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.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Tuesday November 17 -- Got news or an update?
If you have news or an update, leave it in comments. . . .
36 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Dobbs got $8M to quit (Ny Post) CNN 'wanted him out'
CNN was so sick of Lou Dobbs, it gave him an $8 million severance package to leave, The Post has learned.
"They wanted him out," according to a source.
Dobbs, who a source said had a year and a half to go on his $12 million contract, shocked viewers last Wednesday by announcing he was quitting.
CNN boss Jonathan Klein and Dobbs, 64, had been publicly feuding over the kind of reporting Dobbs was doing on his show -- especially stories about illegal immigration and the anti-Obama "birther" movement, which contends the president was not born in Hawaii and is not an American citizen.
But it was not clear until now that CNN was willing to pay Dobbs so much money to leave.
News Channel could oppose the lone voice of one person who isn’t in agreement with them, so badly, that they are willing to pay 8 Million dollars not have that voice of truth in their employ.
Don’t ever try to tell me that Liberals aren’t insane.
Former CNNer Claims Network's Liberal Bias Caused Dobbs' Exit (Newsbusters)
On Reliable Sources, Chris Plante, a former CNN correspondent, said Dobbs, as "the last conservative voice on the channel," no longer fit in.
When Plante said CNN hosts Campbell Brown, Anderson Cooper, and Larry King weren't "completely neutral," Kurtz asked, "Are you suggesting that those hosts lean to the left?"
Plante marvelously responded, "Yes, I am"
PLANTE: And the news media -- I'm supposed to be the radio talk show host and you're the newspaper guy here. In Washington, we've got a chief White House correspondent for CBS News Chip Reid who was a former employee on Capitol Hill of Joe Biden. We've got a senior White House correspondent of NBC News who was a former staffer for Tom Harkin.
KURTZ: Let's stick to CNN.
PLANTE: We have a senior Washington correspondent for ABC News who is a Clinton administration official. David Axelrod is a former "Chicago Tribute" reporter. We've got Jay Carney leaving his job at "Time" magazine to go to work for this administration. Look, the pattern is clear, everybody knows it except you guys, you know?
KURTZ: What does it is say about CNN? None of those people work at CNN.
PLANTE: It's the news media as an industry and as a company, the last conservative voice on the channel is gone. They had Glenn Beck, he's gone. They had him, now he's gone. Lou Dobbs is gone.
ZURAWIK: Chris, if a lot of people are asking the question, they weren't watching him. This is not some ratings juggernaut. Lou Dobbs was finishing third in his time period. This was not some great populous groundswell of support for what he was doing.
PLANTE: Based on that standard, there are a lot of other anchors who would be gone, too, aren't they, but they're not gone, are they?
CNN ratings slide could imperil high ad rates (New York Post)
After losing its ratings lead and falling to last in primetime, the once-dominant CNN stands to lose the last piece of top-shelf value still attached to its business side: premium pricing.
Time Warner-owned CNN, while getting beaten handily in the ratings race and having fallen to fourth place in rankings, still commands higher ad rates than rivals -- in some cases double those of Fox News and MSNBC.
But perhaps not for long.
While advertisers have been willing to shell out more for CNN's venerable brand, broad audience reach and less-opinionated programming, media buyers said the network's ratings slide is likely to bring down pricing.
"They will maintain a premium, but will it stay this high?" asked one ad buyer. "I think it will probably go down."
And that could cost them millions of dollars in advertising revenue.
In the world of television advertising, a big audience doesn't necessarily translate into the highest ad rates.
Nation's largest gay newspaper publisher closes (Meat, the press) AP
ATLANTA — The nation's largest publisher of newspapers serving the gay and lesbian community has shut down.
Laura Douglas-Brown, editor of Southern Voice newspaper in Atlanta, says she arrived at work Monday to find the locks changed and a note saying parent company Window Media LLC has closed down.
...says she arrived at work Monday to find the locks changed and a note saying parent company Window Media LLC has closed down.”
This is the best part. Now if I didn’t know better, that sounds like something that the media/hollywood/the left would love to report on/write a script about. Something that “big business” would do. Something a “heartless capitalist corporation (lead by a “conservative stereotype, of course)” would do. Going by the script we’ve all seen a hundred times, of course.
Classy, real classy to fire everyone post-it note. Liberals really do care about the people.
Butt with as many homosexual activists as there are in the ranks of the MSM, this was just redundancy.
Washington Blade and Several Other Gay Newspapers Go Out of Business (The New York Times )
Gay newspapers in several U.S. cities, including the Washington Blade, shut down on Monday, as the company that owned them, Window Media, abruptly went out of business.
Window Media had been in serious financial trouble, but employees said they had expected a reorganization or sale, not a liquidation.
“We found out when two of the corporate officers were waiting for us when we got to work this morning,” said Kevin Naff, editor of the Blade, a 40-year-old paper that was one of the most important publications written for a gay audience. “It’s not a complete surprise. The abruptness of it was what was surprising.”
The paper’s roughly 20 employees “are determined to come back and make of a go of it as an independent entity,” he said. “Our first meeting is tomorrow.” Employees at Southern Voice, an Atlanta-based gay paper owned by Window Media, found their offices locked on Monday, and a note posted on the door saying that the company had ceased operation.
It told the workers to return Wednesday with boxes to collect their belongings.
I guess they blew it... But it was faaaabulous while it lasted.
Sex infections still growing in U.S.(63% of all syphilis cases from homosexuals!) Reuters
American squeamishness about talking about sex has helped keep common sexually transmitted infections far too common, especially among vulnerable teens, U.S. researchers reported Monday...
