50th Anniversary of JFK Killing Nov. 22, 2013

Dallas was the perfect stage for LBJ to control the scene of the crime of the century. Johnson owned a media empire inside Texas. He won elections by hook and by crooked attorneys. His nickname “Landslide Johnson,” was sarcastic because he always won elections by late vote counts in Democrat precincts.

Jack Ruby was connected to the Chicago mob and had a well-cultivated relationship with the Dallas Police Department. Ruby was the ideal man to shut up Lee Harvey Oswald and shut down the link to the assassination team. Ruby asked to be moved from Dallas where he feared for his life if he brought up the network he worked for. His request was not granted and he died in the Dallas jail.

Mr. Ruby had a jailhouse interview with Dorothy Kilgallen, a nationally known journalist. She reported that the interview would blow the case wide open. She gave the notes of her meeting to her friend Margaret Smith for safekeeping. Ms. Kilgallen was found dead of a drug overdose on Nov. 8, 1965. Ms. Smith died two days later. The cause of death was not known.

Carlos Marcello Mafia head with business in Chicago, Dallas and New Orleans was the financier of the assassination. Marcello’s casinos shut down by Castro in Havana cost the boss many millions. Then, Bobby Kennedy started going  after the mobs in Las Vegas and Reno, where the mob shifted its casino operations from Havana.

Jack Ruby had worked for the mafia for years and was their pay-off man for control of the Dallas police.

Karyn, the beautiful daughter of Chicago journalist Irv Kupcinet, was found strangled to death in  Los Angeles. The LA Times reported a telephone operator heard Karyn scream “They are going to Kill Kennedy” a few days before the assassination. She was strangled to death on November 26 or 27 and not discovered until Nov. 30. Investigators speculated it was a message to her father to stay silent on what he knew about Jack Ruby.

Roger Craig was a Dallas policeman on the scene the day of the assignation. He found a 7.65 Mauser in the Book Depository. That was a fly in the ointment. The plant rifle was the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle tied to Oswald. The conflict of the other rifle showed at least two shooters. Officer Craig’s findings were ignored by the Warren Commission. In 1967 Craig was fired from the Dallas PD. Later that year, he was shot while walking to his car. The bullet grazed his head. In 1973, his car was forced off a mountain road and he was badly injured. He was shot again in 1974 and in 1975 was wounded when his car blew up. Later that year, he was found dead. Authorities called his death a suicide from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Quite the survivor, not the profile of someone who commits suicide. Note gunshot woundS.  

Madeleine Brown, a longtime LBJ mistress, implicated her high-level lover and sugar daddy, implicating LBJ on taped statements before she died in 2002. What did she have to gain on her deathbed? Only the truth and peace with her maker. 

Johnson is the key to the Kennedy assassination. He benefitted the most. LBJ was a raw man. He was well-known for using the “N” word and lifted dogs up by their ears. Inside the Kennedy inner circle, talk of dumping LBJ from the ticket was passed talk and about to be a done deal.

Good ol’ boy, Johnson ran the Dallas area police, FBI and regional CIA and Secret Service.

What luck that Lee Harvey Oswald found a job in the Texas Book Depository two weeks before the president’s route. Who would know the president’s motorcade route but Johnson and his local Dallas Secret Service connections?

Many experts believe that the shot that went through Kennedy’s neck came from the front of the limo, behind the vine covered picket fence on the grassy knoll, not the fifth floor of the Texas Book Depository to his back. Basic ballistics test also show the magic bullet that hit parts of the limo, Governor Connelly, and JFK deny science and evidence, the bullet was unscathed. The horrible explosion of the back of Kennedy’s head follows ballistics in that the backward blowout is much larger than the entry wound, again, from the front.

“I am a patsy” are the only record of Lee Harvey Oswald’s side of the story. He was silenced by a 38 slug to the gut by mob errand boy, Ruby. After a night of questioning in the Dallas PD HQ, there are no notes or recordings. Why? Was it because Oswald described the network and that he was a CIA mole planted to watch the terrorist team do a dry run? Why was Oswald seen on the second floor drinking  a Dr. Pepper 30 seconds before the shooting? Why didn’t Oswald have a real escape plan? Instead he took a public bus to South Dallas to the Texas Movie Theatre in Oak Lawn? Why did Oswald hide in a theatre if he were a radical freedom fighter? Why didn’t he try and fight to the finish? Why after all that would he say he is a patsy?

Kennedy’s body was seized and flown back to Washington D.C. without the media scrutiny. There are reports of three wounds from the front. Triangulation ensured this was going to finish the job. 

Barr McClellan, author of Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK, accuses LBJ of being behind the JFK assassination. Implicates others of fore-knowledge of the plot, including Texas oilmen Clint Murchison, Sr. and H.L. Hunt, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Mystery fingerprint found on sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository matches prints of Johnson aide taken in connection with a prior murder conviction.

The Men Who Killed Kennedy began with two 50-minute segments originally aired on 25 October 1988 in the United Kingdom, entitled simply Part One and Part Two. The programmes were produced by Central Television for the ITV network and were immediately followed by a studio discussion on the issues titled The Story Continues, chaired by broadcaster Peter Sissons. The United States corporation, Arts & Entertainment Company, purchased the rights to the original two segments. In 1989, the series was nominated for a Flaherty Documentary Award. In 1991, the series was re-edited with additional material and divided into three 50-minute programmes, which were also shown by ITV. A sixth episode appeared in 1995. The series typically aired in November every year and from time to time during the year. In November 2003, three additional segments (“The Final Chapter”) were added by the History Channel, but the series is no longer aired.

The ninth documentary in the series, entitled “The Guilty Men,” directly implicates former U. S. President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) and created an outcry among Johnson’s surviving associates, including Johnson’s widow, Lady Bird Johnson, journalist Bill Moyers, ex-President Jimmy Carter, Jack Valenti (longtime president of the Motion Picture Association of America), and the last-living (at the time of the outcry) Warren Commissioncommissioner and ex-President Gerald R. Ford. These Johnson supporters lodged complaints of libel with the History Channel, and subsequently threatened legal action against Arts & Entertainment Company, owner of the History Channel.

The History Channel responded by assembling a panel of three historians, Robert Dallek, Stanley Kutler, and Thomas Sugrue. On a program aired April 7, 2004, titles “The Guilty Man: A Historical Review,” the panel agreed that the documentary was not credible and should not have aired. The History Channel issued a statement saying, in part, “The History Channel recognizes that ‘The Guilty Men’ failed to offer viewers context and perspective, and fell short of the high standards that the network sets for itself. The History Channel apologizes to its viewers and to Mrs. Johnson and her family for airing the show.” Conspiracy author Barr McClellan, interviewed in the documentary, complained that although the historians examined the evidence, they did not interview him or Turner.^[1]

 

One year after the tragic BP oil disaster — all clear on the beaches!

Big Brother/Big Sis will use  the BP industrial accident as a way to pump a massive big government “clean energy tax” on the American middleclass and energy businesses. This kind of propaganda is considered “news” in Venezuela, Cuba and Spain. 

Here is an e-mail blast sent out to Democrats nation-wide today:
The BP oil spill is the worst environmental disaster of its kind in our nation’s history. My administration has deployed every tool at our disposal for the response efforts. Thousands are working around the clock, including some of the top scientists and engineers from around the world.

We are working to hold BP accountable for the damage to the lands and the livelihoods of the Gulf Coast, and we are taking strong precautions to make certain a spill like this never happens again.

But our Socialist work will not end with this crisis. That’s one of the reasons why I invited lawmakers from both parties to join me at theWhite House to discuss what it will take to move forward on legislation to promote a new economy powered by green jobs, combat climate change, and end our dependence on foreign oil.

Today, we consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than two percent of the world’s oil reserves. Beyond the risks inherent in drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth, our dependence on oil means that we will continue to send billions of dollars of our hard-earned wealth to other countries every month — including many in dangerous and unstable regions.

In other words, our continued dependence on fossil fuels will jeopardize our national security. It will smother our planet. And it will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk. We cannot delay any longer, and that is why I am asking for your help.

The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a new future. What future is that? Big Government runs free enterprise like they do the IRS and US Post Office?  

