In fact, Warren Buffett has said don’t buy newspaper stock at any price. The days of the monopoly newspapers huge readership and advertising revenue are long gone.
Illegal immigrants voiting for the Democrat/Socialists with the help of “community organizers” such as ACORN.
Election boards dominated by the Democrat/Socialists disgard more than 25 percent of US soldiers’ ballots. Major manufacturers are “nationalized” by the new one-party system.
Note to cool, trendy Obama supporters: Only U.S. Citizens over 18 are allowed to register to vote. Illegal immigrants and felons (in most states) do not have the right.
“It’s not who wins the votes, it’s who counts to vote,” Stalin.
ATLANTA — The Obama Justice Department has rejected Georgia’s system of using Social Security numbers and driver’s license data to check whether prospective voters are citizens, a process that was a subject of a federal lawsuit in the weeks leading up to November’s election.
What’s wrong with a real ID check?
“This flawed system frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote,” Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said.
The decision comes as Georgia awaits word on whether a law passed in the spring that requires newly registering voters to show proof of citizenship will pass muster with DOJ. Under the law that takes effect in January, people must show their proof up front just as everyone does when paying with a check.
The Soviet Plan
Lessons were learned by watching the socialists take over Russia and transform through class and race warefare. The one-party Bolshavics took control and held it for 70 years before the people of Poland, Georgia and Romania took down the tyrants. Lessons were taken and used to prepare the American liberals for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and political insiders.
These observations are published in Pravda:
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes.
America has traded places with the USSR. It’s time to congratulate the Democrat/Socialists and change the name of America in the spirit of “truth in advertising.”
The SF Chronicle’s carbon footprint is getting smaller, about 150 people smaller. Some may feel a little foolish now about turning off their lights for Earth Hour, especially when they learn that Al Gore kept the lights on in his 9,000 sq ft mansion. California’s power use didn’t budge. It was a dim idea.
Back to the lights out on newspapers top heavy with executive editors:
“Until the current newspaper crisis, you rarely heard politicians or activists bleating about how important newspapers were to self-government. They mostly bitched about what awful failures newspapers were at uncovering vital data. The only group that holds a consistently high opinion of newspapers is newspaper people,” Jack Shafer.
He cites a recent Pew study that shows most people don’t care if their local newspaper folds, and he says they have a point — few of the stories printed every day “are likely to supercharge the democratic impulse,” and even the ones that do, generally fail to spur voters to do anything.
Slate‘s Shafer laughs at the high-minded talk of the critical role newspapers play in a democracy, declaring, “I can imagine citizens acquiring sufficient information to vote or poke their legislators with pitchforks even if all the newspapers in the country fell into a bottomless recycling bin tomorrow.”
Shafer shows that some of the people arguing for the importance of newspapers — academics and liberal activists — have shown little love for them in the past.
CHRONICLE UNIT BULLETIN — It’s official!
More than 80 Chronicle staff members took the severance deal on March 31, 2009. The overall number will be 150 in the next two weeks. Is anyone keeping a talley? Has it been 500 cuts the last four years? That’s my estimate.
|
Because of the large number of employees volunteering for termination during The SF Chronicle’s voluntary termination period, the WARN Act provisions requiring 60 days advance notice of involuntary layoffs is not valid. That means that after April 1, another 80 will be given their walking papers.
The company would have no legal need to give the 60-day notice provided for under the WARN Act.
Some members have said that they would not apply for the voluntary termination package and would, instead, wait for the layoff in order to get 60 days notice and the additional pay involved. Given the current situation, however, the Guild advises against taking this course of action because it appears there is a good possibility that the 60 days additional notice with pay won’t materialize. Remember that after April 3, 2009 no member regardless of age can receive the Supplemental Pension Benefit as a lump sum and all will have to take it as a monthly annuity. So if the Supplemental Pension Benefit as a lump sum from the Guild Pension Plan is important to you, and if the 60 days notice you were counting on is no longer a solid possibility, and you are certain you want to leave The Chronicle, we suggest that you should strongly consider volunteering to terminate your employment by the 5 p.m. March 31 deadline.
So, if another 50 or more rush to get your modest buyouts. The remainder who wait very well could end up with an extra 60 days pay. Not a bad bet. And there are still 60 days of skiing at Heavenly and Squaw Valley.
“Until the current newspaper crisis, you rarely heard politicians or activists bleating about how important newspapers were to self-government. They mostly bitched about what awful failures newspapers were at uncovering vital data. The only group that holds a consistently high opinion of newspapers is newspaper people,” Jack Shafer.
Names of Chronicle staff taking the buyouts are piling up like winos in front of the Salvation Army food kitchen.
Some of the paper’s veteran reporters and biggest names are leaving. It looks like music, books and arts coverage will be hit hard, as well as the photo department.
Here are the names so far:
Joel Selvin, who has covered the rock and roll scene for 30 years or so.
Carl Hall, a longtime science reporter currently on leave.
Tom Meyer, editorial cartoonist.
Zachary Coile, a long-time reporter in the Washington D.C. bureau.