1-2% of the population in urban areas accounts for 63% of all syphilis cases in the USA!
Allegations of Wrongdoing by SEIU and Its President Andy Stern PATTERICO
First, via Instapundit, we have Big Government reporting on allegations of illegal tactics by the SEIU in a union election.
The allegations, made in a sworn affidavit by a former SEIU worker, include “changing ballots and threatening to report a worker to immigration officials,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Second, via Hot Air, we have an exclusive report of a letter from Americans for Tax Reform and the Alliance for Worker Freedom seeking an investigation of SEIU president Andy Stern for allegedly lobbying despite being unregistered as a lobbyist.
The evidence includes Stern’s Twitter feeds, where he says things like this:
Lobbying with Mayor Bloomberg on health care. Leaving Senator Snowe. Mayor big proponent of keeping people healthy and the right public plan
Now might be a good time to recall that the release of White House visitor logs showed that Stern was the most frequent visitor to the White House. Browsing through Stern’s Twitter feed, I saw this entry from February 18:
just left White House where group from MoveOn to Chamber of Commerce but mostly progressives had cocktails with Prez and VP
How Andy Stern Got Around the "No Lobbyist" Policy; He Just Didn't Register (Big Government)
President Obama has always made a pretty big deal about not working with “lobbyists”. Registered lobbyists can’t get stimulus money, can’t be White House advisors and are not allowed access to meetings and summits.
So how does one get around that? It’s simple; you just don’t register as a lobbyist.
That’s what Andy Stern did and it may come back to bite him.
Barack Obama tells 2.6 million Twitter followers he has never tweeted (Telegraph (U.K.)
Barack Obama left his 2.6 million fans on Twitter, the social networking website, bemused, disappointed and mildly irritated by admitting on Monday that he had never used the service himself.
"Let me say that I have never used Twitter," he told students in Shanghai. "I noticed that young people are very busy with these electronics. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone."
During his election campaign, Mr Obama portrayed himself as "connected" to the people through Twitter and his ever-present blackberry phone.
Some of his more understanding fans asked if it was any real surprise that the president had little time to "tweet".
"Did anyone really think he was posting on his own?" asked @Inap.
Others, however, complained that Mr Obama has a "verified account" which is supposed to prove that it is his own. "Unfollowing @BarackObama now. What a letdown!" wrote @bkuri. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone."
Remember when this very thing was the reason John McCain was considered too out of touch
(ABC) Exclusive: Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist
Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 9th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.
There's one problem, though: There is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts.
There's no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government's recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent there.
Barack Hoover Obama, The Audacity of Failure (The Market Oracle)
Barack Obama is on his way to becoming a one-term president. According to Politico:
"President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year’s State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay other new domestic spending beyond jobs programs, according to top aides involved in the planning.
The president’s plan, which the officials said was under discussion before this month’s Democratic election setbacks, represents both a practical and a political calculation by this White House." (www.politico.com)
Er, now who exactly is telling Obama that raising taxes or cutting spending in the middle of a severe economic contraction is a good idea?
Mass. (DEMOCRAT) senator, reportedly drunk, driven home by cops 13 hours before hit-and-run (LA Times) Woops, the media accidentally left out the Democrat label again)
Police in Cambridge, Mass., gave state Sen. Anthony Galluccio a ride home because acquaintances told them he was too drunk to drive about 13 hours before he was involved in a hit-and-run accident.
Police were called to a gas station in Cambridge about 4:40 a.m. Oct. 4 after receiving a call about an intoxicated man.
The station attendant told police he believed Galluccio was too drunk to drive. Police said another man told them he was trying to drive Galluccio home but couldn't find his house. Police said they drove Galluccio home in their cruiser.
About 13 hours later, a vehicle driven by Galluccio rear-ended a minivan. Galluccio has said he left the scene because he panicked.
Galluccio did not immediately respond to request for comment Monday.
St. Louis Democrat Pays Taxes So She Can Be Candidate (GatewayPundit)
In the Age of Obama we’re getting used to this. A St. Louis democrat finally paid her taxes so that she could fill an open slot in the Missouri House of Representatives.
Hope Whitehead will replace democrat Talibdin El-Amin who pleaded guilty to bribery charges in September. (StL PD) The Post-Dispatch reported:
A day before she clinched the nomination to fill a vacancy in the Missouri House of Representatives on Saturday, St. Louis Democrat Hope Whitehead paid a visit to City Hall.
Not to mobilize supporters, but to pay hundreds of dollars in outstanding taxes.
Her trip downtown was more than just civic duty. Under state law, candidates with overdue tax bills are ineligible for the ballot.
When her obligations were met, a panel of city Democratic leaders gathered Saturday to nominate Whitehead, 50, to fill the vacancy created by former state Rep.
Talibdin El-Amin, who submitted his resignation in September after pleading guilty to federal bribery charges.
El-Amin is the third local Democratic lawmaker to leave office this year after getting caught in an FBI crackdown on corruption.
The Washington Post editorial board finally catches up to the big three-card Monte that Nancy Pelosi conducted in passing her ObamaCare bill over week ago.
Last week, Byron York reported that Pelosi hid almost $300 billion in new health-care costs by burying the “doctor fix” in the debate rules for her Pelosi Plan.
Now the Post blasts Congress for its dishonesty, and for mishandling the expensive addition that would make a mockery of the new deficit-hawk posing at the White House (via Conn Carroll):
HAVING PASSED a health reform bill that is, at least theoretically, paid for, the House of Representatives is poised this week to blow a quarter-trillion-dollar hole in the federal budget involving, you guessed it, health care.