That means continuing our unprecedented effort to make everything — from our homes and businesses to our cars and trucks — more energy-efficient. It means rolling back billions of dollars of tax breaks to oil companies so we can prioritize investments in clean energy research and development.

But the only way the transition to clean energy will ultimately succeed is if the private sector is fully invested in this future — if capital comes off the sidelines and the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs is unleashed. And we can do that by finally putting a price on carbon pollution.

Many businesses have already embraced this idea because it provides a level of certainty about the future. And by pouring resources into research and development, by building new markets, we will reinvent our economy — creating opportunities for entrepreneurship, for new companies and new jobs all across the country.

There will be transition costs and a time of adjustment. But if we refuse to take into account the full costs of our fossil fuel addiction — and if we refuse to heed the warnings from the disaster in the Gulf — we will have missed our best chance to seize the clean-energy future we know America needs to thrive in the years and decades to come.

The House of Representatives has already passed a comprehensive energy and climate bill, and there is currently a plan in the Senate — a plan that was developed with ideas from Democrats and Republicans — that would achieve the same goal. This week, I met with congressional leaders to determine a path forward. But this is an issue that Washington has long ignored in favor of protecting the status quo.

So I’m asking for your help today to show that the American people are ready for a clean-energy future.

Never let a crisis go to waste… Who said that?

The story never published about the liberal millionaire who ruined the LA Times and Times-Mirror empire – Otis Chandler

Today the newspaper industry bible–Editor & Publisher was shut down.

The 12-page 8×10 inch magazine was a joke inside the industry it covered. Not always, of course, or the trade mag covering mini-monopolies wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did. The past five years, E&P’s circulation was mainly online and didn’t earn the money to pay for postage or the paper it was printed on. Many blogs earn more in advertising revenue in one day than E&P did the past five years.

The same week with the earliest snowfall on record for Houston — the first wave of elite liberals fly to Denmark for the Global Warming Summit to drink Champagne.

Now another wave of layoffs begin at newspapers large newspapers. With more copy editor and page design jobs going to India at about 60 percent less, in the age of Web-based publishing.

Imagine if newspapers had been more balanced in their coverage and actually had moderate and conservative content? Would readers and advertisers be dropping off like they are? Or is it just the medium that is the problem?

Liberals at the Los Angeles Times and the vast Times-Mirror media holdings have long praised the legacy of an eccentric, big game hunter, millionaire, car collector and liberal Democrat,  publisher Otis Chandler, the surfing heir to an empire that he knew nothing about. Otis set the liberal sharp turn left at the  LA Times, which was immediately followed by the media giant’s other holdings: The Dallas-Times Herald, Denver Post, Houston Post, Baltimore Sun and New York’s Newsday, soon after the title was granted to him by his father.

Otis like many spoiled trust fund kids turned on dear old dad and granddad and imitated the New York Times leftist, socialist dogma. It started in the late ’60s and kept up the pace until the mid-’80s when the Times-Mirror board finally fired him.  The board remained out of the public eye and sat on their hands watching the largest, most profitable media company attack the  advertisers in Dallas, Denver and Houston who had a choice, they easily moved all their advertising and public event support to the  more dominant papers in the markets: then the Dallas Morning News, Denver Post and Houston Chronicle. Liberals hate business and economics with a passion. 

The Chandler’s board got rid of the brat and some 15 years later sold out to Sam Zell of Chicago. They unloaded well before the death spiral of the industry. 

Sam Zell is playing out a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western on the bloated staff at the once glorious flagship, the LA Times.

“Sudden Sam” Zell fired more than 400 employees since assuming ownership of the paper a few years ago. You know there are some hearty laughs over fine cigars and California merlot in the the rolling ranch lands of Southern Cal.

Unlike Otis Chandler, Zell has no regard for the Pulitzer Prize committee, the supreme soviets of mainstream journalism, who only bestow honors on the most progressive and liberal newspapers left in the land. Zell made it clear right off the bat,  that he found the paper’s New-York-Times-of-the-West pretensions, worthless and boring. He has said openly that he doesn’t even bother to read the paper unless he happens to be passing through L.A.

In a New Yorker Magazine profile, Zell described himself as an “economic conservative” and confessed that he likes the columns of Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks but thought the “rest of the New York Times’s columnists are preposterous.” He had no use for Hillary Clinton either, according to the piece: “At a recent dinner party, the mention of Hillary Clinton’s name prompted him to use a four-letter obscenity to describe her.”

Times staffers must have shivered when they read in the New Yorker profile that Zell once sent a music box as a gift to friends and colleagues that played a song deriding the Sarbanes-Oxley Act: “Sarbanes-Oxley/ They’ve got moxie/ But for businesses/ Their act is toxic/ It’s not rocket science/ We’re killing profits with compliance.”

Addressing a University of Hawaii business class a few years back, Zell said: “The idea that somehow or other the business community is full of all these greedy characters — you should see the greed in teachers’ unions! You should see the greed in any political organization!”

Chandler’s era was  “hyperpartisan,” biased and “parochial” in support of Jimmy Carter and on constant attack mode against California Republicans Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. That was the final straw for Otis.

Otis went on to killing real elephants and lions on extravagant safaris. Did you know that? Google it, there may be some bits and pieces on the web. 

Chandler and his liberal successor, Tom Johnson, (who was publisher at the Dallas Times-Herald) focused on winning the approval of East Coast socialites/socialists, had endlessly commissioned left-wing articles, boring local readers who dropped their papers in droves for the more moderate Orange County Register and in Dallas, the more conservative Dallas Morning News. In Houston, the readers left the Post and went with the Houston Chronicle. (The Post is long gone and the Houston Chronicle is among the most profitable major newspapers in America). 

The LA Times  acquired a reputation as the “velvet coffin,” a place where liberal reporters could leisurely cover topics of interest to them, (smear energy companies, HMOs, etc.)  and paint beautiful portraits of their elite friends, but of little interest to the paper’s readers and local businesses.

I know plenty of stories abut the velvet coffin. I was young bastard who worked tirelessly for the honor of being in the inner court of the Times-Mirror estate. I stood shoulder to shoulder with the powers that were. They were a smug group, flying off to Davos every year with Pinchy of the NY Times and George Soros. 

I admire the intelligent courage of the Chandlers for giving Otis the boot and later dumping the media mess he left behind. They could see that the entire industry was following the liberal lead of Otis. There are better investments to be made such as in Apple, HP, or any number of consumer products.

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2009/12/next-for-outsource-news-production-jobs.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004052655

What is a community organizer? ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles expose ACORN fraud

Citizen journalists exposed ACORN on camera. Now the Obama/Democrat politicians have to sever their ties with the socialist group famous for ballot stuffing, voter registrations by the tens of thousands and illegal loans by the thousands (helping fuel the financial meltdown).  The two citizen journalists asked for tax advice on opening up a house of prostitution and got some good tips from ACORN staff members. 

 

The interview was taped and now Obama has some explaining to do. Why did he pick 9-11 for the first annual day of service? Now ACORN will forever be tied to a tragic day in American history. ACORN is a brownshirt political activist group hired to rig local elections and beef up poor and illegal numbers for federal aid.  What a shitty organization? My god! 

 

Two employees at the Baltimore, Maryland, branch of the liberal community organizing group ACORN were caught on tape allegedly offering advice to a pair posing as a pimp and prostitute on setting up a prostitution ring and evading the IRS.

The video  was recorded and and posted online Thursday by James O’Keefe, a conservative activist. He was joined on the video by another conservative, Hannah Giles, who posed as the prostitute in the filmmakers’ undercover sting.

Wonder why the New York Times or Washington Post didn’t think of doing this kind of real journalism? I think you know the answer.

The video shows the pair approaching two women working at the ACORN Baltimore office and asking them for advice on how to set up a prostitution ring involving more than a dozen underage girls from El Salvador. One of the ACORN workers suggests that Giles refer to herself as a “performing artist” on tax forms and declare some of the girls as dependents to receive child tax credits.

“Stop saying prostitution,” the woman, identified by the filmmaker as an ACORN tax expert, tells Giles. The other woman tells them, “You want to keep them clean … make sure they go to school.”