Nancy Gay, who covers 49ers football and other major league teams.
Three of the papers top culture writers are departing, including:
Jesse Hamlin, Edward Guthmann, and Heidi Benson. They frequently profile authors, actors, and musicians.
Sabin Russell, who has covered science for decades.
Alison Biggar, the long-time editor of the Chronicle Magazine.
Sylvia Rubin, who covers fashion.
Bernadette Tansey, a biotech reporter. (She has been writing a new feature each Sunday that I love, a round-up of books on a particular business topic, but done in a very clever way.)
The photography department will take a big hit as six photographers, including Pulitzer-Prize winner Kim Komenich, are departing. The others include Michael Maloney, Craig Lee, Eric Luse, Mark Costatini and Kurt Rogers, a sports photographer
Other departures include:
Kevin Albert, editorial assistant
Greg Ambrose, copy editor
Charles Burress (who has covered Berkeley for years.)
Peter Cafone, sports copy editor
Ken Costa, graphic designer
Elizabeth Hughes, copy editor
Leslie Innes, Datebook editor
Timothy Innes, foreign news wire editor
Rod Jones, copy editor, news
Eric Jungerman, designer
Kathy Kerrihard, library researcher
Simar Khanna, editor of Home and Garden section
Even lower level employees are taking the bum’s rush:
Bonnie Lemons, copy editor, news
Glenn Mayeda, editorial assistant, sports
Johnny Miller, library researcher
Dan Giesin, sports night copy editor
Janice Greene, editorial assistant on the op-ed page
Shirley-Anne Owden, copy editor, features
Courtenay Peddle, copy editor, news
Lee Sims, copy editor, news
Michelle Smith, a sports reporter who covers women’s basketball
Patricia Yollin, metro reporter
There are many, many more. Please post what you know on comments.
So the list will grow longer. Hearst wanted to lay off as many as 225 workers, (and threatened to shutter the paper) but backed off after the Newspaper Guild agreed to cuts in vacation time and seniority rules.
I wonder how these soon to be retired professionals feel now about their liberal politics, the kind that use their taxes to pay for the Mayor Gavin Newsom to fly off to Davos, Paris and London to mingle with the rich and powerful world leaders, while the “good people” work 50-hour weeks and pay nearly 50 percent of their wages in tax?
This is a profile of journalists in Gawker:
“While journalists might continue to forge forward despite workload, deadlines and salary issues, they will not stand by as the foundation of journalism crumbles beneath them. At that point, they will quit,” the study concludes. Hey! Anyone want to start a rock band or a truffle farm with me? Clips not required.
This is the big one. Hillary is discussing how the Mexican border is our problem because so called “assault weapons” are flowing from the USA to Mexican drug lords.
Funny, I call them home defense weapons.
Here comes the government gun grab, take away Americans’ Second Amendment rights to own firearms and protect their family’s lives and do it for Mexico? How gullible do they think we are?
We all know that the Mexican drug gangs have military, fully automatic weapons from China and Eastern Europe and are exporting tons of drugs and scores of people every day over our borders. Why would banning modern home defense firearms from Americans stop or even slow the drug violence and human trafficing?
It’s “new speak” coming from the Obama/Orwellian Big Brother/Big Sis government.
The progressive Democrats are going to ignore a major tenant of the Constitution out of fear, I believe of a civilian backlash.
Tip of the day: Buy guns and bullets. They are the new gold.
The Obama administration didn’t waste more than a month to seek to reinstate “the assault weapons ban” (really the modern home defence firearm band) that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today.
(AP Photos/ABC News Graphic )
“As President Obama indicated during his campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” Holder told reporters.
Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.
Really, why can’t we stop the flow of humans and drugs along the border?
“I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.” Holder said at a news conference on the arrest of more than 700 people in a drug enforcement crackdown on Mexican drug cartels operating in the U.S.
How are Americans to defend themselves, with only 150-year old gun technology against Mexican drug runners and a well armed new U.S. socialist police state?
Imagine the government making a law that kept new computer or cell phone technology from the public?
Which country’s citizens is Obama concerned about?
The mainstream news has been filtering the news and making everything nice and PC for the dumbed down readers. They only report what fits the “progressive” agenda.
With the rise of blogs, the truth can now be reported. Did you know that the longtime New York radio newsman was paying teenage runaways for gay sex? George Weber was found stabbed to death in his Brooklyn apartment Sunday morning, cops said. Now we find he was accidently killed by a troubled teen, paid to have rough gay sex with the radio newsman.
The bloody body of Weber, a passionate liberal fan of the city who spent a decade doing local news on WABC morning radio, was found just after 9 a.m. when he didn’t show up for work. It can now be told that Weber, an outspoken Democrat, was a gay pedophile. He was a chicken hawk who paid teenage boys, often runaways money for sex. A boy who just turned 16 accidently killed Weber during a session of “rough” gay sex.
Weber, 47, was freelancing at ABC’s national radio network after being laid off last year.