This is the so-called doc fix, to prevent scheduled cuts in Medicare reimbursements to physicians from taking effect
Jim Moran : Daniel Pearl’s family is un-American (Hot Air)
That’s certainly the conclusion one can draw from two stories over the last couple of days.
Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), who pushed Barack Obama to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to the US for criminal trials, says that criticism of the decision is “un-American”:
Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) has strong words for the Republicans opposing Attorney General Eric Holder’s plan to bring five 9/11 suspects to New York City to face trial.
“They see this as an opportunity to demagogue,” he said. “They will seize on any opportunity to do that, and that means they’ll even take a stand that’s un-American.
Changing the subject: Why O nixed Ft. Hood probe (NY Post)
As he flew to Asia on Saturday, President Obama told the media in Alaska that he opposes a congressional investigation into the Fort Hood massacre, saying that we must "resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into political theater."
Yet, even as he was posturing against political theatrics, he had just decided that the prosecution of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would proceed on the greatest of public stages -- New York City.
With the strict evidentiary rules in force in federal civilian courts, it is easy to see how the prosecution of Mohammed could morph into an indictment of the Bush administration's interrogation techniques and waterboarding.
As in rape trials, the magnitude of the underlying crime (masterminding the 9/11 attacks) might well be lost as the defense puts the victim (in this case, the government) on trial.
The KSM Trial Will Be an Intelligence Bonanza for al Qaeda (WSJ)
The government will have to choose between vigorous prosecution and revealing classified sources and methods.
This is a prosecutorial decision as well as a national security decision," President Barack Obama said last week about the attorney general's announcement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other al Qaeda operatives will be put on trial in New York City federal court.
No, it is not. It is a presidential decision—one about the hard, ever-present trade-off between civil liberties and national security.
Trying KSM in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda and the hostile nations that will view the U.S. intelligence methods and sources that such a trial will reveal.
The proceedings will tie up judges for years on issues best left to the president and Congress.
Whether a jury ultimately convicts KSM and his fellows, or sentences them to death, is beside the point.
The treatment of the 9/11 attacks as a criminal matter rather than as an act of war will cripple American efforts to fight terrorism...
He was the brains behind a succession of operations against the U.S., including the 1996"Bojinka plot" to crash jetliners into American cities.
Now, however, KSM and his co-defendants will enjoy the benefits and rights that the Constitution accords to citizens and resident aliens—including the right to demand that the government produce in open court all of the information that it has on them, and how it got it.
Prosecutors will be forced to reveal U.S. intelligence on KSM, the methods and sources for acquiring its information, and his relationships to fellow al Qaeda operatives.
The information will enable al Qaeda to drop plans and personnel whose cover is blown. It will enable it to detect our means of intelligence-gathering, and to push forward into areas we know nothing
GE CEO: "We are all Democrats Now" (Economic Policy Journal)
Thanks to some great reporting at WSJ by Elizabeth Williamson and Paul Glader, now we know why General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt has been to the White House five times since President Obama has occupied the place.
He wants GE to out do Goldman Sachs and Carlyle Group combined as the biggest pig at the trough of corporate handouts.
David Rubenstein looks like an amateur compared to Immelt. From WSJ's report:
The financial crisis hasn't been kind to General Electric Co. Its stock has lost almost half its value, the government has stepped in to prop up its enormous financial arm, and sales have slumped in core industrial businesses.
But Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt now has his eye on a huge new pool of potential revenue: Uncle Sam's stimulus dollars. Mr. Immelt, a registered Republican, quips about the shift in thinking in the nation's corner offices: "We're all Democrats now."...
NBC’s ObamaVision: GE Uses Network To Push Obama’s Green Agenda — And Rakes In the Dough (Big Hollywood)
What do you call it when the federal government pays a private company some money so that the private company will stump for the federal government’s agenda?
Payola.
Under the FCC rules and regulations, “When a broadcast licensee has received or been promised payment for the airing of program material, then, at the time of the airing, the station must disclose that fact and identify who paid for or promised to pay for the material.”
So what do you call it when the federal government steers money to a major broadcast network so that the major broadcast network will stump for the federal government’s agenda?
China Turns To Adam Smith [While The West Turns To Marx!] Telegraph(UK)
China Turns To Adam Smith It won’t surprise you to learn that whereas in one hemisphere sales of Marx’s Communist Manifesto have rarely been stronger, the other is devouring Adam Smith like never before.
What is more unexpected is that it is China that has an appetite for the father of modern capitalism, while the West is rediscovering Marx.
Smith’s first masterpiece, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, has been translated into Chinese for the first time, and Chris Berry, professor at Glasgow University, where Smith wrote the book, will next week deliver lectures on it at Fudan University in Shanghai.
China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao, has said he often carries the work – which preceded his more famous work The Wealth of Nations – in his suitcase when he goes abroad.
AP buries the lede: Obama will push additional tax hikes next year (washington examiner)
Buried in this Friday story on Obama's future plans is a curious statement, attributed to White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, which didn't get nearly enough attention:
Orszag has said the spending blueprint, for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, 2010, would put the nation "back on a fiscally sustainable path" and suggested it would include a mix of spending cuts and new revenue-producing measures.
"New revenue-producing measures."
In other words, more tax increases -- increases beyond the dozen or so that are already planned in the health care reform package.
President Obama's advisors understand that they have to counter the perception that deficit spending is out of control. But that doesn't mean Americans want to pay higher taxes.