Both woman appear enthusiastic to help. The tape is on YOUTUBE. Google it. 

James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles visited one of ACORN’s New York offices in August, where they picked up handy tips on how to lie on housing forms to cover up a prostitution business (”Honesty is not going to get you the house,” one ACORN official advises) and how to hide cash from their illicit business (”When you buy the house with the backyard, you get a tin…and you bury it down in there…cover it…and put the grass over it…”).

Watch the whole thing at Big Government. This is now the third videotaped sting exposing the ACORN racket’s law-undermining, truth-sabotaging counseling sessions.

If the Census Bureau no longer trusts ACORN to collect data as a result of these videotapes, why is Congress still allowing taxpayer money to be funneled to the ACORN Housing Corporation?

AHC has received an estimated $16 million in taxpayer funds between 1997-2007, according to the Employment Policies Institute.

 ACORN is now managing apartments in Bedford-Stuyvesant for the newly completed Atlantic Avenue Apartments.

 

The video footage — which has been edited and goes to black in some areas — was recorded and posted online Thursday by James O’Keefe, a conservative activist. He was joined on the video by another conservative, Hannah Giles, who posed as the prostitute in the filmmakers’ undercover sting.

The video shows the pair approaching two women working at the ACORN Baltimore office and asking them for advice on how to set up a prostitution ring involving more than a dozen underage girls from El Salvador.

One of the ACORN workers suggests that Giles refer to herself as a “performing artist” on tax forms and declare some of the girls as dependents to receive child tax credits.

 

 

 

 

Governor Sarah Palin, in her Wednesday night speech to 40 million Americans said, “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” Sarah hit a grand slam with that one.

 

But what exactly were Barack Obama’s actions as of community organizer in Chicago?

 

It’s been hidden from the news that Obama was a member of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN. Google ACORN and you may be surprised to find that it is a liberal/socialist organization involved in voter fraud. Look up the lawsuits ACORN is involved in.

 

 

Obama’s community organizing involved training grievance-mongers from ACORN.

Last week, Milwaukee’s top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigatioins of 37 ACORN employees accused voter registration fraud on a massive level.

 

Obama’s campaign apologized for failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were “accidently” filed with the Federal Election Committee as money sent to “get-out-the-vote” and “advance work.”

 

The New York Post has more quotes today from upset community organizers. Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, says: “I don’t like seeing the really hard work that goes on in really poor communities being demeaned by cheap politicians.”

 

Hard work such as signing up non U.S. citizens as Democrats with voter cards.

 

The Arkansas connection
You know Acorn. You know the grassroots organization, now a national power, got its start here, led by Wade Rathke (pictured), who spent the group’s formative years wheeling and dealing in Little Rock before moving to New Orleans. The local affiliate remains a powerful voice for poor people.

Depending on your point of view, you’ll be saddened or gladdened to learn this shocking news:

The New York Times reports today that founder Rathke’s brother embezzled $1 million from the organization eight years ago and the matter was handled internally.He stayed on the payroll until a month ago, when whistleblowers finally forced him out.

Wade Rathke said the organization had signed a restitution agreement with his brother in which his family agreed to repay the amount embezzled in exchange for confidentiality.

Wade Rathke stepped down as Acorn’s chief organizer on June 2, the same day his brother left, but he remains chief organizer for Acorn International L.L.C.

He said the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a “weapon” into the hands of enemies of Acorn, a liberal group that is a frequent target of conservatives who object to its often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers.

Wade Rathke said he learned of the problem when an employee of Citizens Consulting alerted him about suspicious credit card transactions. An internal investigation uncovered inappropriate charges on the cards that led back to his brother.

“Clearly, this was an uncomfortable, conflicting and humiliating situation as far as my family and I were concerned,” he said, “and so the real decisions on how to handle it had to be made by others.”

If one of the prosperous businesses or public officials Rathke and Acorn have bedeviled and humiliated over the years had offered this alibi for wrongdoing, they would be in Lompoc right now.

Investment guru Warren Buffett’s outlook on newspapers is dismal

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.

What happened? Take a look at this modest blog’s stats: The 7-day traffic average is now passing hundreds of thousands of hits.  The majority are college graduates and in their peek buying years ages 25-55.

I predict the Boston Globe will go online with just a Friday/Sunday printed and delivered paper. 

The Boston Globe proposes to slash Guild wages by 23 percent. The talks carry on tonight and will probably end with an 18 percent cut in wages, and most and upper middle managers and no-named editors will be gone. The NY Times will handle the management. Just my prediction. 

Major city newspapers will go nonprofit to keep influence

Major cities such as San Francisco, Washington D.C., LA, Chicago, New York, Houston and Philadelphia may convert the serviving newspapers into nonprofits to keep their political and philanthropic status. 

The San Francisco Chronicle will be the first to test the entity. 

San Francisco investment banker Warren Hellman and other prominent SF  lawyers and investors made an informal proposal  last week to Hearst, owners of the San Francisco Chronicle about helping the troubled daily paper become a nonprofit, San Francisco attorney Bill Coblentz told the SF Business Times.

Hellman and Coblentz discussed the idea, then Coblentz conveyed it to former San Francisco Examiner editor and publisher William R. Hearst III, who is a Hearst Corp. director and an affiliated partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. William is one of the working Hearsts who lives in the Bay Area and keeps touch with The Chronicle on a daily basis. It’s unofficially the Hearst flagship, though in money making ability, their Houston Chronicle is by far the financial headquarters. 

“What happened after that, I don’t know,” said Coblentz, who is out of town.

The proposal would be for a nonprofit corporation “to take over the Chronicle,” with Hearst Corp. continuing to provide some philanthropic support, Coblentz said. Details remain sketchy. It’s unclear if the proposal is being seriously considered.

 

Editorial-wise they are already PBS in print, aren’t they? 

 

Sleepless in Seattle — The Post-Intelligencer shuts down — lives online

Last week: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has told employees they “might” lose their jobs as soon as next week after a deadline for Hearst Corp to sell the newspaper passed last Monday. 

The news is out, the  146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer prints its last edition tomorrow.

The P-I will continue to “live” on the Internet with a much smaller staff.

I like it. It’s a mix of current and archival. Mikey likes it!

http://www.seattlepi.com 

Owner, the Hearst Corp. reports it has failed to find a buyer for the newspaper, which it put up for sale in January after nine years of financial losses. There are no more suckers left with enough trust fund money to waste.

The end of the print edition leaves The Seattle Times as the only major daily newspaper in the city. 

The TV stations will be there tonight and tomorrow capturing the historic day.

Seattle has been counting TV, and now the internet as their favorite news sources. Do you think people will wait for the Seattle Times to find out?

 

 

Last week:

Read between the lines: Boxes for removing personal items and shredding bins are scheduled to be delivered to the PI floors this week.

Clues suggest Hearst plans to close the P-I shortly

Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on its own demise

Just after Hearst spokesman Paul Luthringer claimed that “we are still evaluating our options,” Post-Intelligencer staffers learned that boxes and bins are scheduled to be delivered to the newsroom later this week — some for materials to be taken home, others for notes that require shredding. “It would be nice to have some clarity,” says business reporter Joseph Tartakoff. “It’s really hard to plan your work when you’re not sure if you’ll be around the next day.”

The New York Times sold off the majority of its new sky scraper in New York and has a long-term rent agreement. The company no longer owns the roof over its head.

Next, McClatchy announced massive layoffs, and Hearst’s Seattle PI is about to turn into a shadow, online only edition. Meanwhile, back at Hearst’s figurative flagship, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Media Guild has accepted big cuts just to keep most jobs. The Denver Rocky Mountain News shut down a week or so ago. 

McClatchy Co. is shearing another 1,600 jobs in a cost-cutting spree that has clipped nearly one-third of the newspaper publisher’s work force in less than a year.

The latest reduction in payroll announced Monday follows through on the Sacramento-based company’s previously disclosed plans to lower its expenses by as much as $110 million over the next year as its revenue evaporates amid a devastating recession.

The layoffs will start before April. No fooling.

 Several of McClatchy’s 30 daily newspapers, including The Sacramento Bee and The Kansas City Star, already have decided how many workers will be shown the door. Close to 2,000. 