What kind of books or DVDs did Mr. Sanchez have in his home? Doesn’t the media look into these things? Oh, wait, Sanchez was a gay pedophile Democrat, not a Christian Republican.
The first results of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation are in. Surprising no one, it’s now confirmed that train driver Robert Sanchez was sending text messages moments before crashing a train full of people into an oncoming freight train, killing 25 people. His last text message was sent 22 seconds before the two trains collided. Sanchez was an outspoken Democrat and Obama reporter with a keen interest in teenage boys.
While we’ll likely will never be able to definitively say one way or the other due to the lack of eyewitnesses, those 58 seconds between received message and sent message are likely the reason why Sanchez missed the “red lights” on the track as the freight train approached. Shouldn’t we know what Sanchez was texting? What if it was something like “the brakes don’t work well?”
The cellular network clock and the train’s onboard computer clock are almost certainly set slightly differently, so the final, incoming text message may have arrived somewhat earlier or later than 22 seconds before the crash. If the timestamps are reconciled exactly, the NTSB could then use information about the speed and location of the train to determine exactly where Sanchez’s train was when he took his eyes off the track ahead and whether that is what likely caused him to miss the signals. The content of the message is important, also. If it was a urgent warning, rather than just a friendly “HOW R U?” Sanchez shouldn’t have had to rush back with an answer. Was he having text sex games with the teenage boy?
Why didn’t you read about this in the LA Times or San Francisco Chronicle? How about this?
There is a dark side to the tragedy
Sanchez’s “partner,” Daniel Burton, allegedly hanged himself in the garage of the home they shared in Crestline, a community in the San Bernardino Mountains about 80 miles east of Los Angeles.
Burton’s sister, Carolann Peschell, said she suspected foul play and never believed her 39-year-old brother, who was HIV-positive, would have killed himself. He had found a job at a gourmet restaurant and sounded well when she spoke to him two weeks before his unusual death.
“He was doing fine; he was happy, no signs of depression,” Peschell said. “We didn’t feel my brother was capable of doing this to himself.” He was a gentle man and hanging is a brutal way to kill yourself.
Peschell, who described Sanchez as “very odd, very strange, and obese” said her suspicions were not investigated throughly by San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigators.
A coroner’s report said the two men had argued the night before Burton’s body was found; Sanchez had told Burton they should break up. That would draw attention by a professional CSI team.
Peschell kept her brother’s purported suicide note, which read: “Rob, Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you. Please take care of yourself and Ignatia. I love you both very much.” Ignatia was their dog.
From KFI radio, the John and Ken Show, Los Angeles
Newsman Eric Leonard reported on KFI radio (3:15 PT today) that the driver in the LA Metrolink crash last week, Robert M. Sanchez, is suspected of having killed his male lover 5 years ago. Leonard reports that the that the family of the lover, Daniel Charles Burton, has always believed that Sanchez killed Burton. The Burtons tried to get the police to investigate their son’s death as a murder to no avail. The death appeared to be a suicide, but the family has handwriting experts who say that the handwriting on the suicide note was not Burton’s. The family also told the police that Burton was HIV positive and that he and Sanchez had a fight right before the “suicide.” More recently, the Burtons called Metrolink to warn them that Sanchez was unstable.
Eric Leonard also reports that “it looks clear from [Metrolink’s] review of the [train] controls, that Sanchez did actually apply some speed controls within seconds of the crash but never braked.”
Would Sanchez have lost his home? That could be a motive. Was Sanchez a chicken hawk preoccupied with teen texting? He was arrested and plead guilty to theft of expensive electronic gaming equipment. And on Sept. 2 his train killed a pedestrian. Was Sanchez texting then too?
Sadly, Natasha Richardson died after her simple ski accident on a “bunny hill” in Canada. After spending a day in a Canadian hospital with only observations, she was rushed to a well-equipped New York hospital where it was discovered the 45 year old was brain dead.
Why wasn’t there a scan and X-ray? The normal procedures in a head trauma. The blood could have been drained and prevented her death. That is a snapshot of what socialized health-care is about. Basic services. Get to a U.S. hospital as soon as possible.
Helmets will become much more popular on the slopes. Nationalized healthcare will still be on Obama’s agenda. The media will not go there.
But of course, citizen journalists will.
Here are some facts that you may never see in your “friendly neighborhood media” —
Despite spending more on health care than any other industrialized country in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) except Iceland and Switzerland, Canada ranks poorly in several categories according to a new study by the Fraser Institute.
For instance:
Further:
With regard to age-adjusted access to high-tech machinery, Canada performs dismally by comparison with other OECD countries:
Lack of access to machines also means longer waiting times for diagnostic assessment, and mirrors the longer waiting times for access to specialists and to treatment found in the comparative studies examined for this study.
Source: “The Fraser Institute: High-Priced Canadian Health Care System Provides Poor Access to Care Compared to Other Nations,” Fraser Institute,” November 5, 2007.
For study:
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/COMMERCE.WEB/product_files/HowGoodHC2007.pdf
The Orwellian “Fairness Doctrine” is about to be forced on America by the Democratic party.