President Obama might think he earns points by advocating fiscal prudence in next year's budget debate, but we all know what happened in the last midterm election after a president pushed a tax-hiking budget through Congress.
Officials: Anita Dunn may be leaving with her little red book, but her husband enters as the next White House counsel, bringing experience in suppressing dissent, assaulting the First Amendment and limiting speech.
Dunn, whose favorite philosophers include mass murderer Mao Zedong, was expected to leave after a short stint. She rose to fame as chief strategist for former Senate majority leader, now national health care guru, Tom Daschle.
While serving as White House communications director, she was the commanding general of the administration "war" on Fox News.
Like her philosophical mentor, Mao, and her colleague, FCC diversity czar Mark Lloyd, she feels that dissent and discourse in a democracy are an annoying and unnecessary distraction to our great leap forward.
Dunn admired Mao. Lloyd admires Hugo Chavez and his treatment of the Venezuelan media.
Obama Admin. Actuary Finds Unsustainable Status Quo Cheaper than Obamacare (American Spectator)
One of President Obama's primary justifications for pushing health care legislation has been that the status quo is "unsustainable" because of the skyrocketing cost of medical care in the United States.
The way to rein in costs, he argues, is to do adopt the policies that he and his fellow Democrats are proposing.
But a new report by the government actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the Obama administration's Department of Health and Human Services, has found that the exact opposite is true.
CMS took a close look at the health care bill that was passed by House Democrats and endorsed by the White House, and it found that not only would the bill not reduce health care costs -- it would increase them.
Time and again, we have been reminded that the United States spends a higher percentage of its GDP on health care than any other nation -- about 16 percent.
As Obama but it in his June speech to the American Medical Association, "If we fail to act, one out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care within a decade."
Yet if we adopt the legislation supported by Obama -- which finances expanded coverage through tax increases and Medicare cuts -- health care spending will actually rise to 21.1 percent of GDP, according to CMS, compared to 20.8 percent if we simply do nothing.
Understanding the Death Panel (Economic Policy Journal)
This WSJ editorial tells it like it is: As usual, the most dangerous parts of ObamaCare aren't receiving the scrutiny they deserve—and one of the least examined is a new commission to tell Congress how to control health spending.
Democrats are quietly attempting to impose a "global budget" on Medicare, with radical implications for U.S. medicine.
Like most of Europe, the various health bills stipulate that Congress will arbitrarily decide how much to spend on health care for seniors every year—and then invest an unelected board with extraordinary powers to dictate what is covered and how it will be paid for.
White House budget director Peter Orszag calls this Medicare commission "critical to our fiscal future" and "one of the most potent reforms."
Vanity Among journalists? Delusional vanity at best. - Quote from a short piece by Paul Bradshaw on Online Journalism Blog about monetizing content and audience: “I think there’s an enormous amount of [vanity among journalists] who forget that people buy and bought newspapers not just for journalism but crosswords, cartoons, TV listings and indeed advertising.”
Murdoch, Slim have no regrets about their newspaper investments WSJ.com
Carlos Slim says he's confident his $250 million loan to the New York Times will be repaid -- with 14% interest. He jokes that he'd invest in the Wall Street Journal, and only charge 12% interest. Rupert Murdoch says: "I have no regrets about [purchasing] the Wall Street Journal, even though the accountants made me write it down by about 50%." Via: Romenesko
With its new presses, NYDN can print full color on every page
New York Times The Daily News has spent more than $150 million on new presses, believing it will attract advertisers. "I'm not going to tell you we’re going to get back to the advertising we had in 2000," says CEO Marc Z. Kramer, "but when an advertiser wants to do print, we think they're going to choose us."
***Former Vice President Dick Cheney reacted to President Obama's bow to the emperor of Japan, telling Politico.com: "There is no reason for an American president to bow to anyone. Our friends and allies don't expect it, and our enemies see it as a sign of weakness."***
Guess it was a sign of weakness for George W. Bush to bow (and kiss) the Saudi king, and for Nixon to bow to the Japanese emperor. Or is all this hue and cry just another example of Cheney (and right-wing) hypocrisy?
Hey 10:56 am, for the record, George Bush did NOT bow to a saudi king. He was receiving a medallion and bent his head over so the king could place it on his head. Here is the video link. Gawd, even with video proof people still lie.
When you're a leftist it is all you have. I am astonished that they didn't try again to say it wasn't a bow. The degree of absurdity in their lies doesn't seem to matter at all. It is like they don't even care if they are caught red handed. They lie, just for the sake of lying much like you find in prison culture.
You are dead on regarding comparatives with the left and the prison system lying. I used to work in the parole system and even when confronted with the evidence in their hand, they would deny it.
You can use all the lame excuses you want regarding George W. Bush and the Saudi King (and ignore Nixon and other presidents' greetings to foreign leaders). You are hypocrites. Obama and the Japanese emperor is a non-issue, as was GWB and Nixon.
36 comments:
Dobbs got $8M to quit (Ny Post)
CNN 'wanted him out'
CNN was so sick of Lou Dobbs, it gave him an $8 million severance package to leave, The Post has learned.
"They wanted him out," according to a source.
Dobbs, who a source said had a year and a half to go on his $12 million contract, shocked viewers last Wednesday by announcing he was quitting.
CNN boss Jonathan Klein and Dobbs, 64, had been publicly feuding over the kind of reporting Dobbs was doing on his show -- especially stories about illegal immigration and the anti-Obama "birther" movement, which contends the president was not born in Hawaii and is not an American citizen.
