination anyway; it is the reason Fox was out in front on those stories. Other news organizations were embarrassed to be so badly scooped--and rightly so, because it exposed them as, at best, lacking a nose for news and, at worst, being in the tank for the Obama White House.
Anita (Mao) Dunn's Husband Emerging as Top Contender to Replace White House Counsel (Fox News) Major Garrett
White House Communications Director Anita Dunn's husband is emerging as the top candidate to replace Greg Craig as White House counsel, Fox News has learned.
Dunn's husband, Bob Bauer, is President Obama's personal lawyer and a former counsel to his campaign, as well as the top lawyer for the Democratic National Committee.
Senior White House officials declined to comment, but Democrats close to the situation said Bauer is under serious consideration to replace Craig, who is expected to leave the White House by the end of the year.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said no decisions have been made on Craig's future or on any potential replacement.
AP: House Health Care Bill Exceeds $1 Trillion Cost over a decade much higher than target President Obama has set
Health care legislation taking shape in the House carries a price tag of at least $1 trillion over a decade, significantly higher than the target President Barack Obama has set, congressional officials said Friday as they struggled to finish work on the measure for a vote early next month.
Democrats have touted an unreleased Congressional Budget Office estimate of $871 billion in recent days, a total that numerous officials acknowledge understates the bill's true cost by $150 billion or more.
That figure excludes several items designed to improve benefits for Medicare and Medicaid recipients and providers, as well as public health programs and more, they added.
The officials who disclosed the details did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.
Some moderate Democrats have expressed reluctance to support a bill as high as $1 trillion.
Last month, Obama said in a nationally televised address before a joint session of Congress that he preferred a package with a price tag of around $900 billion.
Obama also said he would not sign a bill that raised deficits, and the CBO estimates the emerging House bill meets that objective.
Lest We Forget: SEIU, ACORN Behind Ongoing Push For Socialized Medicine (Biggovernment.com)
ACORN founder-turned-pariah Wade Rathke explained in late July SEIU’s and ACORN’s involvement in the push for socialized medicine.
Who really wants a government takeover of health care? Labor unions and tax eaters.
The question remains: if and when the Congress passes “reform,” will the American people understand who is really behind it?
Obama taxes pacemakers, heart valves (The Hill)
The more the fiscal details of the healthcare bills emerge, the more appalling they seem. The Senate Finance Committee bill includes a broad provision taxing all manner of medical devices.
This tax includes such frivolous luxuries as pacemakers, stents, artificial heart valves, defibrillators, automated wheelchairs, mechanized artificial limbs, replacement hips and knees, surgical gurneys, laparoscopic equipment and the like.
President Obama is planning to reduce the cost of medical care by taxing it!
Democrats Vote To Give ACORN Regulatory Authority Over Financial Institutions
WASHINGTON - During consideration of H.R. 3126, legislation to establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee voted to pass an amendment offered by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) that will make ACORN eligible to play a role in setting regulations for financial institutions.
Why Democrats are Smart to Call Public Option "Medicare" (The Atlantic)
Are Democrats really about to re-brand the public option? According to The Hill (via Slatest), Democrats think the term "public option" is too confusing -- it certainly isn't specific -- and they'd like to replace it with something more like Medicare.
Slate's Ron Rosenbaum said earlier this month that public option was the worst phrase ever, but his suggestions -- like government-run insurance program -- didn't quite tickle the pleasure centers.
So I suggested my own ideas and frankly they were pretty bad, too.
FOX IS NOT A NEWS NETWROK. BUT THIS PASSES FOR NEWS FROM MSDNC-AP-McClatchy?
Michelle Obama's Gripe: President's Tennis Game (AP Report)
BURBANK, Calif. (AP) -- What's President Barack Obama's most annoying habit?
It's not practicing his speeches for hours in front of the bathroom mirror or talking too much foreign policy at the dinner table?
No -- first lady Michelle Obama said Friday it's his tennis game.
When they play, the president usually wins.
''He beats me quite often,'' she said on NBC-TV's ''The Jay Leno Show,'' appearing via satellite hookup from the White House. ''That gets to be pretty annoying.''
The show was taped for airing later Friday evening.
In a brief skit, Leno pushed her to talk about her husband's flaws. At first, she sarcastically said he has none.
''He's perfect,'' she quipped.
Then she let it out: It's their battles on the tennis court that get her peeved.
Obama Will Attend Opening of New Florida Solar Panel Plant That Will Power 3,000 Homes at a Cost of $50,000 Per Home (GatewayPundit)
(AP) The state of Florida is completing the final touches on a solar panel plant that cost $150 million to build and will only power 3,000 homes.
Barack Obama will visit this solar-paneled cash dump next week.
The AP reported:
snip
The White House said President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit the facility Tuesday, when it officially goes online and begins producing power for the electric grid…
…The Desoto facility and two other solar projects Florida Power & Light is spearheading will generate 110 megawatts of power, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than 3.5 million tons. Combined, that’s the equivalent of taking 25,000 cars off the road each year, according to figures cited by the company.
The investment isn’t cheap: The Desoto project cost $150 million to build and the power it supplies to some 3,000 homes and businesses will represent just a sliver of the 4 million-plus accounts served by the state’s largest electric utility.
But there are some economic benefits: It created 400 jobs for draftsmen, carpenters and others whose work dried up as the southwest Florida housing boom came to a closure and the recession set in. Once running, it will require few full-time employees.
The plant cost $150 million to build and will power 3,000 homes or businesses.
In other words it costs about $50,000 per household. No wonder these government-funded projects can’t make it on their own. Sounds like an investment only a democrat (and Lindsey Graham) would love.
Pellicano Pleads Guilty; Anita Busch Blasts “Unethical Idiots” at the L.A. Times PATTERICO
Anthony Pellicano and Alexander Proctor pled guilty today to threatening former L.A. Times reporter Anita Busch. The sentence was three years, to be served concurrently with his 15-year federal sentence for wiretapping.
I asked Anita Busch tonight if she had a statement and she sent me this:
I’m very relieved all the criminal trials are over. If this had gone forward, I would have had to testify in two more criminal trials. It was seven years since my life was threatened, computer hacked into and my phones illegally wiretapped.
What they did to me was an act of domestic terrorism, and they are both in prison where they belong. Everything I said has now come to pass. I can hold my head high because I told the truth the entire time.
What I learned through this experience was that most people are afraid of the truth...
and that includes certain unethical idiots at the Los Angeles Times.
Not only did they lie about my employment status, but also called Anthony Pellicano for help on my case and then hid that from their own staff, from me and from law enforcement.
6:25 glad we have MSM reporters giving us substance.
Post a Comment