 

Only 33% would miss their local paper if it folded

Pew Research report
Just 43 percent  of Americans say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community “a lot,” according to a Pew Research poll. And even fewer, only 33 percent say they will miss their local newspaper if it folds.

Back to the West Coast

Negotiators for the Guild and the San Francisco Chronicle reached a tentative agreement Monday night changes to the collective bargaining agreement in line with cost cuts planned by Hearst. 

The agreement will require approval by Chronicle Unit Guild members. (They will approve or lose their jobs wholesale). 

A ratification meeting will be scheduled as early as Thursday of this week. Time and place will be announced on Tuesday as soon as a large enough facility can be secured.

In view of the latest terms agreed today, the Guild Negotiating Committee recommends membership approval.

The terms reached late Monday include expanded management ability to lay off employees without regard to seniority. All employees who are discharged in a layoff or who accept voluntary buyouts are guaranteed two weeks’ pay per year of service up to a maximum of one year, plus company-paid health care for the severance term, even in the event of a shutdown – which today’s agreement is designed to avoid.

Guild membership will remain a condition of continued employment for all employees. However, new hires in certain advertising sales positions will be given the option of membership, even though they will retain Guild protection under the contract.

On-callers will be limited to no more than 10 percent in any classification or department.

Pension changes are not part of this agreement, but are being discussed by pension authorities and must be implemented under terms of the Pension Protection Act, due to the recent declines in investment markets. Because those changes may affect the decisions of many members concerning buyouts, we are attempting to reach some key understandings now as to the nature of the changes and when they will take effect.

A lunch-hour meeting on Wednesday March 11, with our pension plan’s lawyer will be held at the Guild Office, 433 Natoma, Third Floor Conference Room.

A bulletin summarizing all the proposed contract changes will be issued Tuesday. A set of the complete proposed amendments will be available on the Guild’s Web site (mediaworkers.org) as soon as possible.

Management is seeking to change the union contract as part of an attempt to cut costs and keep the paper operating under the ownership of the Hearst Corp.

The company said Feb. 24 it would sell or close the paper unless the Guild agreed to changes in the labor agreement in effect through June 2010.

The leaders in the former cash cow industry thought they could just transform to their pages of expensive advertising to Web pages. Sorry. The Web is very competitive and readers will not put up with page after page of ads to follow the news. 

McClatchy is down for the count. The stock is hovering below $1 and will soon be kicked out of the New York Stock Exchange. 

The The Sun of Myrtle Beach and the  Macon Telegraph — McClatchy papers, announced last week that they were outsourcing printing, they joined what one experts are calling the last stage of the dying industry.

Chuck Moozakis, editor-in-chief of Newspapers & Technology, found in a December survey piece that the flight from printing includes mid-sized papers like the two last week, small papers, but also very big ones like the San Francisco Chronicle. Dow Jones has already closed plants in Denver and Chicago and could shutter 10 of the 17 around the country that have printed The Wall Street Journal.

 

“There is a lot of iron sitting out there now,” Moozkis reported.  

“What’s more sobering is the amount of press capacity now available within operations with relatively new presses” like Detroit and Denver. Losing the Rocky Mountain News press run — when it closes (not if) — won’t help, and some of the same impact will come as the two Detroit papers have reduced distribution of a smaller print product most weekdays.

 

 The carbon footprint of newspapers is enormous. At least the unemployed “progressives” can be happy that they are no longer contributing to the worst global warming industry on the planet. 

The funny thing, the Rocky didn’t know it was on life support for the last 10 years

The JOAs have just prolonged the death of failing newspapers. It’s time to pull the plug.

 

They fancy themselves literary geniuses, some of them do, when they are merely expert at the craft of certain formula which bear little relation to communicating with readers at the highest level. Or they fancy themselves tough-nosed reporters simply because they work in Chicago, and wail about the (falsely alleged) error rates of valuable tools like Wikipedia, without having even gone through the fact-checking process of a typical monthly magazine that will humble any newspaper reporter within minutes (trust me, I know).

The industry is still discussing inverted pyramids instead of the art of the link and how it changes the narrative structure of what we do.

Please die already. — The Beachwoodreporter.com.

Rocky Mountain News publishes final edition Friday

Poynteronline.org holds a podcast/blog later today on “Is it time to exit newspaper journalism?” What do you think they will say? 

Here is the final edition. It has a sad, final edition look to it. http://eatthedarkness.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/rip-rocky/

 

  

Joe Mahoney © The Rocky

Executives from  Scripps, announce their decision on the future of the Rocky Mountain News in the 150-year-old newspaper’s newsroom on 2/26/09 in Denver. In December 2008, the Rocky’s parent company put the paper up for sale, citing multi-million dollar annual losses. No offers were made. Nobody was that slow on the uptake on the future of newspapers.

  

 

 

  

Photo by Darin McGregor © The Rocky

A man stops to read the ticker on the outside of the Denver Newspaper Agency building announcing that the Rocky Mountain News is closing and that it will publish its last edition on Friday. Photograph taken in Denver Thurs. Feb 26, 2009.

  

Photo by Joe Mahoney © The Rocky

 

  

Photo by Joe Mahoney © The Rocky

Executives from E.W. Scripps Co., announce their decision on the future of the Rocky Mountain News in the 150-year-old newspaper’s newsroom on 2/26/09 in Denver. In December 2008, the Rocky’s parent company put the paper up for sale, citing multi-million dollar annual losses.

Share Your Thoughts

What do you think about Scripps’ decision to close the Rocky? We want to hear your thoughts. You can talk live with Mark Wolf by clicking here, or send a letter to the editor at letters@rockymountainnews.com

• BLOG: Official announcement at Rocky
• VIDEO: Scripps announces closure of Rocky Mountain News
• SLIDE SHOW: Rocky staff members get news of closure
• NEWS CONFERENCE: Recession forced closure, Boehne says

The Rocky Mountain News publishes its last paper today (Friday).

Rich Boehne, chief executive officer of Rocky-owner Scripps, broke the news to the staff at noon today, ending nearly three months of speculation over the paper’s future.

“People are in grief,” Editor John Temple said a noon news conference.

But he was intent on making sure the Rocky’s final edition, which would include a 52-page wraparound section, was as special as the paper itself.

“This is our last shot at this,” Temple said at a second afternoon gathering at the newsroom. “This morning (someone) said it’s like playing music at your own funeral. It’s an opportunity to make really sweet sounds or blow it. I’d like to go out really proud.”

Boehne told staffers that the Rocky was the victim of a terrible economy and an upheaval in the newspaper industry.

“Denver can’t support two newspapers any longer,” Boehne told staffers, some of whom cried at the news. “It’s certainly not good news for you, and it’s certainly not good news for Denver.”

Tensions were higher at the second staff meeting, held to update additional employees who couldn¹t attend the hastily called noon press conference.

Several employees wanted to know about severance packages, or even if they could buy at discount their computers.

Others were critical of Scripps for not seeking wage concessions first or going online only.

But Mark Contreras, vice president of newspapers for Scripps, said the math simply didn’t work.

“If you cut both newsrooms in half, fired half the people in each newsroom, you’d be down to where other market newsrooms are today. And they’re struggling,” he said.

As for online revenues, he said if they were to grow 40 percent a year for the next five years, they still would be equal to the cost of one newsroom today.

“We’re sick that we’re here,” Contreras said. “We want you to know it’s not your fault. There’s no paper in Scripps that we hold dearer.”

But Boehne said Scripps intended to keep its other media, both print and in broadcast, running.

“Scripps has been around for 130 years. We intend to be around another 130 years,” Boehne said. “If you can’t make hard decisions, you won’t make it.”

After Friday, the Denver Post will be the only newspaper in town.

Asked if pubilsher Dean Singleton now walks away with the whole pie, Boehne was blunt.

“He walks away with an unprofitable paper, $130 million in debt and revenues that are down 15-20 percent every year,” Boehne said.

Asked if Singleton would have to pay for the presses now, Boehne added, “We had to kill a newspaper. He can pay for the presses.”

Reaction came from across the nation and around the block.