But it was not clear until now that CNN was willing to pay Dobbs so much money to leave.
News Channel could oppose the lone voice of one person who isn’t in agreement with them, so badly, that they are willing to pay 8 Million dollars not have that voice of truth in their employ.
Don’t ever try to tell me that Liberals aren’t insane.
Former CNNer Claims Network's Liberal Bias Caused Dobbs' Exit (Newsbusters)
On Reliable Sources, Chris Plante, a former CNN correspondent, said Dobbs, as "the last conservative voice on the channel," no longer fit in.
When Plante said CNN hosts Campbell Brown, Anderson Cooper, and Larry King weren't "completely neutral," Kurtz asked, "Are you suggesting that those hosts lean to the left?"
Plante marvelously responded, "Yes, I am"
PLANTE: And the news media -- I'm supposed to be the radio talk show host and you're the newspaper guy here. In Washington, we've got a chief White House correspondent for CBS News Chip Reid who was a former employee on Capitol Hill of Joe Biden. We've got a senior White House correspondent of NBC News who was a former staffer for Tom Harkin.
KURTZ: Let's stick to CNN.
PLANTE: We have a senior Washington correspondent for ABC News who is a Clinton administration official. David Axelrod is a former "Chicago Tribute" reporter. We've got Jay Carney leaving his job at "Time" magazine to go to work for this administration. Look, the pattern is clear, everybody knows it except you guys, you know?
KURTZ: What does it is say about CNN? None of those people work at CNN.
PLANTE: It's the news media as an industry and as a company, the last conservative voice on the channel is gone. They had Glenn Beck, he's gone. They had him, now he's gone. Lou Dobbs is gone.
ZURAWIK: Chris, if a lot of people are asking the question, they weren't watching him. This is not some ratings juggernaut. Lou Dobbs was finishing third in his time period. This was not some great populous groundswell of support for what he was doing.
PLANTE: Based on that standard, there are a lot of other anchors who would be gone, too, aren't they, but they're not gone, are they?
CNN ratings slide could imperil high ad rates (New York Post)
After losing its ratings lead and falling to last in primetime, the once-dominant CNN stands to lose the last piece of top-shelf value still attached to its business side: premium pricing.
Time Warner-owned CNN, while getting beaten handily in the ratings race and having fallen to fourth place in rankings, still commands higher ad rates than rivals -- in some cases double those of Fox News and MSNBC.
But perhaps not for long.
While advertisers have been willing to shell out more for CNN's venerable brand, broad audience reach and less-opinionated programming, media buyers said the network's ratings slide is likely to bring down pricing.
"They will maintain a premium, but will it stay this high?" asked one ad buyer. "I think it will probably go down."
And that could cost them millions of dollars in advertising revenue.
In the world of television advertising, a big audience doesn't necessarily translate into the highest ad rates.
Nation's largest gay newspaper publisher closes (Meat, the press) AP
ATLANTA — The nation's largest publisher of newspapers serving the gay and lesbian community has shut down.
Laura Douglas-Brown, editor of Southern Voice newspaper in Atlanta, says she arrived at work Monday to find the locks changed and a note saying parent company Window Media LLC has closed down.
...says she arrived at work Monday to find the locks changed and a note saying parent company Window Media LLC has closed down.”
This is the best part. Now if I didn’t know better, that sounds like something that the media/hollywood/the left would love to report on/write a script about. Something that “big business” would do. Something a “heartless capitalist corporation (lead by a “conservative stereotype, of course)” would do. Going by the script we’ve all seen a hundred times, of course.
Classy, real classy to fire everyone post-it note. Liberals really do care about the people.
Butt with as many homosexual activists as there are in the ranks of the MSM, this was just redundancy.
Washington Blade and Several Other Gay Newspapers Go Out of Business
(The New York Times )
Gay newspapers in several U.S. cities, including the Washington Blade, shut down on Monday, as the company that owned them, Window Media, abruptly went out of business.
Window Media had been in serious financial trouble, but employees said they had expected a reorganization or sale, not a liquidation.
“We found out when two of the corporate officers were waiting for us when we got to work this morning,” said Kevin Naff, editor of the Blade, a 40-year-old paper that was one of the most important publications written for a gay audience. “It’s not a complete surprise. The abruptness of it was what was surprising.”
The paper’s roughly 20 employees “are determined to come back and make of a go of it as an independent entity,” he said. “Our first meeting is tomorrow.”
Employees at Southern Voice, an Atlanta-based gay paper owned by Window Media, found their offices locked on Monday, and a note posted on the door saying that the company had ceased operation.
It told the workers to return Wednesday with boxes to collect their belongings.
I guess they blew it... But it was faaaabulous while it lasted.
Sex infections still growing in U.S.(63% of all syphilis cases from homosexuals!) Reuters
American squeamishness about talking about sex has helped keep common sexually transmitted infections far too common, especially among vulnerable teens, U.S. researchers reported Monday...
1-2% of the population in urban areas accounts for 63% of all syphilis cases in the USA!
Allegations of Wrongdoing by SEIU and Its President Andy Stern PATTERICO
First, via Instapundit, we have Big Government reporting on allegations of illegal tactics by the SEIU in a union election.
The allegations, made in a sworn affidavit by a former SEIU worker, include “changing ballots and threatening to report a worker to immigration officials,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Second, via Hot Air, we have an exclusive report of a letter from Americans for Tax Reform and the Alliance for Worker Freedom seeking an investigation of SEIU president Andy Stern for allegedly lobbying despite being unregistered as a lobbyist.