It is a throw back to FDR when Democrats (America’s socialists) were in complete power in the government and the Fairnes Doctrine is anything but fair. Look for a name change here.
President Reagan ended the “Fairness Doctrine”
As heard on the Bill Press Radio Show on Thursday, February 5, 2009:
Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) spoke with Bill about the possible return of the Fairness Doctrine in some form.
BILL PRESS: So, is it time to bring back the Fairness Doctrine?
SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI): I think it’s absolutely time to pass a standard. Now, whether it’s called the Fairness Standard, whether it’s called something else — I absolutely think it’s time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves. I mean, our new president has talked rightly about accountability and transparency. You know, that we all have to step up and be responsible. And, I think in this case, there needs to be some accountability and standards put in place.
BILL PRESS: Can we count on you to push for some hearings in the United States Senate this year, to bring these owners in and hold them accountable?
SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI): I have already had some discussions with colleagues and, you know, I feel like that’s gonna happen. Yep.
The Democrats who now run Washington don’t want to hear this, because they benefit from blaming all bad economic news on President Bush. And Mr. Obama has inherited an unusual recession deepened by credit problems, both of which will take time to climb out of. But it’s also true that the economy has fallen far enough, and long enough, that much of the excess that led to recession is being worked off. Already 15 months old, the current recession will soon match the average length — and average job loss — of the last three postwar downturns. What goes down will come up — unless destructive policies interfere with the sources of potential recovery.
— Wall Street Journal
The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch is reducing the size of its newsroom, laying off more than 45 people effective on April 3, management of the newspaper announced today. No foolin’.
“These are challenging times for many industries, including the newspaper industry,” said John F. Wolfe, publisher and CEO, who explained the changes to the staff. He’s the one who owns five suits.
“We avoided staff reductions as long as possible long after many other news organizations took such action.”
While the newspaper readership remains strong and stable, Wolfe said the economy and market forces have pushed advertising revenue steadily downward. And advertising revenue provides the majority of funds needed to pay salaries and buy paper and ink.
Editor Benjamin J. Marrison said the newsroom staff reductions will hasten a restructuring of the newsroom to put a sharper focus on local news, local sports, enterprise reporting, and building a more robust online presence at Dispatch.com. Haven’t we heard that before?
He said the reductions will result in some changes in the news pages in the coming months, which he will explain to readers in his “Inside Story” column as plans for those changes are mapped out.
“We will have a smaller but no less dedicated staff working each day to bring our readers the news of central Ohio,” Marrison said. “Our mission remains the same: to provide compelling, relevant, timely and accurate reports about this community. We’ll be working even harder now to make that happen.”
Maybe there is time for “senior editors” with two suits to get hired on at the Obama comunications/propaganda center for “Fairness.”
Journalists can feel better knowing that soon, the Dispatch won’t be contributing to global warming.
Maybe it can be called a hate crime to layoff reporters?
On another front–the biggest losers in the media game–McClatchy News can’t even get pennies on the dollar for some of the papers they spun off from their horrible investment in Knight-Ridder.
A McClatchy spokesman said the company may not be able to recover $5.3 million owed by newspapers it had sold to companies that have recently filed for Chapter 11. That’s putting it mildly.
The write-off pushes McClatchy’s fourth-quarter loss to $27 million, or 33 cents per share, up from the $21.7 million loss the company reported in February, according to a regulatory filing late Monday.
The company declined to say which papers still owed it money, but three former McClatchy properties filed for bankruptcy protection this year: The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, owned by Brian Tierney’s Philadelphia Media Holdings, and the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, controlled by the private-equity firm Avista Capital Partners.
The McClatchy stock teeters on the prospect of being delisted by the New York Stock Exchange. You can smell death in the boardroom.
The idea of space travel is fun and provides great entertainment. I’m sure there are many forms of life similar to earth in the universe. But if you do the math, you will see that it doesn’t matter. The space aliens are not going to visit earth and probe Democrat House representatives’ rectums in Cleveland Ohio, or San Francisco like Democrat Dennis Kucinich insists happened to him and friends of his in Hollywood. Nancy Pelosi who like her friend Kucinich, may look like an alien from another galaxy, that’s a fact, but her basic math skills are lacking.
Kucinich is currently the chairman of theDomestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He is also a member of theEducation and Labor Committee.
Kucinich heads committees on education? That should be against the law.
We need to increase teaching math, science and economics in our schools. That’s a fact.
Meanwhile the stock market continues to crash today. Investors understand economics and simple math and that spending billions on more government programs is not what drives an economy.
A team led by Jochen Greiner of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics determined that the huge gamma-ray burst occurred 12.2 billion light years away. Pluto is 12 light hours away.
Can you imagine man travelling in a vehicle that is 1,000 times slower than the speed of light? It would take 12.2 million years to visit a neighboring solar system. That’s the time equivalent to going back to the days dinosaurs roamed the earth. Planet of the Apes, it would not be. Planet of the volvox colonies.
The concept that a rocket or space craft could ever travel at the speed of light are comic book science, much like man-made global warming. Let’s say man ever could achieve the speed of light of a space craft? Think about the speed and distance.