“The Rocky Mountain News has chronicled the storied, and at times tumultuous, history of Colorado for nearly 150 years. I am deeply saddened by this news, and my heart goes out to all the talented men and women at the Rocky,” U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet said in a statement. “I am grateful for their hard work and dedication to not only their profession, but the people of Colorado as well.”

At the Statehouse, Rep. Joe Rice (D-Littleton), said the paper would be missed.

“The Rocky Mountain News has been a valued institution in Denver,” he said.

“It’s a sad, sad day.”

Long-time Denver real estate agent Edie Marks called the Rocky a voice of reason, moderation and common sense.

“I think that it was the fairest newspaper, the most diverse, and am important part of my daily life,” she said. “I’m going to miss it tremendously.”

On Dec. 4, Boehne announced that Scripps was looking for a buyer for the Rocky and its 50 percent interest in the Denver Newspaper Agency, the company that handles business matters for the papers. The move came because of financial losses in Denver, including $16 million in 2008.

“This moment is nothing like any experience any of us have had,” Boehne said. “The industry is in serious, serious trouble.”

Didn’t Obama sign the trillion dollar stimulous bill in Denver? What did that do for the Rocky? 

Philly Newspapers Rolled – Inquirer and Daily News in free fall

Bankruptcy documents filed Sunday by Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, The Inquirer and Daily News and seven affiliated suburban publications report the newspaper group bought  from McClatchy (the troubled chain that Knight-Ridder unloaded in 2005) is asking the court for bankruptcy protection. The Philly group paid McClatchy  $562 million for the papers. The value of the assets is far lower than that just a few years later.

You have to admire the business knowledge of the Knight-Ridder family share holders who knew when to fold them and chuck them off before the business trends became obvious.

This report in Forbes Magazine is by Wm. P Barret, former Dallas Times Herald and Philly Inquirer reporter and editor. He has good sources. 

The Inquirer and Daily News join a growing list of newspapers forced into bankruptcy after sharp declines in advertising destroyed their ability to service big debts taken on when they changed hands. A day earlier, Journal Register Co. (nyse: JRC – news – people ), parent of Connecticut’s New Haven Register and 178 other weekly and daily newspapers, sought bankruptcy-court protection. The same fate befell the Minneapolis Star Tribune last month. In December, Tribune Co., whose holdings include the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Newsday, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. All newspapers have suffered sharp ad revenue declines due to Internet competition and the recession, but those that recently changed hands in leveraged deals are the most vulnerable.

The bankruptcy threatens to wipe out the $150 million equity investment made by Tierney’s Philly group, which included local labor unions and business interests. It also raises the prospect of big losses by the lenders that provided the balance of more than $400 million in debt financing. The list of largest unsecured creditors was topped by Royal Bank of Scotland (nyse: RBS – news – people ), which is owed $22 million. As of Jan. 31, the company said it still owed $395 million to lenders.

 

“The debtors’ assets and going concern value are worth less today than they were worth in 2006,” Thayer wrote. He added that Philadelphia Newspapers had 2008 free cash flow–before interest, taxes, depreciation or amortization–of $36 million. That is expected to drop 31% to $25 million this year, Thayer wrote. It is from cash flow that debt-servicing payments are made.

Thayer’s statement hints at hard-ball tactics on all sides as Tierney’s team fought to restructure its finances outside of court. A Tierney request in November for $20 million in equity investment from lenders was rejected. Then this month, Thayer wrote, lenders countered with a proposal that the money be a loan and demanded an answer to their proposal within 48 hours–and without providing a copy of the paperwork describing fees for their loans.

In a memo to employees, Tierney said the company has asked the hometown bankruptcy court to allow payments of benefits and pensions. A bankruptcy filing usually halts such payments, at least initially. In recent years, many employees of the Inquirer and Daily News have taken buyouts or have been laid off.

Thayer’s affidavit says Tierney’s management has “dramatically improved the operations.” But one thing not specified was print circulation numbers of the Inquirer and Daily News, both Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers. Latest audited figures put their combined daily circulation at 398,000, on the order of half what it was when the papers’ main competition, The Philadelphia Bulletin, went out of business in 1982.

The Goracle speaks about global warming to our leaders

During a rare snow and ice storm in Washington DC on Jan. 28, the Goracle  (Al Gore) spoke of the crisis of man-made global warming.

 

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) begged the Goracle to look further into the future. “What does your modeling tell you about how long we’re going to be around as a species?” he inquired.

The Goracle chuckled. “I don’t claim the expertise to answer a question like that, Senator.”

This story by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post will  be  the turning point on the greatest hoax of the last 100 years.

By Dana Milbank
Thursday, January 29, 2009; A03

 

The lawmakers gazed in awe at the figure before them. The Goracle had seen the future, and he had come to tell them about it.

What the Goracle saw in the future was not good: temperature changes that “would bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fabric of life everywhere on the Earth —

and this is within this century, if we don’t change.”

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry (D-Mass.), appealed to hear more of the Goracle’s premonitions. “Share with us, if you would, sort of the immediate

vision that you see in this transformative process as we move to this new economy,” he beseeched.

“Geothermal energy,” the Goracle prophesied. “This has great potential; it is not very far off.”

Another lawmaker asked about the future of nuclear power. “I have grown skeptical about the degree to which it will expand,” the Goracle spoke.

A third asked the legislative future — and here the Goracle spoke in riddle. “The road to Copenhagen has three steps to it,” he said.

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) begged the Goracle to look further into the future. “What does your modeling tell you about how long we’re going to be around as a species?” he inquired.

The Goracle chuckled. “I don’t claim the expertise to answer a question like that, Senator.”

It was a jarring reminder that the Goracle is, indeed, mortal. Once Al Gore was a mere vice president, but now he is a Nobel laureate and climate-change prophet. He repeats phrases

such as “unified national smart grid” the way he once did “no controlling legal authority” — and the ridicule has been replaced by worship, even by his political foes.

“Tennessee,” gushed Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Gore’s home state, “has a legacy of having people here in the Senate and in public service that have been of major

consequence and contributed in a major way to the public debate, and you no doubt have helped build that legacy.” If that wasn’t quite enough, Corker added: “Very much enjoyed your

sense of humor, too.”

Humor? From Al Gore? “I benefit from low expectations,” he replied.

The Goracle’s powers seem to come from his ability to scare the bejesus out of people. “We must face up to this urgent and unprecedented threat to the existence of our civilization,” he

said. And: “This is the most serious challenge the world has ever faced.” And: It “could completely end human civilization, and it is rushing at us with such speed and force.”

Though some lawmakers tangled with Gore on his last visit to Capitol Hill, none did on the Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. Dick Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican, agreed that

there will be “an almost existential impact” from the climate changes Gore described.

As such, the Goracle, even when questioned, was shown great deference. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), challenging Gore over spent nuclear fuel, began by saying: “I stand to be corrected,

and I defer to your position, you’re probably right, and I’m probably wrong.” He ended his question by saying: “I’m not questioning you; I’m questioning myself.”

Others sought to buy the Goracle’s favor by offering him gifts. “Thank you for your incredible leadership; you make this crystalline for those who don’t either understand it or want to

understand it,” gushed Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who went on to ask: “Will you join me this summer at the Jersey Shore?”

The chairman worried that the Goracle may have been offended by “naysayers” who thought it funny that Gore’s testimony before the committee came on a morning after a snow-and-ice

storm in the capital. “The little snow in Washington does nothing to diminish the reality of the crisis,” Kerry said at the start of the hearing.

The climate was well controlled inside the hearing room, although Gore, suffering from a case of personal climate change, perspired heavily during his testimony. The Goracle presented

the latest version of his climate-change slide show to the senators: a globe with yellow and red blotches, a house falling into water, and ones with obscure titles such as “Warming

Impacts Ugandan Coffee Growing Region.” At one point he flashed a biblical passage on the screen, but he quickly removed it. “I’m not proselytizing,” he explained. A graphic showing a

disappearing rain forest was accompanied by construction noises.

The Goracle supplied abundant metaphors to accompany his visuals. Oil demand: “This roller coaster is headed for a crash, and we’re in the front car.” Polar ice: “Like a beating heart,

and the permanent ice looks almost like blood spilling out of a body along the eastern coast of Greenland.”