The evidence includes Stern’s Twitter feeds, where he says things like this:
Lobbying with Mayor Bloomberg on health care. Leaving Senator Snowe. Mayor big proponent of keeping people healthy and the right public plan
Now might be a good time to recall that the release of White House visitor logs showed that Stern was the most frequent visitor to the White House. Browsing through Stern’s Twitter feed, I saw this entry from February 18:
just left White House where group from MoveOn to Chamber of Commerce but mostly progressives had cocktails with Prez and VP
It’s progressive heaven!
How Andy Stern Got Around the "No Lobbyist" Policy; He Just Didn't Register (Big Government)
President Obama has always made a pretty big deal about not working with “lobbyists”. Registered lobbyists can’t get stimulus money, can’t be White House advisors and are not allowed access to meetings and summits.
So how does one get around that? It’s simple; you just don’t register as a lobbyist.
That’s what Andy Stern did and it may come back to bite him.
Barack Obama tells 2.6 million Twitter followers he has never tweeted (Telegraph (U.K.)
Barack Obama left his 2.6 million fans on Twitter, the social networking website, bemused, disappointed and mildly irritated by admitting on Monday that he had never used the service himself.
"Let me say that I have never used Twitter," he told students in Shanghai. "I noticed that young people are very busy with these electronics. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone."
During his election campaign, Mr Obama portrayed himself as "connected" to the people through Twitter and his ever-present blackberry phone.
Some of his more understanding fans asked if it was any real surprise that the president had little time to "tweet".
"Did anyone really think he was posting on his own?" asked @Inap.
Others, however, complained that Mr Obama has a "verified account" which is supposed to prove that it is his own. "Unfollowing @BarackObama now. What a letdown!" wrote @bkuri.
My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone."
Remember when this very thing was the reason John McCain was considered too out of touch
(ABC) Exclusive: Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist
Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 9th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.
There's one problem, though: There is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts.
There's no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government's recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent there.
Barack Hoover Obama, The Audacity of Failure (The Market Oracle)
Barack Obama is on his way to becoming a one-term president. According to Politico:
"President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year’s State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay other new domestic spending beyond jobs programs, according to top aides involved in the planning.
The president’s plan, which the officials said was under discussion before this month’s Democratic election setbacks, represents both a practical and a political calculation by this White House." (www.politico.com)
Er, now who exactly is telling Obama that raising taxes or cutting spending in the middle of a severe economic contraction is a good idea?
Mass. (DEMOCRAT) senator, reportedly drunk, driven home by cops 13 hours before hit-and-run (LA Times) Woops, the media accidentally left out the Democrat label again)
Police in Cambridge, Mass., gave state Sen. Anthony Galluccio a ride home because acquaintances told them he was too drunk to drive about 13 hours before he was involved in a hit-and-run accident.
Police were called to a gas station in Cambridge about 4:40 a.m. Oct. 4 after receiving a call about an intoxicated man.
The station attendant told police he believed Galluccio was too drunk to drive. Police said another man told them he was trying to drive Galluccio home but couldn't find his house.
Police said they drove Galluccio home in their cruiser.
About 13 hours later, a vehicle driven by Galluccio rear-ended a minivan. Galluccio has said he left the scene because he panicked.
Galluccio did not immediately respond to request for comment Monday.
St. Louis Democrat Pays Taxes So She Can Be Candidate (GatewayPundit)
In the Age of Obama we’re getting used to this. A St. Louis democrat finally paid her taxes so that she could fill an open slot in the Missouri House of Representatives.
Hope Whitehead will replace democrat Talibdin El-Amin who pleaded guilty to bribery charges in September. (StL PD) The Post-Dispatch reported:
A day before she clinched the nomination to fill a vacancy in the Missouri House of Representatives on Saturday, St. Louis Democrat Hope Whitehead paid a visit to City Hall.
Not to mobilize supporters, but to pay hundreds of dollars in outstanding taxes.
Her trip downtown was more than just civic duty. Under state law, candidates with overdue tax bills are ineligible for the ballot.
When her obligations were met, a panel of city Democratic leaders gathered Saturday to nominate Whitehead, 50, to fill the vacancy created by former state Rep.
Talibdin El-Amin, who submitted his resignation in September after pleading guilty to federal bribery charges.
El-Amin is the third local Democratic lawmaker to leave office this year after getting caught in an FBI crackdown on corruption.
WaPo: Nancy Pelosi’s $300,000,000,000 deception (Hot Air)
The Washington Post editorial board finally catches up to the big three-card Monte that Nancy Pelosi conducted in passing her ObamaCare bill over week ago.
Last week, Byron York reported that Pelosi hid almost $300 billion in new health-care costs by burying the “doctor fix” in the debate rules for her Pelosi Plan.
Now the Post blasts Congress for its dishonesty, and for mishandling the expensive addition that would make a mockery of the new deficit-hawk posing at the White House (via Conn Carroll):
HAVING PASSED a health reform bill that is, at least theoretically, paid for, the House of Representatives is poised this week to blow a quarter-trillion-dollar hole in the federal budget involving, you guessed it, health care.
This is the so-called doc fix, to prevent scheduled cuts in Medicare reimbursements to physicians from taking effect
Jim Moran : Daniel Pearl’s family is un-American (Hot Air)
That’s certainly the conclusion one can draw from two stories over the last couple of days.
Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), who pushed Barack Obama to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to the US for criminal trials, says that criticism of the decision is “un-American”:
Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) has strong words for the Republicans opposing Attorney General Eric Holder’s plan to bring five 9/11 suspects to New York City to face trial.
“They see this as an opportunity to demagogue,” he said. “They will seize on any opportunity to do that, and that means they’ll even take a stand that’s un-American.
Changing the subject: Why O nixed Ft. Hood probe (NY Post)
As he flew to Asia on Saturday, President Obama told the media in Alaska that he opposes a congressional investigation into the Fort Hood massacre, saying that we must "resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into political theater."
Yet, even as he was posturing against political theatrics, he had just decided that the prosecution of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would proceed on the greatest of public stages -- New York City.
With the strict evidentiary rules in force in federal civilian courts, it is easy to see how the prosecution of Mohammed could morph into an indictment of the Bush administration's interrogation techniques and waterboarding.
As in rape trials, the magnitude of the underlying crime (masterminding the 9/11 attacks) might well be lost as the defense puts the victim (in this case, the government) on trial.
The KSM Trial Will Be an Intelligence Bonanza for al Qaeda (WSJ)
The government will have to choose between vigorous prosecution and revealing classified sources and methods.
This is a prosecutorial decision as well as a national security decision," President Barack Obama said last week about the attorney general's announcement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other al Qaeda operatives will be put on trial in New York City federal court.
No, it is not. It is a presidential decision—one about the hard, ever-present trade-off between civil liberties and national security.
Trying KSM in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda and the hostile nations that will view the U.S. intelligence methods and sources that such a trial will reveal.
The proceedings will tie up judges for years on issues best left to the president and Congress.
Whether a jury ultimately convicts KSM and his fellows, or sentences them to death, is beside the point.
The treatment of the 9/11 attacks as a criminal matter rather than as an act of war will cripple American efforts to fight terrorism...
He was the brains behind a succession of operations against the U.S., including the 1996"Bojinka plot" to crash jetliners into American cities.
Now, however, KSM and his co-defendants will enjoy the benefits and rights that the Constitution accords to citizens and resident aliens—including the right to demand that the government produce in open court all of the information that it has on them, and how it got it.
Prosecutors will be forced to reveal U.S. intelligence on KSM, the methods and sources for acquiring its information, and his relationships to fellow al Qaeda operatives.
The information will enable al Qaeda to drop plans and personnel whose cover is blown. It will enable it to detect our means of intelligence-gathering, and to push forward into areas we know nothing
Protocol 101: Honoring America’s Symbols PATTERICO
President Obama’s recent difficulty with bowing reminds me of another of his protocol problems — honoring our flag and National Anthem:
• Obama during the National Anthem at Tom Harkin’s Iowa steak fry during the Democratic primary campaign. (Video here.)
• Obama as the American flag passes during a Memorial Day 2009 appearance at Arlington National Cemetery. (Speech here.)
The White House U.S. Department of State, Office of the Chief of Protocol, has its work cut out for it.
GE CEO: "We are all Democrats Now"
(Economic Policy Journal)
Thanks to some great reporting at WSJ by Elizabeth Williamson and Paul Glader, now we know why General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt has been to the White House five times since President Obama has occupied the place.
He wants GE to out do Goldman Sachs and Carlyle Group combined as the biggest pig at the trough of corporate handouts.
David Rubenstein looks like an amateur compared to Immelt. From WSJ's report:
The financial crisis hasn't been kind to General Electric Co. Its stock has lost almost half its value, the government has stepped in to prop up its enormous financial arm, and sales have slumped in core industrial businesses.
But Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt now has his eye on a huge new pool of potential revenue: Uncle Sam's stimulus dollars. Mr. Immelt, a registered Republican, quips about the shift in thinking in the nation's corner offices: "We're all Democrats now."...
NBC’s ObamaVision: GE Uses Network To Push Obama’s Green Agenda — And Rakes In the Dough (Big Hollywood)
What do you call it when the federal government pays a private company some money so that the private company will stump for the federal government’s agenda?
Payola.
Under the FCC rules and regulations, “When a broadcast licensee has received or been promised payment for the airing of program material, then, at the time of the airing, the station must disclose that fact and identify who paid for or promised to pay for the material.”
So what do you call it when the federal government steers money to a major broadcast network so that the major broadcast network will stump for the federal government’s agenda?
China Turns To Adam Smith [While The West Turns To Marx!] Telegraph(UK)
China Turns To Adam Smith
It won’t surprise you to learn that whereas in one hemisphere sales of Marx’s Communist Manifesto have rarely been stronger, the other is devouring Adam Smith like never before.
What is more unexpected is that it is China that has an appetite for the father of modern capitalism, while the West is rediscovering Marx.
Smith’s first masterpiece, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, has been translated into Chinese for the first time, and Chris Berry, professor at Glasgow University, where Smith wrote the book, will next week deliver lectures on it at Fudan University in Shanghai.
China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao, has said he often carries the work – which preceded his more famous work The Wealth of Nations – in his suitcase when he goes abroad.
AP buries the lede: Obama will push additional tax hikes next year
(washington examiner)
Buried in this Friday story on Obama's future plans is a curious statement, attributed to White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, which didn't get nearly enough attention:
Orszag has said the spending blueprint, for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, 2010, would put the nation "back on a fiscally sustainable path" and suggested it would include a mix of spending cuts and new revenue-producing measures.
"New revenue-producing measures."
In other words, more tax increases -- increases beyond the dozen or so that are already planned in the health care reform package.
President Obama's advisors understand that they have to counter the perception that deficit spending is out of control. But that doesn't mean Americans want to pay higher taxes.