Muzzammil Hassan came to America from Pakistan 25 years ago. He became a successful banker in Buffalo, New York, near the famed Niagara Falls.
While he and his wife were happy to be in the United States, they were upset by the negative perceptions of Muslims, and particularly how this perception might affect their children.
That is how they came up with the idea of Bridges TV. Mr. Hassan’s wife challenged him to start it.
“I had no background in television. I didn’t know anything about TV. Her comment was, ‘you have an M.B.A. (masters degree in business) why don’t you write a business plan?’”
He quit his job at the bank and for the next three years worked developing an English language television network that offers news and entertainment for Muslims. Stonings, beheadings, car bombings perhaps?
Hassan hopes Bridges TV lives up to its name by uniting American Muslims and by helping non-Muslims overcome the negative images they may have of both Muslims and Islam.
That was in 2004. Now, five years later, as far as I know, Muzzamil is still concerned about “negative perceptions” of Muslims held by Americans.
But his wife has no worries in that department. In fact, she has no worries at all.
Orchard Park police are investigating the gruesome killing, the beheading of a woman, after her husband — an influential member of the local Muslim community — reported her death to police Thursday, Feb. 12.
Police identified the victim as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37. Detectives charged her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with second-degree murder.
“He came to the police station at 6:20 p.m. [Thursday] and told us that she was dead,” Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz said late this morning.
Muzzammil Hassan told police that his wife was at his business, Bridges TV, on Thorn Avenue in the village. Officers went to that location and discovered her body.
Muzzammil Hassan is the founder and chief executive officer of Bridges TV, which he launched in 2004, amid hopes that it would help portray Muslims in a more positive light. This unfortunate incident will not help.
The killing apparently occurred some time late Thursday afternoon. Detectives still are looking for the murder weapon.
“Obviously, this is the worst form of domestic violence possible,” Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said today.
Authorities say Aasiya Hassan recently had filed for divorce from her husband.
“She had an order of protection that had him out of the home as of Friday the 6th [of February],” Benz said.
Muzzammil Hassan was arraigned before Village Justice Deborah Chimes and sent to the Erie County Holding Center.
It’s too bad the order of protection was useless. A 12 gage Mossberg shotgun would have been a much better thing to do than waste time on a restraining order.
Mirroring the former Soviet Union’s Communist Party of the 1950s, today’s one party government in the USA (totally in the hands of the Democrat Party) are on a power grab.
Get ready for show trials! Democrat Patrick “Leaky” Leahy, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, urged a commission as a way to heal what he called sharp political divides under former President George W. Bush and to prevent future abuses.
How about the abuses of Congressional Democrat Party hacks like Leahy?
And what’s with that permenant forced smile, it’s like the Dali Lama’s?
Leahy is an example of the “change” Obama promised? That hack has been around for 40 years.
He compared it to other truth commissions, such as one in South Africa that investigated the apartheid era of tribes hacking each other to death.
Is this a free country? Next, the Fairness Doctrine will be pushed through.
“We need to come to a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past,” Leahy said in a speech at Georgetown University.
Be afraid, but what can we do about it? Next “the Fairness Doctrine.”
Bill Clinton said that there needs to be either “more balance in the programs or have some opportunity for people to offer countervailing opinions.” Clinton added that he didn’t support repealing the Fairness Doctrine, an act done under Reagan’s FCC.
In the past week, a couple Democratic Senators, Debbie Stabenow and Tom Harkin, have both spoken favorably about the Fairness Doctrine, or holding hearings on radio “accountability.” What you don’t know is that Stabenow’s hubby is a big investor in Air America.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had surgery Thursday for pancreatic cancer, raising the odds that one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s leading liberals—will step down this year. So that someone of her political views will now be certain with an Obama and Democrat Congress.
Ginsburg, 75, has been a justice since 1993, appointed by Bill Clinton. She has been increasingly vocal in recent years about socialist nanny state issues.
Pancreatic cancer is often deadly, if not caught early. Was Ginsburg so worried about McCain Palin winning the election that she put off her cancer treatment? That is really taking one for the Democrat party. Ginsburg is a true Progressive.
Gov. Sarah Palin continues to make news. She understands economics and real-world energy issues.
I AM DISMAYED THAT LEGISLATION HAS AGAIN BEEN INTRODUCED in Congress to prohibit forever oil and gas development in the most promising unexplored petroleum province in North America — the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in Alaska.
Let’s not forget: Only six months ago, oil was selling for nearly $150 per barrel, while Americans were paying $4 a gallon and more for gasoline. And today, there is potential for prices to rebound as OPEC asserts its market power and as Russia disrupts needed natural gas to Europe for the second time in three years.
As I traveled throughout the country campaigning for vice president, I was glad to hear politicians, including Barack Obama, promise that “everything was on the table” to address America’s great challenges. I also found that when Americans were apprised of the facts, most people became supporters of responsible oil and gas drilling in Alaska. So, I want to remind our national leaders of this promise and make the case against this legislation:
•Oil from ANWR represents a huge, secure domestic supply that could help satisfy U.S. demand for more than 25 years.