The lawmakers joined in. “There are a lot of ways to skin a cat,” contributed Isakson, who is unlikely to get the Humane Society endorsement. “And if we have the dire circumstances

we’re facing, we need to find every way to skin every cat.”

Mostly, however, the lawmakers took turns asking the Goracle for advice, as if playing with a Magic 8 Ball.

Lugar, a 32-year veteran of the Senate, asked Gore, as a “practical politician,” how to get the votes for climate-change legislation. “I am a recovering politician. I’m on about Step 9,” the

Goracle replied, before providing his vision.

Prospects for regulating a future carbon emissions market? “There’s a high degree of confidence.” The future of automobiles in China and India? “I wouldn’t give up on electric vehicles.”

The potential of solar power in those countries? “I have no question about it at all.”

Of course not. He’s the Goracle. He and his entourage jetted to Davos, Switzerland! 

He can afford his carbon credits, he owns the company. It’s like the Stienbrenners “buying” tickets to see the New York Yankees. 

Now the famous NASA “climate change scientist” has been disgraced.

One of Al Gore’s favorite salesman is  James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute. Hansen’s former boss, retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, has come forward with some news … Theon is skeptic of man-made global warming and his former employee James Hansen is an embarrassment to NASA. Theon says, “I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made.” He goes on to say, “Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress.”

There’s more to chew on here,  it is good to find out who is on the  Al Gore PR payroll.

Davos annual financial summit — It’s time to show stockholders and taxpayers what the big shots do with our money–Gov. Paterson pulls out of his ski trip to Europe

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!”

January 20, 2009

An historic day for President Obama, America and the free world. Take a look at the front page coverage of newspapers all over the world. http://benwikler.com/news21all.html
Note the Russian paper. No photos of event.

Rupert Murdoch tells journalists: Shape up or risk extinction

Rupert Murdoch is a media genius. He has an instinct for fair and balanced news. Of course,  members of the elite, liberal media (former monopolies) would say he is just a rich conservative who buys up media. I’ve seen the smears against him for the past 25 years. Now his empire includes FOX, the Wall Street Journal and You Tube. 

This is what Mr. Murdoch has to say: 

“It used to be that a handful of editors could decide what was news-and what was not. They acted as sort of demigods. If they ran a story, it became news. If they ignored an event, it never happened. Today editors are losing this power. The Internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore. And if you aren’t satisfied with that, you can start up your own blog and cover and comment on the news yourself. Journalists like to think of themselves as watchdogs, but they haven’t always responded well when the public calls them to account.”

Mr. Murdoch points out  the media reaction after bloggers debunked a “60 Minutes” report by former CBS anchor, Dan Rather, that President Bush had evaded service during his days in the National Guard.

“Far from celebrating this citizen journalism, the establishment media reacted defensively. During an appearance on Fox News, a CBS executive attacked the bloggers in a statement that will go down in the annals of arrogance. ’60 Minutes,’ he said, was a professional organization with ‘multiple layers of checks and balances.’ By contrast, he dismissed the blogger as ‘a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.’ But eventually it was the guys sitting in their pajamas who forced Mr. Rather and his producer to resign.

“Mr. Rather and his defenders are not alone,” he continued. “A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let’s be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves.”

—Reported by Charles Cooper of CNET.

Update: Dan Rather now works for Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Cuban is under investigation  for insider trading by the federal SEC.

“My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it’s not newspapers that might become obsolete. It’s some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper’s most precious asset: the bond with its readers,” said Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive officer of News Corp., owners of FOX News.

UPDATE: Dec. 21, 2008

Some 500 managers and nonunion workers at The Seattle Times are being asked to take a week off without pay as financial troubles mount.

This is one of many JOAs that allow two mastheads to remain “independent” while all the marketing, promotion, advertising, publishing and distribution are joined in one economical operation. It is a form of monopoly, exactly what Mr. Murdoch was discussing. 

 

· Times memo to unaffiliated employees

Company spokeswoman Jill Mackie said workers can take the time off in a weeklong chunk or a day at a time between now and February. She declined to say how much money the Times expects to save from the mandatory time-off program.

It’s the latest in a series of dire steps by the company, which has had three rounds of layoffs this year.

“There are very few areas remaining in which we can pursue necessary savings,” wrote Seattle Times Senior Vice President Alayne Fardella in a two-page memo sent to all nonunionized Seattle Times employees Friday.

“It has been and continues to be a long and difficult fight for our survival.”

The memo says the time must be taken off before Feb. 28 because the company needs to achieve cost savings early in the year.

The Shagged Sheep — One party PC journalism is here. Watch the attack on Mark Steyn