President Obama might think he earns points by advocating fiscal prudence in next year's budget debate, but we all know what happened in the last midterm election after a president pushed a tax-hiking budget through Congress.
The Mao The Merrier
Investors.com
Officials: Anita Dunn may be leaving with her little red book, but her husband enters as the next White House counsel, bringing experience in suppressing dissent, assaulting the First Amendment and limiting speech.
Dunn, whose favorite philosophers include mass murderer Mao Zedong, was expected to leave after a short stint. She rose to fame as chief strategist for former Senate majority leader, now national health care guru, Tom Daschle.
While serving as White House communications director, she was the commanding general of the administration "war" on Fox News.
Like her philosophical mentor, Mao, and her colleague, FCC diversity czar Mark Lloyd, she feels that dissent and discourse in a democracy are an annoying and unnecessary distraction to our great leap forward.
Dunn admired Mao. Lloyd admires Hugo Chavez and his treatment of the Venezuelan media.
Obama Admin. Actuary Finds Unsustainable Status Quo Cheaper than Obamacare (American Spectator)
One of President Obama's primary justifications for pushing health care legislation has been that the status quo is "unsustainable" because of the skyrocketing cost of medical care in the United States.
The way to rein in costs, he argues, is to do adopt the policies that he and his fellow Democrats are proposing.
But a new report by the government actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the Obama administration's Department of Health and Human Services, has found that the exact opposite is true.
CMS took a close look at the health care bill that was passed by House Democrats and endorsed by the White House, and it found that not only would the bill not reduce health care costs -- it would increase them.
Time and again, we have been reminded that the United States spends a higher percentage of its GDP on health care than any other nation -- about 16 percent.
As Obama but it in his June speech to the American Medical Association, "If we fail to act, one out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care within a decade."
Yet if we adopt the legislation supported by Obama -- which finances expanded coverage through tax increases and Medicare cuts -- health care spending will actually rise to 21.1 percent of GDP, according to CMS, compared to 20.8 percent if we simply do nothing.
Understanding the Death Panel (Economic Policy Journal)
This WSJ editorial tells it like it is: As usual, the most dangerous parts of ObamaCare aren't receiving the scrutiny they deserve—and one of the least examined is a new commission to tell Congress how to control health spending.
Democrats are quietly attempting to impose a "global budget" on Medicare, with radical implications for U.S. medicine.
Like most of Europe, the various health bills stipulate that Congress will arbitrarily decide how much to spend on health care for seniors every year—and then invest an unelected board with extraordinary powers to dictate what is covered and how it will be paid for.
White House budget director Peter Orszag calls this Medicare commission "critical to our fiscal future" and "one of the most potent reforms."
Audit: Despite staff, spending cuts post office lost $3.8 billion last year (Los Angeles Times)
The Postal Service reported a net loss of $3.8 billion for the 2009 fiscal year, about $1 billion more than the previous year.
The loss comes despite a reduction of 40,000 in career employees and billions in cost-cutting measures.
President O-bow-ma
Bwhahahaha
Vanity Among journalists? Delusional vanity at best.
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Quote from a short piece by Paul Bradshaw on Online Journalism Blog about monetizing content and audience: “I think there’s an enormous amount of [vanity among journalists] who forget that people buy and bought newspapers not just for journalism but crosswords, cartoons, TV listings and indeed advertising.”
Murdoch, Slim have no regrets about their newspaper investments
WSJ.com
Carlos Slim says he's confident his $250 million loan to the New York Times will be repaid -- with 14% interest. He jokes that he'd invest in the Wall Street Journal, and only charge 12% interest. Rupert Murdoch says: "I have no regrets about [purchasing] the Wall Street Journal, even though the accountants made me write it down by about 50%."
Via: Romenesko
With its new presses, NYDN can print full color on every page
New York Times
The Daily News has spent more than $150 million on new presses, believing it will attract advertisers. "I'm not going to tell you we’re going to get back to the advertising we had in 2000," says CEO Marc Z. Kramer, "but when an advertiser wants to do print, we think they're going to choose us."
***Former Vice President Dick Cheney reacted to President Obama's bow to the emperor of Japan, telling Politico.com: "There is no reason for an American president to bow to anyone. Our friends and allies don't expect it, and our enemies see it as a sign of weakness."***
Guess it was a sign of weakness for George W. Bush to bow (and kiss) the Saudi king, and for Nixon to bow to the Japanese emperor. Or is all this hue and cry just another example of Cheney (and right-wing) hypocrisy?
Hey 10:56 am, for the record, George Bush did NOT bow to a saudi king. He was receiving a medallion and bent his head over so the king could place it on his head. Here is the video link. Gawd, even with video proof people still lie.
http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/newsbyid.asp?idx=150625&cat1=news
Gawd, even with video proof people still lie.
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When you're a leftist it is all you have. I am astonished that they didn't try again to say it wasn't a bow. The degree of absurdity in their lies doesn't seem to matter at all. It is like they don't even care if they are caught red handed. They lie, just for the sake of lying much like you find in prison culture.
You are dead on regarding comparatives with the left and the prison system lying. I used to work in the parole system and even when confronted with the evidence in their hand, they would deny it.
You can use all the lame excuses you want regarding George W. Bush and the Saudi King (and ignore Nixon and other presidents' greetings to foreign leaders). You are hypocrites. Obama and the Japanese emperor is a non-issue, as was GWB and Nixon.
He wasn't bowing. He was just looking for other peoples money laying around so he could spend it.
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