•ANWR sits within a 20 million-acre refuge (the size of South Carolina), but thanks to advanced technology like directional drilling, the aggregated drilling footprint would be less than 2,000 acres (about one-quarter the size of Dulles Airport). This is like laying a 2-by-3-foot welcome mat on a basketball court.
•Energy development is quite compatible with the protection of our wildlife and their habitat. For example, North Slope caribou herds have grown and remained healthy throughout more than three decades of oil development. Most of the year, our coastal plain is frozen solid and thus characterized by low biological productivity.
•ANWR development would create hundreds of thousands of good American jobs, positively affecting every state by providing a safe energy supply and generating demand for goods and services.
— Gov. Sarah Palin
Besides skiing, wine gulping and dining 24/7, there are some presentations at Davos. I know, it is hard to believe.
Two thirds of people in the Western world don’t trust newspaper articles.
Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, began a session saying that trust is an issue for the press as well as government and big business. Edelman found that trust in business magazines and analysts fell from 57% to 44% and from 56% to 47% respectively. Trust in TV news is down from 49% to 36% and in newspaper coverage from 47% to 34%.
The least trusted businesses: Banking and the auto business. In general the U.S., India, U.K., Poland and China, there is much more trust in business than in government. The French, Germans and most of Europe believe in Big Brother over the private sector. The sad part, the U.S. is moving toward the French.
Just last year at the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the CEO of Lehman Brothers held court on the state of the global economy before lucky big league journalists and quiet subordinates while other Wall Street stars mingled after-hours with the likes of Claudia Schiffer, the supermodel, Bono of U2, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Pinch Sulzberger of the New York Times empire always attended. Did he get an invite this year? Why would he?
IT ALL STARTS TUESDAY. Better shape up for those ski pants.
But the politicians go on our dimes. New York Governor Paterson will fly off to a “junket” in a swank Swiss town this week, escaping from New York just days after his disastrous effort to chose Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate replacement, The New York Post has learned.
UPDATE: A beleaguered Gov. Paterson pulled out of his Switzerland trip Monday as a new poll shows his once-huge lead over Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has virtually disappeared.
Paterson was planning to leave Thursday to attend and speak at theWorld Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, but said this morning he decided to stay to concentrate on the state budget.
With all the wealthy Democrats in DC to help Obama make the USA a socialist state, the big spenders are not showing up in Davos this year. They may be in hiding.
As business, government and even nonprofit leaders jet set into the ski mecca, the cameras may be blocked from some of the parties this time. It would not be good PR to let the “journalists” into the five star restarants this time around.
And with much of the financial system in the UK, EU and the USA edging toward a possible socialist takeover, the 2009 agenda at Davos, “Shaping the Post-Crisis World,” has taken the limelight over global warming and globalization.
“The pendulum has swung and power has moved back to governments,” said Klaus Schwab, the German-born economics professor who founded the World Economic Forum in 1971 and has been its impresario ever since. “This is the biggest economic crisis since Davos began.”
Davos will draw approximately the same amount of participants (2,500) – but the cavier and celebrity-filled parties are going to be hidden from view. There will be many fewer members of the Bogner-ski suit set strutting down the resort’s snowy streets with their Rosignol skis in tow. Will Getty and his boy Gavin Newsom be there?
Davos has become so early 2000s and so Euro-centric. “Let’s stay longer at Sundance!”
Let the transition to socialism in the US begin. Why hide the Democrat/MSM agenda any longer?
History will mark 2009 as the start of the United Socialist States of America (USSA).
Is this just hype from right-wing nuts?
Check on this yourself at cpus.org
A People’s Inaugural
by Joe Sims, 01/20/2009
Reprinted from the People’s Weekly World
Huge crowds, unprecedented in U.S. history, gathered in Washington on Tuesday, to celebrate and welcome President Barack Obama to the White House. Pre-inaugural estimates of up to 3 million participants seemed on mark, with newspapers like the Washington Post calculating 2 million people on the Mall.
With many participants both with and without tickets unable to gain entry, the overall numbers are likely higher. “I had tickets and couldn’t get in,” said a New York City teacher whose story was echoed by many others.” We got here early but it was just too big.” Her family managed to watch President Obama’s speech at Union Station.
“You have to conceptualize this as a populist inauguration,” said political analyst, University of Maryland professor and long-time activist Ron Walters to the Washington Afro-American. “You have people coming here from all over the world; people coming from across the country – many bunking in with relatives – just because they want to be a part of history.”
As the millions gathered to observe the festivities, Wall Street stocks tumbled in the worst Inaugural Day plunge in a century, accenting the cloudy economic horizon and giving emphasis to President Obama’s people-oriented themes. The stock market plunged over 332 points or 4 percent, wiping out January gains amid growing fears of bank instability.
The president’s speech seemed to anticipate these problems and was a continuation of themes struck during the presidential campaign. Obama said, “Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.”
Moments later, tracing the sacrifice of previous generations, he continued, “For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.”