THE SHAGGED SHEEP

This is a long piece but it does have underage sex and bestiality in it. So enjoy! — Mark Steyn The other day I had an e-mail from M J Murphy, who blogs as Big City Lib, saying only this: I think you owe Dr. Miller an apology. There followed a link to a post called Steyn Gets Punked By 28-Year Old Literary Hoax: Remember the kerfuffle between Mark Steyn and journalism professor Dr. John Miller from a few weeks back? Dr. Miller accused Steyn of taking material for “America Alone” from illegitimate sources like the infamous Little Green Book: Sayings of the Ayatollah Khomeini.* [*UPDATE: M J Murphy has quietly revised this paragraph, and so the airbrushing begins]  Actually, I don’t think Dr Miller has accused me of any such thing, though I admit, given his shifting accusations, that I’m no longer quite sure what he’s accusing me of. Just to recap, said “kerfuffle” arises from this passage in a review I wrote for Maclean’s of Oriana Fallaci’s final book The Force Of Reason: Signora Fallaci then moves on to the livelier examples of contemporary Islam — for example, Ayatollah Khomeini’s “Blue Book” and its helpful advice on romantic matters: “If a man marries a minor who has reached the age of nine and if during the defloration he immediately breaks the hymen, he cannot enjoy her any longer.” I’ll say. I know it always ruins my evening. Also: “A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin.” Indeed. A quiet cigarette afterwards as you listen to your favourite Johnny Mathis LP and then a promise to call her next week and swing by the pasture is by far the best way. It may also be a sin to roast your nine-year-old wife, but the Ayatollah’s not clear on that. A cheap joke en passant. Indeed, insofar as I dwelt on the ovine fornication, it was to suggest to La Fallaci that, even for us flagrant Islamophobes, it was not perhaps the most useful avenue of attack: I enjoy the don’t-eat-your-sexual-partner stuff as much as the next infidel, but the challenge presented by Islam is not that the cities of the Western world will be filling up with sheep-shaggers. If I had to choose, I’d rather Mohammed Atta was downriver in Egypt hitting on the livestock than flying through the windows of Manhattan skyscrapers. But he’s not. And that’s it. That’s all I said. And no one would remember had not El Mo’s sock puppets included the sheep-shagging line in the dossier they submitted to the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission. Whereupon Dr Miller …actually, I’m not sure he is a doctor: He calls himself “The Journalism Doctor”, but the  title seems to be entirely self-conferred. Anyway, at this point, Doc Miller, Prof Miller, Herr Baron von Miller or whatever he is got interested in the case and asked the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal if he could intervene. Silly ol’ me assumed that he wished to intervene to argue the cause of free speech. But no: he wanted to intervene to argue that I was not a “responsible journalist”, and so it was entirely appropriate for the state to censor me. As Rory Leishman notes, since this thought-police racket got going, “Most journalists have either condoned censorship or cowered in silence.” Canadians who still value liberty should know that, if they rely on anemic PC flunkeys like Professor Miller, they’ll lose their country. At any rate, the BCHRT gave him the bum’s rush, so Prof Miller surfaced a few weeks ago and kept returning to the subject of the sheep-shaggers line. His complaint is in an apparently endless process of evolution. But let’s go through the story so far: 1) First, insofar as I understand his initial argument, he advanced the curious line that the ruling from the Ayatollah was not widely cited, and therefore it was improper of me to use it. After it was pointed out that in fact Khomeini’s views on the post-bestiality buffet, child sex and other arcane points of Islamic law are known to many (especially those  on the receiving end), a couple of weeks later he revised his line of attack: 2) Now his argument was that I’d concocted it out of whole cloth. The J-Doc declared boldly that Steyn “gave no citation for the quote, and I suspect it was made up.” In fact, as anyone who reads the passage above can see, I attributed it to Oriana Fallaci’s book. The disinterested observer might conclude that Professor Ethics-Bore had never so much as glanced at the offending article but had simply taken the Sock Puppets’ word for it. So the E-Bore was obliged to revise his argument yet again – and decided to accuse me of what he appeared to have done himself: 3) Now my sin was that I “clearly accepted someone else’s word for it”. Evidently, it wasn’t all that “clear” when he was accusing me of making it up, but a drowning ethics prof can be forgiven for clutching at straw men. At any rate, that makes three different complaints. As I wrote: That’s the great thing about the self-appointed “Journalism Doctor”: When he diagnoses you, he provides his own second opinion. Now, on Prof Miller’s behalf, M J Murphy has revised my crime yet again: Dr. Miller accused Steyn of taking material for “America Alone” from illegitimate sources like the infamous Little Green Book: Sayings of the Ayatollah Khomeini. As I said, the sheep-shagging passage is from a review of La Fallaci’s book in Maclean’s. It’s nothing to do with America Alone. There is no mention of sheep shagging in America Alone. There is no mention of any Little Green Book in America Alone. There is, indeed, no mention of Ayatollah Khomeini in America Alone. Prof Miller and Mr Murphy and their enthusiastic chorus boys at Law Is Cool are welcome to check for themselves. But, leaving that aside and forgiving M J Murphy for confusing America Alone with a book review in Maclean’s, if you return to the passage up above, you’ll see that neither Oriana nor I refer to any Little Green Book. We cite a “Blue Book” – or “Libro Azzurro”, in La Fallaci’s original Italian. That’s the color we’re nailing to our mast. We’re singing the blues, and it’s you fellers who are smelling the green. Indeed, the guy who brought up the Little Green Book is Prof Miller in his response to me. I never mentioned any green book. Like I said, I’d rather be blue. So, if M J Murphy and the excitable schoolgirls at Law R Cool have proved The Little Green Book is a “hoax”, the person who’s been “punked” is Professor Miller. Incidentally, I wouldn’t describe The Little Green Book as a “hoax”. It would be truer to say that it is a somewhat lurid and condensed version of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s work. Nevertheless, if you read M J Murphy’s post, you’ll find that Marvin Zonis of the University of Chicago declined to provide an introduction for it. Professor Zonis is evidently regarded by M J Murphy as a greater authority in these matters than I am, so please keep his name in mind. However, as it happens, I didn’t take “someone else’s word” for anything, whether it was the word of Oriana Fallaci or the compiler of The Little Green Book. When it comes to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s views on sheep shagging, my gu ide for many years has been a book called Resaleh Towzih al-Masael. The author is a chap called …Ayatollah Khomeini. Let’s go back to the original offending quotation from my Maclean’s book review: Signora Fallaci then moves on to the livelier examples of contemporary Islam — for example, Ayatollah Khomeini’s “Blue Book” and its helpful advice on romantic matters. Well, here’s a clue: Hmm. Here’s another clue: But how can that be? We all know: “There is no Blue Book.” The Lord High Checker of Facts has pronounced. As it happens, Resaleh Towzih al-Masael has been published in Iran in several editions. But the most popular was the paperback edition published by Nashr I Sharia’t of Tehran. It sold for 120 rials. It had some 350 pages, approx 5×7 inches, with a blue cover, featuring a picture of its ever more famous author. A souvenir hardback edition marketed as the perfect New Year gift was subsequently published by Rashidi with a plain blue cover… almost every year this book is published in a different color. But many versions of the “Blue Book” are still out there:     In the relevant passage in her book, Oriana recalls first seeing excerpts from the “Blue Book” in 1979. That’s what it was back then: A blue book. The blue book in revolutionary Iran. It certainly wasn’t a “little green book” as that wasn’t published till 1980. So when she and I refer to the Ayatollah’s “Blue Book” we’re referring to that Nashr I Sharia’t edition of the Resaleh. It was translated into English, unabridged, by J Borujerdi and published in 1984 by Westview in London and Boulder, Colorado under the title A Clarification Of Questions. I was given it a couple of decades ago by the Iranian gal I was then dating. She had a copy of the pocket paperback with the Ayatollah on the cover, and once, when she read out a bit to me, I expressed skepticism that it could really be that wacky.  So a few weeks later she presented me with the English edition. As she explained, these were not just some personal musings from the Ayatollah but a kind of moral compass for the Islamic state. So I didn’t need to “accept someone else’s word for it” on having sex with nine-year-old girls, because, like anyone else who’s taken even a cursory interest in the subject, I’ve known for a long time that, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, girls could be legally married at the age of nine. Article 1041 of the Civil Code states: Marriage before puberty by the permission of the Guardian and on condition of taking into interest the ward’s interest is proper. “Puberty” is defined as “nine full lunar years” – although, in practice, girls as young as seven can be married on the say-so of a doctor. The justification for all this is in the highly elaborate rules of Islamic life. They may sound unlikely to M J Murphy or Prof Miller but the Ayatollah’s “clarification of questions” doesn’t strike most devout Iranian Shi’ites that way. Mr Borujerdi, the English translator, was an Iranian émigré living in Cleveland, and he gave an interview about the book to David Remnick (now the editor of The New Yorker) in The Washington Post in 1985. It’s not available online but M J Murphy and Prof Miller and the Law R Cool nellies are welcome to go to their local reference library and check it out. It’s the Aug 21 issue, page B1: “I did the translation because it gives a very close understanding of the Shiite view of the world,” he said. “The Bantam Press published a very slight version five years ago called The Little Green Book’-just 6 percent of the original-but that was really a joke book, to poke fun at Khomeini and debunk Islam at the beginning of the hostage crisis. In Iran, this book is mandatory for every literate person, a kind of guide to living.” So this is the real deal, not the sensationalist précis but a serious, scholarly  “unabridged translation” designed to provide “a unique picture of the belief structure of Shi’ism“. Mr Borujerdi had no difficulty finding eminent academics to provide an introduction – namely, Professors Mehdi Abedi and Michael Fischer of Rice University in Houston. But he also consulted on the translation and interpretation with many other scholars, among them Professor Wilfred Madelung of the Oriental Institute at Oxford University, Professor Wheeler Thackston of Harvard’s Near Eastern Languages department, Professor William Darrow of Williams College, Professor Vincent McHale of Case Western, Professor Merlin Swartz of Boston University …oh, and Professor Marvin Zonis of the University of Chicago. That would be the same Prof Zonis who was unhappy with The Little Green Book, and thus made M J Murphy unhappy, too. But Prof Zonis is cool with A Clarification Of Questions, so presumably M J Murphy will also be satisfied? Resaleh Towzih al-Masael/A Clarification Of Questions consists of almost 3,000 “problems” for which Ayatollah Khomeini provides answers, plus a few follow-ups he dealt with in subsequent editions. So, just to bring the deplorably unicultural Prof Miller up to speed, the easiest way to get a flavor of the Ayatollah’s book is simply to  sample the contents pages: THE UNCLEANS 1&2. Urine and stool 3. Semen 4. Corpse 5. Blood 6&7. Dog and pig 8. Infidel 9. Wine 10. Beer 11. Sweat of an unlawful ejaculation 12. The sweat of a camel that eats uncleans Hey, Multiculti Man, that would be you at big hit sound number 8: “Infidel” – right behind “Dog and pig” but, if it’s any consolation, ahead of “Sweat of an unlawful ejaculation”. But hang on: ejaculate-wise, the Ayatollah’s just getting cranked up: PRECEPTS OF EJACULATION Things that are unlawful for an ejaculator Things that are loathesome for an ejaculator The bath of ejaculation… 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. Did either of us mention a Little Green Book? No. In fact, the translation Oriana cites pre-dates The Little Green Book by a year. I think Professor Waggy-Finger is doing what they call “projecting”. He’s accusing me of everything he’s been doing himself. I took “somebody else’s word for it”. Er, no. That would be you, taking the Sock Puppets’ word for it on my book review. I didn’t check the “primary source”. Er, no. That would be you, cavalierly announcing there’s no such thing as a “Blue Book”. To be more charitable to you than you deserve, you assume that Oriana Fallaci and I so want to think the worst of Islam that we’ll fall for any old hooey. Actually not. On the other hand, you so want to think the worst of us blowhard provocateurs that you assume we’re as ignorant of Islam as you evidently are.  Please follow this on SteynOnline.com

Gannett is building the model of the profitable newspaper

A new bold initiative is about to unfold in Detroit. Overnight, profitability will be restored to the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News and the joint operating agency that serves them, the experiment in non-daily home delivery could be common practice in the next two years.