Even the poet Elizabeth Alexander, says The New York Times, speaking after the president, highlighted working class themes: “Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.”
Still the event and speeches, with these touches and emphasis, spoke broadly to the nation about the economic challenges ahead and marked a sharp break with policies of the Bush administration and even a direct rebuke, as President Obama made particular reference to not sacrificing ideals for expediency in foreign policy. “We reject as false the choice as between our safety and our ideals,” he said.
After the swearing-in Obama attended a traditional luncheon hosted by Congress, followed by a legislative session where several Cabinet appointments were approved. The huge outpouring of citizens from all over the country for the inaugural ceremony is sure to help hasten the approval of the president’s legislative agenda. According to press reports the first act of the new administration was to order a halt, pending further review, of all of former President Bush’s pending presidential regulations.
The inaugural parade extended into the afternoon, featuring a trade union float, representing the AFL-CIO, Change to Win and the teachers union, the first in many years at an inaugural. Over 200 workers marched and called for passing the Employee Free Choice Act. That is the act that will put pressure on all but the smallest businesses to become unionized with open ballots. Employees will not be able to vote in private.
The No. 1 story for 2008 is the great campaign and election of Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the U.S. That is historic and the obvious top story. But why isn’t there an investigation into the death of Osama bin Laden? That my friends is the biggest coverup since the JFK assassination.
A story as big as Hitler shooting himself in his bunker, has been buried. In the one-party Democrat system, what is bad for the party will not be published. There is mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden is dead, in fact he was most likely blown to bits and covered in tons of rubble on Feb. 4, 2002. Special Forces have detailed reports on Osama’s cave complex which was destroyed on that date early in the war on terror.
FBI investigations of “pay for play” and political corruption in New Mexico, Chicago, Cleveland — all Democrat Party officials. Death threats and a very unusual death at Christmas of Democrat Rosemary Vinci.
Very little coverage of the most widespread political corruption in perhaps 150 years. All the investigations began before the November elections. Yet, no interest from major media until after the election. Is that how a free press works in 2008?
If you live outside Ohio, I’ll wager you don’t know anything about this story:
Rosemary Vinci, the mysterious former strip club manager and close ally of Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora and Auditor Frank Russo, was found dead in her near West Side home Monday evening, said a spokesman for the county coroner.
Vinci was 50, was in good health, an autopsy to determine the cause of death is scheduled for Dec. 23 but had been put off. Police responded to Vinci’s home about 5 p.m. and found no signs of suspicious activity, a police spokesman said.
“We are very saddened by the recent passing of our employee, Rosemary Vinci,” said Destin Ramsey, a top Russo aide. “Our deepest sympathy goes out to all her friends and family, especially at this time, as we are sure she will be missed.”
Dimora and Russo are focuses of a federal corruption probe of county government. During a raid of Russo’s home and office, investigators sought pictures of Dimora and Vinci and documents related to Vinci, records show.
For years, Vinci managed the now-closed Tiffany’s, a high-end strip club on the west bank of the Flats. She recently pursued plans to open a social club at a property she owned in the Flats, but the project stalled because of zoning issues.
She had been active in the local Democratic Party, which Dimora leads.
Three months before the FBI raids, Vinci was at the center of a political storm when The Plain Dealer asked about her job on the county payroll. She made $48,000 a year, but officials gave varying accounts of who her boss was and what her duties were. Dimora ejected two reporters from a public meeting after refusing to answer questions about her.
Russo said Vinci worked for his office only, as a liaison to Cleveland City Hall. But several county employees, including one in the auditor’s office, told the newspaper at the time that Vinci also did work for the commissioners. Vinci said she worked for Russo and Dimora and spoke for both on behalf of the county to City Council members.
Back to Osama…
Osama, like all ego maniacs, couldn’t stay away from the camera or his followers. Reporting his death would not only make a hero out of the U.S. armed forces, but also President George W. Bush.
That was not going to happen in this day of the media/Democrat party alliance. It’s a double-edged sword. By hiding the fact that Osama was killed, the war effort continues to get full funding. That’s best, for there will be nothing left of al-Qaeda to speak of.
Can you imagine the press keeping quiet about Hitler’s demise during WWII?
Special Forces and CIA specialist Billy Waugh has compelling evidence on the fate of Osama. Google him.
Then ask yourself why you didn’t read this in the Washington Post, New York Times or San Francisco Chronicle.
That’s because it is hard to report on your own demise.
by Michael Hirschorn
End Times
Virtually all the predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print—the moment when, amid a panoply of flashing lights, press conferences, and elegiac reminiscences, the newspaper presses stop rolling and news goes entirely digital. Most of these scenarios assume a gradual crossing-over, almost like the migration of dunes, as behaviors change, paradigms shift, and the digital future heaves fully into view. The thinking goes that the existing brands—The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal—will be the ones making that transition, challenged but still dominant as sources of original reporting.
But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if TheNew York Times goes out of business—like, this May?
It’s certainly plausible. Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400million in debt. With more than $1billion in debt already on the books, only $46million in cash reserves as of October, and no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company’s debt was recently reduced to junk status), the paper’s future doesn’t look good.
“As part of our analysis of our uses of cash, we are evaluating future financing arrangements,” the Times Company announced blandly in October, referring to the crunch it will face in May. “Based on the conversations we have had with lenders, we expect that we will be able to manage our debt and credit obligations as they mature.” This prompted Henry Blodget, whose Web site, Silicon Alley Insider, has offered the smartest ongoing analysis of the company’s travails, to write: “‘We expect that we will be able to manage’? Translation: There’s a possibility that we won’t be able to manage.”
The paper’s credit crisis comes against a backdrop of ongoing and accelerating drops in circulation, massive cutbacks in advertising revenue, and the worst economic climate in almost 80 years. As of December, its stock had fallen so far that the entire company could theoretically be had for about $1 billion. The former Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal often said he couldn’t imagine a world without The Times. Perhaps we should start.
Granted, the odds that The Times will cease to exist entirely come May are relatively slim. Many steps could be taken to prolong its existence. The Times Company has already slashed its dividend, a major source of income for the paper’s owners, the Sulzberger family, but one that starved the company at precisely the moment it needed significant investments in new media. The company could sell its share of the brilliant Renzo Piano–designed headquarters—which cost the company about $600million to build and was completed in 2007, years after the digital threat to The Times’ core business had become clear. (It’s already borrowing money against the building’s value.) It could sell The Boston Globe—or shutter it entirely, given what the company itself has acknowledged is a challenging time for the sale of media properties. It could sell its share in the Boston Red Sox, close or sell various smaller properties, or off-load About.com, the resolutely unglamorous Web purchase that has been virtually the only source of earnings growth in the Times Company’s portfolio. With these steps, or after them, would come mass staffing cuts, no matter that the executive editor, Bill Keller, promised otherwise.
It’s possible that a David Geffen, Michael Bloomberg, or Carlos Slim would purchase The Times as a trophy property and spare the company some of this pain. Even Rupert Murdoch, after overpaying wildly for The Wall Street Journal, seems to be tempted by the prospect of adding The Times to his portfolio. But the experiences of Sam Zell, who must be ruing the day he waded into the waking nightmare that is the now-bankrupt Tribune Company, would surely temper the enthusiasm of all but the most arrogant of plutocrats. (And as global economies tumble around them, the plutocrats aren’t as plutocratic as they used to be.) Alternatively, Google or Microsoft or even CBS could purchase The Times on the cheap, strip it for parts, and turn it into a content mill to goose its own page views.
Regardless of what happens over the next few months, The Times is destined for significant and traumatic change. At some point soon—sooner than most of us think—the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist. And it will likely have plenty of company. In December, the Fitch Ratings service, which monitors the health of media companies, predicted a widespread newspaper die-off: “Fitch believes more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010.” — Michael Hirschorn
| THE SHAGGED SHEEP |  |
 |
|
This is a long piece but it does have underage sex The other day I had an e-mail from M J Murphy, who blogs as Big City Lib, I think you owe Dr. Miller an apology. There followed a link to a post called
Hmm. Here’s another clue:
THE UNCLEANS
So just to reprise: Did I cite Oriana Fallaci accurately? Yes. Did she cite Ayatollah Khomeini accurately? Yes. Is there a volume by the Ayatollah commonly known as the “Blue Book”? Yes Does it include rulings on sex with nine-year olds and what to do with a shagged sheep? Yes.
|
First it was the big win for Saxby Chamblis for the U.S. Senate from Georgia. The Democrats had a lot of paid people in the state to make sure that didn’t happen. They can’t change election results while counting if there is a landslide.
Next, in Louisiana’s runoff elections, two more wins for Republicans. This shows the people understand what absolute rule by the Democrats would be terrible for the nation.
Republicans made an aggressive push to take the 2nd District House seat from the 61-year-old Democrat William Jefferson, who has pleaded “not guilty” to charges of bribery, laundering money and misusing his congressional office. You might remember seeing photos of Jefferson’s “cold cash” wrapped in foil in his freezer on FOX news.
“The people of the 2nd District have spoken,” Cao, 41, told supporters at a restaurant near the French Quarter. “We want new direction. We want action. We want accountability.”
In a speech that stopped short of concession, Jefferson blamed low voter turnout for his showing and said supporters may have thought he was a shoo-in after he won a Nov. 4 primary in the black and heavily Democratic district.
“I think people just ran out of gas a bit,” he said. “People today flat didn’t come out in large numbers.”
Greg Rigamer, a New Orleans political consultant, said his analysis showed turnout in predominantly white sections of the district was double that in black areas. He said that helped push Cao to victory over Jefferson.
“This is quite a feat,” Rigamer said of Cao’s victory.
With ACORN money all used up to elect Obama, this election was decided by the voters of the district who cared enough to follow through on what was a national joke of corruption.
Watch the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and SF Chronicle for their coverage. Page 12 you think?
The end of elite liberal media empires and rise of citizen journalism 