Desperate times create desperate measures. The new model even cuts down on newspapers’ carbon footprint.

There is a widely reported plan that the Detroit dailies will restrict home delivery to Thursday and Sunday and perhaps one other day of the week. While papers on the other days of the week presumably would be available for single-copy purchase in busy downtown and suburban shopping centers, the rough draft of this plan is that the subscribers to  the Thursday and Sunday  newspapers would get full access to the news online.  

Gannett owns the Free Press, which is reported by the Gannett Blog to be preparing to eliminate 300 jobs. MediaNews Group, (Singleton) which in part is financed by Gannett, owns the News. 

Let’s face it, newspapers should not be printed and delivered each day. What a waste of energy.

The age of objectivity and fair reporting in America is over — MSNBC is disgraced

Who is a Democrat PR talking head and who is a journalist on MSNBC, NBC or CNN? Why stop there? The Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times and SF Chronicle are not investigating economic issues and massive bailouts. What kind of balanced journalism do you think the media performed during the two-year election?

First the gang journalists piled on Hillary, next they covered for Obama and attacked Palin.

MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.

The New York TImes had a reporter rewrite an AP story on the hoax and they spun the story to blame FOX News first with the hoax.  This is called journalism?

MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.

David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, “a McCain policy adviser,” had come forth and identified himself as the source of a story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent.

Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy and “a contributor to FOX News.” Yet neither he nor the institute exist; each is part of a hoax dreamed up by a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The Eisenstadt claim had mistakenly been delivered to Shuster by a producer and was used in a political discussion Monday afternoon, MSNBC said.

“The story was not properly vetted and should not have made air,” said Jeremy Gaines, network spokesman. “We recognized the error almost immediately and ran a correction on air within minutes.”

Gaines told the Times that someone in the network’s newsroom had presumed the information solid because it was passed along in an e-mail from a colleague.

The hoax was limited to the identity of the source in the story about Palin—not the Fox News story itself. While Palin has denied that she mistook Africa for a country, the veracity of that report was not put in question by the revelation that Eisenstadt is a phony.

Eisenstadt’s “work” had been quoted and debunked before. The Huffington Post said it had cited Eisenstadt in July on a story regarding the Hilton family and McCain.

Among the other victims were political blogs for the Los Angeles Times and The New Republic, each of which referenced false material from Eisenstadt’s blog.

“The story was not properly vetted and should not have made air,” said Jeremy Gaines, MSNBC spokesman.

There are plenty of questions that are not asked.

How did Minnesota Democrat Party election officials come up with 500 more votes for the Democrat senate candidate days after the polls closed and none for the Republican candidate?

Why was there a crisis over $150,000 spent on Sarah Palin’s campaign clothing, but no comparison with Hillary’s warehouse of pantsuits or Obama’s Greek columns and semi-truck of suits?

Newspaper and news magazine circulation is dropping. Layoffs continue. (Wait until after January).

Let’s start redistributing the wealth of Barbra Streisand, Michael Moore and Opra

Barack Obama has plans to redistribute the wealth of Joe the Plumber — that’s chump change and the guy has to work with broken pipes and human waste for his money.

How about going after the big fish — liberal Hollywood Democrats like Barbara Streisand, Michael  Moore, Opra Winfrey, Rosie ODonnel, Rob Rhiner, Alec Baldwin, John Travolta and friends?

How about Ted Kennedy, John and Teressa Kerry, even Bill and Hillary Clinton now that they’ve skimmed millions from the system.

What’s so funny about redistributing the wealth? What kind of jokes are they telling in New York and Malibu about McCain and Sarah Palin?

Bill Ayers was out lecturing an adoring crowd of admirers, expressing displeasure that he’s become an issue in the Presidential campaign. The Daily News reports:

The former member of the Weather Underground beamed at the attention paid by the audience of about 60 people, many of whom were decked out in Obama gear. The crowd gave Ayers a warm welcome, guffawed at jokes about “redistributing the wealth” and nodded at his complaints about the “Republican revolution.” After the talk was over, event organizers attempted to sneak Ayers out a back door to avoid the media. Waiting reporters gave chase, but Ayers sputtered, “No comment,” and darted into a cab.

One wonders what that redistributing the wealth joke was — those “property is theft” gags are a hoot, no doubt. Yes, I’m sure with the website and the  new edition of his book coming out, his real hope is to remain far from the limelight.

If you find it odd that sixty people would choose to spend their time with a former terrorist yucking it up about the Reagan Revolution, you might consider how utterly bizarre it would be to enjoy a fulsome political and personal relationship with such a person. It is not something an average voter, I’d suggest, could in his wildest dreams imagine doing.

Once again, you are left to conclude that Obama simply doesn’t hold the same values as ordinary voters. He’s giving a good imitation. But that’s not the same. It really isn’t. –Jennifer Rubin

Bottom-up change of America by Obama — Lowering the middle class

Trickle up poverty,  a phrase coined by someone who deserves an award or something, is probably not well liked by the far right. Why not try trickle up economic support?  Most of us consider ourselves “middle class.” I’d imagine even Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh think of themselves as middle class, on the upper end, of course.

For political “big tent” purposes, the middle class is now about 80 percent of the country, including the  millions who don’t pay income taxes. We now know that  Joe the Plumber will soon be too rich for middle class status or Obama’s tax cuts. Welcome to the new lower middle class.

The Wall Street Journal’s Bill McGurn unpacks Barack Obama’s “tax cut for 95% of the people” hooey. The short version:

Now, if you have been following this so far, you have learned that people who pay no income tax will get an income tax refund. You have also learned that this check will represent relief for the payroll taxes these people do pay. And you have been assured that this rebate check won’t actually come out of payroll taxes, lest we harm Social Security.

You have to admire the audacity. With one touch of the Obama magic, what otherwise would be described as taking money from Peter to pay Paul is now transformed into Paul’s tax relief. Where a tax cut for payroll taxes paid will not in fact come from payroll taxes. And where all these plans come together under the rhetorical umbrella of “Making Work Pay.”

All of this is breathtakingly dishonest. (As Al Gore would say I think we need a lock box.)

Welcome to the world of MSM-lapdog-ism. But I can’t blame the MSM. McCain was too frozen in country club Republican politics to respond. 

Joe the plumber is in deep sh*t now for speaking up against Obama

By Mick Gregory

You knew it would happen. Joe the Plumber’s 15 minutes of fame in last night’s debate have turned into a round of public humiliation for the wannabe business owner. The Toledo Blade is reporting that Joe has no plumber’s license.

To make matters worse, the Blade also found that the Ohio Department of Taxation placed a lien against Joe because $1,183 in personal property taxes had not been paid. The piling on has begun. The media is searching for more dirt on Joe. Why aren’t journalists looking at William Ayers and Obama’s ACORN support and the Fannie and Freddie financial disastor with as much vigor?

You know why, don’t you. Welcome to the new United Socialist/Democrat States! Where the media is in lockstep with Big Brother and Senator Government. Make way for a wave of taxes and government control not seen in this country since Jimmy Carter, or LBJ’s Great Society, maybe even FDR’s New Deal. It’s BO’s time.

It took a hard working, average citizen to expose the media propaganda and lack of reporting on Democrat candidate for president, Barack Obama. Rather than report on Obma’s ACORN and William Ayers long-term alliance with Obama’s political support, they turn to ripping into Joe from Ohio.

 

 

We know that more than 90 percent of the major media consider themselves liberal. Even more so, the “minor media” like loser reporters in Scranton and those working for the Stribe.

We know that the small town Scranton fat, homely liberal reporter who made up hearing people at McCain-Palin saying “terrorist,” etc.